What's Your Name Again?

            by Lizzy Arnason

 

            It was one of those huge momentous days. For the last five years I had prepped my French skills. Earlier I had been chatting giddily in english with a friend from my Experiment in International living group, discussing all the fun we were about to dig into. Today I was sitting at a small table, sweating from the blazing noon sun that offered absolutely no shade. I was more bored than I had been since the last days of school, including an eight hour plane ride to Paris from New York with limited movie selections which predated the millennium.

            According to the diary I kept during my five week trip in France, two of which are in a French home stay, I was supposed to be stumbling through strained conversation about my life and hobbies with my new French family. I was supposed to be picking up an accent, learning new words and gaining confidence. I sweated across from an American girl in the backyard of my French “family’s” house. Inside watching T.V was my host mother, during the next two weeks I would discover this was her favorite and sole hobby. My “mother” had told me and a friend from my group, who was waiting for her host family to pick her up, to sit in the back yard and chat. So we sat while our suitcases metal zippers reached a burning temperature and our faces started to match the blister red color of the house. We had no water, and no shade while stranded in a French backyard. Once my friends host family came to get her I was taken inside. The house was small and far from cozy. Sparse furniture, mismatched chairs around the table, and naked, thin walls were my first vision, then I saw the abundance of comfy seating in the T.V room. This was obviously where they pass their time. The house was actually half of a house; the other half belonged to a robust, retired couple, whose loud auditory affairs could be heard from my bedroom, conveniently separated from their own by one thin wall that muffled less sound than a curtain.

The sister, Anissa, was twelve years old, tan, and very skinny, she introduced herself to me first in the downstairs section of the house after I had taken my toasty warm suitcase upstairs.

“Do you want to bath yourself” she asked in French.

“Can you repeat that slower, I’m not sure if I understood you…” I muttered back in French as well. I prepared myself to listen to every single syllable that came out of her mouth, did she really just tell me to shower?

“Do you want to bath yourself?” she asked again this time using her mouth to slowly sound out every word as if she were talking to a baby teasingly before the mom washes them.

“O.K” My eyes bewilderedly looked around trying to plan my next move. Anissa didn’t pick up on my confusion because she turned and walked back into the house, I followed. The most logical thing now was to take a shower, so I fumbled through my suitcase for clean clothes. I had packed my luggage by shoving everything in and employing the help of two people to sit on it while I wrestled the zipper closed; now I regretted my hasty tendencies as it was impossible to differentiate between clean, dirty and this could probably be worn another time.

Choosing a clean looking green tank top and a pair of black cotton shorts I headed for the bathroom. In order to take a shower, I needed some privacy that the cheap accordion door just didn’t want to provide. The door was practically bolted open. It took a ten minute wrestling match, Lizzy vs. A Cheap Accordion Door, to yank the contraption closed. My shower provided me with a little confidence, no longer did I reek of a day of travel and I recollected myself a bit during the shampoo process. Nothing is what you expect I assured myself with the age old proverb. No one was in the downstairs so I looked outside. Anissa was splashing around in the grimy inflatable pool. I didn’t know the word to bath could also mean to swim but I learned fast. The word had a double meaning, when she asked me if I wanted to bath, she meant swim. I found my swim suit.

My first afternoon and my first language blunder taught me to be prepared for embarrassment. For dinner I sat down for a nice microwave cooked meal of frozen hamburgers and peas. I felt bad for expecting a grand feast in my honor and ate my dinner as happily as I could. We all sat around a plastic lawn table with an eclectic set of lawn chairs. At the table were two new faces. There was a boy about my age and a girl the same age as Anissa. Neither of them introduced themselves, but I knew from a brief summary of the family that there were two siblings named Anissa and Yassin, since I had already met Anissa I knew the boy was named Yassin. The other girl was a mystery. I finally broke the long silence that had hovered over the table like a haunted mist and asked the unnamed girl for her name. In return I received a chuckle quickly slammed down by a vicious look from the mother. She was chunkier than the two siblings, Yassin and Annissa, and her voice had a tendency to fluctuate into a high pitched squeal. I dubbed her the no name girl. During dinner I was mostly ignored while the four of them argued over who would walk the monster dog that they owned. I opted to sleep in my room after dinner while they continued arguing, they had relocated to the more comfortable T.V room and now were throwing screams back and forth over a dubbed episode of Full House.

 I got completely dressed for my three step trip to the bathroom in the morning. The accordion door meekly complied with my shoving after being conquered just the day before. Yassin was downstairs in his boxers parked in front of the TV.  I asked him if he ate breakfast already and he responded with an affirmative grunt and made no mention of where I could find this alleged meal. I decided to wait until my sister woke up to eat breakfast; I sat down on a chair in the living room and watched the TV. It turns out that the little lunch, the English translation for the French word breakfast, in this household was nonexistent and their fridge was strangely empty of any food that can be eaten without intense preparation. The fridges sparse offerings demanded finding a pan, butter, a plate, a knife and a spatula, a task I was not in a mood to take on. There was milk, an eggplant and some strange soup containers, I managed to find a cup amid the jumble of dishes scattered haphazardly throughout the cabinets and I poured myself a glass of milk. 

