From This Moment On Page 15

  I was back to leading a typical teenage life, more or less. I grew up following hockey and although Timmins didn’t have a pro team, I used to watch games between our local junior league teams. Junior hockey is loaded with adrenaline, and once introduced to it, I got hooked. The atmosphere could get pretty wild: beer spilling, fists flying, people’s dental work being rearranged. And that’s just the spectators in the stands, never mind the action on the ice!

  I made a few friends hanging out at the rinks, including a hockey player named Luc, a short French Canadian one year older than me. After one game, he invited me to take a ride on the back of his street bike, which is basically a souped-up motorcycle. Very cool. I’d never been on one before, only the much more rugged dirt bikes we rode over the punishing bush trails back in Hanmer. His street bike was sleek and white, with a motor that purred, and it had been painstakingly polished to the point of blinding. Since I knew how to handle a dirt bike, Luc let me drive it. I guess he was flirting with me, but I was totally devoted to Daniel and enjoyed the ride and only the ride.

  A few days later, Luc asked if I wanted to go with him to a party at his older brother’s place. I was cool with it and said sure. It started with a late-afternoon outdoor barbecue, but soon the weather turned cold, so we all went inside. The music got loud, and the booze was flowing. It wasn’t the kind of party that normally appealed to me, but, to be honest, I’d been feeling a bit out of place since coming back to Timmins and was open to mixing with a new crowd. Despite my age, I’d been around alcohol probably more than anyone else there, but I wasn’t drinking. As the night wore on, I began to stand out as one of the few sober people still standing. Maybe the only one!

  Luc was in no shape to drive his bike, and since he was my ride home, I resigned myself to spending the night. I could have called my parents for a lift, and I know they would have picked me up without complaint, but I just … didn’t. I’d been feeling a bit disconnected from them, to be honest. For one thing, I’d never wanted to leave Toronto (and Daniel), and for another, I was doubtful that the two of them could avoid backsliding into their same old pattern of violence. Plus, I didn’t much like sleeping in a cold storage room, either, and, well, I was just plain angry at my mother and father for my life. Like most teenagers, I suppose.

  Now: where to sleep? Everyone was passed out in chairs, on couches, on the floor; it was a messy home with dirty clothing left wherever it landed. Luc was sprawled out on a couch in the living room; I curled up on the floor. I was relieved that he didn’t pressure me to lie down with him, as it would have been awkward, considering that I was in his “territory” and didn’t know a soul there.

  Luc’s brother must have given up his bed, because he and his girlfriend ended up a few feet away from me zipped up in a double sleeping bag on the floor. I could hear her panting quietly in a curious rhythm. Oh! I eventually realized. They’re having sex! How strange, I thought, that people would “do it” so openly. To me, making love was a private act, and I felt both embarrassed as well as shocked.

  I especially felt bad for the girl. It never occurred to me that maybe she was drunk, horny, and quite happy to screw her boyfriend no matter who was looking on. All I know is that at the age of sixteen and being so new to sex, I just assumed that she was being controlled and that he was an arrogant, disrespectful, selfish pig, because what girl would possibly consent to being so exposed? I certainly wouldn’t let any boy decide for me when, where, or if we’d be intimate. But maybe she was a totally willing partner. Or even the instigator! One thing was for sure, I was confused and uncomfortable.

  I stopped hanging with this crowd immediately after the party, realizing that I was probably lucky to have escaped without being taken advantage of. Thank goodness that Luc had been so cool; another guy might have been much more insistent. I knew not to tempt fate, though, and decided that I’d better find some new friends.

