From This Moment On Page 17

  A full season’s planting was divided into three parts: spring, summer, and fall. Depending on what I was doing with singing, I would join the plant for any one of the three or the entire season. During each of the stretches, we’d get only one excursion into town. Personally, I never had any interest in going, but it was my duty to take my crew, who were, as you might imagine, anxious to leave the confines of the camp. Besides, having Carrie’s company, as she was now in her second season, had me looking forward to the two-hour van trip.

  The food in camp was tasty enough but was limited to stews, soups, and very basic, repetitive dishes. Like most teenagers, I was craving a fast-food hamburger with an order of fries, a chocolate milkshake, and cherry pie right about then. So a stop at my sister’s usual place of employment, and my former workplace, the Golden Arches, ranked first on our itinerary.

  Of all the guys in my crew, my favorite was a sixteen-year-old named Berny. Among his many fine qualities, he was the hardest and most honest worker. No matter what the weather, Berny wore a T-shirt layered with a long-sleeve wool sweater. It could be sixty degrees out or eighty, he always wore the same thing, no more and no less. When it rained, he wore a plastic garbage bag over his shoulders. His English was as poor as my Cree, and so he rarely said a word. Nevertheless, the two of us always seemed to understand each other. I gauged my fairness toward the crew by Berny: If he was hungry, then I knew it was time for everyone to eat. If Berny was tired, then I knew everyone else was exhausted, and it was time to take a break.

  Like a number of the men, Berny had teeth in need of dental care. They were stained black and brown; clearly, the concept of tooth brushing was foreign to him. One morning on our walk to work, I’d asked him point-blank if he brushed his teeth. He shook his head no. “You need to brush your teeth, Berny. They’re going to fall out if you don’t. If I get you a toothbrush and some toothpaste, will you use it?” “Uh-huh,” he answered. Berny lived up to his promise to brush his teeth and before too long, I could actually see his smile. It turned out that he had nice, straight, perfectly formed teeth. Hopefully, now he would go on to keep them, I thought.

  Anyway, we pulled into the McDonald’s parking lot for our fast-food fix. I took everyone’s orders—all fourteen of us—and asked Berny to come inside with me and help me carry everything back to the van. He just looked at me, then stared down at his shoes.

  “Come on, Berny, let’s go.” He shook his head vigorously. No.

  “Why not?” I couldn’t understand why he was acting this way. Now Berny was starting to get agitated. Slowly and very reluctantly, he came to the open back door of the van, and I could see that he had tears in his eyes.

  Finally, someone piped up, “Berny can’t go in. He’s too scared. He’s never been into a McDonald’s before, and is too afraid to be among so many white people.”

  Of course, I realized, chastising myself for being so insensitive. In fact, it wasn’t unusual, at least at that time, for some Native North Americans from the more remote areas of Ontario to have little exposure to “town” life. I immediately apologized and took along another guy more familiar with being the minority. I felt really bad about pressuring Berny, but it was unintentional.

  A trip to town always included a stop at Angelo’s, a small, family-owned corner grocery store located several blocks away from our home on Montgomery Avenue. We had a tab there that my dad paid throughout the year, both for our family and for the planting crews. Angelo, the owner, was a supernice man, accommodating and nonracist. If I brought a dozen or so unshowered, unshaven Native bushmen into most grocery stores, I could count on them receiving glares and being watched with suspicion. Personally, I was offended by this attitude and would have none of it: I was offended by the prejudice.

  Angelo, to his credit, was one of us and always welcomed the planters who accompanied us into his store. We loaded up on necessities to get us through another few weeks of isolation, such as magazines, gum, cough drops, and aspirin. Afterward, I dropped the men off at a local bar, then went off to a sauna for an advertised deep-cleansing treatment. You have no idea how out of character this was for me! I actually loved the smells of smoke, bush, and fresh air on my skin and usually cleaned only the essential parts, leaving the rest “natural.” After several weeks in the bush, the typical girly regime of shaving my legs, applying moisturizer, using hair conditioner, and so on seemed like a real nuisance. Nevertheless, I was a civilized town girl who, now that I was back in town, should be freshly showered and groomed. So I splurged on the sauna.

