Place d'Italie, Paris, Circa 2003

By Holly Brockman

From my perch atop a concrete cylinder at this busy Paris roundabout, I’m watching a little girl in blue leather Mary Jane’s. Her hair is pulled back in a braided ponytail and she has on a blue sweater over a white blouse with a choir boy collar. Her brownish pony tail is curled at the bottom and it taps in the middle of her back between her shoulder blades like a horse tail at canter. A French girl, maybe? Everybody here is French as far as I am concerned. I think she’s nine or ten. She’s speaking French up to her father from her tiny spot at the corner.

Her father is handsome and tanned. His dark black hair waves around his head and falls just below his ears as it curls under at his neckline. He runs his fingers in a circle around his ear and squats down to listen to his little girl. He gives her a little peck on her cheek and they smile at each other. She’s carrying a little pink Jenny fer bag with silver metallic writing that is probably filled with tiny little treasures from the trendy, juniors store in the neighborhood. I wonder if they’re on a daddy daughter date? I think her Daddy looks a little like the way mine did when he held my hand like that. If I had a picture of me and my Dad holding hands, I would want it to look like this.

I think I’ll give her a name, this little girl I’m watching. I want her to have two names. Something like Relais Marie. I want a two-name name myself, but I haven’t come up with it yet.

Relais Marie is holding her Daddy’s hand at the corner of Rue Bobbolot at Place d’Italie in front of one of the six subway entrances at this bustling urban turnabout. Of course, I don’t know for sure what they’re doing, but they’re not crossing with the other pedestrians. They must be waiting for someone. From the center circle, six little Rue’s project out like the sunshine’s fingered rays to busy streets lined with tiny shops, cafés and Pharmacie’s with flashing green and blue crosses.

“Bonjour, Madame,” and smiles come my way from a handful of the people walking by me. A woman with a grocery bag on her wrist drops a jar of Nutella chocolate sauce on the ground and her son rushes over to retrieve it before it rolls too far down the sidewalk. She gives him an approving grin and puts her hand over her chest and sighs.

We exchange smiles while she gathers up her groceries. Her boy grabs her hand and they walk away.

All the little French girls wear Mary Jane shoes. Whether they are on the train or walking up and down the cobblestone rue’s, little girls seem more French to me when they’re wearing shoes like Madeline standing with her friends in two straight lines. The little Mary Jane shoes come in lots of colors but mostly red, blue, white or black. The strap comes over top of the foot and buckles on the side. In front, over the toes, two little holes are cut out so you can see socks or skin.

Relais Marie is wearing white socks that I’ll bet are turned over once at the ankles. Her khaki cords cover them, so I can’t tell for sure. But, she’s the cutest little thing I’ve ever seen. When I look at her — watch her — my own little girl life rushes before me like a tiny filmstrip of pictures. Quick, like the green subway cars rushing underneath the ground below me, I see first grade, then second and now third. I stop at fourth because I think this little girl is that same age.

I think of all the times I took walks with my Dad downtown, in and out of little shops, running errands, and how he used to hold my hand just like that little girl is getting her hand held right now. I’m giving a long thought about my Dad and how he’d be fixing this little mess I’ve found myself in if he were here. I’m sitting with my two bags of luggage, purse and backpack on a concrete seat near the curb because I can’t find the car. I remember parking the teeney Peugeot in a residential neighborhood before I got on the pink 7 line on my way into Paris. That was a week ago and I realize the familiarity has escaped me. I’ve lost my bearings.

While parking, I was anticipating a week at the Louvre and Musee de Orsay looking at French art and taking my time. I saved for three years for this trip to taste French reds from the Beaujolais region and devour the Impressionists inside the city.

Hundreds of people walk by me. Some are walking their bikes and others are pushing strollers or dragging wheeled carts behind them. Others are sitting in outside cafés having coffee and tea trying to stay warm as the sun sinks behind the terraced apartment buildings and five storied banks. Most people are wearing coats and scarves or sweatshirts. Another little girl walks by and I see myself in her, too — pretty blonde hair and an innocent smile. I once looked like that.

