There was yelling through the streets as Charmaine and I wove our way through the square. It all seemed foreign to me, the noise of people coursing through the streets like a pulse. I looked around, trying to jog my memory but it was a difficult process. There were teenagers leaning against walls, elderly sitting on the edge of the fountain, the sounds of a city scaled down to fit the square. The church was still the same, the only difference being that the once bright white paint had aged into a mottled and peeling grey. This was no longer the sleepy little town my mother and I had breezed into almost twenty-five years ago.
“Come, Charmaine,” I called, noticing that she was lagging behind me. I stopped to wait for her to catch up when I felt a sort of still dizziness hit me. I shook my head at the feeling, trying to figure out what it was. Déjà vu, that what it was. I hoped.
“What’s wrong, Maman?” she asked, standing beside me with a hand on my arm. I looked at her and smiled, her onyx eyes shimmering with concern.
Looking to the scenery surrounding me I felt a bubble of laughter well up inside of me. After all these years, I was only beginning to understand the method to my mother’s madness, but there were moments in which I knew her soul was coursing through me. Standing at the mouth of the square, I had one of these moments. I felt the laughter leave my lips but, strangely enough, it didn’t sound like mine.
“What is so funny, Maman?” Charmaine asked, her eyes wide in askance and her English lilting under her delicate French accent. Her brow furrowed in concentration as she searched for her next words, trying not to mix up her languages. “Is it this place? Because I don’t think this place is funny at all. In fact, I think it smells.”
I laughed again and this time the laughter I heard was mine, not my mother’s, and I was slightly relieved. I sniffed the air between my breaths of laughter.
“Ah, ma cher,” I replied to her in French, “I do believe that this town has…” I thought for a moment before replying in English. “Gone to the dogs.”
“Maman!” Charmaine cried, looking up at me with an obvious annoyance on her face. “Why must you keep doing that?”
“Doing what, my love?” I asked her sweetly, feigning innocence.
“That! First English, then French, then Dutch, and back to English! It’s confusing!” She stomped one of her little feet on the concrete sidewalk square beneath her. Gone are the cobblestones, I noted to myself before quickly reverting my attention back to my daughter.
“I must keep you on your toes, darling!” I replied to her in Dutch as I picked her up. She squealed in delight, all annoyance gone. Holding her in one arm, I swept out my other across the square.
“Maman, what is this place?”
“Do you remember the sleepy little village Granmère Sophie used to constantly speak of?” Charmaine nodded her head. “Well, ma petite souris, this is that sleepy little village.”
Looking at me puzzled for a moment, Charmaine wriggled free of my hold and leapt from my arms. Running ahead of me, she turned in a circle then stopped. She looked up to the sky, the clear blue canvas above her, then I saw her eyes travel down, quickly studying the buildings that bordered the little square. I approached her as the eyes of townspeople began to notice us. Taking her hand, we walked towards the fountain and sat on it’s edge.
“But this village is anything but sleepy, Maman!” She gestured to a group of raucous teenagers playing dice against a building wall. “They’re terribly loud for a sleepy little village, don’t you think?”
“Ah, how times change,” I whispered to her. I closed my eyes and remembered the old village of when I was six. “Time certainly do change.”
“And it is much too big to be a village,” I vaguely heard her quip. She was right. The tiny, close-knit village of my reveries had grown and transformed into a bustling town.
Charmaine’s voice pulled me out of my memories as her hand tugged at mine. “Come, Maman! Show me where Grandmère’s bakery used to be!”
I stood and watched my daughter for a moment, feeling a strong guilt-laced pang of kinship with my mother. She must have felt the exact same way I felt, watching an excited daughter of six ready to take on the world. I shook the feeling and caught up to her, taking her small hand in my own and guiding her to the main vein of streets that would lead through the winding boulevards and avenues I used to know by heart. As we walked, I tried to place the buildings and shops from my past into the new structures and the current reality. It was hard.
“And this used to be Rue Avenue,” I informed Charmaine as we walked down the largest street. I searched out a street sign and found one, the brightly painted metal placard seeming garishly out of place against the ancient signpost it was affixed to.
“Rue Se-se-secor-ord,” Charmaine read slowly, sounding out the letters phonetically. I waited patiently until she was repeating the street name into her memory. “Rue Secord. Rue Secord.”
“Very good, darling.” I smiled at her encouragingly as I switched my tongue to French. “Now, down this street is where Granmaman had her bakery and patisserie. Can you tell me what a patisserie is in English?”
Charmaine hesitated as we strolled. I could feel her fingers drum lightly into my hand as she contemplated her answer. I chanced a glance ahead of us, to see how far our paces had taken us when I saw the hanging shop sign swaying in the breeze in the distance. I narrowed my eyes and chuckled to myself.
That stupid sign. That stupid sign was still there, still being used, although sorely neglected, I noticed. The bell beside it that used to be connected to the door was gone, that goddamn bell ringing incessantly, a sign of good fortune for my mother but one of sheer annoyance for me. Twenty-five years of dirt, grime, and countless seasons had abused the sign and one could barely make out the juvenilely painted loaves of bread with white squiggles of steam rising from them. I had made that sign. It was a surprise, a gift to my mother when we had first moved to Rizal all those years ago. I could remember my excitement as I searched the riverside for the right piece of wood –
“Pastry shop!” Charmaine cried, beaming proudly.
