From This Moment On (6 page)

My grandmother died while we were still living on Bannerman, the same time period my mother delivered the first boy in the family. My grandmother specifically asked my mother that if the baby was a boy, to name him Mark, and she did.

One of my sister Carrie’s most vivid memories from the Bannerman house was her routine of waiting for my dad to get home from work. He always saved his lunch dessert for Carrie; she had a real sweet tooth and sat on the front step each afternoon, waiting for him to
return so she could rush his lunch box. She’ll never forget the time she clipped open the aluminum hinged box to find a plastic bag filled with water and two goldfish swimming about. She named her new pets Goldie and Silvy. They sat on display at the top of the fridge of our tiny kitchen in a round glass bowl. In her memory, it was the sweetest gift he ever gave her. We both remember our father as a kind, thoughtful man, and because the contrast between his two sides was complicated for us small children to comprehend, we tended to hold on to the sunny side rather than the darker side.

The Bannerman house certainly saw its share of personal hardships, and it showed in my mother’s behavior. She would spend hours putting together our Halloween costumes, like the ones shown in the photo included in this book, with me as a fairy princess with a tinfoil wand and crown, Carrie in her clown suit, and Jill in a “squaw outfit,” as my dad called it. She pulled herself into the spirit of life for us kids, and I realize now how much courage that must have taken for her to keep us happy and feeling as if we had some normalcy in our lives. Yet on the other hand, there could be a hurricane of domestic instability, sometimes all in the same day. But she was only so strong, and she inevitably took it out on us sometimes. One time I had the stomach flu and woke up in the middle of the night feeling nauseous. I called for her as I stumbled out of bed and staggered across the kitchen on my way to the washroom. I didn’t make it, vomiting all over the floor. It was the first time in my seven-year life I’d ever thrown up. I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and I was scared. With my mother now at my side, I vomited again, this time on myself as well as on her.

I was crying and weak and wanted only to be held while I tried to catch my breath. To my shock, my mom grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me hard. “I can’t believe what a mess you made!” she scolded furiously. “Now I have to clean all this up. It’s the middle of the night, for Christ’s sake!” Aside from the odd slap across the head or tight grip on my arm when I got on her nerves, either by talking too
much or not paying attention, I’d never felt my mother being so angry with me before.

Looking back on it now, and being a mother myself, I understand her lack of patience that night. She had three other kids to wake up for in a few hours, and now, in the middle of the night, I’d given her a big mess to clean. I wish I’d had the maturity then to comfort her and tell her I understood. But being seven years old, I didn’t understand. How could I? The idea that adults can live challenging lives full of struggles and suffering is beyond a child’s comprehension. All I knew was that her behavior upset me, making me feel worse than I already did.

How can four children and two adults sleep in a tiny one-bedroom house? The only bedroom was on the second floor, and that was where my parents slept, while my two sisters and I slept in single bunk beds wedged into the corner of the stairwell at the base of the steps leading down from their room. Our baby brother’s crib was tucked under the stairs, across from our bunk beds.

Jill’s “seniority” earned her the luxury of sleeping alone in the top bunk; Carrie and I shared the bottom bed. Not only was it pretty cramped, especially as we grew—this arrangement continued until I was twelve—but my little sister was a bed wetter until about the age of ten. Boy, did I used to get pissed (sorry, Carrie!) at her when I’d feel something warm and wet soaking my pajamas in the middle of the night. Sometimes I was able to avoid it by jamming myself up against the wall or shifting to the foot of the bed; I’d throw a coat over myself and leave her in the puddle of pee with a grunt and try to get back to the business of sleeping. But other times there was no dry spot to take refuge in, and so I’d have to go through the whole process of waking up Carrie-Ann, changing her pajamas, placing a towel over the wet spot, and putting on fresh bedding. Much to my astonishment, and my annoyance, if I didn’t shake her awake, she’d just carry on sleeping peacefully as if nothing had happened!

Jill, being the oldest, naturally shouldered most of the responsibility. She was incredibly mature and conscientious, always taking good care of Carrie and me. My parents often gave her the task of paying utility bills while the three of us were on our way to the pool, or to Hollinger Park, or to the local bowling alley—bowling being one of our favorite activities. My dad worked long hours at the local mine at this point, and my mother had a part-time job at a department store called Marshalls. We took care of ourselves a lot and did many of the errands while they worked.

Even at age seven, I was painfully aware that our family was dysfunctional compared to most. Other families seemed to behave more like the families I saw on TV: sibling squabbles over taking too much time in the bathroom, parents disagreeing over whether to have the
in-laws over during the holidays, how to tell the kids the dog ran away, things like that. The television series I used to watch in the late sixties and early seventies included
Bonanza, The Flintstones, The Addams Family, Gilligan’s Island,
and one of my favorites,
The Brady Bunch.
These families—even the animated Flintstones of Bedrock—always worked out their problems reasonably, learning important life lessons and morals in the process.

