Ciel Read online

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Ciel / Sophie Labelle ; translated by David Homel.

  Other titles: Ciel. Comment survivre aux deux prochaines minutes.

  English

  Names: Labelle, Sophie, 1988- author. | Homel, David, translator.

  Description: Translation of: Ciel. Comment survivre aux deux

  prochaines minutes.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200212389 | Canadiana (ebook)

  20200212850 | ISBN 9781772601367(softcover) | ISBN

  9781772601374 (EPUB)

  Classification: LCC PS8623.A23235 C5413 2020 | DDC jC843/.6—dc23

  English translation © 2020 by David Homel

  Copyright © 2018, Éditions Hurtubise inc.

  Published with permission of Éditions Hurtubise, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publisher.

  Cover illustration by Sophie Labelle

  All emojis designed by OpenMoji—the open-source emoji and icon project. License: CC BY-SA 4.0

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Second Story Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  Published by

  Second Story Press

  20 Maud Street, Suite 401

  Toronto, Ontario, Canada

  M5V 2M5

  www.secondstorypress.ca

  For Mémère

  1

  Don’t Call Me “Young Man”

  You might not believe me if I tell you, but I have a special power. It’s not my fault; it’s just the way my body works. Like a kind of magic. And I don’t believe in magic, so that gives you an idea…but here it is—every morning, no matter what time I set my alarm clock, my eyes open exactly two minutes before it rings. I swear, it’s true. If I set the alarm for 5:45, I will beat it by two minutes. If it’s for 6:30, my eyes pop open at 6:28, if it’s supposed to ring at 7:07…you get the picture. I can’t do anything about it. Even if I try to close my eyes again, it won’t work. Something in my brain keeps me from going back to sleep, even though I love sleeping. Instead, all I can do is stare at my alarm clock until two minutes go by. As soon as it rings, quick as a cat, I hit the Snooze button before my father, my brother, or my dog has the chance to wake up. Quick as a ninja!

  There it goes. Five thirty-five. Beep! Beep! Beep!

  I’ve never mentioned my special power to anyone, not even my best girlfriend, Stephie, because I’m afraid people won’t believe me, or they’ll think I’m so weird they’ll send me to take all kinds of tests to see whether I’m a mutant or something.

  I turn on my light, slip out of bed, and put on pajama bottoms and a T-shirt, the first clothes I can find. No need for fancy rags for my job.

  For the last few months, I’ve been delivering the newspaper. But even before my job, I would wake up very early for no other reason than to see the sunrise and listen to the songs of the birds. I live near Rosemont Boulevard in Montreal, on a street so quiet I can hear everything that’s happening at night while everyone is sleeping. My house is right next to the Botanical Gardens, and this last summer I went there often to read or play on my Nintendo Switch after I was through with my paper route. Now that it’s September, the sun rises later and it’s still dark when I’m delivering the paper, but at least the birds are singing. And if I’m lucky, I’ll see a fox.

  Once I get dressed, I unplug my phone from the charger to see whether Eiríkur answered my last email. He lives in Iceland, and with the time difference, it’s day there. But he doesn’t go on the Internet very often, so even if I answer his messages as soon as he sends them, it takes him a few days before he lets me know he’s still alive. That bothers me sometimes. After all, we’re supposed to be a couple.

  The home screen on my phone is a picture of the two of us in Maisonneuve Park just before he left. He seems a lot older than twelve, the opposite of me. His broad shoulders, which once comforted me, make me look smaller than I am, and in the sun, his hair is so blond it’s almost white. In the photo, my hair is still short. I don’t think the style looked good on me, but it did make my green eyes greener.

  He went back to his home town, Reykjavík, two months ago. (Don’t ask me how to pronounce the name of the place, I tried once and Eiríkur laughed at me.) He spent two years, maybe a little more, in Montreal, with his father and mother. He has a sister studying in England, and I met her when she came for Christmas. She was a lot of fun. He and I were in the same class in grades five and six. His father is a video game designer, and he was hired by a Montreal company to work on a big project. Unfortunately, his contract ran out last May. Since his mother develops Internet sites, and she works for herself, she could go back to Iceland to live, and they did. I thought that was selfish of them since they knew Eiríkur and I were going out together, and now all we can do is send emails and call each other on Skype once in a while. I talked to my father, and he promised we would go visit him next summer, but that’s ten months away. We’ll have time to break up and make up five times before then.

  I check the messages on my phone. No reply. Eiríkur is as lazy as they get. I’m not really mad at him because he’s always been that way. When people say I’m lost in space, I tell them they should meet my boyfriend! At the beginning of grade six, when we started going out together, Eiríkur admitted he’d been trying to tell me he loved me for six months, but he kept putting it off. I had to ask him to be my boyfriend. He’s so shy, and I love him that way. But he should have made an effort to send a message. He knows today’s my first day of high school, and I’m stressed out to the max.

  It’s a new school, which is part of the trouble. It’s much bigger, with at least five times more students than at Joe-Rose, where I went last year. All the kids from Joe-Rose will be there, and ones from other grade schools from the neighborhood too. It’s intimidating, being around so many people I don’t know. I don’t like having to explain who I am to everyone.

