Finding out about the game had been a complete fluke. I didn’t know that Villeneuve even existed, much less that they played football there. I’d come upon a poster in the metro the day before. It had a picture of a running back, a buff Brother, straight-arming a would-be tackler, some high-rise buildings off in the background, Match Amical de Football Américain block-lettered along the top. And I was like, For real?
But sitting on the RER train headed back into the city after meeting Matt and getting the Arab’s invitation to try out for the team, I knew there was no way I’d go back up there the next day—no way!—’cause I had to get home to the States, to Mama and Tookie and Tina. Then to Iowa State. There wasn’t no way I could stay longer in France, so why even mess with it? Still, the whole ride back, my mind kept troubling the possibility of it.
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My host family’s building, by the Parc Monceau, was fly: marble floors and fancy ironwork on the windows and doors. Their apartment was bigger than our whole house back in San Antonio.
When I walked in the door, Françoise, the mom, called from the kitchen, “Just in time. Dinner is almost ready.”
In the family, there’s Françoise, Georges, the dad, and a daughter named Marie, who is away at college. Georges was sitting on the sofa, listening to the news on this old-school transistor radio, holding it up to his ear, the volume turned low. He clicked it off and asked me how the game was.
“Merveilleux,” I said.
“You see, Françoise?” he called toward the kitchen. “I told you it would be fine.”
I had told him and Françoise that the game was a class excursion because they had been worried about me going up to Villeneuve. “It is a very dangerous neighborhood,” Françoise had said, looking grave, when I’d asked where to find it on a map. Me, I was like, Paris, dangerous? But Georges had chimed in, all serious too, “People don’t go there.”
I thought, Well, somebody must, because folks live there. I had seen the poster.
But Georges wasn’t all wrong. Villeneuve, when I first stepped out of the RER station, was not Paris. For real. Not like the Paris I’d been getting to know anyway. The train dropped me next to some projects—straight-out-of-the-hood projects. Jacked-up cars on cinder blocks, tagged-over concrete and steel. Everybody hanging about was colored folk, like me: African and Arab, a smattering of Asians. White folks too, but they blended in, carried themselves like the rest.
The place was more Arab than not though. On the boulevard beside the station was a bunch of boutiques and stands, bustling, their signs in Arabic. Men in suit coats and shirts but without ties stood on the sidewalk outside. Most had mustaches and were hawking everything from gold necklaces to cameras. Inside, the stores were full to bursting with shoppers, mostly women, some veiled, all with kids, coming and going through the glass doors.
Georges walked to the kitchen door. “You worry for nothing, Françoise,” he said in thick-accented English (even though the host families were only supposed to speak French around us). “I told you his teacher would see to his well-being. The Americans are good and trustworthy people too, after all.”
Georges is straight up the class clown. From day one, he’d been picking at Françoise, acting like she was neglectful or inconsiderate toward me, or just one of those snobby French types that doesn’t like Americans (which she is not, not none of it!—she’s the sweetest lady I’ve ever met). He’d act like he had to take up for me. At breakfast he’d say, “Voyons, Françoise! The sugar bowl—it is empty. The Americans are good people, are they not? Shouldn’t they have sugar for their coffee too?” (I didn’t ever even drink coffee.) If she didn’t refill my plate lickety-split, Georges would scrunch up his face in a put-upon rage, like it was him that had been wronged. “Ah, no! We must feed this poor boy properly. The Americans are good people too!” Françoise would just wave him off and keep on with whatever she was doing, but I always busted a gut behind his antics.
The day I went up to the game in Villeneuve was a Sunday, and Sunday meals had been a big deal the two Sundays I’d been here, but that night seemed different. Special. Françoise set out the nice china and silverware they had used at the meal when I’d first arrived, and after salad, she served coq au vin. It’s just chicken, but stewed in this wine sauce, and I’d told her I loved it the first time she made it. She brought it from the kitchen with a fanfare like, Ta-da!
Georges leaned forward in his chair as he served me. “It is really a pity that you are returning to America so soon. Marie has holidays soon. We will meet her at Mont Blanc. The Alpes françaises!”
I asked, “How many years have you been to make to ski?”
I could always hear it when my French was slipping.
Georges continued in English. “Me, since I was this high.” He indicated his knee with the flat of his hand. “I am really quite expert. Marie too. As for Françoise…” He wobbled his hand on the air. “Comme çi, comme ça. She’s so-so…”
She slapped his arm.
