Between

Before Six

Start from where you will….

Chapter 1

I was five and I taught myself to read because my brother could read. My brother Joey was two years older. Sometimes I was mean and called him a goody-goody-two-shoes. He went to the Catholic school on the French side and I wanted to know everything he knew. At the end of each school day, Joey ran home, threw his school bag down and dashed into the bathroom, locking the door behind him. He told Mom that he couldn’t go at school because he was afraid someone was going to crawl under the door in the school washroom and peek in on him.

As soon as I heard him lock the door, I riffled through his black cloth bag. I knew it was going to take a while for him to do his number two because he always brought a comic book with him, so I could take my time and check out all his things and see if there was anything new for me to learn. The problem was that most of his stuff was in French and I hadn’t yet been able to learn to read in French because no one would teach me. My mom didn’t know how, and my dad said he only spoke bad French, and my brother told me I had to wait until I went to school. It wasn’t fair.

My brother had just finished grade two. He spoke and read French. In a few months, after summer holidays, I get to start grade one. This was his last day of school and his black cloth school bag was full. He told my mom that his teacher, Sister Mary Paule, loaned him some holy books to read over the summer. She was the nun that talked to my parents about my brother being an altar boy when we went to the school to register me for grade one.

When Joseph is older, we could make inquiries for him to continue his studies in a seminary. He is such a perfect boy at school and so respectful to the other children. He excels in everything. I do believe, Mrs. MacGregor, you should consider that your son may have a calling.

My parents didn’t seem to be very happy about what Sister said about a calling. I bugged my mom about what a calling meant and she said, Later. When we got home, we were told to go out and play and that she’d call us for dinner. I came back to pee. While in the bathroom, I heard my dad say, No way will I let a son of mine go off to be a priest because some young nun who’s barely out of high school thinks he has a religious calling. For Pete’s sake, Helen, he’s not eight yet. How can they spout this nonsense? Why don’t they just teach what they’re supposed to be teaching and stop meddling in people’s lives with all that religious nonsense? Son of a pup, can you believe this?

In Joey’s school bag, I found the same old scribblers with nothing new in them from yesterday. He’d cleaned out his desk and all five of his yellow lead pencils, now worn to nubs, were in his pencil case. He hadn’t lost any of them. His eraser, with the small nibble I took when no one was looking, was now half the size. You could hardly notice the bite part anymore. My brother made a big fuss about it and cried; he’d written his name on it and said that made it special. I’d bitten off the h in Joseph. I just wanted to know what it tasted like. It was really awful. I spit it out and Mom wasn’t too happy about me touching other people’s stuff. Joey’s glue bottle was almost empty; the little rubber nipple was clogged up and the glue was hard and brittle around the edges. I already tasted it when it was new and then found out it was made of old dead horses, so that wasn’t too smart.

My brother brought home his art that hung on the walls at school; he was a pretty good drawer. I’d already seen all his stuff a hundred times because I’d watched him do it, so I didn’t have to look at it again. He would always tell me to go away because I was bugging him. I liked the three books Sister Marie Paule let him borrow.

I opened the biggest book. The words were in French, so I just looked at the pictures. You could sort of figure out the story. It was about a bunch of men walking through the bush—some were carrying a canoe, some were wearing furs, and there were two men wearing long black dresses and crosses. They each held a small black book in their hands and a rosary. Near the end of the story, these two men were being hurt by bad people with hardly any clothes on. It looked like the guys in the fur coats ran away because they were not in the pictures anymore. I put that book back in the bag. I needed to borrow the two books that were written in English before my brother finished with his number two. It would take some time to read them because they had a lot more writing with some big words I needed to figure out. I put them under the front of my dress and snuck off to my hiding place in the field behind our house where they were going to build the new houses.

There was still some bush and a few small trees left where they cut all the older trees down. I knew where I could hide so my brother wouldn’t see me. I figured out that the English books were called The Lives of the Saints, Book 1 and The Lives of the Saints, Book 2. I started with Book 1.

