I happen to turn my head to look up towards the hospital and
see my grand-papa is making his way towards the house and he looks angry. He
seems to be stomping his way down the street, his body swinging from side to
side, a reminder of his knee replacement surgery and I hear him muttering “la
grosse vache” (the fat cow in English). Eeeeeeek! I wonder what happened to
make him angry. As I approach him, he
smiles and asks if “She” is home. I see - he is here to see Big M. He tells me
to pack my bags because Roxanne and I are leaving with him.
Just as I enter The House, Jack happens to be walking out
and intercepts his father, Antoine. I side step Big M who looks angry, as
usual; but manage to escape any ire. I tell Roxanne to “pack a bag, we are going
to grand-maman and grand-papa’s place for a few days.” The relief in the room
is palpable. The day before, Big M had been ‘cleaning’ our bedroom (a.k.a.
going through all our dresser drawers) and had found Roxanne’s stash of dirty
tissues in her top dresser drawer. Roxanne was on the phone with our grand-maman,
Alice when Big M went into a rage over the tissues being in the drawer and not in the
garbage.
Just the month prior, Big M saw the tissues in the garbage
and Roxanne and I were yelled at because we cried too much or all the time. We
did not know where to put our tissues so they would not be found and we thought
we could hide them in the dresser. My grand-maman was deeply concerned for her
grandchildren and sent our grand-papa over. Jack did not let Antoine in the house
and therefore no confrontation ensued. Once my sister and I left our bedroom,
bags packed, Big M lost her mind, of course. She demanded to know where we were
going, and because it was the dead of winter in The North and The House was
cold AF, I had managed to catch a cold. As I gasped for air to respond to
her assault of questions, I started to cough like a baby seal calling for its
mother. I do not know what else she was pissed about because I slid into my
vault to tune her out once my coughing fit was over. My vault had progressed
from me being alone with myself to me picking berries in a field across from my
grandparents’ cottage – a new memory from the previous summer.
Every year I would get this horrible cough that sounded like
a baby seal. One of the House Rules was that I was
allowed to have a cold but I was not allowed to have “THAT” cough. In January,
the temperatures up North are normally -45
Celsius and our house was not well insulated; it was built around 1896 with
newspaper in the walls and that means it was very drafty. Every winter I managed
to get laryngitis; I now know I am allergic to chlorine bleach and in winter,
the windows were closed so when Big M decided to do laundry or clean, the
scent of bleach permeated the air for months. I often lost my voice for weeks
at a time. Once my voice recovered, I would inevitably get a chest cold
followed by a horrible and painful cough (I imagine much like the whooping
cough I had five years running as a kid). I learned to sleep with at least eight
pillows on my bed and several stuffed animals when I was older – all those
layers masked the sound when I needed to cough because I coughed bent in half
and directly into several pillows.
I remember dad showing up and coming in without grand-papa and telling Big M that we were
going to visit our grandparents for a few days and would be staying over. A few
days turned to three weeks and I was in heaven! I could walk to school every day,
a luxury since dad never let us walk anywhere on our own; I also came home for hot
and fresh homemade soup, saltines with butter, and a small container of strawberry
or orange Jell-O for dessert. My grand-maman was an amazing cook –nothing like
Big M. Grand-maman’s mother had passed away when she was a little girl so her
father sent her to a boarding school of sorts (I’m not entirely clear on her
youth), but she ended up graduating from “école normale” which
would be equivalent to teachers’ colleges today. Her diploma is in
Roxanne’s living room, framed and proudly on display. It is for this reason, one amongst
many, that Antoine and Alice felt offended when Maeve called herself a nurse
after never attending any form of post-secondary institution. Not only that,
but she was a terrible housewife, cook, caretaker, and human being, in general.
The joke at home was that she could burn water; and my father’s nightly "dinner
bell” was the sound of the smoke alarm.
Grand-maman spent a lot of time teaching me how to cook and
bake, along with the art of silk flower making, crêpe-paper flower making;
knitting, and she attempted to teach me crochet, but I was not interested. Grand-maman
taught me how to play the card game Solitaire and I still play this game often,
on my phone - it helps me feel close and connected to her years after
her passing. Grand-maman taught me how to do laundry over the three weeks
Roxanne and I slept over on the pullout in the living room. I remember being at
her house eating lunch when the Challenger exploded in 1986.
When we had arrived at grand-maman and grand-papa’s place,
they made me a hot toddy with weird non-alcoholic stuff and they put Vick's VapoRub
on my chest and on my back to help with the congestion. I was allowed to cough
but the hot toddy and Vick's were working their magic. As an adult I learned
that I am very susceptible to bronchitis; it is something I had frequently in
my youth and up to my late 20s that required an inhaler in the winter.
The cold would frequently steal my breath away and I found it near impossible
to draw air into my lungs; Big M would usually tell me to stop being an asshole. It was all in my head. Not once was I taken to the doctor.
I never wanted to leave the paradise that was my grandparent’s
home.
One Sunday dad came to visit and stayed for lunch. At the
end of the meal, he told us it was time to go home. Roxanne and I started
shaking and crying and then grand-papa told us to go wait in his bedroom. Yappy
had died a few months ago and grand-maman had replaced the dog with a bird. I
loved the bird, I cannot recall her name, but she was green and yellow, and
later in 1986 while grand-maman was cleaning out her cage the bird escaped and
never returned. Roxanne and I liked to pretend to teach her words so while the
adults discussed, we visited with the bird, unconcerned about going home because
grand-paper is dad’s (papa) father so my father must obey.
We ended up loudly dragging our feet in protest when Jack
took us home.
NOTE: Obviously, I changed the names of all the people who were in my
life to protect their privacy, their past, but also to prevent my parents from
hunting me down. The reason I chose “Jack” to name my father is that I think he's a JACKass.
My readers are so quiet!
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