Читать книгу Little White Squaw - Kenneth J. Harvey - Страница 9

BORN THE WRONG COLOUR

I was only six when I suspected my skin might be the wrong colour. We were living in Haneytown, a small country village about twenty miles from Fredericton, New Brunswick. I was in grade one and in love with Dickie Lee, a shy seven-year-old from somewhere in China. I loved the golden glow of his skin and his blue-black hair, which shone in the morning sunlight as he boarded the bus to the rural school we attended in Geary.

Just before my seventh birthday I decided Dickie was going to be my boyfriend and told him so. He never argued the point but, looking back, I’m not sure he even understood it, either; he spoke very little English. He did enjoy the homemade cakes and cookies I shared with him from my tin lunch pail.

“Do you like me, Dickie?” I asked him one day at school during recess.

“Yes, thank you very much,” he replied with a smile as he swallowed a large bite from one of my mother’s cinnamon rolls.

That was enough for me.

I was stimulated by thoughts of a culture so different from mine, a culture where dragons were magical creatures and children like Dickie were greeted with proud smiles by their fathers. As far as I could tell, Dickie’s parents were never angry with him. I used to watch their faces glow every time they picked him up at school. It was as if he were someone special, and when Dickie paid attention to me I felt special, too.

I tried to imagine what it would be like to live on a foreign Asian shore where all the boys had black hair and brown skin. When Dickie moved away, only three months after we met, I was already hooked. My attraction to Dickie Lee was the beginning of an unusual addiction.

THE CURSE OF A POOR FAMILY

My mother, Isabel, a petite woman with shoulder-length light brown hair and plain good looks, was the best cook I’ve ever known. Even back when I was just a kid she was able to create a culinary masterpiece out of something as simple as a can of sockeye salmon, onions, and a few potatoes. My mouth still waters when I imagine her plump brown loaves of bread or deep dishes of apple crumble cooling on the windowsill of our small brown-shingled home.

Mom didn’t like to hug. When I tried to get close, she’d pat me on the head or back off awkwardly. I’d keep trying, but she would usually brush me away, saying, “Go on now. I’ve got to get this cooking done.” Or sewing or ironing…

When she did hug me, her arms felt stiff, as though they were working against their will. A vacant look would overtake her small brown eyes when I tried to strike up a conversation, as if she were creating a wall between us so she wouldn’t have to get to know me. She never seemed to act that way toward my brothers. Regardless, she always took extra care in baking special treats for us. And I came to understand I love you in the language of apple pies.

For many years I possessed the empty feeling that my mother didn’t love me. I often felt as if I were nothing more than a bother to her.

Being born female had been the root of many of my mother’s problems. From an early age she discovered it was a male’s world as she waited on her drunken father and helped her mother care for six brothers. She spent her teen years in Barker’s Point on the north side of Fredericton, and often she’d walk the two miles across the train bridge to deliver lunch or some necessity to her father while he dried out in the Brunswick Street jail. Her mother was too busy caring for her large brood single-handedly to spend any time playing with them, and my mom—being the eldest—was expected to assume a great deal of the responsibility.

In those days discipline meant beatings with a large leather strap or an alder switch. Often there was little to eat. There wasn’t much to prompt the words I love you from a mother who matter-of-factly proclaimed, “Daughters are the curse of a poor family.” I think those words lay dormant in my mother’s mind, only to find new light when I crossed into adolescence.

My mom became pregnant before she and my father met. She was only seventeen when she gave birth to a girl with curly blond hair. She named the infant Eunice and tried to care for her while still helping at home, but it was impossible. The workload was too much to handle and a choice had to be made—the obvious one at the time. When Eunice was fifteen months old, my mother was forced to give her up for private adoption. No doubt that baby girl gouged a big chunk out of my mother’s heart when she was handed over to strangers.

I couldn’t understand my mother’s growing coldness when I began developing into a young woman. Perhaps she was troubled by reminders of her past mistakes and was determined to make certain I wouldn’t follow in her footsteps.

Our house was extremely small—a mere three rooms. No bathroom. No running water. Just two bedrooms and a combined kitchen and sitting room that contained another pullout bed for two of my brothers—Nelson and Carman. I occupied the top bunk in one of the bedrooms. Another brother, Allison, claimed the bottom bunk. Mom and Dad—who worked as a janitor for an apartment complex in Oromocto—had the remaining bedroom to themselves, except when there was a new baby or if someone was especially sick. Otherwise there was no way of getting close to my parents, of enjoying their comforting heat. Being especially sick was almost something worth looking forward to. I cherished the cold nights when my father would come and check to make certain we were all tucked in. Sometimes I’d throw my blankets off so he’d cover me up again and give my forehead a reassuring little pat.

The old house wasn’t much to look at, just a brown-shingled shack. But it had plenty of character standing proudly in the middle of a large field about fifty feet from the woods. Our yard was as spotless as the inside of the house. My mother despised clutter, so even the garbage was hidden before it was taken to the dump five miles away to be burned. The grass was always clipped and manicured.

Everything on our property was neatly arranged and had been given its own space an exact measure of feet away from the nearest object. The outhouse was at least a hundred feet from the house and was surrounded by pine trees. About fifty feet in front of it, between the outhouse and the house, stood a small shack used for Dad’s meagre collection of tools, shovels, picks, and the scythe I greatly feared.

On the north side of the house there was another outbuilding used for storage, and twenty feet behind that, off to the right, stood a woodshed. On the south side there was a picnic table next to a single swing that hung by rope from the thick branch of an ancient oak. Once in a while a multicoloured beach ball or a small red wagon might get left behind beside the picnic table, but usually any sign that play had taken place in the afternoon was quickly erased by suppertime.

In the front of the house, spaced exactly two feet apart, were three tires, each filled with flowers. Pansies grew in a circle on the outside, ringing the marigolds inside. Everything was so perfect; even the flowers had their own little yards. It must have been my parents’ way of compensating for the lack of space inside the house. They created a vast, ordered kingdom outdoors to help escape the claustrophobia of their inner lives.

A young cedar grew outside my bedroom window. Sometimes, on summer nights, the pungent perfume stole its way inside on a warm carpet of west wind. The lacy fingers of the tree would scratch on my window to signal the visit and I’d pretend the cedar was a special friend come to call, I’d think of Catherine in Wuthering Heights, one of my favourite novels. I’d picture Catherine visiting Heathcliff, tapping on the glass. I’d fantasize about the darkness that was Heathcliff, so much like my father, a handsome man with thick dark hair, brooding eyes, and high cheekbones that hinted at remote Native ancestry. I used to imagine my dad as a movie star. With his sober good looks and unpredictable mood changes, he exuded an air of mystery like some of the men I read about in my books.

I read incessantly anything I could get my hands on. Mom told me I had inherited my love of reading from my father. Growing up as a child in a poor family, he found that dictionaries were often the only books available to him, so he read them cover to cover many times. As for me, stories that portrayed gloomy, untamed men heightened my affinity with tragedy.

When I was twelve, Mom added wild rosebushes to the front yard, then a lilac tree and wild day lilies to her flower collection. Soon the front of our house was completely fenced in by aromatic flowers. Mixed with the scents of Mom’s blueberry pies and lemon breads, the resulting blend rivalled the intoxicating fragrance from any perfume company.

I can’t recall ever being cold or hungry. But I do remember the exhaustion in my father’s eyes when he walked the more than three miles home after work before we had a car, frequently carrying a large burlap sack of potatoes or some other groceries on his back. Stepping in the door, he’d be faced with the news that there was another leak in the roof or the shed door needed a hinge. And always wood or water had to be carried.

There was no end to my mother’s slaving. She was in constant motion—cooking, scrubbing, washing clothes by hand (and later in an old wringer washing machine), hanging them on the clothesline, preparing lunches, planting flowers. Our house and our clothes always smelled of flowers, cinnamon, and cloves. I don’t know if that scent of flowers lingered on my mother’s hands or if she carried the pollen in the pores of her skin, but I can’t think of my mother without picturing perfect rows of peach-coloured gladioli and deep red dahlias surrounded by the sky-blue of morning glories.

Neither my mother nor my father had time for imperfection or frivolity, and I was given to both. So I tried to stay out of their way. I hid in the woods for hours and talked to the trees, the flowers, the brook, and later, to my little stray cocker spaniel, Pal.

I’d tell my surroundings about my dreams, about how I was going to be a famous writer and have tons of money when I grew older. About how I would wear bright satin dresses and pearls braided in my long hair as I entertained my friends in a grand house and my babies slept in their separate beds upstairs.

I would have four healthy, happy children and I would be a good mother.

Sometimes I’d cry as I held Pal and asked him to love me and never go away I talked about everything, except the visitors who came to touch me during the late hours. I was a child and had no way of properly facing those feelings or aligning them into words.

Sometimes I collected ants and spiders and made farms for them. My mother wasn’t too thrilled with this pastime, but she allowed it as long as I stayed outside or in the shed, out of her way. It wasn’t until I smuggled a garter snake into the house in a shoe box that she put an end to it all.

Cut off from my bug and snake interests, I took up reading and writing in earnest. I read comics, dictionaries, encyclopedias, True Stories, anything, as long as it offered a world to which I could escape. Jane Eyre, with another seething male protagonist, and Wuthering Heights became my literary Bibles, but I loved my Wonder Woman comic books just as much.

I never really minded being poor. Economically challenged—what an expression! It sounded like some sort of competition. Back then all we worried about was surviving. I know today what hardships my parents fought. They did the best they could. But, as a kid, I assumed I was the problem. My world was so small and introspective that I was sure I had to be the reason for their ill tempers, especially when my father raged about how unfair life was, or how he wished he’d never been born. Like most children, I took it personally.

GRANDMOTHERS

When I was quite young, my father’s mother, Grammie Mills, visited us often. My paternal grandfather had died long before I’d been born, so Grammie Mills had been widowed quite a while. Emma was her name—a sweet little woman from Birmingham, England, who stood only five feet tall. She smelled like lilacs. I don’t remember her hair being any other colour than grey It was long, but she never wore it down. She kept it pinned up in a circle around her head that made her look to me like an angel with a silver halo. I’d stare up at her from her lap while she rocked me in her rocking chair and sang hymns that I embraced for their soothing melodies: “Rock of Ages cleft for me. Let me hide myself in thee.”

I wasn’t sure what kind of rock she was singing about, but I thought I understood. I’d once found a cave carved into the rock in the woods and figured it might be a good place to hide. I would go there and sit on the moss and pretend I was safe from my enemies. I used to think Grammie would have liked it, too.

Most often the songs she sang were about the home and mother she’d left behind when she immigrated to Canada at the age of seven. I believe she made up the words to most of the songs, because they didn’t rhyme and they rambled aimlessly without reaching any destination, but I couldn’t have cared less. She was singing them for me. Not only that, she would also read me stories and recite precious poetry.

“Two little girls in blue, two little girls in blue,” she’d mumble over and over as she stroked my cheek. Gazing toward the sky outside our kitchen window, she always seemed to be off in another world.

“What are you thinking about, Grammie?” I’d often ask.

“You, little one, you,” she’d say. And she would laugh throatily and gaze into my eyes with such love that I would feel my chest swell with pride. Sometime I thought I could detect a trace of fear in those soft eyes when she looked at me, but she spoke so few words that I could never be certain.

“Be a good girl, Eva, be a good girl” was all she’d say before once again retreating into her far-off world of daydream.

When Grammie Mills moved to Saint John to live with my Aunt Edna, I felt as if I’d lost a big piece of my newly special self. After a few months, the memory of her tranquillizing songs wore too thin to buffer my loneliness. We didn’t visit Grammie Mills often because the one-hour drive was a costly venture for a family struggling to clothe and feed five people. I wrote to Grammie frequently and she would always reply. She kept all of my letters and read them repeatedly, my aunt later told me. I did the same with hers, even sniffing the letters. Her lingering scent and the delicate curl of her handwriting gave me solace.

I saw my maternal grandmother, Grammie Brewer, more regularly She’d left my grandfather, George, the father my mother had brought lunches to in jail, before I was born and remarried a man with eight children after raising eight of her own. In later years she also raised her granddaughter, Nancy.

According to her birth certificate, Grammie Brewer had been born Effi Scoupi on December 24, 1903, in Germany. My mother said she’d come into the world with a veil of flesh over her eyes that had to be removed. This caul gave her “second sight” and established her reputation as a fortuneteller who often saw forerunners of people’s imminent deaths. Her father, Franz, was also a noted fortuneteller. He hailed from Bohemia, and her mother, Franchiska, was from Austria. Other relatives lived in Romania.

As a child, Effi travelled with her family from village to village, searching for work, learning the art of tea-leaf fortunetelling and palm reading from her father, who repaired timepieces along the journey. They did this until they immigrated to Canada to escape persecution from an Austrian leader.

Once in Canada, her name was changed to Eva Skopie. At fourteen she met and married my grandfather. My mother was the eldest of the two girls in a predominantly male family. It wasn’t until Grammie was in her mid-forties that she became Grammie Brewer after she married a farmer who lived in a small country village about forty minutes north of Oromocto.

Grammie Brewer, like Grammie Mills, was small in stature, measuring only four foot ten, but she was a force to be reckoned with when she was riled. One day I watched her chase a stray dog across the yard with a wooden spoon in her hand. The dog was almost as big as she, yet Grammie showed no sign of fear as she drove the mangy cur away from one of her prized white angora kittens.

Like my mother, Grammie Brewer wasn’t openly affectionate, but I always knew she had a soft spot for me. Every Valentine’s Day I received a carefully wrapped gift from her in the mail—a small tin of heart-shaped sugar cookies with pink frosting.

When I was about eight, I coaxed her to tell my fortune, even though she seldom engaged in the practice around any of us kids.I’d gulped down my cup of tea, with only a little sugar, no milk, and spit bits of tea leaves into a dish towel as I paused for breath. I couldn’t wait to hear what adventures lay in store for me.

“You needn’t have drunk the tea,” Grammie said a little too late.

I watched in fascination as she squinted into my cup, studying the patterns made by the leaves. When Grammie instructed me to make a wish, I was torn between choosing a new car for my father or happiness for myself. In the end I selected the car because I enjoyed our Sunday drives.

“What do you see, Grammie? What do you see?”

“Settle down and be quiet. This takes time.”

It seemed like hours before she spoke again. She gazed intently into the cup, and I could hear her careful breath as her eyes focused on my future.

“You will travel many different paths in your life,” she finally said, “and you will touch many people.”

I was puzzled by her words and a little disappointed. I’d hoped to hear something about a new bike or maybe a note from Norman Gardner, one of the cute boys at school I had a crush on. When I started to open my mouth to ask, she gave me a silencing look.

“I see a man with very dark hair and dark skin in your future. You will be too young when you marry. Be careful, Eva, he is not a good man for you.”

Grammie started to talk about paths again, but my mind was already engaged by the dark man who would be my future husband. Maybe it will be Norman, I giggled to myself. Maybe we’ll run away together and be happy forever.