  I walked out of there as red as a lobster, with my eyes all swollen from the dry heat and my face irritated from the soap and hot steam. I felt strange and sleepy, unaccustomed to the chemicals in cleansing products and superficial heat, but I needed to find the guys.

  They weren’t in the bar where I’d left them. Or the next one, and it wasn’t even dark yet. I ran into two men from Carrie’s crew, and they didn’t recognize me at first. “Hey, guys!” I called to them. “It’s me, Eilleen! Where’s the rest of the gang?” They stared at me like they’d never seen me before in their lives.

  After clueing in that it was actually me, their normally scruffy crew boss, who looked so radically different cleaned up, one said, “You look … different.”

  “Yeah … different,” his friend repeated. The two of them were so nonplussed by my cleaned-up appearance that it didn’t occur to them that I might take offense when they added that they didn’t like me as well this way! Gee, thanks, guys! Actually, I just chuckled about their reaction. They pointed in the direction of where the others had gone, and we set off in opposite directions.

  I soon found the guys in yet another bar, and already half drunk. The music was loud and the atmosphere a bit rowdy. They ordered me up a shot of something, I slugged it down, and we were off for a fun night. We stuck together as a crew and we were often glared at by onlookers who found it odd to see thirteen Native men out with one white girl, and it often provoked racist remarks. I have no tolerance for racism and especially as a teenager, it was hard for me to bite my tongue when it came to such small-minded attitudes.

  Sometimes the tension would build pretty high and it became clear that it was time to go. I hated to be a party pooper but even on our night on the town, I was still the crew boss, and I had an hour-plus drive ahead of me back to the bush camp. “Let’s go, guys,” I announced. We had to plant the next morning at five o’clock, and it was already way past our bedtime. I wanted to round up everyone before someone there got into a fistfight, lost a few teeth, or possibly wound up cast in a drama with the local police. It was not an unlikely scenario.

  Now, I should tell you that in all the years I spent around older men as a crew boss, no one had ever acted inappropriately with me. In fact, only once did someone even acknowledge my femininity. Hmm, maybe I should have been insulted! I was helping the men load one-hundred-pound tree bins in the back of the truck when one of them remarked very matter-of-factly, “You have a nice body.” I took it as a compliment and didn’t feel threatened or uncomfortable at all, as it was said innocently and not in a leering manner or anything like that.

  Before we hit the road, I needed to grab something from the back of the van, which was piled high with provisions from Angelo’s. The men were strewn around the metal floor like throw rugs, using their jackets as cushions. As I turned around to exit out the back door, Berny impulsively grabbed my arm and tried to kiss me. I pulled away, caught off guard and totally surprised.

  “Berny! What are you doing?”

  He didn’t release his grip, and his lips were about to attempt another landing. This time, I jerked my arm back, and he let me go. Before I could climb out, Berny’s father, John, spun me around and started screaming in my face, “He wants to marry you! You have to kiss him! Kiss him now!” he demanded.

  I could not believe what I was hearing. I told the older man very firmly that I had no intention of marrying his son, but this only set him off further.
His face reddened and his voice grew louder as he accused me of insulting Berny and humiliating the entire family by not submitting to the demand for a kiss and for turning down his … marriage proposal?

  I was still in shock that any of this was happening, although as the guys were pretty inebriated, I suppose I shouldn’t have been. As John was the oldest, the men felt awkward stepping in and it took a few minutes for them to break it up. All the while I’m thinking, Uh-oh. What have I gotten myself into? I struggled some more with John, who by now was completely out of control, until finally the other guys broke it up, realizing that I was physically not capable of holding my own. A couple of them calmed John down while I slipped out of the van, closed the doors, and climbed into the driver’s seat. The incident had shaken me, but I knew it was essential that I keep my nerve and be strong. I was just glad I wasn’t as drunk as the crew and able to get back behind the wheel to drive us the hell out of town. I’m amazed at how we managed those town outings after weeks on end of isolation in the bush. It was as though the safe place for us to be was out in the wild and town was the more dangerous.