The very first activity I was to do with my host siblings and no name girl was an excursion to a corn maze. The town I was staying in was about an hour away from the nearest metropolitan area and was surrounded by plenty of corn fields. I skeptically agreed to the trip on the grounds that I had never experienced country life growing up in a small city. Quelling my fears of becoming completely lost in the maze, I brought sunscreen and water. My host mother wasn’t very into activities so we were given a ride to this corn field by a presumed family friend who picked us up a few blocks away from the house. I thought this was strange but I didn’t feel like I had much power over the situation.

 Once there we each paid and entered the maze together and to my relief, decided stick together. The point of the maze is to find the numbers posted throughout it, which unlock a treasure chest at the end. The four of us, my brother, sister and no name girl start at a run; at first attempting to find our way using a map provided and common sense.  In a decision I had no part in, probably because I got so tangled up in their fast paced chatter that I constantly found myself five minutes behind the conversation, it was agreed that we have to cut through the thick growing corn to different parts of the maze. This is COMPLETELY against the rules: the actual rules given to us on a piece of paper at the beginning of the maze and my general rule of not doing dumb shit. They predicted that somehow, randomly cutting through the stalks helps us so much more than following paths that are arranged in a seemingly random order as well. I had to follow them through spider infested corn stalks till eventually we cut right out of the maze. We stood on the edge of the ten foot tall corn wall, the southern France sun burned my face. Shrieking and cackling they point at my feet, which were adorned with the traditional California flip flops and a sticky coating of mud from the wet ground around the corn which is watered daily.  They dodged straight back through the corn stalks and scream expectantly for me to follow. I did so grudgingly. Eventually we take the advice of two ten year old boys and navigate our way out of the maze where we are rewarded one piece of hard candy. I couldn’t eat it because of my braces, no name girl grabbed it from me the moment she understood what I was charadeing to her, trying to explain why I couldn’t eat my candy without knowing orthodontic terminology in French.

The three of them were a spontaneous bunch, they had simply forgotten to ensure a ride home. I started the two mile walk back to our house grumpily with them when I looked over and saw that my brother, Yassin had flagged down a supply truck from the labyrinth. He leaned into the window he motioned us towards him. The corn maze was at least two miles from our house and I barely knew the general direction, armed with this knowledge, I climbed into to the back of the truck and settle down on a plank of wood.

After a few days of nothing more than TV, strange music and generally being ignored I developed a list of my grievances. Number one: their constant calls “viens lisy” or come lizzy, like I was their pet. Number two “on y va lisy” or let’s go lizzy which was the second most common thing they said to me. Number three: Them looking up words that are hard to say in the dictionary and making me say them. Number four: them speaking to me in any way. Number five: them screaming and screeching whenever they laughed at me. Number six: their existence.

My first angry vent opened up a small part of me that wanted to get to know my family better, although I had repeatedly attempted conversation.

“ What are schools like in france? Maybe they’re different from mine…” I would say.

“School sucks”, Yassin would say and then flip the channel.

A few minutes later I might interject a “What do you like to do?”

“Not much, sleep” Yassin would say as I crinkled my nose expecting a question to be thrown back at me.

 I learned a few interesting facts later at dinner, they had had two exchange students before me. I couldn’t really figure out why they continued to have them, they didn’t seem to want me there. The dad was a very sore subject with the mom. The huge dog ate their last cat and they still got another one, so whenever the cat tries to get to her food and the dog is near by, someone must hold it back. They were also planning to go shopping tomorrow and they thought it was ok if I came, if I didn’t want I could just stay at home and watch TV.

I was so excited to go shopping. There is nothing I am better at than shopping, I finally had a chance to get excited enough about something too fight through their dropped conversations and wicked chuckles. I knew I could handle a day of true French shopping while carrying on a somewhat one sided conversation; me asking questions and me receiving one liner responses. I wasn’t quite sure where we were going to shop but I figured it would be some cool artsy area that only locals knew about because Anissa kept saying how excited she was for a place called Quick. This sounds like a very hip store that apparently is a chain but is very different than other places. Driving for half an hour through increasingly urban areas peaked my excitement, I had no idea when we would finally come to the promised land of shopping central. We pulled off the highway into the parking lot of a large, dirty looking sports apparel discount store. Across the street was a fast food restaurant that called Quick which is the French equivalent to disgusting plate of mush fried in a vat of pig lard served quickly. We had our lunch at Quick.