From that day forward I talked to Grammie Brewer about fortunetelling and dreams every chance I got. Whenever she could find time, she’d help me decipher the clumps of tea leaves in the cups of those who’d eaten at her table. If the leaves shaped a ship, it would mean an adventure or good fortune. When Grammie Brewer saw a cat, it forecast misfortune or betrayal. Letters or numbers might indicate significant dates or initials of people who would affect the seeker. Other times if a path was shaped by the leaves and something was obstructing it, a blocked course was suggested. Just when I started to demonstrate a talent for unravelling the signs of the people who had left their futures in their cups, Grammie insisted I stop.

“Nothing good comes to those who keep reading the cups,” she told me. “That’s why I don’t like to do it anymore.”

But it was too late. I was already starting to “see” things I didn’t care to divine.

UNWANTED ATTENTION

When I was in elementary school, my mother’s father, George, was a regular visitor to our home, especially on weekends. He was still a drunk, and on those occasions my mother was, too. Dad never drank much. He said he didn’t care for the taste of it, but I suspect he just wanted to keep an eye on Mom. It was those disturbing visits that slowly began to erode my faith in the goodness of nature.

Some weekends I thought it might be different as I watched my grandfather, my mother, my father, and a few friends take up guitars, harmonicas, and fiddles on a Friday night. I appreciated the music, but it was the clinking of the bottles that terrified me. The poisoning liquor always seemed to twist the uplifting beat of the singing and dancing into angry brawls.

It was during this time, when I was about five, that I first found out men would be nice to me just for a touch of soft skin. I was already used to hiding my body from the lecherous gaze and searching fingers of an old family friend who dropped by a couple of times each month, but during these drunken parties there was nowhere to hide. So I pretended to be asleep when I couldn’t stand the exploring fingers of one of the guests who might come into my room where the bottles were waiting. Mine was the biggest of the two rooms, with an open space behind the door, a logical choice for storage.

I knew it had to be something to do with what was inside the bottles that made my mother change from a quiet housekeeper to a screaming, angry wild woman. Usually it was my dad who was given to furious outbursts. Mom seldom raised her voice. If she was upset, she’d go off to the bedroom and cry in silence.

On one such Saturday night the house was full of people, several with guitars, fiddles, and harmonicas. As all the instruments came into play, even our spoons were used to take up the beat. I loved to hear the music because I knew my mother would soon begin to sing in a voice that reminded me of June Carter’s from the country-and-western Carter Family.

Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes

Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes

Beautiful, beautiful brown eyes

I’ll never love blue eyes again.

Tucked under the bedcovers, I’d pretend Mom was singing that song just to me. She was a fine stepdancer, too. Her feet never seemed to tire when she danced to the reels and jigs our visitors energetically played. She’d throw back her head and laugh as she moved in rhythm to “St. Anne’s Reel” or old favourites like “Camptown Races.”

Dad would never dance. Instead he’d sit and play a mournful harmonica, or sometimes the Jew’s harp. Once in a while he’d attempt to sing along, but he had little confidence in his vocal abilities. I was the greatest admirer of his voice, especially when he sang about intriguing people like the sad Indian princess Red Wing.

On this particular Saturday night one of my father’s friends seemed to be paying a lot of attention to my mother. The two of them even tried a dance step together, but the man was too wobbly to pull it off. Watching my mom, I grew increasingly disturbed to see her laugh and joke with this man. When she wasn’t drinking, Mom never talked to anyone of the opposite sex who wasn’t related to us.

I turned my attention to my father and noticed a change come over his face. His usual stern look had stiffened to a sinister expression. When the music paused so everyone could refill their glasses, my father glanced over at my mother and called out in a loud, commanding voice, “What do you think you’re doing? Do you think I’m blind?”

“What’re you talking about?” my mother asked. But I suspected she already knew. She’d behaved that way before and my father had made the same accusations.

Dad ordered everyone to leave, and as they started to rise from around the kitchen table, he said, “I can’t trust you when you’re like this.”

My grandfather, not wanting to see the party break up so quickly, took my mother’s side. The argument heated up until the three of them shifted outside into the clear night air with the departing guests. A shouting match soon commenced. My father and grandfather stood with fists raised, hurling insults that seemed to have nothing to do with what was going on. My mother cried and yelled for them to stop while a few of the guests waited for things to settle so they could resume their drinking. That was when I went to bed. My little brothers were already sleeping soundly and hadn’t woken during the racket.

Eventually everything was quiet. The guests had reluctantly left the party. Later my grandfather slipped into my room. I felt his shadow in the doorway and sensed his breathing. I blamed the bottles for what was happening. The bottles changed people, gave them two different personalities. Sometimes I thought I might be the one who split into two people—one for the normal days and another for the grotesque nights.

The music in my head grew so loud that I couldn’t hear my sobs. I imagined I was inside a cloud that was going to carry me to a land where there were no men at all except maybe my father. And my father would protect me. He would be there to look after me. He would hold me in his strong arms, and the night and its shadows would shrink away from where they had lodged deep in my frightened child’s heart. I would marvel at his handsome face and his smiling eyes would save me.

The nighttime visitations continued—either my grandfather or friends of the family would find their way into my room. It wasn’t until I sampled the remnants of liquid in the bottles that I found a way to black out the fear and sleep peacefully. I was six years old.

After only a few sips, I felt safe and happy as I floated inside my cloud to another fantasy land, a big green thicket occupied only by my grandmothers and their cats, a place where small cocker spaniel puppies lingered with all the other forest animals. They would watch me with innocent, depthless eyes and speak to me in our own private language. When they were near, there was only the feeling of ample goodness. There stood the animals, unmoving and plain, the gentle, welcoming forest behind them.

BORN-AGAIN CHRISTIAN CHILD

When I was nine, I attended the Billy Graham Crusade in Fredericton with my friend Sharon and her parents, who belonged to the local Baptist church. I was nervous about facing the new experience, but my hesitation fled the minute I walked into the coliseum. A young, pleasant man and woman stood at the entrance, greeting people as they arrived. The woman had brown waist-length hair. She gave me a warm handshake as she welcomed me to the meeting, then handed me a small piece of paper with the words “Jesus Loves You” written in red at the top.

We found seats in the fourth row from the front. There weren’t many children present, mostly adults. We sat amid the assembly of close to five hundred people watching the man onstage trumpeting the high points of salvation. The buzz from the crowd, the sense of their intense devotion to the man booming out his words, mesmerized me. Suddenly I had the impression I was the only person in the room. Leaning forward in my chair, I clung to every word and savoured every musical note as I felt beckoned to the power of deliverance and angelic epiphany.

I studied the face of the man who was preaching. Something about him reminded me of Grammie Mills. There seemed to be a glow around his head. Maybe it was just the large overhead fluorescent lights giving an afterglow to images. I’d seldom been in a building with lights that bright.

When the preacher searched in my direction, his eyes returned my gaze.

He sees me, I thought. He really sees me.

“Jesus will give you happiness,” he called out to me. “Jesus will be your friend. You just have to give Him your heart. Give Jesus your heart. Can you give Jesus your heart and let Him be your friend?” I rose from my chair and stumbled to the front, climbing the stairs to the stage with joyous tears streaming down my face, not even aware that Sharon and her parents had followed me up.

“Please, Jesus,” I said, “take my heart.” I wanted him to make it a better thing. I wanted to be saved. And, yes, I felt I was being saved.

The same woman with the long brown hair who had greeted me at the door joined me onstage and grasped my hand to pray. “Will you repeat the sinner’s prayer with me?” she asked.

I nodded and swiped the tears from my eyes, oblivious to the crowd before me.

“If you say the prayer and mean it, God will forgive you for every bad thing you’ve ever done.”

I nodded again.

“God will change your life for you. Do you want your life to change?”

“Yes.”

“Close your eyes and pray with me.” She shut her eyes and I shut mine. In a whisper I repeated the words the woman spoke: God, be merciful to me a sinner… And as I did so, I felt my heart swell to discharge its burden. My head grew light and I was gripped by an intense happiness I had never experienced. I was filled with holy light.

Opening my eyes, I looked out over the crowd. They were watching me and they were smiling and shouting out praise, happy that I had been saved.

Unfortunately the desperate situations at home didn’t change in the face of my new salvation. I started to become discouraged, yet I didn’t lose my faith. I continued attending church. I prayed and prayed for a better life. God, please make my mom stop drinking. Make her love me. Give Daddy a better job so he won’t be so angry all the time. And please make my grandfather go away.

I devoted myself to praying. I wouldn’t give up on God. When I was almost twelve, God answered my prayers. For years I had been imploring my parents to join me at church each Sunday. They would see me praying every day I thought, and might want to change, too. Then, to my astonishment and glee, they did begin attending church, and their drinking stopped. Everything will be all right now, I told myself. Everything will be so absolutely perfect.

My parents soon became pillars of the church. They renounced all worldly goods, a feat not that difficult to master considering their economic situation. The minister at the church became their direct pipeline to God, pronouncing new revelations that required greater sacrifice and more devout obedience. Women were commanded to stop wearing shoes with heels. They were to wear dresses that disguised their womanhood and hats that demonstrated their subservience to men. Even the baby girls were instructed to wear dresses that flowed to their ankles. Radios could only be switched on for the news, and televisions were positively evil, the sole creation of the devil.

On a warm spring day our family and a few of the church people gathered on the front lawn of our home. Before us sat our television, propped on a table. My father said a prayer of exorcism before raising the pickaxe and driving it through the tube. When the tube blew out a large puff of grey smoke, the small gathering cried, “Praise the Lord!” For them it was an offering. For me it meant no more Walt Disney, no more candy-coated escape into benign lands.

I was informed I had to stop wearing jeans, nail polish, and jewellery. I was warned never to cut my hair. I was to be excused from gym class. I wasn’t even permitted to play baseball at noon hour.

I still had a crush on Norman, but he wasn’t interested in church, so I decided I’d have to sacrifice my girlish feelings for my more serious devotion to Christ. I had never been allowed to spend time alone with boys, but now it was even worse. If I was caught alone with a boy, I’d be accused of all sorts of vile actions I didn’t even know about yet. I was used to being groped and prodded by adults, but I couldn’t so much as talk to a boy my own age.

Girls who thought about boys all the time were bad, sinister, wretched wenches. Since I did wonder about boys quite a bit, I suspected my parents were right. I must be bad. I must have the sinister worm of evil in me. Oddly I took a shine to that thought. It was a romantic notion: the seeds of insurrection neatly planted, the way it was in one of the characters in the books I’d read. If I was bad, then I’d need accomplices. That was when I started befriending the bad boys at school.

I was fascinated with a classmate named Raymond, a short, well-tanned French boy who could barely speak French. In fact, he couldn’t speak English all that well, either. He would often stutter when he was forced to read in class. He always wore light-coloured T-shirts, black jeans, and boots—never shoes or sneakers—and usually his clothes were too small for his stocky frame. I figured he bought them at the Salvation Army discount store because I knew firsthand how hard it was to find just the right size there. Immediately I empathized with his dilemma.

Raymond lived with religious foster parents. He never did well in school and was picked on by most of the teachers and the other kids, probably because he was so emotionally numb. He wouldn’t cry even when the principal strapped him for not answering a question. He told me he never even cried when his stepmother whipped him across the back with a belt and locked him in his room without supper.

I believed him and began to revere his suffering. He needed to be saved. He was in pain. I thought he was just about the bravest boy I’d ever met. I tried to help him learn how to spell so the teacher would stop calling him a dummy in class, but he never seemed to get the hang of it. He had a hard time pronouncing certain words and found it difficult to concentrate. Today he would be diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder or a learning disability. Back then he was just rebellious and incorrigible. His teachers told him he didn’t want to learn, but they never saw how hard he tried when he was with me, or how honest tears would float in his eyes when he couldn’t distinguish a b from a d. And he was so eager to please me.

I promised never to tell.

Raymond grew up with the tough-guy image clenched in every muscle of his body but also in his heart. He hated the world. When we were in school, we were constantly warned about him. Everyone said he’d come to no good. And I guess, in their own narrow-minded way, they were right.

Raymond was twenty-five when his body was discovered at the bottom of Lake Ontario. Rumour was he’d been dumped after being killed by a rebel biker gang. I never found out for sure how he died. When I heard the news, all I remembered was the curly-haired guy who loved red cars, tabby cats, and the colour black. He was the one who gave me my first bouquet of flowers when I was only thirteen—daisies, bluebells, and buttercups—with a note that read: “To my best freind. Love, Raymond.”

One of the most difficult consequences of my family’s born-again values was the effect they had on my ambition. My dreams to become a professional writer or veterinarian or both were dashed. My father was a talented poet who had been dubbed the Bard of Oromocto by local media. His poetry and children’s stories had been published in local newspapers and, as a tourism project, the Women’s Institute had put together a collection of his poems in a book called The Wake of Silence.

“Crusoe Complex” was one of my favourites. The words helped explain the pained expression I so often witnessed in my father’s eyes:

Heart is a lonely island ringed by reefs

And washed by endless tide

Love is a bridge to other islands

A brotherhood to lesser loneliness.

My island has no bridges,

The bitter tides are flotsam-filled

And reefs around my island are a cage.

Jim Coulter often read my father’s poems on CFNB Radio, but Dad knew he’d never make any real money writing poetry no matter how much he dreamed about it, so I guess he was determined to save me from the same unrequited dreams. He was quick to say, “Put that foolishness out of your head.” I was a female. Females were supposed to learn all the devotions required to be a good wife. “Never mind that career nonsense,” he insisted with a fierceness that seemed much too severe to suit the situation.

He discouraged me from viewing writing as a career, but his objections came too late. I had already fallen in love with the recognition I’d received at school for my writing abilities. It was the only area of my life where I felt some measure of confidence. When I won a provincial essay contest at the age of twelve, my mind was made up. I would be a writer and I would make money at it.

My father discouraged me from learning about things usually considered the sole preoccupation of men—like cars. I asked him one day to show me, as he had my brothers, how to fix the fan belt in our car. He had no time for it. I cursed him twenty years later when I sat on the side of a deserted highway on my way home from St. Stephen trying to picture what little information I had been able to glean of the fan-belt installation before I was instructed to go help my mother and leave the fan belts to the men.

I was always at the top of my class in school. My marks hovered in the nineties. Sometimes I would even bring home papers with a proud 100 circled in red marker. But no one was particularly impressed except Grammie Mills. Whenever I wrote and told her about my marks, she’d always write back to let me know how proud she was of me.

Only if my grades slipped a point or two did I receive any feedback. Then it would be something like: What happened there? Didn’t you study? Had your mind on those boys again, didn’t you?

I had a hard time pretending my life was normal. Sexual abuse had forced me to be a fragmented woman long before I was even an adolescent, and the secret was making me sicker every day My strict parents would never have believed I was innocent. If I confessed, it would be my fault. If I opened my mouth, it would all be my fault, my creation, my doing. My father was always suspicious of my dealings with the opposite sex. He’d often accuse me of sneaking away to meet a boy when I’d only been sitting in the woods by myself, wondering about my solitude and admiring the stillness.

Eventually the accusations got to me. The craziness in my head got to me. The life of misunderstanding and loneliness got to me. The part of me that was labouring to come to life just gave up. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I thought maybe I could drown myself, but we didn’t live handy to any suitably deep river or lake and I was terrified of water, anyway. I had heard that my greatgrandfather had shot himself, but I didn’t know how to use a gun. So I just started praying for an end when I went to bed at night.

