The Body Where I Was Born by Guadalupe Nettel Page B

traces of grass and was reserved for holding soccer matches. In France, they also thought it was a little weird for a girl to play soccer. I’d never played marbles and at first was inclined toward the sport of my childhood, but very soon I stopped playing for the same reasons that had made me give it up in Mexico. And so, gradually, I switched over to marbles, an activity I knew nothing about. The marble scene was run by Dimitri, a boy from the East who had an unmistakable aptitude for managing a casino. He was the one who gave me my first marble and a rough explanation of the rules accompanied by a lot of hand gestures. This was how I was able to hit the target and win the five other glass spheres that I would play with for the rest of the week. I remember the hurried atmosphere of the place, the jittery back-and-forth of the players, the crack of glass on glass, and the sound of glass rolling over the ground. Even though I have forgotten how much they were all worth, I remember the names of the different marble families: œil -de-chat, arc-en-ciel, plomb, neige . These words were also the first I learned in French. To my brother’s surprise—and to that of anyone who knows me—I turned out to be not so bad at this marble business (it doesn’t feel right to call it anything else), in which sight and precision play such an important role. Maybe Dimitri’s gift brought me luck. The point is, in just a few days, I managed to amass a considerable number of marbles of varying shapes and values. To store my new collection, I knit a wool pouch that soon grew dirty on the ground.
    Another disconcerting aspect of French schooling caught us off-guard halfway through our first week. It was Wednesday at noon, and instead of heading to the cantine the kids all rushed out the front door with the same enthusiasm they showed every other day at five o’clock. My brother and I were stuck in this frenzy like people blocked by a protest march. We asked a teacher who spoke a few words of our language if something out of the ordinary was happening, and she tersely answered in textbook Spanish: “On Wednesdays, class finishes at midday. Your mother must know this.” According to her, we were getting picked up outside the school, just like everyone else. But Mom never came. The street became less and less populated and we grew used to the idea that we would have to wait for her at the school gate for five hours. One of the last mothers to arrive asked us if everything was all right. When she saw that we didn’t speak French, she asked again in Spanish. We told her what had happened and she brought us to her house for lunch.
    Her name was Lisa and her son Benjamin was in the same grade as my brother. They lived in a very pretty part of the city, full of single houses that were small but charming. Every piece of their furniture was exotic and flush with the floor, like in illustrations from The Thousand and One Nights . She told us that she used to be married to a Moroccan man, her son’s father, but things didn’t work out between them. Now she was back living in France and much happier. The doorbell rang several times while she was talking and, through the half-open door, we saw another two or three people arrive who seemed to be her friends.
    “In this home, Wednesdays are communal. I make couscous like I used to in Casablanca, and whoever wants can come share it with us.”
    We sat down on some cushions on the floor to eat around a very short table. In the cantine I’d seen silverware used as spears, but here cuttlery was nowhere to be seen. The guests put their hands into the giant pot then brought them to their mouths. I was grateful for the invitation that had saved us from spending hours in front of the school. When we finished eating, Lisa served us all mint tea, then she lent me and my brother her phone to let our mother know where we were.
    “If she can’t come, it’s no big deal. You can stay here until whenever.”
    But