Bilingual Being (36 page)

China and cheap slang

for sexuality are rolled up

together in my infant French.

But years later, I will

learn to speak English.

There will be much China

“this and that” at Granny's.

It's fancy stuff we put

on shiny dinner tables,

its name under everything.

I can read it when we scrub

the big plates so carefully.

Made in China.

Made in China.

Everything comes

from this China.

Everything is signed

by this China.

It must be a great,

wide, huge place

full of fancy meals.

It sounds like vagina,

but it's not, you see.

In this language, English,

things are pretty, lovely,

handled only gently.

Not by rough hands.

In years to come,

I will even find

China on a map at

my brand new school –

and in a stamp collection.

And there will be dainty

China dolls to buy for gifts:

China and dignity

co-existing so politely

in my second language.

But I'll end up breaking

three China sets in all.

Child, I'll drop «par erreur

j'm'excuse bin beaucoup»
*

two entire dolls' sets:

one my mother's,

one “my own.”

Adult, moving, I'll drop

the “everyday” set

from my granny's.

The fourth, Granny's best,

lives in my furnace room.

I am afraid to touch it.

My sensuality entwines

my pathology. I'm still an

English China doll who once

bathed in «chinoiserie.»
†

__________

*
«Vagine» is rare old slang for “cunt,” used in name-calling (or so the story goes) only among people with a very low level of education.

*
The words in this stanza are all slang: baboune for “pout”; minoune for “mistress”; moumoune for “a gay man”; toutoune for “a fat woman”; pitoune for “a slut” and also for “a little girl”; foufounes for “butt cheeks”; guidoune for “whore”; zouzoune for “vagina” and also a “female idiot”; and bizoune for “penis.”

*
“By mistake; I'm very, very sorry.”

†
Anything Chinese; also used colloquially in French to designate a jumble of information or an incomprehensible thing (physical or verbal), including mischief.

19

IMAGINARY COMPANIONS

PAPER PRINCESS

One of my very favourite possessions from childhood was a set of twelve wooden cubes, each about two inches across – a gift from my grandmaman Dumont. Four went sideways, and three went up and down. Each side of each block had a picture, one-twelfth of every story. If you flipped them just right, you could see six fairy tales spread across the blocks, one view at a time. Flip just one cube, and the picture became silly. Flip one whole row – very tricky – and you had a theatre scene change, stories merging. Turn them over all at once – almost impossible with small hands – and you could see a whole other story world underneath.

The set came with six small pictures showing the completed images, my blueprints. I remember Little Red Riding Hood: the woods, the girl, the bed, the granny, the wolf. I remember Snow White: the apple, the mirror, the girl, the dwarfs, the queen. I remember Hansel and Gretel: the woods, the trail, the candy, the father, the witch. I remember Cinderella: the mice, the ball, the girl, the clock, the godmother. And I remember the Three Little Pigs: the straw, the sticks, the bricks, the blowing, the wolf.

Why do I remember only five, no matter how hard I try to force up that last one from the deepest recesses of memory? I never find that sixth story – the missing pieces, the absent tale. I sometimes think I can picture it – wasn't there a donkey? Some beans? But not
Jack-in-the-Beanstalk – I know that. Or do I? And then what bit I think I hold slips away again. Maybe I don't recall the pictures all that well after all. Maybe I've only fed a memory with repeated tellings of these classics, confused the present and the past. Switched sense and story – and vice versa?

Possibly, I've done just that. After all, the child's mind is porous, amorphous, generous even. It's free of the inconvenient boundaries of time and space. It knows no clear line between reality and fantasy – or between bedtime stories shared in books, and far-off stories shared in beds. That's why one may easily supplant the other as a substitution, a simple repetition. And that's how “fictions” about poisoned foods and magical kisses end up having exactly as much meaning as “truths” about how some things won't hurt at all, when they do – and how some things will feel good, when they don't.

