Stolen Life

by Rudy Wiebe

  Leon had to have a light on in order to sleep. He’d spent most of his life in reformatories, with chain gangs, in prisons where lights burned all the time. I didn’t dare leave him with the children and help Dwa paint. I didn’t dare stay alone with him while Dwa worked, sometimes away for days or late hours, coming home when the kids were already sleeping and he was tired and happily alcoholic and would eat and get into bed with me and fall asleep so he could get up and drive off in his van and do it all over again.

  Dwa did what he did best: escape into steady drinking and work, and I couldn’t explain my fears. Fears both for myself and for my children, dreading that my nightmares would resurface in them, even if I loved and protected them more than anyone else on earth could. Leon put the blocks to me simply by walking in from the garage: huge, growing a beard, glowering, enough aggressive personality to burn down Wetaskiwin crammed into my small house. His way of staring. Though I didn’t dare show it, I was terrified.

  How could I get rid of him? I’ve never known.

  Oddly, a few times he seemed as weak and helpless as I. He told me that whenever he was in prison he could think because that world was real to him; outside he couldn’t really think, the world seemed too strange. And when Earl died he went completely crazy; he had shared a room with him and how could he sleep alone in it then? He’d wanted to fight and kill every cop for what they did. But the cops didn’t kill Earl. No.

  “Earl killed Earl,” Leon told me. “He wimped out, left me holding the bag. I’ve got to live and deal with it alone.”

  Deal with what? He would never say, exactly. Only a bright light burning kept him going, he said, only when he was dead for sleep.

  As he told me this he put his arm across my shoulders and held my hand in his—not really hard, holding it in an almost caring way. I was alone with Leon, and afraid, but he was confessing something too and I knew I shouldn’t stop him. Then he turned my hand and saw the scar on my wrist. He asked me if I had slashed it, and I said yes. After I got raped in Winnipeg. He ran his finger along the scar gently, not pushing me, and told me how he once had to listen to a man in Deer Lodge Prison, Montana, kill himself by smashing his head to pieces against a stone wall.

  “But dying’s easy,” he said. “It’s living that’s so fucken hard.”

  Leon tried to fix Dwa’s cars, but otherwise he didn’t do much; he rented sex movies and asked me to watch them with him. I’d never seen any before and they were dreadful. Once little Chantal got up on a suitcase and danced while I was singing and he said, “She’ll grow up to be a peeler,” and Chantal said, “No, I won’t.” I was so surprised, and afraid too, and to protect ourselves I tried the only plan I could think of: I gave Leon money to get his girlfriend, Lucinda, from Montana. She came with her little kids and that distracted him for a while, but one night he was enraged because she wanted to drink with us instead of going to the garage with him—he warned Dwa to stay out of it, he was Lucinda’s man and he’d show her—and he dragged her to the garage. After she came back out, I called the cops, and they put her up in a hotel for the night. When money came from a painting job, I told Dwa that Leon had to move out. But Leon had a plan; he told us he’d go to Montana with the money, buy dope, return with a load, and become a dealer. So Dwa told him, “If you’re going to the States, you should stay there. There’s no more work for you here.” And under his breath: “You’re not selling out of my house.”

  Leon was mad, and of course phoned Mom. She was furious: so I now considered myself too high and mighty to help my brother, eh? And of course she decided to do something for him. Bristol Aerospace was shutting down in Winnipeg, so she cashed in her pension and RRSPS and invested the money in an upholstery shop in the old band hall on Red Pheasant in Saskatchewan. Leon arrived back from Montana with a new girlfriend, Laura—who’d left her two children for him—supposedly to run the business. But Mom did all the work that was ever done in that shop. He and Laura lived there, but neither worked, and in a year he had run it into the ground: the cutting tables and the sewing machines just sat. But for a while at least he was away from me and my small, helpless children.

  One evening after Dwa was home I got away alone. I was in a bar, having a solitary drink, when I noticed a young guy with two girls, having a tough time of it. He was stiff and very mannered, looking like a total jerk with suit and bowtie, and the two girls were playing him for the fool with two guys at the next table: the other two had muscles playing theme songs all over their arms and chests. I watched; the girls knew exactly what they were doing and the guy knew it too; he stayed polite and bought the girls drinks, but he had no idea how to stop these muscle idiots moving in on him.

