A Cage Without Bars

by Anne Dublin

  We have so much fun playing in the snow on Friday. We make snowballs because the snow is so soft and wet, and throw them at one another, but not so hard that it hurts. We laugh and scream and run around the schoolyard chasing and tripping one another like all the other girls when suddenly, a hard smack in the back of my head almost knocks me over. It knocks my hat off, though, and stings so much that tears jump into my eyes.

  When I spin around, I can see Jeanine across the schoolyard, laughing like crazy with her ugly friends, her ugly mouth wide open, and her ugly head thrown back.

  “Your mother makes your hats, habitante,” she yells, and I cringe when everyone looks. “Your family lives like farm peasants! In a dirty barnyard full of horseshit!”

  “Détestable,” I mutter. I wish I could shove a snowball down her ugly throat even though that’s a bad wish. Instead, I scoop up a handful of snow and start packing it, good and hard. It becomes a tight, icy ball as I rub it in my bare hands. Georgette has picked up my hat and the mittens that I just dropped, and she’s staring at me wide-eyed, like Lucille and Thérèse.

  “Aline, don’t do it,” she warns me, but I’m furious now. I don’t know how I can possibly stop myself from doing it. My arm starts to rise on its own as if I have no control. Which I don’t, because my guardian angel is losing and the devil is winning. And that snowball feels so solid and dangerous in my hand, with the icy burn on my bare skin.

  But just as the devil is about to throw it, something happens. I see Jeanine’s hand in the air and a quick white blur of something flying straight toward my head. And my guardian angel tells me to duck, so I do. Just in time to see it whiz past my face. Just in time to see Sister Marie, the principal, step out the school doors to ring her bell and summon us inside.

  And a whack! And a shriek! Snow is all over Sister’s habit and dripping from her very red face. I drop my snowball and crush it under my boot. Everyone starts pointing toward Jeanine, including me and my friends, because—mon Dieu—we sure don’t want to be blamed for this one!

  “Jeanine Bonenfant!” Sister Marie yells in her scariest of scary voices.

  And everyone in the schoolyard freezes.

  7

  We Like Cabbage

  When Jeanine shuffles past me toward the school doors, I hear her mutter the word under her breath. It’s a word that we never say. The most terrible horrible word in the world.

  “Tabarnac,” she says so we girls can all hear. Which is a slang word for tabernacle. Which is where Jesus lives in the church. Which is an awful sin when you use it to swear. We all gasp at once. Sister Marie hasn’t heard, though, which is a good thing. She’s already gone inside to wait in her office with her strap.

  Then Jeanine says something else, just as she passes me.

  “Tu vas payer, A-de-line Sau-ri-ol,” she hisses, and I can’t help but shiver.

  I will pay for this? What did I do? I can’t understand this girl at all and the way she’s started to blame me for all her woes. And saying awful things about me and my family. She is méchante! Bad, bad, bad, in every way. But at least she will get the strap to pay for all her sins. We quietly file into the school a few minutes later. As we walk past Sister’s office, we hear it. That sharp whack of the leather strap on the palms of someone’s hands. We all know who that someone is. And something in my stomach twists with the sound of every smack.

  Jeanine is quiet for the rest of the day. She’s slumped over her desk, which Sister Madeleine has moved to the very back corner of the classroom, with her face buried in her arms. Sister carries on with her lessons, probably happy that Jeanine is behaving for a change. I wonder if she’s asleep as I pad to the back of the classroom in my stocking feet to sharpen my pencil before we do our arithmetic. Then I realize she’s not sleeping at all when I hear the softest of sniffles.

  Can it be true? Can Jeanine Bonenfant actually be crying?

  0

  “Your house smells of cabbage. Did you know that, little girl?” That’s the very first thing Carolyn Coleman says to me on Saturday after they’ve moved in. And she’s littler than I am, well younger, anyway, but taller, so she called me little girl!

  Our house really does smell like cabbage, I guess. We eat a lot of it. But the first thing I say to Carolyn Coleman is this: “We like cabbage. And you’re littler than I am, you know. And we don’t want to play with you, me and my sister, Yvette,” I tell her in my slow broken English. “You’re a Protestant.”

