- Mar 21
- 8 min read
Why I Call Him What I Call Him
Because the first memory I have of my dad is this: I am four or five, sitting in the bath,
screaming.
Because he’s sitting in the white children’s chair next to the scratched up tub, washing my
hair. He doesn’t wash my hair often. Only when my mom can’t.
Because I ask to take a break, to clear the sting from my eyes.
Because my dad doesn’t hear, or doesn’t listen, and my body heaves, taking in gasps of air,
taking in gasps of air
without being able to wail them out.
Because my dad tilts the blue pail and water pours down my body and into my open mouth,
and I choke, my fingers
sprawling, wiping aggressively at my face.
Because our house is a bilingual house, rooted deep in Montreal soil.
Because my American mom talks to Benji and me in English, and my Québécois dad talks to
us in French. They talk to each other in their native languages. English to French, French to
English.
Because sometimes, at the dinner table when they don’t want our curious ears listening in,
they speak in German. A language they learn studying abroad in Tübingen, where they meet,
thirty-six years ago.
Because when I’m ten, I have my first sleepover with my best friend Esmée. We put the
futon mattress on my bedroom floor and drape sheets from my bed to my chair to the
dresser to create a fort.
Because we vow to stay up all night, flashlights blazing under our bedsheet fortress. We eat
Twizzlers. We watch Sky High and The Parent Trap on my pink iPod nano. 11.
Because as a young child, my mom is “mommy,” and my dad is “papa.”
Because Benji calls him that and as a younger sister, I follow suit.
Because I struggle with my French my whole childhood.
Because when I am little, my mom reads me The Little House on the Prairie, and I meet Pa, who
protects Laura from the
ever howling winter wind.
Because Pa, pronounced “pä” as in a dog’s paw, is nothing like my “pa,” as in “Paddington.”
Because my parents never kiss besides a peck at the airport or on Christmas morning.
Because as a kid, I don’t know that this is weird.
Because the sleepover bedsheet fortress falls by the next morning, and I sleep on the futon
mattress on my floor for a week.
Because as a kid, I have trouble sleeping.
Because my dad teaches on Tuesdays and Thursdays at a University in Trois-Rivières—a two
hour drive from Montreal.
Because one night, post sleepover, I cannot sleep.
Because when I am four, the Chornets move in next door.
Because my mom is thrilled. They have two girls who will be going to my preschool. One a
year younger than me, one
a year older.
Because they, too, only speak French.
Because on that night I can’t sleep, I put the futon mattress on top of my bed, hoping the
added height might help.
Because my dad leaves early Tuesday morning and comes back late Thursday night.
Because my parents live together idly.
Because research has found that bilingual speakers’ first and second languages are associated
differently to emotional experiences.
Because my parents no longer have much in common other than me and my brother.
Because my dad has SAD, a funny acronym because that’s what the disorder does—makes
him sad.
Because I learn through clues. Through the big mechanical light-therapy lamp that he begins to sit in front of every morning at breakfast when I’m in high school. By reading the labels
on pill bottles.
Because on that night I can’t sleep, the futon mattress is heavy, and my bed frame creaks at
the slightest shift. I must have been loud, walking around my room, hoisting the mattress
onto my small shoulders, and launching it onto my twin bed.
Because when I talk to my dad about my mom, I call her “maman.”
Because when I talk to my mom about my dad, I call him “papa.”
Because bilinguals appear to jump between languages in a single conversation, especially
during emotional episodes.
Because I never spend much real time with my dad.
Because my mom is the one who brings me to ringette, to hockey, to baseball, to tutoring.
Because according to my Google search, people with Seasonal Affective Disorder have
symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder and/or Bipolar Disorder during certain months of
the year, especially winter.
Because the floorboards of our house creak.
Because they give away movements.
Because when my parents tell us, on Zoom, me in my sophomore dorm room and Benji in
his apartment in Montreal,
that they’re getting divorced, I am not surprised.
Because people always ask me, “Which language do you dream in?”
Because we spend our summers in Door County, Wisconsin, with my mom’s side of the
family.
Because I find out about my dad’s alcohol abuse when I find a bottle of liquor hidden
between the couch
upholstery and his office wall.
Because I drive him to the corner store for chips and beer, when I don’t know how to drive
yet.
Because “La Loi 101” states that any child in Québec who doesn’t have a parent who has
attended an English school
in Canada must attend French school through high school.
Because there are good times.
Because my dad takes me to my first NHL game. I rock an orange Fanta mustache and the
bleu-blanc-rouge Habs logo on my cheek.
Because my dad stays in Montreal over the summers. He visits for a couple weeks over the
Fourth of July.
Because on that night I can’t sleep, I hear my dad in my parents’ room before he enters mine.
I rush on top of the futon mattress on top of my mattress and fake sleep.
Because on the first Saturday of every December, my dad and I get up early and go to
Atwater Market to pick out a Christmas tree. We like Frasier Firs and how they dust the
smell of fresh pine all over
our house.
Because when I’m mad I swear in French.
Because during my freshman year of college, I learn, by accident, that my dad is being sued
for harassment by one of his female students.
Because I read over my mom’s shoulder, when she is writing in her journal.
Because I ask my mother about it, and she asks me not to tell my dad.
Because she thinks it would break him, right now, to know I know.
Because my parents never fight in fighting sounds.
