by Rudy Wiebe
She finally ran out of words—“I’m not taking care of your kid too. If she’s damaged it’s your own fault”—and she left.
Then Aunt Josephine asked me, “Where’s the sixty dollars I left with you, that Dale drank up? I need it now.”
I told her she’d get it when I could get outa here. So she left too, and I freaked out, the pain hit me so hard; they’d play their cruel games over me if I was dead in my coffin. I was ripping out tubes, staggering around for clothes, I was getting out, who cares if I die, my mother coming from Winnipeg just to yell and my aunt demanding sixty lousy bucks! I was screaming.
A nurse came running, one of the kind ones. She talked me down, calm, and convinced me I needed help, I must stay till I was strong. I needed someone to talk to, and she found a psychologist at Mental Health for me. When I got back to Heritage Apartments the first thing I did was tell Dale he had to pay back Aunt Josephine’s money and leave. And he did both.
Drinking was as common as sleep in the world where I grew up, and it had nothing to do with “social” drinking. In our family you drank head-on steady to get drunk. And so I learned by watching, and drinking hard liquor off and on in Butte until I hit the blackout and that scared me—I hardly drank again till the four-week drunk at Stand Off. I started on beer in Winnipeg and drank steadily for almost two years. I stopped for most of the two and a half years with Fred; I abstained completely when I was pregnant and until Chantal was a year old. I limited myself to two beers the few times I went out in Wetaskiwin before I met Dwa.
So I did not recognize that I was an alcoholic. Though I didn’t know what, or why, I did know something was wrong with me; sometimes I was so horribly down. Except when I was alone with Chantal.
Affer the hospital, the apartment building was free of family: Auntie Rita had married Albert Yellowbird and moved out; the others had left too; and I wouldn’t answer the buzzer, so no one I knew could gain access to the building. One day the buzzer went and I wouldn’t open the door but I listened on the intercom: it was two girls, one a schoolgirl cousin. I heard her say to her friend, “Just as well we don’t visit. Her mother says she’s crazy.”
Chantal came and hugged my legs; I was crying but she looked up at me with her deep black eyes and I knew all was fine; who needs to care what name-callers say anyway. A short, stocky little girl sixteen months old and lovelier than ever, a chatterbox all day long and speaking only the language we had between us. She’d sing and prattle and I’d ask her, “Is that right, really?” and she’d nod laughing, it was such a funny game; she always caught the words, the tone when I said it, “Is that right, really?” and she’d nod so hard her whole body bounced yes, yes! I just hugged her, both of us rolling around on the rug.
If the weather was a bit warmer, we’d go out on our little balcony to play on a blanket in the fresh air. I told her the story of the girl locked in a tower by a wicked witch and one day her prince came, she let down her hair, and he climbed up to her, and they had lots of babies, little brothers and sisters, and so lived happily ever after. The balcony faced a street going north, distant lines of trees and roofs of houses all around, but there was never a boxy 1961 Chevy van down there splattered with paint.
Once, soon after the hospital, I had seen Dwayne come into the bank and I hid behind a large billboard—bright daylight and what would he think of me?—I had the telephone number he’d slipped me, but now I didn’t dare call it. What could I say? Finally one evening I talked myself into using the excuse that I had left my purse in his truck, and a man’s voice said, “Hello”—but it wasn’t Dwayne. The guy said Dwayne was still working. I was so relieved I hung up before he could finish his short sentence. I tried again, but I couldn’t leave my name and he never seemed to be in. Then one evening his voice answered. I could just blurt out, “Howdy, howdy … is Dwayne Wenger there?”
A pause. Then he said, “Are you my tall, beautiful Indian girl?”
“I am tall,” I said, and was going to start on the purse, “and I met you——”
But he cut in, “Hey, I’ve been waving at you all over town; you always disappear.”
I never walked around town. He’d mistaken another Native woman for me; he’d been trying to get her attention for weeks!
He asked, “What are you drinking?”
“Tea.”
“Don’t move,” he said. “I’ll be right over.”