The breeze is blowing little whisps of my hair out of my own pony tail and I wonder about never going home. Maybe I’ll miss my plane tonight. Like letdown Monday after a great weekend and letdown salad when I’m on a diet, I am sitting here grieving Paris since I have to give it up this evening. Going home to nobody isn’t the most picturesque feeling I’ve had this week and I am worried I’ll feel as lonely when I get home as I do right now.

I’ve been living my life for the last week riding the Metro and walking down brick and stone streets. My Dad taught me how to navigate the subway by myself and how to stand tall. He taught me to drive and how to parallel park.

When I get home tomorrow, I’ll have to live the life I’ve been distracted from while I’ve been in France. The life without my Dad. The life that just picked out clothes for his funeral. The life that just buried him. Suddenly, all I want right now is to curl up fetal and sleep in my own bed. But, before that, I have to find the car.

“Pardon, Monsieur?” I ask one of the five taxi cab divers shooting the merde on the corner. I keep my bags in my eyesight but leave them for just a moment.

“Oui?” he says holding his little cap in his front fingers and scratching his head with the ones remaining.

“Eh, eske eh Metro la gare sorte ….,” this is where my French trails off. I try to think of the word for seven but I can only get to quatre, four. “I am looking for the Metro stop where only the 7 train on the pink line comes out.” Hopefully the guy can tolerate my deliberate English.

“Oui, you can get on the seven right here, Madame,” he says very politely and points to the little Metro map they give you when you buy the visitors three-day pass. As I flatten my hand underneath the map, he draws a little roundabout showing me where all six Metro entrances and sortie’s (exits) are located.

“Merci bouquois,” Well, I’m already that far along on my own I think to myself and shake my head a lot back to him like he’s been helpful.

I grab my rolling suitcase and sling my purse and backpack up and over my shoulder and start to walk around the crosswalks hoping one of the streets will look familiar. I walk down each one a block or two and nothing seems to look like what I saw when I came here a week ago. New friends in Beaune and Amboise in the French countryside said I should park the car outside Paris and take the subway in. Driving into the city, I was thrilled to find a spot just across the street from the number 7 line’s Metro stop.

I walk the circle twice and although I am walking with rows and rows of people at least five deep, I feel so lonely and I’m starting to get scared. How many hours of daylight are left? What if I don’t find the car before dark?

Bags in tow and packed on my back, I take three flights of steps down to the Metro and wait in line for the attendant selling tickets.

“Bonjour, Madame, I am looking for the 7 line but not where the five, six and seven come together, just the seven line at Italie,” I said as slowly as possible without seeming condescending as my purse fell from my shoulder to the crook of my arm nearly turning me over on her counter.

“Madame, right behind you is the seven!” She says in her harsh dialect like she has no time for an American in Paris and points to the big sign over my head that has a giant 7 encircled in black. I know, I know, I think as I get a new grip on all my bags and pull them back up the stairs to the outside. Of course she thinks I am an idiot.

“Merci,” I say and walk the other way to go up and out of the Metro station. I drag my bags and myself around the roundabout again hoping, wishing something would look familiar. I spot a KFC this time around. What if I ran in there and cried to the people behind the counter? Would they help me? Would they immediately get on the phone to my friends who work at KFC in Louisville and see that I found my car?

There’s a map behind weathered hard plastic on a bus shelter that I hadn’t seen my first time around. I finger the roundabout and the six-odd Metro stops on the circle. As cars speed past me and hundreds of pedestrians are guided by white-gloved traffic cops, I let all my bags fall to the ground and I make a nest in them as I look at the map. I must have looked like a pack mule with all those bags covering my back while I looped around looking for my way. I see that the pink line stops at Place d’Italie where I am, but it goes on to three other stops on this particular street, one of them named Port d’Italie. That’s it! Port, not Place! I’ve been wandering around Place d’Italie looking for my car that’s near Porte d’Italie.

Remind me to choke the logistics people at the Paris Metropolitan the next time I’m here. Stupid me, for not trusting that I was just in the wrong place and shame on them for naming two stops on the same line Italie!

