The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles Read Online Free Page A

won’t be my dad anymore?”
    “Of course he will. He just won’t be living here with us.”
    Joséphine was terrified. She wished she could turn back the clock to her first days of motherhood, the first vacations the four of them took together, the first fight, the first making-up, the first awkward silence that became more and more silence. When did the charming man she’d married become Tonio Cortès, her tired, irritable, unemployed husband?
    Zoé started to cry. Joséphine hugged her, burying her face in Zoé’s soft curls. Above all, she knew she couldn’t cry. She had to show them that she wasn’t afraid. She told them all the things the psychology books suggest parents say to kids in the event of a separation. Daddy loves Mommy. Mommy loves Daddy. Daddy and Mommy love Hortense and Zoé, but they can’t live together anymore, so Daddy and Mommy are separating. But Daddy will always love Hortense and Zoé, always be there for them, always. Joséphine felt she was talking about people she’d never met.
    “I have a hunch he didn’t go very far,” Hortense declared in a tight voice.
    “He’ll come back, right, Mommy?” Zoé asked.
    “Don’t say such stupid things, Zoé. Daddy left, and he’s not coming back. What I don’t understand is, why her? Why that
bimbo
?” She’d spat the word out with disgust, and Joséphine realized that Hortense knew about Mylène—had probably known long before she had.
    “Problem is, now we’re going to be really poor. I hope he’ll give us a little money. He has to, doesn’t he?”
    “Listen, Hortense . . .” Joséphine stopped, realizing that Zoé shouldn’t hear the rest.
    “Go blow your nose and wash your face, sweetie,” she said, gently pushing her younger daughter out of the kitchen.
    Zoé sniffled as she trudged off.
    When she was out of earshot, Jo turned to Hortense. “How come you know about . . . that woman?”
    “Get with it, Mom. The whole neighborhood knows. I was embarrassed for you. I wondered how you could possibly not know.”
    “Actually, I did know about it. I just turned a blind eye.”
    That wasn’t true. Joséphine had only learned about Mylène the night before. Shirley, her neighbor and friend across the hall, told her.
    “How did you find out?” Jo asked Hortense.
    Her daughter stared at her coldly.
    “Open your eyes, Mom! Look at how you dress. What your hair looks like! You’ve let yourself go. It’s no surprise he went looking elsewhere! You need to leave the Middle Ages and come live in this century.”
    Hortense was using the same amused disdain as Antoine. Joséphine closed her eyes, covered her ears with her hands, and started to yell.
    “Hortense! I forbid you to speak to me with that tone! We’ve been scraping by because of me, and because of the Middle Ages!Whether you like it or not. Don’t you ever look at me like that! I’m, I’m your mother, and I . . . you have to . . . respect me!”
    She was babbling, she felt ridiculous. And now a new fear gripped her: she would never be able to bring up her two daughters. She didn’t have any authority, she was in way over her head.
    Joséphine opened her eyes, and found Hortense looking at her oddly. She felt ashamed at having lost her temper.
I can’t get everything mixed up
, she thought.
They have only me to look to now, and I have to set an example.

Chapter 2

    T he girls walked back to school after lunch, and Joséphine went over to Shirley’s. She already couldn’t bear to be alone.
    Shirley’s son Gary opened the door. He was a year older than Hortense and in the same class, but she refused to walk home with him, claiming he was utterly uncool.
    “Why aren’t you in school? Hortense already left.”
    “We don’t have the same schedule. On Mondays I get back at two thirty.” He paused. “Want to see what I invented? Check this out.”
    He showed her two Tampax, and somehow was able to make them swing in circles with one hand without their