two cans and a string!

The house was unusually quiet that afternoon. That was a rare occurrence given fourteen people lived here, including two parents and twelve children.  It was a brutally cold Saturday afternoon in mid-January. As was the case every Saturday, we younger siblings loved to go outside and play, building forts and snowmen, snow dogs occasionally. Sometimes, we'd pretend we were lost in a desert and would crawl around, entertaining ourselves with pretend mirages. We had very little to do inside the house. When we played inside the house, we'd play school, school bus, jacks, if we had them. We usually found something to keep us entertained.

On this particular day, the cold was cruel. We quickly ate our lunch and hurried outside, ready for new adventures. Unfortunately, our winter wear was not up to the challenge of keeping us warm in what must have been temperatures of at least minus 13 Fahrenheit.  Within a half hour, we were back in the house, our faces bright red from the cold. And what’s more common than bright red faces on children coming in from the freezing outdoor temperatures? Snotty noses, that’s what. I hated how my nose would get twisted and tortured when Mother or an older sibling would come at it with a crusty old handkerchief. 

My baby sister was a little slower in shedding her winter gear, and I waited for her in the living room, sitting on the sofa and holding my teddy. I didn’t like being alone in any room, but I counted on Dorina rushing in from around the corner any second. 

Our living room was practically bare. There was absolutely nothing fancy about it. The green sofa upon which I was perched was long, 3 cushions long, and there was a time when all us kids could sit on it. On this fateful cold winter day in 1967, we were able to squeeze 7 out of 12.  The sofa faced the front window and today, like all other winter days since I can remember living in this house, and like all the other windows throughout the house, this one was covered in a heavy gauge plastic to keep the cold out and the warm in. Come spring time, one wonderfully warm day, Father would decide to remove the plastic, to our great joy!   Between the window and the front door stood my grandmother’s old treadle sewing machine cabinet, upon which sat the monstrous black shiny telephone. Under the telephone was kept the thin telephone book, which evidenced the low number of residents living in our little corner of the world. 

“Drrrrrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnnng! Dring! Dring! Drrrrrrrriiiiiiinnnnnnng!  Drrrrrrriiiiiiiiinnnnnnnng! Dring! Dring!”. The shrill coming from the awful thing was deafening! Why so many rings? ! I couldn’t bear for it to continue its assault on my ears. “Where was everybody? Anyone?”.   I quickly looked around, too startled to understand that unless someone had magically appeared in the last two and a half seconds, I was still alone in the living room. There was nothing else to do. Leaving my bear on the sofa, I ran to the sewing machine cabinet across the room and I removed the black handset from its cradle.    “Drrrrrrriiiiii”: it stopped.  Underestimating its weight, I almost dropped it back onto its cradle. My right hand quickly came up and, hanging onto the handset with both hands, I was able to bring the receiver close to my ear. I heard the far away voice speak:  "Collect call from Mr. [blurb], do you accept the charge?".   I had absolutely no idea what she said. I was 5 years old at the time, about to turn 6 in 2 months. I was born and raised in a French Acadian family in a farming community named Rosaireville.  I didn't understand a word of English. And I hated the sound of that RINGING!!

I said nothing.  I moved very quickly, placing the handset on the cabinet, turning around in a spin, and running for the door leading to the hallway. “Ruuuuuuuun!!!”, my inner voice screamed it while my heart was beating so hard that I could practically hear it and feel it travel through my veins with its every pump. “Thump! Thump! …. Thump! Thump!”. The kitchen, the usual gathering place in the house, was my destination. Mother was almost always in the kitchen. If not Mother, surely I would find someone big enough to answer this lady's question.   These calls were always trouble. I knew it because Father would get upset whenever someone called and said "Collect call from [blurb];  do you accept the charge?".   I didn't understand why Father would get angry. I feared Father when he got angry. His voice was naturally powerful and when he spoke, there was no mistaken what he said was what it was….. I would never contradict or question him. His serious looking face, with large black eyebrows floating over his eyes, shadowed his eyes, which made them look dark and mysterious. I can honestly say, I don’t think I ever saw his eyes smile. He was a very serious man. And, there  was a rule in our house; children didn’t speak unless spoken to. 

I was just about to turn the corner to the hallway when I ran into Mother’s aproned lower body. I quickly moved out of her way. Mother had crossed the living room in a millisecond to pick up the receiver, and held it to her left ear. Barely 2 seconds went by and Mother said “yes”, followed by a questioning “oui?”. Mother didn’t speak after that. I saw her left hand begin to shake uncontrollably as she quickly grabbed the top of the cabinet with her other hand. Her legs seemed to give out and appeared that they would no longer support her. I panicked, knowing I wouldn’t be able to hold her up. 

