Mister Roger and Me by Marie-Renée Lavoie

Author:Marie-Renée Lavoie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2012-09-26T00:00:00+00:00

“You’re how old?”

“Twelve. Almost twelve.”

“Yeah, well you’re pretty small for almost twelve.”

“I know. I can’t help it.”

“Too bad. You poor thing, you’re going to be small like me. More’s the pity. Nothin’ in life is ever easy when you’re small. Not when you’re fat, neither. Take it from me.”

Madame Deslauriers was a small, rotund woman who knew what she was talking about. And since I had just steered the conversation toward the fatality that had united our small destinies, my age no long mattered. Oddly enough, it was easier for me to be twelve, now that I was ten, than it had been to be ten when I was only eight.

“So, it was Roger who sent you?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“How is he, the old fart?”

“He’s okay.”

Because I didn’t want to stir up any other sympathies by telling her he spent his time waiting impatiently to die, I confined my answers to a laconic formula that was only the beginning of a long story neither of us wanted to dawdle over. So we discussed work.

“Tell me, are you quick?”

“Yes, Madame.”

“Are you a whiner?”

“No, Madame.”

“We’ll see. It’s damn hard, that job. Not many can take it.”

“I’ll be able to do it, Madame.”

“You seem pretty sure of yourself.”

“Could be.”

“You’ve got a quick tongue on you. Not a bad thing,” she added, dragging her words to show that she was capable of it, too.

“Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s all right, don’t apologize. It’ll do you good in life to be able to speak up. Believe me, you have to know how to take care of yourself, otherwise they’ll eat you alive. I could tell you stories —”

No, no, no, no, no! I said to myself loud enough to make the hammer in her inner ear vibrate.

“— but we don’t have time for that now.”

Yes! I thought.

“I guess I’ll try you out.”

“When?”

“Right away, I’m short a girl tonight.”

“Okay.”

“Normally you get here at six o’clock and set the tables until six-thirty. You wait on tables until nine-thirty. Then you work in the kitchen with the others until the sinks and counters are like new. I’ll show you how to do it with Ajax, it does a great job, you’ll see. I pay you ten dollars when you leave, ten dollars minus any mistakes you make, which you pay for, naturally. You’ll have to figure that out for yourself. You keep your tips, that’s none of my business.”

The setting of the tables was already underway when I joined the other three girls, who, like me, trays in hand, gum in mouth, were getting ready for the onslaught of a large gymnasium full of small, superstitious women packed like sardines into the Wednesday-evening Megabingo. Through the small rectangular window in the door we could see a swarming sea of curly-haired heads. Hairdressers worked hard on Wednesdays.

One of the girls came up to me.

“When you come back, you go to the back, you’ve got the fourth row because you’re new. You don’t pay no attention to anyone who calls you from the other rows.

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