Free Bilingual Being by Kathleen Saint-Onge Page B

Gretel’s.
    We wore our Saturday best,
    pretty dresses, cute and short, as
    we posed for all those men with their
    cameras, and for the Elder. And that’s
    how we know now that we were there – the
    photographs – because we’ve forgotten
    countless parties. Seems like only the
    boys there remember them well.
    That’s all right. Never mind.
    I have a party to invite you to at my
    new friend’s house – Sarah M. I met her
    in Grade 5, when her father (a reporter) was
    transferred here from Ottawa, and her lovely
    parents are making bread and soup, and
    have invited us for a mouse party
    today at 4. Can you make it?
    What’s a mouse party? That’s
    when we play house with Sarah’s fourteen
    mice, “little cousins,” she calls them, who
    live in the huge doll house that her father made
    for her, with the sweetest cotton beds her mum
    sewed for them, munch bits of cheese on tiny
    tables, climb up and down the elfin stairs,
    fast and free, and even eat the walls.
    It’s hilarious, pure delight, to watch
    their Lilliputian selves run around their
    own house, doing what they please, eating
    when and what they want, making up their own
    games, escaping easily. Plus there’s not a single
    frilly dress or camera in sight. Imagine! And
    when their spirits die, at least someone takes
    the time to bury them outside with dignity.

4
    CULTURAL BORDERLANDS
    LINGUISTIC JOINT CUSTODY
    I don’t remember learning English. I don’t remember learning French. The years went by with both my languages alternating like a game of leapfrog. Logistically speaking, there was one parent for English – my bilingual father who wanted (or felt obliged) to make it possible for his children to interact with his culturally anglophone family and his English “mum.” And there was one parent for French – my virtually monolingual mother who believed in children being natural extensions of their mothers, as she herself was, and as her own mother was, and so on. But since my father was a workaholic who withdrew psychologically even when he was home, and spoke only French with my mother or in her presence, our entire household effectively ran on French «essence.»
    Besides, all the neighbours, local clerks, servicemen, and salesmen spoke French – everyone from the whistling milk delivery man, to the pop delivery man with his big tins of «des chips au vinaig’,» to the bread man who brought green and pink loaves sliced horizontally for our party sandwiches, to the Chinese food delivery man who came on so many Friday nights with his local version of «des nouilles chinoises, pis du chow mein, pis des egg rolls, pis des p’tits spareribs.» Everything one needed was brought to the door. The mothers I knew seldom left home except to visit family, see the doctor, or buy a gift – and mostFrench mothers, including mine, didn’t drive a car. Groceries, medicine, dry cleaning, and everything else just showed up. Fathers went to work early and came back late. As a result, there was usually one place for English – school – and one place for French – home. This also meant that there were typical days for English: Monday to Friday, business hours. And days for French: Saturdays, Sundays, weekday evenings, and summers. The whole thing, in retrospect, sounds more like a cell phone plan than a family.
    There was one family for English, the St-Onge side – and one family for French, the Dumont side. As a result, the yearly calendar was also divided. Christmas Eve was spent with the French side at an aunt’s house, rotating from aunt to aunt each year, including midnight mass and the «réveillon,» the party after the mass, lasting until four or five in the morning, featuring pork in every conceivable dish, egg and tomato sandwiches, sweet onions, jellied salads, «des têtes de violons» [fiddlehead greens], and too much