We lived less than a ten minute walk from the barber shop, and on the way home I found myself deliberately slowing down in order to figure out a way of telling Mum about this without creating a full blown crisis. I eventually reached our home, none the wiser as to how I was going to break this to Mum.
I ran up the stairs, let myself in and walked into the kitchen to find Mum slumped on the table with two empty wine bottles and a half empty cognac bottle next to her. There was no sign of my brother.

“This was the last thing anybody needed” I told Fons and the others.
“I tried to get Mum to move but couldn’t. She had passed out once again, as had been happening a lot lately. Pierre had reached a new low in his selfishness, not only had he left Mum on her own in the kitchen, he was simply not in the flat.”

Once again I found myself having to deal with the whole mess on my own. Mum was hell bend on drinking herself to death and Pierre couldn’t care about anybody but himself, so why would I? Moni was the one who made it impossible for me to leave. I simply could not leave her deal with all of this on her own, she was not strong enough for any of this, and had her own devils to deal with.

I went into Mum’s bedroom, stripped back the bed covers and made sure there was nothing she could hurt herself with within reach. I then went back to the kitchen and lifted her off her chair to carry her to her bedroom. Suddenly life got an awful lot more difficult. As soon as I picked her up I knew she had soiled herself in her drunken stupor. There I was, standing in the kitchen, carrying my unconscious mother, not knowing what to do, when somebody knocked on the front door. I put Mum back on the chair, made sure she couldn’t slip off, and went to see who was calling up. Much to my surprise, it was Yvette’s mother who had decided to come and check on things as Yvette had told her she hadn’t seen Moni for such a long time and was getting worried. She must have seen right through me, for she took one look at me, walked in, closed the door and said:

“You better tell me what’s going on here Jean. You look very, very worried. Shall we go to the kitchen and you can tell me over a cup of coffee maybe?”

Before I could stop her, she opened the kitchen door and saw Mum.

“Oh my God! Jean, what is going on here?”

I told her what the problem was with Mum and why I hadn’t managed to get her to bed to sleep it off and she looked at me in absolute horror.

“I can’t say I blame her” she said, “after all she has been put through. I’ll take care of this Jean, don’t worry. Can you get her to the bathroom?”

Between us, we managed to get Mum cleaned up and in bed. I didn’t want to leave Mum alone, so we sat down in the kitchen and I told her everything. I just couldn’t hold back my tears any longer and cried my heart out while talking to this woman who was really a total stranger to me. In the middle of all this, Pierre came back carrying a bag with more wine.

“Oh,” he said when he saw me and Yvette’s mother in the kitchen, “did she finally pass out then? About time, these will hold for the next time.”

Before I managed to get up Yvette’s mother had jumped up, turned around and slapped him so hard he dropped the bottles. The look of total shock and surprise on his face was wiped off with another slap, and before he knew what was happening he was wrestled on to a chair by the woman. She was white with rage and it was obvious she was finding it very hard to control herself. Pierre got another slap across the head before she sat down again.

She looked at me and said

“Jean, I’ll stay here, sort this idiot out and look after your Mum. You need to go to Moni, she needs you now more than any other time. On your way back, will you just drop in to Yvette and tell her I’m here with your Mum. You can also tell her I’ve changed my mind, she can go off tonight with her friends, but she must be back at midnight the latest.”

I hurried back to Sarah and Isaac, with a little stopover at Yvette’s place. When she saw me she wanted to know all about Moni. I told her I didn’t have the time to tell her the full story now, but we would, as her mother suggested, call around very soon. The bribe of being allowed out that evening didn’t work, and I had no choice but to take Yvette with me back to Moni.

“Oh Jean, you must have heard us!” The gendarme smiled when she saw Yvette walk in with me. “We were just talking about Yvette, and here she is.” Moni fell into Yvette’s open arms and they comforted each other while tears freely rolled down their faces.
Isaac got up and went into the kitchen, followed by the gendarme who beckoned me the follow them.

“Jean, things are obviously not good with Moni. We are going to have to work something out for her before she goes off the rails completely“, said the gendarme. “And call me Natalie, please. I’m here as a friend, not as a gendarme. Don’t ever call me by my name in the station or when I’m in uniform, but any other time it’s Natalie, ok?” I nodded in agreement and proceeded to tell her what was going on at home. She looked at me, put her hand on my shoulder and said, “You’re an exceptional young man Jean. Nobody else your age that I know off would be able to handle this the way you do. Let’s find a way of taking some of this load of your shoulders, ok?”

