She sets her cup on the edge of the brand-new sink that Méo has just put in under the pump, runs some water. For a long time. It’s cold. It comes directly from far down in the earth. It hurts. It feels good.
“Aren’t you asleep? Go back to bed!”
It feels even colder in the bedroom. The nighttime dampness has seeped in everywhere and the air seems wet. Rhéauna shuts the window and races back to her bed.
Béa hasn’t moved. She merely looks at her sister and frowns. Two very black marbles in the dark. Intimidating. Béa is impressive when she’s serious. Rhéauna lifts the blanket, climbs into bed next to her sister. She is shaking but now it’s not from cold.
“I know you didn’t get into my bed to warm up my place, Béa …”
Béa presses herself against her, puts her arm around her sister’s waist.
“What happened? What did Grandma say?”
Rhéauna’s sigh is not an ordinary sigh. Béa knows her sister’s sighs, which are often sighs of exasperation. Because of her. Because of what she does, what she says. But this one, deeper, longer, ends with a kind of trembling close to a sob that is new, as if it were stretching out because, in fact, it didn’t want to end. But maybe it will never end either. Because Béa suspects that she will hear it in her head for the rest of her life: first she’ll remember that endless trembling, the expression of something that’s impossible to say, a sigh that she heaves without realizing it, and then what will have followed, terrible news that will have turned their lives upside down. Suddenly she doesn’t want to hear the news, but it’s too late, she has asked for it and, soon, her sister will tell her. At the end of the endless sigh.
Rhéauna turns her head, looks her straight in the eye.
“Let me cry a little first. Afterward, in a little while, when I’ve finished, I’ll tell you everything …”
But she doesn’t have time to cry: Alice has just got into bed with them. She inches her way between her two sisters and huddles up next to Rhéauna.
“Can’t you get to sleep either, Alice?”
The youngest, most-vulnerable member of the family has a tiny, fluty little voice when she is worried. Her grandmother says that it’s the voice of a mouse in a trap.
“I don’t want to be the last one to find out what’s going on, as usual.”
The three of them huddle together. If it were because of a storm they would laugh at their fear, at the same time complaining about the narrowness of the bed, about the smells that come from it, but this is a serious moment and they need to be crowded together like this. They need this exchange of warmth to get through the minutes that will follow.
And when the story comes, in little murmured admissions, in delicate touches because Rhéauna wants to spare her two sisters, not rush too much, they are galvanized by the horror of the looming separation, of the loss of the grandparents they adore, of the journey to be taken, first by Rhéauna, then by the other two – a whole continent to cross, it’s unimaginable – and above all by this new life they don’t want with a woman they don’t know in a strange and distant city when they’re so happy here in Maria, hidden and protected in the middle of nowhere.
For once, Monsieur Connells, who owns the general store, greeted them with open arms. He has been advised of their visit and knows that today Joséphine will have money to spend. A lot of money. It’s not every day that you have to put together a whole new wardrobe for a child and he rubs his hands at the thought of the dollars – ten? twenty? thirty? – that will land in the drawer of his cash register.
