Hungry Woman in Paris (5 page)

Maybe I should just go back to L.A. and face my family and go to therapy and then tell my family I broke off the wedding engagement
because I discovered… I was a lesbian… Yeah! How do I explain all the men in my past? I know: I was experimenting.
I was compensating… Yeah, right! Sure, they’ll believe that! Inside I knew I could go home only when I’d come up with
a good enough reason for breaking my engagement to a successful surgeon. I just didn’t want to go back and face the disappointment
on my mother’s face.

I looked up at the sky filled with dirty clouds and my hand began to write a sentence:
Clouds above me, clouds all around me… is it depression or just my life going nowhere like stale water in a fish tank?
I stopped writing. It hurt to write. I didn’t want to write anymore. Every time I tried to write, the stupid editor’s voice
from my old newspaper would say, “You lost your objectivity,” and I would practically throw the pen out of my hand. So what
do I do with my life now? I’ve always said that if I couldn’t write anymore, I wouldn’t want to live.

Rosemary arrived early from work and found me on the bed recovering from my sightseeing. She announced that she was taking
me to the Lapin Agile in Montmartre to see a cabaret that I couldn’t miss.

“I love taking people to this cabaret because it truly captures the spirit of Paris and Montmartre.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“It’s a neighborhood that’s on a hill; a little seedy, but back in the eighteen hundreds it was the place to go for can-can
dancers and drinking and all the illegal things. I really like that neighborhood, and if I could find a
chambre de bonne
I would move there.”

We took the metro and got off at the Lamarck-Caulaincourt stop. We climbed up what seemed like endless stairs to a house with
a gate. When we walked in through the front door, the attendant told us to speak softly. A beautiful voice sang in French
like Edith Piaf. It was a woman named Cassita, one of the regulars. To hear her sing transported me back in time, back to
my teenage years, when I still believed in love. When the song finished we were escorted into another room, which looked like
a cozy cabin filled with tourists and real French people. For over 130 years a family of singers has sung traditional French
songs every night at this cabaret. We were given a special cherry brandy, or something like it, a few minutes after we arrived.
The head singer welcomed us and people sang their hearts out.

After two hours of this I wanted to go home. French is such a beautiful language, almost as beautiful as Spanish, but after
an hour it was difficult to remain interested. I pinched myself to stay awake—I didn’t want Rosemary to think I was not appreciating
French culture at its best. The ensemble of loyal singers would continue until the wee hours of the morning, but Rosemary,
who was now beyond tipsy, decided we should go home. I held her arm so she wouldn’t go rolling down the hill and tumble down
the stairways of concrete. Her cell phone went off; she searched all over herself for it until she finally found it buried
in her bra.

“Hello? Rudy? Hey, what’s going on? You’re serious? When did this happen?” Rosemary hung up and broke down crying. She hugged
me, practically falling in my arms.

“What happened? What did he tell you?” I asked delicately.

“My mom… she’s in the hospital… I have to go see her,” uttered Rosemary between gasps of emotional breaths.

We took a taxi home because the metro was already closed and it was urgent to get back to the apartment and call for whatever
little details would keep Rosemary’s hopes alive. Her mother was in the hospital in a coma. She booked the earliest flight
she could get and left the next morning for Los Angeles. I should have gone with her on that plane ride back home, but I was
a coward and hid out in her tiny room instead.

A
fter two months of living in Paris, I looked out the window and saw snow falling. It was beautiful at first to see snow on
the streets of Paris, but then it dawned on me that it really was winter. This was not a California winter, but a real winter
requiring scarves and coats and even boots. I walked down Victor Hugo Boulevard past all the shops and was tempted to buy
something, but I had promised Rosemary I would never shop on Victor Hugo Boulevard unless it was at the little boutiques that
had preowned designer clothes and purses, some located on the rue de la Pompe. She said most of those clothes were worth it
because they were worn maybe once, and the designer purses were practically new. Rosemary explained that a lot of those purses
belonged to mistresses or call girls who got them as gifts, bought with the same business credit card used to pay for hotels
and business expenses. The women in those situations sold them to the boutiques to get fast cash. “Aside from the bad karma,
they’re good deals.”

I got on the metro and took it wherever it took me. When I started seeing African people in traditional African clothes getting
on, I assumed I was getting closer to the part of town where immigrants lived. I decided to get off and explore. It was probably
cheaper there. Wherever there are immigrants, you know there are bargains just around the corner. I got off on Clichy and
walked around the boulevard north of Pigalle, which was packed with inexpensive coats and knockoffs of every type. I bought
a black coat. Normally I’d go for a red one, but the truth of it was that I just wanted to hide out. I wanted to be small
and invisible if possible. I made my way to another metro stop and an African man wearing traditional Kenyan clothes handed
me his business card. He’d looked at my face and figured I needed help. He had been a witch doctor in Kenya and was practicing
in Paris. His card said, “Come to me if your husband has left you. I will make him come back to you like a dog.” I imagined
that scenario. I thought, Yes, but what if he does come back like a dog and ends up drooling on himself and shitting all over
your carpet? Maybe if I could ask him to play dead and hide under the sofa until I needed him to mow the lawn that could be
a good thing. A large African woman pushed me aside with her fat arms and I snapped back to reality. I was in front of the
metro entrance and had to shit or get off the pot because there were people behind me waiting to stick their metro ticket
into the ticket machine. I stepped aside and wondered where the hell I should go next. I remembered I still had not been to
the top of the Eiffel Tower and thought it was as good as any day to do it… Maybe on such a miserable day there would
be no line.