  I paused, exhaled deeply, then told everyone to settle down, and with my foot on the gas and hands firmly on the steering wheel, off we drove.

  Berny, his father, and his older brother, John, couldn’t have been more silent that day. Ordinarily, John Jr. was very accommodating and communicative with me. Now he wouldn’t even make eye contact. In his judgment, I’d committed an unforgivable transgression by humiliating his baby brother as well as the family. That was just the way it was.

  The rest of the crew was understanding, but from that moment on, the easy rapport I’d had with Berny, his brother, and his father vanished. Over the last weeks of the summer, the atmosphere was awkward and at times confrontational, as when I had to do my job as foreman and perhaps correct either Berny or John. This saddened me, because they were such decent people, and I’d admired them for their work ethic and sincere natures. I’d felt a bond with all of these men, despite my being the only woman in the crew. I’d worked hard to gain the respect of the men. Now I felt like I’d lost that with Berny and his family, and it hurt. I rejected one of them, and they were unforgiving about it.

  It can be difficult for a teenage girl to read a man’s sexual intentions, or to recognize when a man is about to cross a boundary with her, sometimes until she’s already in a tight spot. The incident with Berny just happened out of the blue, but I suppose that since I was the only girl working with these men for several months at a time, alone in a remote area of the wilderness, it’s not surprising that there was the potential for something to get out of control. Looking back now, I wonder why my parents weren’t more concerned and watchful for my sake, but I suppose I gave off such an independent, “Don’t worry about me” attitude, they just genuinely didn’t worry.

  But the brush with Berny ended up being less disturbing than another encounter with a man that year. Some months later, at home, I was taking an afternoon catnap on the living room couch. Nobody was home but me and my father. I was lying on my side, with my back toward the TV set. Suddenly I felt a man’s hand cupping my right breast from behind.

  In my grogginess, it took a few moments for it to register. Am I asleep? Then my eyes opened, and as I realized where I was, my dad pulled away. I wasn’t quite sure what to do so I continued lying there for a minute or two, feeling very weirded out.

  “Dad?” I called out meekly. “Dad? Do you need something?” trying to act as if nothing had happened. What if he was standing behind me? I froze and didn’t want to move. A few more minutes passed. I tried his name one more time. Silence. He must have left. The living room floor had thick carpet, so he was able to tiptoe out as silently as he’d come in.

  I consigned the incident to the back of my mind, just so that I could face him the next time we saw each other. I never said a word to him or to anyone else, figuring that no one would understand or believe that my father was capable of crossing such a sacred line with me.

  10

  From High School to Hitting the Road

  Since I’d had no choice but to follow my mother and siblings back to Timmins in order to finish high school, I spent grades eleven and twelve at TH&VS: Timmins High and Vocational School. It did have better music and drama classes, but I put in a halfhearted effort during my last two years of high school. I skipped a lot of classes, showing up regularly only for music period, gym, English, World Religions, and drama. It wasn’t that I had no interest in learning, it’s just that I was utterly consumed by music and bored with everything else. Most kids, when cutting class, ducked out of the building for a cigarette. Me, I’d blend in with whatever class of students was filing into the music room and barricade myself in the soundproof music-practice cubicles in the back of the class. Close the door tightly and you couldn’t hear or see a thing from the outside, so I was free to sit there with my guitar and write and sing for as long as I wanted, unnoticed. The inside walls of these three-by-four cubicles were soundproofed with thick fabric and a layer of padding, just like you’d find in a recording studio.

