Home is who you are

Part Ten

10

She had a cake in the oven when Monica arrived.

"Sorry I'm late. Your president is in town!"

"He's not my president."

"Your husband is American and you lived there for two years. That makes you American enough."

"Did you take the subway?"

"I wish! I took a bus and it had a detour. That's why I'm late. It's fucking chaos in the city."

"And beware of the snipers!" Gabi went to the kitchen to check on the cake. "Uh. Shit."

"What?"

"The cake isn't growing."

"Did you forget to put baking powder?"

"I thought the flour was self-raising." She took the package from the cabinet. "Farine. It should say fermentante, right? Damn, I bought the wrong flour."

"It happens. I bet it tastes good, though."

"Ugh! Sometimes it feels like I can't even do the simplest things, you know? I buy the wrong things, I can't read instructions, ask for directions. I feel like such an alien."

"I know what you mean. When we go to the city hall to deal with our paperwork I just sit there and listen like I'm a child, or retarded. It's my life being dealt with and I don't have a say in it! It's so frustrating!"

"How's that going, by the way?"

"It's finally done. Now we have to wait for the answer. It will take six months."

"Six months? That's ridiculous!"

"But we're confident it will be positive."

"That's good." Gabi took the cake out of the oven. "It looks like a shoe sole!" She served two pieces and poured some coffee. "I hate it that my spouse visa doesn't allow me to work. I feel so useless."

"How long are you guys staying?"

"We're not sure yet. It's early to decide. Tony wants to have children soon, but he wants to be in America for that."

"And what do you want?"

"I would like to work first and see what career path to take. But that doesn't seem to be going anywhere so I might as well consider having children because I'm almost thirty."

"Bullshit. What did you do in New York?"

"Some babysitting and dog-walking. I also took classes at a community college. My experience is limited to Law and I couldn't and didn't want to do anything related to it anymore."

"What else do you see yourself doing? What are you interested in?"

"That's the problem. I don't know."

"What do you mean, you don't know? Don't you have a hobby?"

"I never had the time, I was always studying! Then I got married and busy with the house, those jobs and classes... what a boring life, huh?"

"Yeah. What you need is some excitement! And passion!"

"Where do I find that?"

"We'll think of something. But now the best we can do is to learn this fucking language, right? Let's get to it."

They studied for their exam and ate the whole cake that afternoon.

Gabi liked to sit across from the blackboard. The desks were arranged in a semi-circle and everyone sat pretty much on the same spots every day. Sometimes Philippe disturbed their comfortable dynamics. He made Gabi sit on the right side of the semi-circle, where she couldn't see the board well and the radiator was too warm. A woman named Rafia, from Bangladesh, sat next to her. She was in her fifties and wore very colorful, loose clothes. They had never talked before.

"Bonjour." They said and smiled.

"Gabriela?" Rafia asked.

"Yes, that's right. And you're Rafia?"

"Yes."

"From Bangladesh?"

"Yes."

After a pause, Gabi asked: "What language do you speak there?"

"Bengali."

"Ooh."

"And what do you speak in..." Rafia hesitated.

"In Brazil we speak Portuguese."

Brazil... Where is that?

"..."

Is she serious? Gabi observed Rafia's face and held back a chuckle. Oh, my God, she really doesn't know. "In South America."

"Aaah! I thought it was somewhere in Asia."

Have you ever seen a map in your life, woman? It is right there, you can't miss it!

"Mmm... No, it's in South America. Very big country."

While they talked Gabi noticed that her classmate had a big brown wart on the side of her chin. It had thick hairs growing out of it. Between trying to avoid looking at the thing and resisting the urge of running out and coming back with an atlas, she learned barely any French that day. It was all Philippe's fault for not letting people just sit wherever they wanted.

***