Yay, I’m on my way back to the car and then the plane and then my bed. I watch myself in my head gathering up all my bags, crossing back over the streets to the next Metro stop.

I see myself gingerly navigating the steps down to the 7 train with all my bags and take every step down with caution. I smell the urine, see the dog droppings and smell all the body odor of the Parisians. I see the pastel green cars whizzing by and I reach for the metallic bar to keep me steady on the train. I’m getting on the train and taking it to the Port d’Italie stop, stepping off before the doors close behind me and climbing three more flights of stairs out of the Metro station and finding the car. I pass tourists who don’t know what they’re doing. They’re looking at their maps and swiveling their heads around looking for street signs to orient themselves.

The crowds around me thinned to only those eating and enjoying the evening. Rush hour has passed. I wish I was still packing my bags for this trip not knowing what I know now: that I’ve lost my Dad. He’s not yanking on my ponytail like a reign, “whoa-ing” me and he’s not just a phone call away to tell me something I need to know or remind me of my great Aunt Grace’s quirkiness. The alone feeling overwhelms me and I cry into my hands and curl over in my own lap. I want my Dad to rub my head and tell me he’ll pick me up at the airport like he always has.

I keep watching myself on continuous loop getting to the car, but I stay in my place until it gets dark. Families are coming out now for after dinner nibbles; couples for café and tea. They’re covered in shawls and scarves and I count two people wearing gloves.

Little Relais Marie is here again. She’s shed her tiny pink bag with silver writing and now she’s got her baby doll in a stroller she’s pushing. Her hair is mussed some, but her ponytail is still braided and her Dad is holding on to it like a leash twirling the little curls at the end in his fingers. They speak their beautiful language to each other with words and without. Watching them look at each other, I hope like hell I gave my Dad looks like that and told him I loved him so much I couldn’t stand it even if I didn’t have the words.

“Pardon Madame,” said Relais Marie’s father in sweet, poetic French. The two sit next to me on the green wooden bench on the other side of the bus shelter.

“Oui? Non Francais,” I think that’s close enough. I hope he speaks English.

“Oui, Madame, are you lost?” He says. I’ve heard that at least a thousand times in the week I’ve been here walking around with a map.

“No, I finally found where I need to go, but I’m taking a rest for now,” I said trying to make up something believable.

They sit next to me in the quiet and we watch the cars rush by and listen to lovers talk and kiss as the night challenges the day.

“We saw you earlier in front of the café with your bags and when we noticed you still here, we couldn’t help but wonder about you,” the father said leaning over his legs with his arm around Relais Marie. "During our dinner, we watched you take laps around the circle.”

“I finally found the Metro stop I need but I just don’t want to leave Paris,” I said.

He fluttered his eyes like he knew what I meant and Relais Marie came over behind me and touched my hair, lightly. I was a little surprised at first, and I flinched, but having her little fingers on my neck and in my hair was comforting. The man whispered something to his daughter in French and it sounded something like a sweet reprimand. Suddenly, she backed away from me.

“It’s okay, please go ahead,” I said. “If it’s alright with you, it’s alright with me for her to continue.”

He motioned for her to go back to her coiffeuring and I sat up taller for her to reach me better and I closed my eyes.

As she sectioned my hair into three parts, and twisted each one in and out of her fingers, I watched the evening darken up the bus stop Relais Marie has turned beauty shop. A night light flashed on in the bus shelter startling all three of us as I looked across the street at the wrought iron cascading underneath windows and red geraniums.

When she finished the braid, she came around in front of me and kissed each side of my face tenderly once, then again. Her rosy smell and soft linen skin made me feel like a little girl. I stroked my own face feeling her softness under my hand and blew her a kiss.

A bus pulled up to the stop and blocked my view. The door opened with a sigh.

"Bon soir," the little girl said and then "bye-bye" in over-pronounced English. Her father took her hand and helped her up the stairs. The doors closed and the bus pulled away. I looked at the red tail lights.

__________________________________________________________________________

Holly Brockman is a freelance writer and adjunct literature professor in the school of Liberal Studies at Spalding University. Her essays and articles have appeared in Runner’s World, The Courier-Journal, Louisville Magazine, UofL Magazine, LEO and The New Southerner. She lives in Louisville.