Word soon made the rounds of Maria that the eldest of the Rathier girls, grandchildren of Méo and Joséphine Desrosiers, was going to join her mother in Montreal. Comments, good and bad, quickly follow. Some of the nastiest claim that the little girl’s mother, Maria, is a prostitute in Providence and a floozy in Montreal because that’s all she knows how to do; others claim that she is going to be a servant in some rich person’s house in Outremont, a fancy part of the city, and that she’ll drag her daughter into the same trade to make more money; others, finally, believe the story that Joséphine has been telling forever because they have also seen relatives leave their country for the eastern United States to try to make a better living. They all take pity on the child who is going to be thrown, without being consulted, into a dangerous adventure from which it’s impossible to imagine how it will end and that will unfurl in a world that no one knows in Maria. To travel across Canada by train like that, all alone, is dangerous, isn’t it? And all those strangers you travel with. Men on their own who may be looking for prey …
Joséphine has turned a deaf ear on all those negative considerations since last week but it’s beginning to get on her nerves and it is here, at the general store, that she has decided to put an end to the ridiculous gossip and rude remarks. After all, it’s the best place in Maria to start a rumour that you want everyone to know. More than on the steps of the Sainte-Maria-de-Saskatchewan church, because here there’s no holding back. They’re not in the presence of God or, even more, his representative, curé Bibeau, who screens everything, censors and slashes away at everything and, from the steps of his church on Sunday morning, transmits a version of the news that he himself has expurgated, that he imposes as the only possible truth, shouting and gesticulating broadly. Despite her deep piety, Joséphine has always been wary of him, and fears that if she ever decided to confide in him, he would always side with the most ill intentioned, the most depraved and that he would push for a disgusting portrait of her daughter and her granddaughter, supposedly to set an example. Or to illustrate his theory that no one should leave Maria, especially not to go east where there are so many opportunities to lose their souls. The opportunity would be too good, he would most likely take advantage of it to discourage his parishioners from moving away from his influence.
Maria is an anomaly in Saskatchewan. A small Francophone, Catholic enclave surrounded by Anglophone Protestants, lost in the middle of prairies so vast they seem infinite and forgotten by all because of that difference, it has withdrawn into itself and come to believe that it is a world complete, well defined, governed by unchanging laws dispensed by one man: the curé. A narrow and simple-minded way of thinking, encouraged by this somewhat despotic but in fact sincere priest, that ultimately made it a place impossible to live in, under its false appearance of a neat and tidy countryside and a picturesque village. Although knowing that they would be shouted down by the majority of Maria’s inhabitants, those who have the courage to leave know that they’ve made the right choice and never return. Some inhabitants in their early twenties, among those who are starting to look beyond the limits of the village, actually envy Rhéauna – in hushed tones of course – and wish her great happiness at the other end of the country. Even as the daughter of a prostitute or a maid in the house of a rich family. And when word started to get around that she would soon be joined by her two younger sisters, they applauded at the thought that a complete family from Maria was going to get rid of its overly tight ties to this village at the end of the world and cooped up in its solitude. The grandparents are too old. They could tolerate neither the journey nor living so far away, but the three girls have the unheard-of good luck to experience the vast world and the most liberal of the young villagers envy them.
Monsieur Connells has brought out the prettiest things he had for a little girl Rhéauna’s age, spread them out across the wide varnished counter – white stockings, bloomers and other underwear, dresses, coats, gloves, shoes, little straw hats. The shelf for “Little Girls 4 to 10” has been cleaned out and the storekeeper hopes he’ll sell Joséphine Desrosiers everything he has in Rhéauna’s size. He has even taken out the Eaton’s catalogue, in case … For shoes, for instance, of which he doesn’t have many to choose from.
Rhéauna, who’s been silent and reserved ever since she learned that she was leaving, peers at it all with a glum look. At any other time, she would jump for joy and shriek with excitement before so ma
ny nice clothes, but this sudden abundance of riches – you have to be rich to afford a whole new wardrobe all at once – leaves her cold despite her grandmother’s encouraging words.
“Yes, it’s pretty, Grandma, really pretty …”
She feels the softness of the bright-red winter coat, the lightness of the pale-green organdy dress, but says nothing. Joséphine turns her head away to hide her annoyance.
“Just try a little, Nana. Monsieur Connells knows quality, and he’s brought out all his nicest things for you. The clothes you wear here wouldn’t be right for Montreal. You’d look poor, and your mother sent me a good-sized cheque so I could buy clothes for you … Just try, Nana!”
Rhéauna looks down, runs her hand over a scarf so soft that it feels like silk.
“I know all that, Grandma. But you’ll never see me in those clothes. Did you think about that?”
Joséphine bows her head, brings her hand to her heart.