We went back into the living room, where Moni was telling her story to Yvette.
“Yvette proved to be the rock Moni needed. Without her I doubt it if Moni would have gotten through this hell”.

We decided to go back to our flat and see if we talk this over between all of us, including Mum, Yvette’s mother and Pierre. Back at the flat, Pierre was still sitting in the exact same position he had been when I left. Yvette’s mum introduced herself as Sophie, and told me it was quite ok for me to call her by her name.
“We’re a little too involved with all of this to keep up the Madame Florent bit, aren’t we?”

Natalie told us that she knew there would be no action taken against Moni, her boss had confirmed that after talking to the prosecutor. That was conditional on Moni going on this detox program, which she readily agreed to.
“But she needs more than that, ” Natalie said, “Moni needs a lot of help in comming to terms with everything that is happening in her young life. I think she also needs to be taken out of the immediate environment of her family. That is not a reflection on you Jean, far from it. I think that your presence and attitude is what has been preventing her from going off the rails completely. she needs you now, more than ever.”

It was agreed that Moni would go and stay with Sophie and Yvette for the time being. Sophie was a widow and had a pension she could live on, so she didn’t have to work and could keep an eye on the girls. Natalie had already organized the detox program for Moni and would sort some backup for Sophie and Yvette in case it was needed.

“She was absolutely fantastic. She had lots of contacts in the social services, and new a good few broadminded people in the university whom she said she could rely on to help. She actually left the gendarmerie about a year ago, and went back to university to study psychology.”

The whole arrangement did of course hinge on Mum’s agreement. Sophie thought it best that Moni went with them straight away, she really didn’t want Moni to see her Mum in the state she was in. Natalie agreed and promised to visit Moni every day to see how she was doing. She kept that promise for the full two years it took Moni to get back on her feet.

Sophie, Yvette and Moni left a few minutes later, and Natalie turned to Pierre. She asked him how Mum managed to get into the state she was in when he was supposed to be looking after her. He flatly told her that all Mum wanted to do was get drunk, and if that kept her off his back then that was fine by him, he wouldn’t stop her.
“So you just sat and watched her drink herself into a stupor? Where was the alcohol hidden? Jean tells me there was none in the house.”

“There wasn’t. I went a got it and gave it to her. It always works. She gets stupid drunk, falls asleep and I can go and do what I have to do. I not her babysitter, her bottle is!”

…Continued

Moni told us that she was really badly hurt after Mum slapped her and she left, fully intending to kill herself at the same spot Elfje had died. When she arrived there she sat on the bench for a while, and that’s were Yvette’s mother, who was out walking their dog, found her. She convinced Moni to go home with her and talk and think things over there, with them. Moni did, and obviously changed her mind. Two days later Moni told them that she would go home and try and talk with Mum.

Before going home, she went back to the river and sat on the bench she and Yvette had been sitting on when Elfje drowned. While she was sitting there, staring into nothing, a young man, in his mid-twenties, joined her on the bench. He started talking to her and soon put one and one together. Moni said he was so easy to talk to, and before she knew it she was telling him how she just had had enough of it all and wanted to leave. But being only 14, that was not the easiest thing to do, and she had no money either. The young man told Moni he could help her with that, if she wanted to. He explained to her how lucky she was because he was very busy but somebody else who was working for him had dropped out and he had to do that person’s work as well, which is why he had passed by when he did.

“Moni told us he needed somebody to run an errant for him 3 or 4 times a week, and that if she wanted the job she could earn 5 Francs every time, which was a lot of money, especially for a 14 year old. Last time I spoke to Mum she was earning just over 2 Francs an hour!”
The man told her she could start immediately if she wanted to, and Moni didn’t need telling twice.

“He took a small package, about the size of a cigarette pack, from his pocket and gave it to Moni, with precise instructions where and who to deliver it to. Moni was told not to ever ask about the contents, not to give it to anybody else than the person she was told to give it to, and not to talk to anybody about her job.”
He said he would have another package for her in two days, and they arranged to meet somewhere in the first arrondissement so that he could give it to her. She would then also get paid for her previous delivery.

“This went on for a few weeks, and the guy started taking Moni to the house by the cathedral where I had followed her to. She would not always get a package to deliver. Sometimes he would make some mint tea and they would, at first, just sit and talk. She did realize that the tea made her feel a little strange, but it felt nice so she didn’t really mind. He sometimes had a little present for her, and encouraged her to bring a few changes of clothes to the house and leave them there for when she needed them. He would give her hugs and little kisses, and before she knew it she had more or less moved in with him and regularly found herself in his bed. She considered herself to be his girlfriend.”