	Place d'Italie, Paris, Circa 2003 By Holly Brockman From my perch atop a concrete cylinder at this busy Paris roundabout, I’m watching a little girl in blue leather Mary Jane’s. Her hair is pulled back in a braided ponytail and she has on a blue sweater over a white blouse with a choir boy collar. Her brownish pony tail is curled at the bottom and it taps in the middle of her back between her shoulder blades like a horse tail at canter. A French girl, maybe? Everybody here is French as far as I am concerned. I think she’s nine or ten. She’s speaking French up to her father from her tiny spot at the corner. Her father is handsome and tanned. His dark black hair waves around his head and falls just below his ears as it curls under at his neckline. He runs his fingers in a circle around his ear and squats down to listen to his little girl. He gives her a little peck on her cheek and they smile at each other. She’s carrying a little pink Jenny fer bag with silver metallic writing that is probably filled with tiny little treasures from the trendy, juniors store in the neighborhood. I wonder if they’re on a daddy daughter date? I think her Daddy looks a little like the way mine did when he held my hand like that. If I had a picture of me and my Dad holding hands, I would want it to look like this. I think I’ll give her a name, this little girl I’m watching. I want her to have two names. Something like Relais Marie. I want a two-name name myself, but I haven’t come up with it yet. Relais Marie is holding her Daddy’s hand at the corner of Rue Bobbolot at Place d’Italie in front of one of the six subway entrances at this bustling urban turnabout. Of course, I don’t know for sure what they’re doing, but they’re not crossing with the other pedestrians. They must be waiting for someone. From the center circle, six little Rue’s project out like the sunshine’s fingered rays to busy streets lined with tiny shops, cafés and Pharmacie’s with flashing green and blue crosses. “Bonjour, Madame,” and smiles come my way from a handful of the people walking by me. A woman with a grocery bag on her wrist drops a jar of Nutella chocolate sauce on the ground and her son rushes over to retrieve it before it rolls too far down the sidewalk. She gives him an approving grin and puts her hand over her chest and sighs. We exchange smiles while she gathers up her groceries. Her boy grabs her hand and they walk away. All the little French girls wear Mary Jane shoes. Whether they are on the train or walking up and down the cobblestone rue’s, little girls seem more French to me when they’re wearing shoes like Madeline standing with her friends in two straight lines. The little Mary Jane shoes come in lots of colors but mostly red, blue, white or black. The strap comes over top of the foot and buckles on the side. In front, over the toes, two little holes are cut out so you can see socks or skin. Relais Marie is wearing white socks that I’ll bet are turned over once at the ankles. Her khaki cords cover them, so I can’t tell for sure. But, she’s the cutest little thing I’ve ever seen. When I look at her — watch her — my own little girl life rushes before me like a tiny filmstrip of pictures. Quick, like the green subway cars rushing underneath the ground below me, I see first grade, then second and now third. I stop at fourth because I think this little girl is that same age. I think of all the times I took walks with my Dad downtown, in and out of little shops, running errands, and how he used to hold my hand just like that little girl is getting her hand held right now. I’m giving a long thought about my Dad and how he’d be fixing this little mess I’ve found myself in if he were here. I’m sitting with my two bags of luggage, purse and backpack on a concrete seat near the curb because I can’t find the car. I remember parking the teeney Peugeot in a residential neighborhood before I got on the pink 7 line on my way into Paris. That was a week ago and I realize the familiarity has escaped me. I’ve lost my bearings. While parking, I was anticipating a week at the Louvre and Musee de Orsay looking at French art and taking my time. I saved for three years for this trip to taste French reds from the Beaujolais region and devour the Impressionists inside the city. Hundreds of people walk by me. Some are walking their bikes and others are pushing strollers or dragging wheeled carts behind them. Others are sitting in outside cafés having coffee and tea trying to stay warm as the sun sinks behind the terraced apartment buildings and five storied banks. Most people are wearing coats and scarves or sweatshirts. Another little girl walks by and I see myself in her, too — pretty blonde hair and an innocent smile. I once looked like that. The breeze is blowing little whisps of my hair out of my own pony tail and I wonder about never going home. Maybe I’ll