Lisette put her mug down hard and glared at her. “Right now, you say? I’ve hated you all my life. Each time Social Services switched me from one home to another I’d draw a picture of what I thought you looked like. And after I’d tear it into tiny pieces. It was never the foster family’s fault; always my bad attitude, always a bad fit.”
Nadine pressed her lips together and turned away. She didn’t know what to say or do. The girl had a right to be angry, to want to hurt her. How to make her understand she had always loved her—always wanted her—that she had never lost hope they’d reunite one day? Social Services must’ve kept a record of all the calls she’d made through the years to make sure they still had her permission to give out her contact information to the girl. It was probably something they weren’t at liberty to tell Lisette. Would this have made a difference to her? Her anger might be too entrenched. She had hated too long to understand right now.
The silence was heavy between them. Nadine fiddled with her napkin, pressing her fingers along the fold. Lisette had been leaning forward clutching her coffee mug when she straightened and placed her hand on the side of her belly.
Nadine’s head shot up. “Is it moving?”
“More like dancing a jig.” She grinned. “It always seems to happen when I’m hungry. Kid’s already looking out for me.”
“You better eat something then.” She signalled to the waitress, who headed towards them. “The baby takes up all your energy at this stage.”
“I am feeling pretty tired these—” She glanced up at the waitress, “Do you have something small I can order?”
“Why don’t you try their chicken special? It’s close enough to supper time.” She needed to buy more time with her daughter. Having a meal together might ease the tension a bit.
Lisette raised her palm in protest. “That’ll bust my budget. I’m trying to save up for a new place to stay. Plus I’ve got to find some kind of furniture—used will do, but free would be better.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of the bill.” She turned to the waitress. “Make that two chicken specials with a coffee refill, please.”
The waitress scribbled in her order pad and trotted away.
Lisette studied Nadine for a brief moment. “You look kind of young to be my mother. I guess it’s because you were only sixteen when you had me.” She paused to sip her coffee. “Being pregnant, I can see how things must’ve been tough on you. But I’m a big girl now. I don’t hate you as much as when I was a kid, and it doesn’t mean we can’t be on talking terms.”
Nadine let out a soft sigh. If the girl claimed she hated her a little less, that was encouraging. “You’re looking for a new place to stay? Because of the baby, I suppose.”
Lisette frowned. “My roommates—it’s kind of complicated—want me out. It’s their place, so I have no say in the matter. I don’t pay actual rent, but I work it out by cleaning up after them. Not paying rent plus working three days a week at the depanneur helps me out with school. It gets a little crowded sharing the place with Serge and the other couple. And… there’s the baby coming soon. I’ve got till next week to find a place. I don’t imagine they’d physically throw me out, but it can get a little awkward.”
“And Serge?”
“What about him?”
The sharp look in Lisette’s eyes made Nadine hesitate. “Will he… be helping you with the move?” Maybe she was probing too much. Yet the girl wasn’t giving out too many details.
“I’ve only got my books and my clothes to move… and then there’s the baby’s crib.” She paused. “Serge will be joining me”—she fiddled with her hair, tugging a fistful, releasing it, and grabbing another—“as soon as he can… but he’ll help me with the rent and all that. He hasn’t said anything about letting me have his bed, so I’ll have to rent something furnished.” She cocked her head, a faraway look in her eyes. “I suppose I can always apply for a student loan after the baby comes. It’ll tide me over till I can get a better paying job.” She stared down at her hands. “And… well I’ll have to think about daycare.” She reached in her bag for a Kleenex and wiped the sheen of sweat on her forehead. “All these things to think about. But it’ll all work out… once Serge joins me. We can be a real family then.”
The waitress came back with the chicken platters, refilled their coffee mugs, and scooted off to the next customer. Lisette attacked her food as soon as it landed in front of her.
