Worst Case, We Get Married by Sophie Bienvenu (translated by JC Sutcliffe).
Title: Worst Case, We Get Married.
Author: Sophie Bienvenu (translated by JC Sutcliffe).
Genre: Fiction, crime, mental health.
Country: Canada.
Language: French.
Publication Date: 2019.
Summary: Aicha lives with her mother in Montreal's Centre-Sud neighbourhood. She's only thirteen but claims to be older. She has never known her father, and resents her mother for leaving Hakim, her stepfather. Her only friends are Mel and Jo, two local prostitutes, and Baz, a musician in his twenties who comes to her rescue one day and with whom she falls in love. Her impossible love for Baz, her precociousness and her rebellious streak come together in an explosive and deadly cocktail. Raw and heartrending, the book is narrated as a confessional statement Aicha gives to a social worker.
My rating: 7/10.
My review:
♥ But I wasn't really listening. After that he disappeared for a while, but then he came back. He always came back. Except for that time he didn't. That crazy woman had thrown all his stuff out the window, screeching like she was possessed. You should have seen her! She was a fucking mental case. She grabbed me really hard, and her nails dug into my arm and everything. "Go to your room and stay there," she yelled. She was seriously afraid I'd go with him, you know? And I would have if I'd known he was leaving for good.
♥ Better than outside in winter.
Better than my house anyway.
You know those times when you feel like you have to be out of the house because your mother has a new guy over and she hasn't told him she has a rug rat, or she's ashamed, or she can't face seeing you, or she's trying to teach her fucking bird to talk and that makes you wanna smash your head into the wall until it starts bleeding... There aren't many other places you can go except the library.
Because I haven't got any friends.
♥ I didn't want anything, except to go back home and for Hakim to be there. For him to cut the crusts off my toast, or help me pull off my snowy boots, for us to snuggle in front of the TV and share a Twix, and for him to come and turn off my bedroom light and say, "Night night, kiddo."
That's happiness, right? Someone calling you kiddo with so much love in their voice that you whisper it to yourself over and over again like some kind of idiot until you fall asleep. I really did that, I swear.
And if that's not happiness, I don't know what is. If that's not happiness, I don't want anything to do with it.
♥ Who wouldn't be mad about being furious all the time, right?
♥ It makes me feel all tingly in the pit of my stomach whenever I hear an amp buzzing. It's like a hot dead space. A hole... I dunno. And the first chord he always strums before he really starts playing. It's always the same one. The way he strums the chords, quietly but not too quietly. I'm not, like, trying to impress you with everything I know about music. But it's important if you want to understand why I love him.
Well, that's why, because of how he strums chords, and a ton of other stupid tiny little things like the little repaired chip in his tooth that's a completely different colour than the rest. I have a list, I can show it to you if you like.
♥ Anyway, we never bumped into each other. Never never never.
We always met up. If you bump into someone, it's, like, not deliberate. But we didn't do that. We always met up on purpose. Mr. Klop thinks it's fate. Hakim always used to say that God meddles in our business to arrange things his way. "Insh'Allah, God willing," he said. I don't really believe that, or else God's just a piece of shit. But fine... fate, chance, God, or some alien kid with tons of cash who plays with us like we're just an ant farm, whatever, Baz and me never just bumped into each other.
You should write that down, it's important.
♥ I told him I never looked at the sky, and he thought that was sad. But looking at the sky seemed stupid to me. Like staring at the TV screen when it's turned off. Sometimes a plane goes by, but then you can just say, "Look, there's a plane," and you don't give a shit because it's never you in the plane.
Well, it's never me.
What I mean is, it's boring looking at the sky. Everybody goes on about the stars and everything. In movies you always see it when the guy and the chick are in love. But I don't think anybody in Montreal can be in love, because I've never seen people gazing at the fucking stars. That's why I don't look at the sky. It's depressing that nobody in this city is in love. So that's more or less what I said to Baz. Maybe I explained it better, but you know.
