A Cage Without Bars Read online

  F or my mom, Laurie Symsyk (née Laurette Saumur), whose evocative Ottawa stories, shared over a lifetime, continue to enrich my imagination. Thanks so much for everything you’ve given me.

  1

  Chewing Gum

  On Wednesday afternoon, when our teacher asks who can bring used chewing gum to school tomorrow, lots of hands go up in the air. I know that I won’t be able to help her, though.

  Sister Madeleine needs our gum for sticking things on the blackboard and the wall. She says it works very well for that. But I don’t have any chewing gum and don’t know when I ever will. Except for now and then, when my friend Thérèse Beaudoin gives me a bit of hers that doesn’t even have any taste left, I never get to have gum in my mouth. Once, when nobody was looking, I picked a piece off the sidewalk that was hardly chewed at all and still had some flavor left in it. That was heavenly.

  I really wish I could have some gum to bring to school for Sister on Thursday. When I look around the classroom, some of my other classmates don’t have their hands up. Instead, they stare at their desks, and I know why. Those girls are ashamed, just like I am. Their families have no money to buy gum, either.

  Jeanine Bonenfant has her hand in the air, though. She never puts up her hand to answer questions the way I do because she never knows the answer. But when Sister asks if anyone can bring their chewing gum to school, she can finally raise her hand. She seems very proud right now and has a big wide smile, and Jeanine usually just scowls all day—when she isn’t getting the strap. And when she gets it, she just half-smiles at the rest of us as she walks back to her desk. But she can bring used gum to school, and I know she’s even poorer than we are. I also know a secret about her. I know why she has money for gum.

  For the rest of the day, I’m mad. I can’t believe Jeanine will have some used chewing gum to bring for Sister tomorrow and I won’t. It isn’t fair. My face gets red every time I look over at her, slouched there at the back of the class at her desk and not doing her work. When Sister asks her to write a word on the blackboard, she spells it wrong, then swears out loud, “Maudit,” and gets the strap. Three smacks on each hand. I secretly rejoice. Ha! I might not have any gum, but at least I can spell. At least I always get As and red checkmarks. At least Sister never has a reason to get mad or yell at me. She even asks me to help her after school sometimes. And I never get the strap.

  Today it’s impossibly hard to hold on to my secret about Jeanine, especially when I’m jealous that she has gum to bring for Sister. And after school I can’t hold it in any longer. It almost burns my tongue because I’m still so mad about the chewing gum that I don’t have.

  That’s why I decide to tell my cousin Lucille, who lives across the road from us and has the same last name as we do. Our fathers never speak to each other because a long time ago my papa had a fight with his brother Pierre, who is Lucille’s papa. When I ask Maman to explain, she says it’s just too complicated for a child to understand. But I still like Lucille, even though she’s only eleven—a year younger than I am, a year older than my sister, Yvette, and in Grade 5. Papa doesn’t know that I walk home every day with Lucille, that I play with her at recess, and that she’s my close chum.

  Thérèse is walking home with us today too. She’s taller than me, with blue eyes, black hair, and a pretty nose. She has a French father and an English mother, and she can speak English very well compared to me. Her father has a good job. He is a butcher. They have a very nice house a few streets away from ours and a garage with a car in it instead of a barn with horses, like we have. I never invite her to our house. Ours is very different from the other people’s houses around here, and sometimes I feel ashamed about that.

  But I know for sure that Jeanine steals money, and I can’t hold on to this secret any longer. When I tell them, Lucille’s eyes open wide and so does her mouth.

  “And that’s why she always has money for gum and candy and Sister’s charity box,” I say, enjoying the shock on her face.

  “How do you know that, Aline?” she gasps.

  “That’s a secret too,” I tell her.

  I don’t want to confess to her that I overheard the bread man, Monsieur Nadeau, telling my mother one day when I was home sick from school. I’m not sure how he found out, but somehow our bread man knows everything about everybody around here. He sees things that nobody else sees, and hears them too. Sometimes I think he knows everybody’s secrets.