  I’d brought my acoustic guitar to leave in the classroom for this purpose, along with a small tape machine to record my writing. These cubicles were the perfect hiding place for a class-skipping teenage songwriter. They were a place you could go to isolate the sound and prevent driving everyone crazy with loud, bad notes.

  This soundproof hideaway was my music refuge. I think it’s possible I got more accomplished in the soundproofed cubicle than I ever would have in class. Much of my writing skills was honed here in my private place. To prevent getting caught, I’d keep an eye on the time and work it out just right to file out with the flow of students from the class at the end of the period or sometimes even stay for two periods. It was tricky when there wasn’t a music class during the period I was skipping, though, as there was no student crowd to blend in with as I attempted to make a clean exit.

  Occasionally, the music teacher spotted me, in which case I’d emerge from my inner sanctum brandishing a textbook and a readymade pretext for being there. “Oh, hi! I left a book in the cubicle from earlier today. Well, gotta get to class! See ya!” He always let it go or let on that he was wise to my scheme. For the record, I also excelled at forging notes from my parents, as missing a class required a parent’s or doctor’s note explaining your absence. Since my parents weren’t paying attention, no one ever questioned this, and I simply got away with it. Naughty me.

  But I counted the days through those two years until I could finally make it back to the city of Toronto. I knew that if I was going to reach my long-term goal of becoming an adult professional in music, I would have to leave my hometown and head back to the city. Toronto was the obvious next step for me after high school, and at this point I’d already made the decision that while my other friends would carry on with their educations at college and university to prepare for their futures, my future was going to be in music, even though I really didn’t know where it was going to lead.

  In both grades eleven and twelve at Timmins High, I played second trumpet in the school orchestra. As part of a band exchange program, we were scheduled to perform at a high school in Ottawa. Each of us would stay with a local family of band kids from the exchange school for a few days leading up to the concert. Although I’d been to Toronto several times, Ottawa was our capital city, and I was excited to be away from home exploring somewhere new. I got to stay with a nice family that was a notch above your average “roast beef family,” with a bigger house and just more of everything. They were decidedly not dysfunctional: everyone was well mannered, everything was orderly, cooking aromas filled the air, and it was just … well, normal. The way I perceived a home should be.

  Mr. Tony Ciccone, my grade-twelve music teacher, knew that I wrote my own songs and asked me if I would sing one of them at the concert, accompanying myself on guitar. Before I could stop myself, I said yes. Despite the fact that I’d been singing in p
ublic regularly since the age of eight, I was still self-conscious about performing and used to suffer terrible stage fright, torn between wanting to keep music as a private and personal experience, and feeling compelled to pursue it as a career. If I was surrounded by other musicians, I usually relaxed into it after a song or two. But the prospect of standing onstage all by myself scared the living shit out of me.

  Sometimes I would get so stressed-out about having to perform that a day or two beforehand I’d develop a tight, sore throat. Now, my mother-manager wasn’t about to cancel a gig due to nerves, so she would nurse me with what she called hot toddies: a cocktail of hot water, honey, and whiskey.

  My inflamed throat would sometimes develop into full-blown bronchitis, and I was regularly on a cycle of antibiotics all through my primary years. My mother wasn’t canceling anything, however, and hot toddies got me through. “Let’s give a warm welcome to … Eilleen Twain!” A nudge from my mother, and I’d walk onstage very stiffly, because the fact was that I was ready to pee my pants. And I don’t mean figuratively. It was a perpetual nightmare trying to get from the wings of backstage to the microphone, my lower abdomen feeling like a knotted-up garden hose about to burst.

  I was to be highlighted as a soloist during the Ottawa high school student exchange concert. I prepared something I’d written and accompanied my vocals with my acoustic guitar. I cringe at the thought of how awful that performance must have been considering I was such a weak guitarist, let alone the nerves in my voice. The most memorable part, however, was not the quality of it, but the sheer fear of the whole experience. After that performance, I was forever clear on why never to share my musical world with my peers. It was also the most glaring example of how pronounced my stage fright was.