“What you wear doesn’t matter to me, sweetheart, you should know that … And the day you leave you’ll be wearing all new clothes so I’ll be able to see you in some of them …”
Monsieur Connells coughs into his hand and takes out from behind the counter what he considers to be his pièce de résistance: a pair of winter boots so fine, so light, so soft they’d be unthinkable in a place like Maria, but that Rhéauna will certainly be able to wear in Montreal where as everybody knows the wooden sidewalks are scraped every day and there is less snow than here. They even say – though no one really believes it – that whole winters can go by there without snow!
“I don’t know why those boots have ended up here. You couldn’t wear them in Maria. But when I knew you were going to Montreal, Nana, I thought about you right away …”
Joséphine fingers and hefts the boots.
“These boots are for a woman, Monsieur Connells. They’re way too big for her.”
“Then she can give them to her mother! Your daughter Maria, we used to call her Maria from Maria when we were little, remember, she’ll certainly be glad to get such a fine present from her daughter …”
“We don’t know her tastes, Monsieur Connells and, even more, we don’t know her shoe size!”
When she leaves the general store, she has on the same clothes as when she went inside. She did agree to try on a few items – the pale-green dress, for instance, that cost the earth – but she refused to put on the straw hat or the pretty, crocheted white gloves as Monsieur Connells had suggested:
“Children usually like it, Nana, wearing clothes that’ve just been bought for them … You’ll be pretty in them, why won’t you try them on?”
“They’re clothes to wear on a trip …”
“You won’t wear them just on your trip. You’ll go on wearing them in Morial …”
“That’s just it. I don’t want to look here the way I’ll look in Montreal!”
Her grandmother hasn’t said anything. She simply paid – with crisp new bills, fresh from the bank – pursing her lips. She feels that Rhéauna is gradually moving away from her, from her sisters, too. From everyone, in fact. As if she were getting ready for the separation piecemeal instead of waiting for the final cut. Maybe to reduce her suffering. Joséphine, who wants to fuss over her before she leaves, to spoil her, to stuff her full of all her favourite things to eat – who knows what she’ll be able to eat there, with a mother who goes to work, in a city where fresh food may be rare – doesn’t know how to react. She is used to simple situations, to problems that require common sense, and the helplessness of her granddaughter who will soon be separated from everything she knows and sent to the end of the world has her flustered. When her daughter Maria left, it was quite the opposite: she had chosen to go away. She couldn’t wait to hop on the train, to leave for good what she called a hole in the middle of the cornfield and finally be free. Now, though, she can find neither the words nor the actions to console Rhéauna. She has tried to talk with her, but the obstinate little girl told her that everything was fine, that she understood the situation and couldn’t wait to see her mother again. She hadn’t said though that she was anxious to leave.
Joséphine would need advice for handling this grave problem, she knows that. But where can she go? Not to the presbytery, certainly, where she would find only unwillingness to understand and ignorance. Yes, ignorance. The booming fat man is an ignoramus of the worst kind and she’d never ask him for advice. The school mistress maybe; she seems to appreciate Rhéauna’s intelligence and acuteness. Meanwhile, the tension in the house is going up and everyone is miserable. Alice, already skinny, has stopped eating and Béa gawks at her sister as if she doesn’t recognize her. As for Méo, his misery can be read in the furrows of new wrinkles on his forehead.
The other night he’d said to her:
“We’re going to lose them one by one, Joséphine. As if they were dying one after the other. We don’t deserve that …”
The purchases paid for, she picks up the packages – a number of brown paper bags, a few boxes – and follows her granddaughter who has already left the store, head down, making the little bell fastened to the door jingle.