There is always a line, unless it is closed, I soon discovered, and waited for half an hour to take the elevator up to the
very top. On my way up I saw the Jules Verne restaurant and told myself I would eat there before I left Paris. Who would I
eat with? I had no friends in Paris. What if Rosemary never returned? I got off with the rest of the tourists and looked down.
It was a long way to fall. There was no way anyone could jump off; it was suicide-proof. I took photos with my digital camera
and wanted to ask a Japanese tourist to take my picture.

“Canela? Canela!” someone yelled out from behind me. I turned around and saw a woman I couldn’t recognize at first.

“It’s me, Margaret. I did the journalism summer workshop back in Los Angeles with you.” I smiled, pretending to remember,
until her younger face came into focus.

“Yes, now I remember your face… What are you doing here? Are you visiting Paris?”

“No, I live here. I’ve been living here for the past year,” Margaret announced.

“What do you do?” I asked.

“I just finished cooking school. I got my diploma in cuisine and pastries just last week from Le Coq Rouge.” She announced
this proudly, as if awaiting some kind of applause.

“I thought you wanted to be a journalist,” I reminded her.

“I did,” she answered, sounding a little annoyed, “but I was tired of the bullshit with the editors. I couldn’t write the
stories I wanted to write, so I said, ‘Fuck that.’” I quickly recalled all the fights with my editors over stories too controversial
to publish, like my piece on the Latina immigrant mothers in the barrio whose sons were the first to die in Iraq. I remembered
my interview with the Guatemalan immigrant mother about the loss of her son José Antonio Gutierrez, the very first soldier
to die there. He’d signed up to go to war so he could get a green card.

“You lost your objectivity,” my editor had said, claiming that was the reason he had prevented my story from being printed.

“What do you mean?” I’d replied, trying not to lose my temper.

“The fact that you’re an immigrant completely paints this article in an unbalanced manner,” he’d informed me.

“You don’t think I can be objective,” I’d asked carefully, “because I’m an immigrant?”

“Yes. It’s clear that you can’t. You’re too emotionally involved. You should be a columnist, but I can’t have you doing this.
I’m taking you off the story.” He’d said it matter-of-factly, not even looking at me.

“You do that and I quit,” I’d threatened.

A woman in a wedding dress walked past me now, on a photo shoot, and I was brought back to reality. Margaret had been talking
all along and I caught the last of her sentence.

“. . . so I decided to take a year off and come live my dream,” she confided with a smile of satisfaction.

“That’s really wonderful that you had the courage to just go for it,” I offered, trying to make up for my previous annoying
comment.

“I figured, you only live once. I always wanted to live in Paris, and I met a wonderful man in cooking school who proposed
to me. We’re going back to the States to start a restaurant together.”

“You actually met him in cooking school?” I pictured them frying up eggs together like idiots in love.

“Yeah, isn’t that romantic? I was totally not looking for love and we just happened to be in the same cooking group, directly
across from each other, and something about the way he cut his onions got me.” We laughed. I was curious about what she had
to do to stay in France for a year to attend cooking school.

“If you pay for the whole course, the school will get you a
carte de séjour
for a year.”

“A what?” I asked.

“A
carte de séjour,
” she said, overpronouncing it. “A card to stay—like a visa.” Margaret gave me her cell phone number and told me to call her
if I needed anything, but added that she was leaving in a week. I wished her well and wondered why I had run into her, of
all people. I guess the Eiffel Tower is the center of the world; you’re bound to run into someone from your past.

Back at my building, I was about to step into the elevator when an older woman in a designer suit with large pearls around
her neck said something in French. She was well kept and impeccably dressed. These Frenchwomen don’t know how to get fat and
age properly. Since I did not respond, she asked me in English where I was going. I explained to her that I was going to the
sixth floor.

“You must take ze other elevator,” she explained. “Ziz elevator is for za people who live here, not za servants.” I was about
to explain that I wasn’t a servant and that my situation was different, but I assumed she didn’t speak enough English to understand
and didn’t care to know my situation. I went behind the main elevator and took the dirty servants’ elevator. Rosemary had
explained to me that because she had been there awhile, the residents didn’t mind her taking the regular elevator, but since
I looked like an Arab to this woman I’d immediately been rendered a servant. Everyone in Paris thought I was an Arab. Even
the Arab taxi drivers would speak to me in Arabic and were shocked to discover I was Mexican. I didn’t bother telling them
I was Mexican-American because that tends to confuse people in Paris; even Americans got confused.

Earlier that morning, I had stared at the calendar and counted the days I had left before I’d be considered undocumented once
again, in another country. Growing up, I was what people called an “illegal alien.” I didn’t know I was undocumented, because
my parents had told me not to tell anyone I had no papers; I’d just assumed they meant toilet paper or something innocent
like that. Then, when I was a teenager and needed to think about college, I discovered I didn’t have the right papers to apply.
Although I was undocumented and could be deported at any time, I thought it impossible because my parents were both legal
residents. It was due to a technicality that I was without papers. Eventually my father applied for citizenship, and my siblings
and I were able to obtain residency right in time to qualify for financial aid and attend college.

When I got out of the servants’ elevator, a woman was already there, waiting for it. Our eyes met and she feigned a smile.
She said,
“Bonjour”
with a Spanish-accented pronunciation.

“Habla español?” I asked her. She stopped and smiled with a real light behind her eyes.