  She doesn’t cry. She doesn’t even get mad. Instead, Carolyn Coleman laughs in a silvery way that reminds me of bells.

  “I don’t care,” she says. “I like being alone. Me and my dollies. They make me happy.” Then she clatters up the stairs in her shiny black shoes with the heels that click and disappears into the bedroom that only last week I shared with Yvette.

  Yvette and I hid in the living room, our bedroom now, and watched as two men moved the Colemans’ things upstairs. There was a big trunk, probably for their clothes, and some things for the kitchen, like a small stove and an icebox. Our “icebox” is a cupboard outside on the back porch. And Carolyn has at least three different dolls wearing lovely clothes. I saw her carrying them up the stairs like babies. And then one of the men carried up a white bassinet—she even has a beautiful bed for her dolls. Papa made us a crib for ours out of wood scraps from our backyard.

  Madame Coleman is very pretty. Carolyn looks just like her. And they both have beautiful coats; Carolyn’s is navy plaid, and Madame Coleman’s black one looks like a wooly lamb and has a fur collar. And they both have turned up English noses and lovely hair as shiny and brown and smooth as chestnuts. And dimples when they smile. They each smiled as they passed on the stairs and spotted my sister and me spying on them. They pretended they didn’t see, but I know they did. Monsieur Coleman is tall and thin too, with a thin mustache and nose, and even thin hair. I can see the top of his shiny head. Not like Papa, who has thick dark hair like a bear, Maman says. Mr. Coleman smiled and nodded too, when he passed by on the stairs and saw us watching.

  Maybe the Colemans will be nice, but I’m not sure yet. And Carolyn told me that our house smells like cabbage, then she made a yucky face. She has dolls, though, and I wish I could hold one of them, they look so pretty. Yvette and I each have one doll. We’ve played with them so much that their faces look funny now, squashed in places. And Yvette’s doll has only one eye left, which looks scary, but she still loves her. Our dolls don’t have real hair like Carolyn’s. They have hair that’s hard, just like their faces. And they have soft cloth bodies that flop around. Carolyn’s dollies look very stiff.

  All of a sudden, everything seems different at home. Whenever we make noise, my sister and brothers and I, Maman puts a finger against her lips and says, “Shhh.” She never used to do that before today, and now we have to spend the rest of Saturday learning to be quieter in our own house. We don’t slide down the banister anymore when Maman isn’t looking, or run, shrieking, from room to room playing chase. Yet the Colemans don’t have to be quiet upstairs.

  We can hear music playing. That’s because they have a radio. What must it be like to have your very own radio in the house? Maman says someday, but right now we have a house to pay for and we can’t afford to have a “luxury” like a radio, and isn’t it far better to have your own house than to have your own radio? Now we get to listen to the Colemans’ radio, so that’s the first nice thing about them living here. Sometimes I can hear Madame Coleman singing along with the songs on the radio in a sweet voice.

  But we can hear their footsteps as they walk from room to room above our heads, and I catch Yvette looking up at the ceiling with wonder. Maybe we’ll get used to the click-click-click before long. The smell of smoke drifts down the stairs sometimes too, which isn’t so nice, so I guess maybe Monsieur Coleman smokes. Some people smoke, but not my parents.

  After supper, which tonight was c
hicken and stuffing, mashed potatoes with nice brown gravy, and carrots—not cabbage—Papa tells us a Ti-Jean story. He always smiles when he tells us these stories. So does Maman as she sits knitting by the table. Every time I look over my shoulder, she’s watching me and she winks. Even though we hear the same stories again and again, they always sound different because Papa finds something new to add to them.

  Today we hear the one about the three giant brothers who can tear trees out of the ground, roots and all. Birds fly down and peck at the giants’ heads because they’ve been disturbed, so the giants wave their arms like windmills to chase the birds away. We all laugh because we’ve never heard that before, even Arthur, who is usually so serious. Ti-Jean sits in a tree and throws rocks at the giants. That way he tricks them into beating one another up with the trees they’ve pulled out until they’re all lying in a giant heap on the ground. Then he tells the king that he took care of them himself. Ti-Jean always finds a way to make himself the hero.