  Monsieur Nadeau always stops and talks to Maman. That’s how she finds out what’s going on in our neighborhood, here in Paroisse Saint-François d’Assise. She says that sometimes he tells her things that she really doesn’t want to know. Papa says that he tells too much that’s none of his business, that he should just deliver his baked goods and leave his gossip in his bread wagon.

  “I already knew that,” Thérèse tells us with a sneaky grin. She loves to hear gossip, especially when it’s bad. “Jeanine always steals from her mother’s purse. And from her father’s pockets when he’s asleep.”

  “But why don’t they ever catch her?” Lucille asks.

  Thérèse snorts. “Because her papa is a big drunk. And her maman sleeps all day. You know sometimes she has bugs in her hair, and her brothers and sisters too. And they wear used clothes that are always dirty.”

  I feel my face turn red. I don’t want to tell them that we’ve had bugs too, my sister and brothers and I. We had to sit at the table over a newspaper while Maman used a special comb to get the eggs out of our hair. Then she washed our hair with very hot water and stinky soap. And sometimes we wear used clothes too, but they’re always clean.

  “That’s terrible,” Lucille says. “She’s breaking a commandment. She’s in big trouble.”

  “I know. She’s a sinner. Don’t tell anyone, okay?” I beg them.

  Thérèse says good-bye to us a few blocks from our street. I hope I can trust her with my secret. As we round the corner onto Hinchey Avenue, my cousin and I unlink our arms and walk on separate sides of the road. I don’t want Maman to see me through the kitchen window walking with Lucille in case she mentions it to Papa, because that might make him unhappy with me. And I don’t like it when that happens.

  “How was your day at school, ma belle?” Maman asks when I walk through the door.

  “Très bonne, Maman,” I tell her, even though it wasn’t even close to being very good.

  0

  The first thing I do on Thursday morning is let out a gasp. The wood floor is still freezing when I climb out of bed because the house hasn’t warmed up yet after Papa filled the furnace with wood this morning. The second thing I do is toss a pillow at my younger sister, who was curled up tight under the quilt beside me all night.

  “Get up, Yvette. It’s time to get ready for school,” I tell her. Yvette rolls over and moans, just like every morning.

  “I don’t want to go today.” She starts to cough into her pillow again. Sometimes she wakes me up with her coughing.

  “You never want to go.” I tug on a pair of thick wool socks and shuffle out of the bedroom and into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face. As usual, I scowl in the mirror at my tangled mane of dark brown hair. I twist it atop my head, then frown as it drops around my shoulders like a rumpled veil.

  I press on the bridge of my nose. The bump turns white for a second, then fills in again. Last night, once again, I fell asleep while pressing the end of my ugly nose upward, praying to Sainte-Thérèse for a miracle to make it stay that way, to make it look more like an “English” nose by morning. It’s my someday dream. But once again, it hasn’t come true. I make an ugly face at myself and hurry down to breakfast.

>   Maman is in her house dress, her hair in a loose bun already, stirring the porridge at the stove and frying potatoes and pork for Papa. She wears sturdy black shoes. She’s not so tall, but she’s thick and sturdy, just like her shoes. Papa is taller, but sturdy too, with a square, hard face, not roundish and soft like Maman’s. Maman’s lips curl up more than our father’s do, and she has wrinkles around her eyes whenever she smiles. Papa doesn’t smile as much as she does. He gets meat and potatoes for breakfast every morning because he has to work out in the cold. We get the same mushy, old porridge.

  “Again?” I say, and Maman narrows her eyes at me.

  “Can I have some sugar on it, please?” I ask. “Just a tiny bit.”

  “I need it for baking. You know that, so stop asking.”

  “There will be more rations during this war,” Arthur says. Our older brother, with his white face, is reading the paper like he does every morning. He almost never plays outside. Maman says he thinks too much and needs some fresh air. “You’ll see. First, it was sugar and coffee and tea. Next month, ration coupons for butter. There will be more to come next year.”

  “Maybe not,” I tell my brother. “You don’t know everything, Arthur.”

