Roxane places the picture of Anastasia at the bottom of her violin case.
Ready to go.
The shower is still running.
Opens the door a crack, cloud of warmth: ‘Mom, I’m going. I’ll save you a seat.’
A meek yes from under the water, see you there.
Closes the door, goes outside. The wind is whipping up the snow and deposits a white veil on the street. Roxane walks through it. There’s no yellow school bus today. She is going to walk to school today. She is playing a concert today.
She knows exactly where she is going today.
* * *
It’s dark. The air lashes and cars are beeping. It smells like sex and beer.
People are making out and swatting at each other on the brightly lit Main.
It’s Friday.
You wonder where they got the number from. Fifty. Can’t come within fifty metres of your mother. When you get to forty-nine, does it start to burn? Does she go up in flames? Spontaneously combust?
Fifty. Mélissa has done the calculation.
If she were to lie down on the ground, it would be around thirty times her. And with the heels, it would be a bit less.
The letter crack is empty. Her white papers have flown off into the void of the neighbourhood. Mélissa wonders who will read them.
She’s there, on the other side. A car stops in front of the group.
No … don’t get in. Wait for me.
Another girl is leaving. Oof.
Okay. I have to walk properly.
Mélissa takes a deep breath.
* * *
The chairs are all lined up in the auditorium. It looks nice. It’s organized. A few people are already there. Roxane gets up onstage and walks between the music stands. Turns back toward the room; the light hits her as if it recognizes her. In an hour, she is going to play for an audience, for her father, for her mother.
She looks at the room and chooses two seats, the best ones.
She steps down. Writes, concentrating, two ‘reserved’ signs, which she places on the two best seats in the house. For her parents.
* * *
Her heel squeezed in the vise of the shoe, clacking on the sidewalk, the child’s foot teeters but stays upright. Clack, another step, she advances, delicately, head held high and brow furrowed. Fifty metres from the other side of the street, she turns slowly toward the group of matchstick women. She is trembling but she is standing tall. Her thighs are shaking, her ankles are tensed, her lips are taut, but her head is high. She looks at her mother.
‘Hey, what the fuck, who’s she?’
There’s raspy squawking from the group: there’s competition on the other side of the street.
‘Meg, isn’t that your girl?’
Meg turns around. Silence.
Her big blue eyes cross the fifty metres. To meet the eyes of the prostitute across the street.
For a moment, Hochelaga is still. There’s no more shouting, it doesn’t smell, it stops shining everywhere. It’s just a dark, biting night where nothing else exists but two sets of eyes meeting.
* * *
Jesus … like wind between her dry lips.
Louise, standing in front of the mirror. Not moving. Like a ghost.
Pale. Hollows of sadness under her eyes.
She looks at herself, and Jesus, is she ever ugly.
She has nothing to hide her face. She stopped using makeup a long time ago. It’s been a long time.
She would cry, but there’s nothing left.
She would have a drink, but she’s decided she should hold off tonight.
She wets her hair. A bit, just with her fingers. Then her whole head under the tap.
She looks at herself. Smiles a fake smile. Starts to laugh. Slams the door.
‘Okay, what should I wear?’ Nothing fits her anymore. She’s gotten fat. A fat ass.
She takes out a skirt. It looks cold outside. Cold wind on her cheeks – it will probably remind her she’s alive. She would walk out with her skirt and a nice coat – would say hello, Mr. Gingras to the neighbour clearing the snow from his car, hello, Ms. Vigneault to her neighbour picking up her mail – then she wouldn’t say anything to the prostitutes but she would look at them because it’s fucking cold and women have each other’s backs.
She would walk like that, at a good clip, to the school. When she gets there, she would smile at people, not even forced. She would say, ‘Jesus, it’s cold,’ the way people do, and the people at the school would say to each other, ‘So that’s Roxane’s mother,’ and they would be surprised because she looks like she’s got it together, Roxane’s mother.