  I got a job at the local McDonald’s, which happened to sit along the same highway that my sisters and I regularly walked to the Schumacher pool ten years before. I started on “windows,” taking orders and making change at the drive-through, then soon moved up to being a crew trainer. Carrie-Ann began working there as well, and sometimes we used to have a bit of fun while manning the drive-through window late at night. There were big helium tanks in the back of the store. (I have a feeling you already know where this is headed.) My sister and I would suck in the gas, then get on the microphone. Customers would pull up and be greeted by what sounded like a pair of Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz: “Welcome to McDonald’s’ drive-through; can I take your order, please?” Some were amused, others confused. The two of us would also ignore the carloads of people waiting to order and chat over the speaker about boys, sing songs, crack jokes, and generally engage in more giddy nonsense. Looking back, I’m amazed that no one ever complained to the manager.

  With the time apart starting to wear on us, Daniel and I agreed that we’d take turns traveling to see each other to share the financial strain of a round-trip bus ticket. Remember, there was no instant communication such as email or Facebook, so we relied on slow mail and the rare long-distance phone call if we’d saved up enough money. The first time he came to Timmins, I was so sick with anticipation/excitement/impatience that I drove everyone around me nuts with stories about my boyfriend from Toronto who was coming to visit. I just went on and on and on. It usually would have been weeks since I’d seen Daniel, probably even as long as three months. This felt like an eternity at sixteen.

  By then my family had moved into our own small second-floor apartment in a house that had been divided into four separate apartments. It was a humble setup, but brighter and cleaner than the dirt-floor cellar accommodations we’d been living in at my grandparents’.

  This apartment had just one formal bedroom, which was where all four of us kids slept. We somehow managed to fit both sets of bunk beds in there, with about a four-foot space between them. I took the top bunk and Carrie the bottom, right across from the two boys, each of whom had his own bunk against the opposite wall. I was a little uneasy over the fact that a second door in the room led to a public hallway. Not only didn’t it have a lock on it, but it was one of those flimsy hollow wooden doors. As a precaution, we kept both bunk beds jammed against it, but it wouldn’t have taken much for anyone to force his way in.

  The apartment consisted of just two other rooms: a caper-sized kitchen and an open living room, the far end of which became my parents’ makeshift bedroom. Between them was a space just large enough for our kitchen table; it was the only place big enough for us to all sit together. The bath and shower were in the public hallway, to be shared with the other tenants, although at least we had our own toilet and sink.

  During Daniel’s first visit, my father refused to let him sleep on the floor. I don’t mean the floor of my bedroom (shared with three siblings, I should point out, so what was likely to happen? I’ll tell you: nothing). No, my dad wouldn’t even allow him to sleep anywhere in the apartment. Finally, after much lobbying from me, we reached a compromise: Daniel could spend the night on the floor, out in the hallway.

  Hey, it was better than sending him back to Toronto on the next Greyhound. And unbeknown to my father, I was able to leave the door to the hallway ajar a few inches—just enough for us to be able to touch fingers and talk quietly. I laugh about it now, but, really, how sad for us to be treated like a couple of silly kids in puppy love, when the reality was that our affection for each other was deep, mature, and anchored by a mutual respect. Daniel and I understood, though, that neither his parents nor my parents would ever be persuaded otherwise, not when we were only sixteen.

  Eventually, the circumstances proved too much of an obstacle even for a love as genuine as ours. Between being separated by hundreds of miles and expensive long-distance phone bills (if only email and Twitter had existed back then!), we both had to accept that we would have to let go. The heartbreak would leave me mourning for a long time, and I wa
s bitter and angry at life for taking my love away.

  Even though Daniel and I never disobeyed my dad’s strict rules regarding sleeping arrangements during his visits, my father started exhibiting a strange side to him that I’d never seen before.

  As long as I could remember, it was my dad who tucked us all in at night, rather than my mother. He was more nurturing in certain ways than my mom. Whenever my legs ached from athletics, he’d sit on the edge of my bed and rub ointment on them for me. In hindsight, I can say without a shred of doubt that there was nothing inappropriate about his behavior. In fact, I looked forward to these times because we would get a chance to chat. So it makes what I’m about to tell you all the more confusing to me, even today.

