ROSIE MALDONNE’S WORLD Translated by Alexandra Maldwyn-‐Davies This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Text copyright © 2013 Alice Quinn Translation copyright © 2015 Alexandra Maldwyn-‐Davies, from Pimienta.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Previously published as Un palace en enfer (Au pays de Rosie Maldonne t. 1) by the author via the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform in France in 2013. Translated from French by Alexandra Maldwyn-‐Davies, from Pimienta.com. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2015. Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle www.apub.com Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates. ISBN-‐13: 9781477827567 ISBN-‐10: 1477827560 Cover design by Marc Cohen Cover illustration by Aurélie Khalidi Library of Congress Control Number: 2014921446 Printed in the United States of America
Monday: My Home Sweet Home
1 My name is Rose. Rosie Maldonne. 37-‐26-‐35. That’s not my cell number. No, those are my measurements. Apparently, I’m a total knockout from head to toe. I couldn’t tell you, though. I don’t have a full-‐length mirror. Being called Rose is about as lame as it gets, but it’s the only thing my mother left me. That’s why I can’t handle it when people call me Rose. She’s the only one who ever had the right to do that. I have people call me Cricri instead. That sucks even more, I know. It’s nothing like Rose. But I always liked Jiminy Cricket, and at least it doesn’t start me off crying. Because, you see, my mother died almost nine years ago, when I was sixteen. I’ve missed her ever since. The two of us were as thick as thieves. She taught me everything. Like how to fill out a welfare application (they called it “aid” back then). How to berate the guys down at the job office (a.k.a. “the unemployment line”) when the paperwork was taking too long. How to dump a guy who steals your money and fools around with other women. How to wax using heated sugar, and how to color your hair with henna. How to look your best in a push-‐up bra, preferably
red. That Sunday, the day this whole thing started, I’d decided to call my friend, Mimi (short for Émilie), to see if I could borrow some money, seeing as the kiddos and I had nothing to eat. Mimi was rich because she worked full-‐time, which wasn’t the case for me. She was the only one I could ask for a loan. It broke my heart to see my kids go without. I loved them so much. I had a litany of nicknames for them that I was always blurting out: chickadees, rug rats, crib lizards. I loved to crack them up. The phone rang for a while and Mimi finally picked up. But as soon as I spoke, she cut me off, accusing me of not knowing how to manage my budget and, above all, of still not having paid back the last money I owed her. “Listen Mimi,” I started. “You’re right—the last time I wasn’t all that careful when I did my groceries, and I bought a load of shit I didn’t need, but this time it’s different because school’s back and everything, and they’re late with my check. It’ll only be for a couple of days, that’s all. Come on, Mimi, don’t make me beg . . . Yes, sweetie, I saw! You finished your poopie! Wow! It’s beautiful, my little trickster . . . No, Mimi, I’m not talking to you, I was talking to Emma. She was on her potty . . . No, there’s nothing crazy about it. I have to praise her sometimes, right? Wait, no, wait, honey, no! It’s not paint, Emma! She just decided to go paint the couch with . . . Yes, I know you’re not all that interested and you can’t stand kids . . . OK, right, so this cash, can you come through or not? Emma!