Nadine poked at her chicken with her fork. Nothing appeared appetizing. The girl was eight months pregnant, broke, and moving out by herself. No furniture. No steady job. Who would rent to her? The father of her child didn’t appear too concerned about her situation. Who was this guy, and where were his brains? Something didn’t seem right. Nadine hesitated to ask too many questions. She watched how fast the girl wolfed down her food. Had she even eaten today? This was her own flesh and blood. Her daughter. Would the girl be too proud to accept help?
“Please don’t take this wrong.” Nadine put her fork down and Lisette looked up from her plate. “It looks to me like… you can use some help. I have a spare bedroom at home. You’re welcome to stay till you get back on your feet… or longer… if you want.”
Lisette shot her a sardonic smile and reached for her glass of water. “Isn’t this a little late to play mother?”
Nadine’s heart raced. She had gone too far. The girl hadn’t asked for help. She was pushing herself on her. Judging her situation. What did it matter that the father of the child wasn’t going to be around? It was none of her business. If the girl walked out, she’d never see her again. “I only… wanted to—”
Lisette lifted her palm to stop her. “Right, well. You do owe me.” She stabbed her chicken, cutting it into bite-sized pieces. “Supposing I take you up on your offer, I’d have to check out the place first. The room has to be big enough to fit a crib. It’d only be for a short while—that’s if I decide to go ahead with it. Serge and I are getting back together soon. So don’t go making any long-term plans for me. It’s not as if we can pick up and pretend we’re family after twenty years.”
Nadine clutched her fork. The thought of eating anything made her stomach churn. The girl was right. Twenty lost years. No memories connecting them. Strangers with nothing in common. Her life had ceased to exist when they took her daughter away. She had plodded along all this time, reacting to, but never participating in what was happening around her. Sharing a meal with her own daughter right now was a gift from the gods. If there was a price to pay she’d have to deal with it, but at this moment, her heart was bursting too much to even think about that. She’d have to keep their conversation going and try to find some kind of common ground. She noticed a rolled up newspaper sticking out of Lisette’s bag. “Who do you think will win the municipal elections on Sunday?”
Lisette glanced up at her. “Jean Drapeau is scaring the shit out of the people to get himself elected. He’s got everybody thinking the opposition is full of terrorists and revolutionaries.”
Nadine’s stomach relaxed. Politics seemed to interest her—a good start to connect. “From what I hear, Drapeau’s Civic Party will get most of the seats.”
“And that’ll be the end of democracy in Montreal.” Lisette frowned. “He’ll keep his dictator billy club hidden in his desk as long as you vote for him every four years and keep your mouth shut the rest of the time.”
“He’s still a popular choice. He brought in the metro system, Expo ‘67, Place des Arts, and now he’s planning for the 1976 Summer Olympics.”
“What has he done for the poor and the people he made homeless to make room for his grand ideas?”
“You talk about Drapeau using fear to get elected, but what about the FLQ? Haven’t they been using fear and violence to get what they want? How is that different from the way Drapeau operates?”
Lisette thought for a moment. “I’m OK with their
mission, but I’ve never approved of their methods. Sylvie and Pit will shoot me if they hear me say this, but the FLQ is only a small militant group aiming to blow up democracy for the sake of democracy. Just as Drapeau is sabotaging democracy with his lies and fear campaign. Democracy is like a good marriage. You need to have trust and respect from both sides.”
“I’m glad to see we already agree on something.” Nadine smiled at her.
Lisette looked at Nadine’s untouched plate. “Hey, if you’re not eating that, ask for a doggy bag and I’ll bring it home for Serge.”
***
Nadine shook the rain from her jacket into the bathtub and hung it on a hanger to dry on the shower curtain bar. Peaches meowed nonstop from the kitchen. The cat’s feeding time was two hours ago but her rendezvous with Lisette had lasted longer than expected.
She had daydreamed of this meeting too often to convince herself it had really happened. She had longed to reach across the table to touch her hand, to feel the warmth surging through her veins. They had shared the same blood for nine months twenty years ago. But her daughter had erected an invisible barrier with all those angry remarks each time Nadine attempted to get to know her better.
