They say snacking is a sin, though they never let the cupboards go empty.

My aunt and uncle tell me I'm going to lose my virginity the way I ride that bike down the dirt horse-trails and gravel ditches in the road. So I wipe my fingers (stuck together by some force felt by siamese quintuplets or high-school sweethearts or something less poetic like the juice from the cherries in my hands) slyly in the folds of my scarf, because to lick them and laugh and talk about how terrified I used to be of the geese is considered impolite.

Maybe that's because the geese are dead now, sold to the neighboring couples for Christmas dinner as a last appeal to keep their sons and daughters home before they move to Bordeaux or Nantes or anywhere where you won't see tractors parked at the local Hyper U and your neighbours don't know what size bra you wear.

Or it could be me, no longer content to hang the laundry on the clothesline or 'borrow' from the fig tree in front of the train station, all for self-cleaning appliances, modern technology, and setting aside mental health days. I stay in the cool, dark room I never missed, watching through the window with one eye the raspberries giving a half-assed effort to ripen beneath the glass and the other watching the eighty-something hack who extends liver-spotted hands with swollen joints like she's offering me an escape. Every leaf and blade of grass from our yard that dares enter hers is cut immediately.

They call me the little Bourgeoisie because I don't sop up every drop of sauce from the dishes with a chunk of baguette, because I bought a pair of ankle boots and don't work in the fields, because I eat fruit instead of petits sables and pains au raisins.

Because I sip coffee with soymilk and stare at the television like I still belong, though I think the geese always knew better.