  Often, I wish that I could be as brave and clever as Ti-Jean.

  0

  Papa has flooded a skating rink in the backyard for us! It’s already frozen because the weather has been so cold. So after Mass on Sunday morning, Bernard and I go out into the backyard to skate. Arthur can’t be bothered. He’d rather stay inside and read another book by Jules Verne, who is his favorite author. And Yvette is complaining of a sore throat again. She always complains of a sore throat and sore ears, and she seems to cough a lot. Maman has made a mustard plaster for her back to draw out the sickness. Yvette cried when she had to put it on, which was no surprise. It burns but feels good, and Maman never leaves it on for very long.

  Bernard and I bundle up to play outside. I wear a pair of Arthur’s too-small breeches instead of my lisle stockings because it’s so cold today. And a thick pair of wool socks. I also wear my older brother’s tuque, which Maman knit, instead of my red felt hat from the United store. I even put on Arthur’s jacket instead of my coat because he told me he didn’t care. I wear Arthur’s old skates stuffed with some newspaper. They feel a bit big but still work fine!

  Outside, snowflakes sift down like flour from the sky as Bernard passes a horse ball hockey puck and I shoot it back with my hockey stick that Papa made. We skate back and forth on the rink pretending we are les Canadiens de Montréal. Bernard is Joe Benoit, and he tells me that I’m Toe Blake. We race each other, and I beat Bernard more times than he beats me. Papa is in the barn feeding his horses, and he checks on us now and then with a big smile on his face. He likes to watch us play hockey and skate on the rink that he built for us.

  “Hey, les p’tits gars,” I hear from the fence that runs alongside the road. When I look over, I can see Jeanine’s pink face staring at me. She has a mean smile, and she’s with her ugly friend Gilberte from school. “Are you having fun skating, little boys?” she shouts again.

  At first, I’m not sure what she means, then it hits me. I’m dressed like a boy! Jeanine is calling me a boy! It makes me shaking mad! When Papa steps from the barn, scowling, the girls run away laughing. I don’t care, I tell myself to help melt away my anger. I’m having fun skating in the backyard, and I know that when we go inside in a little while and hang our clothes to dry by the stove, Maman will have some hot tea with sugar ready for us, and maybe even some bread and molasses. And Jeanine will go home to a sick mother and a dirty house.

  I turn around to have a backward skating race with Bernard. He always falls down on his bum whenever we skate backward, but I don’t. As I cut smoothly across the ice on my skates, I catch sight of a face pressed against the frosty glass in the upstairs window of the bedroom that once was mine and Yvette’s.

  It’s Carolyn Coleman, watching Bernard and me skate. I wonder if she has a pair of skates too, and if she might like to come out and join us on the ice rink. But just as I wave, her face disappears, leaving behind a patch of fog on the window.

  8

  Store-bought Cookies

  On Monday, Jeanine Bonenfant doesn’t come to school. I’m so glad because I know that today I don’t have to worry about being teased by her in the schoolyard. Or about getting my face washed with snow on the way home for doing absolutely nothing wrong. Or getting slapped in the face or punched in the stomach again, which still hurts when I think about it. None of the Bonenfant children are here today, I notice at recess, and usually at least a couple of them turn up at school, except the oldest sister, who never comes at all. Sister Madeleine seems more content whenever Jeanine misses school. Today, nobody gets the strap, and she doesn’t yell once.

  After school, Georgette invites me to come to her house to play with her baby dolls. She has such nice ones, with pretty white bonnets and fancy nightgowns. She even has a Marie Dionne Quintuplet doll, which I’m not allowed to play with. It sits safely up on a shelf, dressed in a pretty blue robe, which is Marie’s color. Georgette is fascinated with the Dionnes. She says she wishes she could be one of them instead of herself, Georgette Blondin, so she could have everything she ever wanted and wouldn’t have to live in a house with parents who fight all the time. When I tell her that it would feel like living in a zoo, she just laughs at me.

  All of Georgette’s dolls have cloth bodies like my doll, and they don’t have real hair, either, but they’re much prettier than mine, and newer as well. And they have a whole wardrobe, so we can change their clothes. She always lets me play with the one that has blue eyes and long eyelashes and yellow hair. I wish I looked like that instead of my brown eyes and messy hair that never looks the same from one day to the next.

