“Masculine” by Mathilde Merouani was selected by T Kira Māhealani Madden as the winner of the 2021 Open Border Fiction Prize.

“‘Masculine,’ a fresh, punchy coming of age story, understated but gutting. With Mathilde Merouani’s expert use of repetition and perspective, one feels all that simmers beneath these scenes, and the taut violence of hindsight. The beauty of this story winded me.”— T Kira Māhealani Madden

◆

The boys and the girls told me my mother was a whore. Two girls, two boys. They didn’t speak English, only French, and I didn’t understand the last word. The bad word. My mother hadn’t taught me that word.

“It’s a lady who’s very very nice,” Baptiste said, and the others laughed.

“No,” Alice said. “A whore, it’s a woman who makes love for money because she’s dirty. A prostitute. On the street.”

I understood that. At first, the language and their age made me think I had been lied to. I was always ready for the world to shift, then, for someone to reveal the truth that had until then been hidden on account of safety. I imagined the real as a thing forthcoming.

For a minute, I thought I did not know my mother’s job. That she made a living not dressed, but naked.

They said other words, too, bent over with laughter: catin, chienne, péripatéticienne, pétasse, putain. That last one I knew – I had heard putains in my mother’s voice when she was upset, annoyed, angry, and she thought she was alone. I’m only guessing the other ones were the other ones.

“Look at her face!” Baptiste said. They laughed again.

“No need to cry,” Alice said. “Maeva’s mother, she’s a whore as well.”

I was confused. Not just because Maeva didn’t seem bothered that her mother was a whore, but because I found it odd that a prostitute should work in a village like that. Whores lived in cities; they waited by the curb.

“My mother isn’t a whore,” I said, quietly.

“Yes, she’s a whore,” Nicolas said. “She cheated on your father, no? With married men. Like Maeva’s mother. That’s what my mother told me.”

“Mine said it too,” Alice said.

“My father too,” Baptiste said. “He said your mother came back to France because she was ashamed and nobody wanted to be her friend in England. Because she cheated on your father with a lot of men.”

“How do you know they’re not all liars?” I asked.

They laughed again.

“She doesn’t even know how to speak French. She’s French and she doesn’t even know how to speak French.”

I had said toutes instead of tous, they told me.

“But there are two women and a man,” I said.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Nicolas said. “The masculine prevails.”

“Yes,” Alice said. “The masculine prevails.”

We were sitting in front of the church, were all too hot in the sun. My mother had told me they were her friends’ children, and that they would play with me. When I had repeated that fact, Maeva had said, “We don’t play, we’re not babies.” And Alice had said, “If you buy us Calippos you can stay with us. Coke-flavoured, obviously.” So I had run back to my grandmother’s house, had taken a five-euro note from a jar, and had bought four ice-lollies for them. That was when they had told me my mother was a whore – sucking on the Calippos.

When they were done talking about prostitutes, they asked me how old I was. I said I was nine; the girls were ten. I told them they looked older, which made them smile and arch their backs and fill their lungs. The boys said they were twelve, and the girls said they were not twelve at all, only eleven, and that they always said they were a year older than they really were, and that they were always liars. Then they asked me to sing a song in English. I could only think of Grease; I sang “Summer Nights.”

“Now tell us what it means,” Nicolas said.

I tried to translate, and they couldn’t stop laughing.

“English people are so stupid,” Alice said.

“Yeah,” Baptiste said, “Americans especially. With their big guns and their big cars.”

“Yeah and their flags.”

“Yeah and their plastic surgery.”

I rehearsed my sentence in my head so that my accent was perfect and said, “It’s true. In England, everyone says French people are smart. And sexy.”

Alice smiled.

“What else do they say, rosbif?”

“They say French people eat frogs,” I said.

She whispered something into Maeva’s ear; they were both staring at me.

“You can come to the river with us, tomorrow,” Alice said. “We have a rope now. You’ll see if we eat frogs.”

◆

When I came back to my grandmother’s house, my mother said, “Did you have fun, sweetheart?”

