Bilingual Being (32 page)

I have no control over the language of my dreams or prayers. And strangely, my humour register differs in each language. In English, I use and receive only sarcasm, irony, dry wit, and a sharp tongue. Gone from my instruments and possibilities are the «p'tites blagues» [little
jokes]; «des bonnes histoéres» [good stories]; the ability to «s'agacer parce qu'on s'aime» [to tease because we love each other]; and the nerve to join in games and «d'êt' d'la partie» [to be part of the fun].

There are other examples of this pivoting towards each side, this constant flux of personality, ability, and loyalty curiously called by theorists “balanced bilingualism.” There is, in fact, nothing balanced about it – no equilibrium, no point where everything is just right. That isn't how bilingualism is lived. There is instead on an hourly, daily, and yearly basis – and on the personal, family, and social level – a constant churning, an ebb and flow that dwarfs the tides of the Bay of Fundy. So when I try to come up with a reasoned, detached political opinion on one side or the other, I can't.

I walk a thin line between belonging in each language and not belonging at all. I'm different in my languages, and not fully myself in either. But are my possibilities quantitatively or qualitatively changed from those of a person with only one language? In other words, do I merely have more words and ways to say the same thing? Or have I acquired the possibility of saying something substantially different? Does bilingualism completely change the relationship between thinking and being?

Fish

One fish – a salmon,

coloured silver, purple, yellow, pink –

sees herself swimming wildly upstream

fighting gnashing currents

to find her way home.

One fish – a river trout,

coloured silver, dotted red and gold –

sees herself moving up step-wise sensibly

in locks upon the seaway

to get somewhere else.

Two fish souls sensing

currents mix warm and cold together,

cast but one shadow from the surface view,

appearing as a single lifeform

in the oceanic feeling.

17

SHIFTING GRANDMOTHERS

A CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS?

The closest I ever come to understanding the linguistic tension that inhabits me is when I'm alone outdoors somewhere – listening to crickets, camping, or walking – even in the modest stretch of woods behind my mother's home still today. That is, when I'm not talking to anyone at all, in French or English. In silence only can I understand the language debate on the ground in this country, and in my head.

But silence has been hard to find since 1967, a curious year when the sexual abuse seemingly stopped, crowds first rallied to the call «Vive le Québec Libre!»
*
and fifty million «étrangers» invaded Quebec for a world fair. My mother took my brother, me, and my granny by train to Montreal in a serendipitous assembly of all of our family's symbols. Granny travelled first class for free because of my grandfather's service to
CN
. And my mother made matching frilly red tartan skirts for her and me, poofy and knee-length, like a French Canadian line-dancing costume.

We were going to «erprésenter el Québec,» she said, yet the only thing I remember of this extraordinary day – other than the skirts and
how my brother became lost for moments at a time, over and over again – is that I stole, yes, stole, a smooth black stone shaped like an apricot pit from the Japanese pavillion. It's a sin I later confessed but didn't regret. I clenched it my hand all day, seeking meaning among the shouts of strangers. That was the year one tension stopped and another began in its place.

This constant tugging at identities, origins, and symbols embroiled everyone around me, so much so that what was tragic and outright funny was often one and the same thing. I have, for example, a clear recollection of my Granny St-Onge arriving, innocently, for one of my mother's famous dinner events in a light blue woollen skirt and jacket, one of her peacock pins on the left lapel, a shoe bag holding sensible black pumps. My mother, smiling ear to ear, informed her that no one could walk in before weighing themselves and paying a penny a pound for the party. My granny politely resisted, insisting on her 115 pounds, an underestimate to be sure.

But fortified with her own champagne, my mother wouldn't let up. And there they stood, for ten minutes at least, my granny caught in the vestibule, my mother blocking the inside door. Each refused to budge. The scale waited. Granny slowly became angry, incensed at the rudeness of asking someone of her age and social stature to be humiliated like this. But my mother slowly became angry too, at a woman who couldn't put away «ses airs» [her airs] for just one night and have a bit of fun. A clash of civilizations, family style.