She had tried to focus on what seemed to interest her daughter most: Serge and politics. Her face softened when Serge’s name came up. Without asking too many questions, Nadine gathered he drove a taxi part-time and was active in some political group. Lisette babbled on about breastfeeding and making her own baby food. Nadine swallowed hard recalling the drugs the nuns had forced down her throat to dry up her own breast milk. Each time Lisette mentioned what a good mother she’d try to be, her chest tightened.
They agreed she’d come and visit Nadine’s apartment the next day to see if the extra bedroom was what she wanted. They went their separate ways; Lisette headed for the university while Nadine traced her way back home.
The rush hour trip home had seemed to take forever. By the time she stepped off the bus she had almost convinced herself that Lisette would one day forgive her for not having been a good mother to her. Yet a nagging thought plagued her all the way home. She’d probably never hear from her again. Payback for having left Aunt Jan, Papi and Grandma Stella without a word so many years ago.
Peaches meowed louder.
She went to the kitchen pantry and took out the food bag. The cat circled round her feet, purring and rubbing against her ankles. “Move, you silly, beautiful old cat. I can’t fill your bowl with you blocking my way.”
Peaches sprang to her bowl and started nibbling her food before Nadine had finished serving. If only life were that simple. She loved and took great care of this furry orange beauty and he reciprocated with loyalty and companionship. Peaches always stood guard beside her on her pillow when she woke confused and sweating from a bad dream. He stayed perched on the bedroom dresser when a lover stayed for the night—although that hadn’t happened in over a year. The cat was privy to all her fears and longings without ever betraying her. If only the world had more people as loyal as Peaches.
So much to do before Lisette came over the next day, yet she didn’t know where to start. The apartment needed a thorough cleaning but she’d tackle all the clutter in the extra bedroom first. Things had to be welcoming enough for Lisette to want to move in. The bedroom was more like a storage area for anything she didn’t use. Piles of books, old magazines, winter clothes and boots occupied a good section of the room.
The receptionist from work, Diane, came to sleep in that room each time she had a heated argument with her boyfriend. Nadine had offered her a place to stay the first time she noticed the bruises on her arms. The blue marks had faded away, but when they reappeared, Diane came back for a couple more days. Nadine enjoyed Diane’s company but wished she’d let go of her loser boyfriend. Not that she was in any position to talk, having held on too long to certain undeserving men over the years.
Her first serious relationship had been short-lived, ending the same day her doctor told her the itchiness in her groin was due to a bad case of crabs. Her partner at the time, Dany, had turned the story around and accused her of infecting him. Then there was Mike. It took her three years to figure out why she’d find cat after cat mutilated in her backyard—two of them she had adopted as kittens. She caught him red-handed one day smashing a stray cat in the head with a bloodied brick. Fucking cats are evil and full of diseases, he’d yelled at her. I can’t sleep with a damn cat lurking around the bedroom.
There were three others after that. Two lasted beyond the lusting stage but dropped her, alleging her lack of commitment. Gilles, her last one, insisted on looking at his lesbian porn magazines before making out. He claimed it made him a better lover and when she broke up with him, he mailed her a dildo with the words think of me scribbled with a black marker.
What was it about her that attracted such men? Was she tainted, or damaged like the nuns had drummed into all the unwed mothers at the maternity home? Had she not paid enough when they took her infant child away from her? Grandpa Pritchart’s repeated remarks that she came from bad blood echoed within her. Troubled men had populated her childhood, starting with a jealous husband murdering her mother in cold blood. Uncle Denis, agreeing to adopt her without acknowledging her as his own. Grandpa Pritchart, whose weakness had ruined any chance of her having a normal childhood. And then there was Uncle Peter… she had almost forgotten about him.
