Citizen of Happy Town: An Orphan Remembers

By Steve Marchand

A tribute to the power of resilience. Author Steve Marchand takes the reader on an emotional roller coaster as he recounts the period of his childhood during which he became an orphan. Through an intense reflection, the author describes the daily life at an orphanage called Ville Joie, or Happy Town, as well as his experiences, at times good but at times shocking, with the different families who took him in on a "trial basis."

While Citizen of Happy Town is in no way intended as a clinical or educational tool, those who work with children or in the field of adoption would do well to read it, if only to discover what a child can see and feel in difficult situations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Oct 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9782981436733

Book preview

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Introduction

Is it always there?

The question came at the end of a long dinner during which we had wined almost as much as we had dined. It could explain my struggle to find the right words but the truth is, whether it’s wine or water that dilutes the blood flowing in my veins, never before had I hesitated to answer a question about the early years of my life.

Not even when the question came from me.

I thought the subject to be so familiar that my hesitation, the first regarding this matter as far as I could remember, nearly turned into a mild obsession instead of the intense reflection it ultimately became.

Before that question came along, the visions I had of this period of my life looked and felt like a movie preview. The images flickered right behind my eyes to a soundtrack by Cat Stevens, a musical selection that makes perfect sense upon hearing the whole story. The transitions between the scenes were made of white words fading softly, in and out, on a black backdrop: Fear, Pain, Shame, Conflict. Appearing last on the other side of an equal sign, as the sum of it all, was the word Emotions. If I had to pick one word to describe this period of my life, it would have to be that one.

These words are short and simple, really. Tough, also. Whenever I told snippets of my childhood to others, these were the words that could force them into an obedient silence, one that would normally last until I added the emotions of the time to my story. That’s when the questions from the audience usually came, as naturally as my answers did, in a dance that followed a rhythm I thought I had perfected over time.

Emotions are nothing more than a response to whatever our surrounding world is trying to tell us. The stronger our inside agrees or disagrees with what it hears, the stronger the emotion. And for each and every one of those, there is a memory just as intense. That’s how some images stay with us for so long, like the memory of our first love for example.

In my case, emotions are the reason I can remember my youth in a way that is so freakishly detailed. They also explain why the answers used to come to me so easily when I was quizzed about events that took place so many years ago.

At least it was true, until I was stunned by that question into a silence loaded with red wine aromas.

And no worries; the memory of my first love is also still there and quite clear too. Annie was, after all, as beautiful as the summer days we spent holding hands.

As for the images of my childhood, they can appear out of nowhere and occupy my mind for as long as they see fit, whether I seek their company or not. They can be triggered by something as simple as a scene of departure played by actors on television or witnessed by sheer coincidence in real life. A single word overheard in the distance or even a subtle fragrance is often all it takes for my mind to launch tape. Everyday moments, as routine as they can be, happening only to remind me that for a while in my youth, my own life didn’t belong to me.

It becomes difficult to hide from the memories themselves or to hold a grudge against those who trigger them; the planet can’t stop spinning just because it might slap me in the face as it rotates.

Is it always there?

I was asked if my childhood was always there, on my mind, as I went about my life. I was asked if I could see it all the time. Silence followed because until I heard that question, I hadn’t realized how much it was in fact always there. It had become such an organic part of who I was; I couldn’t even feel its presence anymore.

There are of course worse thoughts to occupy one’s mind. I accept that these images are always there because, regardless of their nature or the words that describe them, I have come to cherish each of them over the years. No doubt these experiences have left scars on my body and on my soul, some of them much deeper than the others, but who can claim to have none? A scar is tangible evidence that, for better or for worse, we’ve experienced a moment of our life with great intensity. We move on, sometimes pushed forward by nothing more than the strength we find in the pride of having survived the very moment that injured us. The human heart can not only give life as it beats with mystical consistency, it can also put up a fight against life itself with surprising energy.

My story is, I acknowledge, a peculiar one. But the goal here is not to compare it with the stories of others and hope that mine will turn out to be the worst, like too many people too often do. No, my story is just different with its few defining moments and its many characters with souls as kind as anyone could ever hope to come in contact with.

It also has its soulless villains. Hence my scars, I guess.

This is not a j’accuse moment either, although I will admit that anger was a heavy burden I carried for a part of my young adulthood. Over time, however, I gradually came to terms with everything I experienced as a child until I finally embraced it for what it simply was; life as it sometimes happens for some of us. Life, such as it was for me. To keep living in anger just because of the few who made these years more difficult would have been like turning my back on those who at the time worked so hard to try and make them easier.

Is it always there?

During the long reflection triggered by this question, it occurred to me that over the years I had only told parts of my story to a few people, but never the entire tale.

Never, and to no one: not to my family, not to my closest of friends. Not even to myself.

