Читать книгу Suzanne - Anais Barbeau-Lavalette - Страница 20

Before, you had your bedroom, which you shared with your sisters. You had your rituals, your secrets, your lair.

You liked to sleep naked, your body in the form of a star, arms and legs open wide on the bed, while on the other side of the wall, the boys fought and snored.

Before, every new year, your father would buy you a pair of new shoes. You would spend a week looking down at them, your neck bent, eyes glued to your shiny new feet.

Then, the crisis.

Your mother went to the hairdresser’s once or twice more. But she wouldn’t let you check the telex. The stock market didn’t seem to interest anyone anymore, and the impatient line had suddenly dispersed.

You had nothing more to do at the salon; you didn’t have a mission anymore, and your mother’s reflection in the mirror, under the hairdresser’s hands, had gone dark.

You had to drag your mattress into the boys’ room.

Now you slept crammed together, no more secrets, odours intermingling.

A stranger moved into your room, ‘the lodger.’ It was by order of the government: a room had to be freed up to make a place for the indigent. The lodger had lost his home. He was soaking up your space, your light, your memories. You didn’t like him. He was poor, and he had taken your place.

And then you didn’t get new shoes. At the beginning of the year, your mother cleaned a pair that had belonged to your older sister. And they were handed down to you.

That’s when you lifted your head. That’s when you started to look to the horizon.