Bilingual Being (41 page)

My new world offered me things that my old world couldn't. First, it was a relatively clean affective space. I didn't keep bumping into loaded words that set off old fear instincts and made coping with my chronic anxiety virtually impossible. Instead, it was almost a fresh start – enough of a one, at least, to give me room to breathe. I could exercise a bit of control over old bodily patterns that persevered like habits left unattended. That's what reinforced pathways do – that's what defines them. But I got to turn the tables a little in English. To have a small conversation, and then a few days and years, and eventually an entire life that didn't leave me constantly (only occasionally) hostage to the automatic
click-click-click
of those all-too-familiar triggers –
Run! Hide!

Second, in English, I was able to salvage at least a bit of a sense of humour from what seemed, often enough, to be fairly unfunny times. That's because my new tongue gave a wonderful twist to old, familiar words. And it took my favourite game, word play, to a whole new level. Now a «pissenlit» [dandelion] was a “piss-in-your-bed.” A «crapeau» [toad] was a “crap-on-the-water.” A «phoque» [seal] was … well, you get the idea. English was amusing even on its own. There were crazy felines running around everywhere:
cat
fish («des barbottes»),
cat
tails («des quenouilles»),
pussy
willows («des saules à chatons»), dande
lions
(«des pissenlits,» again), and
tiger
lilies («des lys»). I loved this game and I played it constantly to memorize new words. I ran funny twists on morphemes through my head, making up combinations with individual pieces of words that were just as silly as the little flippy book I was becoming – the head of an owl on the butt of a chick.

Even better, this game was a great way to learn about the difference between appearance and reality. Take, for example, «un cochon d'inde» [a guinea pig], a common pet. If you spoke only French, you'd assume the adorable furry guy's roots were in India, of course. But in English, you'd be led to think that his ancestors were actually from Africa. Which should you believe? You couldn't be sure. You needed to keep checking one against the other, stay sharp. Understand that these words that passed for truth in one tongue might not be considered true at all in the other. Keep bringing evidence from one frame of thought, one world, into the other. Become a smarter player.

It was the same for «une nuit blanche» [a white night]. The meaning nowadays is of an all-night arts festival. But it wasn't always so – this expression has changed fairly recently. A far more ancient French idiom represents the most common meaning of the phrase. If you say, «j'ai passé une nuit blanche,» it means that you couldn't sleep at all because you were worried about a horrid problem. Or you spent the night at the emergency ward, or something equally calamitous, and that's why you couldn't settle. You weren't attending a party – you were attending to a catastrophe. In English, though, the “white knight” who comes to give a perfunctory kiss to the sleeping damsel, to wake her up – and maybe take her to an all-night arts festival – sounds exactly like a “white night.” So the word game becomes a reality check, again. Is the “white k/night” – «la nuit blanche» – a saviour or a tragedy? You can't be sure.

And this shift in meaning isn't just for objects, but for the feelings people have, too. Take, «un coeur gros,» a big heart. In French, you're terribly sad, on the verge of crying – but in English, you're generous and kind. Meanwhile, if something is “formidable” in English, you're likely going to feel some anxiety about dealing with it – awe mixed with dread. But in French, if something is «formidable,» you're going to look forward to it without reservation. There are hundreds, quite possibly thousands, of examples like this between French and English – relative truths that keep you on your toes. Other sets of languages have more, or fewer, of these contrasting pairs, words that look the same but don't mean the same at all. Noticing these tricky differences hones your ability to attend carefully to input from the outside world. To monitor what makes sense and what's true – or not. In other words, it promotes constant reality checking, helping you sharpen a fine spear tip that's very useful, whatever your psychological make-up. But one that's especially vital when you need to defend a fragile self from more internal damage.

Best of all, in English, I didn't have to worry anymore about the uncomfortable business of gender. About my femininity and my core identity. It was a complicated subject at the best of times. The abuse permeated my sexuality and made it problematic in ways that were more or less apparent, just like those word contrasts, depending on the day, mood, partner. I was often, as the word says so perfectly in both my
languages, ambivalent about sexuality. But in English, the “he said, she said” business inside sentences could be easily fixed by using “they” and stating things in the plural instead. Speaking in generalities instead of requiring a commitment about gender. And a boy and a girl could be equally nice (instead of «gentil» or «gentille»), or equally interesting (instead of «intéressant» or «intéressante») – and so on. In English, there was no functional difference between «un ami» and «une amie» – or between «un idiot» and «une idiote.» A word, a thought, was free of the body, the sexuality, of its speaker or owner. And adjectives, pronouns, and articles were completely free of their nouns. The whole business of language was released from the machinery of sexuality, liberated.

Not like in French, where «l'accord féminin,» feminine agreement, was such a big deal. To add, or not to add, an «e» at the end of a word: that was the question, after all. It went miles beyond proper grammatical agreement to far broader considerations of «l'accord féminin» within the culture – women knowing their place, and agreeing to it. Accepting their lot. Moving within the bounds set by men, religion, and the norms of silence erected to maintain families and their peculiar religio-cultural myths. For in French-Canadian society in the 1950s and '60s, women were expected not just to get along with men but to tag along. To make their social and sexual accompaniment of men, their “feminine accord,” the central paradigm of their existence.

That was a major problem for me for two reasons. First, I'd skipped French school entirely, so I'd failed to learn enough about the finer aspects of «l'accord féminin.» As a result, I'd struggle with its grammar all my life when writing anything but common constructions. Second, through the deviant “after-school program” the French men in my milieu had operated, I'd acquired far too much knowledge about «l'accord féminin,» the sexual accompaniment of men. And what I'd learned is that it hurts a lot, inside and out.

