Dropped Threads 2 by Carol Shields

Author:Carol Shields [Shields, Carol]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Literary, Social Science, Women's Studies
ISBN: 0679312064
Google: Y6ERQPMpbUIC
Amazon: B003OYICV8
Publisher: Vintage Canada
Published: 2010-05-27T16:00:00+00:00

Nobody

Needs to Know

Mary J. Breen

I started out as a nine-month secret. It was 1944, and my mother at forty-one discovered she was pregnant with me, her first and only child. Instead of openly rejoicing, my parents decided to tell no one but the village doctor—not one person in their families, not one of their friends. So well did my mother fool people by standing very straight and continuing to wear her sturdy corset that when I was born, the village busybody travelled all the way to the city hospital to see for herself; she couldn’t believe that Mrs. Breen was in the maternity ward.

My mother considered their close-mouthed behaviour a perfect model for me to follow. Secrets were the norm; “nobody needs to know” was the rule. There were no end of things I was not to mention, from who had been over playing bridge the night before, to what my father’s family had done for a living, to where we’d gone on a holiday. The one really big thing I was never, ever to tell anyone was this: my parents had owned and run a prosperous movie theatre for six years when I was a young child. Then television arrived, and everyone stopped coming because they preferred staying home to watch Hockey Night in Canada and I Love Lucy. Our theatre, like thousands across North America, closed its doors. Soon afterwards, we moved to another town, where my father returned to high school teaching, and I was told to keep my vivid memories of the theatre to myself. It was as if I’d been put in a witness protection program, and my real past had been erased. So strong was this taboo that as I write these words now, forty-five years later, my stomach tightens up, and I want to beg you never to tell a soul.

None of the other things I was forbidden to speak of seemed at all important. They weren’t the “good” secrets I had heard whispered in the schoolyard, the kind that are irresistibly better passed on than kept to oneself. Nor were they the life-or-death ones I read about in books—no murders or spies or mad relatives in the attic—but just stories of ordinary people doing ordinary things. I couldn’t understand how we could be hurt by anyone knowing that the Breens had been farmers, or that my father had been scouted by a major league baseball team (but had turned it down for some unspoken reason), or that he had had a job other than teaching. It was like being told to hold my breath forever.

I obeyed their secrecy rule, but I didn’t like it, and I certainly didn’t understand it. I assumed it was somehow connected to their ominous reminders that since we were Catholics in a Protestant town, we needed to keep things close to the chest. Perhaps “they” weren’t exactly the enemy, but on the other hand, “they” didn’t need to know our business. (This old kind of Irish Catholicism

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.