  “And look at her cute little nose,” I tell Georgette as I touch the tiny button. “I wish I had a nose like that instead of this ugly thing.”

  Georgette begins to laugh, and I grimace at her.

  “Don’t laugh, Georgette! How would you feel if you had a nose like mine?”

  “I’m not laughing about your nose,” she tells me, giggling. “I’m laughing because you’d look silly with a teeny nose like that one! Your nose is just fine, Aline. Mine is too wide, see,” she says, pointing at the tip of it. “It’s a big round ball. I don’t like it.”

  “I wish we could trade,” I tell her, and we both laugh.

  “So, what do you want le père Noël to bring you this Christmas?” Georgette asks, bouncing up and down on her bright store-bought bedspread with the pink and yellow rosebuds. “I’d like a new doll, a nurse doll, because when I grow up I want to be a nurse. I’d like some new paper dolls too. And a book. And my little brother wants Tinkertoys. And a toy fire truck. We’re going to look at the toys in Ogilvy’s soon. Are you? The store is so pretty in December, with all the bright lights and decorations.”

  I have never been to Ogilvy’s. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, Maman orders us brand new things from the Eaton’s catalog. And a lot of the time, Maman buys clothes for us at a store called The Neighbourhood, on Wellington. Used clothes, not new ones. I always worry that people will know. I’m glad we must all wear black dresses with pleats, white collars, and cuffs to school. This way, nobody can see my Neighbourhood clothes, the ones I wear at home.

  I sit quietly for a moment and pretend to comfort the baby doll on my shoulder. How do I tell Georgette that le père Noël hasn’t brought any new toys to our house for a couple of years now? Papa has made us presents for Christmas, like the little crib and dresser for our dolls, the old ones we got a long time ago. And wooden toys for the boys. And our double-sided Parcheesi and checkerboard. And Maman knits things for us; once she even knitted some little coats for our dolls when she had yarn to spare, but that was a long time ago too. I would love a book, but I don’t dare ask for one. I’m sure there’s no money for books. Thank goodness for the Carnegie Library, so close by.

  “Oh, I’m sure I’ll be getting a new doll this Christmas too,” I tell Georgette in a merry voice, even though I’m telling a lie. “One with real hair and beautiful cloth
es,” I add, making it even worse for myself. “And two books.” What’s one more lie, after all? I hope my guardian angel and God won’t be too disappointed in me.

  “What books do you want?” Georgette asks, and I’m stumped for a moment. What should I tell her? The only books I read are the Delly books that I get from the library. And I can’t think of any English book titles. Well, maybe Black Beauty or Little Women.

  Before I can answer, though, I hear some loud voices coming from downstairs. It sounds as if Georgette’s papa has just come home from work. There’s a lot of clattering and banging from the kitchen. And Georgette’s mother’s voice is high and shrill when she asks, “What do you think you’re doing, Henri? What’s the matter with you?” Then she says merde! A swear word! That’s when I hear a great scary crash, like dishes breaking, and a loud shout from Georgette’s papa. I jump. Georgette’s eyes grow wide and she cringes. There are footsteps running up the stairs now, and Georgette’s younger brother, Jean, peeks around the half-open door.

  “Papa has been drinking again,” he tells his sister. “And now he’s eating the chicken.”

  “Oh no,” Georgette says, scowling. “And now Maman is mad at him again.”

  Jean nods, then disappears. We hear his bedroom door slam.

  I frown. “Drinking what?” I ask her, and she starts laughing.

  “Booze,” she says. “Beer and whiskey, just like all the fathers around here. He wastes our money on it. You know how they like to stop for a drink after work? À la taverne.”

  “Not my father,” I tell her. “He doesn’t drink that stuff. He drinks lots of tea, though.”

  “Huh,” Georgette says, frowning like she doesn’t believe me. “That seems strange. We don’t like it when our papa comes home drunk from the tavern. He acts stupid and talks too loud and yells at Maman, and she yells back at him. And then he eats like a big pig and doesn’t leave enough meat for the rest of us. And doesn’t even care.”