Because she makes me promise not to tell Benji.
Because real fighting sounds like my mom retreating to her room after dinner and my dad
drinking.
Because I get in trouble in the school yard for speaking English.
Because my dad was married to another woman before he met my mom. I find this out from
Benji, after the divorce. I
want more details and he tells me I should really ask Dad about it.
Because I don’t.
Because growing up I am a tantrum kid. I get sent to my room to cry.
Because after a few minutes of my crying, I hear my dad yell from downstairs, “Laura, si tu
vas crier de même, ferme ta porte.”
Because a different study identifies that bilinguals use their first and second languages equally
when expressing emotions.
Because I never talk about my own sad.
Because second languages are more often used in “light” contexts, while first languages are
preferred in “medium” and
“heavy” emotional situations.
Because medium emotional situations are defined as being in a hurry, as being angry, as
dreaming.
Because my cousin Mélissa and her partner Nancy stay with us one night in August. They
sleep on the futon in the basement, and in the morning, we have waffles with the bluest,
smallest Québec-grown blueberries and fresh Atwater Market strawberries.
Because after they are gone, I overhear my dad say that Mélissa’s started taking the same
medication he takes for SAD.
Because the disease is hereditary.
Because he is visibly relieved she’s started feeling better.
Because, I mutter under my breath, “Est-ce que tu me fucking niaise?”
Because studies show that bilinguals can find expressing feelings in their first language as too
inconvenient or distressing.
Because when I graduate high school my dad takes me on a fishing trip in northern Québec.
76. Because we drive past where he grew up, living in RV to RV—Baie-St-Paul, la Malbaie,
Charlevoix.
Because we get impossible mosquito bites, and I kiss the first trout I catch.
Because not long after Mélissa visits, my dad has dinner with my mom and me. We sit in the
living room in front of the TV. He holds his fork like a cave man, fist squeezing the utensil
and stabbing at his plate. He glares at the screen and slurs his words. His mouth full of food
as he mumbles something
incoherent about the man being interviewed on the news.
Because I avoid looking my mom in the eyes.
Because I stare at him, and he does not notice. He chuckles to himself and sways—one side
to the other.
Because Wu and Thierry examine the brain’s electrical activity among bilinguals while
reading pairs of words in their first and second languages.
Because I think about confronting him, about asking him where he’s hiding his bottles.
Because they find that bilingual speakers activate translations in their first language
automatically. An automatic process of translating word-meaning from their second
language to their first. Automatic French-to-English. Automatic English-to-French.
Because the above is not applicable in a situation where the words given in the second
language have a negative emotional load. The highly distressing overtone of the expressions
activates inhibitory mechanisms and restricts access to the native language.
Because on that night I can’t sleep, I forget to grab my duvet cover from underneath the
futon mattress. My dad opens my door and my body curls inward, pajama covered knees
coiling into my stomach, vulnerable against the off-white mattress.
Because on that night I can’t sleep, my eyes are shut tight.
Because on that night I can’t sleep, I hear him walk toward my bed, where he stops and
grabs the side of the futon.
Because he jerks the futon hard, yanking it from underneath me, gravity jolting me. ‘X’
shaped buttons on top of the mattress scratch the bare skin of my arms as I’m flung down
the futon’s side, against the wall. My pajama shirt twists around my stomach, ringing out the
pink poodles and polka dot wiener dogs against my upper body like a wet washcloth. My
right shoulder blade is stuck, parallel to the wall, forced against it, as I try twisting back
toward the top of the bed, toward the light blue flowers of my duvet. My twisted shirt
exposes my rib cage to the cold metal bed frame. The lamp in the hall casts a weak strip of
light across my now empty
bed.
Because I open my eyes for a split second to see my dad throw the futon to the floor. His
hairy stomach protruding
from his see-through sleep shirt. I shut them again.
Because “La Laura, il est temps de dormir.”
Because on that night I can’t sleep, I don’t understand why he is so full of rage. He knew I
had trouble sleeping. Or he forgot.
Because he was never there to count sheep.
Because I still don’t understand why he wrenched the mattress so violently, so unconcerned
for me, for my
pink-pajamaed body lying there.
Because when I write about my dad, even though I have called him “papa” my whole life, I
call him “dad.”
Because he slams my door shut, and I cry myself to sleep.
Because I hate that the clearest memories of my dad are ones I wish to forget.
Because every time I hug my dad—on Christmas morning, at the airport, on Father’s
day—I
feel the futon jolt from
underneath me.
Because in a poem last week I write “papa” and the word gets caught in the fibers of the
page, a hole split down the middle, separating “pa” from “pa” where my pencil presses the
soft paper.
Because just now the word gets stuck at the bottom of my throat—a foreign object in the
respiratory tract, lodged in my trachea. A stick in a dam. A childhood word caught in
splintered wood.
Because I want the word to knock on the door, I want the word to be soft, I want it to tuck
me in.
END NOTES:
Wu, Yan Jing, and Guillaume Thierry. “Investigating bilingual processing: the neglected role of language processing contexts.” Frontiers in psychology vol. 1 178. 1 Nov. 2010, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2010.00178
LAURA THERIEN is an assistant editor for Seneca Review and has also served on the acquisitions editorial board for the Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize for Seneca Review Books. She lives and writes in the Finger Lakes region of New York.