by Giselle Renarde
Once upon a time I was a teenager at the Toronto Reference Library.
A
friend had introduced me to this edifice downtown, far from the wilds
of suburbia, where books were housed, of course, but in addition to books
they had all sorts of other media. Oh sure, so did my local library,
but the difference with the Reference Library was that they had
listening booths.
My friend showed me how to select a CD
to listen to (a CD! I didn't have a CD player yet! This was really
the future!) and check in with the lady guarding the listening booths
and put on headphones and sit... and just listen.
We
were both big on Broadway musicals, so we both picked out musicals to
listen to. I don't remember what she selected, but I picked out a
musical called
City of Angels. I'd never even heard of it. To this day I remember nothing about the soundtrack, but I remember the experience.
I
wasn't the kind of kid (or teen) who went out with friends very much. I
had too many family responsibilities, plus the cost of going out was
prohibitive. To get to the Reference Library, I had to take a bus and a
subway, and, while my mother covered the cost of my transit fare to and
from school (I went to a high school that was out of area for me, a good
hour from my house), any time I wanted to go anywhere that wasn't
school-related it was my responsibility to cover my transit costs.
Part
of the reason I didn't go out with friends much is that the things they
wanted to do cost money. I was saving my money for university.
From
the time I could write words on paper, every year at Christmas I would
put the same one item in my letter to Santa:
a university education. My
parents hadn't gone to university. My grandparents hadn't finished high
school. I would be the first in my family to get a degree.
You'd
think a mom would be proud that her child had such lofty aspirations,
but something else won out over pride with my mom--either pragmatism or
crab-bucket jealousy, I don't know. Every year she'd laugh at my letter
to Santa. She'd say, "If you want to go to university, you're on your
own. I'm not paying for it."
I got my first summer job
when I was 8 years old. Picking berries. Same first job my grandfather
had 58 years before me. He earned half a penny per pint. I earned 25
cents. Thank you, inflation.
But that money didn't
last long. Because the thing about living with a substance abuser is
that sometimes they steal from you. Sometimes they steal every penny of
berry picking money you earn. Babysitting money, birthday money.
Addiction breeds desperation.
It's true what they say: life isn't fair.
And,
you see, this is why it was a very difficult decision to go out or not
to go out: can I afford to spend $1.35 on transit fare? It'll take a
lot of dollar-thirty-fives to add up to a university education.
So, more than not, I stayed home.
But
that day, when my friend invited me to the Reference Library, I decided
to go out. Of all the friend-dates a person could go on, the library's a
pretty good one. And not just because it's free, although that's an
attractive quality for sure. It was more the fact that we could sit
side by side at listening booths and just... listen. No talking
allowed.
Libraries were different back then.
Not
being allowed to talk can really be quite freeing. People found me
standoffish as a teen, but that's really because I had so much shame
about my family of origin. I didn't want people trying to get close to
me and discovering what was behind the facade. I didn't want people
asking questions.
My friend didn't ask me a lot of
questions. I didn't ask her questions either. I knew it was just her and
her mom. I didn't ask about her father because I didn't want her to
ask about mine. By that time my mother had a restraining order against
him. He lived in a motel room in a small town, but he often swung by our
place to break into our house, destroy our belongings, and threaten to
murder us all.
One time my friend invited me to her place
when her mom was at work. She wasn't supposed to have people over, but
her mother would never know. It was kind of exciting for me to take the
streetcar to her neighbourhood because she lived in a gentrified area
with lots of quirky boutiques.
As it turned out, her house
was one of the forgotten left-behind ones. It was the tiniest house
I'd ever seen, just two small bedrooms off one main living area that
incorporated the kitchen. There must have been a bathroom somewhere but I
can't recall seeing it.
The bedrooms had carpeting, but the main room was just a dirt floor covered in pine needles.
My
friend transferred out of my school in Grade 10. I heard she went to
an alternative school, but I don't think she lasted long there. In Grade
12, I went to a university fair at the convention centre and there was
my friend! I hadn't seen her in two years. I was overjoyed to see her
again. I loved her in a way I still hadn't learned to express.
But
she wasn't attending the university fair as a prospecting high school
student. She was working it as a security guard. She'd dropped out of
high school. She hoped to return at some point but she and her mom
really needed the money and, well, you know how it is...
After
working part-time and summer jobs throughout high school, I was able to
afford my first year of tuition at the University of Toronto, but it
was tight. Throughout university, I think I spent more time working than
studying.
When I finally had that degree in hand, it was
really a non-event. Aside from my grandmother, nobody in my family
seemed to care much about my achievement. But I never expected them
to.
http://gisellerenarde.com
