Black folks don’t ski—that was all I could think. But there I stood, at the top of a mountain in the Alps, on these long Rossignol skis and under layers of clothes, watching Georges and his friends dash down ahead of me. I guess I led them to believe I could keep up.
Dang, I thought.
Georges and Françoise had postponed their January trip so that I could go with them and their daughter, Marie. Georges’s friend Jean-Pierre, his wife, Alphonse, and their two kids, Aimée and Guy, who were Marie’s age, had come too. All of them gone now down the hill. Even Françoise didn’t wait. I watched them zigzagging a path through the sun-bright powder, leaving a smoky trail that I guess I was supposed to follow.
I pushed off like I saw them do. My zigs and zags were broader, and I bogged down on each turn, sometimes to a complete stop. I would work my skis around, point them downhill and push off again.
Other skiers, in loud-colored one-piece suits and matching helmets, flew by.
I tightened my turns and, pretty quick-like, I picked up speed. A lot of speed. Suddenly it was like I couldn’t turn hardly at all, my thighs going tight, burning. And my boot-encased feet bounce-bounce-bounced over the little bumps, the moguls, like Wile E. Coyote in a cartoon.
Straight.
Down.
Hill.
That damn Matt had told me I’d pick it up easy! Any half-decent athlete does, he said.
I just laid myself over, the only thing I could think to do. The initial jolt was rough, like getting blindsided on a crackback block (harder than any hit I took against the Ours two days before, when we beat them by four scores). But then the powder was soft, and I was sliding on my back, then spinning in a circle and sliding at the same time, until finally I came to a stop.
Both skis gone. One pole too.
“Nice mustache,” I heard in English—MOOSE-tah-sh.
It was Marie, appearing out of nowhere. She was leaning into her ski poles a few yards above me, wearing this yellow ski suit that shaped her form just so. I expect I had a face full of snow or some such. Suave.
“I suppose we should have started you on an easier slope,” she said.
“Naw, naw. I’m just one fall away from mastering this run.”
She helped me up. “You have never skied before?”
I didn’t answer.
“I will teach you. Climb on.” She pointed behind her. “Place your feet there.”
I did and grabbed her waist, and she skied me to my skis, a little ways down. I clicked my feet into them. She showed me how to snowplow to slow myself, how to squat into my turns. When I was being too cautious, she prodded me by poking my butt with the point of her pole. And in this way, she led me down the mountain.
» » » »
The entire weekend was dope like that. Georges stayed goofy the whole time, telling stories about previous trips and meals they’d had, about the famous people they’d met on their runs and the really hard slopes they’d mastered. There was never a minute when we weren’t doing something—walking around Mont Blanc to see the classic wooden A-frame architecture of the chalets, or building a fire in the fireplace, or going down to the cellar after board games. We played Monopoly (in the French version, it’s the Avenue des Champs-Elysées instead of Park Place) and another I hadn’t ever even heard of, Mille Bornes. And we ate fondue. Two pots on little burners sat in the middle of the table, one of hot oil, the other of melted cheese. Everybody strung raw meat on long skewers and cooked it in the oil or dipped chunks of bread in the melted cheese.
I was telling Matt about it at practice after I got back, still excited, while we watched Michel, the backup QB, try to run the offense.
Matt cut me off mid-sentence. “It was a great trip, I get it. Football practice is just not as fun as skiing in the Alps. But come on, Free. We’ve got the Anges Bleus on Saturday, our first real test since the Jets, and you’ve got to learn the offensive packages before then. Focus.”
But I wanted him to know it all. “And Marie!” I went on, whispering but still emphatic-like now, because I could see Coach Thierry glancing back at us. “She’s twenty-one, at college and whatnot. And a real hottie!”
Matt ignored me. “Mobylette,” he called, pointing to the spot where Mobylette should be.
Coach Thierry added, “Vite, Mobylette, sinon on va être offside!”
It was early March, gray and chilly but crisp. The offense was supposed to be in Trips formation, but Mobylette had lined up in the backfield. He scrambled to the right place, and Michel called the cadence. The offense exploded off the snap, but the receivers were all over the place, bumping into each other. Some real Charlie Chaplin stuff.
“Merde, merde, merde!” Coach Thierry snapped, frustrated by the bungling. “Qu’est-ce qui se passe…?”
He started toward Mobylette. Matt followed, but I grabbed him by the arm. “You think she be trying to mack me, man? A grown woman, jocking me?” It was hard to keep it to a whisper. “Tell me I ain’t for real!”
Matt stopped and kind of glared.
“Free, I swear, if it weren’t for context, I wouldn’t understand half of what you say. You’re always jabbering, but I mean, I’m a Francophone, and, strictly speaking, I speak English better than you.”
“Different,” I told him.
“Different?”
