made the crustiest and best tasting baguettes in all of Montreal. She’d captured the spiders and moths at the bottom of their apartment stairs.
From the living room window her bugs could see the street below. A streetcar swished by clanging its bell. It was followed by Monsieur Lemire’s old horse pulling the milk wagon and plodding home after a long day delivering milk. The iron horseshoes made a hollow clippety-clop sound on the pavement.
Sophie’s mother came into the living room. “What in heaven’s name is this!” she exclaimed. “All those bugs! Oh no! We can’t have those nasty things in our living room.”
“But it’s my pet collection!” cried Sophie.
“Bugs for pets? Who ever heard of bugs for pets? What kind of thing is that for a proper ten-year-old girl? Really!”
Sophie hugged the jars so her pets wouldn’t hear.
“You must remove those nasty things at once,” said Maman. Then she sat down at her piano and played a very loud concerto.
Sophie knew it was no use talking to Maman when she was playing her piano like that. She sighed and moved her bugs into the coat closet by the back door. She stacked them into a dark corner.
“I know it’s stuffy in here, but I’ll take you out for fresh air every single day,” she promised.
That evening after supper, while Sophie was in the living room reading her favourite Star Girl comic to her little brother, Zephram, Maman went to get a sweater from the coat closet.
Sophie heard a loud crash. She dropped her comic and dashed to the kitchen. Zephram trailed behind her. Her jars had tumbled out of the closet and their tops had popped off!
Ladybugs and spiders scooted into dark corners while her moths and crickets fluttered away to the ceiling.
“Sophie! Your bugs are everywhere! Catch them! Vite! Catch them!” cried Maman.
They dashed around the kitchen trying to scoop them up. It took a long time with Zephram running around chasing them and screaming his loudest.
When they’d captured them, Maman said, “I want all those nasty things out of my kitchen. Right this minute!”
So Sophie had to move her pets again. This time she hid them in a neat row in the dark space under her bed beside her growing stack of Star Girl comics.
All night long, she lay in bed as still and stiff as a stick so she wouldn’t disturb her pets. But every time she forgot and had to turn over, she heard the jars rattle and bump into each other like grumbling children. It was a good thing her bedroom was far from her parents so Maman couldn’t hear them.
The next morning Maman came to wake Sophie as usual. “Up, Sophie, up. Time to get up for school. It’s your last day. You can’t be late.”
One of Maman’s feet happened to poke under the bed. It nudged the ladybug jar, which bumped the spider jar, which struck the moth jar, which toppled into the cricket jar. The jars all tumbled over and crashed! Tops popped off. Out scurried the bugs. Ladybugs scampered over the quilt. Moths flew to feast upon the blankets. Spiders and crickets ducked into dark sheet tunnels.
“Bugs!” shrieked Maman. “Your bed’s crawling with bugs, Sophie! Vite! Vite! Catch them! Catch them all!”
Sophie raced around trying to catch them again. It took so long to capture them she was late for school.
Before she left, Maman told her, “After school all these insects must go. Right out of your bedroom.”
“But, but.…”
“No buts. If you don’t get rid of them, I will. Every single last one.”
“Yes, Maman,” Sophie promised, reluctantly. “Every single last one.”
After school she hurried straight home without even checking if the Star Girl comic was still at Tussaud’s. She gathered up her bug collection and lugged it upstairs to the attic where her three older brothers shared a bedroom.
“Sorry. No room here!” said Joseph, her oldest brother. He was sixteen, had a man’s deep voice like Papa’s and even a few whiskers on his chin.
She looked around her brothers’ cluttered bedroom. Half-full boxes were everywhere. Arthur was sitting on the floor making himself a new Jughead hat out of Papa’s old grey fedora by turning it inside out and cutting the brim into jagged triangles.
True. There wasn’t space for even a tiny bug collection.
“Don’t be silly, Sophie,” said Henri, her next oldest brother. “We’re moving in a couple days. You can’t take those bugs all the way to B.C. you know.”
“I can so,” she told him. Where else could she keep her collection? There was only one place left.
She put on her jacket and carried the jars outside and down the long staircase from their apartment to the back alley behind the tall brick buildings.
She hated thinking about moving, especially moving so far away. Her family just didn’t understand. If she could bring along something from Montreal, like her bugs, maybe moving wouldn’t be quite so bad. Anyway, she had to find a good place to keep them until Monday.
She came to the vacant lot next to Our Lady’s church. She lifted a loose board in the fence and squeezed inside. The edge of the lot was overgrown with prickly blackberry vines and thin maple trees. She crawled under the vines to the centre of a small mossy clearing where an old wooden packing case lay on its side.
There, in that old packing case was her secret hideout. Her very own place to read her Star Girl collection and store things she didn’t want anyone else to touch. She’d dragged in a couple of long planks and stacked them on crates, one for a table and one for a seat.
On the table she lined up her bug collection: her ladybugs, her spiders, her moths and her crickets.
“There,” she told them. “Now we all can be happy.”
She sat on the plank and watched them in their jars. They were very still. They didn’t move an antenna or a leg. They stood there inside the jars with their tiny eyes wide open, staring out at the scrap of blue sky and pale sunshine filtering through green leaves and branches.
She watched them for a long time. Then she sighed and opened the ladybug jar. Her ladybugs flicked out their tiny wings and flitted away. She opened the spider jar. Her spiders stretched their eyelash thin legs and scurried away. She opened the moth jar. Her moths fluttered their delicate wings and flew away. She opened the cricket jar. Her glossy crickets waved their antennae at her and leapt away.…
Sophie stared at the empty jars and sighed again. All her pets were gone.
Then she noticed the ladybugs were climbing a maple leaf bud, searching for aphids. In the branches behind her, her spiders were weaving intricate webs which reflected the sunshine in a glistening pattern of pink and green and indigo. Her moths were drifting among the new blackberry vine buds, their paper-white wings fluttering in the still afternoon air. Her crickets chirped a beautiful melody.
Now her pets were free to stay