“Please, God, don’t let me wake up in the morning. I don’t want to wake up anymore.” I begged for God to take me so that my eyes would never witness daylight again. I would eventually drift off into the semblance of my hoped-for disappearance, but in the morning my eyes would open to the reality of yet another day.

Having grown up in a predominately morbid household, it was an easy transition to become preoccupied with fantasizing about death. How wonderful and peaceful it would be. How empty and weightless. How innocent and graceful.

But I continued living. After a while, I just stopped praying altogether

If it wasn’t for school, I might have found a definite way to do away with myself. I loved school. I loved books. I grew stronger under the steady regimen of classrooms and corridors. I delighted in cleaning dusty chalk boards and helping the teachers any way I could. I found the consistent presence of the teachers reassuring. I hated weekends. I hated the turbulent days when we were forced to stay at home because of storms.

And I hated summer vacations.

I had few friends at school, only a skinny girl a year younger than I named Beryl. She had light brown hair and sang country songs like my mother. Beryl was easygoing except for being troubled by constant nosebleeds. She lived about four miles away on Waterville Road. Some of my teachers were the kindest people I had ever come upon. Miss Murray, a slim young woman with curly brown hair and a generous smile, was my favourite of all the teachers. Whenever she spoke to me, she always put her hand affectionately on my shoulder. She seemed to care about me genuinely, even going as far as to tell me she was worried I was spending too much time with the boys at school.

“You have to be careful,” she said, “especially around the older boys—like Norman.”

A part of me wanted to ask why, but another part didn’t want to hear anything more. My need for Norman far outweighed any advice from an adult who knew nothing of my brash and pure-hearted desires.

One of my principals, Mr. Davidson, loaned me extra books to read and always encouraged me to follow my dreams. He never seemed too busy to talk and he was quite excited when I showed him those 100s circled in red. It was as if he had journeyed from my imaginary country, that green fertile land with winding brooks, furry puppies, and gentle-handed grandmothers who served apple pie and cookies as they smiled and patted your cheek, a country where the sole male inhabitants lived on the other side of the brook and could visit only in the daytime under the plainness of sunlight. It was a world I still conjured up, even in high school.

Mr. Davidson wasn’t concerned about training anybody to be a proper wife, and he certainly wasn’t interested in my body His generosity and kindness accented my parents’ rigid fanaticism. It was through this comparison that I began to suspect my mother and father truly hated me.

In school I adored listening to lectures about far-off countries or distant planets. This information held my attention a lot longer than the seemingly frivolous games played during recess breaks. I was particularly fond of history, language arts, and social studies, but totally frustrated by mathematics after grade six. For the most part, I loved all my teachers, and I often fantasized what it would be like to stand in front of a classroom and lecture about Charles Dickens laboriously penning his stories of life in old England.

School became my entire world. I couldn’t fail. That was who I was—a top student, willing and able to take on any project to please an adult. I wrote for the school newspaper and worked as the editor gathering articles from the reps in each of the classes. I often won writing competitions. These interests were particularly important because I needed my poet father to be proud of me. Outside school I possessed zero identity. To fail would have meant I ceased to exist as a human being.

In spite of my efforts, not all of my teachers admired my devotion. In particular, one of my math teachers, Mr. C., made it obvious he thought I wasn’t worth any extra effort when it came to getting supplementary help to master difficult concepts in subjects like algebra. I approached him one day to seek assistance.

“Why would a top student like you need extra help?” he replied sarcastically, walking away. I knew better than to ask again.

Grade seven was a tough year for me. My lack of popularity among my peers became excruciatingly obvious. I wasn’t allowed to attend school activities like dances or baseball games, functions that might have given me a chance to nurture friendships. So I tried deliberate rebellion, like failing to produce homework in order to appear cool, even though I usually completed assignments within an hour after school was dismissed.

One day I tried to act cool in class by making fun of the teacher, Miss Mazie Myles, behind her back so the other kids would laugh at me. And I did get their attention as I pretended to scratch my chin and mouth her favourite phrase: I wasn’t born in a swamp yesterday, you know. Unfortunately my antics also caught Miss Myles’s attention when she turned unexpectedly. Everyone laughed, but when I saw the look of disappointment in my teacher’s eyes, a teacher who had treated me fairly, I felt stupid and ashamed. Miss Myles sent me out in the hallway to think about my behaviour, and I stood there in humiliation, realizing that a few laughs from the kids weren’t worth hurting a teacher I actually liked.

That year I befriended Donna Carpenter. New to our class, she had moved with her family to Geary because her father was enlisted in the army at Base Gagetown. Donna was everything I ever wanted to be: popular and pretty with long, straight auburn hair and a flippant attitude about everything. We were practically the same size, both short, with long hair, and had been born in the same month and year, so I fantasized that she was my twin sister. I jigged school a couple of times with her, but fear of my parents’ wrath ruined any fun I might have had on those excursions. Donna’s parents were much more lenient. Most of the time she didn’t even have a curfew. One of the days we jigged school, her mother actually drove us to Killarney Lake in Fredericton so we could swim.

I visited Donna’s home a few times. She’d let me borrow her clothes, but I’d have to change before I went home. My parents would have died if they had seen me dressed in bell bottoms and a halter top.

Donna and I managed to stay friends in spite of our differences. I still went to church and she had no religious beliefs. She often attended school dances or skating parties at the school. Most of the time I listened to the highlights of these events as she retold them. I figured I was banished to the sidelines to watch others have fun. I had to face the facts: I was destined to be a nerd. The only hope I held on to was my love of writing. I would be a famous writer and then I would be so cool.

“You’ll never amount to anything,” Mr. C told me one day, regarding me as if I were a loathsome creature he’d like to cast from his sight. “Those high marks don’t mean a thing.”

I was standing in front of my entire class. I had tried to pass a note to Donna while Mr. C. was teaching. His cutting words tore away what bit of self-confidence I had managed to cling to over my thirteen years. Something vital shrivelled into a cold heavy ball inside me. I had been humiliated again. The eyes of all my classmates were upon me, and everyone now knew how worthless I truly was.

By the age of fourteen, I started to change, but not physically; that had happened a long time ago in grade two. I started to embrace my anger and turn it on other people. My thoughts of missionary work on some distant shore, or helping the pagans live better God-inspired lives, transformed into daydreams of lying naked beside some woodland stream with Ray Stewart, the brother of my next-door neighbour. Ray was the first boy I ever loved. I dreamed about marrying him and running away to Prince Edward Island where his family had lived before moving to New Brunswick. I wanted him to love me back. His cool, detached manner only heightened my desire for him. I didn’t want to be a nice girl anymore. I wanted to be nasty. I wanted to control him with my body The body that held the power, the body that people wanted.

Being a faithful churchgoer hadn’t changed my life for the better. More than ever, I could never quite measure up. After being accused so many times of things I’d never yet experienced, I decided it was finally time to discover what I was missing, to fit the role, to bridge the gap between accusation and reality.

That was the year I willingly let Ray explore my body We were into heavy necking and petting, but I wanted to give myself to him completely. Only the terror of a possible pregnancy kept me from going all the way My mother’s fervent warnings reared up in my head. My mother’s sad life. My mother’s dark regret. It had found its mark in me. I couldn’t give myself over to my longings even though my parents were certain I already had.

A few months later Ray moved to the United States and joined the American army I was heartbroken. He kept in touch for a while, writing short letters on lined paper, talking mostly about his training. They weren’t romantic by any stretch. He even came back to see me once, showing up on my doorstep unexpectedly. He talked to my father about marrying me, which sent my heart soaring. When he was leaving, he kissed me goodbye, then said, “I’ll write and we’ll make plans.” But I never heard from him again.

A CAREER IN WRITING

Winning the essay contest when I was twelve encouraged me to write with more regularity. Geary Consolidated School produced a student newspaper and I was a frequent contributor before I eventually took over as editor. I entered every essay contest I heard of and often won a prize. I developed a deep passion for writing exposition and non-fiction. Determined to be a reporter, I asked my principal, Mr. Davidson, where I should start. He suggested I contact the two local papers, The Daily Gleaner in Fredericton and the weekly Camp Gagetown Gazette in Oromocto.

At the tender age of fourteen I was writing a weekly column in both newspapers. I covered school news for The Gleaner and the Social Scene for the Gazette. The editor of the Oromocto paper at the time, Don Sisson, was satisfied with my writing and didn’t hesitate to pass on his approval. Finding worth in his encouragement, I worked even harder to please him. When I became district representative for the Kindness Clubs, an organization dedicated to the prevention of animal abuse, I also began writing about the clubs’ activities.

The material I wrote for The Daily Gleaner was on a gratis basis, but the Camp Gagetown Gazette paid me a weekly salary of about $10.

A year later my yearning to pursue a writing career was bolstered when I won yet another essay contest. Out of several hundred young people who entered from all across Canada and the United States, I was selected as one of thirty-nine winners. My essay, “Submission to His Commission,” was based on Christ’s message to carry His word of love to all people regardless of their state or location. It was published in Young Ambassador magazine out of Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1966. I nearly went out of my mind checking the mailbox every day for four or five months, anxious to see my story in print. When the magazine finally arrived, my mom was the first to see it. She opened the envelope, then showed it to me when I returned from school. She also proudly flaunted it to all her friends.

Within a few months of my newfound success south of the border, I was picking up a few dollars by covering events in the Oromocto area as a correspondent for The Daily Gleaner. At night, before sleeping, I’d imagine what it would be like to have a full-time job as a writer. I’d picture myself travelling to exotic locales, covering stories for National Geographic and Life.

Again I considered a career in the Christian ministry. I saw myself as a helpful saint, rushing to the aid of children in Third World countries, or ministering to the sick and dying in some dingy big-city hostel.

The summer before I turned sixteen, I went to live with Hector McGregor, a French evangelist on the Gaspé shore of Quebec. He had been a visitor to our Geary church and had spoken about the need for people to help with his new Protestant church. Brother McGregor was calling for musicians and singers, anyone willing to join him for the summer. He also required a person to assist with his four young children. On the night I heard him speak I approached him and said I would be interested in offering a hand. I was expected to help with the children and the church services, and the family would speak French exclusively so I might learn the language in this do-or-die situation.

I rode the train from Fredericton by myself. My parents saw me off. The church had taken up a collection, so I had money in my pocket. They presented it to me the Sunday before I left, and Mom and Dad managed to scrape up a few dollars to go with it. After the return train ticket was purchased, I had almost $60 and felt like an heiress setting out on her own for the first time. Along the way I spoke to a few people who were curious about my venture. When an old man asked if I was interested in accompanying him to the bar car for a drink, I stopped talking and took out my Bible to read. No one came near me after that.

When the train arrived in Gaspé City, Hector McGregor and his family were there to meet me. They drove me to a small village named Pointe-Navarre where they lived. As it turned out, I spent most of my time doing housework and baby-sitting while Hector and his wife visited people, attempting to build a congregation. I did manage to sing in French during a few services. After I was there about a month, Brother McGregor caught me talking one evening to a French boy who didn’t attend church. The brother mercilessly scolded me, saying I’d go straight to Hell if I didn’t change my ways, and I watched the French boy shrink away, taking his leave. A kind young minister named Jean Joyale tried to take my part while Brother McGregor delivered his wrath, but the damage had been done. The brother said, “I’ll have no boy-crazy teenager making out in the churchyard and interfering with my ministry.”

“You’re a dirty-minded hypocrite!” I yelled back. “Your biggest ministry is having kids.”

“Let’s just talk about this,” Brother Joyale interrupted in French.

“This isn’t your concern,” Brother McGregor said sternly.

That was that. I packed my things in silence and was delivered to the train station a few days later. Only the warm hugs from Brother McGregor’s wife and children let me know I’d be missed.

When I returned home from my learning experience, I once more abandoned my dream of becoming a missionary. I knew I could never possibly live the uncompromising life my parents and the church expected of me.

ADDICTED TO BAD BOYS

My next big crush was on a young Maliseet boy named Alfred who used to visit his sister next door to where we lived. He was lean and brown with dark, menacing eyes—eyes so black I sometimes felt mesmerized when I looked into them. I was intrigued by the alluring primitiveness of his behaviour, the raw, passionate sex that seemed a foreboding certainty. He had a long, angular face with a hooked nose that reminded me of a hawk. He smelled like the cedar and pine he spent hours carving into animal figures. He was an artist, vaguely magical and mythical, and there for me.

I was hungry for the touch of those rough, callused fingers, but again I was too afraid to give in. Our summer romance was limited to probing tongues and awkward caresses that tried to coax shy nipples through the confines of cotton. I never knew he had another girlfriend—a tough, husky white girl—until one day she made her presence known. I was sitting outside on my doorstep when she stormed right up to me, a hostile figure suddenly too close for comfort.

“Who do you think you are?” she screamed. I stood and edged away from the house, not wanting my mother to hear what was going on. I didn’t have a clue who the girl was.

“W-what are you talking about?” I stammered, noticing she had her fists clenched by her sides. I continued backing away as she advanced.

“What are you doing with my boyfriend?”

“What boyfriend? Who are you talking about?”

“Alfred.” She raised her hands and lunged at me.

I stumbled, shocked into silence for a moment. “Alfred? I didn’t know he had a girlfriend.”

“Well, he does,” she said, pointing at me, gritting her teeth. “And if I catch you messing around with him again, I’ll drive that little white nose of yours down your throat.”

My cheeks were flushed and I felt tears spring to my eyes. I had never been threatened before and I wasn’t about to attempt fighting a girl with arms like a wrestler’s.

“There’s nothing going on between Alfred and me,” I lied. “Besides, I already have a boyfriend.”

“That better be true!” she screamed in my face. “If I find out different, I’ll wrap that long hair around your throat!” She glared at me, deciding what to do next. Then she backed away, still watching me, before heading onto the road that would take her the three miles from Haneytown to Oromocto. She sure does talk strange for a white girl, I thought.

Fearing for my life, I told Alfred I couldn’t see him anymore when he came to visit his sister a few days later. He didn’t offer any objection. No decrees of love for me, no long pleas of devotion. I had a sneaky suspicion his girlfriend must have already warned him off. After all, she was twice as tough as he was.

GRAMMIE MILLS’S DEATH

I didn’t see Grammie Mills as frequently as I would have liked in my early teen years, but I thought of her often. I wondered what she would say if I had been able to talk to her about boys. I didn’t think she would get as mad as my mother when I tried broaching the subject. Grammie Mills never got mad at me.

It was a freezing cold morning, February 13, 1967, when my father received the call informing him Grammie Mills was gone. Ordinarily I would have been at school, but on this particular morning I was home with a cold. My father was told there had been a fire caused by overheated ductwork in Aunt Edna’s Lakewood home on the outskirts of Saint John. Aunt Edna had already left for work. A neighbour had noticed smoke billowing from the house and alerted the fire department. When the firemen arrived, it was too late. They had discovered my grandmother’s body on the kitchen floor, three feet from the door. Aunt Edna’s German shepherd, which had lain faithfully next to Grammie Mills, had also perished.

