Nearly Normal

by Cea Sunrise Person

  My battling emotions about Mom made the chores of tipi life a welcome distraction. The amount of work to be done to keep the camp running was an endless cycle, and plus, I had my third-grade homeschooling to do. Coming back to the wilderness had seemed natural to me, but it also made me into a weirdo all over again. In the Gulf Islands, I’d begun to feel a little normal. Even though Barry was making me touch him, and we lived in a half-finished house, at least we lived in a house instead of some canvas shelter, and I went to a regular school with nice teachers and even had a few friends. Now I’d become the freak from the wilderness once more—and if I really did go to live in the city with Mom and if I wanted to have any friends, I’d have to act like this year hadn’t happened. Because who was I going to talk to about hunting bears and eating fried grouse and mushing sled dogs and a grandfather who insisted I do my yoga naked and the way I knew it was morning each day by how the sunlight slanted into the tent I slept in all by myself? Nobody, that’s who.

  So it was Mark, my one connection to a world outside my tipi life, who made me feel a little better. I would tag after him while I did my camp chores, badgering him with questions about life in the city. He never seemed to mind, and sometimes he would play cards or hide-and-seek with me. We fished and hunted together with our bows and arrows, and he told me I was a good shot. He said he was planning to become a wilderness guide just like Papa Dick after he finished university, and I secretly wondered if we would still be friends then.

  And that’s how it happened that a bear was chasing us. This morning Mark had announced that he was taking a hike up the mountainside behind our camp, and I had run and put on my hiking boots without being invited. He just laughed and messed up my hair like he always did.

  “Okay,” he said to me. “But you better keep up. I’m not waiting around for you.”

  “No problem.” I smiled happily. I loved hiking the mountainside. If I climbed high enough, I could see right down into the lake and feel like I was standing at the top of the world.

  An hour into our hike, Mark said it was time to go home. I reluctantly pulled myself away from the berries I’d been picking and followed him back down the hill. It was late summer, but there were still a few flowers in bloom.

  “Come on,” Mark said each time I stopped to pick them, but I was intent on collecting the perfect bouquet to bring home to Grandma Jeanne. She hardly ever smiled anymore these days, and I thought flowers might cheer her up.

  “Cea. Let’s go,” Mark said to me for the tenth time, clapping his hands together.

  By then I was busy plucking rosehips off a bush. Grandma Jeanne loved making tea out of them.

  Suddenly I heard a noise in the trees, a little up the hill. I stood up and looked, then I glanced at Mark, who shrugged. I turned back to my rosehips. Another sound, this time louder and closer.

  “Probably a deer,” Mark said. “Or a bear.”

  I nodded. Bears were nothing to be afraid of, I knew, as long as you didn’t scare them, threaten their babies or run away from them. I’d run into them a number of times by myself and never had a problem.

  “Let’s get going. Just in case,” Mark said.

  “But even if it’s a bear, we should just—”

  Another crash, much louder this time. I looked at the treeline, expecting a large animal to come bursting out. A memory washed over me of Mom rushing out of our tent, yelling and screaming at an unknown enemy. That time it had worked out perfectly okay. I turned back to Mark.

  “There’s nothing—”

  “Bear! Run! Run run run!”

  Electric fear charged my body. I dropped my rosehips and tore down the hill as fast as I could. As I dashed around trees and jumped over fallen logs, I could hear Mark racing behind me.

  “Don’t stop!” Mark yelled. “It’s coming! Don’t look back! Don’t stop, don’t stop!”

  I wouldn’t look back, I told myself. But I had to. Just for a second, long enough to see Mark’s terrified expression. He was running so fast the wind was pulling his hair back from his face. Then my foot caught on a rock. I tumbled to the bottom of the hill like a log and scrambled to my feet again, bruised and scraped. I was pretty sure my knee was bleeding, but I didn’t dare stop. I set off again. I was almost back at camp. The ground was level under my feet now, but I was slowed down by my injured knee. I pictured the bear’s jaws closing around my leg and pulling me to the ground. We were doing exactly what attracted bears most—running—and though my brain screamed at me to stop, I simply couldn’t.