Stop! No! NO! Emma, are you listening to me? . . . Yeah, sorry, hmmm? You really can’t? OK, I have to go now. I’ll call you back, OK?” I hung up and screamed, “She’s so goddamn mean! Such a stuck-‐up cow! That dumb bitch!” “Mommy, you jutht curthed!” cried my five-‐year-‐old, Sabrina. Her lisp was ridiculously cute, even when she was being her stickler self and chastising me for bad language. I ignored her and continued to rant. “I know good and well she has at least six hundred in her account, and she says she can’t lend me any money? Emma! Come over here and stop spreading that on the cat. And your face. Come on, let’s get you in the shower.” Mimi blows all her money on threads. She’s single. It’s cool. She gives me her clothes when she’s done with them, and she’s often done with them. That’s why I look so great and somehow manage to fool everyone. When I visit the social worker, I can tell she drools over these castoffs. Red leather miniskirts, orange satin corsets, fluorescent-‐pink wedges. The jealousy kills her. Which often doesn’t help with getting things done. I left Sabrina with a coloring book so I could throw the twins in the shower stall. They’re not really twins and they couldn’t look more different—Lisa so pale and blonde and Emma with her dark complexion. I just call them that because they’re the same age—two years old at that time. That’s when I realized we had no hot water. Something must have
busted somewhere. And to top it all off, Pastis (my cat) was complaining because I’d given him only a saucer of sour milk with three crusts of bread. See, I don’t tend to have much luck. My surname is pretty apt: Maldonne literally means “misdeal.” It’s my father’s name. He married my mother when they found out she was pregnant. A month before she gave birth, he ran out on her and went off to Canada. But I couldn’t care less. I never knew him. Maldonne. It’s a term used in card games. If someone doesn’t deal the cards right, they call it a misdeal. And that’s exactly what happened to me. When I started out in life, I was dealt a bad hand. Names mean something. If my name had been Madonna, for example, things might have been quite different. Maybe I’d have turned out to be a pop star too. Who knows? Right then, on that dreary Sunday, I felt like my name should be Rosie Misfortune. Take, for example, the fact that I’d never found anything. I’d met tons of people who told me all about the stuff they’d found. The perfect couch, a box full of groceries when they were homeless, the right address for the Social Security office, or even their very own knight in shining armor. But not me. I never understood why. Fate? Chance? Luck? Did it all come down to one thing? And if I looked for it, would I ever find it? Doubtful.
Even so, I liked when there was a reason for everything, even if I never found the reason. Just like I never found anything else. It wasn’t for lack of trying. I’d spent my whole life trying, and I always ended up with the same result. NOTHING. Another of my particular skills: I never won anything either. You could take any bet you liked with me. I always lost. But life’s full of surprises, right? I was headed for a two-‐in-‐one. I was going to find something and win something. I had a hunch that maybe my luck was finally changing. Just like on Wheel of Fortune when a contestant gets on a roll. Spin . . . and narrowly miss the Bankrupt to win the Prize Puzzle. I should have had my doubts.
2 Lying in bed the night before, I could hear my mother’s voice singing the Beatles song “Money (That’s What I Want).” I couldn’t tell whether I was dreaming or not. I tossed and turned when I was supposed to be getting a good night’s sleep. Of course, early the next morning, I couldn’t get up. And I couldn’t get the lyrics out of my brain. The singer says that, yes, there are many beautiful free things in life, like sprawling landscapes and love, but what he really needs is money. It was exactly what I was going through. One thing was for sure, my mother loved that song. She used to sing Beatles songs a lot—and just then, I felt I could hear her singing to me. That’s how I knew my mother was with me. She sends me songs. It’s our way of communicating. Usually, the message is clear and I know how to decode it. But not always. Since getting pregnant the first time, when I was nineteen,
I’ve tried to get by as best I can. But I was beginning to feel old. I was almost twenty-‐five and I had three kids. All they wanted to do was grow up. Two had come out of me. The third arrived by way of life’s unpredictable circumstances. And I’m not talking about a man-‐child who ended up staying for God knew how long. The kids were making a terrible racket. I resisted with everything I had, putting my head under the pillow. I dreamed I was already up, so I didn’t have to go ahead and actually do it. Finally, when they’d shrieked too much and jumped all over me, I had to surrender and admit I wasn’t asleep anymore. I just couldn’t face what the day had in store for me. I knew there was nothing left to eat in the house. I know it sounds melodramatic to say that in twenty-‐first-‐century France, but it was the truth. As for using the word house, well . . . we didn’t actually live in a house. We lived in a trailer. A 1985 Caravelair. It was pitched next to the abandoned railway station, in the middle of a vacant lot. But it could actually be pretty nice there. It’s full of poppies in summertime, daisies in spring, and sometimes blueberries. The rest of the year, though, it’s full of muck. I had put planks along the ground so we could get home without ending up covered in it. My monkeys love this place. Despite my chronic bad luck, I’m sometimes able to
