When I was in college I studied abroad for a semester in southern France. Fiercely shy, I found it hard enough to speak my mind in my native language, and speaking French, a language with which I didn't have much experience, was a daily struggle. Feeling alien from the culture and unable to connect with the people, I turned to my host family's dog for emotional support. She didn't care if I pronounced sit or stay incorrectly, she didn't give me disdainful looks for dressing like an American; she loved me for me. I wrote the following story about my experience with this dog several years ago, but I thought it might be appropriate for the Animalia blog. If it's stupid, then I blame it on my youth--I don't feel like rewriting the thing now. :) Warning: it's a bit grim, so if you're extra sensitive, don't read it.
Les Chiots
She killed them with a cloth soaked in ammonia. They were hours old and the size of rats. Wrinkly, blind and squirming, still wet. In fact I never saw them, but this is how I imagined them.
Cannelle had been in the hallway crying the night before. I cracked my door to see what was going on. She whimpered louder and limped over to me, her belly hanging to the ground, but I quickly shut my door because I’d been told not to let her in my room. I went to sleep and the next day after school, Eva told me she and her brother had killed the puppies. I wasn’t sure if I’d understood correctly; I was almost never sure if I understood correctly. “Pourquoi?” I said, but Eva only gave me a pitying look. They had seemed annoyed that Cannelle was pregnant, but they hadn’t told me this was the plan.
They let their dog run wild. It seemed like everyone in Montpellier did. She had followed me to school one day a couple of months ago, the dog. Maybe that was the day she had her romantic encounter. Or not, because it seemed like I was the sole object of her affections. It was right out of Lassie. It was a two-mile walk, and I’d already gone half a mile by the time I realized Cannelle was behind me. I stopped and shooed her away. “Go back!” I said. And then I said it in French as well for good measure. She turned around and appeared to be obeying, so I continued walking. A few minutes later I looked back and found her, still following, but at a distance of about 50 feet. “Fuck it,” I said. I didn’t have time to take her back home.
When I reached the school, I entered the courtyard to find my friends, the dog closer on my heels now. “She followed me,” I explain ed to them. They laughed and petted her. It was time to go inside the building for class, so once everyone went in, I had a talk with Cannelle. “Reste ici,” I said. She sat down on the beige dirt of the courtyard and looked up at me in a painfully loyal way. She was a scruffy Benji-ish dog, about knee-high. She had a habit of moving her upper lip up and down on one side almost constantly, so it seemed like she was always sneering and relaxing, sneering and relaxing.
I went inside the building and closed the door, which was usually left propped open, and walked upstairs to my class. It was a fairly empty building; it seemed like ours was the only class held there, occasion- ally I would see someone I didn’t recognize walking down the halls. I could never figure out where they were coming from–I never saw another class being held and there were no offices in the building. Class was starting when I walked in. I moved to the back and sat down. The class was Grammar and Pronunciation for French as a Second Language students. I was scared of the teacher, or maybe not so much scared as spooked. She was in her 50s, wore shiny black leather pants and a somewhat revealing top to every class, which was fine, but she also spit a lot when she talked. She was something of an advocate for Gascon, a language that was spoken in parts of South-western France and predates contemporary French. There has been some controversy surrounding the language, as the French government at one point banned its use in an attempt to promote French as the primary language of the country. There is an effort now to try and revive the language and teach it in schools.
At any rate, Madame Boger would work herself up any time the subject of Gascon came up, which it seemed to do quite often, and the more worked up she got the more spittle exploded from the corners of her mouth, until at some point, it truly looked like she was foaming at the mouth. She would take out her handkerchief and dab, removing some of it, but always missing a couple of drops that remained glistening on her chin. She also had a very strong southern French accent (so strong even I could pick up on it), which I always found to be curious in a French pronunciation teacher. As in the U.S., a southern accent in France is often thought of as unsophisticated. I worried that I would have two strikes against me in the country: one being an American, and the second having a southern French accent.
A few minutes into class, just as Mme. Boger was launching into a childhood reverie about GasconCannelle burst through the doorway and, without even looking up to get her bearings, darted to the back of the classroom and jumped into my lap. The class laughed nervously. I feigned surprise–for some reason I didn’t want to let on to the teacher that this was my (host family’s) dog. “Hmmm...well, I suppose I’ll take her back outside,” I said. I carried her outside, her head over my shoulder like a baby. I set her down, repeated my commands, left her in the courtyard, and made sure I closed the door tightly behind me. Ten minutes later, it happened again. The teacher began to catch on that this was indeed a dog for which I was responsible. This time, once outside, I decided not to return to class. Cannelle would undoubtedly worm her way into the school again and interrupt class for a ridiculous third time. I started back toward home with Cannelle close behind. It became apparent soon after that adventure that Cannelle was pregnant.
The evening that Eva told me about the fate of the puppies, I went out with some friends and drank two bottles of wine. I talked much more than was my habit, peed in the scratchy bushes along an urban path, and then left my friends when I spotted a phone booth to make a drunken call back to the States. When I got home I was ill and disoriented, my body burning. I threw up in the toilet in the tiny water closet, afraid neither the toilet nor the room were big enough to hold the portion of my insides that were surging out.
Empty and raw, I went to my bedroom and plopped face-down on the bed. I was on the verge of passing out when I heard a whimper at the door. I got up and let the dog in. I hadn’t seen her all day, I didn’t know where she’d been. Perhaps they’d had to stash her away somewhere while they did the morbid deed. I went back to the bed to lay down. Cannelle’s whimpering didn’t stop; it got quieter but kept on. She stared up at me on the bed for a moment while I petted her head. She jumped onto the bed and sprawled over me, her face in front of mine. Her legs were stretched out and felt as if they were gripping me. As I blacked out, her soft whimpers were the last thing I heard.
