We Become Outlaws Our family lasted almost one year in Saskatchewan. It took the town that long to figure out that Ned didn't speak any French. "I always looked on it as kind of a frill," he explains to my mother. "French?" "Teaching," says Ned. "I coach the girls' basketball team and keep real good order in the classroom, so the kids don't, you know, go out and smoke in the hallways, at least during class time, and I always help out at assemblies. I was the one who rustled up some World War Two veterans for Remembrance Day. Remember, Jane, the knack I had with the veterans?" "Knack with the veterans?" asks my mother. She seems stunned by recent events. "You don't want them drooling on their shoes. And you want them to look like they're having fun even if they've forgotten what they're doing there. It takes a certain deft touch," says Ned. "So you didn't think knowing French was really so important?" My mother is trying just desperately to understand Ned's point of view. "Not in the general scheme of things," says Ned cheerfully. "Well!" says my mother. "Are they angry?" "Oh, livid," says Ned. "I guess they want you to resign?" asks my mother. My heart leaps up at the thought of leaving this crummy little house on the edge of town where we have lived for the last year. None of us have warmed to Saskatchewan. We moved here from Massachusetts the summer before when my mother married Ned, who got a full-time job here. His first full-time job ever. But it turns out that there is more to life than this. The town has financed this house for us but at great cost. There is no one very rich in town but still we are despised and pitied for the charity they afford us, giving us this house and lending us this furniture. I have no friends here. It is rumored we get our clothes off the dump. I don't mind so much for me but it is very hard on Maya, who has never had her own friends and wants some desperately. She has one so-called friend named Katie, who lords it over Maya and her poverty-stricken state. She is always saying things like she will give Maya her dolls when she outgrows them, knowing full well that by that time Maya will have outgrown them too. We are not really so poverty-stricken. We have not had chicken and rice without the chicken once since moving. There is always food and heat. But whereas back in Massachusetts our house on the beach carried some cachet, it is different here. No one cares that my mother is a poet. Once at a school dessert night one of the moms asked me what my mother did for a living and when I said she was a poet the mom replied, "Don't worry, she'll get over that." I know that none of this bothers my mother but I am bothered on her account. The only thing that has given us any respectability is Ned's position as the new French teacher. "Resign? Are you kidding? They fired me. Darn shortsighted. You know I was one of only two male teachers in the whole frigging town," says Ned. "Oh no!" says my mother. She looks so stricken that Ned and I glance at each other. But then the stricken feeling leaves her eyes and in its place I see the warm glow of possibilities. "But maybe," she goes on slowly, "this is a blessing in disguise. Now after the school year closes we can go back to Massachusetts. In the back of our minds, we always had that as a place to return." I am not so sure that this was as true for Ned, and I snap my head back around to look for his response. His eyes are flickering, full of thought, but moving too quickly for me to detect anything definite. My mother's eyes are quiet, still waters running Excerpted from Northward to the Moon by Polly Horvath All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
