Broken English
Grain Magazine Vol. 48-4 Summer 2021
The Monday evening after James Cross, the British Trade Commissioner was taken from his residence at gunpoint by the Front de libération du Québec, or FLQ for short, my father arrived home from work later than usual because of police roadblocks. He was agitated when he came in. The breakfast dishes were still in the sink and the beds weren’t made. My mother said she’d been watching the news coverage of the abduction all afternoon and lost track of time, but that was a lie. When I ran up the stairs after school her cheeks were flushed from the cold wind, and she was hanging up her coat.
I was twelve years old and knew about the French separatist movement, the FLQ. They were responsible for the Montreal Stock Exchange bombing the previous year that had injured twenty-seven people and mailboxes in the wealthy Anglophone neighbourhood of Westmount. We lived in Ville LaSalle, a suburb that was neither wealthy nor exclusively English.
Our borough was wedged between the St. Lawrence River, the Lachine Canal, and the aqueduct that supplied the city’s water. Once an apple orchard, the land had been cleared, new roads pushed through, and each summer a few more duplexes were built, most of which were rental units.
That summer, I had my first crush on a boy named Marcel. He was a year older and attended the French Catholic school that was a block away. I attended an English Protestant school and was bussed five miles each way. By the time I’d return to the street at the end of each school day, Marcel was usually involved in a road hockey game with the other boys. When I’d walk past he’d flick the tennis ball at me with the tip of his hockey stick. I’d chase him up the street until he let me catch him. Sometimes we kissed and my stomach felt like a basket of gentle butterfly wings.
My parents and I settled in front of our black and white television and watched the scene unfold in front of James Cross’ house on Redpath Crescent in Montreal. Marcel’s parents owned the duplex directly across the street from us and I could see into his living room. His colour television showed the same image of police standing on the front lawn of the Cross home.
“Are us English going to have to leave Quebec?” I asked.
My dad ignored me.
My mom reached for my hand. “There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
But there were other things she’d told me not to worry about that had come true. My cat didn’t recover from a lung infection, and my best friend did end up moving to Ontario at the end of the summer because her father lost his job.
My dad said the police would find James Cross soon, but my mother disagreed. She said we were in for the long haul, and he said she didn’t know what she was talking about. I wondered what Marcel’s parents thought of all this.
The weather got colder for the rest of that week and no one was outside when I got off the school bus.
Four days after James Cross was kidnapped with still no leads to his whereabouts, the FLQ demands for his release were made public in a manifesto that was read by a reluctant news anchor on CBC. My father listened to the radio in the kitchen where he smoked Players Plain until a blue cloud circled his head and a row of empty Molson stubby beer bottles lined the table. When my mom came into the kitchen, he said, “The French make it out like they’re treated like slaves.”
She said the manifesto had made some solid points, because the French had less opportunity in the Province of Quebec compared to the English and they were generally poorer than us. That didn’t make sense to me because Marcel’s family owned their duplex, and we were renters. They had a swimming pool and both his parents drove cars newer than my dad’s.
My father accused her of siding with the French because of her Quebecois grandfather. His upper lip puckered in a sneer when he said, “the French.”
Her Quebecois grandfather had married the daughter of a rich banker from Scotland and her family had insisted she raise their children English and Protestant if they expected financial help. At first, he’d refused but his wife kept having more kids, and it didn’t take long before his children joined an English Protestant church and school. Their mother tongue was recorded on the 1926 census as English even though their surname was French.
I’d told Marcel that my great grandfather was French and in his broken English he said that was good to know, it made us have more in common. He said I should try speaking French because maybe I still had it in my blood. I laughed and said, “No.”
By Saturday, with still no leads as to the whereabouts of James Cross, another cell of the FLQ kidnapped Pierre Laporte, the Labour Minister of Québec.
“If only they’d worked together,” my mother cried.
My father stared at her like she’d grown a second head. “They’re terrorists! Look what they’re doing to all the Anglophones in this province. If my company pulls out of Québec because of all this, I’ll be unemployed.” He brought up the Plains of Abraham and said he wouldn’t be bullied out of the city his great grandfather had helped build.
She stormed off to their bedroom and returned with a pillow and blanket, tossed it at him and said, “It’s your turn to sleep on the sofa.”
I didn’t know they were taking turns.
Come Monday morning everyone was so panicked about this second abduction that the English Protestant and French Catholic schools were closed for the day. My father left for work and my mother compared it to a snow day and said all the kids would be outside looking for something to do. My aunt had recently given me a hand-me-down, V-neck school tunic a cousin had outgrown. I wanted my mother to hem it and take in the sides, so it fit snug like the older girls wore, but she said she had no time to sew that day.
I headed out as ordered and called on Marcel. His mother answered the door and said he was not home, but his shoes were on the inside mat.
I walked up the abandoned street and climbed an old apple tree that had a wooden platform nailed to it, stretched out on my stomach hidden by branches with leaves and scanned the street hoping to spot Marcel if he left his house. I wanted to know if he’d told his mother to lie or, if she’d made that choice for him.
My mother came out our front door, walked up our street wearing her new woollen coat she’d ordered from the Eaton’s catalogue, her hair pulled back in a stylish wave. Just around the corner, a large black sedan that I’d never seen before pulled up alongside her, stopped, the door opened, and she slipped in. Bile tickled my throat as I climbed down and ran home. On the kitchen counter beside an egg salad sandwich wrapped in wax paper, she’d left me a note. Be back soon, love Mom.
She called late afternoon and told me to take the pork chops out of the freezer. The meat was still frozen when she arrived home just minutes before my dad’s car pulled up. She knocked on my bedroom door to ask why I hadn’t done as she asked. I kept my face to the wall. “Because I saw you get into that car.”