This toy is so memorable for me, so infused with psychic history, that even though I lost it between dozens of moves, I was compelled to buy one like it at a yard sale in British Columbia in the late 1980s. It felt like a blessing just finding it. It's very much like my first one, made of wood with tightly pasted paper sides, and has six stories in all. I only have four of the accompanying images on well-worn paper – the previous owner(s) must have lost the other two. At any rate, I've put it in one of those pretty green boxes from Simons I love so much, and set it on my best bookshelf, among the works of my favourite scholars.
*
It holds more truth for me than anything they can ever write.

It's because this toy isn't a toy at all. It's a paper tapestry in six panels of the life I've led, a kaleidoscopic code in which tales spoke their plain lessons to me. Taught me that many people aren't what they appear to be, and you can never be careful enough to protect yourself when evil lurks in disguise. That the darkest woods can be safer than some homes that look perfectly normal from the outside. That a cave – a blanket, a big coat, a closet, or behind the curtains – can be a pretty good place to
hide!
if you're quick and quiet. That sleep can be very dangerous – how
can you get back? – and without any warning, you can meet wolves in your bed at night.

From twelve blocks of wood and paper, I discovered symbol-reading long before I knew the alphabet. I began to understand that every character in every scenario imaginable exists in multiple perspectives, on the surface and beneath, perpetually rotating and twisting, hidden and visible. To realize that coherent scenes of life are easily shattered, turned upside-down – flip, flip – so that days and stories get all mixed up. To examine every side of a story with a child's hands, a child's eyes, looking for meaning. To hope the missing tale is about a princess and a happy ending – and to dream of a noble rescue, a fairy godmother. To be a flippy block inside a small skin box.

ACCIDENTAL READING

I couldn't actually read when I first received
National Geographic Magazine
either, but I deciphered its meaning just fine. The magazine only started putting images on its covers in September 1959, but the timing couldn't have been better: it coincided exactly with the birth of my baby brother in October, when I was twenty-three months old – a huge event. Here was a tiny boy in a tiny bed – a storybook character. His body had other parts, things I didn't have – minor versions of monstrous ones I'd seen. So his was the birth of my perspective. Seems only fitting, then, that
National Geographic
started being readable for me right then. Prior to then, it featured only words – not so useful for my age group. But my brother's arrival perfectly announced the idea of an Other, and
National Geographic
delivered on it.

I had to grab my knowledge quickly to stay one step ahead of my mother's keen eye for dust out of alignment. Each issue lay around for only a few days before it went into a drawer or onto a high shelf. But what I found was astounding – treasures, dangers, wild chronicles, daring truths. It was all here. For starters, the hard projectiles that came at me – big and long and pointy – were explained in September 1959 and September 1965, when the covers showed some jets. And again, when a hummingbird (November 1960) and moth (June 1965) thrust their proboscises into flowers. I learned that other girls had their lower halves cut off – were numbed down below, sister mermaids. The
October 1959 cover showed a girl snorkelling, her bottom entirely in the water, obviously a fish. In July 1966, there was a mermaid again – a girl splashing with her fish half safely submerged. Priceless data: evidently I had companions out there somewhere, sea people just like me.

From those precious covers, I also learned that others had issues with reflections, those strange moments in front of mirrors where maybe you couldn't recognize yourself, or didn't remember one of your features. Or the face seemed from another world, or time skipped a long beat while you looked. In October 1960, the cover featured a woman kneeling in front of the Taj Mahal, looking at its reflection in water. And March 1966's cover showed St Basil's Cathedral, another perfect reflection in water, with no one there even to think about it. No doubt about it – reflections were a world of their own.

Through my covers, I also learned that twinning was common. That eerie feeling of being two, voices stuck inside, a constant conversation. On the May 1961 issue, two similar-looking Indonesian women carried baskets, wore the same clothing, side-by-side, two in one. In December 1961, two similar medieval women ministered to others, their posture identical – side-by-side duals. In August 1963, two blond American girls that looked like me were together – one a bit in front, and one a bit in back, taking turns. In November 1963, two similar children looked at two similar deer – each pair side-by-side. In December 1964, identical doves. In January 1967, two similar Pakistani girls, face-to-face. Doubles were everywhere. It was just the way of things.

