Do What They Say or Else

by Annie Ernaux

At some point I paused and looked around me. My bedroom seemed far away, and I couldn’t understand how words could have such a strong effect on me.

I was still sad to see the bizarre thoughts I’d been having drift away.

The house was mine. My father and mother were gone. It was a dream come true!

You’re always a tenant in your parents’ house.

I was getting more and more melancholic, but I still loved it. It was fun to lift your head up toward the sky when you were all pressed up against each other. I thought about God, not the God of the mass and the Virgin wearing a washed-out blue dress, but the one who was dripping with sadness, the one who maybe never existed. The one who left us alone. It felt like I didn’t have parents either. Suddenly, I felt old. These kinds of thoughts make you feel older, because you’ve never had them before. It seemed to me that I could understand why people write books, better than I had when we read them in school. They write them because there are fairs full of noise, and because they suddenly come apart. We had to go home. It’s terrible to have to leave the crowd behind, with the music still playing, especially when you have to go back across narrow streets that are blocked by trailers.

Why do you always have to go home?

I’m done with my childhood now, and as a result I’m done with other people’s childhoods.

Logic is worthless compared with the self-assurance of boys.