From This Moment On (20 page)

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 was 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.

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.

By now, the sun had set completely. At last, I could make out, through the near impenetrable curtain of white, a faint black haze in front of me. My dad, realizing that I must have lost my sight line, was standing by the water’s edge. As soon as he heard the growl of the motor, he started to wave his flashlight in my direction. The flickering light caught my eye. I’d made it! Ironically, what had been a potentially life-and-death drama for me went entirely unnoticed by the men, who were probably wondering only “What the hell took her so long?”

In the North, most people do things like this, even though we all know the risks involved. In that rough environment, you develop survival skills and attitudes that get you through; your senses seem to sharpen, too. Being out in hazardous weather teaches you to become resourceful and mentally tough enough so that, when confronted by situations like this one, you just carry on. It wasn’t as if we didn’t respect the power of Mother Nature; I mean, God knows, every winter
you’d hear about people who’d died from exposure in the North. I guess we just never thought it would ever happen to us, and so there were no shortage of stories about close calls, usually shared around a warm fire with plenty of laughter.

Not my mother’s brother, Uncle Don, though. One time he and my cousin Roger cheated death by the skin of their teeth.

It was a cold December morning. Now, with a temperature of twenty degrees below or so, you might assume that a frozen lake would be as hard as concrete. Not necessarily. If there hadn’t been enough cold days in a row, you might encounter some weak patches of ice. My uncle and his twenty-four-year-old son, riding tandem, were the last in a small party of snowmobilers crossing the lake together. The other machines left a slushy trail behind them—a sign of brittle ice—so my uncle, who was steering, veered off to the side a bit.

Before either of them knew what was happening, the back end of the snowmobile plunged through the ice. Roger managed to jump off and scramble onto solid ice, but my uncle, in heavy boots and bulky winter gear, fell into the water. Don swam over to where his son was lying on his stomach. The first thing he said to him—and this will never cease to amaze me—was a reminder to place their helmets on the ice as a courtesy to other snowmobilers, to warn them of the danger.