  Starting when I was sixteen or so, on more than one occasion, he would seem to just suddenly appear in our bedroom at night and stand silently by the head of my top bunk. Then he’d whisper in my ear disturbing things like “You’re a bitch, you’re nothing.” “You slut.” I acted like I was fast asleep, and there probably were times when I was initially, until I was awakened by his whisper of dark, disturbing insults. Not knowing what to do or how to respond, I just pretended to hear nothing.

  Some nights, I’d get a double dose of his abuse. After he’d hissed in my ear, he’d linger against the door before leaving and start up again. “You filthy slut.” “You disgust me.” All in the same hushed voice. Then he’d walk out of the room and disappear into the dark. It was only a few years ago that Carrie and I were reflecting on our childhoods, and the subject came up.

  “I used to hear him say these terrible things to you at night!” she confided. I assume that my brothers did, too, but I could never be sure and have never brought it up since. I personally coped by playing possum and had no idea that my sister was aware of these nocturnal visits until now.

  Strangely enough, the next day, things with my dad would be back to “normal.” I’d come home from high school to fry up my usual afternoon snack during that school year of bacon and eggs with toast, and my father and I would sit and talk just like we always did. It was as if these abhorrent episodes had never happened. God knows that I was more than happy to pretend that they never did.

  As for my father, I honestly wondered if he was even aware of the twisted things he’d said to me only the night before. Could he have been sleepwalking? The way he spoke to me, almost in someone else’s voice, it seemed like he was out of control. In a trance, almost. I know for sure that he wasn’t drinking. And although I couldn’t explain what might have provoked such behavior, I concluded that something was seriously wrong with him. I found myself actually feeling sorry for him. This went on until I left home at seventeen.

  Still, from then on, I tried to avoid my father as much as I could without being too transparent about it. And our tuck-ins at night, which had once been a source of comfort for me, were now received with suspicion, anxiety, and dread. I couldn’t think of anything worse than to be assaulted verbally, almost feeling verbally raped, by someone I’d trusted and respected as the father who’d taken me in as his own. I didn’t want to know why he was acting this way, I just wanted it to stop. I resolved to remind myself that there was something wrong with him, not me. My goal was simply to survive it until I could get away.

  9

  Avoid Open Ice

  With Christmas approaching, my dad took on some bush work as a way to make extra money. “How about coming out to the bush and chaining on one of my crews?” he asked. I had three weeks off from school and jumped at the chance to earn a little pocket money myself.

  Chaining, or taping, is a term used to measure the distance between stakes planted on a grid that has been claimed by mining prospectors. We did this often during the winter, when the ground is cloaked with snow and the trees are bare, for greater visibility. Men known as cutters cut the lines so that, come springtime, the prospectors are better able to access and visibly identify the grids where their claims have been outlined on maps. They then explore their marked areas with special mining exploration equipment used for gold and other minerals. They take advantage of the frozen surface of the lake in winter, using it as an anchor so they can drill down into the bottom of the lake.

  It takes two people to chain efficiently. One other guy on the crew and I would each take an end of long measuring tape and mark off the distance between stakes by one hundred feet, or as they measure it now, twenty-five meters, then number them for identification. We rode through the forest on a Ski-Doo snowmobile, which pulled a sled loaded with stakes, markers, and other tools. The snow was deep, the temperature typically hovered around thirty below—colder still in January and February—and we were in the middle of nowhere.

  Naturally, I loved it. I had a stubborn pride in not being some girly-girl; I was a Northern Canadian girl! The work was purely physical, so I could shut off my mind and feelings and just soak in the peace and tranquillity of the forest in wintertime. Just to wade through the hip-deep drifts took exertion, as you’d have to lift your legs up high with each step. Despite the cold, I’d get so hot and sweaty that I’d unzip my one-piece snowsuit to cool off or even let it fall off my shoulders to drag behind me until Jack Frost started pinching me again.

