Suffice it to say that grade seven didn’t get off to a good start. My brother tried to kill himself, and I ended up with an abusive asshole for a home-room teacher.
Mr. G was an angry and abusive man who should have never been allowed in a classroom. He threw chalk so hard it would leave bruises, and he wasn’t above slamming kids into the lockers whenever he could get away with it. Many parents complained to the principal, but for some unknown reason, he wasn’t fired. Everyone was afraid of him.
I used to love school, but things started to add up in my personal life, and this year, instead of school being a safe place, I found myself in a class with an abusive teacher who made no bones about how he felt about my disability. Instead of showing me a little compassion, he intentionally made a point of telling me the exact spot I was allowed to stand in during phys-ed class. I wasn’t allowed to sit on the ground or on a bench. I had to stand on the sidelines and watch my classmates play games. It was a constant reminder to everyone that I was a cripple, and it was humiliating.
Whenever my dad was willing to drive me to the hospital, I would go up to visit Dusty. His injuries were so severe that he was in the hospital for many months. Eventually, and with Dr. Cawsey’s help, dad had Dusty moved over to the Pasqua hospital, which was considerably closer to where we lived.
Dusty was never the same after that jump. He always had a hard time academically and was diagnosed with dyslexia. The brain injury he acquired from the fall onto the freeway further diminished his comprehension, and he spent the rest of his life struggling even more than he did as a child.
While he was in the hospital, the lease for his apartment was canceled, and his belongings were packed up. When he got out of the hospital, he came back home to live.
Children See…. then Do….
My dad was a prankster during our childhood. Hiding in a closet or behind a wall and then jumping out was common in our household. He would laugh his head off when we spilled whatever drink we were carrying and then said, “you better clean that up!” Most of the time, we would laugh afterward, too.
Sometimes, we would lie on the floor on our tummies watching TV. Back when we were kids, there were lots of spooky shows. There were several shows on Friday evening: Outer Limits, Night Gallery, and The Twilight Zone, to name a few.
One night, long before Leanne got married and Dusty moved out, we were all lying on the floor watching one of those shows. I got up to sit on the couch, but Leanne and Dusty were still lying on their stomachs watching the show. Dad thought it would be funny to lift the heaviest catalog he could find over his head and throw it down on the floor to see how high they would jump. Leanne let out a scream, and Dusty must have come a foot off the ground when that catalog hit. When they saw my dad laughing and the catalog on the floor, they calmed down and eventually started laughing themselves.
Another time, when I was around twelve, my dad hid inside my closet when I was in the bathroom, cleaning my teeth before bed. He waited patiently for several minutes until after I turned my light off before hitting the closet door from the inside and jumping out of the closet, loudly roaring. I bolted straight up and screamed so loud I scared my mom. She was in the living room watching TV when she heard the commotion and came running down the hallway into my room. When she came into my bedroom, she saw my dad trying to console me. She was furious with my dad for scaring me like that.
What neither of them knew at the time was that my brother-in-law, who I was now afraid of, was the real monster that came to me in the night, and how terrified I was at getting caught by my dad doing something I knew I wasn’t supposed to be doing but I had no idea how to make it stop.
DUSTY COMES HOME
As I mentioned earlier, my brother wasn’t the same after his accident. That’s what we called it – his accident. It wasn’t a suicide attempt or even my dad’s usual go-to mugging story – it was his accident. His psychiatrist had cautioned us all to be very patient with him. He told us that Dusty’s recovery would take a long time and that he may never remember what happened, but if he did, the memories would either come in little bits or all at once.
The biggest thing we all noticed was that Dusty was scared. Really scared. All the time. He was prone to panic attacks, hyperventilating, mood swings, and angry outbursts. When I think back now, I wonder what was going on in his mind and his body that created such intense fear. No one knows how long he lay there on the ring road in a pool of blood, in what must have been incredible pain, before the driver of the vehicle that nearly ran him over found him.
For the first few days, we all did our best to give him space so he could settle in. His memory was coming back in pieces, and at least he remembered who everyone was.
After a few weeks, I thought it might be fun to play hide and seek. Dusty didn’t remember what that was, so I told him to stand in my parent’s bedroom, count to 10 and then come and try to find me. I didn’t go very far. I hid in the bathroom with a pillow. As soon as Dusty stepped out of my parent’s bedroom, I jumped out, swinging the pillow, hitting him square in the belly. He took off running down the hallway, screaming. I stood there frozen. I knew that I was in big trouble.
After calming Dusty down, my dad was all over me. “What is wrong with you?” he spat.
“How could you scare your brother like that?” my mom said.
I was stunned, scared, and remorseful. We had played this jump-out and scare-somebody game for our entire childhood. I had no idea that Dusty was going to react this way. “I’m sorry” was all I could say.
MR. G AND THE CANOE
In the late spring, my class had the opportunity to go canoeing. It sounded like a lot of fun and finally something that I could do with the others, but it didn’t turn out nearly as well as I hoped.