There was a lot of writing and the pictures were strange and scary. It was kind of like the comic books my mom wouldn’t let us read. She said those comic books were about bad things happening and she didn’t want us to get any ideas or pay too much attention to the bad people in the comic books because we might have bad dreams. We were only allowed cartoon comic books. I was tempted to tell her that cartoon people could be pretty mean—they often hurt other cartoon people and most of the time they were kind of silly—but cartoon comics were better than no comics so I kept my mouth shut, which was hard for me to do about anything.

I settled deeper into the scraggly brush. I read about why the people got on a big ship with large sails blowing in the wind and travelled across the sea, leaving their families behind in a country called France to come to the shores called New France. They walked through the bush, built themselves a small church and some houses, and they prayed. They seemed to be asking God for a lot of things. They were supposed to be good people and they were trying to help some bad people who got them tied to some poles. These bad people were painted red and they didn’t wear much, except what looked like large diapers. They had feathers in their hair and beads around their necks, wrists and ankles. The red people looked like they were yelling and dancing in circles around the poles where they’d tied up the white people. There was a big bonfire. I read that these men in the long black dresses were missionaries, like the priests who often visited our town and talked to us about all the poor people in Africa. I thought these so-called missionaries in the book looked like teenagers. These teenagers were tied to poles like in the other book. A fire was burning around them, and they were looking up at the sky.

My dad would have said they were looking pretty hard done by. The person who wrote the book said they were called saints, and that’s why someone painted golden circles around their heads while the fire was all around them. There were ladies sort of floating around in long blue dresses. They looked like they were wearing long yellow wigs and had large white wings. I knew these ladies in the book were called angels, but they sure didn’t look like the angels I knew. I thought these teenage boys called saints or missionaries needed some help before they were cooked like a side of venison at a party. Near the end of the book was a picture of the old bearded man named God who lived in the sky and sat on soft white clouds. Naked baby angels were flying around in the next picture. They were pretty ugly for babies. This bearded old man called God had a large stick in one hand; not a stick like the spears that the red men held while they danced around the missionaries, but a stick with a rounded hook at the end. God’s other hand was reaching through the puffs of white fluffy clouds, trying to reach the boys called saints. I didn’t know why God didn’t use that stick in his other hand to reach them. It had kind of a hook on the end and he could’ve easily lifted them up. Those angels with the long dresses and yellow hair could’ve helped the old man snare them and bring them to heaven behind all those clouds. Once in heaven with God, I thought they must have lived happily ever after.

Book 2 of The Lives of Saints was different than the other two books which were about boy teenagers called missionaries. This one had a picture of a beautiful girl inside the cover. Maybe Sister Marie Paul put this book in because she knew my brother had a sister, so it was good that I was reading the books without asking Joey if I could. He would’ve said no because he followed all the rules at school. No, you have to wait until you go to school, and the nuns tell you what you can do.

This book was about a thirteen-year-old girl in Rome called Saint Agnes, and the writer wrote that she was very beautiful. All the men wanted to marry her, but she said no and promised Jesus that she would be his wife. I guessed that made the guys really mad so they dragged her down a street without any clothes on, but her hair grew and grew and covered her like a blanket so people couldn’t laugh at her because she was naked. An important man asked her to marry him. She would not marry any of them because Jesus was going to be her husband. They tied her in chains, then tied her to a pole like the boy missionaries. They tried to set the wood around her on fire. The wood wouldn’t burn so one of the guys chopped her head off.

Agnes just floated up in a beautiful dress with her head back on properly and wore one of those golden halos around her head. Now that she was in heaven, I guessed she could float anywhere she wanted. She didn’t need anyone helping her. She did this all by herself and got her head back on straight and she was only thirteen. I thought I would like to do that. I would’ve really liked to be able to float up and see what was behind all those puffy clouds. I decided then and there what I wanted to be when I was older.

When I grew up and was a teenager, I was going to be a saint.

My brother Joey told me about Baby Jesus and how Baby Jesus saved the world and that we needed to pray to him and love him the best. Joey showed me how to kneel by my bed and make this sign on my body before I talked to Baby Jesus and to do it when I was finished, too. I thought it must be some sort of a secret code. Most nights I told Baby Jesus how much I loved him and how he had a great mom and how I would take good care of him when his mom got too old. Joey also told me about angels they called guardian angels that took care of us, but I already knew that. I was five; of course I knew about them. I told him so and he laughed at me. I had been seeing angels all around me since I was a baby and didn’t tell anyone else about them because they would call me a weirdo and shout Liar, liar, pants on fire. My angels sure didn’t look like the ones in the holy books the nuns had let Joey take home, though.