I curled my lips into a fake crescent of a smile and reminded myself that nothing is what you expect. A vacated throne is never a happy one and the Mother was eager to let us all know how she felt about leaving TV land without its proper ruler sitting on the green couch. The entire time she kept yelling at her kids and no name girl to hurry up and when I stopped for a second to look at a shirt that said “make big hug me happy” made that second more bearable, she turned around and screamed

“Catch up right now!”

I did the fastest walk I could muster without running over to the others, I didn’t want to look too upset. The four of us, Anissa, Yassin, no name girl and I marched up and down the twenty some aisles with our sharp tongued general barking orders at every turn. The meal we had at Quick along with the lack of anything nutritious in my diet was starting to take its toll on my bowels and I knew I needed to get to a bathroom. I was too scared of the mom to say anything too loudly so I went over to Anissa and asked her if she needed to go to the bathroom. Completely missing the hint that I didn’t want to venture off alone and leaving me too timid to do anything about it I waited, hoping that someone would drop out of rank to use the lavatory. The three of them stood strong, showing no signs of budging from the dictated route. I asked the mom if I could go to the bathroom. She looked at me as if I were an idiot, not a timid young girl with people she hardly knows, and the mom chuckled under her breath with a wicked nasal snort and said:

“I hope you can”

Feeling like I could do no right I walked towards the corner I thought had the bathroom, I left behind my family at the shoe aisles. When I came back I didn’t see them anywhere, I walked from one end of the store and back looking down every single aisle. There’s no way they could leave me, I assured myself, but from what I knew of their hasty decisions to jump through corn stalks and hitch hike I couldn’t get rid of the bubbling feeling of panic. For the next fifteen minutes I searched desperately through the aisles repeating my same lonesome path from one end to another hoping that they would appear from the racks of cheap polyester. My last walk down the aisles was the worst until I caught a glimpse of the parking lot, trying to crane my neck in any direction they could have possibly gone, they would have to go back to their car. The car was not anywhere I could see, I nearly threw up from the intense terror of being stranded. A few steps forward revealed to me my savior, a large van had been blocking my view of the car which still sat in the same parking space. I felt like I was doing something horribly wrong. Had I not heard them say something? Could I have missed them inside? I didn’t have to wait that long to get answers as the group came up to car tightly packed as usual sporting new Quick bags. We all squeezed into the car, no one said a word.  I felt like my own thoughts were so loud they drowned out everyone else but maybe they all just needed to go to the bathroom now, after all no one is strong enough to handle two trips to Quik.

            Most of my time I spent sitting in my room especially after the shopping trip. It wasn’t really my room, it was Anissa’s but they gave it to me for the two weeks I was there. Anissa and no name girl slept in the master bedroom, Yassin slept in his own room, and the mom slept on the her green velvety couch. Anissa’s room was covered with pictures of an English pop band. I sat and stared at images of two spike haired guys with various large breasted women on their arms. The words held little meaning and would probably be bleeped out on American radios but Annisa sang every single one of them incorrectly, actually enhancing the quality of the music. I eventually came to know these lyrics and the faces so well I was on my way to a forced tween obsession, I could recognize them on the street, I knew there names there horoscope information and the seven articles taped to the walls of my room provided me with their favorite foods, movies and pets names. I read all seven of the articles the very first night, then again on the third night and again on the fourth. As much as I loathed those ugly faces I knew they were my escape. I could either sit and stare at them or go downstairs. Downstairs I have to face Yassin taking out a dictionary and combing through it so I could try and pronounce certain words that my tongue jut couild nto twist itself around. Yassin thought this was a hilarious game or maybe he was trying to help me learn but his uncontrolled malicious laughter hinted otherwise. In my misery I imagined them naming the game after the sound I could not say and I laughed as I imagined a single one of them in America where the stench of cigarettes isn’t the most loved smell and hitch hiking often leads to questionable circumstances.

The party for our host family’s as a thank you for all they’ve done for us was my group leader’s idea. All ten people from my group arrived early before their host families came so we could set up. I heard stories about going to the rock band Cold Play concerts, riding horses, staying up till two in the morning being taught French slang and talking about boys with a younger host sister. Few people had bad things to say about their host families and I just couldn’t seem to explain to them the dynamic of my family until my family arrived. The parents of all the other families seemed to get along great and as I idled around I picked up on conversations about embarrassing situations my American friends had gotten themselves into, (everyone was laughing in a nice way). My family sat in a corner with there plates of food. They made me leave early but I didn’t care because the next day I knew I would be leaving them forever. In the morning I would be picked up by another family in my group because my mom did not want to drive to the train station. No one would be up when I left, tonight would be the last time I saw any of them. Even though most of my stay in their house could be summed up in the word stinky, I find myself asking one question over and over: what on earth was that stupid no named girls name!?