During the night of September 2nd to 3rd,1986, I had a first contraction that woke me up. Philippe Toussaint was sleeping against me. My daughter chose the right night to arrive: on the Saturday, there was a nine-hour break between the last train and the Sunday morning one. I woke up Philippe Toussaint. He had four hours ahead of him to take me to the maternity hospital and return to lower the barrier for the 7:10 train.
Léonine took too long for her father to be there when she let out her first cry. It was midday when I pushed her toward life.
Waves of love and terror engulfed me. A life that would count for much more than my own, and that I was responsible for. I struggled to breathe. I can say that Léo took my breath away. I started shaking from head to toe. Emotion and fear made my teeth chatter.
She looked like a little old woman. Within seconds, I felt that she was the elder and I the child.
Her skin against mine, her mouth seeking my breast. Her little head in the palm of my hand. Her fontanel, her dark hair, green slime on her skin, a heart-shaped mouth. The word “seismic” isn’t too strong.
When Léonine appeared, my youth shattered as violently as a porcelain vase on a tiled floor. It’s she who buried my carefree girl’s life. Within minutes, I went from laughter to tears, from fine weather to rain. Like a March sky, I was sunny spells and sudden showers all at once. My every sense was awakened, heightened, like those of a blind woman.
All my life, when coming across my reflection in the mirror, I wondered which of my two parents I looked like. When her big eyes stared at me, I thought she looked like the sky, the universe, a monster. I found her ugly and beautiful. Furious and gentle. Intensely close and unfamiliar. A marvel and venom within the same person. I spoke to her as if we were continuing a conversation begun a very long time ago.
I welcomed her. I caressed her. I devoured her with my eyes, I breathed her in, I spat her out. I inspected every centimeter of her skin, I licked her with my eyes.
When she was taken from me to be weighed, measured, washed, I clenched my fists. As soon as she had disappeared from my sight, I felt like a child, very small, helpless, useless. I called out to my mother. I didn’t have a fever, and yet I called out to her.
I saw my childhood again, speeded up. How could I make sure that my daughter never had to live what I had lived? Were they going to take her away from me? As soon as Léo arrived in my life, I was scared that we would be separated. I was scared that she would abandon me. And, paradoxically, I wanted her to disappear and come back later, when I’d be grown up.
Philippe Toussaint came to see us in the afternoon, between the 15:07 train and the 18:09 one. I’d disappointed him. He wanted a son. He said nothing. He looked at us. He smiled at us. He kissed me through my hair. I found him handsome, with our child in his arms. I asked him to protect us, always. He replied to me, “Obviously.”
And then there was the second seismic event. Léo was two days old. She had just breastfed. I had placed her on my bent thighs, her little head supported by my knees, her little feet against my stomach, her two fists gripping my index fingers. I was looking at her. I was looking for her face’s past, as if my parents were going to appear to me. I looked at her so much, the midwives told me I’d end up wearing her out. She stared at me while I spoke to her, I no longer remember what I was telling her. They say that babies don’t smile, that they smile at the angels. I don’t know which angel she saw through me, but she quite clearly stared at me and smiled.
As if to reassure me. As if to say to me, “Everything’s going to be fine.” Never have I experienced such a disturbing feeling of love.
The day before we were due to leave, Father and Mother Toussaint came to the maternity hospital in all their finery. She with precious stones on her fingers, he in absurdly expensive tasseled shoes. The father asked me if I would get “the child” baptized, the mother took her in her arms, even though Léonine was sound asleep in her see-through bed. She picked her up awkwardly, without asking me a thing, as if the little one belonged to her. The wicked stepmother made Léo’s fontanel disappear into the fabric of her blouse. Hatred engulfed me. I bit the inside of my mouth hard so as not to cry with rage.
It’s on that day that I understood that anything could be done and said to me, that my skin and my soul as Violette had become impervious, at my daughter’s birth, to any form of annihilation. On the other hand, everything that would touch my daughter would permeate me. I would absorb everything that would concern her, a porous mother.
While cradling my child, Mother Toussaint spoke to her, calling her Catherine. I corrected her, “She’s called Léonine.” Mother Toussaint replied, “Catherine is much prettier.” At that, Father Toussaint spoke to his wife, “Chantal, you’re going too far.” And that’s how I learnt that Mother Toussaint had a first name . . .
Léo started to cry, probably due to the smell of the old woman, her voice, her tense fingers, her rough skin. I asked Mother Toussaint to give her back to me. Which she didn’t do. She placed the screaming Léo in her bed, not in my arms.
And then we went home to the “train house,” as she later named it. I