miss my plane tonight. Like letdown Monday after a great weekend and letdown salad when I’m on a diet, I am sitting here grieving Paris since I have to give it up this evening. Going home to nobody isn’t the most picturesque feeling I’ve had this week and I am worried I’ll feel as lonely when I get home as I do right now. I’ve been living my life for the last week riding the Metro and walking down brick and stone streets. My Dad taught me how to navigate the subway by myself and how to stand tall. He taught me to drive and how to parallel park. When I get home tomorrow, I’ll have to live the life I’ve been distracted from while I’ve been in France. The life without my Dad. The life that just picked out clothes for his funeral. The life that just buried him. Suddenly, all I want right now is to curl up fetal and sleep in my own bed. But, before that, I have to find the car. “Pardon, Monsieur?” I ask one of the five taxi cab divers shooting the merde on the corner. I keep my bags in my eyesight but leave them for just a moment. “Oui?” he says holding his little cap in his front fingers and scratching his head with the ones remaining. “Eh, eske eh Metro la gare sorte ….,” this is where my French trails off. I try to think of the word for seven but I can only get to quatre, four. “I am looking for the Metro stop where only the 7 train on the pink line comes out.” Hopefully the guy can tolerate my deliberate English. “Oui, you can get on the seven right here, Madame,” he says very politely and points to the little Metro map they give you when you buy the visitors three-day pass. As I flatten my hand underneath the map, he draws a little roundabout showing me where all six Metro entrances and sortie’s (exits) are located. “Merci bouquois,” Well, I’m already that far along on my own I think to myself and shake my head a lot back to him like he’s been helpful. I grab my rolling suitcase and sling my purse and backpack up and over my shoulder and start to walk around the crosswalks hoping one of the streets will look familiar. I walk down each one a block or two and nothing seems to look like what I saw when I came here a week ago. New friends in Beaune and Amboise in the French countryside said I should park the car outside Paris and take the subway in. Driving into the city, I was thrilled to find a spot just across the street from the number 7 line’s Metro stop. I walk the circle twice and although I am walking with rows and rows of people at least five deep, I feel so lonely and I’m starting to get scared. How many hours of daylight are left? What if I don’t find the car before dark? Bags in tow and packed on my back, I take three flights of steps down to the Metro and wait in line for the attendant selling tickets. “Bonjour, Madame, I am looking for the 7 line but not where the five, six and seven come together, just the seven line at Italie,” I said as slowly as possible without seeming condescending as my purse fell from my shoulder to the crook of my arm nearly turning me over on her counter. “Madame, right behind you is the seven!” She says in her harsh dialect like she has no time for an American in Paris and points to the big sign over my head that has a giant 7 encircled in black. I know, I know, I think as I get a new grip on all my bags and pull them back up the stairs to the outside. Of course she thinks I am an idiot. “Merci,” I say and walk the other way to go up and out of the Metro station. I drag my bags and myself around the roundabout again hoping, wishing something would look familiar. I spot a KFC this time around. What if I ran in there and cried to the people behind the counter? Would they help me? Would they immediately get on the phone to my friends who work at KFC in Louisville and see that I found my car? There’s a map behind weathered hard plastic on a bus shelter that I hadn’t seen my first time around. I finger the roundabout and the six-odd Metro stops on the circle. As cars speed past me and hundreds of pedestrians are guided by white-gloved traffic cops, I let all my bags fall to the ground and I make a nest in them as I look at the map. I must have looked like a pack mule with all those bags covering my back while I looped around looking for my way. I see that the pink line stops at Place d’Italie where I am, but it goes on to three other stops on this particular street, one of them named Port d’Italie. That’s it! Port, not Place! I’ve been wandering around Place d’Italie looking for my car that’s near Porte d’Italie. Remind me to choke the logistics people at the Paris Metropolitan the next time I’m here. Stupid me, for not trusting that I was just in the wrong place and shame on them for naming two stops on the same line Italie! Yay, I’m on my way back to the car and then the plane and then my bed. I watch myself in my head gathering up all my bags, crossing back over the streets