  You see, I’m transgender, which means I identify with another gender (whether it’s boy, girl, non-binary, or any other) than the one the doctors gave me at birth when they looked at my genitals (which are nobody’s business, by the way!).

  People like me have always existed, all around the world. There is nothing new about us. It’s not abnormal; it’s just the way part of humanity is made. In most societies, it’s the custom to attribute a gender to newborn babies, without waiting to ask their opinion. Depending on whether they’re designated a girl or a boy, their rooms are painted a certain color, and they’re given certain kinds of toys to play with. Afterward, if people turned out to be wrong, and the children end up being a different gender than the one that was assigned, why would they have to justify themselves and explain the mistake to the doctors and their parents? If you ask me, trans children shouldn’t have to explain anything, and adults should say they’re sorry instead of bothering them.

  In my case, I’m not exactly a girl, and not really a boy. I am somewhere outside these two. And that has nothing to do with what I like to do or the clothes I wear. It’s the way I feel in the world and how I want people to understand me. Usually, it bothers me less if they think I’m a girl and call me she than if they think I’m a boy. But what feels right is they. They can mean any gender. It’s been used for people like me for cent
uries. Usually, the first thing people wonder about when they hear that I’m trans is what’s in my pants. That’s not very polite. I know that might happen, very soon, when I walk into the classroom. Do you think there are people anywhere in the world who like talking about their private parts in front of a bunch of strangers? Count me out!

  When someone asks, I have to explain that when I came out of my mother’s stomach, the doctor exclaimed, “It’s a boy!” But he didn’t take the trouble to ask me what I thought, which isn’t very nice, especially since I’ve never really been a boy. My parents made the same mistake as the doctor, and gave me a typical boy’s name, Alessandro. That’s the name the teachers are going to call me today, even though I don’t like it very much. That’s what they called me in grade school, and it didn’t suit me. With a name like Alessandro, no wonder people think I’m a boy. I’d rather be Alessandra.

  Most of the time I ask people to call me Ciel. That’s the name I’ve been using on the Internet the last few years. I like it because it doesn’t sound masculine or feminine.

  My boyfriend, Eiríkur, isn’t transgender. But he’s bisexual, which means he can be interested in people of any gender, including mine, apparently. Everything is much more complicated than you can imagine. Sometimes I wonder whether Eiríkur fell in love with me because he’s bisexual. But he doesn’t worry about those details. He tells me my gender makes no difference to him, and that he loves me, Ciel, for everything I am, completely.

  ♥♥♥

  One of my favorite things is feeling the warm wind on my face when I’m on my bike. Especially early in the morning, when the air is still wet with dew. I have time to think, I’m alone with the birds, and sometimes the fox, as I deliver papers from house to house.

  Of course, it’s not the most exciting job in the world. It’s very repetitive, and the same things keep happening over and over. Sometimes a dog, inside a house or an apartment, will wake up and bark as I’m going up the steps to the mailbox. Or I’ll come across a raccoon serving himself from the garbage cans as if they’re a buffet, but that’s about it.

  I’m trying to save enough money to buy a real camera to make better YouTube videos. I have my own channel called Ciel Is Bored. I’ve put a few videos online, but they’re not very good since I made them with my phone. I talk about my dog, how the day went, how I feel, stuff like that. It’s fun, and it passes the time. I have twenty-one subscribers, and some of them I DON’T EVEN KNOW! My goal is to have thirty by the end of the year. I might have to make some friends at high school.

  The last stop on my route is the wealthy-looking house with the porch. Doctor Mahelona lives there. I like him because he gives me the biggest tips. They don’t have to, but most people leave me a little envelope in their mailbox with a few dollars inside. Every Thursday, in the doctor’s mailbox, there is a little plastic case with a sticker on it, and my birth name written there: Alessandro Sousa. Inside, a five, ten, or twenty-dollar bill. The earlier I deliver the paper, the higher the amount. The doctor goes to work before everyone else, and he likes to read the paper over breakfast.

  I met up with him once, very early in the morning, as he was going off to work at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital. He was happy to see me. And he explained his system for the tips. Since I want to buy the video camera I’ve had my eye on as fast as possible, I’ve been trying to go for the twenty-dollar amount.

  But there’s a problem, it’s a kind of trap. To get to his mailbox, I have to go up an asphalt walk with bushes on both sides, then climb the steps to the porch. That’s where the doctor keeps his big recycling box and his garbage cans. And since they are emptied only once a week, on Fridays, a lot of the time raccoons are rummaging around inside. They might be the cutest animals in the world, with their little paws and their fat stomachs, but I can’t help being afraid when I hear them knocking over the cans and squealing.

  I leave my bike on the sidewalk and creep up to the porch. Carefully, I lift the metal top of the mailbox. There’s the transparent plastic case—with a twenty-dollar bill inside! I smile, slip the money into my pocket, and put the case back where it was.

