Northern Wildflower

by Catherine Lafferty

  Rocky was missing for almost two days. We called the pound, put ads out and filed a missing pet report, but nothing. Then the next evening we got a call from a lady that said she had found him scrounging for food on the side of the road. We were so relieved to have Rocky back. We couldn’t have started the new chapter of our lives without him.

  Rocky was a special dog. He came into our lives when River and I were living in the city during my days in college. I figured we needed some furry company. I saw an ad in the paper for cheap puppies and went to check it out one night while River was sleeping in the back seat of the car. When I walked into the house, there was a large litter of puppies running around in the kitchen. The owner’s kids were playing with them and naming them. I wasn’t sure which one to pick until a little girl grabbed the runt of the litter, held him out to me and said, “Here, this one’s name is Rocky.” And, just like that, he was ours. I couldn’t even look at any of the other puppies; it was like he chose me. When we got home that night, I carried River to his bed and put Rocky beside him so he would wake up to a surprise puppy. River and Rocky have been best friends ever since.

  Rocky has quite the sense of direction. One night while I was gardening outside, I forgot that I had Rocky with me. I went to bed and locked the door, leaving him outside. Rocky walked all the way up the big hill, through downtown, took a left off Main Street and barked at my grandma’s door at three in the morning.

  Rocky can roll over and knows how to work for a treat. He can belt out a howl and sing to his favourite songs. He is also a great hunter. One day, I let him roam around the backyard and he came back home with a dead ptarmigan and placed it on my doorstep as a gift. I was so impressed that I cleaned it up and put it in my freezer to be used one day for a good fry. With Rocky found, we moved into our new place and it was almost too good to be true.

  ***

  OUR NEW HOME WAS FLAWLESS. The small patch of grass in the front yard was a vibrant green and seamlessly manicured. Every row house looked the same, except for the odd house with different coloured trim and flowers. The neighbours were friendly and welcoming. I was the only single Indigenous mother that could be seen for miles, and my neighbours often asked me how I was getting by. The rent was very high, and money was tight, but I tried not to worry about it. I hadn’t packed up our lives and come all that way to be defeated. We were going to make it, somehow.

  Victoria was beautiful. I had never seen anything like it in all my life. It was a Canadian paradise. Being near the ocean was soothing for my soul, and I would often sit on the beach on a piece of driftwood and just stare out into the beautiful blue abyss whenever I had the chance.

  The kids and I were outside as much as possible. Hiking, swimming, camping and exploring. There is no winter in Victoria. The first year we were there, it snowed one day, but melted the next. The kids built a sad-looking snowman that was half dirt and half snow.

  My first day of school was a dream come true. I walked, books in hand, down the hill to the school and it looked exactly like the picture that I placed on my fridge a year before; even the weather that day was the same as in the picture. I was proud of myself for how far I had come. I was an official university student. I knew how lucky I was to be in this position, since I didn’t graduate from high school. I had made it, despite the odds. Now it was all about focusing and making sure I did the hard work that came along with the prestige.

  The next two years were going to be tough, but I was in a beautiful place and I had my little family with me and that was all I needed. I was ready to accomplish my goal of getting a degree and making my family proud. I could only imagine my grandparents looking down on me from heaven, beaming with pride. I finally proved to my papa that he was right all along: I truly was in a “high class” and ready to mingle with the rest of them. I soon found out that I was one of the only Indigenous people in the class and made fast friends with the one other Indigenous woman from the North.