And then she would sit down with the other mothers, the concert would start, and Roxane would be really good, and everyone would say, ‘She’s good, your daughter is good, madame, she’s good!’
And she would say, ‘I know.’
* * *
Mélissa is motionless in front of her mother, each on their side of the street. Smells her scent. Something animal is guiding her steps.
Clack clack on her piece of the sidewalk, Meg heads toward the street.
Hey, don’t fuck around, you’re going to get arrested if you cross the street.
On the other side, Mélissa in her shoes doesn’t fall.
Come over here Mom come over here Mom come over here Mom like a song in her head.
Like a wounded animal, Meg crosses the street without falling either.
Forty-thirty-twenty-ten metres.
In front of her daughter. Looking her in the eye.
A long moment, in silence.
Then words, like a twisted torrent, words of love and hate.
Get out of here for chrissake I love you I’ve got nothing I’m ugly you’re beautiful get the fuck outta here now please move it run – a slap to the face, tears on their cheeks, a hand that hangs on, nails in her skin, don’t go, don’t leave me …
A scream, FUCK OUTTA HERE!
A child who runs off, flying, feet trapped in a woman’s shoes, makeup drawing channels down her face. A broken mother who crumbles inside then crosses back over the fifty metres, crying; like a salmon to its spawning ground she is going back to her life.
* * *
The skirt is too tight, dammit. She can’t get her fat ass in it anymore.
Louise sits down.
The phone rings.
‘Hello?’
‘( … )’
‘Yes, I know, it’s okay, I was just leaving!’
‘( … )’
‘In front? Well, I’ll find it if you wrote reserved on it.’
‘( … )’
‘See you soon.’
Hangs up. Collapses on the bed in her underwear.
She has a reserved seat.
She puts on a sweatsuit. It’s ugly, but she just has to keep her coat on over it and it won’t show. She has to at least put her hair up. Hair up looks good. Roxane must have some elastics.
Her daughter’s bedroom door squeaks.
Louise goes in. She hardly ever sets foot in there. Sober, at any rate. It’s nice. There are pictures on the walls. Sorts of castles – where on earth is that? It’s like Wonderland, with Alice and everything. She looks around. There are pictures, everywhere.
It’s covered, floor to ceiling.
Louise sits on her daughter’s bed. There’s a river stuck right on the door.
It’s relaxing, like …
She pulls back the covers of the unmade bed. She should really wash the sheets.
Beside the bed, books, and a box of tampons.
A box of tampons.
Ah.
Louise feels small.
She won’t cry.
Slowly, Louise stretches out, face in her daughter’s pillow, breathes in her scent.
Pulls the sheets up over her.
* * *
Night falls suddenly on the apartment block. On the whole street. Kevin and Steve are side by side at the window. Steve still smells like bl
each from his new job, and Kevin likes it. They are looking down at the street together. The car is waiting. Mélissa gets in. They’re just waiting for the third kid, the youngest. They’re taking him. He’s crying.
‘I hope they put them in the same home at least.’
In silence, Steve takes his son’s warm hand in his.
* * *
Mélissa is tired. She doesn’t cry. Doesn’t yell. She’s just tired. Mathieu hid in the closet, under Mom’s skirts. They found him anyway.
He’s crying. Shh. Shh.
Sitting between her two little brothers in the back seat, she gently strokes them with her fingertips. The car starts.
Along the street, birds.
Mélissa would have liked them to take flight. Here, now, all the girls taking flight at the same time.
The car drives past them. Meg isn’t there.
Mélissa’s gaze meets the stork’s. They look into each other’s eyes.
Something like a sigh in her eyes of a child. The stork watches as Mélissa escapes. The stork watches Mélissa taking flight.
* * *
The violins resonate throughout the room. They are warming up the instruments like little living bodies. From the stage, kids are waving as familiar faces start to come in.