  Then the song “Good Old Time Rock and Roll” started clanging out of the speakers and I had an inspiration. I’d drunk enough to have the nerve to go and ask him for a dance. He came onto the floor with me; he could dance okay, but he kept watching the girls at his table.

  “Hey, relax,” I told him, “let anything you feel come out of your feet and arms. Let it go, have fun.”

  Finally he cut loose, and he was an excellent dancer; we danced several times and he felt better each time. The two girls were watching him now; he was starting to lift off, to spin on his toes like Michael Jackson, and I came on to him a little: if you can dance like this, implement it in your life, don’t hide it, you’re really good. And he came on to me, dancing closer, smiling, and I said, Thanks but I’ve got a husband and nice family; save it for those girls—lose your bowtie, open a few shirt buttons. He did that, dancing like a scene out of Flashdance, and finally he strolled back to his table with his jacket hooked on one finger over his shoulder.

  And those girls were crazy about him. I couldn’t quite believe what happened, but those girls knew they had all the man they wanted; the muscleboys leaning over from the next table had fallen off their planet.

  I could do that with strangers in a bar, but in my family? No, I could neither convince nor charm them into anything. To them I was still the smallest, the wordless brat of the family. Dwa with his quiet reserve and few words kept most of the family members away, but when he wasn’t around—working all day or in jail for being impaired—they still harassed me.

  Both Mom and Dad had taught us in Butte: it’s us against the world. Even when they split up, she made it her life to care and stand beside us; and I in turn shared with her whatever I had—money, food, a place to sleep or stay, anything. But the authority within the family was always hers, authority which began with “Never talk back to your parents!” and was underscored by hitting. As we grew older she didn’t necessarily have to hit us; Mom is an incredible speaker. Snake poison you can cut at and suck out, but she can slice your soul apart with words. Especially when she drinks: then she turns mean and may say things that remain forever scarred on your heart. Afterwards, when everyone sobers up, no one in the family will say a word about what she said; we all pretend it never happened. But it happened all right.

  No one in the family has ever hit Mom except Dad; and Leon. She denies that Leon has, but Karen says she saw it. I’ve never even talked back to her. I just take what she does to me, aching all over with a twisted hopelessness grinding me up inside.

  Once we had a serious disagreement in my house in Wetaskiwin, and she slapped me with both hands so long her hits finally did not land with full force. I was crying, my nose was running and her slaps began to slip off my wet face. She was so angry she was sweating, and finally she stopped hitting me long enough for me to get her a towel; she wiped her face and hands, and then continued slapping me hard until I was literally rummy. I was falling off my chair, crying, sucking air like I had hiccoughs, just taking it because I wanted her to realize what she was doing, to finally stop and hug me, give me some kind of mother’s reaction. But I realized she would not stop until she was either exhausted or had slapped me unconscious.

  And then Chantal came out of the children’s bedroom. She had awakened and heard us, and I did
n’t want her to see her grandmother hitting me, so I broke away, “Chantal’s coming,” and dashed away my tears and led her to the bathroom to pee.

  She asked me, “Why is Gramma hitting you, Mommy?” And my tears started again. “Why are you crying?”

  I told her we’d talk in the morning, now go back to sleep. So I carried her back in my arms and tucked her under the covers, fumbling, my head ringing with the dreadful burn on my face. Even then I knew that if I could not learn to pity my mother for what she was, for what she lacked, for what her life had made her be, soon I would only be able to hate her.

  Next morning Chantal asked me again and I told her, “Go ask Grandma.” She did, and Mom came storming up the stairs at me.

  “You let your kid talk to her gramma like that, saying I was beating you?”

  I said. “She saw you do it.”

