Queen of the Trailer Park (Rosie Maldonne's World Book 1) (3 page)

5

As soon as the gates were opened, the cops forced their way into the playground, pushing everyone out of the way. I stepped aside to let them pass. I didn’t want to end up with a ticket and become yet another statistic at the Ministry of the Interior.

I was just making my way toward the gates to collect Sabrina when I heard a teacher say to the cops with an exasperated tone, “Wait! You can’t take him down to the station! He hasn’t done anything! He won’t understand!”

“But ma’am, we’re looking for his mother, and she’s not home. He has to go somewhere.”

“Wait a minute. The principal should have a list of people to contact if his mother doesn’t show up. Let me go look.”

That’s when I saw that it was Simon standing between the cops and the teacher, holding back tears.

I took a couple of steps forward. “No need to look. It’s me.”

“Um, what’s you?” stammered the young cop, his face reddening.

Honestly, he was drop-dead gorgeous. However, experience has taught me to be wary of the ones who look cute and act shy in the beginning. When they finally let go, they’re worse than the rest. And to top it off, this one was a cop. That had to be a bad sign.

“It’s me,” I said. “I’m on the list of people to contact if his mother doesn’t show up. And the same goes for my nippers. Véro is my best friend, and she’s the only one I’d trust with my children if anything happened to me.”

He looked down. “Oh! I get it. In that case . . .”

His boss looked me up and down, then stared at the children.

Emma and Lisa were pulling each other’s hair in the stroller, while Sabrina, sensible as ever, stood at my side, observing the scene. That scamp doesn’t miss a trick.

The boss looked toward me again with an air of contempt. No need to draw me a picture, I understood. Yet another adult who disapproved. Sabrina has coffee-colored skin. I often sing to her about it. “
Kahawa coffee
,
pure robusta
!” Just like I drink it: no milk in my coffee. Sabrina’s father is from Cape Verde. He moved in with me shortly after landing in France. By the time I gave birth, he’d managed to bring his family over from Cape Verde. That was a pretty gutsy thing to do at the time.

He moved into a housing project with his wife and their four kiddos. Since then, he’s had two more.

I can’t say he’s not a nice guy, because he is. He often takes Sabrina on Sundays, with his others. What’s weird is Sabrina is darker than his other children. The mysteries of Mendel’s law.

Emma has more of an Arabic look to her. You can’t miss it. Her father, Béchir, had her with his wife, Yasmina, my good friend at the time. But she died in childbirth.

It seems incredible in this day and age, but women do still die in childbirth. She was on the bus when her water broke. By the time an ambulance was called, Emma had been born. Mother and infant were transported to the hospital, where the doctors realized there was a problem with Yasmina. She was nineteen years old. She didn’t make it. She had my number in her notebook, so they called me.

At the time, Béchir was working for a group of builders out in the sticks. He only came home on weekends. I had no way of contacting him. I searched their place, but I didn’t find his number.

When he returned, Emma was with me. I was the one who registered her birth at city hall. Luckily, I knew Yasmina had wanted to call her Emma. I’d asked her why and she told me it was the name of the heroine in
Madame Bovary
.

Yasmina didn’t just read books, she devoured them. She told me, “I’m going to name my daughter after this woman in a book. She married a doctor, but when she was bored off her tits, she whored around.”

“You’re so weird, Yasmina. You’re going to name your little girl after a hooker?”

“You don’t get it, Cricri,” she said. “It’s a question of liberty.”

Béchir had never read this novel. It’s a good thing, too, because I don’t think he’d have cared for it.

Emma has lived with me almost since that day. Béchir tried at first, but he found it hard to care for a baby, what with his job and everything. I accepted because I was already attached to the girl. Eventually, he remarried and went to live in Lyon. If Emma had been a boy, I’d have had more trouble, because Béchir would have found a way to make it work, but I struck gold—this one was pink flavored.

Lisa was a totally different story: her hair is as blonde as wheat. Next to the others, she looks like an albino. I always worry that she’s sick. The backstory on
her
father . . . well, it’s even more complicated than the others. Given that he was my husband. I’ll have to tell you about it some other time. Just know that I met him when he came to repair the overflowing road gully outside the Social Security office. We were married a month later. I hadn’t even had time to tell him I was pregnant before he left. He’d met a woman who owned a real-estate agency, and he quickly realized that selling houses was more fun than unclogging crappers.

So anyway, the boss cop was scrutinizing my multicultural kids.

I couldn’t hold back. “Do you want to take their picture or something? Do they have something that belongs to you?”