So he took me up on the roof of his building so we could look at the sky, him and me. I teased him a little, because it was cheesy as shit, but it was cool. More than cool, actually.
..I tried to look at a different, less boring part of the sky, but I don't think there are any. Then I looked around, and you know what? I'd never seen Montreal at night from so high up.
I cried a little bit.
I mean, not cried cried. Just a little bit. Like from emotion.
I went up to him, he was still looking up at the sky, and I pointed out all the lights of the street lamps, the cars, the buildings, and I said, "That's where the stars are."
♥ It wasn't true that I was going to pay back the two dollars. I've discovered that two dollars is the amount you can borrow and say you're going to pay it back but never actually pay it back. Nobody ever makes a fuss about two bucks.
You just have to make sure not to ask the same person twice, or else ask them when they're in a really good mood.
♥ So anyway, there I was outside, I guess I must have been feeling adventurous or something.
Okay, for real, I just wanted to sit down on the bouncy duck at the park. I don't often feel like thinking, but when it comes on, it does better on the back of a duck. I think it's the rocking motion maybe. I guess it helps me think better. Tons of ideas come to me. Sometimes it helps me chill out. Otherwise I wouldn't go there; it's always a mess afterwards. You come back with your shoes full of sand and you find it everywhere for like the next two weeks, even in your ass crack.
Okay, so maybe not two weeks, but it feels like two weeks.
Anyway, shoes full of sand is still better than stepping on a syringe. At least, that's what people say. Because I've never personally stepped on a syringe. I bet you haven't either.
It's the kind of story that frightens everyone but never actually happens to anyone. An urban legend, they call it. There's syringes around, of course, but nobody's ever got one stuck in their foot. Because I can't see who'd be stupid enough to prance around with bare feet in a sandbox. With all the dog shit and condoms and everything. And the syringes, obviously.
See, it makes no sense.
So I was sitting on my duck and thinking about stuff.
♥ He could have pulled me off the duck, or beaten me to death, or forced me to suck him off, or stolen my two bucks, or some combination of all the above.
So I was pretty much in the shit.
I couldn't see anyone else around apart from this guy, and I couldn't hear anything except him yelling. Nobody had ever hit me before, I wondered if it hurt. I was pretty sure it would hurt.
Maybe someone would have taken me to the hospital where my mothers works. I might be so smashed up that I'd only be able to say, "Jean Teloooon...Hooo...ooospitaaaaal," with like a sigh, like they do in movies. Because that's where my mother works. They wouldn't have taken me there anyway because Notre Dame is right nearby, but it would have been pretty spectacular. And then once I'd turned up, my mother would have started crying so hard because I was gonna die and everything, and before I croaked I would have just said, "Mom, I-I..."
And then I would've died.
And she'd never have known what I was going to say.
So you can imagine I was a bit disappointed when I heard someone yelling, "Hey!" Okay, so I wasn't really disappointed, because I didn't like the part when I had to get my head kicked in, but let's say I do die one day, without intending to, I'm gonna pull that shit with my mother.
Anyway, basically, the "Hey!" was Baz.
All mt life I'm going to remember the feeling I had when I saw him. For real. When I'm dying I'll still remember it. I'm gonna do that thing with my mother, yeah, for sure, but after, I'm gonna remember the first time I saw Baz. I don't know how to explain the feeling to you. It was like I'd just gotten bitten by a vampire who'd sucked out all my blood and replaced it with Coke. Like that time I was going through my mother's stuff and a cardboard box full of winter clothes smashed me in the head. BANG!
You know what they say about love at first sight?
That.
I nearly smashed my face on my duck.
♥ Having a broken heart was already a pretty terrible feeling, but with the taste of the cigarettes too it was seriously revolting.
♥ I wanted to ask him his name and everything, but my voice was garbage. I didn't want it to come out all weird. You know when you want to say something but it won't come out? When you want to, like, tell someone you love them, but you are physically incapable of doing it because the words are too big for your mouth, or because you feel like it's going to set off an avalanche of emotions and bury you?
