Chapter 1
1969 “She’s a girl; she doesn’t need an education,” Mom sneered, swatting a hand through the air. “She’ll get married and have kids.”
Dad didn’t agree. In his opinion. I should go to high school. He was about to come up with yet another argument, when Mom cut him off.
“She’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, Albert. She won’t be able to cope. She hates school. Why put her through another six years?”
“Well, then maybe an art academy,” Dad reasoned. “She’s pretty good at drawing. Let her develop by doing something creative.”
“I don’t know, Albert.” Mom shook her head in doubt. “If we were talking about a boy, I’d say fine, let him go to an academy instead of a high school, but we’re talking about a girl—a girl who will meet a boy, fall in love, get married, and start a family. She’ll be a housewife like me. So why does she need a fancy education? I say let her stay in the school she’s been in for the past six years; let her enter the special program where she’ll learn to cook and sew. That will be all the education she’ll ever need.” “Luc went to high school,” Dad remarked.
“Luc is a boy; he’s smart and he’s got a great future ahead of him. Did you know he wants to become a math professor?”
I was hunched over the dining room table with my back to the fireplace, glancing from my mom to my dad as they argued about me. I wished they would stop and give me a say in the matter. I would tell them that I hated school, hated it with a passion. The teacher liked nothing better than to put me on the spot with questions I couldn’t answer and my classmates took pleasure in my humiliation. Every time the teacher called me to the front of the class, I could hear the whispers behind my back.
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