  Up ahead through the trees, I saw the best sight in the world: Papa Dick. He was at the chopping block, swinging his axe over his head as he split wood.

  “Papa Dick!” I shrieked as loud as I could. “There’s a bear! It’s chasing us! Get your rifle!”

  He turned to face me, axe held over his left shoulder with both hands, as if ready to swing and attack if he had to. I shot past him and finally stopped, safely behind him, turned and braced myself. But there was no bear. And the crashing had stopped, replaced by another sound: laughter. It was Mark, shaking his head as he gripped his sides. There was a rock in his hand. He threw it into the trees, and it made the same sound that had chased me down the mountain.

  “Your face! You should have seen—”

  In a flash, Papa Dick was in front of him. He grabbed Mark hard by the upper arm. Mark stopped laughing and looked at my grandfather in shock.

  “What the hell is the matter with you?” Papa Dick hissed.

  “But she was taking forever—”

  “I don’t care!” Papa Dick roared back, and I realized how seldom I’d heard my grandfather raise his voice. “You think it’s a joke to make someone think a bear is chasing them? Leave your fear-mongering in the concrete jungle. You’re lucky I don’t make you pack your bags right now.”

  I looked at both of them in shock. I was embarrassed over Mark’s joke, not to mention that my body was bruised and battered because of it, but I didn’t want him to go home.

  Papa Dick turned to face me. “What Mark did was wrong, Cea, but let this be a lesson to you too. Fear is nothing but perception, and often perception is far worse than reality.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means what I’ve always told you. Fear is the only enemy, and only in weakness can it attack. Strength is the opposite of defeat.”

  I nodded, but really I didn’t understand. Wasn’t it normal to be afraid if I thought a bear was chasing me? Would it have been better if I’d stopped in my tracks and yelled at it that I wasn’t scared? Was I really weak because I hadn’t? In Papa Dick’s eyes I was, because in this case I would have come face to face with the truth. But what if it hadn’t been a joke?

  A dark cloud fell over me. I didn’t know what my grandfather expected of me, but if there was one thing of which I was certain, it was that I’d always disappoint him.

  Mark walked over to me and took my hand. “Come on,” he said quietly. “Let’s get that knee bandaged up.”

  For a while after that day, I lost my easy comfort with the wilderness. Snapping twigs made me jump, and I rounded each bend along our lakeshore with my senses on alert for danger. But despite my confusion over my grandfather’s words, they stayed with me. I wanted his approval. I wanted to be fearless, and I wanted to choose strength over defeat. But even more than that—and this was something I could never tell Papa Dick—I wanted to be flawless like my Barbie doll, who had an outfit for every occasion and never lost her smile. That doll had planted a seed in me that was now in full flower.

  I’d first met Barbie when a summer visitor’s daughter brought her to our tipi camp in the Kootenay Plains. Her perfect plastic face had stirred something in me. Something that had to do with female beauty and how beholding that beauty made me feel—awestruck, admiring, more curious about faces. And then when I was five, Mom and Karl had taken me to Calgary for a day, where I’d seen something at a department store that would change my life: two models walking a ramp fo
r a fashion show. They were tall and skinny, just like me, and it was this observation that made it all click—the extra height I’d always hated could actually work in my favour. And Mom had told me I had the looks for it too. When I saw photos of myself, I saw green eyes, long eyelashes, a straight nose that seemed the right size for my face, a full lower lip. I wasn’t certain I was going to be pretty enough to be a model when I grew up, but I knew I’d at least want to try. And I could only imagine the look of disgust on Papa Dick’s face if I were to tell him so.

  A few weeks after the incident with Mark, I was bathing in the lake. It was early autumn, and the water was freezing, but I still preferred washing out here to washing in the tipi. At least here I could have some privacy. I always bathed with my underwear on, just in case Mark or Papa Dick should happen by, though I knew he would give me hell for wearing them. Papa Dick had no patience for modesty.

