From This Moment On (16 page)

Even the enjoyment my mother derived from handling my career
was no longer enough to offset her more chronic state of depression from too much fighting with my father and our Twain family’s never-ending financial struggle. She stayed in bed more than ever, and I was just tired of being left to run the house. It was a lot of responsibility for an adult, let alone a child.

I’d get home from school to the exact same mess that we’d left from the morning rush. Mom, too, was exactly how we’d left her: in bed. I saw my mother much like a bird in a cage: she was fragile and delicate, easy to break, and she sat at the bottom of her cage with her eyes closed, defeated. She’d abandoned her dream of one day flying to her potential. A bright, passionate, energetic but broken bird. My white, anglophone mother was unusually open-minded for a woman of her generation, coming from a small Ontario mining community but still speaking French and having had the courage to marry interracially to a Native. The French and English didn’t fare well socially then, and mixed marriages between whites and Natives, especially when the woman was white, were very rare and openly were considered unacceptable by most. It took brave souls to face the criticism that came with it.

I made my mother coffee and lit her a cigarette in an attempt to get her up and moving before my dad got home from work, because if she was still in bed when he walked in the door, he’d get upset, and from there the tension would build and possibly end in another night of fighting. It was not unusual for him to physically drag her out of bed by whatever he could grab—an arm, an ankle, her hair—or he would just clutch the sheet in both fists and yank off the bedding with her still wrapped up in it. I knew this was coming when he’d tell me to shoo the boys outside to play. My dad would proceed to drag my mother along the floor from the bed to the kitchen as she kicked and screamed, cursing him to hell: “Let me go, you fucker! I hate you, let me go!” My father let her go once they got to the kitchen; then he’d scold her to get up and take care of her family. My mother was in a bad state, half dressed, not showered, pale and frail. My heart broke to see her like this. Sometimes her reaction to this assault was
one of submission, and she would sit at the table in her usual position with her knees curled up to her chest and just cry. I would comfort her by placing my hand on her back and saying, “Don’t cry, Mom, it’s going to be okay.” Then I’d make her a coffee and hand her a smoke. “Dad’s right,” I’d say firmly. “You need to get up, Mom, and take care of us. You can’t just sleep all the time. We need you. We have nothing to eat.”

If all of this commotion went on for too long, an alarmed neighbor might call the police, who appeared at our door regularly. Most of the time, my mother would calmly tell the officers that, yes, there had been an “argument,” but now everything was fine—when in reality, she’d probably be pretty bruised and battered from the spat, especially those times when she decided to fight back and not retreat to the table. At least the police’s presence served to subdue her and my father, putting an end to the conflict.

I hated my life. I went to sleep feeling helpless at night and woke up angry in the morning. What amazed me most about the new day was the fact that not only one but both my parents were still alive and hadn’t managed to kill each other during the night. This was a period when we were living the farthest distance from both of my parents’ families. Hanmer was several hours’ drive from Timmins, where most of our relatives lived. Consequently, we got to see them only on special occasions such as Christmas, about two or three times a year.

Extreme poverty and marital violence marked our years on Proulx Court, and I’m not sure why no one offered to help—at least not that I was aware of. It wasn’t a mystery to those who knew us that my parents had a troubled relationship and that we had financial woes, but I really don’t think anyone understood the degree of crisis we experienced at times. Ultimately, and somewhat remarkably to me, we would survive these especially turbulent four years, but in the summer of 1979, something had to give.

One particular morning after another long year had gone by, I was more convinced than ever that this was it. It was now or never. My mother had attempted to break up the marriage several times over the
years, packing us up and going off to a friend’s for shelter. It was never the same friend, for some reason; and sometimes it was someone we hardly knew that my mother would call on. I don’t know the logic behind who she chose for refuge, but my sense is that my mother wanted to make sure we went someplace where my father wouldn’t look, in order to avoid more drama should he find us. These attempts to leave never lasted more than a few days, however. She did get serious about leaving him once, going so far as renting us an apartment in a nearby town, but that lasted about a week. Then we were right back home with the same cursed cycle of ups and downs spinning us all dizzy. I couldn’t count on my mother to make definitive decisions for our family or herself, for that matter; by this time, I couldn’t even coax her out of bed at the end of my school day. So I made my own plan to break free of this cursed cycle we were all in. This was a defining moment for me. The “now or never” feeling is exactly how I said it to myself internally at the time.

School had just let out at the end of grade nine for the summer. One morning I simply made up my mind:
today is the day.
The minute my dad was out the door for work, I zipped around the house, packing a few clothes for us kids. Meanwhile, I tended to my mother as if it were just another day: coffee and a cigarette in bed. Next I herded Carrie, Mark, and Darryl into the car and told them to wait. There was a time when my dad took turns driving to and from work with a coworker to save on gas, which explains why the car was at home. In any case, we had a car that day, and I took advantage of the opportunity. I crammed it with as much of our belongings as I could. Whatever didn’t fit, we left behind. The one possession I would not leave without, however, was our grandmother Eileen’s grandfather clock. After everything else had been packed, I carried it out by myself, despite it being about three feet high and made of heavy wood and metal internal mechanics. I knew my mother would find comfort knowing her mother’s clock had come with us. She was still very attached to the memory of my grandmother, and this clock meant
something to her. I laid the heavy piece across the kids’ laps in the backseat, along with my grandmother’s crucifix, which my mom had hung above the entrance door of each place we’d lived since my grandmother died. This was obviously something that my mother would not want to leave behind, either.