  Before that day, I always thought that the highly educated people were smarter than me. In fact, they weren’t any smarter. They just appeared to be, because they had privilege, and with privilege comes a sense of confidence. When I saw people that seemed to have it all, I didn’t understand why I couldn’t be like them. But privilege was not something I would ever know. Most of my classmates came from well-rounded beginnings. Then there was me. I had to go around a time or two before I made it to where I was. In a sense, I had to claw my way to the top. I am glad that I didn’t have it easy, because success means a lot more to me than it does to the people who have everything at their disposal. I did not have my path paved for me from the start, but at the end of the day what mattered was that education gave me the confidence I needed to stand at the same level as those who I thought, all my life, were better than me. I may not have come from the same upbringing or the same race, but I now had the same chance in life. Whenever I felt insecure, I reminded myself that my classmates and I were all in this together, and no one was better than anyone else even though some of my classmates may not have seen things that way. I often had to utilize the school’s food bank and was embarrassed to ask for the key to the storage room where the administration kept the dry food. I hoped that none of my classmates would see me. Most of them had probably never experienced the humiliating feeling of not being able to afford food, and I didn’t want them to pity me.

  I got a part-time job working as a waitress at a pub near our house during my time off from school. I had very little waitressing experience. When I had turned bar age, I had a brief stint as a waitress in a local pub. I was the worst waitress, hands down. I would get drink orders mixed up all the time, even if I wrote them down. I couldn’t remember who had what, a tall vodka with two ice cubes and a splash of lemon or a double rye on the rocks. The bar would get so packed on the weekends that I had to learn how to balance my tray above the crowd and somehow squeeze my way through a bunch of rowdy customers without spilling it. I spilled all the time and one time I accidentally spilled the entire tray on this poor fellow who was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  My waitressing gig at this pub was less intense, but I still managed to mess up the food orders. My boss starting to give me dirty looks when I got the orders mixed up and the kitchen staff would yell at me when I sent food back. I was often sent into the kitchen to do the dishes in the back instead of dealing with unhappy customers.

  Some of the customers were so rude, and I had no patience for it. One lady tried to give me a few pennies as a tip and I said, “It’s okay, keep it.” Another time a man was so picky, he sent his food back three times. When he asked for ketchup with a snotty attitude, I grabbed the ketchup and dropped it onto the table in front of him and it splashed all over his nice clean white shirt. I apologized but couldn’t help but think that he might have deserved it.

  My customers must have complained about the poor service, because I eventually got fired. I didn’t disagree with my boss’s decision to fire me, but she did it in such a ruthless manner, right before Christmas. She said, “I’m sorry, Catherine but you’re just costing me too much money. You’re constantly getting your orders mixed up.” I had never been fired before. I wanted to defend myself, but instead I didn’t say a word and walked out feeling sheepish. At least now I know that my calling is not waitressing. It’s a tough job and, since then, I have had the utmost respect for people working in the hospitality industry.

  I took a job as a security guard shortly after that; since I was taking my degree in justice, I thought it would make sense to start working in a somewhat related field. I was posted in various locations around the city. My least favourite posting was the liquor store, where I had to stand on guard in my uncomfortable uniform for hours, feeling like a British guard. I would take my time wandering around the store, becoming very familiar with each type of wine and spirits. I did the rounds outside of the store on the hour to pass the time, but mostly I would just sta
nd until my feet felt like they were melting into the floor beneath me. I tried to imagine that I was a strong tree with my feet rooted firmly in the ground, but it just made my feet ache even more.

  While working the rounds in a downtown building one day, I got chased in the back alley by a homeless person on a bicycle, which left me winded. The last straw was when my employer wanted me to do the rounds in an underground parking lot at six in the morning, without a weapon. I wasn’t about to take a chance of getting murdered in an underground parking garage in the city, so I turned in my uniform and that was the end of my security guard days.

  ***

  JEREMY CAME TO VISIT ME and the kids halfway through our first year on the island and brought his unwanted turmoil with him. His “visit” turned into him permeating himself back into our lives. I know he didn’t mean to be the way he was, but he travelled all the way to see us only to be a thorn in my side once again.

