Leaning, Leaning Over Water by Frances Itani Page A

drive up to where he could park his car at the curb and know his family was safe inside; where he could walk down a street and be greeted by a handshake and the warm touch of an old friend. But we had no car and no curb; only a dirt road. We had no neighbours, either, on chemin Brébeuf, but Mimi did, on her street. She and I had been watching Monsieur Cote ever since the day Father had talked about the Communists.
    “Or Madame Chenier, by the bus stop,” said Mimi. “Her stomach is as big as a watermelon but there’s no baby inside. Everybody says it’s a tumour that’s so heavy she has to hold it up with her hands when she walks. Maybe she’ll wake up one morning and her stomach will be flat.”
    “You two are morbid,” Mimi’s mother said. She was wearing a tight skirt with a pleat at the bottom, a thin peach cardigan buttoned down the back. “Pick out my earrings,” she said to Mimi and Mimi slid off the hope chest and disappeared into her mother’s room.
    The aunts came out of their rooms, dressed for the movie and the bus ride to Hull. Mimi returned with white chiclet clip-ons for her mother.
    “Don’t play outside too late, you two,” said Mimi’s mother. “Grand-mère is in her room. She wants to sleep. Pierrette’saround, I think, and Bee-Bee’s here. Anyway, Henri and the Bride are always at the back of the house if you can’t find anyone.”
    It was one of those warm-breath summer evenings. We could hear sounds from far away, and yet everything seemed enclosed. We could have walked from one end of the village to the other and it would have been the same. Heaviness and stillness. Everything stopped. No one behind screen doors making the slightest effort to move. The insides of houses were purposely in shadow; it was too early for lights.
    Some of Mimi’s friends from her street wandered into the backyard and we soon had enough for hide-and-seek. We determined that the stoop would be home-free and we set out our territory: two yards—front and back—Mimi’s and the Côté’s; the line of trees; the sheds; the veranda. We chanted Am-Stram-Gram and worked our way down to the Côté boy, the only one left. I wondered if he was a little Communist. “You’re it,” we shouted in his face, and scattered. Mimi and I raced past the Bride’s English garden and around to the front of the house.
    “We should stick together,” Mimi said. “Let’s go inside. We can sneak upstairs and come down the back way. Quick!”
    We opened the screen and tried not to make a noise. Pressed ourselves against the wall when we heard the counting stop, and waited. Mimi pointed at the stairs and gestured at me to run up first. She slipped behind a door as I tiptoed up to the landing. The place seemed deserted, uninhabited, without the aunts coming in and out of their rooms. But Bee-Bee came out of Mimi’s mother’s room, suddenly, and filled the doorway.
    We were both startled but he recovered first. “Hide-andseek?” he said, and I nodded. “Quick,” he said. “In here. I’ll hide you.”
    He opened the door to a room I had never been in. There were two dressers, a large cardboard box, a sofa, a desk and a tiny chair. It might have been a sitting room, or a storeroom for extra furniture. I turned around and saw Mimi, who’d followed me upstairs.
    “You’ll be safe here,” Bee-Bee said. “I’ll go down and scout out who’s around the stoop and I’ll tell you when to run for it.” He slipped out of the room and closed the door behind him.
    The room was dim; the blind had been pulled and the overhead light was off. I smelled must, old wood; the room was probably never used. A long time seemed to go by. Bee-Bee finally reappeared and said, “Everyone’s gone, they must have gotten fed up. Now I have to take you hostage and lead you downstairs.”
    He had tea towels in one hand and rope in the other. “Turn around,” he said.
    We hesitated, but shrugged and turned. We’d often played with Bee-Bee,