I was overjoyed and terrified at the same time and tried to fix myself up fast. He hadn’t seen me since that night and now that dumb drinking song kept reminding me of our first meeting: “All women get prettier at closing time.” But he came to the apartment wearing his old paint coveralls, and told me he had spray-painted his boots just for the occasion, a perfect black. They looked very smart, but I could still see the screw; he was a man with nothing to prove, he was himself, which was fine with me. Dwayne Joseph Wenger; my Dwa.
And a strange courtship we had of it. That first time he arrived sipping Southern Comfort, and drunk. Most of the evening he spent on the floor playing with Chantal; and I was surprised both at him for doing it and at her: she was so independent with everyone, playing her own games and never bothering any adults. But when he came in she pulled him down and crawled all over him, playing with him, unsteady as he was. It grew late; I finally got her settled in bed and came back into the kitchen. Dwayne was standing there, passed out on his feet, a puddle of urine spreading on the floor.
So, he was staying the night. I set him in a chair and ran a tub of hot water; when I came to get him he reached up and smudged my lipstick.
“I don’t like … that stuff,” he muttered.
There seemed no point at the time in discussing make-up. I helped him to the bathroom and told him to get his dirty clothes off and get in there. But he slumped down on the toilet and passed out again. So I undressed him and tried to hoist him into the tub; he was heavy and he came round and fumbled to hold onto me, I should get in too, get in with him.
I gave him a push and he fell into the tub; that brought him round and he slammed about, thinking he was drowning in six inches of water—“I can’t swim!”—but I slapped a bar of soap in his hand.
“Use it,” I told him.
I didn’t want him sleeping where I couldn’t see him, so after he was washed I put him in my bed and covered him with separate blankets. He was asleep instantly but woke me at dawn, shaking me awake.
“Where are my clothes?”
“You pissed yourself last night,” I told him.
“I gotta go work.”
He stood there naked—he had to go work!—the only guy I ever cleaned up who thought about work first thing in the morning after a drunk. I gave him some of my large clothes and he was gone. I fell asleep again, and I don’t know, maybe I was smiling.
Leon got out of prison in Montana and I invited him north: after all, he was my brother and maybe in Canada he could somehow break his self-destructive cycle of prisons. He moved in with me and began working for Dwa; they got along well, but Dwa’s roommate, Jerry, didn’t like him. Jerry would get coked up and head-butt Leon, which always scared me: if Leon got mad he might kill him. But Leon was actually more interested in finding out how Jerry could break beer bottles on his head without knocking himself out, so they practised doing that. Then Dwa and Leon went to a bar and ended up getting stupid together: Leon drank beer pouring out of a hole in the sole of his workboot, and then Dwa curled up his thong and drank beer using it as a funnel. Soon the bouncers were trying to throw them out, and Dwa went easy—in six years I never knew him to fight anyone—but Leon was too macho. He fought them till he lay on the floor sticking his tongue out at the guy trying to choke him, sneering, egging him on to choke him harder.
So Dwa and Leon became working and drinking buddies, but I still had to protect myself. Drinking and pot were never enough for Leon, he demanded women; he put the blocks to me about sleeping with him, and I couldn’t stand it. I told Dwa and he said he’d fire him. “
No,” I said, “he’ll still be around but with no job. It’ll be worse.”
I liked the independence of Dwa and me seeing each other whenever we wanted to, each at our own place. The first time Dwa came up for lunch he asked if I wanted to go see some land he might buy, so we drove out. He told me he’d grown up in the north, at Swan Hills, hilly country all covered with bush, and his first girlfriend had been a Native girl from there. Like me he loved forests and trees, plants. We met some Cree men he knew and we finished the day drinking in Hobbema. It was different; at one point the women there beat up the men with beer bottles. We drove back to Wetaskiwin, tearing over the gravel roads on the rez, and his hand slid up to my crotch and I dug my nails into his arm and drew blood. That frightened me: to men blood is no joke. But he just laughed.
“Serves me right,” he said.