  I was rinsing the shampoo from my hair with an empty coffee can when I heard a sound. I turned and saw a male moose swimming toward me. Other than the V in his wake, the water around him was perfectly flat. His antlers, hung with long pieces of grass, loomed above the surface of the water. I froze, wondering if I should run up the trail to tell Papa Dick. We were due for a big game kill to store for the winter, and this animal was the perfect target—convenient, large and, most important, male and adult. Hunting had little effect on my emotions. We did it to survive, and I’d watched my grandfather shoot countless animals. I’d killed them myself, with my bow and arrow, and I knew that alerting him now would make me the hero of the day. But I wasn’t so sure anymore that I wanted to be my grandfather’s hero.

  Not long ago, I’d been sitting in the tipi when a mouse skittered across my legs. Without even thinking, I’d shot my arm out and was probably as surprised as the mouse when I caught it in my hand.

  “What should I do?” I asked Papa Dick, though I already knew I wanted to let it go. Its fur was soft, and its tiny black eyes were filled with terror as it squirmed helplessly in my hand.

  “Kill it, of course,” Papa Dick answered.

  I looked at the mouse again, imagining my grandfather’s disappointment if I let it go. He’d shake his head at me, throw out a line about ignoring the cycle of nature and then hide his face behind his book.

  I squeezed the mouse as hard as I could, until I felt its tiny heart stop beating in my hand. Papa Dick smiled approvingly, but that didn’t cure the sick feeling I had over what I’d done.

  I watched the moose. When he reached the shore, he found his footing on the lake bottom, heaved himself to a standing position and scrambled onto the beach. He was less than twenty feet from me, with his head turned away toward the water. I took a step in his direction, and then another. He didn’t move. I sucked in my breath and held it, and then I took another step. His massive head swung my way, and I jumped and dropped my eyes. When he didn’t move, I slowly raised my gaze to his face. I knew I was being stupid, but I couldn’t help myself. And what I saw in his eyes was so gentle, I felt almost as if he were smiling at me. I knew all too well what terror felt like, and I was happy not to see it in this animal’s eyes.

  We looked at each other for a moment, and then he turned away and walked down the beach in the opposite direction from our camp. A minute later, he turned and disappeared into the trees. I smiled to myself, feeling a little triumphant. I had challenged my grandfather’s teachings, and nothing bad had happened. Maybe following my instincts was okay sometimes, instead of listening to the relentless storm of opinion that rarely seemed right to me.

  Chapter 9

  2007

  Halifax

  Sweetie. Please,” I said to Avery desperately. “Please just let Mommy do this. Then we can go to the playground, I promise.”

  I unwrapped my son’s arms from around my legs and placed him on a chair. He started to howl. I turned away, fighting my instinct to sweep him up again. I’d been trying to get him occupied with something for the past hour, and nothing was working. He’d even ignored the TV when I put on his beloved Cars DVD, no doubt sensing my urgent need to be free of him. We were leaving for Vancouver the next day, James was already gone, Doris wasn’t available, and I had a million things to do. We had started a renovation on the sunroom before we knew we were moving, and the trim still needed to be painted. There was clothing to be packed, my car to be returned to the leasing company, the refrigerator to be cleaned out, some last swimwear orders to be filled, and the promised trip to the park—and it was already two o’clock in the afternoon.

  I grabbed my paintbrush and paint can, went to the sunroom and started slapping white semi-gloss on the windowsills as fast as I could. Avery fell onto the floor in a heap, screaming indignantly. I kept working, my blood pressure rising. Twenty minutes later, the job was finished and Avery was still howling. I plucked him from the floor and placed him in his high chair with some snacks. He threw them at me, flailing in his seat. My eyes welled up with tears. I sat on a box beside him, talking quietly and trying to soothe him. When it became clear nothing was going to work, I placed his sippy-cup back on his tray and walked to the basement to fill orders.