The policeman notified my father that Grammie had been overcome by the smoke. She never suffered. Not a bit.

“The police want me to go to Saint John,” my father quietly told us, his hand still on the receiver. “To identify the body.”

I couldn’t believe my ears. I stood there, watching the pain etch deeper into my father’s face. It was too much for me to bear. Without a word I headed to my bedroom. I stayed there, unwilling even to say goodbye to him as he left.

The following day, when my father returned from Saint John, he didn’t talk about Grammie in front of me. He wouldn’t mention her name. I noticed that some of his dark brown hair had turned white. It had happened in less than twenty-four hours. I’d read in one of my books about a man whose black hair turned completely white after coming face-to-face with a demonic spirit. I was afraid for my father, but I didn’t want to know what had happened, what had made his hair change colour in what seemed like nothing more than an instant.

Grammie Mills’s funeral was held in Fredericton. All during the service I stared at the casket, determined to rip it open and have one last look at her to make certain she was really inside. I couldn’t believe they required such a big box for such a tiny woman. I wanted it all to be just a bad dream. I wanted to wake up and see her visiting us again for a big Sunday dinner. I wanted to hear her gruff little chuckle as she greeted me with a warm, perfume-scented hug and kiss.

Sitting with my mom and dad in the funeral chapel, I recalled how purely delighted my grandmother used to be when I brought her flowers. She didn’t like winter and so it seemed unfair to me that we would be taking her for her last car ride in the middle of a winter storm. She should be surrounded by sunshine and daffodils, I reflected.

I glanced across the handful of people, all dressed in black, who sat stoically listening to the words of some dreary hymn. My aunts (Aunt Lois looked so much like Grammie), parents, brothers, cousins, and other relatives I’d only met at funerals stared straight ahead as a minister stood to pray for my grandmother. You’re too late, I thought, concentrating on holding back my tears. Too late.

Two ministers conducted the funeral service: Dr. Harold Mitten from Brunswick Street Baptist Church, where my Aunt Lena, Dad’s other sister, and my cousin, Heather, attended faithfully; and Archdeacon A. S. Coster, the Anglican priest who had married my parents.

How can you look so calm! I longed to shout. It was impossible to measure the amount of pain my relatives might be suffering by studying their faces. My dad’s family had a long history of suffering in silence.

I stared down at my own black skirt and felt fury and resentment as the pallbearers carried the casket from the funeral home to the hearse outside. On the fifteen-mile trip to the graveyard I studied the snow as it began to blow into tiny white tornadoes along the way, and I imagined I could see Grammie Mills’s smiling face along the edge of the cloudy sky above the dancing flakes. By the time we reached the gravesite, I was certain she wasn’t even there, so I never watched as they lowered the casket into the ugly hole that had been hacked out of the frozen earth.

Many times since her death, at junctures when conditions appeared darkest, I have felt Grammie Mills’s caress on my cheek. One night, about six months after her death, I was sick with the flu. I awoke to see her standing at the side of my bed, I began to cry and she reached down and touched my cheek. Her fingers were warm. When I closed my eyes and opened them again, she had vanished, but her touch lingered. I have felt her presence five times since then, episodes that have sealed my faith in the afterlife.

OUT OF CONTROL

After Grammie Mills’s death, I felt angry most of the time. I despised who I was and hated everyone around me. Even my writing provided little distraction or release. I turned my back on trying to be the good girl simply to win the approval of others. I’d had enough of home and wanted to leave. The old-fashioned Christian laws that ruled my house allowed me absolutely no leeway. I felt as if I were being suffocated, especially now that it was summer and I was around my parents more than usual. If I was even a few minutes late coming home, I was accused of plotting an escapade with a boy. It was time to run my own life. I had it in my mind that I wasn’t going back to school. I’d had enough of school, enough of everything from my past life.

To hide my true intentions, I told my folks I was going to visit Judy, my cousin in Fredericton. My parents didn’t like the idea, but they couldn’t do anything about it. I had made up my mind. I guess they reasoned I would be away only for a short while. They had no way of knowing I had shut my mind to them and was never coming back.

I showed up on my cousin Judy’s doorstep and asked if I could stay with her for a few days while I searched for a job. She wasn’t surprised to see me. I often popped in unexpectedly. Two days later I was working at a lunch counter in the Queen Street Zellers in Fredericton.

I met a new, exciting crowd—most of them at least four or five years older than I was—and began to experiment with hashish and uppers. The first time I smoked hash I felt sleepy and hungry, nothing more sensational. I never liked it. But I did like the uppers. After living with the chaos of my mom’s and grandfather’s drinking, I’d promised myself I’d never let alcohol touch my lips.

Three weeks into my stay in Fredericton I was smoking hash with a few hippie friends in a run-down rooming house on Regent Street when one of the guys, an educational student at the University of New Brunswick, suggested we all go to a dance at the KP Hall a few blocks away. I’d never attended any functions there, but I’d heard it was a pretty rough place. Everyone seemed eager to go except me, but I would never have admitted I was afraid. The stone from the hash made the venture seem even more severe. I didn’t want to go anywhere near anything dangerous. I just wanted to sit still and be mellow, let my eyes melt and worm my way into some soul-smoothing music. But the others kept insisting, so I came up with a legitimate excuse. “I’m only sixteen,” I quietly offered.

“That’s no problem,” Steve said. He was twenty, slim, handsome, and of Italian descent. I appreciated the fact that he was an older man and I knew he’d had his eye on me. He’d told Judy that he’d like to take me out. “I can get you in.”

“You sure?” I asked, my wavering fear slowly overcome by the heady anticipation of being with a guy as good-looking as Steve. I licked my lips and watched his eyes, trying to figure out his intentions. Was he really interested in me or not?

“I’m sure. C’mon,” Steve said, signalling for everyone to get ready. We were all sitting on the floor, listening to the Rolling Stones.

Outside, the air was sweet. I felt my feet moving, but I was totally stoned, shifting at the wrong speed. Everyone was chattering about strange things and laughing at the slightest hint of humour. Before we knew it, even though it seemed like forever, the six of us arrived at the dance hall. There was something happening in the parking lot. Violent noises and movement. A scuffle. Two men in their thirties were punching each other, while a young woman stood nearby screaming at both of them. It seemed by what she was shouting and by her position in the confrontation that they were fighting over her. Onlookers stood leaning against the dance hall, watching with mild interest or uneasy concern.

“I don’t think…” I started to protest, but Steve hooked his arm in mine, his bare skin brushing me. I almost melted with the pleasure, with the seemingly illicit nature of that simple touch.

“I’ll take care of you.” Steve grinned, then winked, leading me around the brawl as one of the men went down and hit the pavement hard. What new world is this? I thought. What screwed-up world? My heart was beating faster. But I let Steve lead me while the others followed, casting glances back at the brawl.

When we reached the entrance, Steve whispered something to the burly, muscle-bound guy ushering people into the dance. The guy looked me up and down and I tried not to be nervous, but my eyes kept darting here and there. When he was done inspecting me, the bouncer smiled and made a sweeping gesture with his hand, graciously allowing me entry.

The hall was filled with people. The smells of stale cigarette smoke and sweet liquor provoked memories. I imagined those parties in my parents’ kitchen, but this was my party now. This was my turn. I could break free and have fun on my own. I felt at home in the dimness with the loud music cutting off thought. Music, that was what I wanted. Steve took my hand and led me to the packed, smoky dance floor. Soon, I was dancing to the beat of “Memphis,” a Johnny Rivers tune.

When I was through, Steve shouted over the music, “What d’ya want to drink?”

“I’ll try a beer!” I yelled back. I’d never actually drunk beer before, but it seemed to be the beverage everyone was having. I’d tasted wine from the bottles in my room as a child and some other malty liquid my father had made once, but this was a new experience for me. After only one gulp, I was comfortable with the taste. I started to experience the same warm, safe feeling I’d felt when drinking wine as a child.

As the evening wore on, I consumed several more beers, revelling in the boozy lull that loosened me up and made me feel as if I truly fit in, that the night was there for me to take full advantage of. We danced for hours and I became a new person, healed, not needing to think about anything, a creature reincarnated exclusively for pleasure. When Steve decided we should go to a party, I agreed.

The party was at someone’s house about ten minutes away The quieter atmosphere was a big change from the hall, but I was feeling bubbly, so it didn’t matter that much. I was interested in checking out the interior. The house was a suburban bungalow, bigger than anything I’d ever lived in. It was all new to me.

“You sure can hold your liquor,” Steve said as we settled in the living room, which was clean and full of nice furniture.

I smiled with genuine pride.

I thought there might be more people in the house, but there were only two other couples. The man who owned the house was short and dark and not very attractive. In fact, he was almost ugly and seemed to have few friends. He’d have anyone around. That was why we were there. He told me he drove a milk truck. When he asked me what I would like from his liquor cabinet, I had no idea what to say. I’d never been in the presence of sophisticated drinkers. A tall bottle with dark green liquid caught my eye, so I pointed to it.

“How do you want it?” the man asked, unscrewing the bottle and holding the tip over a glass.

I sat in silence.

“On the rocks?” he asked.

Not knowing exactly what “on the rocks” might mean and feeling the eyes of everyone on me, I said, “I’ll just drink it like it is.” And so I did. I drank until I was liberated beyond belief. I drank until I was wobbly and barely still in my body. I drank until there was no more to drink. I finished off the entire bottle.

Things slowly became a blur after that. I found the company astoundingly interesting. I soaked up the conversations and laughed when I was supposed to. I kept sipping and loving the taste and loving my new friends until everyone was confusing to me and I felt my body move on its own. I felt it lean sideways even though I wasn’t leaning. I’d have to catch myself to stay straight. I felt the room begin to spin. Deep inside, my body was turning against the air I was breathing, turning against gravity, turning crookedly against itself.

The next morning I woke in a place unknown to me. I was in a small bedroom on a single bed. My waist-length hair was covered with something sticky and thick. I caught a whiff of a pungent odour and knew it was vomit. The pain in my head became unbearable as I shifted my body. I leaned forward, cringing, and held my head, fearing my brain would crack in two.

Eventually I managed to get up to search for a bathroom. When I entered the living room, I realized I was still in the same house. The guy who owned it was passed out on the couch. All alone.

After that wild night, I slipped easily into a lifestyle of drinking and partying. The hangover soon went away and the booze kept me at a safe distance from myself. For a few months I drifted from job to job and lived wherever I could find a bed for the night. Sometimes it was with female friends, other times with male friends, known or unknown to me. I had no contact with my parents even though they lived only twenty miles away.

One night, in a bar, I met up with a girl who had been in my class back in Geary. Linda was married to a soldier, a guy named Doug. They lived in Lincoln, halfway between Fredericton and Oromocto. Linda walked into the bar bathroom and found me crying because I’d just lost another job, this one in a candy store. I’d been late too many times and was finally let go. I had no place to live and wasn’t even sure where most of my clothes were. Linda offered to help. She told me I could come stay with her and Doug. I accepted the offer, desperately in need of some sort of permanence, having no idea I would soon meet my first husband in Linda’s home, and finally embrace the menacing instability that would nearly kill me.

STAN

When I moved into Linda’s house in Lincoln, I made a firm commitment to get my life back on track. I even decided to visit my parents so I could let them know I was alive and doing well.

“Oh, Eva, you’re all right!” my mother said, running to the door to greet me when I arrived. She wrapped her tiny arms around my back and held tightly, starting to cry.

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Mom had lost weight and looked ill.

“I was so worried,” she wept into my cheek. “I prayed every night.”

I returned her hug, held on tighter, and burst into tears. She loves me, I thought. She really loves me. “I’m fine, Mom.”

My father wasn’t home from work yet and my brothers were at school, so I sat and waited with Mom as she filled the kettle for tea and set a plate of cinnamon rolls on the table in front of me.

She smiled. “One of your favourites. Eat.”

I raised a cinnamon bun to my mouth as I studied my mother. She had definitely lost weight, more than I had first observed. “Are you okay, Mom?”

She sat in the chair across from me, her eyes sad and happy at once. “After you left, I just couldn’t seem to eat much. We didn’t hear from you. I was sure something awful had happened.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t have a phone.”

She nodded. “You’re fine, though.”

“Is Dad mad at me?”

“He was worried, too.” Pausing, she watched me chew a bite of cinnamon roll. “He’ll be glad to see you. He even called the police once. And I checked the hospital.”

“I didn’t think you’d be worried.”

My mother stared at me as if remembering something distant and uncertain, then the kettle began to whistle.

When my father came home from his job as janitor at the Oromocto Shopping Centre, he didn’t say a word. He just laid down his silver lunch pail and put his arms around me, gently patting my head.

My brothers were excited to see me. They eagerly chatted about what was happening in their lives.

I stayed with my family until Linda’s husband, Doug, picked me up that evening around ten o’clock. I couldn’t remember when I’d ever felt so loved. Leaving the house in a blissful state of reassurance, I even promised Dad I’d try to make it to church the following Sunday. We were opening up to one another and expressing our feelings. My mother was worried to the point of weight loss, to the point of sickness. Was it possible we could finally be at peace with each other?

That night back in Lincoln, Doug and Linda invited a friend of theirs over to meet me. It was a blind date of sorts, although I knew I was being set up. Linda told me the man’s name was Stan and he was stationed with the Black Watch Regiment, just like Doug, at CFB Gagetown, a military base housed primarily within Oromocto town limits. When Doug mentioned Stan was also a Mohawk from Deseronto, Ontario, I grew even more eager to meet him.

Stan was three years older than I. He was a big, imposing man over two hundred pounds and as solid as a mountain. But his shyness and boyish face made him seem like a gentle giant. This time it wasn’t only the dark skin and eyes that attracted me. It was also his deep, soft-spoken voice, so low he practically mumbled, and the way his fingers moved across the neck of his Gibson guitar. He carried his guitar with him everywhere he went. Music was becoming another of my addictions, and I was easy prey to the soothing, resonant pluck of a guitar.

Stan and I didn’t talk much that first night. He spent most of his time singing country songs while we all enjoyed a few glasses of ale. I’d decided to lay off the heavy stuff and stick to beer for a while.

I knew the words to most of the songs Stan sang: old country ballads by Hank Williams and Marty Robbins, love songs by Jim Reeves and Buck Owens. When Stan started to sing “Crystal Chandelier” by Charlie Pride, I joined in and realized immediately that our voices blended seamlessly. There was a natural harmony between us. I was embarrassed and deeply touched at the same time.

“You have a nice voice,” he told me with a timid smile that showed off his full lips.

I smiled back, feeling a growing fondness toward him. “So do you.”

He stayed overnight at Doug and Linda’s. I slept in my room and he stretched out on the couch.

Over the next couple of weeks I saw Stan frequently. When he revealed truths about his lonely childhood, how he’d been cared for by grandparents until he started school because of his mother’s drinking, I felt a bond of suffering between us. As he talked about his father who had died when he was still a boy, I saw a profound sadness in his eyes.

“No one has ever really loved me,” he professed, not looking at me. We were sitting in Linda’s living room. It was 1967 and we were watching Bonanza. Stan believed Lorne Greene was a Mohawk from Ontario and therefore felt a special kinship with the actor. “Thank you for being so kind,” he told me.

