Cours primaire
Exile is my native land; foreign, my mother tongue.
– T.K.
Her solidly wasp parents were well at ease with being monolingual – never a passing curiosity, they saw no purpose in learning a language other than their own.
When they travelled, they spoke blithely to all and sundry in English, uncaring that ne’er a soul had the vaguest idea what they were saying.
– Have you got any ice?
– Comment?
– Does this come with salad?
– Bitte?
– What time does the next boat leave?
– Scusi?
Honestly, you’d think they’d make an effort to learn English, they’d sigh while posing in front of the landscape.
One night back at home, they met a man at a cocktail party who’d recently opened a French school in their town, and who somehow managed to persuade them that it would be chic for their children to attend.
To send all three seemed a bit much so they selected the youngest, who was four, and a chatty little thing indeed.
So as summer heat was beginning to abandon the air, and everything seemed to smell of pencils and leaves, the mother took her tiny daughter to the new school which, at the time, was located in the basement of a church.
Inside that church basement, it smelled like prayer books and kids and new leather shoes, and there was apple juice and arrowroot cookies getting warm on the rad at the back of the large bright room.
The little girl sat cross-legged on the wooden floor in a row of strangers as tiny as she, and a dark-haired young lady with a chignon and bangs and a movie star accent stood before them and said hello, bonjour, she was Mademoiselle Carnon from France, and that these were the last words she would ever say to them in English.
After that they sang and danced and counted in French. Drew and learned to read. Being so wee, the little girl didn’t realize she was learning another language, only that she now had two ways to say everything.
It wasn’t until she was at home that she realized that she had a truly excellent and growing secret. She knew things that her father, mother and big sister didn’t know. She had a whole other world to live in. She could call her big brother grosse nouille or gros caca and he didn’t understand (but beat her up anyway, just in case).
Her parents and their friends would have her perform, sing little French ditties at their parties. She didn’t like being put on display so she’d change the words around, slip in silly ones, and wait to see if anyone noticed – grinning like a fool when they applauded.
The more she learned, the more she was certain that there’d been some other kid inside her all along, just waiting to find the words.
Sometimes she dreamed about running away to cobblestone photos of streets slung with laundry and noisy with kids playing soccer, to wonder about how many voices one person can have and why Wilma never tells Fred Flintstone to get lost.
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