At family gatherings, I watched the older people talk and eat and drink their grown-up drinks, and when they did, the lights coming from them changed. It was fun to watch the moms. Their colours brightened up when they were talking to one of the dads or uncles, and their voices got girly. It was different watching the dads; the dads’ and the older teenage boys’ colours mostly happened just below their belly buttons. I liked watching the younger teenagers more than anyone—the girls with little pointy bumps on their chests and the boys with a few straggly hairs above their lips and on their chins and red angry pimples erupting on their still baby faces were the ones I couldn’t figure out. They had all these oranges and reds streaming out of their privates and yet they still glowed the baby colours around their hearts. There sure were a lot of crazy lights zipping in and out and around them. No one else seemed to notice them, so I didn’t say anything about what was going on in case I made my mom mad at me again for being weird or something.

My mom asked me to stop staring at people; some of the aunties and my mom’s lady friends told her I made them feel uncomfortable. I wasn’t too sure if I could do that—not watch people. My brother said I was staring with my owl eyes. As for me, I couldn’t understand why no one else talked about the light people coming and going through the room checking us out and smiling at us. I guess everybody just ignored them because they didn’t have real bodies like we did.

Chapter 2

When I was brought back from the hospital as a newborn, home was a small rented apartment behind the Twins’ Beauty Salon, the one and only real beauty salon in town. From nine in the morning until five in the afternoon, the patrons of the salon knocked on the thin door that separated our apartment from the business, and the parade would begin.

Hi, Helen, it’s only me. I’ll stay for a cuppa and have a visit once I have my whizz.

Is John home?

The ladies walked through our sitting room to the kitchen to use the only indoor toilet in the one-story building. My parents’ bedroom was also in the narrow sitting room. They had no door, only material over a rod that curtained off a makeshift room for my mom and dad’s bed. There was never any privacy during the day. Mom was constantly cleaning and dusting, attempting to keep the apartment as clean and tidy as possible. My crib was in the middle of all this. I was talked to, cooed over, stroked and commented on daily by these passing women.

The linoleum in what was the bedroom/sitting room was a puke brown. It didn’t matter how many coats of liquid wax my dad poured on it, the floor still looked disgusting. Mom braided bright rag rugs from old clothes and blankets to hide the linoleum and brighten up the room as best as she could. These rag rugs also made the floor less cold when I was crawling around. I would gather them around me and nap right there on the floor in the middle of the foot traffic.

The ongoing flow of the Twins’ clientele created a less-than-pleasant situation for my dad. He never complained; he was just tired all the time. His work on the railroad included being on call day or night, and often the only time he could sleep was in the middle of the day. This did not work well and there was no opening for things to change. The Twins were not only our neighbours but the owners of the building. Since we had the luxury of the only indoor toilet, it had to be available not only for the Twins but also for their clients during working hours.

The bathroom was a small room built at the end of the kitchen near the back door. This was a recent addition that held a porcelain toilet, a water tank attached to the back wall and a pull cord to flush. The whitewashed bathroom door locked on both sides with a metal hook-and-eye latch. The ongoing battle of keeping the cold draft out during the long winters required that the door to the bathroom be locked on the kitchen side so it would not blow open. The bathroom was no more than an upgraded outhouse that you accessed through the house. It had no insulation, save the tarpaper and board on the outside.

The wood stove in our kitchen was our only source of heat. Our back door, the kitchen window and the bathroom door had old heavy blankets tacked over them, as well as felt snakes Mom made to block any cold wind coming from the bottoms of the doors or windows.

The beauty salon ladies paraded through our apartment wearing black vinyl ponchos, their hair in rollers or wearing what looked like a thick plastic bathing cap. Oftentimes, a small dribble of black dye rested and stained the tops of their ears or the backs of their necks. Those suffering through a permanent had metal rollers with wires or rods sticking out. They would dash through, do their business and go right back and sit in the large chair to get plugged back in so they could fry their hair into a permanent curl. The ladies waiting for their dye job to take would stop to sit at our kitchen table and visit, once they were finished using the toilet. Mom kept a basin of warm water, a sliver of soap and a clean towel on the counter, otherwise they would have to use the kitchen sink to wash their hands after using the toilet. The sink always had something soaking in it, and it would have been too inconvenient to keep it clear for the ladies.