summon my inner optimist. I opened the cupboard, full of hope. But there was nothing much. I opted for a few crackers. The song carried on in my head. Maybe if I keep singing about money, it’ll come to me. I couldn’t help but think that the day before school beginning had already started out pretty badly. This year, the first week of school started on Tuesday, September 4. You have to wonder why a Tuesday. The school isn’t even open on Wednesdays! I wished we had croissants for breakfast, for the kids— though to be honest, it was I who wanted a hot croissant with a strong cup of coffee. Without coffee, I need to be handled with kid gloves. Without my morning coffee beans, I start getting palpitations. Anxiety attacks. But I toasted the crackers instead, and we had them with what was left at the bottom of the jam jar, and the imps were happy. I managed to fool them again. Ahmed, the jackass at the store, won’t give me any more credit. He says I’ve racked up too much debt. We won’t even bother talking about the other local stores; they wouldn’t trust me as far as they could throw me. The words of the song ran through my head, telling me that all the love in the world would not pay for my food. Yes, I know, Mom! Thank you! Apart from my not having any money, everything was
going pretty well. And if it weren’t for the whole lack-‐of-‐food problem, I’d be ready to face the day with a spring in my step. I decided to extend the weekend some and not take the little ones to daycare (which children here attend until preschool begins at age three). Sabrina was headed back to preschool tomorrow, so we would enjoy the last of our time off. The schools are on opposite ends of the city, so the following day, the cavalcade would begin again! When things are going wrong, I try to sleep in as much as possible, because I know once I get up, I’m going to have to put on a good show the rest of the day. Although my kiddos are hilarious, having three of them isn’t always easy. However, they’re the only area of my life where I am lucky. When I see the awful kids whacking the hell out of each other at school and the dumbass mothers who come to collect them, each one more unbearable than the next—well, next to that bunch, mine are incredible. I know I sound biased, but I swear it’s the truth. Pure and simple. And then there’s my cat. He’s the other area where I’m lucky. If I believed in reincarnation, I’d say he was definitely Einstein. But I’ll stop there. I know how annoying it can be when people go on about their pets. It’s even worse than people telling you all about their dreams. Well, maybe not that. There’s nothing worse than people telling you about their dreams. So, today’s goal was to come into some cash. But knowing
my terrible luck, I was fighting a losing battle.
3 My first hope for cash was already dashed after that call to Mimi. She could have at least lent me a twenty. Yeah, right. Why even bother with a cheapskate like that? The trouble was, she was the only person I knew who had any cash. She didn’t have to watch every penny at the end of the month with the number of clients she had. It wasn’t the same for me. Ever since my grandmother stopped working the streets, that option had become taboo among the women in my family. We’re all for sexual freedom, but true sexual freedom. I have to be fair. Mimi had another job with declared income. She was a waitress at Sélect, like me. Except she was on a full-‐time contract, and I worked when I could. With the three babas, that wasn’t very often. Sélect is a coffeehouse in the Old Town. The boss, Tony, had always been cool with me. But only because he wanted to sleep with me. I’m not saying I didn’t like him—he was OK for an older guy (he was thirty-‐four). It’s just I’d never really considered it. My instinct told me that if I said yes, he
wouldn’t keep me on as an off-‐the-‐books waitress any longer. And that wouldn’t suit me at all. I needed the dough. Plus, he let me work the hours I wanted, which came in handy with a bunch of rug rats. And on Saturday evenings, Tony invited a band to play, and the last time, the musicians were really sweet—they let me wail like a banshee. I love to sing. At home, it’s second nature: I sing from dawn to dusk. Maybe that’s why my mother sends me songs at night. I wake up with lyrics in my mind, and they follow me all day. They’re always songs she loved, which explains the dated repertoire. There are messages for me to decode. Mysteries. Enigmas. Puzzles to piece together. The following day, it’s rare I don’t understand what my mother wanted to tell me. The solutions to my problems can be found in the songs she sends. I just have to hit the right note. The only solution for me that day was to head to Sélect with the three chickadees. I steered them toward the back of the coffeehouse with some coloring books. I did a two-‐hour shift, enough so that Tony was happy to give me fifteen in cash. This clarified the lyric: I needed money, I wanted money, and now I had money. We’d all perked up, so we headed out to treat ourselves to some Mickey D’s. That’s where we bumped into my best friend, Véronique, Véro for short. She worked afternoons cleaning for an insurance company. Véro’s cool, but she’s misery personified. I don’t know