She gasped. “Don’t tell your father, it will just make matters worse. Do you hear?”
We ate grilled cheese sandwiches for dinner. My father took his to the living room and left his dirty dishes on the coffee table.
In the morning she promised to take in my tunic and buy me the white blouse with the Peter Pan collar that I’d asked for. I told her I didn’t want a new blouse unless I got a brand-new tunic too.
Days passed without any leads as to the whereabouts of the abducted men. The streets were crawling with police cars, and everyone was told to stay home. The house was cleaner, and dinner was on time each night, but my parents moved around each other with explosive silence.
At school, I learned that the Quebec government had asked Ottawa for help because there weren’t enough police to catch regular law breakers and hunt down the kidnappers too. My teacher explained that the War Measures Act was necessary to keep us English safe. He said that if this Act was invoked it would be the third time in Canadian history—the last two times were for the two World Wars. The classroom got too quiet. No one passed notes or asked to go to the washroom. Mr. Fab, my most favourite teacher, saw the anxiety he’d created and ended with an interesting detail—the Montreal Canadians always took the Stanley Cup when the War Measures Act was invoked.
When I got off the bus after school that day, Marcel was sitting alone on his front stoop eating a big bag of Frito chips. I sat beside him, and he offered me some. They were my favourite, but I was noticing how food got caught between my teeth. It got too quiet between us, so I mentioned what my teacher had said about the Montreal Canadians winning the Stanley Cup when the War Measures Act was invoked.
“If they play at all.” His cautious English smothered by his thick French accent.
I laughed and said, “If they can’t play, we’ll cheer for the Toronto Maple Leafs.” It was a joke—my dad would hit the roof if I ever cheered for any hockey team besides the Habs.
Marcel crumpled his chip bag closed, sprung to his feet and left me on his step as he went inside.
That evening, I worked on a jigsaw puzzle with my dad in the living room while I kept an eye on Marcel’s house, but the curtains were shut. My father sent me to the kitchen to get him another beer. My mother wouldn’t let me open the fridge. “Tell him to get it himself.”
He was already on his way toward the kitchen, and I knew the fight that had been brewing for days was on. I ran to my room and listened to them shout about housework, money, and why she didn’t answer when he phoned home on his afternoon break. He called her an emotional wreck and said she’d never be happy. She called him a bully and the reason why she was such a mess. I covered my head with a pillow, but their voices got louder and louder until the lady who rented the flat beneath us thumped on her ceiling. She was a friend of Marcel’s mother, and I knew he’d hear about my parents’ terrible fight.
One week after his abduction, Pierre Laporte was found dead in the trunk of a car. My mother took pills her doctor had prescribed and slept all day. My father visited his mom who was equally upset. I stood watch at the front room window to see if Marcel would come out to play road hockey, but the street remained deserted that Saturday.
Days later, I waited for the school bus with the other English Protestant kids, but our numbers had shrunk. Instead of the regular dozen there were only three at my stop. Some parents had decided to home school. Marcel walked past on his way to school wearing his Canadiens, Jean Beliveau hockey jersey, and ignored me.
My mother had stayed in bed that morning sleeping off more pills. My dad had left without checking to see that I was up. We had a new bus driver because the one who started the school year with us kept asking the girls to sit on his knee. This new driver didn’t speak very good English, but my dad said as long as he kept his hands to himself and his eyes on the road it didn’t matter. As I boarded the school bus, I said, “Morning Jack.”
He grabbed my arm. “Je m’appelle Jacques, pas Jack. Tu comprends?
“Oui, je comprends.” I skulked to my seat, but an anger burned in my belly and my arm hurt where he’d grabbed it.
We weren’t allowed to eat on the bus, but I pulled out the lunch I’d packed for myself and started peeling an orange. Jacques yelled in his rear view mirror to put it away. I ignored him. When he yelled again, I belted out, “Je m’appelle Jacques, pas Jack.”
The other kids joined in.
Jacques shouted, “Debbie, ferme ta grande bouche!”
One of the popular grade seven girls poked my shoulder. “Big mouth!” She and her friends laughed.
My fingers held a chunk of sticky orange. I stood up, leaned forward and threw it as hard as I could. It hit the back of Jacques’ bald head.
The bus stopped. Everyone shut up.
He swung from his seat and stomped towards me, grabbed my bagged lunch, threw it on the floor and stepped on it.
When we reached the school, he made me stay seated while the other kids got off and then he escorted me to the principal’s office. I’d never been in serious trouble before, just the regular kind for passing notes or whispering during math class.
I spent the day getting lectured about respect, leadership, and dangerous times. The principal called home but there was no answer and he said he had no choice but to call my father at work because this was a serious matter. When he ran out of things to say he sat me at the desk outside the office—the desk for bad kids. My classmates snickered as they walked past. My teacher ignored me.
At the end of the day when the school bus arrived to take us home, I was brought outside to apologize. Jacques looked down at his scuffed shoes when my eyes teared up.
I sat alone at the front of the bus right behind him. As the bus headed towards the bridge that crossed the aqueduct and the Canadian soldiers that now guarded it, I stared at Jacques’ white knuckles—hands at two and ten. His aging skin stretched tight over fine bones and dark blue veins.
My father’s car was parked in front of our flat when I got off the bus. I expected the scolding of a lifetime, but when I got inside my mother was still out, and my father’s sorrow blanketed our home like dense fog.
“I messed up,” I cried.
He pulled me into a big hug, and I rested my head against his chest as he combed his fingers through my hair, which hadn’t been brushed all day. “You have to behave until this trouble passes,” he said.
I didn’t know if he meant the trouble on the street or the trouble in our house