  “There will be. I know what’s coming because I read about what’s happening in the world. Not silly romance novels like you always read.”

  I make a face at him and stir my porridge. I don’t know everything about the war the way Arthur does, and he always likes to brag about it too.

  “The Dionnes eat this kind of oatmeal,” Maman tells me.

  I just shrug and scowl. That doesn’t work anymore. The Dionne quintuplets are getting older, and so am I. I don’t care so much now about what they eat or what toothpaste they brush their teeth with or what they do in their little playground with the fence around it that everyone in the world still goes to visit way up north in Callander, Ontario. I don’t care if they’re rich and get everything for free, either. They are like animals in a zoo. But lucky ones, that’s for sure, with their nurses and all their new toys and their special colors and symbols so that people can tell them apart. I would want to be blue like Marie, but with a lollipop for my symbol, not a teddy bear.

  Bernard is sitting at the table too, not paying attention to anything we’re saying. Instead, our younger brother has his hands clasped in front of him, his eyes closed.

  “You’re praying again?” I ask Bernard. He doesn’t answer me.

  “He prays all the time,” Arthur answers for him. “He wants to be a Christian Brother, like our teachers at school, remember?”

  Maman looks at us over her shoulder. Her face turns into a frown.

  “Where’s Yvette?” she asks. “Why isn’t she coming down yet?”

  “I don’t think she wants to go to school today,” I tell Maman.

  “She never wants to go to school,” says Arthur, peering over the top of his paper.

  “Maybe she’s really one of the Bonenfant children, not a Sauriol like us. Maybe she should be in their family instead of ours.” I grin at Arthur, and we both laugh.

  “That’s not funny. That’s mean,” our younger brother tells us.

  “Oh, listen to Frère Bernard telling us when to laugh,” Arthur says. “Give us your blessing this morning, Frère Bernard.”

  Bernard sticks out his tongue at us, and we laugh again—even Bernard this time.

  “Go upstairs and get your sister, Aline.” Maman stands with the wooden spoon in her hand, stabbing it toward the stairway. “Go and get her right now. She’ll be late for a ride to school with Papa.”

  “Let her be late, Maman. It will do her good to get in trouble from the teacher. Maybe next time she won’t stay in bed so long.” I want to stay in the kitchen by the warm stove.

  “Vas-y, Adéline.” She points with the wooden spoon again. “Go!” Adéline is my real name even though most people call me Aline. When Maman uses my real name, I have to hurry.

  I slip and slide in my wooly socks along the kitchen floor to the stairway as though I’m on skates and stamp up halfway to the landing.

  “Yvette! Dépêche-toi! Hurry! We’ll be late!”

  The only sound that comes from our bedroom is a muffled moan.

  “She won’t come down, Maman,” I tell her in the kitchen. “And she was coughing all night again too.”

  “Don’t tell me poor Yvette is sick again.” Maman clucks her tongue and her face sags with worry.

  The two barn cats, a brown striped one and a black one, weave around her ankles at the back door, waiting to be let outside. Our mother lets them sleep indoors by the stove at night whenever it’s freezing cold because she feels sorry for them. If they don’t come when she calls “minou, minou” just before bed, she stomps across the snowy yard to the barn to get them. She carries them into the kitchen, one under each arm, then even gives them a few drops of milk. She smiles whenever she hears them purring because she knows they’re warm and safe. They are like a part of the furniture in the kitchen, but they’re not terribly friendly, so I hardly ever bother with them, except maybe for a pat or two in passing.

  “It’s her tonsils again.” Maman bends to stroke each cat between the ears, then opens the back door for them before they start to scratch at the door frame. She shakes her head as she pulls the door shut. “Poor Yvette. Time to make la soupe de malade.”

  Maman makes the special creamy soup with crushed tomatoes and milk for us whenever we’re too sick to eat. We all love that soup, with crackers, but don’t like being sick enough that our mother needs to make it for us.

  La soupe de malade must mean Yvette is really sick.

