Street of Riches

by Gabrielle Roy

  Then a lantern was hung from the ceiling of the boxcar. It gave little illumination, just enough to see the bare planks within which we were enclosed. Almost all the travelers sat on the floor; Maman and I were seated on our suitcase. Once again Maman had wrapped me in her coat. And soon we felt we were in motion, but just barely so; the track must have been damaged for a considerable distance. With the heavy doors slid shut upon us, it was like a dream in which you know you are moving forward a little, yet how do you know it ?

  Someone had a phonograph and records, and he played blues and jazz. Couples began to dance on the bit of free space between the two rows of people sitting on the floor. The light was faltering; the couples cast huge shadows which danced on the walls . . . shadows advancing, receding. Sometimes they came apart... then melted together again.

  An old lady near Maman complained, "Isn't it dreadful? Young people who an hour ago did not know each other—and

  look at them, in each other's arms! Think of dancing at such a moment! M

  Then they danced something even worse—a tango. I felt Maman stiffen beside me. My head was in the hollow of her shoulder. She put her hand on my eyes to induce me to close them, perhaps to prevent my seeing the dancers. But through her fingers I watched the shadows on the wall...

  And I asked Maman: "Georgianna wouldn't listen to you? Will she be unhappy, as you said?" Maman certainly hoped she wouldn't. Then I asked her what was necessary for people to get married.

  "They must love each other...."

  "But Georgianna says she's in love. . . ."

  "She thinks she's in love," said Maman.

  "And the Dukhobors... why do they burn down bridges ?"

  "They are visionaries," replied Maman; "they use bad means to accomplish what are most likely good ends."

  "Don't you know it—for good and all—when you're in love?"

  "Sometimes not," Maman answered.

  "You knew it, though?"

  "I thought I knew "

  Then my mother became vexed. She seemed very put out with me. She said: "You're too prying! It's not your problem ... all that Forget it Go to sleep "

  30 Street oi Riches

  A Bit of Yellow Ribbon

  M

  y sister Odette was then like a princess among us. For a year she had done tatting—nothing Lbut tatting; then she worked in raffia. The next year she practiced a prelude by Rachmaninoff; now her heart was attracted to the mystical life, and she faithfully attended the devotions of the month of Mary, "which is the loveliest," then those of the month of the Sacred Heart, and visited as well the little Massabielle Grotto which had been reproduced in our region; but since there was no single protruding bit of stone for twenty miles around, it had had to be dug in soft earth; at all seasons the grotto would cave in. When people pointed out to my mother that, with all the things she had to take care of, she might have expected more help from Odette, my mother would reply, "She does help me She prays for us."

  For my part, in those days I thought Odette lucky beyond all belief. I recall the alpaca skirts she wore, almost as high as her ankles. You could see her handsome high shoes, the ends of which were pointed and turned up a bit, like the prow of a boat; a special hook was required for their ten little black buttons. She also wore vastly padded bodices with big sailor collars, made of so sheer a silk that she had to use corset covers underneath; but since these were equally thin, Odette had to wear yet another piece of clothing underneath them. The loveliest thing she possessed, though, in my opinion, was the outfit she wore to go motoring with her bosom friend Carmel, who was the daughter of wealthy parents. Odette would slip on a full raglan coat, beige in color—already she was beginning to have the look of an explorer—dark glasses, and a sort of helmet with a visor from which hung a full veil intended to protect her against the dust of the road. Thus clad she would sometimes go as far as ten miles away with Carmel in her automobile.

  Perhaps I admired Odette too much really to love her. Then, too, several of the chores she imposed upon me were grievous to me. Using the excuse that I was small enough to slip under it easily, she would send me under the table to dust its heavy legs, which were elaborately ornamented with twists and curlicues, with scrolls and arabesques. And she, who could have no

  idea what was beneath that table, urged me to twist my dusting rag into a tiny, tiny point so as not to miss reaching the very bottoms of all the holes in the carving. She also made me dust the banister of our staircase, with its eighteen bars almost as tortured as the table legs—and then she would claim that I was soldiering at the job!