No? Maybe it's just me then.
♥ At one point, it got too emotional and I don't like emotions, so I said I had to go. But I asked him if he'd be there the next day.
I wanted to ask him the same question about the next day and the next day, until the end of time, but I didn't do that either. If I always did what I wanted, people would think I was mentally ill.
♥ Don't tell her that I said this, but my mother's shepherd's pie is totally kick-ass. It's annoyed me for years that something she makes could be so good. It's like Hitler, you know. Maybe his chocolate cake was kick-ass too, even if it wasn't very well known. Nobody would want to eat the best chocolate cake in the world if Hitler had made it, would they?
Well, it's the same thing with my mother's cooking.
♥ Lying is exhausting, but seeing people's faces change when you tell the truth is depressing.
..See what I mean about lying being exhausting? ..When you feel comfortable with someone, sometimes you lower your guard and forget your lies.
♥ I also told him what I wanted to do. Like, when I grow up.
"I don't really know what I want to be. I used to want to be a whore, but that doesn't seem that fun after all. Mel and Jo are always complaining about clients who disrespect them and everything.
"Actually I do want to be a whore, but one who just has one client. A respectful client. One who would ask how my day was and run me a bath. I'd cook for him and look after the house, or maybe we'd have a cleaner. I'd be in love with him, he'd be in love with me, and he'd let me do whatever I wanted, like go to Africa on vacation, or watch old films all day long, or whatever. We'd have a fabulous life and I'd never have to worry about anything again. Financially speaking or any other way.
"We'd have a contract that said I was his only whore and he was my only client, and he had to look after me and vice versa. It would be the law.
"But worst case, if that's too complicated, we get married."
♥ You know, in that movie, the one with the end of the world when a big meteorite's heading to earth and everything, and they send the boyfriend of that elf from Lord of the Rings and her father who was also in Lethal Weapon or something.
No, wait, it wasn't Lethal Weapon, I'm getting mixed up. Whatever.
Why is it never the end of the world in Centre-Sud, hey? I feel like we deserve a good apocalypse. Or at least I deserve one. Not that I want to die, but it would be a good excuse for screwing.
I've thought about that a lot.
Like on TV, you'd have Peter Mansbridge announcing that there was a tsunami on the way or a supervolcano about to blow its top. Supervolcanoes freak me right out. Anyway. So he's announcing that and everyone starts screaming and crying and running in the streets, and I just go over to Baz's place and we kiss, and then we fuck until the world blows up, and he pretends to make animal crackers drink sweat from my navel, and we say we love each other and all that shit.
And at some point we see the sky getting darker, and everything sounds muffled, like when you block your ears. Everything starts shaking, and then there's this big, big light, sparks, flashes, and everything. I press myself against him and then, bang! We can die.
Because obviously we would die, right. When the apocalypse comes to Montreal we'll die. Nobody's gonna show up to save us at the last minute, the government, the police, or whoever. Like even if they cold save people from the disaster, they'd choose queers, whores, junkies, and welfare bums.
No, no, no. When the apocalypse comes we'll be the first to get blown up, obviously.
..I told him that if the end of the world did come, I'd like to be with him.
You know what he did?
He laughed and patted me on the head, like you pat a dog. Like, pat pat pat, snicker, and then he went off and sat down with his guitar.
I swear, for real that nearly was the end of the world.
♥ Why is it that sometimes you give everything, absolutely everything, to someone so that there's nothing left for you, not even yourself, and he doesn't want it? He throws it all right back in your fucking face without even bothering to explain why or anything. Just gives you a pat on the head before going back to playing his crappy songs on his shitty fucking guitar.
Why would you make someone pasta with ham that you'd cut up into tiny pieces, so small that you could taste the parmesan and everything, and tell them you love them, and then it's not even true?
Why would you hug someone, watch movies with her, make her happier than she'll ever be again, say, "Night night, kiddo," or "I'm right here, Aicha," and then when she tells you she'll die if you leave, you leave anyway?
