My holy war

A chapter of my book translated into English

The subject: ages twelve to eighteen

Series of portraits of an isolated young girl

(Montigny-le-Bretonneux, Yvelines, France ; Dordogne, France.)

I was born with one particular trait-my myopia. Seems like there is myopia within, too. That tendency to see others with a blurred outline around them, that embellishes them, as the naysayers would put it. I would say, in my defense, that I want to believe, not in what I think I know of another being, but in what can be perceived, in the potential they have, sometimes never exposed to light, but present nevertheless, under the surface.

On the other hand, I don’t wear rose-coloured glasses when it comes to myself. I learnt early to hold my father’s gaze, a sharp, shooting glance. And at other times, his eyes would overstep me and make me seem invisible.

And by repeating it over and over, my mother convinced me I was just like my father.

As useless as him.

As unlovable as him.

That lie, that came from God knows where, I believed it for so long, so often.

I started to dread what I might be capable of, could I rely on myself if I had his same rage somewhere inside? The same need to bite others and not let them get back on their feet? Where was my anger hiding? It had to be comparable to his tidal wave of emotion, impossible to hold back.

For fear of my shadow, I started to forget myself. My encounters with others were mostly through books. My friends, books. My horizons, books. My retreats, books.

I became gentle, so that I did not resemble him. I remained silent, so that words didn’t pour out of me with rage like his.

I held onto my words, I cultivated them, til the day I put them onto a crumpled sheet of paper to make some boy smile.

I stopped asking questions, I began to accept the rustling presence of others that I could sense around me. Probably because I wanted others to accept me in a similar way, without question, without a gun in the eyes.

At school, I was full of shame. Nobody ever said anything, but I was ashamed to be the daughter of my parents, as if everyone could witness on my forehead the household booming with shouting voices and tears, with the sound of crockery crashing into a wall. I felt out of place, as awkward as their cutting words.

I asked them to be sent to boarding school, in a letter that I put under their pillow. They never said a word about it, ever. I was ten. By the age of twelve, I believed my father one evening that alcohol had made him say that all I needed to do was leave the flat, that I wasn’t his daughter anymore. I didn’t know, back then, that the source of my father’s fits was his drinking. He hid himself well. Although I knew the manifestations by heart, in an implicit way.

So, I crossed the threshold of our family’s flat, in a new town on the outskirts of Paris. Noone stopped me, the quarrel between adults was in full swing. I thought hard and found out that the best place to avoid any looks from the neighbours and have time to think about what I should do, was to step inside a space for the rubbish chute, on the ground floor. It was dark in there, no one would see me and I could get organized there. I remember having seen the time, eight in the evening, and the thought of where to go once outside the building filled me with alarm.

No coat, no money except for the change after buying bread for my parents earlier on. Nobody to call. There were only telephone booths in those days. And what could I say? That my father had become ashamed of me? Who could have listened to that and how could I have uttered but a single syllable, me, the unworthy, who dared to silently meet my father’s wrathful gaze, who later on, as a teenager, would dare to pronounce the taboo words: you drink.

Me, who, when heavily pregnant, would come between him and my younger brother, in defiance of him, you wouldn’t dare to hit me with my belly full of tenderness?

Me who would cry my eyes out, one evening of teenage hopelessness, and manage so well to freeze on the couch, in the living room left empty by my workaholic parents, that I needed a bucket of ice-cold water over my head, the grip on my long hair to keep my head from hitting the wooden stairs while I was dragged all the way up into the corridor to my room, until he shoved me there and stormed off, shouting at my mother, at the moon, at the entire neighbourhood.

That evening, I remember the war I declared. I stared at the sky from my window for a long time, motionless, until I remembered who I was, what my first name was. I understood without a word that it would be him or me. That I would make myself elusive. That we should become strangers to one another. I would put kilometres between us. I would want my own family, to avoid returning to his kingdom. I became a warrior four times, offering my body, twisted in pain, to my children, like a red carpet for them. And then, I became a sacred cow offering her teats to feed them, with milk and stories. I learnt to question my mother’s judgments. She had lacked discernment, trapped in her own pain as she was. My father and I only looked alike physically. I was touched by others. They would confide in me, who listened to them. My children would lean on me, perhaps because I didn’t want to harm them, and let them breathe, and share the days together.

Which didn’t stop me from wandering. I discovered that yes, I was angry. That I pitied him; And that the only way to perhaps help him would be refusing his toxicity. By the time I had a few wrinkles, I wrote to my parents to tell them why I would only visit now and then and I told them all the real dangers and hardships I had been exposed to as a young girl and that they had not known of, so wrapped up in their own personal misery were they.

I sliced through the stale air with my martial whirls and I refused to be confused. And I thanked the heavens to have put wise sisters and godmothers on my way, sisters and godmothers at heart. And many father figures as well, theatre teachers, a philosopher, sensible young men. It was a veritable armada of people who raised me from adolescence onward, each in their own way.

They were, after my grandmother and grandfather, the true cornerstones of my young life, the substitute fathers and mothers on whom to lean.

My unbreakable Swiss woman, you would laugh and tell me I was only half-traumatized. That I was your walking dictionary. You to whom I never said that you brought me into the world. Perhaps you knew, for you gave me your precious books, at the twilight of your existence.

Salvador, your name suits you so well, I remember your sparkling eyes and your soft, soothing words, you were the attentive ear that got me out of trouble with a smile and not a word out of turn, though I only saw you once, and no one ever knew it but me and you, it is you who put me back on the tracks, with elegance.

My dear angel, my good friend with blue eyes and white hair: you wouldn’t be my child’s godmother for fear of being too old, but you were the brightest, the most clear-sighted, and you gave me shelter. Your good advice still echoes in my mind, as does your good heart within me to this day.

My mentors, alive and departed, you so artfully paved the steep and rough path that I had to walk. I claim no merit, except for having listened to you, chosen you, and loved you for life.

My great friend, you saw me at first glance. You understood me in a second. Your words and smile accompany me against all those who mock. I remember you saying, a friend is the one who says to you, “cut it out” when you’re off track. That is exactly why I shed happy tears when I think of you, at least I recognized you as the best of friends, the funniest and the most care-free too. You who told me precisely to choose my friends wisely, I always chose you, from decade to decade.

It is thanks to you that I did not turn into my father’s dead tree.

That I bloom. That my holy war is against myself alone. That, if doubt is my signature, you brought the tenderness of a smile to every step I took.

That my children turn to me with love. That I may attempt to reassure them, to love them for who they are, lively and fragile, with scars too, that I know of and that hurt me too, as a knock-on effect, because I couldn’t prevent it for them; it is difficult for me not to turn gray worrying about them.

Yet, my mop of hair is dark, and my father’s is white through and through.

It is so true, don’t judge a book by its cover.

I am well aware that before I have hair as white as his, I will have to cover the distance that still separates me from the privations he took upon himself, in never fully being a father or a grandfather. That his real winter lies in grasping, as best he can, that his children did all they could to free themselves from him.