  Above all, however, I was terribly envious of Odette's possessions. Her blue room, for instance, the nicest in the house! Maman said that Odette deserved it because she was twenty years old—I failed to see that this was any reason—and also because she was neat and orderly. Yes, she was orderly after a fashion, which consisted—probably the better to hide them from my eyes—in stuffing precious, mysterious little things into very small boxes, which she then placed in medium-sized boxes that were in turn enclosed in larger boxes still.

  I was forbidden so much as to put a foot on the doorsill of Odette's room.

  "You put one foot there one day," she would say, "and on the next the other foot is there, too!"

  Despite everything, it once happened that as I was passing Odette's room I stopped two fingers' width from the sill and saw protruding from an ill-closed drawer a bit of yellow ribbon.

  Instantly I longed for that yellow ribbon with so much intensity that I do not recall ever since having set my heart so much on any other object.

  Yet why? To wind it around my doll's hair? Or around my own, which had gotten into a thorough tangle, perhaps in the hope that I might thus make myself more presentable? Or only to tie around the neck of my big gray cat which slept all day under the currant bushes? I no longer know; I can remember only my passion of desire for that bit of yellow ribbon.

  I at once considered every tactical approach and elected one coinciding with an opinion of mother's, which held that "what you ask for very politely, with all your heart, you obtain." I went off to find Odette, all honey sweet: "Dear, kind, wonderful D&Iette! . . ."

  "What do you want now?" she asked, ruining all my softening strategy.

  "Your lovely yellow ribbon, please, Odette ..." I went on, but with a greatly diminished sweetness, perhaps already on a war footing.

  I have never seen a person react so quickly as Odette, jump 32 Street of Riches

  so fast to false conclusions, search me with so penetrating a look, and accuse me so basely: "You nosy little brat! Miss Meddlesome! You've been going through my bureau drawers again!"

  Tliis dreadful reputation I don't think was merited, since I almost always stopped short at the edge of what was forbidden ... but I had an imaginative eye, and did not an inch of ribbon hanging out of the corner of a drawer allow one to presume a great length of it inside ?

  In any case, I was so hurt that I retreated to the hut I then possessed in the far reaches of the garden—a hut constructed as though to stage theatricals, since, just like a stage, it had only three sides; I had run short of planks to close it in on all four.

  Meanwhile, my mother was giving signs of those strange adult emotions that are neither wholly sorrow nor wholly joy. From time to time I noticed that her eyelids were reddened; then in Maman's beautiful brown eyes, even though they were swollen, I watched rise the sun of happiness, yet a happiness so difficult to reach, so unknown, that I was afraid of it.

  I did not like seeing my mother distraught in this way; here was for me a beginning of insecurity. Often I went close to her, asking her what was the matter, and she replied "Nothing," but looked at me the while with an odd intensity, as though 1 were going to disappear from before her very eyes. Then, telling me to run along, she would say, "You're still too young."

  But one day as she sat darning in the two-seated swing, my mother called to me and told me: "It is time that you, too, were t
old the great news. Your sister Odette," she added, "has chosen the better part "

  That did not astonish me in the least. To me it was obvious enough that Odette, having always had the better part, could only continue along the same line.

  Baffled at my calm acceptance of this news, Maman explained to me: "You understand: she has chosen God."

  That puzzled me somewhat. Up until then it had seemed to me rather that God was the one Who chose ... as, for instance, when during the course of a picnic, He did not send us a good, spanking shower.

  Maman continued, "Odette is going to become a nun."

  And then there burst upon me the obvious, the wonderful, the unbelievable advantage accruing to me from all this. "Odette," I inquired, "is going to leave us all her things ?"