When he visited and had supper, he would leave money in the fridge to help me, but I didn’t want to feel I owed anyone anything. Once when he was helping me move out what was left of Mom’s furniture, he asked to kiss me; he said, “You want to neck?” I wanted to snuggle but it wasn’t at all romantic; I was sober, he drunk; I was shy and self-protective—he’s a man, if I give in he gets what he wants and he’s gone—so I told him I’d just gotten rid of an abusive partner and I wanted independence—what I really wanted was a date.
So we had a date, and one night in my apartment we went to bed together. He said I was wild, though I knew I was drunk and giving him what I knew men wanted; I was robotic, I had no feelings to remember. And he got up early again and was gone to work without a word. During the day he phoned: did I want to go on a picnic? Of course, so we drove into the country and my hat caught on fire and so did the painting tarps we were sitting on. A few days later he cooked me my favourite supper—spaghetti—at his house. After we put Chantal to bed, we sat on the couch. I was shy and he would undo my shirt and while he was busy with my jeans I’d button my shirt again. That went on for a while, I got excited and enjoyed it. It was wonderful.
After that, either he was at my place or I at his. But I had Chantal to care for and we had to work around Leon, who lived with me, and it was no good. Leon takes over any space he lives in. Independence disappeared for me, so I paid the rent a month for Leon and moved in with Dwa. All I asked was that we not lie to each other: he knew some of the problems I had with my family, okay, and he should have enough respect not to cheat on me. We agreed on everything; he didn’t speak about my troubles with Leon or anyone else; he just acted as if me living with him would change things for me.
Life was better. When Chantal and I came back from that dreadful trip to Mom in Winnipeg and moved in permanently with Dwa, Leon was still working for him and, after the fight in the bar, sleeping in Dwa’s garage. Life was basically good: living with Dwa became almost a business adventure. I answered his business phone, listed appointments and calls, cleaned the house, cooked, and sometimes went to help him on a job when he was really busy. When he came home wasted from work and drink, I’d massage his tired body with baby oil and he’d pass out or drift off into sleep. He loved Chantal and she adored him, she’d have all her stuffed toys waiting at the door for him to come in. She even started to call him “Daddy,” and whenever Dwa’s little boy, Taylor—from his previous marriage—came to stay with us, Chantal and I took care of him while Dwa kept on with his daily work; he’d underbid on every job to get it, and slave away, work, work; his daily life was to disappear into work.
Taylor was three when he first saw Chantal; he pointed at her and said, “Dad, she’s a nigger.”
“No,” I told him, “she’s Indian.”
He was a lovely boy, and we all grew close together; Taylor loved his dad and so did I. Dwa was so good and decent, never doing to me what other men had done; kindness was a deep and unending part of his nature, totally harmless when drunk.
In many ways our living together was convenient for us both; I loved him beyond all I can say and we four grew to love each other. We never went out because he did not want to. I worked on the yard, cleaning up junk buried all over in the long grass, dug the garden area bigger, scraped the picket fence and garage for painting. Dwa drank steadily, a little all day long—he especially like painting inside houses that had a liquor stash to sample—but it didn’t seem to affect either his work or how he reacted to people. But I could not do that. I never drank in public at all, and hardly ever at home at first. He’d come home, eat, and pass out asleep.
We never went out together; it was almost as if he did not want to be seen anywhere with me. I tried to get him to go camping, but if he did he’d be drunk and miserable the whole time. He cared for me and he played with the kids, but I was to stay in the house and care for them; that was all. I tried to put up with it, though I knew it wasn’t good for me or him, always being alone together. But our mutual need kept us together somehow. I had a home, family, a gentle man who was excellent with kids, steady food and a van: go with it. I told myself again and again.
Nevertheless, there are so many arms and legs to my life, and Dwa wasn’t a person to ask me about any of them. Even before my nightmares became impossible to hide from him, I knew I had to start telling him about my abuse. But he did not want to hear anything like that. We were together almost six years before our Wetaskiwin world collapsed and we knew each other very well, though in certain ways we didn’t at all. I should have told him more.