I replied I no longer wanted to speak English – only French.

We had a big salad for dinner. My mother asked if I wanted sausages, too, and my grandmother said, “Sausages with salad? You’re crazy.”

My mother rolled her eyes at me and imitated my grandmother behind her back, mouthing, “You’re crazy!” When she raised her arm to slap her own head, her sleeve slipped down and showed yellow and blue bruises. I laughed.

I went to the freezer to get ice-cubes and broke them into our glasses. My grandmother asked me to leave some in a towel so she could hold it to her sweaty forehead. I noticed my mother was wearing trousers.

In my bed, that night, I wondered which swimsuit I would wear. I had brought my two one-pieces, the one with the dogs and the one with the flowers. I couldn’t sleep. I stared at a tall, framed photograph of my dead grandfather above the dresser.

◆

I met them in front of the church and we walked to the river, and to the tree, and to the jumping rope. I matched my pace with theirs; the arm that held my towel was numb.

Baptiste’s father had installed the rope, so Baptiste claimed payment every time the girls wanted to jump. The toll was a Chinese burn, which they called an Indian burn. Baptiste stood near the rope; he would only hand it to Maeva and Alice after they had given their forearms. They said, “It doesn’t even hurt.” When it was my turn I said, “It doesn’t even hurt.”

I waited a little with the rope against my body. They all watched me, down in the river.

“Are you a wet chicken?” Alice shouted.

“She’s a little girl!” Baptiste shouted.

I jumped. The only thing worse than being a whore was being a little girl.

◆

In the river we held our breaths underwater. The girls pretended to drown and the boys pretended to save them. Then the boys pulled Maeva and Alice’s bikini bottoms down and the girls shouted at them to give them back. Then Alice undid the string on Maeva’s bikini top and shouted, “Look! Maeva’s boobs!” and Maeva did the same to Alice, and Nicolas said they were as flat as bread boards. When I laughed, they seemed to remember the shape in the water was a girl. They looked at me and spoke quickly; they knew I wouldn’t understand if their mouths were too closed and their tongues too fast.

After a minute of fake-speaking and fake-laughing, Alice asked me, “What can you do?”

“What?”

“Me, I can do a handstand underwater. You, what can you do?”

I said I could plank; they shouted to show.

“If you last less than ten seconds,” Baptiste said, tearing out some grass from the bank, “you have to eat this.”

They counted down, striking the water with their arms to mark each second. I closed my eyes.

I was still planking at twelve seconds; Baptiste stuffed the grass into my mouth.

◆

We repeated the jumping cycle in the same order. Nicolas, then the girls, then Baptiste.

Maeva asked me to sing the Grease song again and the girls danced and called themselves synchronised swimmers. “Imagine there’s an audience!” they said, “Imagine the glitters!”

The boys gave them a seven out of ten, and Alice spat water on them.

We tired of jumping. We lay on a large rock and let our bodies dry in the sun. I imagined myself as a pepper. I imagined my skin peeling, and wanted to laugh.

“How did your mother meet her lovers?” Alice asked me.

I was in the middle. Maeva and Alice both turned their heads towards me.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“But yes, you know. You must have seen them,” Maeva said. “Or you heard a phone call.”

“Yes,” I said, “I heard a phone call.”

Her eyes opened wider; she smiled. The two boys sat up and looked at me. I turned to Alice and saw her waiting smile.

“She… she talked to a man,” I said. “From her work. And he was married. To a woman. And the woman was angry. And she hit my mother. She punched her and then she grabbed her arms. Because her husband had cheated on her. With my mother. And she… she said she was a whore.”

“What about the others?” Baptise said.

“Yes,” I said, “there were other men. For example a doctor. He asked my mother to undress and then he asked me to leave the room and to wait outside. He also said he needed to take pictures.”

“And you heard them make love?” Alice asked.

“Yes. I heard them make love. They made a lot of noise.”

“And you looked?” Nicolas asked.

“Yes. They were naked. And he was facing her back and he said she was a whore. And she screamed.”