A SUFFICIENT LIFE

The pain of belonging-not-belonging had started in early games I played against my full consent in dark places. And it spread right across the years, and onto the streets, to games I played willingly in broad daylight. In those first days of bilingualism, of course, I wasn't aware that
language was a tangible thing; it was just something I could do. I could talk in one or another tongue and mostly be understood. It was only later, as I got older, that I realized that speech was something people could examine, embody, judge, accept, reject, embrace, refuse. And the way I learned this – the way language was excised from my head and thrown down hard onto the road – became a trauma unto itself.

For in all those years since that day when I was shut out of that game of slingshot because of my language choice, I've felt abandoned by my culture. It was «un jour impossible» when I was forced to declare a singular allegiance to French, but couldn't. I imagined myself to be a traitor, «une indésirable,» and I withdrew further. In time, this sense of betrayal became a two-way street in which I generated at least as much sorrow as I endured. For in learning “to think in English,” I challenged, even shattered, my mother's understandable expectations that I'd be «une bonne fille» who'd respect her unconditionally and duplicate her values. Instead, I became «une maudite anglaise.»

Perhaps we all disappoint our mothers. Or did my bilingualism make me the worst of children? I think I know my mother's answer to this question, but I dare not say it. What I will say is that if she could take back my English education, I believe she would. As for me, I can only give my answer slowly, and it's “No.” True, I became a tiny migrant, the prodigal daughter who learned that the foreign land has many wonders, and never returned to the ancestral hearth. My new language had put something into my head that wasn't there before. Does a new language ever not do that?

«‘Mande-moi pas c'qu'al'a ent'les deux oreilles!» [Don't ask me what she has between her ears!] It's a common expression in Quebec. You use it when you don't understand what in the world is in someone's head, when you're in shock about bad decisions or generally problematic conduct. This idiom gets a lot of mileage on the streets, and I spent many years wondering what was, in fact, between my own two ears. I questioned not just those languages of mine, English and French, and my flowing back and forth between them – I could easily believe that – but also those memory fragments, shipwreck debris drifting between consciousness and unconsciousness. I couldn't believe that – it was not permitted. «Bin voyons donc!» The “best” of its adults being its worst? The “worst” of its children possibly not being as bad as all that? Please!
Be serious now! In this narrative frame of reference, it was understandably easy for the «maudit(e)» and the «bon(ne)» to become confused.

In Quebec, there's a new, ongoing discussion these days about «La Grande noirceur» having been the symbolic mother of «La Révolution tranquille.» The theory is that great darkness instills resistance and the desire for change. Is this one of those idiomatic truths about necessity and invention? That we need a motive to act on the present, something to propel our rebellions against fate? Was my personal darkness the symbolic mother of my revolution against my own silence? Did my trauma engender my reason for reclaiming my voice in another language? Perhaps changing tongues simply meant changing cultural and emotional scripts, transmuting my reactions, my roles, my realities. Using whatever chance I had to achieve the typical objective of most revolutions: long-term peace.

In fact, I could say that this peace held for life, in one way or another. As the years went by, my two languages remained in perpetual, paradoxical tension – as if managed through a carefully negotiated truce – swirling, mixing, yielding, crossing. Sustaining a highly functional state of contradiction and ambiguity between the language of origin, and the language of safety. The language of core, and of ego. Of destiny, and of agency. Of roots, and of shoots.

Pick any paradigm – the fundamental truth of my bilingualism was the same. And it was that each of my languages had, and has, an inherent value and an insurmountable problem all its own. Something that makes it irreplaceable, and something that makes it insufficient. That's why my languages aren't the two irreconcilable solitudes Canadian politicians often make them out to be. Rather, they're the flexible contours of a psychological space stretched out before me where I enact a most sufficient life not just upon it but because of it. For in the topography of my bilingual mind, English and French are the shores of the syncretic sea I inhabit – the essence in which I turn and return.

__________

*
This was a popular game found in most households in Quebec in the 1950s and '60s. It was invented in France in 1954, but the version we owned was distributed by Parker Brothers in 1962 in a small, light-green box. It's a card game involving road travel between stone markers, featuring hazards, remedies, and safeties.

*
The new bridge was built between 1966 and 1970. When the provincial vicepremier Pierre Laporte was murdered during the October Crisis, it was given his name instead of the planned name, Pont Frontenac. It's the longest main-span suspension bridge in Canada and the longest non-tolled suspension bridge in the world.

*
La Loi sur la langue officielle [Official Languages Act] of 1974, which made French the official language of the province of Quebec, affecting commercial and business transactions, education, and justice.

Avalanche

Life with childhood trauma

is life in avalanche country.

Memory is a rock face of sheer ice,

entirely unassailable.

You don't dare step too hard,

or cry too loudly.

You fear the ground will give.

You dread your own primal

screams, learn stillness,

doubt every step,

tread only on the surface,

and forget, over time,

about what lies beneath.

You embody your compliance.

Momentary light triggers

temporary thaws, becoming

shifts that open tiny passages.

But these close up again too soon –

these tectonic promises

of a cataclysm to come.

Who knows when …

Sudden whispers set off

quick fault lines in the

thick crust of remembrance,

mass gathers murderous speed,

shatters tension with its thunder,

smashes internal mountains

into powdered crumble.

By the time you're strong enough

to stick your head out,

and catch your breath,

the terrain has changed completely,

revealing caverns you left behind

and entire landscapes

you forgot you owned.

It takes a while to steady feet,

chart a new course for yourself,

when there's no mountain left to climb –

when the avalanche is finally over,

so that silence is not required,