It makes you look like a bitch Pendry, don’t go out like that, all the guys are gonna check you out. Crocheton had warned her. She couldn’t say it wasn’t true. She didn’t want to listen to
him.
« Your brother is right. »
It wasn’t coalescence. It was just the truth: Crocheton was right. Mom was telling that. Nobody asked for my opinion. But if someone had, I would have said that I agreed with him, although I was
not against Pendry. Well, at that precise time, I mean. I was not against Pendry at that time but it’s true that Crocheton was right: she was really looking like a bitch.
Mom said « invisible under a skirt » and Pendry said yes precisely. Crocheton said okay, definitely okay, and he added a little and brief silence like a punctuation and then he underlined with a movement coming along with his words: « under a skirt ».
It must not be easy everyday, being a girl. A girl in a family of boys. Oh sure, mom is not a man of course, but she is neither a woman, she’s mom. Whereas us, Crocheton and I, are two, while
she, Pendry, is one.
A female one.
Mom said: « Pendry, right or wrong? you told me you wanted one of those to wear under your skirt.
– Right, but…
- There’s no but, Pendry… You wanted a g-string because one could see your pants through your white skirt. I bought you a g-string. Right or wrong?
– Right…
- Very good. »
But mom, all the other girls wear it like this. She wasn’t wrong on this fact, Pendry, it’s true that all the other chicks wander with the strap of their g-string above the belt of their low-waist trousers. With micro tee-shirts. Must be that they really want us to know they have a string up in the arse.
Trousers.
Speak up, I didn’t hear you well.
Trousers.
And mom says yes indeed Pendry that’s trousers you have on your ass today.
Pendry said pffff and mom raised her hand over her shoulder as if she were playing tennis and preparing her backhand but she had no tennis racket. Mom asked « can you see this one? » but she
didn’t wait for any answer from Pendry « Sigh just one more time and be sure that this one will fall on your little mug. »
My sister’s eyes fall down. Mom’s hand falls down.
« Oh my gosh look at that, your g-string will ear long come up under your arms. It’s the only thing one can see! And you dare saying it’s invisible!! Climb back upstairs to your bedroom right
now, and you choose Pendry: either you wear your skirt or you wear your trousers, but in this case you please take this g-string off, it’s pulling up to your scapula! And hurry! »
Pendry left, running. Nobody asked for my opinion. Crocheton said: all the guys I know keep on checking her out and they also say that she looks like a bi… BANG mom’s hand slapped on Crocheton’s
cheek and she said « Next time I hear you say your sister is a bitch, I bit you up, is that clear? »
Crocheton’s eyes were dry and his cheek was red and he looked at mom deep down in the eyes and he said « clear as day, mom ».
Pendry’s footsteps were coming closer. She was wearing her white skirt and red eyes. With her forefinger, mom raised her daughter’s chin and it looked like she was gazing into the mirror of her youth. Pendry sniffed a sob, mom said: « listen to me carefully Pendry because I won’t repeat these words: always listen to what your brother tells you. »
If things had to stop right here, thanks to all of you who supported me within this experience, who encouraged me with their comments, with the links they put on their website, with their laudatory articles they dedicated to me. Thank you sincerely. And for evermore. Each day, I try and transform my life into a patchwork, written with digestible and pleasant words… I try and find those catchy expressions that would bring you back to me… today it’s your turn… The rule is quite simple. Just as I strive for giving you the desire to come back on this blog, give me the desire to come back likewise. If no comments, I will never come back, that goes without saying. What are you saying, you, over there? Blackmail? Is this blackmail? Well then, don’t write anything… and you’ll never have to bear me any more. Have you ever known loneliness, dismay, this will to leave, which erodes your guts and scratches your face? Have you ever known the fear to awake alone, in the middle of nowhere? Fuck you.
People say I’m taciturn but only my sister’s naivety can compete with her beauty. People say they don’t see any connection, I answer that laughing is not forbidden. Laughter. This guy is too
weird. Dark things, that’s only what he’s able to say. Why is he doing that? Do you know? He stays alone for hours. He talks to nobody.
« People say I’m pessimistic but only my sister’s simplicity can compete with the sharpened blue of her eyes.
- There’s no connection. Laughing is not forbidden.
- You’re too weird.
- Dark things, is that all you can say ?
- Why are you doing this? »
Oh well look at him! This dude is weird. It’s said that he writes stuff on the Internet. I don’t talk to him. You know him?
This guy’s not too bad I think, it’s a shame that he never smiles.
Little fathead.
People say I’m intelligent but uncommunicative; but I always say that it’s my sister who is pretty and it’s my sister who looks like a candy. But people always answer me there’s no connection. No
matter how I cry that they haven’t looked at her, no matter how I cry all of my water on my empty stomach by howling my throat, tearing my arm, no matter how I vomit them that my sister is the
most beautiful girl, no matter how I wrest from them that they haven’t seen her simplicity, the clearness of her soul, that she’s not the one they think she is, no matter how I clean off my
throat until it bleeds under the edge of words or how I salt my open scars for them to understand, they do not understand.
What do people need to understand?