  2

  Store-bought Hats

  Out in the backyard, snowflakes float in the frozen air and clump on my eyelashes. Winter arrived in November this year. The horses stamp their huge hairy hooves and snort great plumes of steam. Their whiskers are already white with frost. Papa climbs aboard his old sled that he uses to deliver wood and fingers the reins.

  “Allons-y, Aline,” he calls to me. “Let’s go!”

  I climb slowly into the sled as my bundled-up brothers set off for École Saint-François-d’Assise, the boys’ school a couple of blocks away on Stirling Avenue.

  “Yvette is still in bed,” I tell Papa. “She’s going to get it from her teacher today—if Yvette ever shows up.”

  Papa steers the sled out of the yard. The clomping echoes in the winter air. Nobody ever rides around in sleds or wagons, except for the bread man, the milkman, and the iceman. And the rag-and-bone man. Yet we have both parked in our yard—a sled for the winter and a wagon for the rest of the time. And even worse, sometimes Papa takes my sister and me to school in the horrid old things, like he’s doing today. Heads turn as we glide along the parish streets toward École Sacré-Coeur, where I’ll be dropped off.

  Children point and laugh. Someone I know throws a snowball that smashes against the side, spraying snow in my face: the biggest girl in my class, Jeanine Bonenfant. She has failed twice already, and she is always in trouble and seems to enjoy it. Papa stares straight ahead. I slide down into the hay, deeper and deeper until I’m almost entirely covered. I lie buried there until the sled shudders to a stop and I know we’ve reached my school. Now comes the hard part—to climb out without being noticed by the other students.

  I quickly gather my books, slither over the back, and drop to the ground with a heavy thump. Then I brush the telltale straws of hay off my clothes and pick them out of my hair as the sled glides away.

  0

  The Grade 6 girls, wearing our uniform of black dresses with white collars, sit as still as statues at our desks as Sister Madeleine, with her rosary beads clacking, swishes up and down the aisles checking our homework. She has already collected the gum from everyone who could bring it. She walked around the classroom with a little bowl, and all the lucky girls w
ho had some got to drop in their used gum. When she passed my desk, I didn’t even look up. But I could feel my cheeks burning red, and I felt as if everyone in the class must be staring at me, Aline Sauriol, the girl who didn’t bring chewed gum to school.

  Sister Madeleine places a great red checkmark on my page of arithmetic. Perfect again. I beam up at her, but she ignores me, her narrow face set in a scowl, one eye on an empty desk that still awaits one of her students. Then, as Sister moves along the aisle, there’s a racket from the back of the class, and everyone turns around to look. My friend Georgette Blondin, who sits behind me, snickers as she pokes me in the back. She has a nice house too, and such beautiful dolls, and sometimes I’m lucky because she invites me over to play.

  Jeanine Bonenfant, the same girl who threw the snowball at our sled, has arrived, late as usual. The door crashes shut behind her. She drops her armload of books onto her desk and thumps down the aisle to the cloakroom in sloppy boots two sizes too big. She hangs her coat on the hook, slams that door, shuffles back up the aisle, and slumps into her chair. She sits there chewing a wad of gum and grinning. Sister Madeleine stands frozen in the middle of the classroom, her pencil in her hand, her nostrils flaring, spots of crimson glowing on her cheeks.

  “Why are you late again today, Jeanine?” she asks.

  “Maudit,” we hear Jeanine mumble. And we can tell that Sister heard her too.

  Slowly, Sister Madeleine drifts back to her desk like a huge black crow coming in for a landing and opens the drawer. Everyone in the classroom sits perfectly still, watching and waiting, not even daring to breathe. We all know what’s coming next because the same thing happens almost every day.

  “Jeanine. Viens ici.” Come here.

  Jeanine sighs. She shambles to the front of the class and holds out her hands, palms facing up. Sister gives five hard smacks to each hand. I shiver just imagining how much it must sting. Jeanine smirks at her, then takes her gum out of her mouth, and drops it on Sister’s desk. Sister gives her five more whacks. By now, her hands must be as tough as the soles of her rubber boots.