“Like that?” Baptiste said, and then he moaned, and we all laughed, and the sun laughed, and the river laughed.

◆

We went to the river every day for two weeks. I bought them ice-creams or ice-lollies. I stole money from jars, from my mother’s purse, from my grandmother’s side table.

On the third day, Alice brought her father’s razor and shaved my legs. The boys said I was pretty.

We found a more violent section of the river and sat side by side, legs open against the current, and all held hands; the goal was to stay, to fight against the push of the water. I was always the first to be carried away.

On the seventh day, Maeva brought one of her sister’s old bikinis and told me to wear it. I went to find a tree and Alice said, “No. Here.”

In the water, Baptiste tried to pull down my bikini bottom, and I kicked him and made his nose bleed; he called me a salope. Maeva said, “If you don’t kick them they’ll give it back. They’re really sensitive inside.”

I apologised and kissed Baptiste on the cheek and told him I hadn’t realised it was him.

On the tenth day my mother asked me if I’d been stealing, and I said no, and she said, “If you need money, you ask. But we don’t steal things that aren’t ours.” I wanted to call her a hypocrite, but I wasn’t sure it was the same word in French.

On the fifteenth day, it rained, and I stayed home. My grandmother made me an apple pie and hot chocolate.

“Your favourite mug,” she said.

When she left the room, I scratched all the pink hearts on the mug with a knife.

◆

It rained for a week. I watched the rain and watched my mother. I wondered what parts of her were the parts of a whore. I wondered if you could tell by the shape of her lips. I wondered if her waist was the waist of a whore. I wondered if she had given me her disease.

Maeva had given me her phone number; I called her.

“How can you know if someone is really a whore?” I asked.

“You know if she has two dents on her lower back,” she said. “Like two little holes in her skin. It’s the mark of the devil’s horns.”

“What else?”

“You know if someone is a whore by the way she looks at men. And if she licks her lips often. And if she wears too much makeup and red nail polish the colour of blood. And if she wears transparent bras. Also in the way she walks, if she moves her hips too much.”

I went through my mother’s makeup bag. I tried to look at her lower back when she bent down. I watched her walk. I watched her watch the male actors on the television.

“That Brad Pitt, he’s really handsome, don’t you think?” she said.

“No,” I said. “He’s disgusting.”

I ran upstairs and looked through her underwear drawer. When I woke up, the next day, I took my pyjamas off and looked at my lower back in the mirror.

◆

The rain grew louder and thicker. It made the days slow and the TV loud and made it impossible to see outside the window. I phoned Maeva again.

“Do you think my father thinks I’m a whore too, because I’m her daughter?” I asked. “Do you think that’s why he doesn’t want to see me?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Ask her when he’s coming, and then you’ll know if it’s him who doesn’t want to see you or her who doesn’t want you to see him.”

We had fries and mussels for dinner, that evening, and my mother kept licking her lips. I said, “Stop doing that,” and took the napkin from her lap and put it to her mouth.

“What’s the matter?” she asked, half-laughing. “Is everything okay?”

“When is Dad coming here?” I asked.

My grandmother stood up and announced she was going to bed.

“He’s staying in London,” my mother said.

“But when am I going to see him?”

“We’ve talked about this, sweetheart,” she said in English.

I gave her a look, and she repeated her sentence in French. I became a flea.

“Is he going to live with us when we go back to England?” I asked.

“We’re spending the summer here, and then we’ll see, okay?”

She went to hold my hand on the table but I took it away.

“Why does Dad not want to live with us?” I asked.

She sighed, stood up, cleared the table. “It’s complicated,” she said. “Could you run me a bath? I’m so tired. Tell me when the temperature’s right, okay?”

When she walked away I stared at her back and whispered, it’s because you’re a whore it’s because you’re a whore it’s all your fault why did you have to be a whore.

I went upstairs and turned on the hot tap in the bathroom. Only the hot tap.

My mother climbed the stairs and I said, “It’s ready.”

I shut myself in my room, waited. I heard her yell, “Putain!” and I thought, “That’ll teach her.”