Tante Gaby’s Bedroom

Climbing that steep oak staircase to the top floor was hard on a child's short legs but had been even harder on my great-grandmother Delvina, who had tripped on her long dress.

"She still wore high heels at ninety," my mother, who loved high heels, marvelled.

"She was so feminine with her lace blouse and long earrings."

The fall had aggravated my great-grandmother's fragile health and she had died in her sleep some time after. I climbed those carpeted stairs with anticipation, and light flooded down on me from the skylight as I arrived at the top.

There were four bedrooms: a small one on the left of the stairs, with a balcony on Stuart Avenue that was my grandmother's. Beside it, was Tante Jeanne's bedroom which was the largest, and had been my great-grandmother's. Tante Marcelle's room was on the other side of the hall and had a back balcony; Tante Gaby's room was immediately to the right of the stairs.

I would go there first, especially when I had a sweet tooth, as I knew my aunt had raspberry jujubes in a metal container by her bed. I was only allowed in their bedroom when my aunts were present. Tante Gaby was usually in her room because she suffered from migraines and had to lie down on her bed during the day. She had had an emergency hysterectomy at sixteen years old.

"That's why she never married," my mother explained to me. "It was something in those days not to be able to have children."

Tante Gaby had won a beauty contest in the 1920s. She had been Miss Montreal one year. I found this hard to believe, not because she wasn't pretty but because she was so quiet. In my 1950s child mind, stimulated by the sight of American cheerleaders and beauty queens, I thought you had to be bold, an extrovert, to win such a prize.

Standing at the threshold of her bedroom, I would ask in my shy manner: "Can I have a jujube?" Tante Gaby would always say yes with a giggle, and I would go directly to the container, pry it open, then pull one or two candies from the sticky clump.

The bedroom was the colour of candy, mint green. The wall-to-wall carpeting was a darker shade of mint. Tante Gaby would be sitting in her armchair near the window which gave a view of the back garden. She would be reading, plain glasses at the tip of her nose, or sewing a button on a blouse. The curved wrought-iron floor lamp beside the chair would be lit. Her narrow bed was against one wall and was covered by a dark silky green bedspread.

On the opposite side was a long ivory coloured dresser with many drawers, a plain piece of furniture with one feature I liked: it had a panel that lifted up to reveal compartements filled with Tante Gaby's collection of jewellery. There were rings, earrings, pins and bracelets, all shining up at me.

My grandmother and each aunt had a jewellery collection, much of it bought on their trips to Europe. Tante Gaby had the most. On top of her dresser, she also had a silver cigarette box. In fact it was dome-shaped and the cigarettes were arranged in a circle. Tante Gaby was a chain smoker and I remember how she usually had a cigarette dangling from her lower lip, even when she talked, or as she cooked. No one made a connection between Tante Gaby's migraines and her smoking habit. It was only when she was nursing a headache and lay on her bed in the dark that she didn't smoke.

I liked her bedroom because it was large, with tall windows, and well-aerated. And there was something mysterious about the dresser drawers that I wasn't allowed to open. One apparently held a small handgun that had belonged to my great-grandfather, though this might have been just a family rumour.

Tante Gaby had the round face of a child, and round twinkling blue eyes, but though she often giggled, she was also very strict. I could look, or even play with her earrings, but not for long. She was impatient and I didn't linger long in her room. At Christmas, Tante Gaby always gave me a generous gift of money in a card, along with two boxes of MacIntosh caramel she had carefully wrapped in red tissue paper.

I was sad that Tante Gaby had not married and had children. She was petite and bony with a small pot belly as she grew old. Like all her sisters, she had her hair permed at home every few months by the same hairdresser. "Il faut souffrir pour être belle," my grandmother would remark when I wrinkled my nose and complained about the foul smell of the permanent solution.

Tante Gaby's bedroom closet was a walk-in, its dark depths filled with silky dresses and blouses, some hanging in plastic clothes bags. She liked to wear cardigan sweaters with pearly buttons. She was the sister whose chore it was to take out les ordures to the grey metal cans in the driveway. There was an old leather jacket that hung on a hook in the pantry by the back door. She would slip it on over her nightgown early in the morning to go out in the cold with the bags.

I don't remember cuddling to her or being read to by Tante Gaby. She loved to play bridge but I was too young to understand that game. She taught me to play Hearts and Solitaire and I liked that. What I liked best was to eat her jujubes.

As she aged, Tante Gaby's tastebuds changed and she preferred to eat salty, rather than sweet, food. Naine, who had the bedroom near the kitchen, had to keep watch for her in the night as her younger sister would roam down to the pantry where the boxes of crackers were kept and she would eat the whole box of Ritz, her favourite. This was against doctor's orders since sodium was bad for her hypertension.

When Tante Gaby was in her eighties, my mother found her a place where she was looked after by nuns. At that time, she had lost most of her memory and had become even more childlike, not recognizing my mother who visited her as often as she could. Quiet, lost in her thoughts, suddenly Tante Gaby would become alert and tell anyone passing by in the hall:

"My father was a doctor, you know."

 

 

©2009 Anne Cimon