She said she did it because he was the only one who cared and paid any attention to her. He made her feel wanted. He also gave her what she called “funny cigarettes” which made her feel really nice.

And then, on the day I followed her, things changed drastically. When she went with him to collect the package, he told her that he had found a way for her to make a lot more money than she was making. He told her were to drop the package, and then gave her another address to go to.
“All she had to do was be “nice” to the man at the address, in the same way she was nice to him in bed, and he would pay her another 5 Francs for the service. It would only take about 30 minutes, and then she was to come back to the house. He told her he had more “work” arranged for her that afternoon.”

The gendarmes had heard enough and a few patrols were dispatched to arrest the man. It was only afterwards that we found out that they had been aware of this gang, but couldn’t do anything because they had no proof. The gang consisted of ex-military who had fought against the Neo Destour in Tunisia and felt betrayed by the French government when Tunisia was granted independence. They had a particular dislike for “Le Général” and had plans to build some sort of an army to fight the government restore France’s colonial power. They raised money in a variety of ways, including drugs, prostitution and protection rackets. The packages Moni had been delivering for them contained opium, a very profitable trade set up with the assistance of like-minded military who had served in French Indochina. Moni’s “employer” was one of those.

Katrien, sitting next to Vic, had been sobbing quietly throughout the story, and finally managed to ask the one question none of them dared ask.

“Where is Moni now?”

I told them that the female gendarme had been absolutely fantastic with Moni. She organized medical assistance for my sister, and got her into a detox program officially reserved for military who had returned as addicts from Cambodia, Siam and Vietnam. She effectively took over from Mum, who simply couldn’t handle any of this.

“Did your mother become ill again?”

“I don’t know Fons. She withdrew from life all over again, started drinking heavily and once again lost her job. She just argued with everybody about everything all the time. She also got very aggressive, especially with Moni.
One evening we were in the flat, it was one of the rare days that Mum hadn’t had a drink. She sometimes did this. Somehow, she found the courage to face what she was doing and decided to change her ways. She would invariably lapse within two or three days, but we always lived in hope that this time it would be different.

“I think Moni had been waiting for this moment. For no particular reason, Moni suddenly got up from her chair, walked over to Mum and put her face right close up to Mum’s. That’s when she spoke to Mum for the first time in months.
She hissed “I hate you!” and left the flat. Moni’s body language, the way she spat the three words at Mum made it very clear she meant what she had said.
The expression of complete shock on Mum’s face is something I’ll never forget, and I really didn’t know whether to stay with Mum and try and help her through the inevitable crisis, or go after Moni. I decided to go after Moni and told my brother not to leave Mum alone, under any circumstances.
“Look after her, she’ll need you!” I said, hoping that somehow he would manage to look up and realize his family was more important than he was.

I caught up with Moni before she could disappear into the maze of little streets around where we lived. We walked silently to the river where she finally gave in to her emotions. She shrieked Elfjes name at the top of her voice, and started sobbing uncontrollably.

I knew I was the only beacon of safety in what Moni increasingly perceived as a hostile, unsafe world and stood motionless, holding her tight, in an effort to give her some of that elusive safety she so craved for.

The soft, gentle touch of a hand on my shoulder startled me and I looked up into the face of a woman who asked us if we would like to come in a sit down in the privacy of her house. She turned out to be the wife of the barber who had witnessed Elfje’s drowning. He had recognized us and had asked his wife to come and help us while he finished with his customer and then closed up for the day. We went through the barbershop into the small living room behind the shop where the woman introduced herself as Sarah and asked us to sit down. She sat next to Moni, took my sister’s hand in hers and just sat with her while Moni cried endless tears.

The barber came in and introduced himself as Isaac. He beckoned me into the kitchen and while making coffee he asked if there was somebody we could get to help Moni.

“Your sister is in a very dark, dangerous place Jean, she needs help. Is there anybody you can think off who can help her? What about her mother, other family, friends?”

I told him I didn’t think Mum would be a good idea because of what had happened earlier, and mentioned the gendarme as Moni’s best chance. She got on with her, and they liked each other.

“Ok Jean, what’s that woman’s name?  I’ll go to the station and find her, you MUST go and at least tell your mother. No matter what happened, she must be told what is happening with her daughter. Sarah will look after your sister, don’t worry. Let’s get moving.”

He took the coffee in to his wife and Moni, and told Sarah that we were going to get help for Moni. I told Moni she was safe and asked her to wait with Sarah, I wouldn’t be long.

…to be continued.