...
I'm not crying.
♥ I can't tell you about the first time I made love because I've never made love.
I'd tell you if I'd done it, but it's never happened.
The brother of that guy from school doesn't count. That was just to piss Baz off. And it did piss him off, so it worked. You know that feeling when you win but there's a taste in your mouth like you lost? That.
♥ Have you ever ended up two blocks away from your house, and three away from the house of the person you love, giving a blow job to some guy you don't know in a stolen car, because the car was actually stolen?
Yeah. I was thinking it was a no too.
Anyway, when you end up two blocks away from your house, and three away from the house of the person you love, giving a blow job to some guy you don't know in a stolen car, loads of stuff go through your head.
Could my jaw actually get dislocated? Or I think we're parked somewhere we might get a ticket or Hey, his wallet is in the cupholder.
All that, and other stuff too.
You're wondering if you're doing it right. Because even if you don't care about the guy in question, you don't want to look like a total loser. At school or to the whole neighbourhood. You don't want to be that girl, who doesn't even know which end is up. You wanna seem like you know what you're doing. But not like you know too much. Otherwise you'll get a reputation as the school skank, and next thing you know some porn director will be calling you up because he's heard of you and wants you to be his "rising star." It happened to a girl I know.
Well, okay, not a girl I know know, but a girl that someone I know knows.
♥ But as for me, it was like someone had peeled off all my skin and then dumped a load of salt on me. I could just about manage to think that I needed to go take a shower to wash off all the salt. But it wasn't even real, it was imaginary salt. Anyway, you know what I mean.
I was imagining washing myself like a cat. Like licking myself and then rubbing. But that seemed too gross.
She said really quietly, "But, Aicha, he was abusing you, he was a piece of shit."
I wanted to kill her.
You know when you feel like you're leaving your body behind, that there's so much rage in it that there's no room left for you? That's how it felt. I cried hard for a long time.
"If he was my real father, he wouldn't have done it. But because you're such a slut, you cheated on him, got pregnant with me, and here we are. It's all your fault. Everything is your fault. You're the one who should've left, we didn't need you." I smashed a couple of things.
♥ Then she'll explain how and why she kicked him out the house. She shut me in my room, the bitch, because she knew I'd leave with him if she let me out.
She told him that if he ever came near me again she'd call the police.
Do you see how sick she is?
It still hurts when I think about it.
Sometimes I still hope he'll come back and find me and then we'll go somewhere far away. Far away from her, far away from syringes on the ground, far away from the cops, far away from all this shit... Maybe I've said that already. I used to think about it every night before I went to sleep, but ever since I met Baz I don't think about it so much.
♥ "I'm so happy you're here," he used to say to me, giving me a kiss. "You're the perfect woman."
Do you know what it means to be a perfect woman?
Has anyone ever told you you're a perfect woman?
I'd be surprised, actually, I mean, you're not exactly beautiful. So you probably don't know what it feels like. It's like an amazing caress, everywhere on your body and inside at the same time. Imagine if all the pores of your skin were eating something really good...
I mean, sure, that's not even possible, but just pretend.
♥ He says he likes it too. He asks you to look at the effect it's had on him. You can touch it if you want.
But you don't dare.
Because, like I said before, you never dare.
When you like a guy, it gets tricky. You van give a blow job to the brother of some guy from school, hop on top and fuck him, play the slut as much as you want, but when you love someone, you can't do anything, you're just paralyzed. It's even worse when you're nine than when you're thirteen.
That's how it is. It's shit, but that's how it is.
And when he leaves because your crazy mother throws him out of the house because she's jealous of you, you tell yourself that maybe if you'd dared, he would have stayed.
Or maybe he'd have come back to find you.
Anyway.
♥ But I don't want a cat. Cats are stupid, just like people. They understand what you're saying but they just don't care. They never want to come and do stuff with you except when you don't want them to. Like when you're going to the bathroom or whatever. You don't want to be watched by a pair of eyes and be judged on how bad it stinks and how long it's taking you. That's what cats do. They're always there between your legs when you don't need them, just to get in your way. And they judge you. And they think the sun shines out of their asses, even though they lick them.