to the next Metro stop. I see myself gingerly navigating the steps down to the 7 train with all my bags and take every step down with caution. I smell the urine, see the dog droppings and smell all the body odor of the Parisians. I see the pastel green cars whizzing by and I reach for the metallic bar to keep me steady on the train. I’m getting on the train and taking it to the Port d’Italie stop, stepping off before the doors close behind me and climbing three more flights of stairs out of the Metro station and finding the car. I pass tourists who don’t know what they’re doing. They’re looking at their maps and swiveling their heads around looking for street signs to orient themselves. The crowds around me thinned to only those eating and enjoying the evening. Rush hour has passed. I wish I was still packing my bags for this trip not knowing what I know now: that I’ve lost my Dad. He’s not yanking on my ponytail like a reign, “whoa-ing” me and he’s not just a phone call away to tell me something I need to know or remind me of my great Aunt Grace’s quirkiness. The alone feeling overwhelms me and I cry into my hands and curl over in my own lap. I want my Dad to rub my head and tell me he’ll pick me up at the airport like he always has. I keep watching myself on continuous loop getting to the car, but I stay in my place until it gets dark. Families are coming out now for after dinner nibbles; couples for café and tea. They’re covered in shawls and scarves and I count two people wearing gloves. Little Relais Marie is here again. She’s shed her tiny pink bag with silver writing and now she’s got her baby doll in a stroller she’s pushing. Her hair is mussed some, but her ponytail is still braided and her Dad is holding on to it like a leash twirling the little curls at the end in his fingers. They speak their beautiful language to each other with words and without. Watching them look at each other, I hope like hell I gave my Dad looks like that and told him I loved him so much I couldn’t stand it even if I didn’t have the words. “Pardon Madame,” said Relais Marie’s father in sweet, poetic French. The two sit next to me on the green wooden bench on the other side of the bus shelter. “Oui? Non Francais,” I think that’s close enough. I hope he speaks English. “Oui, Madame, are you lost?” He says. I’ve heard that at least a thousand times in the week I’ve been here walking around with a map. “No, I finally found where I need to go, but I’m taking a rest for now,” I said trying to make up something believable. They sit next to me in the quiet and we watch the cars rush by and listen to lovers talk and kiss as the night challenges the day. “We saw you earlier in front of the café with your bags and when we noticed you still here, we couldn’t help but wonder about you,” the father said leaning over his legs with his arm around Relais Marie. "During our dinner, we watched you take laps around the circle.” “I finally found the Metro stop I need but I just don’t want to leave Paris,” I said. He fluttered his eyes like he knew what I meant and Relais Marie came over behind me and touched my hair, lightly. I was a little surprised at first, and I flinched, but having her little fingers on my neck and in my hair was comforting. The man whispered something to his daughter in French and it sounded something like a sweet reprimand. Suddenly, she backed away from me. “It’s okay, please go ahead,” I said. “If it’s alright with you, it’s alright with me for her to continue.” He motioned for her to go back to her coiffeuring and I sat up taller for her to reach me better and I closed my eyes. As she sectioned my hair into three parts, and twisted each one in and out of her fingers, I watched the evening darken up the bus stop Relais Marie has turned beauty shop. A night light flashed on in the bus shelter startling all three of us as I looked across the street at the wrought iron cascading underneath windows and red geraniums. When she finished the braid, she came around in front of me and kissed each side of my face tenderly once, then again. Her rosy smell and soft linen skin made me feel like a little girl. I stroked my own face feeling her softness under my hand and blew her a kiss. A bus pulled up to the stop and blocked my view. The door opened with a sigh. "Bon soir," the little girl said and then "bye-bye" in over-pronounced English. Her father took her hand and helped her up the stairs. The doors closed and the bus pulled away. I looked at the red tail lights. __________________________________________________________________________ Holly Brockman is a freelance writer and adjunct literature professor in the school of Liberal Studies at Spalding University. Her essays and articles have appeared in Runner’s World, The Courier-Journal, Louisville Magazine, UofL Magazine, LEO and The New Southerner. She lives in Louisville.