Free Black Bird by Michel Basilieres Page B

order by surprise, leaving it inundated and defenceless. Something sudden, total and overpowering. Like a blizzard.
    How could it have been anything but awkward?
    “Where have you been?” asked Mother, not in anger but in sorrow.
    “With friends. And I’m going back. Where’s Jean-Baptiste?”
    “In his room, of course.” And as Marie mounted the stairs, “For God’s sake, Marie, don’t.”
    “Mother, it’s not what you think.”
    “It never is, is it?”
    And then, with her brother: “I’ve come to ask you to help us.”
    He snorted. “I don’t know who you mean.”
    “Of course you do. And you know what kind of help we need, too. They want you to write the statements.”
    He put down his book. “You mean they want me to think I’m needed so they can use my press. Go away. The next time I see you will be in jail.”
    Marie wasn’t surprised by her brother’s negativity, but she was surprised that she hadn’t discerned her comrades’ motives herself. As soon as he’d said it, she knew it was true. They would never think themselves incapable of the task; they had been carrying along writing their own pieces for years, and only now hadthey thought of outside help. What angered her was that they lied to her; they hadn’t the confidence in her to reveal their true motives. Which only showed how badly they’d read her, how poorly they troubled to know her. She would never have been reluctant to use her brother; she had only resisted being in debt to him. She slammed his door behind her and marched to her own room—Aline’s room.
    She was turning out the closet in a fury, searching for her boots and winter coat. Aline, hearing the slamming doors and marching steps, knew immediately where Marie was. She left her boiling stewpot and hurried up the stairs.
    “Marie, forgive me. Now that you’re back, I’ll find another place.”
    “Forget it.”
    “No, no. I can move my things, it’s your room.” And she began to gather up her clothes from the bed.
    Marie emerged from the closet with her things, flung them onto the bed and pulled off her shoes. “Forget it. I’m leaving.”
    Aline was silent as Marie pulled on her boots.
    Mother had followed Aline up the stairs and stood in the doorway watching. “Stay for dinner,” she said, “at least.”
    Woken by the noise, Uncle had come out of his room and sleepily made his way to the water closet, pausing long enough to say, “I guess it’s not dinner she wants. Unless her brother’s on the menu.”
    Marie looked up, aghast. “Jean-Baptiste, Jean-Baptiste,” she yelled. “That’s all you can think of, soyou think it’s the same with me. I’m not the sick one. It’s not me. You have those thoughts, not me.”
    Her yelling had set off Uncle’s dog, who barked behind his door. Now Jean-Baptiste appeared. “I’m trying to read.”
    Marie pushed her way through her family and ran down the stairs. “Fuck you all,” she yelled.
    They stared over the banister as she ran out the front door, slamming it in her wake. Father entered from the kitchen, where he’d come up from the basement. He stood in the hall, looking from the door up to the landing where the rest of them gazed down. “Was that Marie? I missed her.”
    Outside, the snow began to fall again.
    At the library, Jean-Baptiste returned some American novels that had only depressed him, and exchanged them for novels from France. He had bad luck with the Americans, who despite the lavish accolades printed on their back covers, seemed somehow false, precious; so strained in their attempt to be literary that only other Americans could fail to see that the emperor had no clothes.
    He sat at his leisure in the library’s greenhouse, daylight filtering through the snow-covered glass roofs and the extravagant, enormous leaves of the tropical palms down onto the pages before him. As soon as he began to read—Flaubert, Camus, Voltaire—he was comforted, soothed and cheered by the ease and the