The Exchange: Day 2

As one would expect, it’s a little awkward when the boys meet. Two teenage boys, in a situation not of their making—one round-faced and ready for anything though it’s clear he doesn’t know what, and the other a tall, lanky, likeable boy who lives here, come home to find a stranger in his sister’s bedroom. A short, smiling stranger. Camille comes down the stairs when Bill and Will return from their mission trip. Likely still suffering from jet lag and understanding about every third word, he looks a little out of it. He has been asleep, after we came home from morning church and he had put away four tacos at Chipotle with Sophie and me. Will has been gone four days and changes the way people do when they have been away a little while—coming into the kitchen, he is taller than I remember. He looks different. As if while away he received an update or they replaced him with the newer model. He is also really tan and really dirty from working in the fields, with his hair so out of control they may need to rake it first to cut it. Broken front tooth, burn scars from a flaming marshmallow that plastered his face a week or so back, sunburned, scraped and bruised from head to toe, this is my boy. My summertime boy.

Stiffly, they shake hands. Will does not know the French greeting custom and Camille is instantly shy. I make the formal introduction, en francais. Will looks at me funny. We talk about his trip. We offer something to drink. We sit at the kitchen table, a really unnatural posture for us since there is no food on it. It is too early for dinner. I, of course, want to hear all the adventures of picking kale in the seething heat, and of the things Bill has texted me while they were away. Will wants to adjust to this boy watching him and listening to his fast-paced monotone account. Looking at Will I realize he really does speak in monotone and hardly moves his lips. Is he practicing ventriloquism? Could it be those burn scars? In any case, it must be torture for a French kid with two years’ of English under his belt. Words coming out of one boy but not making it into other boy. Lots of blank stares and agreeable smiles. Probably Camille knows how to order at the restaurant and what to call all the rooms of a house and that’s it. If he’s a good student maybe the names of animals. Useful stuff, but not in this setting. Hello, my name is Camille. I’ll have the steak frites?

Seated at the kitchen table while Bill narrates the record-setting mission trip, I am listening, but I am also hyper-aware of the assimilation happening—or not—between these two teens. The whole summer hangs on this moment. Le reunion. I pause Bill midsentence and ask, no suggest, would the boys like to go outside together? Find a game or something to do? peut-être? I don’t know who shoots from his seat first but they are off and running. The backyard, international waters. I go back to listening to Bill but it isn’t ten minutes before we hear the roar of the go-kart being yanked into life and then sure enough, the little body-less heads screaming by outside the window as the go-kart makes its rounds. Round and round the house they will go, tearing up dirt and moss in their wake—and grass, naturelment. It is a journey across time zones and language barriers, traveled on a teeth-rattling Briggs Stratton 6.5 HP 212 cc gas powered engine through our backwoods. Camille is a good 6” shorter, with beautiful tan skin of a Riviera native, who speaks a completely different language that ¾ of my household cannot understand. He wears different clothes and different shoes (or he will when finally his bag is delivered); he sounds different and smells different, everything about him is l’etranger—”Mom!” Gasps Will, busting in through the backdoor as I stand at the kitchen sink, his face filthy and smiling, “He’s just like me!”

It was only a matter of time before they start in on the fire. Ah, oui! You speak pyromania??! Sure enough, look out ten minutes later and they’ve got a nice little blaze going in the chimenea. Eighty-five degrees in the shade, hot summer evening, but of course, it’s just what we needed: a fire. From the kitchen window I can see them poking around the back patio, sitting and just talking—or something like talking, as neither speaks the other’s language. They sure look as though they are talking, but what can they possibly be saying?! I know what their half-formed brains are saying: “Does it burn?” It dawns on me that so much of what William and Camille will communicate will not require words at all. In fact, words would slow them down.

That first night, just he and me and the leftover pasta, our conversation resembles caveman talk. I was trying to communicate the concern of a mother for this little lost boy:

Teeth brush? “Yes.”

Shower? “If you like.”

Clean clothes? (Blank look) “What is this?”

When I go out to set the patio table for supper there is Camille, BB-gun slung over one shoulder with the makeshift strap William fashioned from an inner tube, slinging the muzzle and aiming it haphazardly to shoot at squirrels—or trees or plastic cups or anything he’s already seen William shoot at. Hopefully not the shed windows, though. That was last summer. When he sees me he winks and swaggers John Wayne style, while a hundred sentences pass between us—of humor, of surprise, of delight, and even though I’m sure this—a firearm—didn’t make the list of approved activities, of warmth and approval for the boyhood he has brought here. A hundred sentences in that moment and I did not have to speak a one. Who doesn’t want to discover a BB-gun flung in the grass, and who doesn’t know exactement what to do with one when he finds it? By nightfall the backyard is littered with the detritus of their doing: a pupped pup tent, a hastily made target nailed to a tree and beneath that some police tape(!), the flung skins of marshmallows, a jiffy pop, also pupped and heavily burned, two bikes splayed in the grass, a helmet, several cups, articles of clothing, and an unwound hose. Two boys. Looks like a neighborhood block party for 50 has just broke up. How do you say “Please pick up my back yard” en francais? How do you say, My word, that is a lot of boy. How do you say ahhh, Hello summer. Hello, boyhood. Bring it on.