  I loved growing up in the North from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. Where else in the world could a teenage girl drive a snow machine without a license, with a flask of whiskey slung over her shoulder, light a campfire to warm up, anywhere in the vast, empty forest she felt like, and exercise every four-letter word in the dictionary while trying to maneuver the machine through deep snow to prevent getting stuck, and still make it home alive by dinner? Your cheeks all red, your insides warm from the whiskey, bracing fresh air slapping you awake, liberty on your tongue, and a powerful engine under your ass. This was teenage fun for me and my friends, but working out in the winter bush was another story. Chaining out on the open lake was especially dangerous. It was necessary to follow the grids on the map, and if that meant crossing a lake, then that was what we did during the winter season, while there was a surface to mark and a line to be followed from shore to shore.

  While crossing a wide expanse of ice, we had to be very careful to avoid open ice. Sometimes the ice cracks and leaves gaps. Sometimes you see them as you approach. But other times, blowing snow camouflages the hole or it gets covered by a thin sheet of ice that isn’t thick enough to support the weight of a person, let alone a snow machine.

  One late afternoon, around three o’clock, my father, a bunch of men, and I were wrapping up a day’s work. In January darkness descends by three thirty, maybe four. We’d run out of stakes, and my dad asked me to ride back to the van—parked all the way on the other side of the lake—and bring a batch over before we went home. That way, we’d have plenty of room in the sled the next morning.

  It was a good ten-minute trip across, and I wasn’t sure I’d make it back before dark. The Ski-Doo had a headlight, but snow began falling, obscuring the shoreline in the distance. What’s more, the thick flakes were covering up my tracks behind me, so I wouldn’t be able to rely on following them on my way back. I needed to hurry, while the sun still lingered on the horizon. To be honest, I was a bit afraid. But I was determined to act brave in front of the guys and not be a whiny girl.

  My dad had affixed a long pole made of poplar to the front of the machine—sticking out several feet on either side—so that if the Ski-Doo did fall through the ice, the unusually pliable wood would keep it suspended just long enough for the rider to at least clamber onto the surface before the machine sank to the bottom of the lake. This pole was specifically poplar, as any other kind of wood would have snapped instantly. I wasn’t sure if having the pole provided a measure of comfort or if it only reinforced the potential dangers of piloting heavy vehicles across ice-coated lakes. Let’s just say it was a necessary precaution.

  I managed to make it to the other side, but with the stiff wind and swirling snow stinging my eyes and blinding me—I didn’t have any “fancy”
snow gear like goggles or glasses of any kind—the trip took longer than I’d thought it would. I also had to take it slow because I was heading for a clump of white birch trees. On a clear day, even at dusk, they would have stood out against the backdrop of dark evergreens, but not in the middle of a blizzard, which was picking up with every passing minute. White on white made it almost impossible to see the landmark from where I’d left.

  We had only the one machine, though, so I had no choice but to return for the guys. Worst-case scenario, they actually could have made it back to the van by hiking their way back across the lake through the snowdrifts, but after a long day of working out in the bitter cold, they wouldn’t be too happy with me. This was a large lake and walking around instead of across it would have taken three times the amount of time and was totally impractical, as the snow would have been very deep and made for an exhausting, slow walk, as opposed to tracking back over the machine tracks through the center. I pulled up next to the van, quickly filled up the sled with stakes, and wasted no time in heading back. As I sped along, I was grumbling aloud, “What the hell am I doing?! This is crazy! Eilleen, you can’t even see where the hell you’re going! Shit, it’s dark enough to need the headlight already, and you still have to go back across the lake.” Since I couldn’t see my tracks anymore, I had to guess where I was going. I figured that if I just followed my nose and kept a straight line, I’d eventually get close enough to the other side that I’d be able to see the shoreline at least, and then make my way from there. This logic turned out to work, although I must tell you that, at the time, I wasn’t at all confident it would. It is very disorienting being in a whiteout and extremely difficult to travel in a straight line with no reference point to help guide your direction.