Infuriated, he strode off, barking over his shoulder, “If you see your friend, tell her we’re looking for her. We’ll be waiting for her down at the station.”

“What about Pierre?” I asked. “Is someone going to get him from daycare?”

That stopped him. He turned around and looked at me, then said, “Don’t you worry about Pierre. We’ll take care of him.” He marched off again, but less briskly this time.

The young cop stepped toward me. “I’m Jérôme. Jérôme Gallo.” He held out his hand for me to shake, but I didn’t take it.

I started sizing him up. “What makes you think I give a damn?”

Ah yes, just as Sabrina always says: “That’th life, wight!” It’s always the good guys who take the rap for the bad guys. The boss tried to humiliate me with his holier-than-thou attitude, so I had to take my revenge on the younger, cuter one. Ridiculous, I know. We can be so stupid at times. So stupid.

When I saw his face, I regretted my harsh words. I held out my hand to him. “They call me Cricri, but my name is Rose.” I laughed. “Don’t ask me why, it’s a long story.”

“Maybe one day you’ll tell me the story,” he said playfully.

I laughed again, stupidly. “Don’t go trying to pick me up. I’m a complex girl. Let’s not get into all that.”

His boss yelled over from the van. “Gallo, are you getting a move on?”

The gorgeous Jérôme walked away with a thoughtful look in his eyes. I told Simon to hold onto the stroller bar, just like Sabrina was doing on the other side, and all five of us set off at a fair pace. I kept my fingers crossed that we had enough pasta back home.

6

I’d run out of cell phone minutes a while back, so I was looking for a phone booth to call Véro on her cell. I found one, but there was no answer.

As I passed her building, I rang her bell. Nobody there.

I didn’t want to harass Simon, but during the meal I tried to ask a few questions. “Was your mommy home last night?”

It’s not easy getting him to speak. But he started stammering. I’d never seen him so upset before. His face flushed and he began to cry.

Something serious must have happened. I consoled him, told him not to worry, that his mother would be home soon. Slowly, he began to calm down, especially when Sabrina choked on her spaghetti and started turning every color of the rainbow. I have to say, my rug monkeys are just awesome. Simon was so interested in this phenomenon that he forgot his misery. Sabrina finished her meal sitting in my lap, which had been her goal all along.

Simon managed to swallow one and a half strands of spaghetti, then he pushed his plate away and began humming to himself. I tried every trick in the book, but he didn’t want to eat any more. He never was much of an eater.

It didn’t look like Véro had spent much of Monday at home. Nor had the famous Alexandre. I think I’d managed to grasp, through all of Simon’s weeping, that before his mommy left, she’d asked a neighbor to take Simon to school on Tuesday morning.

Unbelievable. She left Simon home alone? And she didn’t call me to ask for help?
Oh.
I’m such a moron. I hadn’t checked my messages. I’d angrily thrown my cell in a corner when I saw I was out of minutes and knew I couldn’t afford more. The battery would’ve run out.

Maybe she had tried to call me. It wouldn’t have even rung.

I started to search for the phone, moving Pastis out of my way. I don’t know why, but Pastis seems to think getting under my feet is the ultimate fun. I finally found my cell at the back of the cupboard under the sink.

At the same time, I noticed I only had two diapers left. I had to go see the social worker until I could get more money together. I needed her to give me some stamps so I could get a few diapers for the kiddies.

I plugged in my cell and picked up my messages. Well, I deserved every bad name under the sun. What a moron I was, an idiot, an asshole. I couldn’t believe it.

Véro had tried calling me all Monday afternoon to ask if I could pick up Simon from her place. The reasons were confusing, and I wasn’t sure I understood everything.

It turned out that Pierre had disappeared while she was grocery shopping. He’d been in front of the bakery . . . or was it something about Alexandre (the famous, wonderful Alexandre) who’d lost track of him while they were out on a bike ride, or something? Basically, in a fit of panic, she’d reported Pierre missing, and while she was at the station, she had a sudden flash of intuition.

It was bound to be her bastard ex, Michel. He must have taken Pierre. He’d never liked how she dealt with the tots.

And she’d just seen him.

As I listened to more of Véro’s story unfolding in my voice mail, her tone sounded altered, her comments increasingly disjointed.

She said something about killing someone—but who? It wasn’t clear.

I felt my stomach knot and my heartbeat accelerate.

She said that all Michel had ever wanted to do was give her shit, and that it wasn’t going to go down like that this time because she had a boyfriend now, and he’d help her find the kid. Then she’d shoot Michel with Alexandre’s hunting rifle.

So the teacher was a hunter now, was he? Prince Charming himself. To say she was talking drivel would be an understatement.

