Small People

On humid summer nights, we slept outside. My father dragged our mattresses into the yard. My mother carried a bulging pile of blankets. We three children gambolled around them like puppies. Mother would always declare she felt a breeze, though the air clung like cobwebs to our skin.

I remember the salty smell of my mother’s sweat mingled with the perfume she liked to wear — Le Galion, sent to her from France by a childhood friend. The dark gold liquid in a heavy bottle stood on a doily in the center of her dresser. My father smelled of endless cigarettes. A fine veil of smoke wreathed his head as he recklessly flicked ash onto the lawn.

In August, my family fled to a resort. Belleview Manor. A fancy name for a cluster of peeling cottages set in a clearing surrounded by dusty woods.

We’re standing in a room with just two beds, one double and one cot. My father’s arguing with someone, a plump gnome, the manager of the place. I can feel my eyes burning, filling with tears. I don’t understand their words. Those opaque, meaningless sounds were the first I spoke, but I quickly forgot them, eager to fit in. Now it frustrates me to be shut out. I sense my father’s anger and helplessness. His sallow face looks flushed. He’s holding out a pack of cigarettes, a bottle of wine. We have no money, I know we have no money.

Whenever he could, the gnome would catch me outside our cabin and press me up against the wooden walls. He’d smile and stroke my cheek and give me chocolate, one of those sly old perverts you hear about. I’d smile back as I plotted my escape. When footsteps came too close, he finally hoisted his bulk away from me and I squirmed past. I never told. Even when I was ten, I understood power, who could safely make waves, and who could not.

Now it’s November, gray and drizzling rain. Four of us are huddled on a street corner. There’s a transit strike, it’s paralyzed the city. My father needs to thumb a lift to work. We wait, patient and silent. I hold his hand. He’s wearing a thick wool coat, a scarf and hat. My mother’s in brown mouton, cheap and warm. My younger brother presses close against her. His nose is bright with cold, his lips are chapped. This sentimental tableau will hopefully snag a driver, a spacious car. Finally, someone stops, a door opens. My father murmurs something, his eyes look down. The car sweeps him away. My mother turns, forgetting to take our hands. We hurry after her.

With my parents, it’s always the same story. ‘That’s all in the past,’ says my father bitterly. He’s dreaming of the life that he will make; a good, prosperous life for all of us. Stubbornly, my mother shakes her head. They’re too separate to argue, they rarely fight. Their life isn’t a journey they take together.

Then, one spring day, my father has a car, a blue leviathan with gleaming chrome. Triumphantly, he takes us for a drive, a small man in an enormous automobile. His feet barely reach the pedals. He’s honking the horn and waving at the neighbours. My mother’s hunched in the seat, her eyes squeezed shut.