I was forced to realize that, in all of the time that had passed since these events took place, only some of them had been favored by my memory, either for an internal debate or an out loud discussion. It was the first step toward the conclusion that if it was going to always be there on my mind, maybe I should dig a little deeper to try and find the rest of the images and see, even if only for my own peace of mind, if I could at least remember the entire story.

And while at it, why not try and turn these images into complete sentences instead of isolated rough words.

If I’m quite confident about the order of the events, as they will appear in my writing, I can’t make any promises regarding their place in time or the decor used as the backdrop of each of the scenes. I obtained my file from Social Services so the chronology has to be pretty accurate, but the folder is incomplete to put it mildly, having been misplaced for a few years at the time.

What follows is almost entirely based on my memories. Some of them sure are blurry but, luckily, most are so clear I can still smell them, taste them and feel them. For that, I have to give thanks to the power of emotions.

Is it always there?

Yes, it’s always there. It’s right there, flickering behind my eyes.

The afternoon I was taken from my family, my first morning at the orphanage, my best friend Alain. Danielle and the families who opened their door to me.

It’s all there.

Let’s see if I can find the words.

What follows is based on the author’s memories and is the result of his reflection.

*Some of the names have been changed, either because they were erased by time or because the author wants to ensure the anonymity of certain people.

Chapter 1

Summer of 1975. It’s the summer that follows my sixth birthday. I’m playing with kids from my neighborhood in the narrow backstreet behind the hovel in which my mother rents a small unit and where we live with my sister and my brothers.

Nothing out of the ordinary ever happens here and time is so slow, each day feels like it’ll never end, especially during summer. We kids never appear to get older and our old people stay old forever.

As far as I can remember, no one on our street has ever owned anything of value and judging by the common look I see in the faces of the adults, they all seem to have given up on the hope for a better lot. The one virtue of poverty is its equity in the effect it has in the eyes of those who live deep within it. Plus, spending every single day in a place where there’s never anything to covet makes it a lot easier to simply just give up. Maybe it’s better this way; this kind of poverty doesn’t mix all that well with dreams in the human heart.

And so, there isn’t much here people can share. In fact, the only thing they accept to share is a balcony but that’s only because of the way the buildings were designed. The tenants still managed to keep some distance between them by marking their portion of the balcony with cases of empty bottles of beer. Quite a few cases too.

As for us kids, we are completely oblivious to our reality; we’re not allowed to go any further than the backstreet except when our mothers send us to the convenience store. Very few people in the neighborhood own a television set and when they do, they’re not inclined to share it with others. So we have no clue what the rest of the world looks like. A true blessing, which explains among other things, why we don’t see anything wrong with the fact that most of the tenants have their windows covered in newspapers in lieu of curtains; we have no clue what curtains are and that we’re too poor to afford them. For us, if that’s how it is here then that’s how it is everywhere. When the pages turn to a dark shade of yellow after bathing long enough in a mixture of humidity and nicotine and it’s time for a new window treatment, we simply buy a newspaper.

Outside, there are dozens of clotheslines constantly bent to their limit by the weight of wet and freshly hand-washed clothes, going from each unit of the grey buildings on our side of the backstreet to their twins, facing us on the other side. How I wish I could say that the clean laundry is in stark contrast with the whole scene but, an enormous beige bra hanging and dripping next to a formerly white t-shirt do very little to add colors to the rest of the tableau.

To the easily amused eye of a child though, these lines look like a giant spider web. We can spend entire afternoons lying on our backs with our fingers pointed toward the sky as we try and figure out which line connects to which unit.

Unemployed men sit in rocking chairs on their portion of the balcony all day long, sipping beer after beer while the women stay inside to roll enough cigarettes to last until bedtime. They also make sure the meals are ready on time, which has to be the easiest part of their day: no one ever orders À la Carte here. A can of beans or a can of stew, that’s the Menu du Jour, every single Jour.

Not for my family. For us, it’s peanut butter, which is supposed to be good either for breakfast, lunch or dinner. So peanut butter it is, for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

So there they are, husbands and wives who spend their entire days just a few feet apart, interacting only when they scream at each other and who seem to find harmony only when they join forces to scream at us kids.

That’s where my roots are.

Luckily, I’m so young and the soil itself is so poor they can’t have dug in very deep.

Given the nature of this neighborhood, it’s easy to imagine our surprise when a big and expensive white car makes a turn on our backstreet and drives in our direction. Frozen in awe, with our mouths wide open, we watch this mammoth of a car grow even bigger as it gets closer. When it stops near our group, a man wearing a suit comes out of it and smiles at us; an allure and a gesture that only add to the rareness of the event.

Through the clotheslines, I watch him go up the stairs and walk with assured steps until he stops and knocks on the door of my family’s unit. My friends’ parents scream at their kids to come home for dinner but with an urgency I’ve never heard in their voices before today. My friends respond to the call so fast, it’s as though I’ve blinked once and made everyone around me disappear.