I didn’t like the sound of this. I didn’t like it at all.

Véro is always in a state of anxiety. It’s enough to rip your heart out. But this time, it sounded really bad.

I was done for. It was all so unreal. Yet I only had one thought: I had to cobble some cash together so I could feed the horde. Everything else seemed secondary.

It was a pity it wasn’t Saturday, because I could have asked Tony to let me sing with his Saturday-night musicians. Last time, there had been tons of song requests from customers, and I got a five-euro tip. Not bad, right?

People love it when you sing songs from their childhoods. One man even said I had the perfect voice for jazz. He asked me to sing some Ella Fitzgerald.
Who?
I wondered, but I didn’t let on that I had no clue. I gave the guy Nino Ferrer’s back catalog and it went down really well.

Anyway, it wasn’t Saturday, so I needed to go and do a little waitressing to pick up some cash.

If only I had listened to my voice mail in the morning, I’d have known that Véro wouldn’t show at school, that she couldn’t have lent me any money, and I wouldn’t have spent all my cash on a ridiculous plastic lunchbox. I would have worked more hours instead of wasting my time down at the electric utility office.

But I couldn’t find anyone to take care of the munchkins, which meant I couldn’t work that evening. I went to see Véro’s next-door neighbor, who had taken care of Simon on Monday night. She gave me the keys to their apartment, in case I needed to pick anything up. I brought the children with me.

I managed to find diapers and two or three things we could eat. Véro’s apartment was a total mess. Nothing was where it should have been. It looked like a tornado had passed through. Véro was usually such a clean freak. Strange . . .

All in all, it looked like the school year hadn’t started out too well for me. Less so for Véro, I’d say.

When I got home, despite everything that had gone wrong, I felt the mood change and I hummed the love tune sent by my mom.

I could see the face of the young cop, floating along with the lyrics.

Wednesday: Palace Party

7

The situation must have alarmed my mother, because the next morning, Frank Sinatra was on the internal playlist with “Fly Me to the Moon.”

It seemed we had an emergency on our hands.

The song was impossible to get out of my head. The little ones had some Coco Pops, which I’d picked up from Véro’s. I had some too. It was Wednesday, a day off in France for many students and mothers. My social worker never worked Wednesdays. I dropped off Emma and Lisa at daycare—they had to go to school, poor things, but not Simon and Sabrina. They stayed with me. Simon being with us had given Sabrina a new lease on life. She’s usually much quieter. Anyway, I decided to go to Sélect and left the scamps to play in the back.

But Sabrina was screaming, running all over the place. She was a ball of activity, while Simon threw one tantrum after another, acting up like a loony tune.

After a half hour, Tony lost it and kicked us all out. But I got a whole hour’s pay. Awesome. A grand total of seven and a half euros.

I tucked it into my pocket and listed the groceries I’d picked up from Véro’s. I told myself it was better not to spend a single cent, in case something came up.

We went over to the square where the Mickey D’s was. The poor mites looked sheepish. We didn’t go to eat, just to play. It was the same one where I’d last seen Véro. On Wednesdays, because they have more customers, they don’t notice whether you’ve made a purchase or not—the children can just play. And they have the latest stuff for little ones, supersonic slides and rubber floors, that type of thing.

I was still annoyed that they hadn’t behaved in the coffeehouse. As if I wasn’t pissed enough, the kids began rooting around in the trash can.

“You’ve got this amazing slide and all these games, but you’d rather have fun in the trash? That’s what we’ve come here for, is it?”

But they wouldn’t listen to me. They probably wished they could have something to eat. They foraged in the waste and pretended they were fishing for remnants of fries and nuggets.

I was wrapped up in my dark and obsessive thoughts.
We need to find something to eat, tons to eat, and we need to do it fast.

I left them to it for a while, watching them without paying much attention to what they were actually doing. They found some boxes of promotional toys, publicity for some Disney fairy tale. I vaguely noticed Sabrina had a plastic figurine of an Indian princess or something, with veils and jewelry. She’d wrapped her up in a long, shiny necklace and was feeding her a feast of bits of curly paper.

Despite the evil eye I was getting from a customer, who obviously thought I was an unfit mother for letting my children play in the trash can, I carried on trying to devise some sort of quick-fix plan.

I knew that what they were up to was gross, but I didn’t have the energy to do much more than halfheartedly scold them from time to time. I felt like I was on the verge of finding a solution.

What if I learned all about betting on horses? There are people out there who live on their winnings from the racetrack. You see that in the movies all the time, right?