  As soon I opened the door, I saw it: the floor was flooded. “Oh, shit!” I ran down the stairs, glancing at the culprit window and cursing myself for not having replaced the glass. It was broken when we moved in, so we’d covered it with plastic as a quick fix and forgotten about it—and yesterday it had rained in torrents. I lifted one of my swimwear boxes and inspected the bottom. Water crept four inches up the sides of the cardboard. Cold dread coursed through my body. I could still hear Avery yelling upstairs. I slipped my hand down the side of the box and felt the swimsuits along the bottom. They were damp. Fuckfuckfuck—

  I heard a thud from upstairs and a blood-curdling scream.

  “Avery!” I dropped the box and took the stairs two at a time.

  He was lying on the floor with a sizable red bump on his chin. I snatched him up and hugged him to my chest.

  “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  I sank down on the floor with him, listening as his screams slowly turned to hitching sobs. When he was calm enough, I cradled him in my arms and looked down at his face, thanking my lucky stars he’d landed on his chin instead of his head. His eyes were fluttering closed. I took a few deep breaths, trying to still my mind and reset my panicked mood. As I stroked his cheek, I found myself wishing that Mom were here. She’d come to Halifax shortly after we moved, so she could watch Avery while I unpacked, and she’d wanted to help again this time but was too ill.

  Avery’s arrival in our lives had changed my relationship with Mom in a way I’d never imagined. Our frustrations with each other and tremendous differences of opinion were still there, but her love for my son and the effort she made to be with him made all of that less important. I’d seen the difference in her from the very beginning. I had allowed her to be present for Avery’s birth, and for the first time in a long while, she didn’t disappoint me. She flew into town, waited days until I went into labour and then helped me through it. I had handed Avery to her when he was a few minutes old. She gazed at him lovingly and then met my eyes with tears in her own. “I wish I could do it all again,” she whispered. It was a kind of apology, I guessed, but also so much more. I realized then how sad it was that she’d never had a chance to experience motherhood with at least a little preparation and confidence, or to share her life with a caring man who could have helped her with me.

  Months later, I’d needed someone to watch Avery while I did a swimwear trade show in Las Vegas. Even though she was already weakening from the cancer, she volunteered immediately. I flew her to Vegas, and she spent her days playing with Avery at the hotel while I worked my booth. One time I let myself into the hotel room to find them sleeping. Mom’s body was curved around Avery’s, and he was holding her thumb in his hand. He’d always been a fussy baby, unwilling to let anyone but me and sometimes James hold him. But he’d never hesitated to go to my
mother, as if he understood the deep purpose he was serving both her and me. My son was the thing I’d always hoped would be important enough to bring Mom and me together again. That closeness would be snatched away when my mother died, but at least we had it for a little while. I realized in a way I had James to thank for that, because if we’d never had Avery, maybe Mom and I wouldn’t have had our moment of harmony.

  Avery was asleep in my arms. I carried him upstairs and placed him carefully in his bed. Then I grabbed a couple of buckets, put on my rain boots and went to the basement. As I bailed water under the dim glow of the hanging light bulb, a feeling of acute loneliness swept over me. Was I destined to face all of my life’s trials alone, without support or guidance? Was I even worthy of such things? Even if Mom and I had managed to create some peace between us, the constant tumult of my unsettled thoughts guaranteed that I was rarely at peace with myself or my choices. Sometimes, I felt like I was at war with the life I myself had created.

  1979

  Calgary

  I exited the city bus and walked fast, pretending the sidewalk was snapping at my feet like a hungry crocodile. Four blocks between here and safety. Cars rushed by, horns honked, crowds of people swarmed the busy intersection. I scanned the street for military vehicles; the coast was clear. Relieved, I hurried on.

  I was nine years old, and city life was still new to me, and more than a little scary. Just six months ago, my grandfather had saved my life by pulling me out of the frozen lake at our Yukon tipi camp. One year ago, I had been shooting porcupines with my bow and arrow, chopping wood for the stove and helping my grandparents winterize our tipi for the long, dark, freezing months ahead. The years before that had been spent running from the cops for drugs and theft, living in the forest and squatting in abandoned summer cottages. Still, I felt almost nostalgic about those memories in comparison to the anxiety my new reality caused me.