“Different than me,” I said. “Different don’t equate to better. It’s how black Americans speak, how we been speaking since slavery.” I was speaking it heavy right then to make my point. “You saying what you just said is like calling me out of my name. Like me saying you was French when you ain’t.”
“I’m Québecois.”
“Right. You just speak French.”
“Some say a bastardization of it,” Matt said. “Some French people anyway.”
“Right! But you know you’re not lesser on account of the difference.”
“Right,” Matt said, his face gone soft, apologetic.
“Alors, les filles!” Moose called over. “You going to quit with the English jabbering and help us out here?” He looked as annoyed as Matt had just a few moments before.
The other guys had all stopped too. Everybody stared.
» » » »
On the train headed back to Paris, Matt sat silent. Not ignoring me, just not talking. I figured it should be me all mad after what he had said about black English, but he just sat there, stewing.
“You still want to go to that cemetery?” I asked.
Père Lachaise. Jim Morrison’s grave. I didn’t really want to go, but Matt had been talking it up for days. Apparently lots of hippies hung out there, lots of girls, people passed around jugs of wine, and it was generally a party. Myself, I didn’t feel like partying in a cemetery. Especially not in a cemetery.
Still and all, I said, “Well, do you?”
“Not tonight,” Matt said, and I was straight-up relieved.
The RER arrived at Gare du Nord, my transfer point. When I got up, Matt did too; he walked me toward my metro line and I couldn’t figure out why, because the one we had been on led to his cousin’s spot. My look must have stated my question.
“I’ve got an errand to run,” he explained.
We sat side by side on the metro but didn’t speak. A long silence. I thought I knew what was eating him, and it wasn’t just practice. It dated from a little while back. “Look, I’m sorry,” I said, “but Villeneuve is a shithole. Cops everywhere, wannabe gangsters…”
“When you say things like that, you sound more like a Jet than a Diable Rouge. Your ‘shithole’ is Moose’s home.”
“I know,” I said.
I watched the dark tunnel walls stream past the window.
“Listen, I like Moose and all, but he rides me. Always tossing out snarky comments and whatnot. He acts like he’s got something to teach me, but the kid is seventeen, just like me, and hasn’t been balling one-tenth the time I have.”
“He’s the team captain and wants to be a schoolteacher. For him, everything is a potential lesson or a teachable moment.”
“Well, I’m not his pupil, and besides, his teaching method needs work.”
“Moose takes the team very seriously. It’s his life, you know—community pride and all that. Sometimes you act like you’re on vacation.”
I was on vacation, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t bringing it for the team. But I didn’t say that.
We got to my stop, and I stayed seated. “I already told Françoise I wouldn’t be back for dinner,” I said. I figured we should hash this thing through, me and him. “I’ll ride with you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Ain’t got nothing else to do.”
He didn’t seem any too pleased, but he didn’t protest either.
I felt like there was something more I should say, to kind of make up for something—for how I’d been acting, being moody and all, or for whatever expectations I wasn’t living up to. But we just sat there, silent. I didn’t know what to say. He didn’t say anything either.
He got off the train a few stops later, at Ternes. I followed him down the platform and up the stairs. “How’s my girl?” I said to lighten the mood. “Is Juliette asking after me?”
He smiled. “Actually, she is. You made quite an impression.”
“I told you so. I’m a killer!”
We got out on the street, and he stopped under the illuminated yellow M metro sign and extended his hand. “Okay, killer. Goodnight.”
And I was like, Huh?
“This is my errand.” He pointed to the hotel across the street from the station. “My dad. He arrived this morning.”
“Uh-oh,” I said. Obviously he’d been brooding over something too.
“He called from the airport and told me to meet him here.”
“With no advance warning?”
“Not a word.”
“Dang.”
“Dang is right,” he said.
He had told me how close he and his pops were. He said his pops had made him who he was. He’d taken Matt to rallies and protests: for Earth Day, against global warming, to oppose the US invasion of Iraq (the last hardly surprised me). But Matt said his pops had been different since Matt ran off.
“Juliette didn’t give you any clues he was coming?” I asked.
“I don’t think she knows he’s here. And I haven’t told her.”
“Not Moose?”
“Just you, just now.” Then he smiled. “If it was your father just showed up like this on leave from Baghdad after you’d done something like what I did, he’d be coming to kick your butt, right?”
I hadn’t told Matt about Pops. I wasn’t thinking I would. I mean, it wasn’t none of his business. Besides, Pops had made me a man. I knew that his death was my weight to carry. Mine alone.
I said instead, “I expect your pops is here to make sure you’re all right. It’s all good. Don’t sweat it.” I pushed off up the street. “Holler at me tomorrow. Let me know how it goes.”