  I was going to the gym daily at the school, working out on my own and doing some circuit training classes. I was preparing to take a physical test to become a corrections officer and needed to be in the best shape possible. I passed the physical test but didn’t want the job after all, because I chickened out when I took a tour of the prison. Something about having to be confined in a small space all day with convicted felons didn’t sit well with me, and if I couldn’t make it as a security guard than the odds were that I couldn’t make it in a maximum-security prison, either.

  Jeremy bought himself an electric scooter because he did not have his licence and had to have some way of commuting to the warehouse job he got on the other side of town. At first he purchased an electric bicycle from a local outdoor flea market, but it stopped working days later, so he upgraded to a used electric scooter that ran off a battery pack and had to be plugged into an outlet to charge.

  As he set off to work, he looked so ridiculous and oversized on his silver scooter with the Superman sticker slapped on the front. He travelled on the sidewalk at five kilometres an hour, inching his way to work before the crack of dawn. His scooter had just enough juice in it to get to work, and he had to charge it up during the day to make his trip back home.

  One weekend, Jeremy decided it would be fun to give scooter rides to the neighbourhood kids while I was out for the day. Jeremy was such a big kid at heart and never knew when to draw the line. He was riding recklessly around the block with Brooke on the back and crashed into the neighbour’s door. Shortly afterward, he crashed again after running over the neighbour’s pug. The poor pug skidded on its belly for a few feet until Jeremy realized what he had done. When I got home, he was in a heap on the ground next to the broken scooter, muttering something about wanting to go back to the North where he could go fishing — something that he hardly ever did to begin with. The neighbour rushed the poor little pug to the vet. The pug survived, but it had severe road rash and had to wear a cone for the next couple of weeks. I’m not sure if it was the pug that did it — maybe it was the mix of chaos and years of going through the same ups and downs — but whatever it was, my mind was finally made up. I was done.

  I’ll never forget the day that the kids and I drove their dad to the airport to catch his flight back to Yellowknife. We all knew that this was finally it. The last episode in the saga of Catherine and Jeremy. We had failed at every attempt to be together, and it was time to stop trying. I let one tear roll down the side of my face. I didn’t wipe it away in case he saw me crying, so I just let it dry up on my chin. The kids were silent. On any normal car ride, they would be fighting and screaming in the back seat, but they knew well enough to behave on this ride. The kids hugged him as he waited in line at the airport to check in. They didn’t shed a tear. If it were me leaving, they would be crying, devastated. I breathed a sigh of relief when we drove out of the airport parking lot. I realized that, all this time, I had been holding my breath. And I could finally breathe again. I knew the kids and I would be okay; as sad as it was, they were used to having their dad leave sporadically. It didn’t take us long to bounce back into our routine, without looking back.

  ***

  I GRADUATED FROM MY Bachelor of Arts in Justice that fall and was surprised with how easy the workload had been. I wasn’t ready to stop living on the island or learning, so I signed up for a master’s program at the university.

  When I told my mom about my educational pursuits, she was happy for me, but she didn’t understand why I was still in school after I had already achieved my goal of getting a degree. I tried to explain to her what a master’s degree was, but I gave up trying to get her to understand why I was still in school. I knew she was proud of me. She just didn’t exactly know how to go about showing it.

  I got a job across town working in a small salon. I just couldn’t get away from the spa practice, but it served me well and was something I could always fall back on if need be. We moved into a small apartment around the corner from the salon, trending with unique boutiques, outdoor food markets and live music on every street corner. I loved being submersed in the charm and the culture of the island.

  A little, one-bedroom apartment was all that we could afford, since I was only working part time at the salon, and it reminded me of when I lived with my grandma. River and Brooke shared the only bedroom in our cramped apartment, and my bed was set up in the dining area under a brass chandelier. Our kitchen couldn’t fit more than one person at a time. It wasn’t the ideal situation, but we were happy and healthy and that was all that mattered.