I even found maps a lot like the one in my head, that strange record I see when I
hide!
When all I see is only me. North, south, east, west: how I walked, faced, laid – was carried, taken, moved, pressed, turned. Directions others went: left to right, right to left, away, towards. Locations relative to each other: across, beside. Enough said. But on the cover of the November 1961 issue, here was Italy with icons. I had (have) icons too, sort of. Larger shapes: V-shaped indoor stairs, a left-side closet, a long hall with doors only on the right, a long window where I can only see the tops of trees, a sparkly ceiling, green paisley linoleum, a red wooden swing on chains, a pink bathtub, a dark vanity by a curtained window, a piano. And smaller shapes: a cane, a pipe, a wooden spoon, a small glass full of red liquid, swishing yellow tassles, a powder puff, a dark tool box. But enough said about that too. And here
was another map in August 1962: Cape Cod with icons. We'd just been there with Granny. Did we go there because it was on the table? Or was it on the table because we went there? That was the beautiful, circular sense of safety that kept me going. Truth be told, it still does.

On the October 1966 cover was a man with binoculars. What gall, to tell it like it is! Brave, brave
National Geographic
! – my rescuer, my ally, my kin. Of course, it was frightening to see a “red-white man” front and centre, the sort I was most afraid of – still am, some ways, some days. But at least someone knew the truth. The problem was these old white girl-hunters, all pink and wrinkly. Sorry-looking, badly shaved Santa Clauses.

Of course, I'm telling this now using the big words of the big girl I became. The woman who doesn't believe in Santa has learned about the Taj Mahal and St Basil's, dated the family trip to Cape Cod through the baby book, and done painful inward looking to find a shattered self. Has figured out the difference between jets and hummingbirds, found old maps scratched inside her head, and remembered more than what is comfortable to say about a time that was profoundly uncomfortable to live. I have no words to tell, really, how it felt to figure this out in the winter of 2011, when my endopsychic perceptions came face to face with their doubles on those covers and I accidentally read my own mind. When I fugued into a curious space where the real “now” has never happened – and “then” is happening still, perpetually, suspended forever inside me. My psychic boomerang.

The shock sent my five-foot six-inch frame down to ninety-six pounds, triggered my eleventh bout of mononucleosis (after a twentytwo year hiatus), and prompted new apparitions of my old “smoke rats” – shadow creatures scurrying along the baseboards. Déjà vu: the cathecting of the present by the past. I wept my worst when I realized I was comforted not by story characters, fellow sufferers inside books whose full lives I could engage, but by flat, static, images where I picked up truth incidentally. Grabbed a fact here and there through illicit scanning, random glimpses. And started to believe, as I do now, that not only the unconscious speaks but the universe does too.

Once I conceived of these covers as symbols of reality, it wasn't much longer before I thought they could predict it – and I felt even safer inside my existence. On January 1960, there was an ox on the cover. In
November 1961, we moved to the suburbs right where an old farm road had passed. I could still see ruts leading from nowhere to nowhere, overgrown with grass. And not fifty feet from my back door, I found an ox skull. I took it as a sign of watchful grace – confirmed in October 1967 by another ox cover. That's how things started to make sense to me. Help the only way I had it, the way it was offered. And a real bargain too, at a dollar a copy.

For the first years of my life, these covers were my special “comm link,” so to speak, to a place I had no location for. Kind of a pre-mother tongue. Their pictures registered in a part of the mind that seemed to come before or under my languages. Like fear, pain, love, wonder. Just to find them again flushed my entire being in a nanosecond. Nausea and sensory overload, ears popping, fever, systems voiding, forty years of an erased life returned in a flash. A labyrinth and a library. Raw seduction. I couldn't resist opening the door – and couldn't deny what I saw there. Material so difficult to remember, so impossible to forget. Reading as electroshock.