how this girl manages to attract so much unhappiness, but it’s like clockwork. Either her landlord is kicking her out, or her boyfriend is beating her up. I say “boyfriend,” but I mean whatever guy just happens to be around, because she doesn’t have a steady man. I don’t have one either, of course, but it’s not the same. Véro spends all her time crying that she doesn’t have a man in her life. Me? I couldn’t give a crap. I’m not on the lookout for one, either. On the contrary, I’d say they were looking for me. A little too much. My problem has always been how to get rid of the latest one. When we got to McDonald’s, my girls made a beeline for Véro’s older kid, Simon, and they all went off to play on the slides. Véro had a face three feet long, and I could tell right away that something was up, but she didn’t want to tell me anything. For once in her life she wanted to listen to me do the talking. Her mind was elsewhere, but she listened anyway. She ended up saying, “If you’re short, I can lend you some money. I got an arrears payment through welfare. I’ll go to the bank tomorrow and give you some when I see you at Victor Hugo.” Victor Hugo Elementary School is where my Sabrina goes. She’s in her third year, and Simon is in his second. They agreed to take Simon into the second level on the insistence of the shrink, even though his language skills are slightly delayed. Simon doesn’t like to talk. We’re not sure he really knows how. He stutters. Sometimes he busts out with a few snippets, and sometimes nothing. When he’s really tired, he
won’t open up at all. Only Sabrina understands him all the time, even when he says nothing. She interprets for us. Sitting outside McDonald’s, Véro seemed anxious. I asked her where Pierre, her younger son, was, and she burst into tears. I was scared. When you ask a mother about her kid and she starts wailing, you immediately think about leukemia or something awful like that. Plus, Véro is so fragile and pretty, with her hair cut short and her big eyes, that you automatically feel the need to protect her. Seeing her cry like that made me upset. “What’s the matter? Oh, Véro! Stop with the waterworks, please! Tell me! Has something happened to Pierre?” “No, he’s fine. You know, it’s just that I’m so happy!” Her answer left me speechless. “Happy? What do you mean, happy?” When stuff like this happens, it makes you understand just how limited your vocabulary is. Take the word happy, for example. That day, I realized it was a word nobody around me ever used. Or words like happiness, joy, tranquility, bliss, peace, satisfaction, well-‐being, serenity, ease, lightness, and ecstasy. But as for anger, misfortune, unlucky, misery, trouble, tired, fed up, exhausted, crap, drab, garbage—we used them all. They were my daily life. Yet Véro was happy: she’d met a man who was crazy about her. Some guy who’d been a teacher in the Haute-‐Savoie, but
who’d grown sick of the snow and come south. He didn’t work as a teacher any more. He’d met Véro and fallen head over heels. She’d told him everything: that she had two kids; that her idiot ex, Michel, wouldn’t divorce her; that he’d torn the couch fabric into thin strips . . . everything. Well, this new guy—his name was Alexandre, like some emperor—was totally taken with her and the children, and today he was taking care of Pierre. They’d headed off on a bike ride together. “Even all the shouting matches between Michel and me . . . well, I just don’t care about them anymore. I’m on a total high. I’m on top of the world.” “Why? Have you seen that bastard again? Did he come back? What did he want? You fought, right?” But she didn’t answer any of my questions. She just shooed me away. A lazy sweep of the hand. With that, she stood to leave, smiling. I kissed her on both cheeks, and she walked away, taking Simon by the hand. I returned home deep in thought. It’s not every day you bump into Happiness with a capital H. When the kiddos began rearranging anything and everything that could be moved in the Caravelair to build a fort in the middle of the living room, I didn’t have the heart to stop them. I put all three of them to bed right inside it. Pastis had been hiding atop a cupboard through all the commotion, and as soon as the monkeys were asleep, he
came down and set about rubbing against my calf. In other words, What about me? Do you have a bite to eat? I gave him the half a hamburger from lunch that I’d saved for him, but he didn’t want it. I told you he was odd. He sulked and meowed to go out—I think he was trying to catch a mouse. I opened the door reluctantly. He’s the only man in the family, and I like it better when he’s home with us at night. I’m grateful Emma’s dad offered us this trailer. I know he only gave it to us because he couldn’t do anything else with it, given its condition, but he really did me a favor. I had just been evicted. I couldn’t risk going into one of those awful shelters for single moms. I’d rather starve. You have to learn how to be grateful for what life offers you. Thank you, Caravelair, my home sweet home.
Tuesday: A Cop Who’s Too Cute for His Own Good