The yellow lights illuminate the space, illuminate Roxane, give her strength. The two seats are still empty, but Roxane does like the others and waves – greets her parents who aren’t there yet.
The teacher dressed as a conductor clears his throat and proudly introduces the ensemble.
‘Grades 5 and 6 will play for you tonight.’
It’s starting.
Not there.
They’ll be here.
Can’t miss it.
Not both of them.
Lots of snow.
Don’t get out much, walk slowly.
They’ll be here.
Roxane sits up straight, violin set on her shoulder, eyes staring into the crowd.
Anastasia is there – it’s okay it’s okay. Roxane holds the bow in her frozen hand.
It’s Vivaldi’s Winter, the two chairs are so empty in the middle of a full row, Winter, which Roxane hangs on to like her last life preserver. They’re not there.
They didn’t come. Roxane, hanging on to her violin, plunges into the storm. She can’t play. She doesn’t know from where, she doesn’t know for whom, around her every note tells the story of snowflakes, slush, and Christmas that never comes, each stroke of the bow makes a winter of ice and lonely bodies rain down on her. Roxane grips her violin tight, too tight.
‘You’re not playing, Roxane?’
Her teacher in her ear. Roxane stares at the room full of faces cheering on violins other than hers.
‘No. I don’t play anymore, sir.’
At the end of Winter, a string breaks.
The concert loses steam, peters out. They didn’t come and Roxane didn’t play.
The room applauds. They liked it, shower bravos on the little violinists.
Two chairs that stayed empty.
Roxane cuts through the crowd, flustered. The musicians fall into their parents’ arms. A boy in a tie that’s too big for him takes a cold carnation from an outstretched loving hand. At the back of the room, a father bends down to tie his daughter’s shoelaces. Roxane sees him: he is hiding so he doesn’t cry. Because the concert was beautiful. Roxane is hot, everything is blurry; she grips her bow, looks for Anastasia’s black eyes – looks for someone.
Roxane opens the door onto winter and runs into it.
The violin, like an extension of her body, stays glued to her hand. Roxane doesn’t want to drown.
Red snowflakes fall over Montreal.
The city is bleeding.
* * *
The square in front of the pawnshop is empty. There’s a piece of cardboard like a tombstone, traces of bodies imprinted on it. Here lived Kathy and Kelly.
Passersby notice a void, but don’t know where it comes from.
By tomorrow they’ll be used to it.
* * *
Roxane heads straight into the cold. Dry squeak of her soles on the snow. The street is empty. As if it were a normal evening. A nothing evening. Only the prostitutes, like ink stains stretching toward the sky, are a small reminder of life. Roxane stops across the street from them. Matchstick women in their glass globe. Long and frail, their black silhouettes are like eyelashes on winter. Ladies of the night, meagre prey. Roxane looks at them. Would have liked to gently shake their glass orb and make thousands of snowflakes dance around them.
Slowly, she brings her violin to her shoulder. She plays in the storm. She plays for them and so she won’t die. The notes cross the street. Slowly, they penetrate winter. Then nothing else moves because the music skins the girls on the inside. Because it permeates their entire bodies, over the cold and over all the penises from that month. The crystalline sound of the strings as they’re caressed tells them a new story, presses RESET on their inert bodies.
They are motionless, tears in their eyes.
For a moment, there’s nowhere else they want to be.
Roxane plays.
Her hand clutches the bow and sends the notes, any notes, into the air. For a long time, because if she stops she will fall.
Her violin alone, in tune, crying out, pierces the emptiness and fills the night.
I’m here. A stranger but alive. Do you hear how alive I am?
She will have to play until she dies so she doesn’t go under. Her violin will have to cling to the surface so she doesn’t fade away. It has to.
Above the street, through the frost on a dark window, a woman is crying.