  I became friends with the girls at the spa. I was content, for the most part, but I was still feeling a bit lonely. One of the girls at the spa must have sensed it and said, “You know, Catherine, you should really put myself out there more.” A year had gone by since Jeremy left, and it was the longest we had ever been apart. She told me that I should try online dating. I had never thought of it because I was of the opinion that online dating was a sign of desperation, so I was reluctant to sign myself up. But my friend insisted that I would find someone nice and I had nothing to lose.

  I set up a profile and found I couldn’t keep up with the amount of people on there. It was a daunting task to rifle through the messages and profiles. I was just a drop in the bucket of thousands of lonely people looking for love, or something like it anyway. I connected with someone, and we seemed to hit it off without talking or meeting in person. The concept of blind dating was so out of my comfort zone that, the night that I was supposed to meet him, I stood him up. I wasn’t used to having to put myself out there. I needed to learn how to let down my guard, but when he came to pick me up, I wasn’t at our meeting spot. He didn’t give up so easily on me, though, and on the next try he came to my house to pick me up, so I couldn’t back out of it. It was raining hard that day and there was thunder and lightning, something that rarely occurred on the island, so I took it as a good sign.

  Trevor was a tall, blonde blue-eyed island boy. He came from a large, close-knit, European family. He lived with his brother in a little brick house with a nice backyard, where they played badminton all year long. His place wasn’t too far from mine and, although their house was crumbling, they both owned nice expensive sports cars. When I met Trevor, the first thing that came to mind was that he lied on his profile about being a non-smoker, but it didn’t bother me too much.

  After dinner, we went for a nice drive around town. He showed me the city from his point of view; having grown up on the island his entire life, he knew all the great spots that only locals would know about. We stopped at a beautiful look-out point with a perfect view of the ocean and stepped out into the rain. We sat on a bench and he leaned over and kissed me under the lightning that filled the sky, and I finally had my romance. I wondered if this is where he took all his dates. He was so handsome; I was almost certain he was a player and that I would get my heart broken, but I was filled with butterflies. I had not had a guy kiss me like that since as far as I can remember. Jeremy had
never kissed me with that kind of passion.

  Trevor was sweet, yet he still had a bad boy image to him that I took a liking to. I had been with Jeremy for so long that, when Trevor did nice things for me, I would always be taken by surprise. I slowly started understanding that this was what a healthy relationship must look like.

  We ended up spending the entire summer together, because Brooke and River were back up north with Jeremy’s mother. Jeremy’s mother helped me out as often as she could and was one of the only supportive people in my life. She took River and Brooke back to Yellowknife that summer so that I could have a break from the stress of taking care of the kids on my own. Little did I know that I would meet a special someone and focus all my time and attention on him.

  Trevor and I fell in love that summer. In the fall, when the kids were back with me, Trevor and I would go for long walks together and sneak away to the beach while they were in school. We would spend our time tanning, walking barefoot in the sand, collecting pieces of driftwood and beach glass. Things seemed perfect, but trouble in paradise slowly started brewing. River didn’t like Trevor. No matter how hard Trevor tried, he just couldn’t get River to warm up to him. Of course, it was to be expected that River didn’t want anyone replacing his dad and I didn’t push the issue. But Trevor went to extremes to try to get River to like him and even went as far as renting a boat one summer day to have one-on-one time with River. Being out in the middle of the ocean was Trevor’s idea of man-to-man bonding. I look back now and wonder why I ever allowed Trevor to take River out into the middle of the ocean in the first place. Trevor didn’t know the first thing about boats, let alone where he was going.

  They left in the early morning, and I was pacing the floors by the time evening rolled around. When Trevor finally called me and solemnly said, “Catherine … something bad happened,” my heart sank. He said he would tell me when he got to the house. I could only imagine the worst. I wanted to scream. By the time Trevor pulled up to the house, I was already outside on the sidewalk. I watched him pull up with River in the passenger side, and relief went through me like a wave. I hugged River tight while he and Trevor laughed and laughed about how overprotective I was.