I finally negotiated a truce, a devious compromise. «Vas-donc voir si l'pain brûle! Y m' semb' que'j'sens quequ'chose.» [Why don't you go and check if the (garlic) bread is burning. I think I smell something.] I said it to my mother with my customary seriousness, which she had no reason to doubt. And since my mother was famous for enjoying her parties and finding a forgotten ingredient in a cold oven the next day, she dashed off.

I winked at my granny and had her walk gingerly to the side of the scale while I put my own foot on it to mimic the scale's sound. I knew my mother's attention to detail, even at a time like this. Then my granny put some coins in the jar just as my mother returned. «Pis, combien?» [So, how much?], she asked me with a giggle. «Cent vingt»
[120], I answered steadily, trying to make it believable by upping my granny's estimate the tiniest bit. Just then a carful showed up and lined up for the scale, true to the party ethic they held, taking my mother's attention off my granny completely.

Yet this confusion in the vestibule remains a vivid portrait of cultural contrasts. Among French Canadians, you called ahead before visiting even close relatives, but on arrival everyone got kissed. And when asking how things were, you injected hope and empathy: «C'pas grave. Qu'est-ce'tu veux? Ça'rrive.» [That's all right. What can you do? It happens.] English Canadians, on the other hand, popped in unannounced, but they could make it to the kitchen and back without even a hug. And when inquiring about things, you demonstrated intellectual engagement: “That's really interesting. I heard that too … Have you tried …” In Quebec in those years, you were always crossing worlds when crossing doorways.

UNE BONNE MÉMOÉRE

The same tandem operated on those many occasions when my parents went out of town. My Grand-maman Raisin, my francophone great-grandmother (my mother's grandmother), was left in charge for years. She was a whisper of a woman at eighty years and as many pounds, who dabbed herself behind the ears with vanilla extract and pinched her cheeks for colour. She routinely lifted her skirt to stand on a chair in our home to reach a pot of jam, a fresh jar of peanut butter, or a new packet of «p'tits biscuits,» her worn socks rolled down. In all the years I knew her, I remember seeing those coarse, brown stockings bunched at her ankles far more than pulled up where they were supposed to be. She was too busy for such a fuss, didn't care.

The snapshot of her that endures in my mind is nothing at all like the few photographs the family has of her, taken on some wedding day or other special event, where she wears a dark, modest suit and a small hat. This look doesn't capture her essence at all. Rather, it's this: a plain cotton dress, patterned on a white background – she's sewn it herself, of course. There's a round collar and a few buttons, usually at the back, and the sleeves are short. In sum, it's a practical dress. The skirt is plain,
falling just past the knee, its front protected by an apron, mostly white and never perfectly clean, which she's made out of a similar dress that wore out over time. It was good fabric to recycle, so I had nighties she made for me made from her old nighties. When they wore down too, I kept small squares of the soft cloth as my comfort treasures. In my memory shot, she's elbow-deep in bread dough. When visitors come in, she erupts in smiles, throws her hands under the tap furiously, and wipes them on the edge of her apron before coming to grab a face, pinch a cheek, and offer everyone a warm hug.

She always wanted to give us something special for a late-night snack, «juste pour une p'tite folie, une p'tite traite» [just for a little fun/ joke, a little treat], she'd say, giggling, a timeless squint in her eyes. She was a bright, young soul inside a misfitting shell. It wouldn't have been a visit with her without a teensy treat. She sneaked fancy cookies from the secret reserves she knew my mother kept for «la compagnie,» and dug Glosettes for us stealthily out of her purse as if they were illegal contraband.

She gambled with us for sultanas, tiny hills of them by our left sides, glasses of juice on our right, the pairs of jacks and sevens laid out in between. When she got tired, she started eating her own pile of raisins, a few at a time. She couldn't help it, she said, just hungry, as she let us win our way to a bedtime that was at least on the decent side of midnight. A child who was also a grownup when she needed to be. My first favourite human being in the entire universe.

