When you are engulfed in flames - By David Sedaris Page 0,61

was built by a man I’ll call Jackie, who used to live there with his wife and his wife’s adult daughter, Clothilde, who was retarded. On summer evenings after their dinner, the wife would dress her daughter in pajamas and a bathrobe and walk her either through the village or in the opposite direction, where the road steepens and winds in a series of blind curves. Depending upon the weather, Clothilde wore plaid bedroom slippers or a pair of rubber boots that came to above her knees and changed her walk to a kind of goose step. I’d heard from neighbors that she attended a special school, but I think it was more of a sheltered workshop, the type at which the students perform simple tasks — putting bolts into bags, say. Though I never heard her speak, she did make noises. It’s a contradiction in terms, but, if forced to describe what came out of her mouth, I’d call it an “upbeat moan,” not unpleasant but joyful. I can’t say that Clothilde was a friend, but it made me happy to know that she was around. The same was true of her mother and her stepfather: the whole family.

Jackie had some sort of problem with his leg and usually walked no farther than he had to. He drove a truck so small and quiet it seemed like a toy, and every so often, as I was walking into town, he’d pull over and offer me a ride. On one of these trips, he attempted to explain that he had a metal plate in his head. My French comprehension wasn’t very good at the time, and his pointing back and forth between his temple and the door of the glove compartment only confused me. “You invented glove compartments? Your glove compartment has ideas of its own? I’m sorry . . . I don’t . . . I don’t understand.”

I later learned that when he was a boy Jackie had found an unexploded grenade in one of the nearby fields. He pulled the pin and threw it, but not quite far enough; thus the metal plate and his messed-up leg. His hearing had been affected as well, and his eyes were deeply shadowed and encircled by spidery scars. Crew cut, dented brow, lower jaw jutting just slightly forward: had he been tall, his appearance might have startled you, but, as it was, he was pint-sized, five feet two, maybe five-four, tops. When the villagers spoke of Jackie, they used the words “slow” and “gentle,” and so it seemed outrageous when the police stormed the ugly cinder-block hut and took him off to jail. Someone or other spoke to the local councilor, and within an hour everyone knew that Jackie was suspected of sexually molesting his wife’s grandchildren, who were aged six and eight and occasionally visited from their home, an hour or so away. It was speculated that he also molested Clothilde, but I couldn’t bring myself to believe it. Hugh says I just don’t want to believe it, and I tell him he’s right — I don’t. She and her mother left our village shortly after Jackie was taken away, and I never saw either of them again.

With no one to maintain it, the house that was ugly became even uglier. Our neighbors across the road would often comment on what an eyesore it was, and, while agreeing, I’d lament the sorry state of my French. Oh, my comprehension had improved — I could understand just about everything that was said to me — but when it came to speaking I tended (and still do) to freeze up. It wouldn’t hurt me to be more social, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon. The phone rings and I avoid it. Neighbors knock and I duck into the bedroom or crouch behind the daybed until they’ve left. How different things might be, I think, if, like Jackie, I had no more hiding places. Though harsh in other respects, prison would be an excellent place to learn a foreign language — total immersion, and you’d have the new slang before it even hit the streets. Unlike the French school that I actually attended, this one, when it came to verbs, would likely start with the imperative: “Bend over.” “Take it.” That kind of thing. Still, though, you’d have your little conversations. In the cafeteria, in the recreation room or crafts center, if they have them in a French prison, and I