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By Root 331 0

great-aunt Sylvie lives, where their butcher is located, where they last got lost, and, when truly desperate, they will name a street on one of the islands that cleave this city. By then I am gone because too often their surprise deviates into anger: "How can this little Indochinese, who can't even speak proper French, who can't even say more than a simple sentence, who can't even understand enough to get angry over the jokes that we're making at his expense, how can this Indochinese know this city better than we?" All I need is a little monkey dressed in a suit more expensive than my own, and I could join the ranks of the circus freaks. "Come one, come all. See the Half-Man-Half-Woman Sword Swallower, the Bearded Lady, and, now, introducing the Little Indochinese Who Knows This City Better Than Any Parisian!" But this is hardly a skill to impress a potential Monsieur and Madame.

I have been in this city for over three years now. I have interviewed with and even worked for an embarrassing number of households. In my experience, they fall into two categories. No, in fact, there are three. The first are those who, after a catlike glimpse at my face, will issue an immediate rejection, usually nonverbal. A door slam is an uncommonly effective form of communication. No discussion, no references required, no "Will you want Sundays off?" Those, while immediately unpleasant, I prefer. Type twos are those who may or may not end up hiring me but who will, nonetheless, insist on stripping me with questions, as if performing an indelicate physical examination. Type twos behave as if they have been authorized by the French government to ferret out and to document exactly how it is that I have come to inhabit their hallowed shores.

"In Paris, three years," I tell them.

"Where were you before?"

"Marseilles."

"Where were you before that?"

"Boat to Marseilles."

"Boat? Well, obviously. Where did that boat sail from?"

And so, like a courtesan, forced to perform the dance of the seven veils, I grudgingly reveal the names, one by one, of the cities that have carved their names into me, leaving behind the scar tissue that forms the bulk of who I am.

"Hmmm ... you say you've been in Paris for three years? Now, let's see, if you left Indochina when you were twenty, that would make you..."

"Twenty-six, Madame."

Three years unaccounted for! you could almost hear them thinking. Most Parisians can ignore and even forgive me for not having the refinement to be born amidst the ringing bells of their cathedrals, especially since I was born instead amidst the ringing bells of the replicas of their cathedrals, erected in a far-off colony to remind them of the majesty, the piety, of home. As long as Monsieur and Madame can account for my whereabouts in their city or in one of their colonies, then they can trust that the République and the Catholic Church have had their watchful eyes on me. But when I expose myself as a subject who may have strayed, who may have lived a life unchecked, ungoverned, undocumented, and unrepentant, I become, for them, suspect. Before, I was no more of a threat than a cloistered nun. Now Madame glares at me to see if she can detect the deviant sexual practices that I have surely picked up and am now, without a doubt, proliferating under the very noses of the city's Notre-Dames. Madame now worries whether she can trust me with her little girls.

Madame, you have nothing to worry about. I have no interest in your little girls. Your boys ... well, that is their choice, she should hear me thinking.

The odds are stacked against me with this second type, I know. But I find myself again and again shamefully submitting. All those questions, I deceive myself each time, all those questions must mean that I have a chance. And so I stay on, eventually serving myself forth like a scrawny roast pig, only to be told, "Thank you, but no thank you."

Thank you? Thank you? Madame, you should applaud! A standing ovation would not be inappropriate, I think each time. I have just given you a story filled with exotic locales, travel on