In the light of this meekness I vowed to try to help alleviate some of his pain. For now my own troubled past was forgotten. I would mend someone else’s pain.

Just seventeen, I was hoping to have my own home and break free from the authority of my parents. Stan had never been a regular churchgoer, but said he’d be willing to attend my church. That should please my parents, I thought. So I followed Stan home for Christmas to Ontario to meet “the family” barely two months after we started dating.

The eighteen-hour train trip was accompanied by a forty-ouncer of Silent Sam vodka. I’d decided that this particular occasion called for something stronger than beer. We found a comfortable spot on the train on a bench across from a couple of guys with guitars. Between sips from my bottle, which I shared with Stan and the guitarists, I joined the trio to sing every country song we could think of. The other passengers appeared to enjoy the free entertainment. A few even sang along.

The vodka and musical camaraderie made me forget any misgivings I had about meeting Stan’s relatives. By the time we reached Belleville, I was pleasantly intoxicated and ready for a new adventure. Even Stan was well lubed and much more talkative than usual. When we started out on our journey, he’d been unusually quiet. I suspected he had mixed feelings about his mother. He’d told me she’d never been easy to please.

Stan’s cousin, Melvin, was waiting for us at the station. He was a small, wiry man in his mid-thirties who didn’t have much to say, but he did have a welcoming smile that put me at ease.

Afraid of not impressing Stan’s mother, I wore a dress, a ridiculous silver sequined full-skirted thing that should have been reserved for New Year’s Eve. I had an eye for the gaudy, craving all the attention I could get. By the time I stumbled off the train in Belleville, the dress looked as if it had spent weeks hiding in the bottom of my clothes hamper. Shrugging, I downed the final drink of vodka from my cup. That last gulp of Silent Sam took the wrinkles out of any imperfections I might have felt about my appearance. We headed for Melvin’s car, the click of my red high heels resounding through the parking lot.

When we arrived on the doorstep of Stan’s mother’s house, I was teetering slightly. A white woman came out to meet us. She smiled at Stan but made no move to embrace him. Her eyes shifted to me and I could sense the instant hatred. A snarl actually cut through her features. No one else came out to meet us, so I assumed this was Stan’s mother, Loretta, though I couldn’t remember him telling me his mother was white. We entered the small green bungalow, located in the town adjoining the Tyendinaga Reserve. It was packed with ornaments. I’d never seen so many ceramic figurines. There were animals, birds, men and women, and salt and pepper shakers on every shelf and table. While there seemed to be no particular theme to the collection, I noticed they were mostly white. Loretta’s husband had died years ago and she was alone and bitter. We were two women vying for Stan’s affection. Being white herself, maybe she knew exactly what it was that attracted me to Stan and despised me for it.

The day after we arrived other family members came to call. They were polite and attentive. The trip became an endless round of visits and introductions. Everyone who met me stared with interest, but few spoke except to each other in Mohawk. They would point, openly sizing up my large, firm breasts and wide hips with obvious approval. On a few occasions I had to stop myself from offering my teeth and gums for inspection.

Stan’s paternal grandparents came for a visit. They lived only a few streets away from his mother’s home. They, too, had moved off the reserve many years earlier. They were sweet and kind and went out of their way to make me feel comfortable. They were from old Mohawk stock; no white blood had dared trickle through their veins until their son married a woman whose ancestors hailed from Scotland. Stan had been the only cross-breed from that union, and I am sure they hoped he’d get back on track and marry one of his own kind before the blood got too diluted and they all faded away.

Stan was plenty dark. You couldn’t tell he had white blood in him. When I first met him, I thought he was Mexican or Spanish. His grandparents appeared more like the Indians I’d seen in history books.

“This is my little white squaw,” Stan said when he introduced me to his grandparents with a wide grin. They laughed when Stan started calling me Little White Squaw occasionally, and I laughed, too, thinking it was an honour that would prompt my acceptance into the community. One of Stan’s cousins had accompanied Stan’s grandparents. He called me yakonkwe, with the k pronounced like a g. I liked the way it sounded and decided it must be something special until I learned it was simply the Mohawk word for woman. Little White Squaw sounded much more romantic, I decided. I was proud of my new Native title. I never dreamed it would condemn me to a limbo between the aboriginal and white cultures.

I devoured everything I could find about Mohawk history. One story that stuck in my mind was the journey of displaced Mohawks from New York State who had crossed the border to arrive in what later became the Province of Ontario. In 1784 they settled beside the Bay of Quinte. When the Mohawks lost their homeland during the American Revolution, the British Crown promised the small group of survivors a new homeland. A mere twenty families, approximately a hundred people, made it through the slaughter by the Americans.

Captain John Deserontyon, a Mohawk serving in the British army, led the surviving Indians to the spot that was eventually named Deseronto, where they settled and became known as the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte. Stan, along with more than six thousand others, was a direct descendant of these brave people who were called the Keepers of the Eastern Door. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it certainly enhanced Stan’s legendary appeal in my mind.

CHILD BRIDE

When Christmas holidays ended, I stayed in Deseronto with Loretta. She said she’d like some company and knew a place where I could find work. Keen to win her friendship, I agreed. Stan went back to Gagetown to rejoin his Black Watch unit, which was soon renamed 2RCR. By this time we had decided we’d tie the knot that coming March, and Stan believed it would be good for me to get to know his relatives and keep his mother company.

Loretta silently tolerated me for a while, but it didn’t take long before I bore the brunt of her bad moods. She drank whiskey or beer daily and never stopped complaining about how hard her life had been.

“No one helped me out when I met Stan’s father,” she said. “You’re lucky you’ve got a place to sleep. Nothing good ever happened in my life and nothing ever will.”

I’d be washing dishes or dusting one of her ornaments while she sat at the kitchen table in her nightgown and curlers, complaining for hours. In the midst of such acrid regret I realized how kind my mother had actually been in comparison.

I would make sporadic attempts to persuade Loretta to like me; I’d offer to style her hair or fix her up with some makeup, but she’d just wave me away. She seemed so unhappy that I actually felt sorry for her. In a drunken stupor, when she accused me of being interested in her boyfriend, Rollie, a skinny truck driver who visited every couple of weeks, I gave up and simply tried to stay out of her way. I’d hardly even spoken to the guy He gave me the creeps.

I spent hours writing poetry in my journal and jotting down general happenings.

It didn’t take long for me to grasp the great difference of opinion on skin colour between the Native men and women. White was definitely in with the males from the reserve (the Mohawks preferred to use the word territory instead of reserve). And they liked a woman “with a little meat on her bones,” too. I became a popular item, and I was thrilled, basking in all the attention. I never imagined white meat would be considered such a delicacy.

The next month brought a flood of calls—from Stan’s friends and cousins, all strangers to me—ranging from polite chitchat to outright sexual offers. One very short, overweight cousin asked me if I missed my nookie. He told me he’d take care of me if I was up for it. I told him he’d never be up enough for it and to go straight to Hell.

One of the younger men, a childhood friend of Stan’s, was especially friendly and I enjoyed talking to him on the phone. His name was David and he patiently related to me several Mohawk legends. My favourite was the one about a deity named Peacemaker who summoned eagles to act as lookouts for signs of danger so the Mohawk people would be forewarned and could escape before they were harmed. I often wondered if the eagles had been there in New York State before the American Revolution, but I never asked David. He hated to be interrupted in the middle of weaving his tales.

Of course, the women didn’t see me as the treasure I felt I had become. They were quick to indicate they considered me tainted goods. Cold, silent stares in the grocery store and heavily accented curses over the phone were frequent. “Why don’t you stay where you belong?” they’d say. “Stop hanging around our men.”

Within two months I returned to New Brunswick, devalued again, driven away by racist hostility. I found myself back with my parents and brothers in the little house in Haneytown. Back in a predominantly white community there was no chance of standing out because I was too pale. Back in a place where my boyfriend, Stan, who was still living on the army base, was the oddity.

Stan and I started attending church with my parents. Stan took to the hard preaching and lively music right away, and I was reassured to note that my mom and dad appeared to like him. Even before I said anything to my parents I told a couple I’d been baby-sitting for, Frank and Deana Thomas, that I was considering marriage. The Thomases endeavoured to talk me out of it, but one Sunday night after service, I told my father we were planning to wed and he seemed relieved. He suggested we talk to our minister, so I did.

A few days later Stan and I made an appointment to see Pastor Foster. We sat in his study in the Pentecostal church in Geary and I outlined our plans. Stan sat beside me without uttering a word.

The pastor looked at Stan, then me. “Have you considered what this marriage might be like for any children you have?” he asked, speaking patiently, deliberately. His searching eyes never left my face until I bowed my head. Stan continued sitting in silence, hands on his lap.

“Well, yes,” I finally mumbled. “What difference could it make? It’s not like we’re black and white.”

“No, but there are bound to be problems. People can be cruel. And then there’s the difference in customs, traditions, things like that.”

“But Stan never even lived on the reserve,” I said. “He lived beside it.”

“A culture is a culture, Eva,” the minister said. But I wasn’t listening. I didn’t care what prefabricated words the pastor tossed at me. My mind was already made up. Even if he was right, what major problems could possibly arise just because two different cultures had decided to unite?

Mom didn’t say much about my forthcoming union with Stan, but she did grow more excited as she helped me plan the wedding. Nobody ever suggested I might be too young, even though I was just seventeen. My parents were probably happy and appeased that I’d finally accepted my predestined role in life. Both my parents firmly believed no one should interfere in a marriage no matter what might be going on. Whatever happened was between the man and woman.

As the novelty of the wedding plans wore off, I began to have real doubts about this particular calling. I did care about Stan, but I couldn’t picture spending the next ten years with him, and certainly not a lifetime. I began to doubt my motives for this union. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to give up dating other guys. When I talked to my mother about the way I felt, she reminded me reassuringly. “All brides-to-be have those feelings.” But I was worried my doubts might be more severe than most. I kept quiet about my lingering attraction to other men. I thought about Ray Stewart all the time. That would have doomed me for sure.

On March 31, 1967, I drove in my dad’s car to the Geary church where I was to be married. There was a chill in the air that settled in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t get warm, as if a frost had seeped inside and coated my veins.

As my father walked me down the aisle, the small Pentecostal church in Geary, the same one where my parents had first converted to Christianity, was packed with family, other church members, and a few of my friends like Donna and Beryl Photos of that exercise resembled a funeral procession. Neither of us smiled. Stan was the only one who appeared genuinely happy. My smile was nervous and strained.

The tears in my eyes weren’t tears of happiness but of trepidation. I figured it was too late to run. We exchanged vows and rings, and Stan kissed me before accompanying me back down the aisle. The entire ceremony was shrouded in a dreamlike quality. Nothing felt real.

Outside, after the ceremony, wet snow pasted confetti to my short satin wedding gown. Flecks of confetti were still stuck to the dress when I stuffed it in a garbage bag a few years later and put it out with the trash.

LITTLE BURNT SQUAW

I became more dissatisfied than ever with my white epidermis. So I spent that summer trying to bake, broil, and fry myself in the blazing hot sun. I simply had to have dark skin in order to fit into the place I assumed I belonged. The darker I became, the better.

I spent practically every sunny morning at my favourite spot in the woods, lying on large sheets of tinfoil, dripping baby oil, while praying for rays like a hungry sun worshipper. I was slippery all over, covered in sweat and oil, eyes clamped shut beneath the fiery, oppressive ball of fire in the sky. It was an endurance test. Me against my body. My body against what I really wanted to be. And, yes, hallelujah, I did manage to turn a bit darker. I was delighted, despite the fact that I spent a fortune on jars of Noxzema to heal the peeling skin and blisters.

At one point I became so badly burnt that I was forced to visit the hospital. I waited in the emergency room, tenderly shifting in my seat, trying not to let my scarlet-pink skin stick to the vinyl. When my turn came, the doctor informed me that what I had managed to get for all my trouble was second-degree burns.

The doctor was curious to know what I had been doing to suffer such injury. Had I fallen asleep in the sun? Was I too close to a heat lamp? Reluctantly I explained about the tin foil and baby oil.

“Are you crazy?” the doctor asked, exasperated. “You could actually fry a fish like that.”

Later that night I lay in bed with chills, shivering, sick to my stomach with heat stroke, my tender skin stinging, burning a hot electric-pink.

MY FIRSTBORN

When I was eight years old, my dog Pal was hit by a truck. I’d sat heartbroken in the arms of my apple tree, mourning the death of the small black furry spaniel that had been my solitary friend for more than a year. Tearfully I asked God to let me grow up so I could have children to love and who would love me in return. My perfect children would be cherished, adored. They would be given everything they desired. They would be treated gently. I wouldn’t force anything down their throats. We would have an understanding between us. I don’t think I even asked about a husband—what would I need one of those for?—but I knew I wanted to have at least four children. That way I’d never feel lonely again, and my babies would be treated right, everything would be made better.

As soon as our marriage vows were exchanged, I set my mind and body on becoming a mother. The first year with Stan was the honeymoon. We were happy most of the time, and I loved taking care of the tiny house we rented on Smith Road in Geary three miles away from where my parents lived. My old school friend Donna lived less than a mile away, and Beryl, my longtime childhood friend who I had lost touch with during my courtship with Stan, lived closer still. We got together for coffee from time to time, gossiping and trading news. Life seemed good, even though Stan and I had started drinking a little too much. We drank every weekend and we stopped attending church. Often there would be parties at our home.

One Saturday night Stan got drunk and picked a fight with his army buddy, Ron, from the base. Stan accused him of trying to hit on me when I asked Ron if he wanted a fresh beer from the fridge. I tried to intervene, but Stan was wild. He threw me against the living-room wall. All of the ten or so people present suddenly went quiet.

“Get out of here!” he snarled through clenched teeth. The look in his eyes hit me harder than the shove. I ran outside and hid, crouching behind a lilac bush. As the tears ran down my cheeks, I watched the fray through the window and heard the men’s voices trying to calm Stan. I was wondering what I’d done to make my husband angry.

A few minutes later everything settled down and the party began to break up. The next morning Stan cleaned the entire house and made me breakfast in bed. After that the gatherings at our house were confined to Saturday-night card games with close friends.

Within weeks of the wedding I discovered I was pregnant with my first child. I felt nauseated whenever I saw food. I never thought of pregnancy I suspected I had an ulcer and decided I better see my doctor. He could tell as soon as he examined me. An in-office pregnancy test proved him right. I burst into tears right there in my doctor’s office. I was overjoyed. I had my heart set on having a regular, loving family.

Stan was just as excited as I was. When I told him, he cried, too, and wore a proud smile for days. He said he knew he’d be a good father, and I had no reason not to believe him. We both decided to start attending church regularly again. With a new baby coming we agreed we’d need God’s help. The drinking and smoking stopped. We sang duets in church, mostly country gospel pieces or songs written by my father, while Stan played guitar. I was sure the future would be golden. The weekends were no longer party events. When we weren’t in church, we spent time with my parents or my old friends, Frank and Deana, who had determined it was better to support my decision than to lose me as a friend. Often we just went for long walks on a country road, or Stan would play his guitar and I would sing.