In contrast, something was seriously wrong in our home, so whenever I encountered another dysfunctional family, the signs were all too familiar to me, and I’d feel compassion for them, silently recognizing what we had in common. I could relate to the likely struggles in their home life. I was sensitive to others who showed signs of neglect or abuse such as poor hygiene, bad teeth, regular absenteeism from school, overly introverted or extroverted behavior, parents you never saw, even when they were invited to participate in school functions, and unexplained injuries. I believe suffering children recognize one another. I personally never talked openly to anyone, even other kids I felt sorry for or related to, about my own inner struggle with my childhood. Many kids don’t because children naturally care for their parents and families and feel protective of them, not wanting to expose any dysfunction in the family for fear of the family breaking up or someone getting in trouble. Exposing a parent or someone a child loves can make him or her feel guilty or disloyal, which is how I would have felt. Kids might hide painful feelings also because they are embarrassed by their situation, feeling they might be criticized, and are afraid of being exposed and humiliated. My personal experience was that if I were ever to have shared a violent scene between my parents with a teacher or a friend who then told her parents, I knew my father could be arrested, and I was afraid of being alone with my mother not being able to provide for us. I felt that if anyone knew about certain situations in our home, everything would fall apart. Fear and guilt were primarily what kept me quiet.

I remember one friend the same age as me named Charlotte, a girl with long, golden braids. She lived on the other side of the alley
behind our house. Her mother was a meek, dusty-gray-haired woman who gave me the impression that she had neither the energy nor the time to wash her grungy kitchen floor. One Saturday morning, I went to play at Charlotte’s house. Just as I arrived, her mother was rushing out the door to go to work. Instead of playing, Charlotte and I were assigned the chore of scrubbing the floor while her mother was gone. Our seven-year-old method was to fill up a pail with hot water and a half quart too much of Javex bleach (that’s the brand name for Clorox in Canada) and flood the surface with it until it was about a half inch deep from corner to corner. Next we swished the mop around for a while, squeezing the dirty water into the bucket. Last but not least: let it air dry.

Proud of our little housekeeping duty, we were ready for some play. Charlotte’s father was still in his bathrobe, watching TV in the bedroom. He called us in and invited us to jump on the bed, which we were eager to do. As we jumped up and down, giggling, his bathrobe opened to reveal an ugly, dangling organ surrounded by a ghastly bush of hair. The man made no effort whatsoever to cover himself; he just lay there coolly, clearly aware that he was intentionally exposing himself to a couple of little girls, one of whom happened to be his own daughter.

I had never seen anything like this sausage-like thing before, and it scared me. Picturing the scene
still
gives me shivers. I ran out of the house and kept running until I was standing in our kitchen, gasping for breath. No one asked me where I’d been, nor did I volunteer the information. It never would have occurred to me to tell my parents about the frightening experience; to be honest, I didn’t want to burden them, as things were stressful enough in our household.
Mom and Dad have enough to worry about without having to worry about me,
was my thinking.

I was, however, concerned for Charlotte and felt guilty for leaving her there with her father, and his gross, disgusting thing, without telling anyone. I knew there was definitely something wrong with that scenario, but I didn’t have the courage or maturity to know what
to do except feel uncomfortable and confused. I believed there was nothing I could do for her, and I believe that she had her problems, I had mine. That sense of helplessness is how I would describe how I felt during many crises growing up, with me consciously detaching myself from the suffering, even though I felt every bit of it. I did my best to distance myself from it mentally, a mind-over-matter-type approach. All I felt I “could” do was to move forward, look ahead and not behind. As a parent, I know that if my child told me about a similar experience at a friend’s house, I’d march right over there and bonk the guy on the head, then report his ass to child protective services. I’d like to think that had my mother known, she would have been just as alarmed—although instead of bonking the child offender on the head, she probably would have bonked
me,
to try to scare the wits out of me so I never went back there again. That would have been her way of protecting me, and I suppose it would have worked, although I was sufficiently freaked out without her help.
No way
was I ever going back to Charlotte’s house.

When my grandmother died in 1972, my mother was devastated and thrown into intense grief, crying all the time and at the drop of a hat. I can’t imagine how lost and alone she must have felt with three little girls and a new baby, trapped in a violent, roller-coaster marriage with barely enough money to get by. Now she had lost the one person who had always been there for her. Everyone loved my grandma Eileen, including my dad, who always spoke of her with immense respect, but no one more so than my mother. And certainly no one was as dependent on her as my mother was; just the mere mention of my grandmother would bring her to tears.

Not long after my grandmother died and my new baby brother began to crawl, we moved to a basement with more living space. Although it was roomier—at least my sisters and I now had our own bedroom—I didn’t like it so much. Our bedroom carpet was so thick with skank that I didn’t want it touching my bare feet. I decided we needed to pull up the carpet and throw it out. I’m not sure what my
parents thought of the idea, but they didn’t try to stop me, in any case. When I began peeling back the dirty thing, what I saw made me want to throw up on the spot: what seemed like zillions of disgusting, squirming white
things,
like moving rice, bending and squiggling on the bare floor where the carpet had been. I’d never heard of maggots before, but I knew that they were insects, and I knew that insects shouldn’t be living under the carpet. Rather than complain, I slapped the filthy carpet back down and simply pretended that our revolting little guests weren’t there. The way I figured it, better for them to be living
under
the floor covering and out of sight. The carpet remained.

We rented the apartment from an elderly couple that lived upstairs. They were always sweet to me whenever I’d pass them on my way to the corner store or to the neighborhood church to light candles for my grandmother and our little dog Peppi, who’d also died not long after her. I missed them both so much and found comfort lighting a candle for each of them along with saying a prayer that I wished they hadn’t gone, and that I hoped to see them again someday. I believed the candles would help light their way to the Heavenly Father, to God Himself. And feeling that my candle was very important, I visualized the flame literally helping them see their way through what I imagined was somewhere dark.