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ugly old brass keys that looks like a mutated claw – a cold, twisted skeleton. The kind that jingles in a rusty metal noose from an old man’s dirty pants pocket. In the weeks to come, the secret will make its way steadily towards me like a brave little worm, guided by emails begun separately – serendipitously – between a sister and brother giving their shared origins one more try. There are pointed questionsfrom me – and intriguing replies from him – about obnoxious scents, rooms with double entrances, men with particular traits, and windows of time. Slowly, reluctantly, the past begins to yield itself up to the light of the present, as words run furiously behind the scenes between my brother, sister-in-law, mother, and various aunts. At issue is what, exactly, was said in July – and how it strangely matches some of the garbled shreds of my memory. History’s translatability. Unsurprisingly, I’m miles away while it all unfolds.
    That’s how my great “revelation” – the “confirmation” I’ve been waiting for, on and off, all of my life – finally arrives on 29 August 2010 as a simple phone call from my mother. «T’es-tu assis?» [Are you sitting down?] she asks. «Garde, c’ta …» [Look, it was …] And almost without a pause, she gives up the name of a close family elder – just like that. «Vois-tu, c’ta pas ton daddy. J’te l’ava’ bin dit.» [See, it wasn’t your father. I told you so.]
    That’s it. No tears. No apologies. She demonstrates only relief that the mystery can finally “close” with excuses to one paternal ghost while another takes centre stage. «Eh oui. C’ta’ un pédophile,» she says, as if we’re diagnosing an ordinary illness. «Dans l’temps, on parla’ pas d’ces choses-là.» [Back then, we didn’t speak of these things.] So a non-story then becomes even less of a story now. «P’t-êt’ binque, maint’nant, tu vas p’voir final’ment tourner a’page,» she adds optimistically. [Maybe now you can finally turn the page.] Trouble is, my book’s just been opened. And it’s silence itself that’s the fable here.
    A few days later, I get another phone call, this one from a maternal aunt. I can ask her questions about this affair she says, but only this once. Words as a limited-time offer. And yet there’s a wall in her voice too, an impenetrable fortress of aggressive joy that allows nothing to come at her. She speaks about the art of moving forward «dans vie,» of living «sans regrets,» and of the importance «d’pas perd’ une minute.» Then, she says flatly that she isn’t willing to spend her last years thinking about it. Besides, as far as the elder’s character is concerned, «dans l’monde des problèmes, c’ta’ pas grand chose» [it wasn’t such a huge thing]. Family and cultural myths invoked like lullabies. Ssshhh.
    In the end, it’s quite an unremarkable tale, then. There’s nothing special here. It’s about a French family elder who was known to be a pedophile and whose power was taken for granted. He kept regularcompany with a second perpetrator, a Roman Catholic priest – enjoyed shared interests, one might say – safe inside a social and cultural space that had more than a tolerance for incest, child molestation, and child pornography. «Dans l’temps» – in that time, and in time – this environment of permissiveness would invite more aggressors. How could it not?
    Enter number three, a male cousin on my mother’s side in his late teens who was apparently my babysitter from 1957 to 1961, and who enlisted me in his covert experiments with sexuality. «Ah, y t’aima’ donc bin» [Oh, he loved you so much], my mother recalls. Indeed. And later, number four, a