  Mom got her things and left. I sat and cried and cried; then in a few days Leon came back from Montana with his new girlfriend, Laura—Mom had arranged to meet them at my place and take them back to Red Pheasant with her—and Leon and Mom together was too much. When they were in the house I had a panic attack, I could barely breathe; it was like having both a heart attack and a mental breakdown. I couldn’t control my thoughts. I locked myself in the bathroom, curled up and crying. Mom took it personally and called me down until Dwa—who was scared for me too and didn’t know what to do either—came to the bathroom door, where she was yelling at me to come out. Kathy, who was with her, was shouting at me too, to stop being disrespectful of Mom, so childish.

  Dwa said to them, “Please, just let Vonnie alone.”

  Mom was enraged. But in her order of things, in his house Dwa outranked her, so she could say nothing. She left, and never came back again when Dwa was in the house.

  At first with Dwa I thought I had my drinking well under control, my priorities in order. If you’re fixed in a house, after a while in a small city the people you meet come round, neighbours like Ernie Jensen dropping by, or Erna Brown who’s having a rough time and you can help with a few decent meals and a couch to sleep on before she disappears. And she’ll show up again, you’re not moving anywhere, with a new boyfriend and maybe this one won’t beat her up and you say “Hi, there’s a cold beer in the fridge.” But even if an occasional party developed, for me the children always came first; I bathed them, always watched out, and never drank much until they were safely asleep. My love for them, their love for me, kept me on the ground, no matter how hard my life became. When Dwa was sentenced to six months in prison, I went on welfare; I worked hard getting food and clothing, and I managed.

  However, thoughts I couldn’t control often made me hate myself more than ever. There were times when I could not haul myself out of despair, no matter how bright the day or how cheerful and happy the children. Who would care for them if I were gone? I felt only I could save them from suffering as I had—as I did—and yet I despaired of myself so much that once I actually thought of killing them and myself—but that was too horrible. Impossible. So I tried to find help: women’s shelters, mental health, even church; nothing helped basically.

  People praised me for how beautifully I took care of my three children, and Taylor too, Dwa’s boy, when he visited, how we worked together in the garden I dug much larger. But neighbours’ praise didn’t help much. I could not understand it, but I had to be numb—especially after Susan was born and Chantal began school, when I really thought I had my priorities in place—I never drank alone and yet towards the end I was drinking a great deal.

  I tried to keep Dwa out of trouble till he was finished parole. One day, when I was heavily pregnant with Susan and Dwa took Chantal with him to work, he got very drunk on the job and she came into the house crying and covered with paint. Somehow it had spilled over her in the van, and Dwa and Jerry followed her into the house, just laughing while she choked, she was sucking up paint. They had run laughing from her when she had turned to them for help. I yelled at Dwa as I tried to clean her up; it was in her eyes and even between her legs. I was completely enraged, and he started to call me down; he jumped up and told me to shut up.

  And, pregnant as I was, he gave me a hard push. But I’d had enough of his calling me down, especially in front of Jerry, who had told me he thought I was always covering Dwa’s ass, without me he’d be in jail permanently for impaired. I shoved Dwa over and he crashed on the table, but tilted back up with his fists high. So I went into my boxing stance too. I connected once and he fell back, then rushed me low and bull-dogged me in the middle, hard. But Jerry got him away from me, yelling at him that I was pregnant, and then they were fighting and I grabbed the kids and ran. A woman down the street let us into her house. When Dwa arrived she told him to beat it and he did. I ended up at Aunt Rita’s, who nicely told me to go home, and when she took me there Dwa acted as if nothing had happened. He said, “I don’t remember anything.”

  But my trust in Dwa crashed. I had trusted him with Chantal’s very life and then he stood there, laughing, while she choked on paint. I felt betrayed; my past surfaced in my dreams and thoughts worse than ever. One drunk in a family is manageable, two is disaster. I begged him to move away, let’s start fresh somewhere else all by ourselves and the kids—painting is an easily portable business—but he said he wouldn’t leave the mortgage on his house. He did not want to hear anything of my past; just forget about it, he’d say.

  My cousin Shirley Anne was often in and out of Westaskiwin, sometimes using her mother as a place to stay. But Auntie Josephine was usually on the Hobbema reserves, her in-town apartment locked up, and so my house was handy when Shirley Anne came. Her personal life was an ongoing mess and she became very jealous of me, my house and apparently stable family life. She started to create part of the problem I had with Dwa because she wanted him—and the seeming security he gave me, what she could see of it—for herself. If she complimented me to my face about how nice I was to my kids, that was the back side of knocking me and my mothering when she could get herself alone with him.