She held her cards with hands worn raw, a real worker's hands. I loved those hands of hers – long, straight, muscular fingers, unfinished at their tips. Natural. No rings, no jewels of any kind. Only a few minor scars, perhaps a recent scrape or cut. She often cheated at cards, and everybody knew it, but she did it with deliberate panache, inviting us to catch her. It was just an excuse for another laugh, training us to stay sharp, and she was delighted when we were on to her. The hours passed without any definition except for the full current of joy. But when it came time, I couldn't sleep. I worried she'd fall climbing on another chair. So I became her caretaker, straining to hear her movements. When she was done the dishes, she scrubbed the frying pans. More chair sounds. Then not stopping for a second, she took on a
corner of the linoleum that wasn't perfectly clean. And this, well past midnight.

Sadly, she became too ill to care for us at one point, then too ill to come to see us, then too ill even to be seen by us. «C'est mieux qu'tu' gardes une bonne mémoére que d'la voir comme al'est là» [Better to keep a good memory of her than to see her as she is now], my mother said in sorry tones. Leaping from one Sunday to no Sundays, I never got to say goodbye.

AN IMPECCABLE GUEST

So the next time my parents were out of town, we had a new grandmother and atmosphere. Granny St-Onge brought her tidy suitcase and accepted reluctantly to sit with us for a few days. Admittedly, it wasn't quite what she envisaged herself doing as a comfortably retired railway and military widow. By then, she had a beautiful four-bedroom home to take care of, and even though her five sons were grown, there were clear standards to uphold, not easily achieved without help. Yet she maintained her home, garden, and self impeccably.

That's why the pictures I have of her, of which there are a sizable amount, all look precisely like her. She had no house dress that was any different from her Sunday best, as far as I could tell. It was as if she had a uniform, unchanging for the circumstances: expensive suits from England or Holt Renfrew, skirts exactly to the knee, matching blazers, themed decorative pins on the left lapel, tidy white shirts underneath, and plain pumps. In summer she wore linen suits in pastel colours, with tan or white shoes. In winter, she wore wool suits in dark shades, with black or navy shoes.

My favourite part was the lapel pin from Birks, surrounded by faux-diamonds and silver filigree – treasures to look at but not quite touch. Surely she wore other things to do her daily chores, but I never saw her engaged in anything other than putting the finishing touches on a meal. At those moments, she would still be in her immaculate Granny uniform, only without the blazer. And she would have added a crisp, smart apron in a soft floral print on white, perfectly starched, that covered not just her skirt but went up over her chest, often with ruffled
edges along its sides. Given her slight roundness, the overall effect was like a fancy version of Mrs Tiggy-Winkle in the Beatrix Potter books I adored.

When she watched us, that uniformity enveloped our time together, became its strength and its weakness. Gone were the games, the laughs, the midnight jam. I don't remember her ever coming into the kitchen. It isn't that she couldn't have cooked for us – for she was an excellent homemaker – or that she was unwilling to. It was a simple case of her respecting social norms to the letter. You didn't enter another woman's kitchen, upset her cupboards, inspect her ingredients. You didn't presuppose that there would be the right sort of spice or meat for what you'd have liked to cook, or eat. Rather, you let the matter unfold as it had been planned, according to the detailed list left on the refrigerator by the woman of the house. And in the matter of reheating, a young girl should easily be able to manage, and was certainly of age to develop useful skills.

So instead of taking those moments together to teach us how to make crumpets or cook a better steak, well done, my grandmother acted like the respectable guest that she was in our home, performing her role as she herself had grown to understand it in the high-class days of her own youth. She retreated to the den where she remained, gracious and steady, smelling of soap, expensive perfume, and foundation makeup, a garden of a woman. There she knitted for Protestant church bazaars with plump, manicured hands adorned with diamonds, pearls, and sapphires as she watched Ed Sullivan on
TV
– but not those horrible Beatles, oh my, certainly not. She napped between rows of green and yellow, a footstool propping a calf with deep blue veins that showed through her silk nylons. And she made small requests of the kitchen help (aka me) as I became her servant, responding as best I could to her legalistic sort of interest in our comings and goings. There was no passion, but there was safety. I went to bed early.