Papa Roger’s standing by the window and I’m behind him. He turns round, and bends down, so the radio’s just level with my ears. The American, Roger Guy Folly, is talking about Iran. He explains where it is, what language they speak, a language we don’t speak here. I hear names I can’t pronounce, and places I’ve never heard of. Papa Roger tells us again that Iran is far far away, in Western Asia, and the capital’s called Teheran. And when I ask him if the Iranians have the same money as us, he says no.
‘So how do they buy food at the market if they don’t have our money?’ my mother asks.
‘With their own money.’
I think there must be another reason why Iran doesn’t want to use our money — because the Iranians don’t want to have to look at our President’s head on every one of our notes and coins. In Iran they have a revolutionary leader, like us, and it must be his head on the notes and coins. They are our brothers because we have a revolutionary leader, like them. All leaders are brothers, so we must help this brother of ours.
Looking at my mother, Papa Roger tells us that the shah who’s been overthrown isn’t an animal, he’s a man, even if in our folk stories the animals are like kings, ruling the earth, and men must respect them, and tip their hats when they walk by.
‘The shah’s a man, ok, an important man, but the new top leader in Iran is another Iranian, the Ayatollah Khomeyni. There’s ingratitude for you! He’s been totally straight with Ayatollah Khomeyni, he even pardoned him when he was out to undermine the revolution which was there to give women the vote! What’s going to happen there now, eh? Now Khomeyni’s trying to get hold of the great man, and fling him in prison. What sort of a world do we live in?’
Papa Roger looks at us, and shrugs, because he knows our sadness is not the same as his sadness. It’s the first time we’ve ever heard of the Shah and Ayatollah Khomeyni.
When Maman Pauline asks us to sit down at table, my father comes away from the window, looking disappointed. He goes outside, and takes the radio with him. My mother signals at me not to follow him.
‘You sit down, let him get on with his Iranians, we’ll eat.’
From where I am I can see my father sitting under the mango tree, his hands on his head and the radio cassette player on the ground. From a distance we hear the words of ‘Sitting by my tree’. And when the singer gets to the bit about ‘alter ego’ and ‘saligaud’, I stop eating and think to myself, ‘my father’s thinking about his own alter ego’s problems with its saligauds’.
~ ~ ~
My parents are arguing on the other side of the wall between their room and mine.
I hear my mother say, ‘It’s not fair! If God wanted me only to have one child, why couldn’t he at least give me a daughter instead of a son? Look at the Mutombos, they’re lucky: they’ve got Lounès and Caroline, a boy and a girl!’
She starts to cry, and when she cries it’s as though her tears were coming from my eyes, not hers. And I think too: It’s not fair that Maman Pauline had a boy instead of a girl. And it makes me want to dress up as a girl, talk like a girl, walk like a girl, pee like a girl. Perhaps then my mother will only be half as unhappy. It’s not easy to copy what girls do and hide the fact that you’re a boy. People will just say, ‘You’re not a girl, you’re a boy disguised as a girl.’ And they’ll throw stones at you in the street like a mangy dog. And they’ll say, ‘If you think you’re a girl, what did you do about that thing between your legs, did you change that into a girl’s thing too?’
No, better stop thinking like that, since it’s not my fault I’m not a girl.
I go on listening to what they’re saying behind the wall. Papa Roger’s explaining that the reason children turn up in my mother’s womb but don’t make it out into the world is because they get lost somewhere along the way. So, instead of arriving here below they go directly to heaven, which is not the best way of making people on earth happy.
Maman Pauline reminds my father that before me she had two daughters in two and a half years, and both died the same way: they came out of her womb ok, they cried, then they just closed their eyes for ever. And by the time someone checked to see they were breathing, it was too late — they’d already gone.
When Maman Pauline reminds Papa Roger about this, I listen carefully. I want to know, after all this time, what those two sisters of mine were called. No, she doesn’t say their names, she says ‘my two daughters’ or ‘my two queens’. Am I like them? I think I must be, because I look very like Maman Pauline and I can’t imagine my two sisters not looking like my mother but like some horrible policeman from Mouyondzi.
So what can my sisters have seen the day they arrived on earth, that made them want to turn round and go back to heaven quite so soon? Did the nurses who helped them out have red globules? I can understand one of the sisters leaving, but why, when the next one was due out, a year and a half later, did she do the same thing? What’s going on up there in heaven, why do some children head straight on up there as fast as they can? One way I have of cheering myself up is to imagine my sisters are stars and perhaps they talk to me without my even knowing. Now, when night falls, I always look for two stars close to one another. And there always are, if you look hard enough. Since I don’t know my sisters’ names, I’ve decided to call my big sister ‘Sister Star’. I haven’t got a name for the other one. I keep looking, I keep trying, but I still can’t think of one. Until I think of something pretty I’m going to call her ‘Sister No-name’.
I’m hiding under my sheet, trying not to move around, because every time I move I feel like the mosquito net’s going to fall down on top of me. I’ve got my ears open. I don’t want to miss what’s being said behind that wall. Papa Roger’s talking now. He’s speaking very quietly, and I can hardly hear him. So I come out from under my sheet and pull the mosquito net to one side and get out of bed and stand next to the wall.
Papa Roger’s trying to comfort my mother.
‘It’ll be ok, we’ll have more children, I promise…’
‘Lots more?’
‘Yes.’
‘Roger, I want daughters, even just one, I don’t want boys, I’ve already got one and—’
‘That’s not up to us, Pauline. Let’s ask the Lord for a child, to start off with, let’s not worry if it’s a boy or a girl.’
My mother falls silent. Papa Roger goes on talking. He says that the children he had with Maman Martine are my mother’s children too, and my brothers and sisters. He adds that he’s never made any distinction between them and me. It’s true, when I go to Maman Martine’s, she treats me as though I’d come out of her own belly. Besides, my brothers and sisters are very fond of me. Papa Roger also says that I love little Maximi-lien, that’s it’s touching to see little Félicienne weeing all over me, and that Marius talks to me a lot, Mbombie respects me, Ginette looks out for me, Georgette is a true big sister to me, and Yaya Gaston, big brother to all of us, always wants me to sleep with him in his studio.
Whatever he says, Maman Pauline insists that she wants to have children from her own belly because if I fall out with my sisters and brothers from the other house they’ll probably remind me that I’m not their blood brother, and they’ll say it deliberately to upset me.
‘Roger, are you blind and deaf? You know people round here are saying you’re not Michel’s real father, that your children with Martine are not his real brothers and sisters, and that they’re not my children! Now stop talking to me like I’m an idiot!’