  Shirley Anne was an old hand at family feuds about men. Though she herself was never as pretty as Aunt Rita, she was a few years younger, and for a while in Butte they competed in a vicious game of screwing as many of each other’s men as they could and screwing each other up at the same time. Family gossip of course would follow, and yelling matches and fights; sometimes painful, hair-pulling brawls when they were badly drunk.

  In fact, for a time my sister Minnie made that competition a threesome with her cousin and her aunt. She was the youngest by far, physically the strongest, and so aggressive she didn’t give a damn. She’d go for the jugular: “Yeah, I did it,” she’d tell them, “and this is why. You want to make something out of it? Then let’s settle it right here and now.” But Shirley Anne and Rita knew Minnie could whip both of them, so they stuck to vicious talk, telling Mom all the ugly stuff Minnie had supposedly done, but Minnie never cared about that. Talk shmalk—she dealt with life by shutting down her feelings: if she wore her shame for the world to see, as she did, then why should she justify her actions to anyone?

  I could not, I dared not, shut down like Minnie—though she could have taught me how, and sometimes I longed for it—because I had children to protect as she did not.

  After Dwa fought me when I was carrying Susan, he also cheated on me; so I went out and got deliberately drunk. Then I felt so bad, I went home and put a knife on the table between us.

  “You filthied my child,” I told him. “You slept with another woman and came home and slept with me. You shared my pure unborn baby with the whore you fucked. How dare you! And you just sit there, say nothing. Why don’t you just grab that knife and kill us both, as you already have. I hate you.”

  And finally he said something. “Why do you hate me?”

  “You made me love you. I never wanted to love anyone, look where it gets you.”

  And that was it; he wouldn’t talk. There was no way I would have another child with him
, so when my Suzie Q was a year old I got my tubes tied. He said nothing, always away working. Escape by working is more like it. Stay away and call it work.

  At home I tried to keep the inevitable drinking bouts quiet enough so the kids wouldn’t wake up. But when I went out to drink, which I did whenever I could after my last baby was born, all hell happened to me. The echoes of my life on Winnipeg’s skid came back strongest then, and I realized that for some reason, despite my little family, I was still trying to be the solitary loner I had been there, to become a person without shame, guilt, or pain—not even to feel anger or hate. To just live for this moment. Be empty.

  And I could not understand why I felt that way. When drunk I got into fights, and after a while I wouldn’t even bother to wrestle anyone. I’d just go straight at them and take them down. Wetaskiwin, “a place where peace is made”—in that town I fought a lot and never lost a fight, was never gang-piled, never suffered a blackout. I had a camperized van, and if I got too wasted while out by myself, I’d lock myself in and sleep it off. It got so bad my van became known as a party house on wheels, and by the early summer of 1989 people had reason to fear me: “Take-no-shit Johnson.”

  Except my kids. They kept me alive: inside myself I was an empty space, all I kept intact was “Don’t you dare touch my kids.”

  Dwa and I were killing each other slowly and we knew it. Something was building up, it was inevitable, and in fall 1988 he went north to Yellowknife on a job and just stayed there that winter till spring break-up. Moved in with a girlfriend he found. In Wetaskiwin I had the kids—he talked to them sometimes on the phone—and the house, did odd jobs, went on welfare, and it was dreadful. We couldn’t live together, but we couldn’t live without each other either.

  Other than Dwa, the largest part of my gathering disaster was Leon. I knew what I had to fear from him when he came to visit, but I also felt that with him my children were in particular danger, though I did not quite know how. I remembered that when he was small and started to steal in Butte he began to wet his bed at night, and now he always slept with a light on: how was that dangerous? I could not fathom my fears, but I tried to turn them inside out, as it were expose them by doing the opposite to what I feared. Once, when Chantal was about five—the summer after Susan was born, 1987—she came running into the kitchen, waving her arms, “Mommy, Mommy,” she wanted so badly to tell me something.