“And you, dear boy,” Georges said, “do you ski?”
In San Antonio? Right.
“If you were not leaving, then you could accompany us!” He was all excited-like.
“Yes. That is kind to say,” I said.
“So, how was the game of foot you and your classmates went to see?” Françoise asked.
I knew she meant soccer. “Very interesting,” I told her. “But it was football.”
“Football?” she said and made a kicking motion.
“Le football américain,” I said and mimed a catching motion with my hands, though I expect she didn’t know what this signified.
“Le football américain?” Françoise said. “I didn’t know it was played here.”
“But of course it is, my love. Americans are good people too, n’est-ce pas, and like we French, they need sports to distract them from life’s more serious affairs.”
We went back and forth like that in French (well, me and Françoise anyway). See, I got French like a skunk got stink. Natural. That’s why Ms. Glassman, my teacher, took to me: ’cause I was the only jock in her class, and I be cooking with my French. For real. I hadn’t even considered trying to go on this trip when it was announced at the beginning of the school year. It was Ms. Glassman who called Mama and told her I should apply. She said there was an all-expenses scholarship I’d be a good candidate for—and I got it!
The two weeks here had flown by. Ms. Glassman led the group of us on daily excursions: the Louvre, Notre Dame, all what you’d expect. Interesting. Me, typically I’d bounce as soon as we were free. Not snobbish or nothing, it was just that none of the others in the group really appealed. They were three guys and eight girls. Most of them I knew by sight from the hallways at Heritage Park, our high school, and they’d be friendly enough. But they’d be all loud all the time, always wanting to stay just among us, never with the French, and they’d always be speaking English.
And all of them were white. I hadn’t thought it would matter before coming, but I felt like a fly in buttermilk the whole time I was with them. They’d always speak at me, never to me. Whenever we were together, the white boys would break into some funky pseudo-ebonics, like I wouldn’t understand if they spoke proper. One or the other would toss out knuckles; he’d be like, “Whaddup, bruh!” or “How’s it hanging, cool,” all but calling me “my nigga.”
“Bonjour,” I’d say back. “Ça va bien, merci”—It’s going well, thanks—and offer my hand to shake like the French do. For real.
Back home, I talk like I talk, not ’cause I don’t know better but because I do. Mama corrects me, but with my boys, how I talk is who I am. These here on this trip weren’t my boys, and whoever they thought I was, I wasn’t. So I would throw my French at them and keep my distance and bounce from the group whenever I could.
I’d walk around. The Latin Quarter. The Bastille. Les Halles. Sometimes I’d stop in a café and have a Diabolo Menthe (mint syrup in limonade, which isn’t lemonade at all but more like a French version of 7-Up) or a Monaco (limonade but this time with a red syrup called grenadine). I’d watch folks, the passersby or those drinking wine at the bar and chatting with the barman, or the clusters of college students at the tables outdoors, even in winter, smoking cigarettes and talking and laughing.
Those would be my days. A great trip. Nothing like I would have expected and a diversion from all that was happening back home. That coming Wednesday, me and the rest were set to go back.
After the coq au vin (I had seconds!), me and Georges and Françoise moved to the living room for dessert—a strawberry tart that looked awesome, the glazed fruit in spiral rows on top of a yellow cream filling. Françoise brought in a tray with a stack of small dishes on it—and also Champagne glasses. She sat on the settee beside me and began slicing the tart, but Georges left the room, and when he came back, he was carrying a bottle of Moët and a saber, and I was like, A saber?
He stayed standing, all formal and serious, so that it didn’t fit. “In France, we toast important occasions with Champagne,” he said in French. “Today is special for us, for we have welcomed into our home a person who has touched us most deeply.”
And I remember thinking, Is he talking about me?
Françoise was standing beside him then, all smiles, and he went on. “We have only known you, Freeman, these few weeks, and we know that in many ways it must be a difficult time for you, to be away from your home. But during this time you have become a son to us. We hope we have been family for you too.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Merci,” I said. “Merci.” And I meant it.
Georges, still all formal, took that saber and, holding the Champagne at the base, ran the saber in one fluid swoop along the bottle from bottom to top. There was a clink! and the head—cork, surrounding glass and all—just popped right off, straight up, and hit the ceiling. Foaming liquid bubbled out, and I couldn’t help myself. I blurted, “Oh, merde!”