“Excellent!” I could feel the pride emanating from my own grin as I squeezed her hand. I pointed towards the weather beaten and blackened wood sign swinging in the distance. “Do you see that, ma petit souris?”
“Uhhh… Uh-huh,” she replied nonchalantly as her gaze tried to follow the invisible path my finger was directing to.
“That, my angel,” I whispered to her, my tongue choosing Dutch this time, “is Granmère Sophie’s bakery.”
She looked at me with wide eyes, absently sidestepping a small clutch of washerwomen and laundresses. They looked at us warmly and cooed over Charmaine in her red pea coat, red beret, and matching red patent strapped shoes. A jolt of motherly pride mixed with another pang of motherly kinship ran through me and my smile broadened.
Charmaine skipped ahead of me, eager to share in our family history, as I followed, my vision beginning to fade into the sepia of my memories. Six year old me was running along side Charmaine, both casting an occasional glance backwards for a sign of approval. I nodded my head as I remembered my mother had and the two little girls surged forth a little further. I had to blink as they ran: it almost looked like the two were holding hands.
Stopping in front of the bakery window, Charmaine waited for me impatiently as the six year old me of my memories grew fainter with every step. Finally, I stood with Charmaine, our reflections staring at us. I was startled to see white curtains drawn inside the window pane.
“Is it closed, Maman?” Charmaine’s expression of excitement began to melt, her eyes looking crestfallen.
I glanced at my watch and smelled the air. “No, it’s a Tuesday morning. And I smell bread.” I leant over and looked at the glass door. Catching the eye of an exiting patron, I smiled politely. He smiled in response. I heard a weak tinkle of a bell as he pushed the door open.
“Excuse me, sir,” I asked, tugging on the red woolen lapel of Charmaine’s pea coat as I turned away. I felt her little hand grasp mine. “The bakery is open, correct?”
He was an elderly man, perhaps in his early seventies. He seemed to be in the same condition as the old bakery sign hanging above, stooped and beaten by age, leaning heavily on a knobby wooden cane. His face was sun spotted and jowly. Looking him straight in the eye, I was again taken aback: one eye was a bright clear blue, the other sparkling electric green. I knew this man.
“Yes, yes, my dear,” he replied in a French that had been slowed with age. He stood in the bakery doorway, holding the door open for us. I could smell the familiar aroma of breads and pastries waft through. “The bakery is open. They’re just putting the finishing touches on the new window display.”
I searched his face to see if he recognized me but I saw no spark of familiarity pass through his blue and green eyes. I thanked him.
“You’re very welcome. I’m curious myself to see it,” he said, letting the door swing shut behind him. He walked over and stood beside Charmaine and the three of us watched as the heavy white curtains jostled and flapped inside the store.
“The owners put up a new window display every Tuesday,” observed the man. I watched in the windowed reflection as Charmaine turned her face up to look at him, eyes wide half in fright and half in eager interest. “It’s all very nice: loaves lined up at the ready, cookies and tarts patterned around the whole thing. Nothing so intricate though.”
I smiled as I remembered Mother’s window arrangements. Intricate scenes, every week something new and exciting. One week a carnival, another a scene at a zoo, animals and miniature people, too, all out of baked goods. I knew in my heart that what we were about to witness was nothing compared to the audience my mother used to attract when she was running the bakery.
“Yes, I’ve stood at this window every week for the past twenty-five years to see what new wonders lay behind that curtain,” he continued. I quirked an eyebrow and he turned to look at Charmaine, a kind smile gracing his aged face. “Used to be the old owner would have whole worlds waiting behind that curtain. Well, it wasn’t a curtain back then, more of a wooden shade contraption. But I remember the crowds that would gather, just waiting for Madame D’Orlean to pull up that shade.”
“Really?” I heard Charmaine whisper in awe. There was a warm silence as the elderly gentleman nodded his assent.
I felt Charmaine let go of my hand and I watched her march in front of him with pride. “My grandmother used to own this shop.”
It took a moment for the gentleman to process Charmaine’s words. He looked at her closely then turned to me, his eyes tight in the fight to remember a face.
“Really,” he stated slowly, looking between Charmaine and myself once again. I felt a sly grin creep across my lips as he tried to connect me with the little girl he had met, what seemed, a lifetime ago. He addressed Charmaine as he stared at me, his voice growing lower at the bewilderment. “If your grandmother used to own this shop, then you must be Sophia D’Orlean’s daughter!”
I laughed. “Oui, Monsieur Colle. I have to say, I’m quite surprised you did not recognize me.”
“Julienne! Heavens, me!” He raised his arms in the air and I saw Charmaine duck out of the way of his flying cane. “Recognize you? An old man like me? I never would’ve guessed in a thousand centuries!”
He clasped my hands tightly in his own as we shared a laugh. Feeling Charmaine standing behind me, I stepped aside to reveal her. “My daughter, Charmaine. Darling, this is a dear old friend of mine and Granmère Sophie’s, Monsieur Regis Colle.”
Colle stooped even lower and grasped her hand before righting himself again. He wiped the sweat off his brow from all the excitement, turned to us again and smiled.
“I should have known," he said, the twinkle in his eyes alive and electric. "I should have known."