  Astonished, perhaps, that I was so perceptive, that I should

  so quickly have glimpsed what a religious vocation is, Maman talked to me like an adult. "Odette is going to give up everything" said she. As she spoke, my mother let her eyes linger over our fine trees, warm in the sunshine, the flowers blooming in their beds. "She will give up, before her time, her share of the world, her youth, even her freedom!"

  But I interpreted it otherwise: her little yellow ribbon; and it was hard for me to conceal my delight. Not that I thought it bad, or even out of place, but the emotions which were growing complicated around me at that juncture confused me and left me at a loss.

  I began to hover around Dedette. One day when she was kneeling on the floor, busily extracting things from her trunk, which lay open in the middle of her room, I halted on the door-sill and watched her.

  "it doesn't look as though you really want to go," I said to her.

  Her smile at me was so friendly that I began to squirm in my dress. I wasn't overeager, because of my secret plans, that she be on good terms with me. "You may come in," said Odette. "Come on in, Petite Misire!"

  I was watching her out of the corner of my eye; she was absorbed in reading old letters; a few she tore up, others she left intact and tucked away in one of her famous boxes. I didn't understand what there could be about this occupation to make one so sad, so alone. But I put off to the morrow any talk about the yellow ribbon.

  Odette had reached the stage of taking from her trunk her sheer shirtwaists, her ten-button shoes, in order to distribute them ... and I even saw her pull out a lady's motoring outfit. "Oh! You're not going to give that away!"

  I had protested with such heat that D&iette sat back on her heels a moment and gave me a little smile.

  "What purpose do you think it will serve me now?" And she did me the very great honor of consulting me on the choice of persons to whom she should give her possessions. I gave her my advice wholeheartedly. "Give your automobile clothes to Agn&s, whatever you do." "But Agn&s is still too small. She'd be lost in them." "That makes no difference; give them to Agn&s. You ask me whom you should give them to; I say give them to Agnhs "

  Yet all that scarcely furthered my own business. Right beside Odette, free to examine without let every box, to handle 34 Street o! Riches

  them a little, even to open them, how happy might I have been had the feelings between us not been so muddled!

  The next day I again sought Odette out, this time firmly determined to work on my own behalf, to obtain my share -after all, the most insignificant—of the goods she was bounteously passing around. I found her as she was the day before, sitting on the floor, but her hands idle at her sides, her eyes far away. What on earth do grownups see when, staring thus fixedly, they look at nothing ? I wondered.

  At any rate I made a good start. Perfectly aware of what this meant to me, I said to my sister, "Don't go, Dedette. We'll keep you all the same."

  Her nostrils quivered, her lips began to tremble; I was very much afraid that she was also going to begin to cry. But no. She almost furiously set about pulling everything that remained in it out of the bottom of her trunk. She tossed boxes helter-skelter around her, without even stopping any longer to look at what was in them. I kept the sharpest eye I could upon this shower of boxes; without giving too great an appearance of doing so, I was looking for a bit of yellow ribbon, for I had caught no further glimpse of it since my sister had begun going over her belongings. But now things flew too fast, and although she no longer seemed inclined to prevent my rummaging as much as I chose, I did not dare do it, precisely because of this unexpected forbearance. And also I was quite lost amidst all the thoughts pouring in on me. One of those which upset me the most was to know how Odette, if she were to give away all her clothes, was going to be able to leave the house.

  Then she showed me in a drawer piles of rough, coarse clothing made of unbleached cotton. "You're going to wear those things?"

  She nodded and I gave her my frank opinion: "They're ugly and they're going to scratch you."

  She drew me to her. No more than a kitten did I like to be squeezed, held in people's arms, but briefly I let Odette have her way. She, too, was suddenly looking at me great curiosity, as though she had never properly seen me before that day. With her fingers she tried to untangle my hair. "You don't comb it very often," she reproached me.

  It was an old reproach, but made in so affectionate a tone that it reawakened in me the troublesomeness, the memory of the sad things in my life, and Heaven only knows what other distasteful things, and I began to pull at my ear.

  "Nor should you," D&lette told me, "pull your ear all the time."

