when Fifi died, she said: ‘That’s that. My house isn’t a zoo. No zoology.’
It was her house. She had saved for it, together with my late father, God rest his soul. He was goodness itself, says everyone who knew him, with a heart of gold. And how different everything would have been if he had been granted more time on earth.
If I ever have a house of my own, a house I can furnish as I like, and where I can do what I like, and where no one comes and bosses me about or checks up on me, a house that is really my own, I’ll buy a parrot. And I’ll call him Coco. Coco Chanel.
I mustn’t laugh, I mustn’t laugh, I mustn’t laugh.
Next thing it’ll be in every paper: ‘She has no remorse. She’s laughing!’
And my poor Mummy, who at the end of her life was in a rest home and was too weak to visit me. Ma pauvre petite maman chérie! I would have so liked to look after you, as you looked after me. You never abandoned me, however difficult it was for you. I didn’t want to abandon you either, but I couldn’t visit you, I wasn’t allowed to. Even for your funeral they wouldn’t let me out. That was so awful, Mummy, not being able to say goodbye to you. I have known lots of black days here, but that day was jet black. What misery! Dear Mummy, what terrible things have happened to us? One catastrophe after the other. Who could have imagined it? Do you remember how happy we were, you and I? Sometimes it was difficult. You were having a difficult time, I was having a difficult time, we both suffered with our nerves, and we missed Daddy—oh, how we missed him!—but we had lovely moments too. And they won’t come back. That is so cruel, Mummy. I’d so love to be little again, your little one. But now I have little ones of my own, three little ones, who are not so little anymore. How fast it goes!
Do you remember our delight when my first child was born? How full of hope we were, you and I. You didn’t even have headaches anymore, ‘I’m cured,’ you said. ‘That little mite is my medicine.’
I would so much have liked to make your nerves stronger, Mummy. I prayed and prayed. There was no more I could do.
They throw people into prison without thinking that they have a mother whom they have to look after. It’s not easy being a good daughter when you’re in prison, or a good mother. You have to fight, every day.
I fight. I have gone on fighting, like a lioness.
Sometimes I thought she was dead. She sat deathly still staring ahead of her. When I shook her gently, she said ‘Je souffre. I’m suffering.’
And I said: ‘I’m here, Mummy, I’m your little one, your baby. I was in your tummy. If I could, I’d crawl back inside. Then we’d be together forever.’
I said: ‘Shall I put a flannel on your forehead? Shall I get you a glass of milk? Shall I turn out the light, turn on the light, lower the blinds, raise the blinds?’
I’m suffering now too, Mummy, I’ve suffered so much. I didn’t know a person could suffer so much, but still our suffering is nothing in comparison to the suffering of Jesus, Son of the Almighty, who is called Jehovah. Amen.
I remember everything, Mummy.
Every week our house was cleaned from top to bottom, even when there was no dirt, even when my mother was depressed. Turning the place inside out, my mother called it. ‘We’ll turn the place inside out. On Saturday mornings after breakfast she and I tied cloths over our hair. They weren’t cloths, but worn-out scarves. Or ones that my mother considered worn-out. Ones she could not be seen in the street with without looking ridiculous. I could still manage it, she said, because I was young, and young people were less harshly judged, but that didn’t last forever. Nothing lasted forever, certainly not youth. ‘Have no illusions!’
She pulled the scarf off my head, braided my hair, rolled the braid up and fastened it with a hairpin. Now the scarf could go on top. And when was I going to cut all that hair off? It served no purpose, did it, all that hair? Was I planning to sell it? Had I let myself be talked into believing I could sell it? ‘My daughter doesn’t sell herself, understood?’
‘Yes, Mummy. Of course, Mummy.’
‘I wouldn’t want…’
‘I know, Mummy.’
Those words were sufficient to focus our minds on what bound us together forever: my dear Dad, who had loved us both deeply and we him. We lived in his house, and that’s why we had to look after it. Mummy and Daddy had had the house built to be happy in with their daughter Odette, for whom they had had to wait a long time, almost fifteen years, which had made the joy at my birth all the more delirious. Unfortunately their happiness came to an abrupt end. Sweet songs don’t last long.
Mummy and I put on rubber gloves and plastic aprons, armed ourselves with vacuum cleaner, buckets, mops and cleaning products, and went upstairs. In the bathroom Mummy filled the buckets with hot water. She added a dash of Mr Proper—with lemon!—and soaked the mop in it. ‘Vacuuming isn’t enough,’ she said. ‘People think they can solve everything with a hoover, but that’s not true.’ Meanwhile I turned on the vacuum cleaner and went to work. God help me if I left any dust! There must be no fluff on the mop later. Every bit of fluff was one too many, one that should have wound up in the vacuum cleaner.
‘Is there still plenty of suction, Odette? Don’t we need a new bag?’
‘There’s suction, Mummy.’
Three and a half hours later we pulled the front door open to scrub the threshold and the step. And then we scrubbed the threshold of the back door.
Every other week we cleaned the windows and needed an extra hour. But even then we didn’t take a break. There was time for a break when we’d finished. And there was time for a bath too then, and for clean clothes. Exhausted, Mummy slumped into her chair, turned on the television and stared into space. Not a drop of energy was left. When I took her a cup of coffee, she sometimes did not have the strength to raise the cup to her lips. And if the TV guide slipped off her lap, she had to call me to pick it up for her.
She could not breathe in a house where there was dirt. Or where she thought there was dirt. But it took a lot out of her, too much. It wrecked her health.
‘Odette is very good at cleaning,’ M would say about me to his mates, in that special tone of his. Only a trained ear could hear the danger. Anyone who didn’t know him didn’t smell a rat. They called him friendly. Charming. In the mountains dogs start howling long before a human ear has picked up the first rumble of an avalanche. I was a dog like that. M had turned me into a dog. Not a St Bernard or an Alsatian like my faithful Brutus and Nero, but a Jack Russell, like Fifi: small but brave, and especially tireless. The way I worked for that man! Worked my fingers to the bone. And it was never enough.
‘Odette, show us how well you can clean.’ He kicked the waste bin over. ‘Sorry. Accident.’ Or he would pour milk on the ground, step into the puddle and leave a trail of milk all over the house.
‘Thank you, M.’ And then I mustn’t forget to pull my mouth into a smile.
‘Odette wasn’t made to sit on her arse,’ he said.
And why was that, M?
He himself had never had a mop in his hands. No one in that family had ever held a mop. His father hadn’t, his mother hadn’t, his brothers hadn’t, his sister hadn’t, and M definitely hadn’t. He was even too lazy to wash himself. His parents