My mother usually reused the breakfast tea bag that was hanging from the nail above the sink and made them a singular cup of tea. If a woman from a prominent family or a member of the Catholic Women’s League was getting her hair done, Mom would remove the kettle from the back of the stove where it was always simmering, warm the teapot with a bit of hot water then pour that hot water to top up the washing-up basin for the ladies. She then measured the loose tea, poured fresh hot water and waited the five minutes for the tea to steep. Once steeped to my mother’s satisfaction, she served the tea. This involved pouring the tea through a proper silver-plated tea strainer into her one and only best china teacup, both coveted wedding presents from one of her many sisters-in-law.

Most of the women either had a cigarette already lit in their mouths or would light up a fresh one at the table and talk until one of the Twins would open the thin door and shout that it was time to rinse the dye out of their hair. I would watch these ladies from my high chair and when they took that first puff from their cigarette, I would see their light getting darker and the colours were not clear.

Edith, if you take too long getting back in here, your hair might just fall out.

That got them moving. They snubbed out their cigarettes in my mother’s heavy green crystal ashtray, another wedding present, and as they stood to leave, they quickly downed the last of their canned Carnation milk and well-sugared tea, hustled the few feet through the small apartment and out the flimsy door. My mother would breathe a sigh of relief, fan the cigarette smoke out the window or open the door to air out the kitchen if it wasn’t in the middle of winter. My father told me when I was a young teenager, Gracie, real ladies don’t smoke. Just look at your mom. She’s never smoked, and she looks so much younger and healthier than my sisters who all smoke.

I could see from watching the ladies that came and went, those who smoked, those who drank too much, those who were not telling the truth, even those who had been fighting with their husbands or if they were not well—the colours and lights around them told their real story.

The acrid smells from the beauty salon left their trace in our apartment. The chemical smells permeated everything; even my mother’s spicy spaghetti sauce and freshly baked bread couldn’t compete with the lingering odour. After the Twins locked up for the night, my mother latched the hook through the eye, closing off the apartment from the beauty salon, tacked a heavy old blanket over the thin door to keep out the draft and tucked us into bed for the night in the sitting room, my brother on the couch, me in my crib. This went on every day except for Sundays when the salon was closed.

Helen, the baby is getting so big. I could just bite her cheeks, they’re so chubby.

Helen, is Gracie not in diapers anymore? Do you think you trained her too soon?

Oh Gracie, look, you’re walking.

Gracie, what a great job your mommy did of your French braids!

Now Grace, when are you going to go to school?

I rather enjoyed this parade of women through the house, each one leaving her own trail of colour and energy, each one with her story to tell, and if I paid attention, I could tell when they weren’t telling my mother the truth about whatever they were talking or complaining about. This always intrigued me and of course I continued to make these women nervous with my intensity and my owl eyes, but most times, I was just looking at all the light people and the angels that came in with them.

Our back door opened to a packed black dirt yard. It didn’t matter the season, the backyard was always a challenge. When the snow finally melted, a sea of gluey black mud took over. My dad put down a temporary sidewalk made of old worn wooden crates that the grocery store piled behind the back of their building. The manager told my dad he could take what he needed. Dad was hoping that a makeshift wooden sidewalk would enable us to come and go without getting constantly stuck or covered in the black muck. Very little colour came through on the surface of this mud; it looked dead to me, and when I asked my dad if the mud was alive, he couldn’t tell me. Many years later I understood the various tones and hues of what the soil was saying. This mud was suffocating and starving; it needed a lot of nutrients and air to survive.

I couldn’t resist the siren song of the mud needing testing for consistency; it was inevitable that one or sometimes both of my gum rubber boots would get stuck. If I moved or wiggled the boot to attempt to free my foot, it only made matters worse. The boot would now be sucked in deeper. One foot would often be precariously balanced on the wooden walkway and the other foot trapped. I would wiggle my foot out of my boot, attempting to get back