Bilingual Being Read Free

haven’t been educated in French, like Mme X has, and the subject of grammar is as dangerous for me as it is for the colleagues she’s currently critiquing. I know – or at least, I profoundly believe – that if I don’t find the stapler or the hole punch soon, and make my way out of here back to the safety of my classroom, it’s only a matter of time before I’ll be found in error myself, queried on some technical issue or, God forbid, be asked to proofread something of hers in French. That’s when I’ll blow my fragile cover. Shatter my thinly held illusion of safety.
    So what’s happened to keep me away from French, then draw me back when I’m past fifty? To make me leave it, and now promote it? For it to be the language of my heart, yet a language I can’t put onto paper without a dictionary? For me to be embraced in my profession as a native speaker, yet rendered suspicious for the same reason? And why am I teaching children to do what I’ve never done myself, and what I’ve never wanted my own children to do – attend school in French? Why, too, is it that after a lifetime as an “anglophone Canadian,” it’s still Quebec’s folk songs, tales, reels, and rivers that bring me to tears, that evoke a sense of belonging, whereas the English landscapes of earth and mind never do? My emotions are completely entangled in French rather than in English – a connection of first language and inner being that is potent, even gut-wrenching.
    LES BONS PIS LES MAUVA’ CÔTÉS
    These are the thoughts that engage me as stories come pouring out of the fissures left by «les bons pis les mauva’ côtés d’la vie» [the good and bad sides of life], as they say in the «joual» of my native city, Quebec.My trauma is twice lived. Once, in multiple incidents five decades ago. And recently, in the “confirmation” of this difficult knowledge.
    My truth starts to crawl out of its tomb one ordinary day in early July 2010, when some elderly females of my French «tribu» share expensive champagne to celebrate their longevity. Working its usual alchemy, alcohol begins to transform the essential properties of original identities. On this day, it dilutes the fragile boundaries of a pact of secrecy left vulnerable by the intervening decades and the ravages of age. It is but a simple bit of slippage in an otherwise pleasant afternoon of «p’tites crudités» and reminiscences. One who mistakenly thinks everyone knows something about the subject says a few things too many, and too loudly, to one who knows for certain. The knowledge is received haphazardly by the others – denied, disguised, refused – in clashes of silences and outbursts in the bathroom that quickly turn the mood sour. Seems an ill wind has blown into the otherwise charming summer interlude.
    Naturally, one might have tried – and so it was apparently attempted – to forget it altogether. To annul the comment and its sequelae, to stuff things back into the bottle and cap it really tightly once more. After all, what are a few faults in the course of a life? What good is it to worry about water under the bridge? What right does anyone have to speak thus of the dead? Isn’t it true that «on a bin toutes nos bons pis nos mauva’ côtés» [we surely all have our good and bad sides]? Tears are exchanged, traded from one to the other, as personal grief is weighed in the service of justice. Seems an ancient tactic is being redeployed to forge a new deal. But for the sake of whom, now? Hard to say, but I’m told there was a concerted effort to restore the «joie de vivre» of the innocent afternoon.
    Yet it is too late. I’m less than fifty days away now from a startling affirmation that the human lot is full of very pleasant people without any sense of honour. The critical information has been released by one of those