And then babies happen, of course. I was wildly happy for my three babies, always amazed I could actually have them after all that had happened to my physical body, a new, unspoiled person growing inside me. After Chantal I wanted a dozen babies because I knew I had enough love and experience to care for all of them. But I also knew I should tell him there was something hounding me, something huge always dragging itself after me. I thought of myself as basically a friendly, welcoming person, but I was home all the time with the kids—I really had no friends in the area where we lived, Dwa never took me anywhere to associate with his business people, and the rare times when his parents visited he’d often call me down in front of them, as if to put me in my place, and I felt so low about myself I’d just hang on, shut up until they were gone and the two of us were together again, alone, and it was okay. For a time I accepted that he have me just to himself.
But sometimes our life together became too much. I was too intense with the next-door neighbours, too in-your-face. They’d tell me I was so protective about my kids that at times I was downright offensive.
That in turn reminded me of Mom always saying I was crazy, and I’d suddenly become very angry that anyone leaning over a fence could make me feel I was stupid. I’d face them right down: children, family, property, everything closely personal about me became intense, from cleaning the house to standing up for what I believed in. And later, when I started drinking heavily again, then the old skid pattern returned again: if anyone bothered me and I felt I had to protect myself, I was ready to fight till one of us dropped.
Nonetheless, those first years with Dwa were the best of my adult life. An alcoholic needs someone who will organize the practical business of living and put up with him without nagging when he messes his bed. I had such low self-esteem—my own past made me feel I was a drunk myself—that I was happy to work hard like Dwa and not expect much. I tried to keep him happy and that was such a change from his former wife, who had always wanted more and more of everything—a better house, car, furniture, times out, whatever you can think of—that Dwa loved me more than ever: just keep me to himself, as long he could stay happily drunk and work driven by bennies, what more could he ask from life? Other people just caused problems; keep them away.
Things began to change for us in the spring of 1985, when I found I was pregnant. He said he felt he was trapped into marriage right after high school when his girlfriend was pregnant with Taylor. He said to me, “Get an abortion,” but I said, “No.” Okay, Dwa agreed, but he was around less, working more, and still drinking too, and I was
busy getting ready for the baby. I loved being pregnant. Dwa and Chantal would kid me. “Big Fat Momma!” James was born in December 1985, weighing ten pounds eight ounces, a thirteen-inch head and his body twenty-four inches long; the placenta also weighed ten pounds—“O-o-o-h a big baby!” the Hindu doctor said when his head appeared.
By May 1986, I was pregnant again. At that time Dwa had to answer long-delayed impaired-driving charges in court, to which were added possession of pot as well. He was sentenced to Grande Cache prison for six months.
Dwa and I never did talk about sex. I just pretended whatever we did was easy and natural, I was satisfied if I made him happy. He accepted sex straight on, no frills necessary, and he truly thought he was satisfying me because I’m a good faker, he never suspected anything short of all right and mostly wonderful was happening. And to an extent it was, because he never seemed to expect anything beyond routine—he would not let me touch my clitoris during love-making, that was all his—he did everything he thought made me happy, and once a woman starts faking it you can never stop because then you’ll destroy his manly self. So, if he was satisfied that satisfied me too, and best of all he wasn’t violent.
But I know I didn’t experience the profound depth of sex I heard about, how it can roll you over and turn you inside out—how could I? I was taught sex was dirty, and it was tied to too many drunken assaults, to my buried child torture, to the nightmares that began to erupt into my sleep: I was being raped by something half-human, half-goat, and I was terrified, I couldn’t stop it, totally helpless. That horror began to seep into my daylight awareness. I couldn’t forget this beast thing whispering. I would cry while it whispered, “Just wait, you’ll really like this” and as it started to rape me I could feel my body react—I’d wake up screaming beside Dwa. It was too, too horrible. I dreaded falling asleep after, and then would wake up to another day of restlessness that I knew I could only numb with booze, not wanting to eat, yet trying for everyone’s sake to appear fine—Vonnie is fine, Mommy is just fine. I never had an orgasm, and yet the comfort of Dwa’s arms was all I really needed or wanted.