POLYNÉSIE FRANÇAISE, SESSION DE JUIN 1995 LANGUE VIVANTE 2 - SÉRIE L

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But one night after dinner our doorbell rang. This was curious, because usually people rang the buzzer' downstairs first.

"Lena, could you see who it is?" called my father from the kit-chen. He was doing the dishes. My mother was lying in bed. My 5 mother was now always "resting" and it was as if she had died and become a living ghost.

I opened the door cautiously, then swung it wide open with sur­prise. It was the girl from next door. I stared at her with undisgui-sed amazement. She was smiling back at me, and she looked ruf-10 fled², as is she had fallen out of bed with her clothes on.

"Who is it?" called my father.

"It's next door!" I shouted to my father. "It's..."

"Teresa," she offered quickly.

"It's Teresa!" I yelled back to my father.

15      "Invite her in," my father said at almost the same moment that Teresa squeezed past me and into our apartment. Without being in-vited, she started walldng toward my bedroom. I closed the front door and followed her two brown braie that were bouncing like whips⁴ beating the back of a horse.

²⁰ She walked right over to my window and began to open it. "What are you doing?" I cried. She sat on the window ledge, looked out on the street. And then she looked at me and started to giggle. I sat down on my bed watching her, waiting for her to stop, feeling the cold air blow in from the dark opening.

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²⁵     "What' s so funny?" I finally said. It occurred to me that perhaps she was laughing at me, at my life. Maybe she had listened through the wall and heard nothing, the stagnant silence of our unhappy house.

"Why are you laughing?" I demanded.

"My mother kicked me out," she fmally said. She talked with a

30 swaggee, seeming to be proud of this fact. And then she snickered⁶ a finie and said, "We had this fight and she pushed me out the door and locked it. So now she thinks I'm going to wait outside the door until I'm sorry enough to apologize. But I'm not going to."

"Then what are you going to do?" I asked breathlessly, certain 35 that her mother would kill her for good this time.

"I'm going to use your fire escape to climb back into my be-droom," she whispered back. "And she's going to wait. And when she gets worried, she'll open the front door. Only I won't be there!

be in my bedroom, in bed. "She giggled again.

40     "Won't she be mad when she fends you?"

"Nah, she'll just be glad I'm not dead or something. Oh, she'll pretend to be mad, sort of. We do this kind of staff all the time." And then she slipped through my window and soundlessly made her way back home.

45     I stared at the open window for a long time, wondering about her. How could she go back? Didn't she see how terrible her life was? Didn't she recognize it would never stop?

I lay down on my bed waiting to hear the screams and shouts. And lote at night I was still awake when I heard the loud voices next

50 door. Mrs Sorci was shouting and crying. You stupida girl. You al-most gave me a heart attack. And Teresa was yelling back, I coulda been killed. I almost fell and broke my neck. And then I heard them laughing and crying, crying and laughing, shouting with love.

I was stunnee I could almost see them hugging and kissing one 55 another. I was crying for joy with them, because I had been wrong.

Amy TAN, The Joy Luck Club (1989)

1.            Buzzer: bell.

2.            Ruffled: untidy.

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