“noooooooooo..... noooooooooooooooo..... noooooooooo!!”  Mother let out  horrific sounds;  wails such as I had never heard before. My breathing became shallow and quick. I felt a huge lump in the back of my throat, and my eyes were definitely going to start leaking soon.  I was standing a short distance from my distraught Mother. I wanted to do something, but had no idea what I was supposed to do. Father suddenly rushed into the room, followed by 6 or 7 of my siblings. "What's going on?", Father asked loudly, while quickly moving over to where Mother was barely standing as she hung onto the edge of the cabinet.

Whatever the news my mother shared, it upset a lot of my siblings. Jane started crying hysterically.  My fear increased as my confusion set in. Father picked up the telephone receiver and placed it to his ear before setting it back onto its cradle. He said something softly to my mother as he helped her walk to the kitchen. I, like my other siblings, followed. I hoped to understand, and I may just if I listened keenly enough. My older siblings surrounded my mother as she sat in her chair, elbows on the table, crying in her handkerchief. 

Father spoke softly to Mother, leaning over the table to be close to her, so close in fact that I couldn't hear a thing. But I kept watch, waiting for some tidbit of information that may help me understand what that telephone voice had to say to Mother that broke her heart and made her lose control as she did. 

Father was strong and always took charge when our household went through an upset. And, this was a biggy.  We were all sitting around the kitchen table, staring at Mother as she drank her tea and smoked her cigarettes.  As the afternoon hours passed, Father would, on occasion, walk to the living room and would return almost immediately. By the end of the afternoon, he appeared to be more and more agitated every time he returned from the other room. His voice got louder, and he began repeating those bad words that we were forbidden to repeat. With the assistance of my older sisters, Mother made supper. We all sat quietly, eating our meal, while Father made his treks to the living room more frequent. By this time, from the kitchen, we could hear that the telephone receiver was being loudly slammed onto its cradle. It was clear the telephone had done something to upset Father now as well. 

As a child, I understood telephones to work a certain way; the soup can way: two cans connected by one string, reaching from one person to another, making it possible to hear sounds emanating from each can as the other spoke. I understood that our telephone was like that with all the wires going from it to the wall, to outside the house, and on lots of poles standing to attention along the road. Essentially, I assumed telephones worked the soup can way. That made complete sense to my 5 year old mind. 

After supper, we all gathered into the living room. Father sat on the old pick up truck bench seat placed against the wall under the staircase going up to the 3 bedrooms and a kitchen sized room above it, which was the 5 boys’ dorm room, of sorts. He drank his cup of tea and smoked a cigarette or two while Mother sat in her rocker, and 7 of us children sat on the green sofa, with a couple of children sitting on the living room floor. No one spoke. Mother appeared pale and very tired. Jane was still sniffling from her earlier outburst. 

Father put out his cigarette in the ashtray sitting on the floor next to the bench, and holding the cup with its contents, he walked over to the telephone. He set his cup on the cabinet, he raised the telephone receiver to his ear and started speaking.  My confusion grew.  The telephone hadn’t rung, and Father had not dialed a telephone number on the rotary dial. How was he speaking with anyone?

He spoke softly, pleasantly, although the deep and projecting voice always sounded upset to some people. I heard a screaming voice from the earpiece, despite it being up to Father’s ear. It was definitely a woman’s voice, and she spoke French. It didn’t matter, because we didn’t understand any of what she was yelling at Father. The voice continued for a few seconds and Father didn’t speak. Finally, we couldn’t hear the woman’s voice anymore. Father took a deep breath, placed his mouth close to the transmitter on the hand set, and his voice echoed throughout the house as he bellowed: "Get Off the Goddam Phone!". He slammed the receiver onto its cradle. He walked over to the bench, took another  cigarette and a book of matches out of his shirt pocket, lit it, and after taking a long drag, he slowly expelled the smoke in a steady stream.  He stood, and, with his cigarette and the ashtray, he walked over to the sewing machine cabinet, lifted the telephone receiver to his ear, and with a satisfied look on his face, stuck his finger in the rotary wheel and began turning it, over and over again until he got the right combination, and he began speaking to whoever was at the other end of the wire.

I couldn’t grasp the “party line” concept yet. It took a few months before I was able to fully understand the ins and outs of that monstrous black shiny telephone. The only real important thing for me was to remember to run as far away from it as I could when it rang. And I did, for a few years. 

And then I didn’t. I was 10 years old. I answered as that same female voice called our home: “collect call from [blurb]. Do you accept the charge?”. There was no one around. My parents had gone upstairs to nap and my siblings were nowhere to be seen. I did the only thing I could think of at the time. I ran upstairs to my parents’ bedroom door, and I barged in quickly to announce the call. 

That was my misfortune.   It was never spoken of.