Chapter 17
Montreal
1951
Nadine lowered herself into her chair at the long wooden table and unwrapped her bread and cheese-spread lunch. She tried to avoid glancing at Manon’s thick ham and lettuce sandwich across from her. She had scraped the bottom of her jar of cheese this morning. She’d have to settle for lard sandwiches for her lunches until her next payday.
The factory foreman had agreed to try her out at the sewing machines. The raise in wages would only appear after her six months of apprenticeship. If only she’d stop making those stupid mistakes all the time. She worked overtime most nights, always at regular pay—no overtime paid before she was eighteen.
Working late was better than staring at the damp walls in her shabby room at the boarding house. After wolfing down her usual boiled egg and slice of bread for supper, the only thing left to do was go to bed for the night. The landlady, her only visitor, did her weekly rounds to collect the rent, sometimes bringing her a bowl of her leftover vegetable soup. The long hours at work left her drained and sleep took over as soon as her head hit the pillow. No time to think. Nor time to focus on the intimate noises coming from the other lodgers and the shared washroom down the hallway.
Manon finished half of her sandwich and rewrapped the rest. “Can’t eat all this. I sliced the ham too thick. Here—” She slid it over to Nadine’s side of the table. “I’d bring it home for my supper but I’m going out right after work. Go on, take it. It’ll go to waste if you don’t.”
“Thanks, Manon. You’re a good friend.” Nadine placed the half sandwich in her lunch bag. A welcome change to the boiled egg she had planned for supper. “It’s been a while since I’ve tasted ham.”
Even with the extra hours at work, her pay only managed to cover rent and basic food items. Meat wasn’t one of them. Often one of the women at the table happened to have brought an extra tea biscuit or had an apple she wasn’t hungry for. It usually found its way to Nadine’s place at the lunch table. At first, accepting this food had triggered an uneasiness in her chest. But the handouts were always accompanied by a warm smile, a gentle tug on her hair, or an affectionate touch of her arm. She came to understand that these hard-working women looked out for her as if she were a family member. Their small gifts of food came straight from the heart. They helped ease the hunger pangs that woke her up in the middle of the night, and gave her more stamina at work. One day she’d like to help make working conditions a little easier for these kind women.
She look
ed at the women sitting around the table and her throat tightened. Some came from immigrant backgrounds, but most were from poor French Canadian families. All chatted together like old friends, hurrying to finish their meagre meal before the end of their half-hour lunch break. “Everybody has been so good to me here.”
Manon cocked her head. “Everybody?”
Nadine made a face and shrugged. “The section foreman has been yelling in my ear a lot lately. We’re not allowed to talk with the other operators while we’re working, so I can’t ask them for help. How am I supposed to learn the trade if no one shows me how?”
“He’s supervising your apprenticeship, so he’s supposed to instruct you on how to do things. Isn’t that what he’s doing? He’s often at your workstation.”
“I try hard to do things right. He throws the work on my table and lets me figure it out. If I’m lucky the operator next to me gets the same type of work and I can copy what she’s doing. When he catches me sewing a piece wrong, he yells at me that I’ll never make it to the end of my training. Last week, he docked my pay because I pricked myself on the needle and left a teeny blood stain on the seam of an inside pocket. Had I noticed it, I could’ve snipped it off.”
“He’s the biggest jerk on the floor.” Manon’s eyes narrowed. “I’ll let the other girls know what’s happening.” She leaned forward, her voice lowered. “Leave your lunch bag on the back of your chair here. The undergarments we’re working on are pretty skimpy. They won’t take up much room in your bag. We’ll figure out who’s working on which piece. Each operator will stitch up a different sample for you and sneak it into your bag on their way to the toilets. Study the stitching at home and you’ll be OK.” She paused to smile at her. “Hey, don’t look so discouraged. The girls did it for me too when I first started. Believe me, it sure made my life much easier. The better you get at your job, the fewer excuses he’ll have to put his slimy hands on you.”
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