We were all given life jackets and put into pairs. My friend Tammy agreed to be my canoe partner, but when it came time to carry the canoe over our heads and walk down to the water, it became evident that I wasn’t physically capable of doing that.
As soon as Mr. G saw that I couldn’t walk and hold the canoe above my head, he started screaming at me, calling me a weakling and a cripple and muttering out loud that he couldn’t believe that he had to take me on this trip. I was so frightened and humiliated that I could barely function. I had a hard time balancing inside the canoe, and apparently, I wasn’t paddling correctly. Mr. G started screaming at me, and I was terrified of what he might do next. The more he yelled at me, the more stressed I became, and the more the canoe rocked. I panicked when it started to rock, and the whole thing tipped over. The water in Wascana creek was full of weeds, goose droppings, and algae, and it was stinky, so Tammy and I were not only drenched in that awful water, we stunk too. We were both made to sit on the bus floor on the way back to the school. Not only had I been humiliated by my disability, but my friend had been humiliated too. It doesn’t take much to know that being singled out and humiliated in front of your peers isn’t fun, so Tammy started hanging out with another girl in our class named Belinda after that canoe trip.
When summer came, Dusty and I stayed with my Grandma out at the beach. Our neighbors from up the hill would come down to the cottage to visit, and the family’s patriarch, Mr. B, would play chess with Dusty. It was really good for his concentration, thinking and healing, so we were very thankful that Mr. B had the patience to teach Dusty how to play. Occasionally, the two would go fishing.
The cottage's main room was lined with windows, and my Grandma had two kinds of curtains: light flowery summer curtains and heavy dark red velvet curtains for late summer and fall. This year though, the summer curtains were never going to find their way onto the rods. Dusty was adamant that Grandma leave the heavy curtains on the window, and she did. Every evening after the sun went down, Dusty would move from window to window, making sure that the curtain covered every bit of glass.
Our bathroom was an outhouse at the end of the yard. It was about fifty feet away from the cottage, nestled in front of and beside a bush. There was a bright floodlight at the back door of the cabin that lit up the yard all the way to the outhouse. Dusty wouldn’t go to the bathroom alone, and my Grandma didn’t go outside after dark because she couldn’t see very well. She had a commode that she used if she needed to pee. That left me to go with him every time he needed to go.
My Grandma would stand at the back door watching through the window. I carried a flashlight for extra light. Before Dusty would go inside the outhouse, I had to prove to him that no one (human, bat, or rodent) was in the outhouse or in the bushes. Once he was satisfied that he was safe, he would step inside the outhouse, close the door and relieve himself. When he was done, I would walk him back to the cottage, then turn around and go back to the outhouse if I had to go.
One night we headed down the yard for our last trip to the bathroom before bed. Just as we were coming up to the outhouse, I saw something that looked like a cat move quickly past the door. I told Dusty to stop and wait while I checked it out. I shone the flashlight toward what I thought was a cat, only to see a white stripe down its back!
“Skunk!” I yelled, and we both turned and ran as fast as we could back to the cottage. When we got inside, my Grandma said, “whatever was wrong? You both ran so fast I thought St. Nick got ya!” That night, everyone used the commode.
FRIEND OR FOE?
One of the friends I made at Papa’s lived out in the village year-round. Her dad owned a septic tank cleaning business, and her uncle ran the post office store.
The summer after Dusty’s accident, she introduced me to a Regina Police officer who had a cottage out at the lake. His cabin was on the opposite side of Center Street, closer to Buena Vista. My friend Susan would babysit for this man’s family, and because he was a police officer, I expected him to be a safe person.
One day, he offered to take Susan and me out for a drive in the country and to have a few beers. We drove down the old highway and into a field. It was a hot summer day, and the beers went down pretty fast. He was friendly and full of compliments – just what young girls with low self-esteem want. The alcohol started working, and before I knew it, this man was having sex with both of us. I don’t know if Susan was a willing participant, but I certainly was not. He was raping me. I was fourteen years old and so drunk the force of his penis slamming into me caused me to puke, which put an abrupt end to the whole thing. He was angry that I puked all over him and started yelling, but my friend calmed him down. She helped me get dressed, convinced him to drive me home, and helped me into the cottage. She told my Grandma that I wasn’t feeling well and just to let me sleep.
The next day, I woke up with quite a hangover. I remembered everything that had happened, and I was confused. Was I really supposed to give my body to every man I have a drink with? He was a police officer, and I was taught police officers were protectors – not predators. I began wondering if this is what all men are like.
After breakfast, I went for a long walk. Why did this keep happening to me? Was I doing something wrong by being friendly? Why do all men think that my body is theirs for the taking? The more I thought about it, the angrier I became. I decided that was the last time any man would force himself on me. From this moment on, I would be in charge of who I was willing to have sex with.
If you know anyone who has suffered childhood sexual abuse, please feel free to share my story. Sometimes, reading about someone who has had similar experiences helps you to have the courage to get help.