At the corner I turned back, and he was still standing there, facing the entrance to the hotel, strangely lit by the pale glow coming from the lobby—part shape and part shadow, kind of like a ghost. A doorman pushed open the door, and Matt walked in.
Naw, I remember thinking. If it was Pops that had showed up like that, it wouldn’t be about scolding me, about calling me out. He’d be about making sure I was good to go. He’d come by a game, and he’d see that I was wearing 49, his high-school number, instead of 17, like I did back home. He’d even help out with the team, the days he was here. Maybe he’d take an extended furlough, stay the whole season, coach the Diables. And he’d take me around places. Versailles, Normandy, a TGV back to the Alps.
The clock on the corner by Georges and Françoise’s building said it was quarter to nine. I sat on a park bench between streetlights in the almost-night, looking up to the lit windows of their apartment. Nine ten, nine thirty-five, nine fifty-five…I waited until the apartment went dark.
When I got upstairs, I snuck quiet-like past Georges and Françoise’s room. In my room I took from the desk the letter I’d been writing to Mama. Not email, a real letter—paper and pencil, like in the Hemingway book. I’d been working on it for days—writing a sentence and scratching out another, erasing and replacing words, scribbling in the margins—but now I finally knew how to write it.
I’d known it was cowardly to not go back at the end of the class trip, to not try and help Mama out some way. I did! But I’d also known something felt right about staying. Making my own way, living in Paris, getting to see something more—going places, like Pops had said. And I’d known Mama wouldn’t say no to me staying. She hadn’t protested about me coming on the trip in the first place. She didn’t do anything.
» » » »
Auntie Constance drove in from New Orleans after Pops died, and it was her who called the Army Casualty Program and the life-insurance people and the funeral home. Mama sat on the sofa beside her, silent. After the funeral, everybody who had come in flew out. Auntie Constance took Tookie and Tina back to New Orleans. It was just me and Mama, our house suddenly so empty.
I heated up Hungry Man fried-chicken dinners that first night, even though the fridge was full of leftovers from the buffet at the wake. I told Mama, “It’ll take us days to eat through all Aunt Joanie’s deviled eggs and the meatloaf and the Hoppin’ John that Grandma Jessie left. We’ll be okay for a good stretch.”
Mama “mm-hm”ed.
There was still all kinds of stuff to get done, filling out forms and whatnot, insurance and pension stuff. I told her, “If you need me to, I can stay back from school. To help out.”
She shook her head no and dropped her face, tears shining her cheeks.
I didn’t insist. I let it be.
A little while later she came into my room, wearing an old shift and house shoes. “I think I need to go to Connie’s too,” she said. “Be home in a while.”
And I remember thinking, Home? It ain’t here?
But I told her, “Yeah, of course. Go ahead. You should go.”
She just stood there, framed by my bedroom doorway, eyes sunken, black and heavy. “You’ll be fine,” she said, “with Ms. Glassman.”
Ms. Glassman?
I’d been lying on my bed, so I sat up. “France, Mama?” How was I supposed to head off to France with Pops gone and Mama like that?
“And when you get back, it’ll be just about time to get you to Iowa.”
“I’ll be fine here on my own,” I told her. “Winter break starts in a few weeks. I can join you at Auntie’s.”
But she said, “I’ve put together a little money—for pocket change over there.”
Seeing Mama like that, I remember thinking, Forget Iowa. Forget UT. There was Alamo Community College, right there in San Antonio. I could work construction and take classes at night, be close by to take care of Mama till she got right.
“For real,” I told her. “I’ll be fine here till I can come get youall in New Orleans.”
And she lost it. “Dammit, Freeman!” Her neck was a twist of muscle, a vein popped at her temple. “I just can’t worry after you right now.”
Whenever we’d Skype after I came to France, she’d be smiling, and I’d smile, and I’d let her know that I was fine. I’d say that we had beat the Ours or whoever, or that Georges and Françoise were real nice, and she’d always be like, “That’s wonderful, Freeman. Have a good time.”
Have a good time, she’d tell me.
But the thing is, I was having a good time. It felt like I shouldn’t be.
I got back to the letter. I wadded it up and started from scratch on a new piece of paper. Dear Mama, I wrote. I told it like I would to Pops, like when I was walking around pretending he was with me and I was his tour guide, showing him the things I was learning about the city. I wrote all the details so she would see and smell and taste it. I told her about the roasted chestnuts they sold at Montmartre and how, from up there, you could look out over the entire city. I told her about Mont Blanc and fondue, about the classic A-frame chalets, the whole town smelling of woodsmoke. I told Mama how big my world was, and how I had her and Pops to thank for it.
To close, I wrote:
I know you don’t like me to go on like this, but I need you to know that I know I’m not doing what I should. I’m not doing what Pops would do, if it was him in my shoes.
Youall are my family, my only family. I promise to never quit you like this again.
Love,
Me