As Stan became more involved in the dogmas of the church, I perceived a shift in his behaviour. He seldom joked anymore. He showed little emotion except at church, and he began questioning my every move. Sometimes he’d stare at me for hours without uttering a single word. There would be a deadness in his eyes, as if any light of recognition had been suddenly extinguished.

Then, without warning, a brightness would wash over him and he’d start talking cheerfully. He had been off somewhere and didn’t even seem to know it. These episodes sent shivers up my spine. There was new danger here I hadn’t anticipated.

One morning, as I was getting dressed, Stan grabbed my arm roughly. “Where’d you get that bruise?” he demanded, nodding at my bare thigh.

“I bumped into the door under the sink,” I said. “I forgot to close it when I cleaned the bathroom yesterday.”

He gripped my shoulders and shook me so hard I thought my neck would snap. “Don’t ever lie to me!” he spit, his face merely inches from mine.

I could barely speak but managed to say, “I’m not lying, Stan, honest.” Then I started to cry.

Just as abruptly as he had seized me, he let go and left the room. Later he acted as if nothing had happened.

I tried hard to be a dutiful wife. After I found out I was pregnant, I was no longer interested in sex. I felt little physical attraction to Stan, but I seldom said no to his advances. Sometimes I was actually quite fond of him. He was a great help around the house and often cooked me wonderful meals like chicken cacciatore or dried corn soup, a Mohawk dish I particularly enjoyed. And he was good company on those long nights as I anticipated the birth of my first child.

While I was pregnant I tried to do all the right things. I quit smoking and drinking and walked for miles, but my morning sickness often lasted all day and nearly the entire nine months of my pregnancy. Creamed mashed potatoes and canned sardines became my main fare. I craved so much fish I was afraid my firstborn might pop out squirming with gills and fins and a gasping fish mouth.

Like most first-time mothers, I was terrified something might go wrong. I became self-consumed, oblivious to anyone else’s needs or desires. It was only me and my baby. That was all that mattered. I went to church more frequently and prayed for a healthy baby.

Six days before my eighteenth birthday, on December 8, 1968, I went into labour with my first child while at a Sunday-night service in the same church where Stan and I had been married. My mother insisted we come home with her. I was so excited when she assured me it wouldn’t be long before I would be a mother. My dad drove Stan and me to the same hospital where I’d been born. Every two minutes Dad would ask me if I was all right. When my water broke as I was climbing out of the car, I suspected Dad would pass out.

The entire labour lasted five hours. At the time I thought, Ahah! I guess good hips do pay off, after all. I am a fine squaw. Yes, I am.

All seven pounds, five ounces of my firstborn was delivered into this world healthy and intact. My baby girl was astonishingly beautiful. Perfect, I told myself as I tickled her dimpled cheeks and rubbed the thick black hair on her little round head. She was so tiny and soft, so vulnerable. I could never have loved another human being as much as I did the moment the nurse placed her in my arms.

I named the baby Heather JoAnne as a special favour to my mother-in-law who had always longed to have a daughter. I felt sorry for her and hoped this gesture would make her treat me better. She told me she’d had the name picked out if Stan had been a girl, and since I had a cousin I liked with the same name, I agreed. But, secretly, I longed to give her some exotic name, a Mohawk one like Otsitsya, which meant flower. But, after all, Heather was a sort of flower, too, so I reasoned the name was just as fitting.

For days, lying in bed or sitting in the kitchen, I stared at Heather, astonished by how tiny and flawless she was, this wonderful being who hadn’t existed in the world a short while ago. I felt overwhelmed in her presence. It was a spiritual tugging that must have been pure love. She was mine to care for, and my heart seemed newly complete and blessed.

TAUGHT A LESSON

Bright and early one morning when Heather was about three months old, while I was preparing breakfast, Stan approached me with unexpected news. “God wants you to stop listening to music on the radio. It’s my job to make sure you stop listening.”

A few weeks later I was given further instructions. I was to refrain from wearing shoes with high heels. They were created to tempt men to lust. They were the tools of wanton women. While I agreed that women and men should dress modestly, I couldn’t see all the commotion about open-toed shoes or dresses that exposed arms. I never questioned Stan because I wasn’t prepared to provoke the wrath I knew was building inside him.

These proclamations soon multiplied and intensified. One day Stan slapped my face when I told him the church should pay as much attention to gossip among the congregation as it did to women’s clothing. I soon realized, with dread, that I was caught in a worsening cycle of oppression. Stan had tightened his hold over me. He was controlling my every move, questioning my every action, carefully analyzing each word I spoke for a treacherous double meaning.

For a while Heather became the centre of his existence. He seemed happy when he was around her, although he remained suspicious of my actions. The only time he appeared at peace was when he sat outside on our picnic table and played his guitar. Now he played only Christian songs; country and western was strictly forbidden by the church.

Our second child was born on a snowy Christmas morning in 1969. It had been a long, painful labour that lasted eighteen hours, but Jody Lee was as beautiful and perfect as his one-year old sister. He looked like a miniature of his father. There was no mistaking his heritage. Same black hair, same full lips, same Mohawk skin tone.

Stan seemed more interested in the baby boy when we arrived home than he had in Heather. It was as if he finally had an ally in the home already stacked with two females. He would sing to his son and hold him for hours. He even lightened up after the birth, as though a huge burden had been lifted. I knew he was as proud to have a son as I was, and maybe that pride made him feel better about himself, more capable to have fathered a son. He was eager to help out at home and rarely questioned my activities. It was as if the mistrustful stranger who had intruded upon our lives had disappeared completely. The shy, gentle Stan I’d first been attracted to was back.

My husband started acting strange once more just a month after Jody’s birth. That was the second time he hit me. I was tired and lost my patience when he didn’t respond to my request to help carry laundry in from the clothesline. When he ignored me, I screamed at him. He rose out of his chair and stormed toward me, raising his hand and slapping my mouth so hard my lip cracked and began to bleed. From then on things grew steadily worse. The slightest show of insolence on my part always brought a slap or shake.

It was 1970 and Stan was away a great deal on manoeuvres with the army. It was the year the FLQ crisis took place in Quebec, granting me a reprieve when Stan was assigned there as a peacekeeper.

That was when Kevin came into my life. I noticed him one day at a service station where we stopped for gas. I hadn’t seen him since I was thirteen years old, but I’d always considered him handsome.

Kevin had grown up only five houses away from mine in Haneytown. When he was a boy, he was well built and black-haired with rugged appeal. He was five years older than I was and had a reputation for trouble and pulling pranks on the other kids. He reminded me of Marlon Brando. After finishing school, he’d spent time in prison for car theft and was certainly the same bad-boy type I’d constantly hoped to save. Only this time he was responsible for saving me.

I ran into him again a few days later at the shopping centre.

“You’re sure looking good,” he said when he saw me in front of the grocery store. “Still got that beautiful long hair.” He reached out and touched my hair.

I was tongue-tied, so I just smiled and asked him where he was living. He told me he was staying at his mother’s house in Geary and wondered if he could call me sometime.

“I’m married,” I said.

“Then you call me,” he replied. A few days later I did. I’d been seriously considering suicide as the only way out of my abusive marriage. I’d be in the kitchen, doing the dishes or cleaning up, my mind in a grey haze as I wondered about the ways to end my life. The same monotonous chores every day, the same swell of anger and subjugation. Plain deadness in my heart. No heart at all.

When Kevin came along, I knew he could tell I was an easy target for his advances. He had a reputation for courting discontented wives, but I didn’t care. The few stolen hours when I could manage a baby-sitter were my lifesavers. I savoured every minute spent with him driving over back roads, laughing at his outlandish stories, parking under the stars, or being passionate in the grass. It made me forget the prison my home life had become.

I carried the guilt of the affair with me, but I knew without Kevin I probably wouldn’t have survived. I also knew Kevin would have killed Stan if I’d told him about the abuse. As it was, Kevin was soon out of my life. He had another girlfriend who wasn’t married, so they drifted out west when the police started harassing him for a string of unsolved break-and-enters in the area. But an important part of him remained with me. I had become pregnant again.

Shortly thereafter, we moved into a row house in Oromocto provided by the base. We had grown out of the small two-bedroom house in Geary. The new dwelling had three bedrooms, a full basement, and a spacious backyard. There were children next door for Heather and Jody to play with, and one of my neighbours invited me over for coffee the same day we moved in. I was a nervous wreck by this time because I wasn’t sure who Stan would allow me to talk to.

About a month before my due date in March 1971 I felt a desperate need to get out of the house, I’d been cooped up for days with two active toddlers and was bloated and uncomfortable from the pregnancy. I asked Stan to baby-sit so I could walk to the mall, and he readily agreed.

Before leaving the house I made certain two-year-old Heather and Jody, who was just over a year, were dressed and fed. I didn’t want them making too many demands on their father. They looked so much alike, with their big brown eyes and thick black curls. There was no mistaking their kinship. As much as I adored them, I was relieved to take a much-needed break from their constant needs and steady demands for attention.

“I won’t be long,” I promised, pulling on my coat.

I experienced such relief at being able to round the aisles at the grocery store without Jody tearing open and eating half the order while Heather indiscriminately threw in bags of cookies and potato chips she wanted to gobble down for breakfast. The supermarket was like a pristine dreamworld. There was freedom amid the brightly coloured boxes and packages; everything was neat and immaculate, the refreshing air was so clean, and not a single person clung to me. Despite my hulking, quite-pregnant carriage, I felt light, unburdened, invigorated by the time I could spend exclusively with myself. Browsing through the magazine section in the market was as blissful as a vacation in Florida.

Done with my soul-lifting sojourn, I headed off on the gloriously silent walk home. The weather was springlike, even though I knew we’d be hit by a few more winter storms yet.

Stepping into the house and crossing the back-door threshold with my bag of groceries, I felt a peculiar tension in the air. I was about to call out “Hello,” but the word caught in my throat. Both of the children were screaming upstairs and my husband was sitting in the kitchen reading the Bible as if he didn’t hear a sound. I dropped the groceries and ran through the kitchen into the living room. Clutching the bannister, I bolted up the stairs as fast as my bulky body could carry me. When I threw open the door to the children’s bedroom, Heather and Jody were holding each other in manic fright, tears streaming down their faces.

“Mommie, it hurts,” Jody sobbed. He cried openly as he held out his chubby little fingers. “Hurts, Mommie. Hurts.”

Heather had a facecloth wrapped around her hands.

“Oh, my God!” I gasped as soon as I saw their fingers. Blisters covered Heather’s palms; Jody’s were almost as bad. Fear weakened every part of my body, my head rushing with torrents of confused, broken thought. I stood stunned in a tingling, unreal world, unable to make sense of this. Did Stan know the children were hurt? Was there fire somewhere? My eyes darted around for matches as I sniffed the air and raced into the bathroom for ointment.

“What happened, baby?” I asked upon returning. My hands were trembling as I uncapped the tube of cream. I was trying to appear calm, but inside I was screaming and shivering at once. It took every bit of willpower I could summon to force a reassuring smile as I applied thick ointment to my babies’ burns. Both children were whimpering, their chests throbbing with the remnants of crying fits, so I knew I had to remain calm. To press for an answer would only bring on another outburst.

I moved them both into Heather’s bed and covered them with my special blanket—a pink-and-white quilt with roses stitched in the corners that had been made by my fortuneteller grandmother, Grammie Brewer, decades ago.

Kneeling by the side of their bed, I kissed the tears away from their hot, smooth cheeks. I pressed my lips together, fighting back tears of my own, then began singing:

“Jesus loves the little children.

All the children of the world.

Red and yellow, black and white.

They are precious in his sight.

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Jesus loves the little children…”

After three rounds of song, a soothing sleep stilled their sobs. Not once had their father checked to see what was transpiring.

As soon as I was certain the children were settled, I went back down the stairs, fury mounting with each step, blood pounding in my ears. Stan had moved from the kitchen and was now sitting on the couch. Unlike most Natives on the reservation, he wasn’t a staunch Catholic. He had converted to a charismatic evangelical movement. His Bible lay open on his lap and he watched me without the slightest trace of concern.

I snatched the Bible from his hands, threatening to hammer him with it. “What in hell happened?” I demanded through clenched teeth.

“There’s no need to swear.”

“I’ll swear if I want to,” I challenged, trying to keep my voice down so as not to trouble the children. “What did you do to the kids?”

“I taught them a lesson.” His voice never rose one octave. He remained seated and stared through me, eerily peaceful.

“What kind of a lesson?”

“They were playing with the lamps. Turning the light off and on. I warned them.” He nodded once.

“How’d they get burned?”

Stan said nothing.

I stepped closer, raising the Bible higher. “Did you see their hands?”

“I told them they’d get hurt if they kept doing that. Only one way to teach a child.” His eyes shifted to the Bible I was holding. “The Bible says that. Spare the rod, spoil the child.”

“What do you mean? What did you do?”

“I wet their hands and held them on the bulb so they’d see what I meant.”

“Oh, God!” I heard something thump against the hardwood floor. Looking down, I saw I had dropped the Bible, the golden cross against black. My stomach rose in my throat. Gagging, I held it in, turned, and ran for the stairway, again clutching the bannister, racing for the upstairs bathroom. Tossing up the lid on the toilet, I fell to my knees and vomited.

When I managed to pick myself up, my limbs were powerless, my eyes damp. Feebly I wiped my mouth. A sob trembled in my throat as I glanced in the mirror, not wanting to see myself, hair in disarray, eyes bloodshot, face splotched red, loathing my reflection for having allowed harm to come to my children.

I took my time going downstairs, one hand on my belly, the other on the bannister. When I reached the living room, I stood in silence, pausing at the sight of Stan back at the kitchen table, patiently turning the thin, crisp pages of his Bible, devoutly reading.

The following Tuesday morning, after Stan left for work and the children—done with their breakfast—were playing in the living room, Beryl showed up for a visit. She hadn’t heard from me in months, not since I’d moved back to Oromocto. I was gradually shutting down, withdrawing farther into myself in a futile attempt to contain the abuse.

Beryl was worried for me. When she gave me a big, warm hug, I felt emotion surge from deep inside. I broke down and cried, confessing about Stan’s insane behaviour, about the incident with the children, about my constant and immediate fear.

“You should leave now,” she insisted, holding me at arm’s length and looking directly down into my eyes. “Right now. Bring the children to my place. You need time to think.”

I didn’t argue. I just gathered up some clothes and let Beryl help me throw them into a bag. Anxiously loading the children into Beryl’s Volkswagen, I told them we were going for a visit. I glanced around the street, hoping Stan wouldn’t show up all of a sudden. With everyone safely in the car, we headed for the trailer on Waterville Road in Geary where Beryl and her husband lived with their two small children.

It was another warm day, unusually mild for late February. I turned a bit giddy when I realized the snow was actually melting. I felt that way inside: the frost was dissipating, a change forthcoming from the release, the promise of spring.

We were barely settled at Beryl’s when, later that night, the telephone rang. It was Stan. I’d left him a note in spite of Beryl’s insistence that I leave without letting him know where to find us. He pleaded for my return, mustering all the wounded emotion he could manage. I resisted, telling him I wouldn’t come home, that he couldn’t treat the children the way he had.

