Bitter Almonds by Laurence Cossé, Alison Anderson Page B

Fadila will write more
M
’s and
AM
’s, and copy out
AMRANI
.
    Â 
    This time it is Fadila who asks Édith if she has time for a lesson. But you can’t be at your best every day: she can’t write her first name from memory anymore, and she hasn’t got the
AM
at all; the letter
A
is not as well drawn as the previous time and the
M
doesn’t come out right.
    From long ago, from her own years of primary school, Édith hears the voice of a cantankerous woman harping on, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” A phrase that she did not find the least bit encouraging.
    They work on the
M
and the
A
. Things are looking up.
    Ã‰dith has an idea, an idea so patently elementary that she cannot help, once again, but take the measure of how modest her aims with Fadila have become. She takes a sheet of fine cardboard and a thick black felt-tip pen from the shelf where she has a small stationery supply. On the white cardboard she writes, in big capital letters,
FADILA AMRANI
.
    â€œTake it home with you. Put it up in a good spot where you can see it. Somewhere in the kitchen, for example.”
    â€œNo, I putting on television,” says Fadila. “Like that, is going into the eyes.”
    Â 
    After Fadila has gone home, Édith takes another sheet of cardboard and writes the same two words on it, then looks for a place to put it in the bathroom. She imagines Fadila there ironing, her back to the window, so she pins it to the wall just opposite, at eye level.
    The following time, as she is setting up the ironing board, Fadila sees it at once. It makes her laugh. But it bothers her, too:
    â€œWhat is saying, you husband?”
    â€œHe thinks it’s a very pretty name,” says Édith, and she isn’t lying.
    They work on
AMRANI
. The
M
is still giving Fadila trouble. She calls it, “that one I no liking.”
    They have to keep going. “Let’s try the
R
now.” Édith circles the letter that is in the third position in her name.
    â€œI knowing that one,” says Fadila. “Is train, RER A, RER B, RER C.”
    Excellent. Édith writes
RER
, shows her that the letter
R
comes up twice and, while she’s at it, points to the letter
E
in between. Next to it she writes the letter
A
.
    â€œI knowing that one,” says Fadila again.
    â€œOf course you do, you know the
A
.”
    â€œI knowing the
B
, too.”
    She explains that
B
is the first letter of the code for the electronic lock outside her building.
    Ã‰dith would like to seize the opportunity to have her work on the code, but Fadila, who knows how to do it—she mimes the gesture with her index finger—cannot remember what comes after the
B
.
    â€œIt’s probably numbers, no?”
    She can’t remember.
    Fadila copies out
RER A
,
RER B
, and
RER C
, quickly and neatly. Yet they had never studied the
E
. It’s the first time she’s written it, and she manages to draw it without any trouble, or so it would seem.
    On a sheet of paper, in a column, Édith writes
RER A
,
RER B
,
RER C
, and beneath it,
FADILA AMRANI
. She asks Fadila to find the letters that are shared by all these words. Fadila can’t see it. She knows
A
and
B
. She has just copied out
R
and
E
. But to find these same letters within a word must require other skills: she can’t do it.

11
    I so tired,” she says, as soon as she comes in.
It’s the heat. But there’s something else, too. “All morning is arguing with Madame Aubin.” This lady lives in her building on rue de Laborde, and Fadila works for her on Tuesday mornings. The woman lives with her twenty-five-year-old daughter and cannot put up with her anymore. She is overwrought because of it and takes it out on Fadila.
    â€œWhat does that girl do, then, to annoy her mother so much?”
    â€œAlice?”
    Fadila likes the girl. She’s watched her grow up. She’s a chubby young woman who always wears black.