Anyway, I can't really blame them for that because I know tons of humans who would think the sun shone out of their asses if they could lick them too.
♥ And believe me, you don't wanna know. I know, and it totally freaks me out.
But only when I think about it.
"Whenever you think about it, just stop thinking about it," Baz used to tell me. That's number twenty-four on my list of reasons why I love him. He says things like that. It's pretty hot, right? He can actually pretend there's nothing wrong and just go on living normally. Supervolcanoes, flesh-eating bacteria, particle accelerators, and all that kind of crap, it doesn't bother him.
You know when something makes you freak out, and I mean like seriously freak out, you're suffocating and you end up actually being sick, kinda like just now, and someone's next to you trying to make you believe it's nothing serious, but not like, "Come on, you silly goose, you're just freaking out about crap," but just like using the energy they're giving off so you just know everything's gonna be alright. Even if everything's going to shit around you, even if you're being attacked from all sides, even if it seems like the world's gonna end, or your lactose intolerance is gonna kill you.
That's just the kind of guy he is. Like a desert island where you wash up after a huge fucking storm. But with food and water and all that on it. And a house with heating. And Internet.
Okay, maybe that wasn't a good example.
♥ Anyway, she told me to make him jealous, so that's what I did.
At least, that's what I tried to do. I don't really know if it worked. I don't know what a jealous guy looks like, so maybe he was but I didn't notice.
When I asked him, he said he wasn't. But it's gotta be the kind of thing like when you're sad. If someone asks you if you're sad you just say, "No, I've just got something in my eye," or "No, you stupid bitch, it's my allergies."
♥ Élisanne Blais was a nobody while she was alive and she'll be a nobody when she's dead. She's not the type to wake you up at 3:13 tapping out a message in Morse code on the wall between your bedroom and the dining room. I'm not scared of Élisanne Blais.
If you wanna talk about her, don't expect me to say she was beautiful, that she was nice, and that everyone loved her and "it's so sad that she's not with us anymore" because it's not true.
♥ Sometimes that happens to me when I'm really mad. I've always done it. It helps me let off steam.
I don't really know how to explain what happened with my mother then. You know when people say it was just a moment of madness, like when a guy cheats on his wife and that's his excuse?
I get it.
Right then, with my mother, it was a moment of madness. When you've spent your whole life making a path for yourself to follow, you owe it to yourself to stay in a straight line, that's what defines you, that's what makes you who you are... And then a ton of crap happens to you and you get, like, exhausted. And I mean seriously exhausted. Exhausted like there's no more life left inside you. You've been drained of all your blood, your water, and everything that makes you you. You're so empty, your organs are the only thing left inside. Your heart's still beating just to, like, taunt you.
You wanna die, it would be restful, but no. It carries on beating, the bastard, and with each beat you get even more exhausted, it's like torture. You want to beg, but there's nobody to beg. You could ask God to stop messing around with you, but that's assuming he answers requests, or he, like, even exists.
So it makes sense that when you're in that state, hating your mother is the last of your worries.
That's what it was. A moment of madness. A moment of weakness.
We hugged.
She hugged me; I just submitted to it.
I was feeling so shit and discouraged and all the rest of it, it almost seemed cool. Not cool like cool, cool like restful.
...
Now that I think about it, I think I even called her Mom.
She hugged me hard, really hard. So hard that I thought, Here we go, she caught me and now she's going to make my pay for all the shit I've put her through, she's gonna murder me. And when they find me dead she'll plead legitimate defence. Or maybe she'll hide her crime by chopping me into little pieces and dumping me in her tomato plants, and when people start wondering where I am, she'll say I ran away, or Hakim came for me and I went off with him and good riddance.
Do you know what the worst thing is?
The worst thing is that nobody would look for me if my mother chipped me up into little pieces and fertilized her plants with me. I was thinking that the whole time she was squeezing me so hard.