Finally, after I’d spent the morning organizing the kids, packing the car, and rolling around in my head how I was going to break the news to my mother that we were leaving, I pulled her out of bed. “Mom,” I said with some urgency, “you need to get dressed. We’re in the car, all ready to go. All you need to do is drive.” The usual routine of luring her to the kitchen table with now a second cup of coffee, and a light for her cigarette waiting, did get her up, but I felt I needed to pressure her for time, for fear that she might overthink what was happening and just go straight back to bed feeling overwhelmed by my plan for our escape. With her depression, spending most of the last four years in bed, it was as if she was disconnected from the rest of the world. I wasn’t really surprised that she didn’t argue; she merely asked, “Where are we going?”

“Toronto.” Her only response was to nod numbly, understanding that what was happening was somehow inevitable and out of her control. She went through the motions like someone defeated, hopeless, under command, and I remember the feeling of guilt coming over me, knowing I was taking advantage of her in this vulnerable state of mind. She displayed no resistance to what I knew was a radical situation. I didn’t feel good about it and resented the pressure of having no alternative.

Just as she was about to back out of the driveway, my mother paused. “I have to go back inside,” she said. “I forgot something.” I was so afraid that she’d lose her courage and wouldn’t come back out, but, much to my relief, she returned in a couple of minutes, climbed back into the driver’s seat, closed the door, and off we drove to Toronto.

I asked her what she forgot, and she said, “Oh, nothing. I just wanted to leave him a note.”

“What did you say in it?” I worried that she’d be absentminded enough to tell him where we were going, but no. “I wrote him a note saying that I’m sorry things didn’t work out.” I was sad for her and still feel sad today that she felt so defeated at that moment; that she was so discouraged and empty of hope. And yet she still had the compassion to apologize to the man who had abused her. She truly loved him, and I could feel her heartbreak in letting him go, as well as her acknowledgment that it had been a two-way street: that life had been unfair to both of them, to their relationship, making it too difficult to live together in peace. She was taking responsibility for her part, by apologizing to him in the good-bye note. At the same time, though, I thought to myself,
Man, Mother, what do you mean you went back in there to write him a note of apology
?
Your four kids are sitting in the car feeling afraid, confused, and insecure about what’s next, waiting for you to take them somewhere away from this hell so they can feel safe and secure for a change, be fed and protected, and you’re moaning over the end of your relationship with the man who beats you?
I didn’t get it at that moment, being fourteen, but now I see it quite differently. I didn’t understand how excusing a man for violence could be acceptable under any circumstance. But she loved my father and appreciated his devotion to four out of five children that weren’t his own. There were other things to love about Jerry, too, like the way he did his best to provide for us and how he always retained his sense of humor, even in the bleakest of times. He lost his temper under the pressure, but she surely saw this as forgivable, since it was a lot for anyone to take.

She must also have recognized her role in provoking him when she was upset. She had a way of carrying on, not knowing when to quit, when to shut up and let the mood settle so things wouldn’t get so out of control. She was a passionate, fiery woman who would not stand down once she got going. This high-strung behavior fueled the fire between them, and I believe she knew it and regretted that she had contributed to the chaos. I saw all of this as well and felt compassion for my father, recognizing that, of course, it was not all
his fault. I believed he’d done his best, but things had gone too far, and I’d reached my limit and desperately needed to flee. We were all dying in our individual ways, and the only way to survive was to run.

We drove in silence for a long while after pulling away from the drive of the green bungalow on Proulx Court. I glanced over at my poor mother. How deflated and disappointed she seemed when she got back behind the wheel. Life had let her down so badly, kicked the shit out of her, and left her to fend for herself and four children, with nowhere to go and no one to turn to. I shouldered some of the emotional burden of guilt myself. After all, it was my idea for us to leave. I was the one who walked my zombie mother through the steps of leaving the man she loved, to save herself and her kids. In a way, I guess I blamed myself that she was going through this torture. But we both knew there was no other choice; what’s more, we couldn’t turn back.

Imagine being a thirty-three-year-old woman in a beat-up old car, driving toward a big city where you barely know a soul, and with four kids in tow. She had no plan, no address there, and no money. She was in a daze, following the instructions of her adolescent daughter to get in the car and drive off to a new life. Who knew what kind of life? None of us did. But she knew that at least there would be a shelter or a YWCA for refuge and that I could continue with music there more easily than anywhere else in Ontario.

Ten hours later, we reached Toronto. Mom got out of the car to use a pay phone while we sat and waited in the car, returning a few minutes later with a piece of paper on which she’d scribbled the address of a homeless shelter.

That night, the five of us slept in a crowded, sweltering place on cot-like beds spread out along the walls of a series of spacious, open rooms designed for large groups. Our room held several families. I could barely sleep, it was so hot. Obviously, you had no privacy; everyone shared the bathrooms, and in the morning we ate at long, bingo-style tables, cafeteria fashion. Being surrounded by so many strangers was uncomfortable for me; I felt small and lost and
wondered if maybe we’d made a mistake coming here. But then, at least we had someplace to go. And on the plus side, my first breakfast at the shelter was Rice Krispies cereal. I could have as much as I wanted—and no limit on the milk. This was new. We were eating with the down-and-out, but there was food to spare. We were soon placed in a smaller facility, a multistory house that had been converted into a women’s shelter large enough for about five families and staff. The food was good, the staff members were attentive and helpful, and I felt safe and finally had a sense that things were going to get better.