Life From Scratch by Sasha Martin

quivering gelatins.
    If the food of Paris was heady and salacious, so, too was the noise. Every few minutes the pop and whine of mopeds and scooters challenged car bumpers at every turn. When outside got to be too much, I slipped inside or away, into dark, candlelit cathedrals that had taken half a millennia to build, or onto stately bridges carved with the heads of long-lost kings. This city was both alive and ancient in a way I’d never seen, never touched, never felt before. I was small in her embrace—safe.
    I disappeared into Paris’s unquestioning rhythm, lulled by the babble around me, letting the confusion wash over me. I couldn’t communicate with anyone, and I didn’t want to. It was the perfect vacuum.
    The week before school began, Patricia and Pierre bought Toni and me bicycles, giving us the freedom to continue exploring Paris in our own way. I clung to Toni—her laughter, her smiles, and the unspoken solace that she’d lost a brother that spring morning, too.
    As Paris’s boulangeries and landmarks became our everyday vistas, the urgent call to explore them was quelled. We settled into our neighborhood, pedaling for hours through the farmland that quilted right up to our small town house on the outskirts of Paris, where we’d pluck snacks right off the land: a few leaves of lettuce, a spicy crimson radish, or the aptly named horse carrot. If I was really lucky, I’d forget about Michael for the better part of a minute.
    Then school began, and with it the requirement to communicate. I could no longer play the perpetual tourist. French schools are organized around ability. By segregating the students, teachers were better able to target the learning needs of each group without anyone getting bored or restless.
    Since I didn’t speak a word of French, I was placed in the bottom tier of eighth grade with the “difficult students”—those who didn’t care, or who simply weren’t capable of earning the highest marks. We were called the “C” students. The only level below ours was the special-needs class and, if I were to believe my classmates, I’d end up there if I didn’t learn the language quickly enough.
    On day one, our immersion class chanted “ Bonjour ” in unison. By the end of the week, I could stumble my way through several sentences. The words piled into my brain, faster and faster. Science was in French. Math. Language. Social Studies. Music. While the rest of my classmates took notes with silver-tipped fountain pens, I poured over the photos and charts in the textbooks to decipher the day’s lessons. Sometimes it helped, but usually it didn’t.
    For the first time in my life I was failing, not just one subject, but every one. Teachers’ comments were always the same: “ Travail insuffisant . Poor effort.” My grades were consistent: 0/20, or the even more infuriating 0.5/20. But I was trying. It’s just that my grief interrupted my studies, and my studies interrupted my grief. I was a girl divided.
    In an attempt to create some sort of cultural familiarity, I’d gravitated toward the handful of Americans at my school. We commiserated about how difficult French immersion was—but I was still doing more poorly than any of them.
    After seeing my grades, Patricia and Pierre encouraged me to make friends with some French kids. “They can help you learn the language more quickly,” Pierre said, “Your grades will improve.”
    So against my shyer inclinations, I brought my tray of steak hache, pommes frites , and fromage blanc to the only open spot at a table of French kids. Their impossibly skinny hips dripped into vintage bell bottoms, baby doll dresses, and tuxedo “tail” shirts that reached the back of their knees. Doc Martens’ fireproof soles and steel toes finished off their grunge ensembles and signaled that we were entering the mid-nineties.
    No sooner had I sat down than everyone turned to me. One of the girls finally spoke up. “Can I have your fromage