She:
She speaks in a voice similar to Mariah Carey’s highest octave, but nasal, not melodious.
She touches her cheeks when she talks, the ring and middle fingers of each hand flanking her oily nose, her pointer fingers partially blocking her dark-circled eyes
—a tick in a never-ending poker game.
She walks like a T-Rex, eyes wandering in all directions, stooping forward,
hands reaching toward her wrists,
hitting old ladies with her bag as she passes them in the street.
She pets Karine’s cats as if she’s trying to strangle them, squeezing each cat’s neck like a child learning to use toothpaste.
She smiles widely, glaring, when she says “Fuck off.”
I. French Lessons
#9. “I don’t mean to sound snobbish or anything, but have you ever been to Paris? I went there over winter vacation, when I found a really cheap TGV ticket. You know, if you want, I could tell you all the things to do in Paris that aren’t in the tourist books.”
#13. “Sorry,” she says,
“It’s just that I could write a book about all the shat I know about France.”
#10. French man says, “Elles n’attendent pas.”
I think, Oh, those women aren’t waiting for the ATM…
She says, “He just said they’re not waiting!”
I say, “You know, I’m in the same French class as you. Gimme some credit here.”
She smacks her lips when she opens her mouth to speak, constantly taste-testing her own saliva. “I’m sorry…shat…I didn’t mean to…”
II. Hygiene
Sleepwalking, sleep-showering, sleep-using-my-towel.
Empty toilet paper rolls on wooden slat shelves.
Pieces of toilet paper left on the bathroom floor.
A cup, for shots (“I only do shots when I’m upset”)
The same cup, clear, blue plastic, dirty, left on the floor next to the bathroom for 10 days.
I say, “Is this your cup?”
“Oh…yeeaa…do you think I can just rinse it out and use it again,
or would that be grody?”
“Well, it’s been sitting there for over a week…”
In the bathroom, twisted showerhead tube, twisted finally to the point of breaking
(does she practice drunk ballet in the shower?)
A brush on the shelf, with a wad of hair that is stuck between brown and blonde.
Mom always told me not to crack my knuckles.
SHE religiously cracks her knuckles, neck, and spine.
The mantle is littered with burnt out ideas that missed the ashtray,
inhaled through all natural tobacco cigarettes—Winston: real tobacco for real artists.
“One time I tried to smoke pot and I still felt out of it a week later, like I was still high.
And I told my mom—‘Mom, I smoked weed a week ago and I’m still fucked up!’”
She wears the same two outfits, her shoes cutting her feet, sometimes sleeping in the same shirt she wears to school.
In class, she drinks from her industrial-sized bottle of water, opening her mouth all the way, inserting the bottle, gulping, the suction crackling the plastic throughout the lesson.
The host family—Karine, Nicos, and Manou—usually eats with the exchange students.
Not with us—the family cannot tolerate open-mouthed chewing, drink slurping.
When she stirs sugar in her coffee, she puts the spoon next to her cup, staining the tablecloth with the brown liquid.
She knocked over a bowl of milk during breakfast, a glass of water at dinner, stepping in the puddle on her way to the paper towels.
At dinner, she will eat her couscous, and then proceed to serve herself more salad, dropping food particles from her fork into the bowl of lettuce.
The mealtime mess being too much, Karine sets out place mats.
Manou asks, “Does anyone want corn?” after we have eaten plates of lasagna.
SHE says, “OooOOooooo…yeeaaah? I adooore corn!” and fills her plate,
spilling constellations of yellow kernels all over the table.
Once, at dinner:
She drops the water bottle cap, which rolls behind my chair.
I pick it up and as I hand it to her I notice a few cat hairs on the bottle cap.
I say, “Ew, there’s cat hairs on it, watch out.”
She exhales loudly, “Ugh, whatever,” and puts the cap back on the bottle.
[one minute pause]
I say, “Why did you do that when I just told you there’s cat hair on it?”
She looks angry, confused, drank too much cheap rosé at the school’s cocktail hour.
She wrinkles her forehead. “What? I thought you were bullshitting me…you have a really good poker face.”
I say, “That wasn’t a poker face, I just wasn’t lying.”
III. Space Invaders
Where did this sock come from?
Next to my bed.
It’s not my sock.
This crazy bitch threw her sock over here?
Is this shit even clean?
“Hey, how did your sock get on my end of the room?”
“HUH? Shaaaaaaat, I don’t know…”
IV. Warning
She reads her story to me before her final edit. “I don’t know Arabic, so I just made it up: In Aix, I lived with Madame, who had a basket of bread that she would not let me eat. She would play a song, and pray, ‘Kay allah allah jihad, kay allah allah,’”
I look at her, open-mouthed. “I’m pretty sure jihad is not a word used in prayer.”