Louise emerged when notes crept into her sleep. First she saw the Volga running along the wall and thought she might be dead. The persistent notes split the brick of the apartment block to reach her, and she glanced at the clock on the night table. 10:12 in red. She already knew she had missed it. She just wanted to check. So she got up. Carefully replaced her daughter’s blue sheet. She moved closer to the notes on the other side of the window. A warm breath to melt the white film of ice. Down below, on the sidewalk, Roxane was playing music.
The sound was sweet, delicate, heaven-sent. But most importantly it was her. Roxane. Her daughter. Tall and proud. It was her height and grace that particularly astonished Louise. At that precise moment, Louise told herself no. It turns out she hadn’t messed everything up.
Now, face pressed to the warmed window, Louise watches her child playing in the snow. The violin is like her. There is nothing more beautiful.
A Conversation with Roxane
The three child characters in Neighbourhood Watch – Roxane, Kevin, and Mélissa – are inspired by children Anaïs got to know while working with youth in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve. The character of Roxane is based on the real-life Geneviève Ledoux, with whom Anaïs remains close to this day. I was fortunate enough to be able to talk to Geneviève about her childhood, her reactions to the novel, and her thoughts on the character of Roxane. My thanks to Geneviève for taking the time to speak with me and to her mother for watching young Nathan while she did.
Rhonda Mullins: Tell me a bit about your life today. I understand you’re a new mother.
Geneviève Ledoux: Yes, I have a little boy. He’ll be turning two soon.
R: What’s his name?
G: Nathan.
R: I guess being a mother keeps you busy. Are you up to anything else these days?
G: I just finished studying to work in hospitals in health and hygiene, but with covid, well, let’s just say I’m waiting.
R: Yes, that’s unfortunate timing.
G: Yes. We would be the specialists in bacteria and disinfecting. So right now …
R: Tell me a bit about your relationship with Anaïs back then and now. How did you meet?
G: When I was young, I lived in Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, where there are a lot of disadvantaged families, lots of alcohol, drugs, and violence. Dr. Julien* took me
under his wing when I was four. Later he told me about Big Brothers Big Sisters, and I thought it would be fun to meet someone new, to have someone to confide in. I was twelve years old and she was in her twenties. There was an immediate connection between us. We were both shy, so we connected right away. She’s my role model. She inspired me and helped me a lot. Just like the arts and music did.
She helped me find my way. I’m not sure where I would have ended up. Although I think I would have made it anyway, because I have inner strength. I would have become someone regardless, because I never give up. I’m proud of her and I’m proud of me too. She’s my sister, my true sister.
R: What did you think about the novel when it came out, or now?
G: The novel, amazing. It talks about me, but that was okay. Anaïs was always interested in what we were going through. She was always interested, and I’m fascinated by her work, because it’s reality. She explains what reality looks like.
It helped me. I was moved. I didn’t expect it. I didn’t realize my story was worth telling. I’ve had my up and downs, but I’ve always kept putting one foot in front of the other. I’ve never been a quitter. There were drugs and alcohol around, but I never got too caught up in it. It wasn’t easy, but I knew I should keep moving forward. I’m happy I did.
She was an inspiration. But I have inner strength. I’m a spiritual person, and I always look for the good in life.
R: When Anaïs speaks of you, it sounds like you are an inspiration to her.
G: Inspiration goes both ways.
R: Who chose the name Roxane for the character?
G: She chose it. It’s a character she invented, based on my story. I did feel a connection with Roxane. She is someone who doesn’t give up, she is courageous, and Anaïs explains her journey.
R: So, like Roxane, you played the violin?
G: Yes. I’ve always had an ear for music. Anaïs had a piano in the country, and she would take me there. I was always interested in music. It’s an escape, it’s calming. I would play the piano, just random notes. She was fascinated by my interest in music.
R: Who got you the violin?
G: Dr. Julien, and my uncle Gaston, on my father’s side, got me lessons. I went to music camp. I was very good. I don’t play as much now, but I love classical music. The sound of the violin seizes the heart, it touches you. It’s my other baby.
Neighbourhood Watch Page 9