  So much perseverance in following her everywhere could have been interpreted as proof of an affection uncommon in a child of my age. Perhaps Odette reproached herself for not having entirely desen ed it. I hesitated to destroy so strong an illusion and, at the same stroke, the picture of me as a dear and affectionate little sister which she was creating in her mind, and which did not wholly displease me.

  With lowered head I moved away—and not a word concerning the yellow ribbon. . . . Yet the day of Odette's leaving was drawing ever closer!

  I hadn't many more opportunities to catch her alone; now she was making the rounds of the relatives and friends. I regretted the loss of so many auspicious occasions, so many moments that had been favorable for stating my wish.

  One day we had what was supposed to be a festive meal, at which everyone said there could be no greater happiness than that of giving a child to God; in spite of this our friends and relatives had trouble swallowing the good things set before them; the one time when we had so many rare dishes all at once, I found it sad that no one had any appetite.

  Then, in two rented automobiles, we went to take D&iette and her friend Carmel to the station: the decision of one, my mother said, had carried the day with the other. D£dette's trunk had gpne on ahead, and from time to time an anxious thought beset me: Might not my sister have renounced all save the yellow ribbon ? In a small box, tied around a package of letters, it might be headed toward Montreal.

  Under the high black ceiling, standing in a tight group, the relatives were weeping, especially Maman, who kept saying, "A child in religion is a guarantee of Heaven."

  And then I, too, began to cry. I don't know exactly why. It seemed in those days I could cry at will, because it was appropriate, or to make others have a better opinion of me. But I think that from that very day onward, in order to cry I no longer needed to see others weep.

  Odette had kissed each of us in turn. She had climbed onto the step of the car; I was there among the others, in my new dress, my hair neatly combed, right beside the train which was about to leave. And abruptly, very impulsively, Odette picked me off the ground.and nearly hugged the breath out of me. She 36 Street of Riches

  was saying, "Good-by, tousle-head! ... Good-by! ... Be a good girl! ... Never be naughty! ..."

  Then, clinging to Odette like a kitten to a post, crying on her neck, I asked her: "D&lette! . . . D&lette! . . . Your little yellow ribbon ... if you want to! ..."

  "Yes ... yes ... it's in your room/ she said, putting me back on the platform, for the train
was moving.

  And it was for me, for me above all, I believe, that Odette so long—as long as she was in sight—waved her handkerchief.

  After that, whatever became of the little yellow ribbon „ ., I no longer remember.

  My Whooping Cough

  B:

  lessed be my whooping cough! I coughed, I , turned blue in the face; I lost all taste for food; my lungs must at times have cried out for air, and, as Maman put it, I "sang like a rooster." She would then hold me close, stroke me with her hand. A cruel sickness it is, which cuts off a child's breath and makes him counterfeit a cock! At last, once my coughing fits ceased, I once more desired to go play with my little friends, and I cried because they would not let me. Truly this was the worst illnesses I had suffered, since it forbade my going near other children, and obliged me to fend them off if, in the goodness of their hearts and heedless of the disease, they insisted upon coming too close. Just as a leper tinkles his warning bell, I had to call out, "I have whooping cough; don't come near me!"

  That was when Papa went to Winnipeg to buy me a hammock.

  I spent almost all my time sitting in a tiny chair on the porch, wrapped up in woolens despite the heat, just like a little old lady, and wishing . . . wishing! Papa came home with a huge package under his arm. He undid it, and I saw the lovely hammock, woven in bright colors; red, blue, and—I think -yellow. My father installed it between two columns supporting our porch roof. Thus, said he, I should be partly in the sun and partly in the shade. Later Papa attached a rope to a tree not far from the porch; by pulling a little on this rope, I could swing without effort. My father showed me how: a slight pressure on the rope, and a slow, gentle swell would carry me along. Maman put a clean pillow in my hammock; and when I was stretched out in it, they all came to see whether I seemed comfortable there.