His voice was quiet, despondent. “If you don’t come home, I’ll kill myself.”

My heart sank at the possibility. After all of the pain, after everything he had done to me and the children, I still felt compassion for this damaged man who couldn’t help himself.

“I will kill myself,” he softly insisted “Without you I’ve got nothing to live for.”

I hung up and sat still. The image of Stan killing himself wouldn’t leave me. The liberating wind had been taken out of my sails. I did not want to be responsible for his death. I didn’t want more guilt.

Two days later, hounded by images of Stan’s imminent suicide, I gathered the children and their clothes and called my husband to come and collect us. Maybe things would be different. Maybe Stan was sincere in his regret. Maybe he’d been taught a lesson and knew better now.

Back in our home, I was apologetic for leaving. I was convinced Stan would change, having seen I was capable of abandoning him, of taking the children away with me. It seemed as if everything might take a turn for the better. I had made my point and Stan had called, whimpering, tail between his legs, begging for my return. Over the next few days Stan remained calm, seemingly reasonable, but sometimes I would catch him glancing at me in a way that suggested I was far from forgiven.

MORE BABIES

Reunited with Stan, old wounds were eventually clawed at, and home life quickly deteriorated. Hostility hovered over our relationship. It became a steady battle of words and fists. I wanted him out of the house. I wanted him gone. When Stan was called out of town for a military exercise, I thanked God for the reprieve.

My third child, another daughter, was born on March 19, 1971, and I was horribly sick. The pregnancy had been difficult. I was toxic, my nerves were shot, and I was physically exhausted from caring for two small children. Regardless, I wanted to name the newborn myself, for her to be the only one of my babies for whom I chose the name. My mother suggested Irene, but I wanted a name that reflected our Slavic heritage. We compromised on Sonya Irene.

Our home was like a war zone. Without the escape into Kevin’s arms or into a bottle, I had to face the fact that I couldn’t stand the man I had married. Instead of holding my tongue during his rages I would make things worse by refusing to submit. On top of that, I slipped into a crippling postpartum depression. I would watch my new fair-haired baby, this new life that had come into a world that was killing me, and hate her. I couldn’t handle three children. Simply coping with day-to-day chores became an oppressive hardship. I desired nothing except to die. I grappled with an indescribable weight that drained my will. When I visited my doctor, he prescribed antidepressants. I was in such a state that I would sometimes nod off in the middle of feeding Sonya. I’d wash my face in cold water and try to sit up on the sofa so I wouldn’t fall asleep, but nothing worked. I just wanted to stay in bed forever. Stan brought a young woman named Judy in from our church to help out with the care of the children and the housework.

Along with the antidepressants, I began taking Valium. For months I lived in a shadow world that prevented me from knowing or properly bonding with my new daughter. I knew Sonya would suffer because of this, yet I couldn’t pull myself free from the void of drugs and depression. I was just too sick to give Sonya the attention a newborn required. More and more I felt dead inside, my spirit hardening to black lead, my mind shrouded in impenetrable darkness. Nothing mattered to me. I only wished to sleep, to lie down, shut my eyes. Simply standing, moving one foot in front of the other, became a defeating thought that knocked me farther back into myself. Grammie Brewer’s predictions of almost seven years earlier came back to taunt me. How had she managed to foresee the situation I now found myself in? I see a man with very dark hair and dark skin in your future…. Be careful Eva. He is not a good man for you.

Snuffing out my existence became a compulsive preoccupation. I was nothing more than a burden that would spread sickness to my children. I’d try to plan how I could safely transport my children to Beryl’s house before I killed myself. I knew Beryl would make certain the children were okay. She’d let them know I loved them. After dropping the children off, I’d return home and write a note to Stan. “It’s your fault,” the note would read. Then I’d swallow an entire bottle of Valium, lie down on my bed, and wait for the sleep that would relieve me of the selfless ache that was my life.

Sometimes I’d consider using poison, but I’d heard that could be painful. My wrists ached terribly when I thought of doing away with myself. I was on the brink of a complete and absolute breakdown. Only my fear of going to Hell, and the obscure notion that my babies might need me, kept me from plummeting completely over the edge.

If it hadn’t been for another pregnancy, I might have remained in that disassociated netherworld forever or, worse, passed beyond. When I discovered I was pregnant for the fourth time, I feared I’d never be able to carry another baby full-term. My bladder was in need of repair from the strain of multiple childbirths in such a short period. Sometimes I’d hemorrhage between my normal periods, and there was often a severe pain in my right side that indicated I might have a cyst on my ovary. I was only twenty years old and already had three children under the age of three and a home that felt like a concentration camp. I was totally exhausted, both physically and mentally. My spirit was dying and the pills I was taking were aiding in my self-destruction.

In addition to the problems I was experiencing with bleeding and pain, my doctor found a small growth on my uterus. The gynecologist suggested I consider abortion; however that was out of the question. I asked my doctor to wean me off the antidepressants and stopped taking Valium as the baby grew. When I felt the new life stirring inside me, a glimmer of my old optimism returned.

I called my mother to tell her the news. “Well, it doesn’t look like I have an ulcer, Mom.”

“That’s a relief,” she said. “Did the doctor say what it could be?”

“As a matter of fact, he told me I’m pregnant.”

“You’re expecting again?” she asked, a mixture of surprise and concern in her voice.

“Yes, I just found out.”

“Well, I was going to wait a while to tell you, dear, but so am I.”

“You’re what, Mom?”

“I’m expecting, too. In June.”

Mom was nearing menopause so this wasn’t a planned pregnancy, but even at forty-two, she was excited by the prospect of new life. We were both due to deliver in June 1972. Mom had learned through a friend that her firstborn daughter, who none of us had ever met, was living in Moncton and was also due to have a baby the same month. It must be a sign, I assured myself. A sign that life will get better.

Mom delivered her fifth son on June 5, 1972. They named him Steven. My baby, Jennifer Ruth, arrived ten days later in the same hospital in Oromocto. She resembled Stan, but her hair was curly and a rich brown with auburn highlights, like mine. I burst into tears when I held her for the first time. Not only was she my baby, but she was a symbol of new hope. I just knew she was a special angel sent from God to help me. In spite of the doctor’s warnings, she had arrived safe and sound. And I was feeling happier than I had in months. If I hadn’t promised Aunt Lena I’d call her Jennifer, I would have named her Hope. Three days after Jennifer was born, Mom’s first child, the sister I’d never met, had a baby girl named Anya.

While I was still in hospital the doctor performed a tubal ligation because I was hemorrhaging off and on. No more babies for me.

When I left the hospital, I required extra help because of the surgery. Stan was attentive and reassuringly calm. Mary Westall, the mother of the girl, Judy, who had helped out before, had taken care of my children while I was in the hospital. When I came home, Judy took charge of the domestic duties again for a couple of weeks. There was no postpartum depression this time and no mind-numbing pills to interfere with offering my children the love I felt for them in my heart. I spent most of my time with my babies—all of them—and tried to give Sonya just a little bit more time than the rest to make up for our rough beginning. She was the most inquisitive about the new baby. One day, thinking Jennifer was a doll, Sonya tried to drag her out of her carriage. Jody and Heather spent most of their time playing together. Sonya was the odd one out.

After Judy left us, I found it hard to cope with housework and four children, but Stan assisted a great deal. And there were no angry outbursts for a while. I wondered if we might make it as a family, after all.

Six months following Jennifer’s birth I hemorrhaged so badly I was rushed to the hospital. An emergency hysterectomy was the only solution to my life-threatening condition. I was only twenty-one. No more babies for sure. I stayed in bed and cried for days.

SOOTHING THE SAVAGE BEAST

Shortly after Jennifer’s birth, Stan decided to leave the armed forces and take a civilian job. He went to work for a company that manufactured eyeglass frames. We moved out of our military house and into the top-floor apartment of a home in Oromocto West. It had a huge kitchen, a small living room, and three modest bedrooms.

Fortunately some of the congregation at the church were willing to lend a hand with the care of the children or I’d never have been able to manage. As it stood, Sonya spent a great deal of time with Mary Westall, the jolly mother of six children, including Judy. She adored babies. Mary attended our church and was always supportive.

Stan was a little easier to get along with after he changed jobs. On Sundays we would often go for drives to Crabbe Mountain just to take in the magnificent scenery or down to Burton to visit Frank and Deana. We ate at fast-food restaurants often. The playrooms gave us a chance to have coffee in peace. Stan sometimes took the children to Wilmot Park in Fredericton to splash around in the wading pool. During those times, there was absolutely no sign of the menace I’d been living with for almost five years.

We were eating supper one evening and Stan was watching Heather and Jody, making certain they ate every scrap off their plates. He would force them to eat everything, even if it made them sick. He wasn’t as hard on Sonya or Jennifer because they were still considered babies, but for some reason Stan expected Heather and Jody to act older than they actually were. I was watching him, feeling sick in my heart, tired of the heated, confrontational mood at each mealtime.

“Stan,” I finally blurted. “Why don’t you just let them eat?”

He stared at me, desperate affliction in his deep brown eyes. “Be quiet,” he snarled.

I ate another forkful of casserole, checking the children.

“I’m full, Mommy,” Jody said. Recently turned three, he was a quiet little boy who seldom uttered a word.

“You eat,” Stan barked, stabbing a finger at Jody’s plate. “All of that. Eat.”

“That’s okay, Jody,” I said, rising to my feet. “If you’re full.”

Bolting up, Stan turned on me. The arm he had been pointing with swept down to whack me soundly across the face. I staggered back but didn’t fall. Jody went berserk. Uncharacteristically he leaped from his chair and started screaming at his father. He ran over and pounded Stan’s leg with his little fists.

“Leave Mommy alone!” he yelled. “Leave Mommy alone. I’ll kill you.”

Stan was so surprised, so astounded by this show of retribution, that it took him several moments to react. When the outrage finally sank in, he grabbed Jody by one arm and flung him across the room. Our son crashed against the bottom cupboards and collapsed onto the floor.

I ran to Jody and swooped him up. He was weeping chest-deep sobs. I glanced back at Heather’s shocked face. She was terrified, unable to move a muscle. With tears in my eyes I glared at Stan, but I couldn’t say a word. All of us remained still, as if frozen in a family portrait.

Every waking minute became focused on planning a way to escape for good. I was plagued by the questions facing a woman forced to flee a dangerous household: Where will I go? What about the kids? What will we do for money?

I suspected I was a prisoner who would never be free of the torment. I was convinced one of us would have to die and I didn’t want it to be one of my children. I saw no way out except for pills. I hated asking my doctor for tranquillizers, but if I didn’t I knew I’d crack. I would take smaller doses this time, I bargained with myself. Valium became a soother, a protector, a means to detach and smother the fear and rage.

When I spoke to my doctor about the stress I was under, I was too ashamed to tell him the truth about the abuse. What sort of woman was I to stand for such denigration? Regardless, I’m pretty certain he knew. Bruises and split lips were common decorations. An occasional purple-ringed eye could be hidden behind makeup and sunglasses. These were merely superficial signs of the near-fatal wounds inflicted upon my spirit. A prescription for Valium was easy to obtain. Doctors handed out the drug like candy. I took the pills only at bedtime. They helped to a slight degree, but it was becoming more apparent the children and I would be in greater danger if I allowed the pills to further deaden my senses. Stan’s moods were totally unpredictable.

Some nights I’d wake in a groggy haze while the bulk of a man rolled off me, his gratified moan like a growl reverberating deep in my head. Unconscious, I was of great use to Stan. Nothing woke me when I swallowed those tiny white pills. But my very real paranoia soon overtook my waking hours. Questions constantly plagued me: What if he started on the kids? What if he decided he should kill me to deliver me from evil? I knew I had to give up the pills if we were ever going to escape, but how could I manage, how could I extract myself from the hopeless darkness that spiralled around me?

Then a thought occurred to me: Why don’t I put Valium in Stan’s evening coffee?

I tried it that night, nervously crushing the pill with the back of a spoon while Stan waited for his cup to be delivered. Quietly sweeping the powder in, I listened for his possible approach, each tiny sound magnified. Rattling the spoon, I stirred the coffee.

My heart pounded wildly as I faithfully delivered the coffee to my husband. Handing him the cup, I was relieved to see he paid no attention to my trembling state, familiar with how I was persistently in a lousy frame of mind. Perhaps he was even gloating over my unsteadiness, revelling in the power he had over me. He took a sip and nodded his approval. I smiled like a good wife and walked away.

For months I continued spiking his coffee. It ensured I’d have a proper night’s sleep and never need to take another nerve pill to put me under.

While Stan slept his drug-induced sleep, I sat in the living room, clearheaded, planning our forthcoming departure.

DEATH ON THE BRIDGE

My next attempt to break away from Stan nearly ended in my death. I had pledged to get out of that house, but no one wanted to take in five penniless visitors being chased by a crazed 250-pound Mohawk Black Watch soldier. No one could possibly be that charitable.

Fortunately my suspicions were disproved when Mary Westall, who was almost as big and could be nearly as mean as Stan, offered to let us stay with her and her six children. She cornered me after Sunday School one morning when I tried to sneak out unnoticed.

“Come live with us,” she insisted, her eyes trying not to focus on the bruise around my eye. “Until you get on your feet. Sonya’s already used to us.” She even agreed to baby-sit while I sought employment.

“We’re not going to have to live with Daddy anymore,” I told the children one afternoon. Heather clapped her hands and started to sing: “Jesus loves the little children, All the children of the world…” My mind drifted back to that spring day when I returned home from a walk, only to find Heather’s and Jody’s hands burned by Stan. I’d comforted them with the same song. The rest of the kids joined in. Even baby Jennifer babbled along, not having a clue what we were so pleased about.

A week after I moved in with Mary I managed to secure a job working at a local motel restaurant as a waitress. I was feeling at ease, genuinely content for the first time in years. A monstrous burden had lifted from my heart and I was sure life would be better now. The noise of ten children in a three-bedroom apartment never even bothered me. It was a luxury to be free of constant, belittling intimidation. Compared to the quiet punches and whispered threats, the noise from the children sounded like a heavenly choir.

For the first time in years I found myself looking toward the future, and I’d even catch myself smiling with a faint hint of promise. I had a life again. A life that was mine. Surprisingly Stan hadn’t chased after me and I was encouraged by his sensible reaction. Perhaps he had accepted that things would never be right between us. I didn’t miss him at all. I was even starting to flirt a little with the cook at the restaurant where I worked. The attention he paid me was heartening.

On a Saturday, two weeks after I began my new job, I was at the motel preparing to work a supper banquet when Stan stormed into the dining room wearing an old pair of green army fatigues, his imposing body rigid with anticipation. I was standing on the opposite side of the room setting one of the tables. When I saw Stan, the silverware I was holding dropped to the floor with a riotous clang. The coldness in his eyes sent a cascading shiver throughout me.

Stan didn’t say a word to anyone. He walked over to me, grabbed my waist-length hair, and turned toward the door, pulling me along. Stumbling, in pain, I screamed at my co-workers, “Call the police!” I struggled against Stan, attempting to break free, stinging tears in my eyes. Desperately I tried to twist out of his grip, yanking my own hair in the process. “He’s gonna kill me!”