It’s a cool, late-August day. It smells like the beginning of the harvests and the children are already talking about going back to school. Rhéauna thinks about the school she will attend in Montreal, a gigantic red-brick box like all the schools in big cities, so she’s heard, where hundreds of pupils are crowded in, whereas she is used to a tiny country school where she knows everybody. She has trouble picturing herself in a class of thirty pupils – thirty students, there aren’t that many in the whole school in Maria! – with as classmates children who’ll think that she has every flaw in the world because she comes from far away and they’ll laugh at her Saskatchewan accent. (A few years ago, a visitor from the city of Quebec detected in the inhabitants of Maria a slight English accent, which everyone saw as an insult.)
A new life, a new mother, a new school full of strangers … On the front steps of the general store, she is overcome by an urge to cry. She’d like to plunk the packages she’s carrying on the floor, sit on the top step and give in to the sobs and angry cries that she’s been holding back ever since she learned that she will be going away. But no. Not in front of her grandmother. Her grandmother has to think that she’s strong. She’s not sure that Joséphine is taken in by the role of the reasonable little girl that Rhéauna has decided to play until her departure – because of the looks she has intercepted and her frowns when they talked about the journey, because of the expression of doubt that she reads in her grandmother’s eyes when she insists that all is well, but would never admit, to anyone, how unhappy she is.
The buggy is waiting for them at the door. Devil, the family horse who doesn’t live up to his name, is placidly munching the apple that Méo just put in his mouth. Méo himself is taking the sun as he smokes his pipe, which today smells sweetly of vanilla. He has decided to treat himself to the package of vanilla tobacco he’s been coveting for weeks. It’s good, it tastes like dessert and it numbs a little the pain that he’s been feeling ever since he learned that his granddaughter is going away. Old age, yes, fine, he’s accepted it for ages, it’s in the order of things, it happens to everybody; but the departure of a source of joy and pride like Rhéauna, of a child you hadn’t expected, who arrived without warning in your existence at an age when you thought you’d brought up all the children life had to give you – this cruel separation after five years of a family life transformed by the presence of three turbulent, funny, exasperating little girls, the loneliness of a solitude for two that awaits him and Joséphine in the silence imposed on a house accustomed to cries, to laughter, to high-pitched voices – will be the end of him, he knows it. And it is death, hidden very nearby, snickering, unyielding, that awaits him. He wants to go first. Or at the same time as Joséphine. Because a day without her is unthinkable. Even more than a day without Rhéauna, without Béa, without Alice.
When Alice arrived in
Maria, she was only three years old. She doesn’t know her mother at all, has no memory of her: why should she pick up and join her at the other end of the world? Blood ties? Just because of blood ties? Ties of affection then? Worried nights because fever has struck a little girl with no resistance, the first steps, the first words, the first start of the new school year, the first communion, the first adult sorrow in a child who is too young to know an adult sorrow? Rhéauna, who skips rope in front of the house chanting, “One, two, three, alairy / My first name is Mary / If you think it’s necessary / Look it up in the dictionary”; Béa who wolfs down her serving of pigs’-feet stew and congratulates her grandmother for being the best cook on the planet; Alice and her dolly, Geneviève de Brabant, whom she drags everywhere because it’s the prettiest thing she’s ever seen! His daughter Maria has never known any of that and she dares to beg to have her children back after she has abandoned, yes, abandoned them so she can earn a few dollars in a cotton mill where life is certainly no more enjoyable than it is deep in the prairies! It’s fine to repatriate three little girls who’ve already been brought up, but will she know what to do with them? After the homecoming kisses and the attempts at self-justification, what will she be able to do with these three girls she doesn’t know? These dark thoughts ruin somewhat the sugary taste of tobacco and suddenly Méo wishes he could erase the last weeks, go back to the beginning of August when life was so sweet and so simple. Well, almost. Because life on the prairies is never sweet or simple.
He helps his wife and his granddaughter to lift their packages into the buggy, gets them comfortably settled on the leather bench.
Devil has finished his apple and now turns his head in the hope he’ll be given a second. No. Another time. Méo clicks his tongue twice. The horse recognizes the starting signal, moves away from the general store, prances across the village.
Crossing the Continent Page 3