I glanced at the kids and saw they were going about setting a little table. Using the discarded boxes from burgers and fries, they’d prepared a lovely table set for three.
They’re just too cute, including me like that! They’ve even put a plate down for me!
That’s when I noticed they’d put their new figurine in front of the third plate and that I wasn’t included in their game at all.

They were scrunching up little balls of paper and setting them onto their makeshift plates. Convincing little “yum” and “mmmmm” sounds punctuated their game.

It was only when I realized they were actually munching on the pieces of paper that I decided enough was enough.

I stood and made my way over to them. “OK, that’s enough. We’re going home!”

Sabrina quickly shoved her new toy into her pocket.

They joined me while continuing to either chew up the bits of paper or rub them between their greasy little fingers. Some game. They swapped delighted looks.

“Mmmmm . . . Thith ithe cweam is tho gooooood,” Sabrina exclaimed.

I leaned in, trying to get them to cough up their pieces of garbage, and that’s when I nearly had my first heart attack. When Sabrina spat out the piece of mushed-up paper, I could tell immediately it was green. Euro green.
The remains of a one-hundred euro bill.
If I hadn’t been made of such strong stuff, I’d have fainted. I looked to my right, then to my left.

“Who gave you that?”

“Nobody, Mommy dawling.”

Sabrina calls me
darling
when she knows she’s done something wrong, but doesn’t know what.

“Where did you find it, then?”

“Gawbage.”

I forced them to spit out the money. Then, as discreetly as I could, I searched the trash can.

Some jumped-up broad with a Hermes scarf, a Gucci bag, and her two teeny runts threw me a horrified look. I winced and forced my lips into a smile. Trying to look as normal as possible, I mumbled, “It’s my baby girl—she’s always dumping her pacifier in the most insane places.”

The woman turned her head as if she couldn’t see me, and I stuck out my tongue at her while continuing to rifle through all the food wrappers.

Sabrina screeched at the top of her voice. “You’we thuch a wiar, Mom—I don’t have a pathifier now!” When she didn’t get an answer out of me, she didn’t let up. “Wiar, Mom! I’m all gwowed up. I’m not a baby anymowe. I haven’t had a pathifier for a vewy, vewy, vewy . . .”

Her lips started to tremble, but I still wasn’t listening to her. Or looking at her. I wasn’t listening to or looking at anybody. I was so afraid of passing out. I hung on to the side of the trash can with all my strength.

Sabrina’s distraught tears finally pulled me out of my daze.

As quickly as I could, I grabbed the manila envelope filled to bursting with crisp one-hundred-euro bills. I then thrust it into the messy basket under the double stroller, which was free of twins at this point, and hurtled off at great speed.

I didn’t even look around to check if anyone had spotted me.

The emergency message from my mom was clarified.
I
was going to fly me to the moon, where I would play with the stars, and I’d see what spring looked like on Jupiter and Mars!

As we left the McDonald’s, we passed a phone booth, and I caught sight of a city recycling can next to it.

If people were throwing tons of cash in the garbage bins these days, I was going to look in them all.

Why wouldn’t I, right? As a rule, I never look in trash cans, unless desperate times call for desperate measures and we’ve officially run out of crackers. But it was clear I’d been wrong not to. We usually just open them up with our fingertips and throw in our trash as quickly as possible. If only people knew the possible treasures inside, I wouldn’t be the only one rummaging through the refuse like a street rat.

I threw myself onto the second trash can, Sabrina still crying at my side and Simon looking on with interest. And there—bingo!—was another envelope, firmly sealed this time and bulging. I put this one in the same place as the last. I began skimming all the trash cans in the neighborhood like a crazy woman, followed by two children who looked equally crazy. Just like in the tune, my heart was filled with song and I wanted them to let me sing forever more.

Unbelievable, but true. I found—yes, found!
Me!
—the precious envelopes in no less than six trash cans in all.

My treasure hunt seemed to be taking me downtown. I got as far as the mini-mart, and here, to my great disappointment, the dumpsters didn’t have anything in them besides rotten banana skins, dented Coke cans, and sticky, greasy papers.

In a couple of the dumpsters, I found some empty plastic bags. They were a little damaged, but I hooked them onto the handles of the stroller so I could fill them with the envelopes. There were now too many to fit underneath the stroller.

I had never found a single thing in my life. The verb “to find” wasn’t even in my vocabulary. And now I’d just found the stash of the century. When I wasn’t even looking for anything! But this turn of events was more than to my advantage. Why have less when you can have more?
Pecunia non olet.
“Money doesn’t stink.” Money begets money. No more going to bed on an empty stomach!

I’d found something. And won. The jackpot.