Two other waitresses and the manager were standing in the banquet hall, watching the scene with detached disbelief. No one moved as Stan hauled me out the door and shoved me into the passenger’s side of his small Toyota. My heart was beating so hard I thought people in the motel could hear it above my screams. Stan was still clutching my hair. Terrified by the certainty that I was going to die, I prayed for help, but no one, not one single person, bothered coming to my rescue.

Stan never opened his mouth. He slammed my door shut and walked unhurried around to the driver’s side, confident I wouldn’t run from him, secure in his hold over me. Once settled in his seat, he turned to me and smiled. “Why’d you think you could leave me like that?” he asked, calmly starting the car.

“I…I…didn’t mean to.”

“Well, you won’t be leaving me anymore. We’ll always be together.” He shifted gears and raced out of the parking lot, heading for the ramp that connected to the Princess Margaret Bridge.

“Where we going?” I asked, unable to control my wavering voice.

“Over the bridge,” he said, stopping for a tractor trailer that was gearing down. I glanced at the door handle, thought of yanking it and bolting away.

“What?”

“Over the bridge,” he repeated. “Together, into the water.”

“Oh, God, no, Stan. I’ll do anything. I love you. I need you.”

Slowly he pulled out and looked over at me. I was babbling anything that came into my head, desperate to live, thinking of my sweet children back at Mary’s apartment. Their faces, their laughter and gentle mannerisms, filled my head. I believed I would never see them again, and tears rimmed my eyes as the car sped up.

“Please forgive me,” I begged. “I’ll never go anywhere. Not without you. Please, Stan, just give me another chance.”

We were zooming across the bridge, Stan not giving me a glance. I was expecting his arms to thrust the steering wheel sharply one way at any second. I anticipated the erratic swerve of the car, the crash of metal before the gut-lifting plunge into the Saint John River far below. Trapped in a car, sealed in a tomb and sinking under water. Numb and sinking. Drowning.

“Staaannnn, no, please!”

His eyes were fixed on the windshield, his foot jammed against the accelerator. I watched his strong arms, his hands tight on the wheel, the veins rising. My eyes flitted ahead to a view through the windshield. The end of the bridge wasn’t far away. We were almost across. If I could just make it. Hold on. Keep him from doing it.

“We can be together again,” My eyes flicked from Stan to the road, the end of the bridge only sixty feet in the near distance.

“You get the children,” he said.

“Yes,” I agreed. “Yes, I’ll get them, Stan. Let’s go there now. I’ll get them.”

The car raced out from under the green steel trusses. We had made it across and I felt so relieved, thankful to be alive yet, in a matter of moments, vilely defeated.

“You just get the children,” he said.

“Yes, Stan, yes.”

An hour later, against Mary’s harsh protests, I packed all the children into the back seat.

“Mind your own business,” Stan snapped at her from inside the car. “It’s a sin to come between a husband and a wife. God don’t like that.”

“Well, He don’t like men who beat their wives and molest children, either,” she retorted as he slammed the car door shut. Mary stayed right where she was, with her kids, all of them staring from the steps of the apartment building as we drove away. There was nothing they could do.

When I looked at the frightened faces of my four babies, I couldn’t meet their eyes. In shame I turned away from them, fixing my gaze ahead through the windshield, studying the road and bitterly wishing I’d let Stan kill us both. At least with our deaths the children would be free of us.

ONE LAST ATTEMPT ON NEVERS ROAD

When we arrived at our old apartment in Oromocto West, boxes were stacked inside the door and furniture was sitting outside in the corridor. Entering the kitchen with Jennifer in my arms and the other three toddlers trailing silently behind, I found more boxes. Some of them were half full of dishes or linens. It was as if our lives had been disassembled.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“We’re moving,” Stan replied solemnly. “We’re buying a mobile home. I want us to have our own place.” He watched me with sorry eyes. “We’re going to be happy”

My heart plunged and softened at once. I knew Stan meant what he said. He really did want us to be happy.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, tears streaming down his face. The children started to cry, too, as their father sobbed uncontrollably. I reached out automatically to comfort all of them.

That night we slept on mattresses on the floor. The beds had already been taken apart. When we woke in the morning, we continued packing. Boxing up our belongings and throwing out the garbage gave me great satisfaction. Within a week we were settling in our new mobile home in Avalon Trailer Park on Nevers Road. The park was in Lincoln, not far from the Trans-Canada Highway, halfway between Oromocto and Fredericton.

We were happier than we’d been in years. It was the first time we’d owned our own place, and there was ample room for everyone. Stan seemed proud that he could finally provide an adequate home for us and spent all his spare time fixing it up.

The children were looking forward to Christmas that year. Stan was tranquil, seldom even raising his voice. He was trying hard to make things work out for us, trying not to contaminate the sanctity of our new home. He’d built shelves in the shed to store our extra belongings. And he was working on a large wooden play box for the children. Even though he was drinking again and seldom attended church, he appeared to be at peace.

In 1972 baby Jennifer had her first Christmas. Jody turned three. Heather was four, Sonya nineteen months. I had recently celebrated my twenty-second birthday on December 14. Mom had invited us for supper—her special homemade chicken pie. As Dad snapped a picture of me blowing out the candles on the carrot cake Mom had baked, Stan and the children sang “Happy Birthday.”

Christmas morning was a whirlwind of excitement for everyone. Our Christmas tree was covered with silver tinsel and red and white bulbs that were plentiful mostly at the bottom. The children helped with the decorating, and I didn’t have the heart to change a single thing.

Trucks, cars, teddy bears, sleds, colouring books, pajamas, nuts, and candies—the living-room floor was carpeted with treasures to delight any child. That year Stan had gone out of his way to make sure the kids received special gifts. Stan’s mom had sent a large parcel from Ontario: dolls dressed in Native costumes for all the girls and a bow-and-arrow set for Jody. Because it was his birthday, Jody received another gift, a toy tool set he used later to try to saw the legs off his bed.

After a large turkey dinner, I ventured outside with the three oldest children so they could try out their new sleds. I even went for a downhill ride. Stan stayed in with Jennifer while she had a nap. By evening I was exhausted in a pleasant way.

Although I usually woke early, around 7:30 a.m., I slept in on Boxing Day. It was almost nine o’clock when I woke to the sounds of children laughing. Usually the children jumped in bed with me as soon as they awakened. They must be enjoying their toys, I thought, grateful for an extra hour of sleep. Stan was still sound asleep beside me. I lay on my back, making a mental list of the chores to take care of that day. I knew I needed to do a wash for certain.

Eventually I got up and made my way to the bathroom on the other side of the master bedroom, carrying my eyeglasses with me. When I stepped onto the cool linoleum, my bare toes touched down on a powdery substance. Quickly I fitted on my glasses.

Flour! What was flour doing on the bathroom floor? I spun around, moving rapidly through the bathroom door that led into our hallway. I couldn’t believe my eyes. There was flour everywhere.

I paused and listened to hear giggling coming from Jennifer and Sonya’s bedroom. Tiny footprints led in that direction and I followed them.

When I opened the bedroom door, there stood baby Jennifer completely covered in the white powder. Her long curly hair was totally grey. Only her big brown eyes were clearly visible. She laughed with a wide-open mouth as she threw handfuls of the flour into the air. The flour on the floor was at least an inch deep.

“What’s going on?” I yelled. “Who did this?”

There stood my three other children, covered in varying blankets of flour, dark eyes wide with fear, all pointing at their little sister.

“She did it,” Heather said. “Jenny did it. Her.”

By this time Stan had joined us. I felt him come up beside me. “What in heaven’s name?”

I was so angry I couldn’t trust myself to speak. I grabbed Jennifer and carried her to the bathroom, yelling back at the others, “Start cleaning that up now.”

I turned the water on warm in the bathtub and plunked Jennifer into the tub. She splashed around, stirring up a fine paste. Within minutes she was a gooey, messy dough baby. When I saw what I’d done, a smile broke through my anger. I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. Gazing up at me, Jennifer bit a piece of dough from her hand and started laughing, too.

I was sure Stan and the kids thought I’d lost my mind. Stan even helped the children clean up as best they could. We didn’t own a vacuum cleaner. When Stan and the kids finally peeked into the bathroom, I was sitting on the floor with a towel-wrapped Jennifer, trying to comb bits of dough out of her hair. I looked up at Stan, bit my lower lip, and shook my head. There was no way I could stay mad at the kids. And I was thankful Stan had taken everything so calmly.

By the time breakfast was over, the children were back in my good graces, but it took weeks to get all the flour out of the trailer. To avoid further temptation, I moved my flour tin from the bottom cupboard to a high shelf over the broom closets, far away from curious little fingers.

STAN’S BLEEDING

After Christmas, when Stan stepped up his attendance at church, the rigid, unpredictable tyrant soon revisited us. In fact, his inquisitions grew worse than ever. I couldn’t do anything without being confronted with a litany of questions. One evening, when I came home from having coffee with a neighbour, I was greeted by the barrel of his rifle.

“Don’t ever do that again,” he said, taking aim. I felt all the strength seep from my legs and grabbed a kitchen chair to keep from falling. For a few seconds I held on to the back of the chair as Stan lowered the rifle. I stared into the eyes of the stranger I called my husband.

I didn’t even try to argue. I walked around him and went to bed without a word, grateful the children were already asleep. The next day, after Stan left for work at the factory where they made eyeglass frames, I called my brother, Nelson, and asked him to come and disable the rifle so Stan couldn’t shoot me.

It had been about two months since I’d taken Valium or used it in Stan’s coffee. I still had a half bottle tucked away in an old purse hidden in a box filled with books, so I started taking half a pill in the afternoon just before Stan got home. Subdued by the drug, I wouldn’t do or say anything that might set him off.

One of Stan’s male friends had come to visit and was staying overnight. I was in such bad shape that I couldn’t even remember the friend’s name.

It was late in the evening. The children were all tucked in and sleeping soundly. Stan was at home, completely sober. His friend sat in a chair, watching us from the kitchen. I was sitting in an old wooden rocker with a padded dark green seat cover I’d picked up at a yard sale.

“You’re thinking about leaving again, aren’t you?” Stan said on the couch across from me.

“What are you talking about?” I answered cautiously.

“You been spending a lot of time over at Jackie and Lyman’s.”

Jackie and Lyman were the neighbours directly across the street. Lyman’s brother, Laural, occasionally baby-sat for us.

“They’re just friends, Stan. Don’t be so paranoid.”

It was true I’d been thinking about how to get away from Stan, but I was denying it. Stan stood up and walked into the kitchen without a word. Something isn’t right, I thought. Becoming more and more agitated, he paced back and forth, then rushed to the cutlery drawer and yanked it open, pulling out a butcher knife.

“I’m going to kill you,” he said, running his fingers along the blade, pressing harder, drawing blood. “And the children. That way you won’t leave. We’ll leave together.”

Stan’s friend jumped out of his seat and fled the trailer. I prayed he would call the police.

“No, Stan, don’t…”

Staring at me as if he were talking to someone he’d never seen before, my husband seemed to see beyond the trailer and this world.

“All of us are going to Heaven,” he whispered.

Backing away from him toward the outside door, I glanced at the children’s room, but there was no sign of them. When Stan noticed my movement, he took a step forward.

“Please!” I shrieked, scurrying in reverse. I could sense the blade about to rip through me at any moment. My back struck the wall behind me. “Stan, please…”

“It’ll be better there,” he insisted, stalking closer, the tip of the knife mere inches from my throat.

“No, no…” I blinked the tears from my eyes, trying not to see the point of the butcher knife, attempting to look into Stan’s eyes instead, to get past the blank certainty. “We don’t need to die.” I wanted to raise my hands and shove the blade away but feared my hands would be slashed.

Stan loomed nearer. His lips tightened and his eyes lingered on the children’s bedroom doors.

I thought of snatching the blade. Now was the time. I eyed it, but my nerve was unsteady, useless. Stan was just too big. I yelled as the door to our trailer was flung open and men came storming in, heavy boots clumping on the floor.

“Put down the knife!”

Three RCMP officers advanced toward Stan. Two of them grabbed him while the third tried to pry the butcher knife from his hands as his own blood pooled on the kitchen floor. Stan clutched the blade harder as the officers worked to twist it free, but he wouldn’t let go. He grasped the keen edge until it cut deeper into his hands.

It took a few minutes for the police to wrestle him out of our home. The noise was terrible. I glanced back at the children’s room and saw Heather’s sleepy head peeking from the half-open door of the second bedroom. I rushed back to her and whisked her into my arms.

“It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.” Holding her close, I then tucked her into bed and whispered for her to go to sleep. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” I promised, then checked Jody and saw he was still sound asleep.

None of the other children had woken during the scuffle. They were used to our fights, and this time neither Stan nor I had even raised our voices.

But then I thought Stan might have already visited my babies. I recalled the lost look in his eyes while he stared at their bedroom door. Earlier, while I was talking with Stan’s friend, Stan might have sneaked in there and killed them. I hurried toward Sonya and Jennifer’s bedroom door and flung it open. Kneeling beside Sonya’s and Jennifer’s beds, I touched their cheeks. Warm. Perfect, warm faces. I watched the covers for signs of my babies’ bellies rising in breath. They were sleeping peacefully, but they could have been dead.

We all could have been dead.

Stan spent six weeks under observation at Centracare, the Saint John mental hospital. I went to visit him once out of some deep-rooted sense of matrimonial loyalty. The minister at my parents’ church said I had to stay with Stan. It was what God wanted. We were united. Beryl told me God couldn’t be that mean.

I was nervous when I went to visit Stan at Centracare. It was an old stone structure on top of a hill beside Reversing Falls in Saint John. Once inside, I was obliged to sign in and a large male nurse led me through a labyrinth of corridors. At the end of each hallway we reached a new unit where people in varying stages of mental illness roamed freely. Two units in, a young woman, not much older than I, stared at me intensely, then walked toward me. “Do you know where my baby is?” she asked before the male nurse brushed her off and we continued on. At various times throughout the years some of these patients had escaped and turned up in the waters of Reversing Falls. Each unit was locked and barred. When we reached the unit holding Stan, I noticed the patients were secured in rooms.

“He’s on suicide watch,” the male nurse told me. “He’s been sedated.”

As I entered the sterile white room bare of everything except a bed, I couldn’t believe the change in Stan. Barely recognizing me, he was unshaven and wore blue pajamas. He gave me a slight smile that made him seem like a child happy to see his mother, but he didn’t move from the bed.

I felt a lump in my throat. Where I had feared for my safety all the way over, I was now overcome by pity. Quietly I sat beside him and put my hand on his shoulder. He tried to say a few words, but they made absolutely no sense.

I stayed for ten minutes, not knowing what to say or do. Then, checking for the male nurse who was watching through the opening in the door, I signalled it was time for me to leave.

Stan was declared sane and sent out of the province, back to Ontario by train. The psychiatric examination revealed a childhood of abuse. Without intense therapy he would never be a safe partner. And I wanted my children to be safe.

Ten years passed before the children and I saw Stan again. The next time it was on my terms.