  Then, accidentally, I drop the metal cover of the mailbox. Clang! That’s when one of the garbage cans tips over and a raccoon goes somersaulting through the air. He tries to escape across the porch, then he sees me, switches direction, and bangs his head against the wall of the house.

  I drop the newspaper and take off.

  ♥♥♥

  It’s light outside by the time I get home. I park my bike in the backyard and lock it to the back stairway that leads up to our apartment. I go inside without making a sound. I tiptoe across the kitchen and down the hall that leads into the living room. My little brother Virgil and my father are still sleeping, so I can go onto the computer and check to see if anyone new has viewed my videos since last night.

  I should have known. My foot lands squarely on a Lego spaceship my brother left in the hall, and I yelp in pain as the pieces crunch together, then go flying across the wooden floor. Right away, Borki, our dog, jumps off Virgil’s bed to come and see what is going on. He doesn’t bark (good dog!), but I know that an excited dog scrambling over my brother will be enough to wake him up. Well, it’s not my fault.

  I turn on the computer and see that I have no new comments on my YouTube channel. By then, Virgil is standing in the kitchen, pouring a bowl of cereal.

  “You want some toast?” I ask him.

  He shakes his head. You can’t expect much out of him in the morning. But I’m not complaining. It’s better than someone talking nonstop. I like Virgil just fine, but he’s a real chatterbox when he gets going. And he’s only nine years old. I hope it’s not one of those conditions that worsens with age.

  I make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and swallow it down without even chewing. Borki nibbles on our feet under the table, tickling my brother and making him laugh with his mouthful of cereal. My father comes into the kitchen, yawning. He teaches chemistry at a college, and with his schedule, he can stay in bed later. Usually, he gets up to make our lunches if he hasn’t done it the night before, or just to tell us to have a good day, then he goes back to sleep once we leave. He smiles, runs his hand through Virgil’s hair, then opens the fridge to take out our lunchboxes that are ready to go.

  My father’s name is Gabriel Lucas Sousa. He’s from Brazil and he came to Montreal when he was a student. At first, he planned on staying for six months to study, then he met my mother, who’s from here, and they fell in love. After his studies were over, he returned to Brazil, then spent the next summer here, then left again, but came back for good. I was born, he got a job at the college, then Virgil was born, then we adopted Borki, and with all that, he couldn’t really go back to Brazil, even if the rest of his family (except our Uncle Guilherme) still lives there. And even if my mother died five years ago.

  I get along with my father really well. I can tell him anything, and he’ll understand. And if he doesn’t, instead of getting mad, he’ll think about it, and dig deeper. That’s what he did when I told him I wasn’t a boy or a girl, just after my mother died. He smiled and said, “All right.” Then he held me in his arms, which was a real relief. A few days later, I saw a pile of books in his room about trans people. My father’s pretty cool.

  I hear the sound of a spring popping—Boing!—from my room, which is my alert for text messages and emails. I put my plate in the sink and go see who it is (maybe Eiríkur finally got around to answering my message).

  Ready for the torture chamber, my dear?

  It’s Stephie, my best friend. She’s transgender like me. We’ve known each other since kindergarten, back when, like me, people thought she was a boy. But we didn’t really become good friends until grade four. Stephie transitioned at nine, and unlike me, she’s 100 percent a girl.

  You’re kidding! I’m still in my pajamas

  Come as you are
, you’ll knock ‘em dead!

  Dream on

  Did I wake you up?

  Of course not

  Too bad ;)

  Stephie and I have this game. We score points when we wake each other up. She has more points than I do. It’s not fair, because she doesn’t sleep much, and when she does, she’s impossible to wake up.

  See you at the locker?

  You bet!

  I started harassing Stephie last June to share a locker together. Last year, at our old school, I was twinned with Eiríkur, but that’s impossible now. I wanted to be sure I’d be with her because I don’t have a lot of friends, and I didn’t want to be stuck with just anybody. Who knows who it could have been?

  At first Stephie thought she’d share with Frank, her boyfriend, but I guess she took pity on me. Anyway, it’s not like Frank doesn’t have loads of friends he can share with. He’s super popular, and at our old school, he was one of the best soccer players.

  I get undressed in a hurry and throw open my closet doors. I want to wear something discreet for my first day at school. Not very easy: all my clothes are pretty flashy. Last year, the other kids in my class knew me well enough not to bother me about that, and I felt comfortable wearing whatever I wanted. But I’ll have to start all over again. I’m not going to pull out the spangles on the first day! My father bought a lot of things in the “Young Man’s” section, just in case, but admit it, they’re as dull as dust. Some of them are prettier, like this salmon-colored sweater I wore a lot last year, but the way the sleeves drop from the shoulders, it just shouts out “CALL ME YOUNG MAN.”

  That’s the last thing I want to happen on my first day of high school.

  I decide to wear the white shirt with the lace on the front that I got for my birthday, the beige jacket that’s too big for me, and a pair of black leggings. With that outfit, I will achieve both my goals: I won’t be too visible, and people won’t mistake me for a boy too much.