After dinner and before the fourth or fifth tour de go-kart, I go to find them upstairs, seated side by side on Ellie’s bed using it like a sofa, watching on Sophie’s laptop some animated feature film en francais with the English subtitles turned on for Will’s benefit! Sun has not gone down on this first day and Camille is already sidling up to Will to compare scores on the video game both have managed to download on their cell phones. Cultural standards, step aside: they are now gleefully competing on “Ball Blast.” Maybe the very first sentence he plugs into Google translate is not “Where are the bathrooms?” or “Thank you very much for having me to stay” but rather “What level are you on?” And, as if the similarities know no end, from shaggy hair to impish smiles to soccer cleats now trashing the foot of Ellie’s bed with mud and grass, Camille arrives with an old iphone (a hand-me-down from his mother, he explains to me at some point) that has, in I don’t know what order, been dropped, cracked, burned—and yet functions just fine whenever the boy is lucky enough to be near “le wee-fee.” I laughed out loud when the dad explained the electronics arrangement for their son. Should I ask Will to turn out his pockets to produce his “device,” it would be indistinguishable from this boys’ war relic.

Like Will, Camille is fluent in Gadget. Because his suitcase was delayed by Delta (as in delayed—no, returned! No, lost! Ok—delayed!) we went shopping on their ticket after church on Sunday. Very first hours with my little exchange student and I’ve got him in the American shops—on a Sunday! Sophie is pleasantly surprised, finds this a grand way to acclimate a foreign exchange student, and is thus along for the ride. At Old Navy we don’t find much for Camille but we do find two souvenirs for his little brother, Jacques. Jacques is five. Camille picks out a ball cap with USA emblazoned across the front and a similarly patriotic T-shirt with a silkscreened bear and red stripes. I help him find the correct size for the boy I have seen in the picture. Having explained the situation best I could, that his suitcase is no-where to be found but that the airline company will refund any “reasonable purchases” made for clothing or necessary items, I can tell we’re on the same page when Camille looks at me inquisitively, holds up the little hat, and asks, “Delta?”

Then we are in Marshall’s waiting in the line to pay for two T-shirts on Delta when he suddenly unloads his purchases into my (okay!) waiting arms and makes a bee-line for the “boy toy” area right near check out—the socks, belts, and wallets that quickly give way to cell phone covers, chargers, speakers, gadgets of every color and size. Here in America, land of the free and the discounted merch, he is instantly at home. Universal charger, universal language. I find myself charging up a speaker (he will pay me back, just as soon as we can peel him out of the electronics aisle) that make Sophie and Will universally jealous.

Here are the last moments of the first night chez nous: The small go-kart needed a new tire; the large go-kart is out of gas in the backyard, so there is a momentary lull in the activity. I am seated with Bill again for installment three or four of the mission trip story which has been interrupted several times throughout the evening—this, our first true night with a French boy as part of our family. Out the window I can see Camille and Will both standing—no, jumping up and down on the bars and big tires of our larger go-kart. They are rocking it. They are dancing! Camille has brought his speaker outside so that the whole neighborhood can enjoy la musique. How nice. Headful of silky brown hair thrown back, eyes closed, Camille is rocking to the music and rocking (literally) the go-kart, and Will is hanging onto the roll bars and jumping up and down, pausing to watch this crazy French kid. It is not as loud as the sound barrier, but I hear it when it breaks. The language barrier. It is the sound of American pop music, belting out from a brand-new speaker in the backyard and two boys who’ve known each other six hours yelling and singing as they are dancing—on the top of a non-working go-kart. It is the sound of laughter, loud as thunder; it is the sound of friendship, high as the trees; it is the sound of forever on this breezeless night and I will, indeed, remember it forever.

Later, going to say goodnight to the two of them still at it in the garage—they are trying to remove by force the old tire from the go-kart axle. It’s almost 11 o’clock at night. Boy must be shattered. Selective jet lag, peut-etre? Camille looks up, smiling ear to ear, helping wrench the tire off, grease clear to his elbow. It is so hot and they are so dirty I’m not sure one shower will do it. “Bonne nuit,” he says brightly, braces sparkling, and I answer back the appropriate English for saying good night to a boy of any nationality: “Good night. Sleep well. AND PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH ANY WALLS ON YOUR WAY TO THE SHOWER!”