♥ I cried and cried and cried, I cried so much that it was hard to tell if it was snot or tears or blood flowing when I rubbed my eyes.
I would've liked to cry tears of blood right then, I admit. But no, it was just snot. Or tears. It was hard to tell, like I told you.
It wasn't just the stuff with Baz, it was everything together, all at the same time. Thirteen years of shit.
Hakim taking off, everyone at school hating me, the old bitch Nana who called me a little bastard, the guy in the stolen car, my mother... my mother...
It doesn't seem like much to you, thirteen years-you must be like a thousand years old or something-but to me it's like my whole life.
A whole life is a really long time, even if it's only thirteen years.
♥ My mother: expert in arriving after the fire and putting it out with a bucket of piss.
♥ Why does he love me one day and the next he doesn't love me anymore? If it's just my age, then I'll get older, right. He can't not love me, it's not possible, we get along so well, he thinks I'm beautiful, he thinks I'm funny... What more do you need to love someone?
Nothing, right?
♥ My mother's stupid. She thinks the more you shout, the more people listen.
But really people hear best when you whisper.
♥ So I walked. I don't know for how long. A long time. I wanted to walk down to the river, I could have pretended I was going to throw myself in... But if you want to get close enough to the river to do the big jump, you have to cross Notre Dame, and it's really dangerous with all the cars there. What if I got hit by a car while I was on my way to fake my own suicide... That would be pretty ironic, right?
♥ I seem annoyed, but actually I like irony. It irritates me but I like it. It's poetic.
It's like the South Shore: ugly and boring, and nobody wants to go there, but that's what you see when you look over there.
Which way's south anyway? Whatever. You know what I mean. And when you're there, in Brossard or wherever, looking at Montreal, you want to be there, it looks so beautiful you could cry, but you're not there.
That's ironic too. Complicated, cruel, tiring, but ironic.
♥ "Nothing's really changed at all," he told me.
You know what that's called?
A lie of omission.
♥ When you know something hurts someone you love, because he does love me, I know he does, then you don't do it. You don't just pretend you're not doing it. Don't take me for an idiot.
♥ Love's pretty tiring, isn't it?
Yup.
♥ Yesterday evening my mother forgot her cellphone at home, on the living room table.
I looked through it, obviously. Seeing a phone lying around and not searching through it isn't human.
♥ I seriously mocked him when he told me that. I loved him even more, but I laughed at him so he wouldn't be able to tell.
♥ As soon as he came in, he asked me what I'd done. There were smudges of dirt on him.
I replied, "It wasn't me, she was for real like that before I got there, I swear!" And I crossed my heart. To prove it to him.
He sighed. He took my hands in his, he like... examined them, and then looked at me like, You want me to believe you with all this blood everywhere?
It's true, I should've cleaned myself up. But when I got home I didn't have the strength to do anything. I hurt all over, especially my arms. Look at the bruises I have there. And there.
"Why did you do it?" he asked.
Right then I didn't want to answer, I wanted to do the sulky girl thing. But I just told him the truth.
"Because you're mine."
♥ You know, when the guy you love is crying, you're torn between wanting to take him in your arms, then apologize and tear out your organs one at a time to make him feel better, but at the same time, you're suddenly faced with the sad truth that yeah, he isn't actually invincible.
But that passes. And then you just want him to feel better. You'd just like to go back in time and erase everything.
But you can't.
♥ I don't promise anything without knowing what I'm promising. You shouldn't mess around with that. And you can see that I was right in the end. Look at the shit I'd be in if I'd promised him, am I right?
...
Yeah... no worse than I am now, is that what you're saying?
Alright, so yeah.
♥ He looked at me and he seemed so sad, like someone who's going to die and isn't very happy about it. I said I was sorry again. I said I didn't want him to be sad. I said I loved him and everything.
He started crying. He was shaking really hard, like a dying bird. His eyes looked even redder in his damp white face.
I made him ugly.