My sister pats me on the shoulder. Jack in, we don’t damn care what people think, she says. She restores me with three words, consolidates me with a sentence and I say yes you’re completely
right. Then the dark comes back to what it was, some of a colourful grey. I feel good now and I can stop typing on my keyboard.
Oh what powerful weapons she sometimes has, my sister.
Affûtage des lames, translated by Valentina. Every correction, improvement, proofreading or
subtleties are more than welcome. That's what the comments are for…If you're bilingual, a translator, an English teacher or simply very gifted in English, and if you wish to participate more
actively to the translation of my texts, you can contact me by email (in French please!)
Saturday morning, always the same corny old tune, you know how it is. Nine o’clock, curler mom in the bathroom and the hair dryer purring. In the kitchen, sweatpants dad with his hot coffee cup’s pyjama pants. Flower dress mom opening the door and dad kisses her over the toaster. Outside ibid nice weather. Crocheton hides-and-seeks alone with himself deep down his bed, narrating himself. Pendry twirls her body in the corridor and blows a kiss to dad’s neck. I sleep.
Nine thirty, the car starts up, Carrefourwards. (Carrefour is a hypermarket.) Pendry at the back and dad at the wheel. Mom in the sun of her XXL-size sunglasses, more beautiful than a Greta Garbow. Crocheton suntans with the UV rays of the TV set. I sleep.
Eleven, the graver of the lane crackles. The trunk opens on the fritch-fritching plastic of the carry bags. Crocheton rushes. Pendry crystallises in bursts of laughter. Mom glows. Dad leaves. I sleep. Crocheton’s voice that says it’s « a house question *». Mom’s words that skitter in the kitchen. And Pendry’s laughter. I sleep.
Suddenly french fries scent. Eggs scent. In two minutes mom will enter the bedroom. She will whisper « Brad it’s noon my boy. Willy you get up? » or maybe not and she will shrill that « it’s smelly inside that room ! » but it matters little… it’s so good to be on holidays.
* French TV program about how to set up, transform, decorate your house.
Rêve, translated by Valentina. Every correction, improvement, proofreading or subtleties
are more than welcome. That's what the comments are for…If you're bilingual, a translator, an English teacher or simply very gifted in English, and if you wish to participate more actively to the
translation of my texts, you can contact me by email (in French please!)
Message de valentina :
cette trad est particulièrement délicate à cause des tournures de phrases
"pas françaises". Faudrait un avis d'anglophone pour savoir comment ça rend
en anglais, ça fait peut-etre des tournures bizarres, vu que j'ai essayé de
traduire d'abord littéralement.
Sometimes you don’t ask yourself the right question.
“July First two thousand five… July first two thousand five…”
If you could see me, for sure you would wonder what I am doing here stupidly repeating myself the date of today, sit like an idiot in my square meter of toilets with my butt stuck on the foamed
toilet seat. The one who invented such a thing had to be quite cockeyed. When I look at the toilet seat it makes me think of the beard thing that some people put on the wheel of their car. That
does not tell you why I'm repeating in a whisper July first two thousand five, like a prayer. But it shall come. Theoretically, as you're not here to see the scene, you're just gonna imagine it
and - theoretically thus - it is at the end of the next paragraph that you will say yourselves “but what the hell is he doing into the toilets repeating the date of today stupidly? ” Then let's
pass after. If you would please follow me.
This is here that everything happens. Into this cabin. The wallpaper with large flowers is undoubtedly vintage. I never knew anything but it. Lighting always was like this. Substandard. The pink
toilet seat made with soft plastic confines cheap foam. Moreover is this really plastic? A kind of plastic let's say. It's hard for me to understand that mom did not seek to match it with the
ashtray. It must have been beautiful at one time, this orange and white ashtray on foot. In the Seventies. It's funny these colors it has, a white which is not white any more, yellowed by smoke,
by tobacco. An orange which makes me think of dad's fingers. Where his middle finger and his index meet to enclose his Gauloise without filter. Nut husk color. It's the odor of this precise
cigarette that you could smell if you were here with me. But you are home and I am alone. Repeating myself the date of today. Question.
“July first two thousand five… July first two thousand five…”
Opening the toilets door, I immediately knew that it was dad who was coming out from there. The odor of his body. The heat. And I know that mom must have passed very quickly after him, just
before me. But she did not stay for a long time. My father did. The air seems heavier than in the rest of the house, this is because of the absence of ventilation and of dad's cigarette. I
override certain details and specify only one thing: nobody has pschitted marine scents spray for a long time. The metal odor it's mom who has her periods. The water in the toilets is still a bit
red.
“July first two thousand five… July first two thousand five…”
I repeat myself the current date while thinking about things that occurred today and that I would like not to forget. Association process: one day I will wonder what happened on July first two
thousand five and BLING everything will come back into my gull like a boomerang. Maybe. I hope so. I would like to remember these things all life long.
Question?
Visite guidée, translated by Valentina. Every correction, improvement, proofreading
or subtleties are more than welcome. That's what the comments are for…If you're bilingual, a translator, an English teacher or simply very gifted in English, and if you wish to participate more
actively to the translation of my texts, you can contact me by email (in French please!)
