North of Normal- A memoir of my wilderness childhood, my unusual family, and how I survived both

by Cea Sunrise Person

  I wiped my eyes and stared at her back, wanting nothing in the world except for her to turn toward me. When several minutes passed and she didn’t, I finally lifted the door flap and slipped out into the near-darkness. The air felt cold. I walked over to our canvas tent, still spread out on the ground beneath our mess of belongings, and bounced the flashlight’s beam around until I found one of Mom’s sweaters. It smelled like her as I pulled it over my head. Through blurry eyes, I went to work, taking everything off the canvas and placing it in a heap under a tree. The tipi glowed yellow in the dark. I heard stoned laughter, and then the sound of breaking glass. I untied the ropes from the tent and tugged and pulled until it was flat. Then I found the poles, took them out of their nylon bag and snapped them together, and stood beside the tent and started to cry again. I knew perfectly well I wouldn’t be able to put it up by myself.

  I went back to the heap and found my sleeping bag, which smelled like smoke but was undamaged, and unrolled it on the ground. I can’t be your mom all the time, she had said to me. Did that mean she didn’t want to be my mother at all anymore? I didn’t even know my dad, and my grandparents were pretending I had never existed. I went to sleep with tears soaking through the neck of Mom’s sweater, wondering what would happen to me if she ever decided to give me away.

  The smell of hash woke me up. I turned my head, and Mom was curled behind me with her arms around my waist. “I’m sorry,” she said as she cried into my hair. “I’m so sorry. I’m here now.”

  I hugged her back and glanced around. Karl and Larry, both of them sober and quiet in the light of sunrise, were busy building the tent around us. I closed my eyes again, and when I woke up a few hours later, the tent was built. Mom was still at my side, fast asleep. And a strange girl was dangling a hacked-up earthworm in front of my face.

  “I chopped it up with my very own knife,” she announced, flicking a switchblade out of her pocket to show me. I blinked back at her. She leaned forward and stared at me, almost hissing into my face. “But you can’t use it even if you say pretty please.”

  KELLY AND I COULD not have been more opposite. She was dark where I was blond, short where I was tall, chubby where I was thin, and fearless where I was shy. At least, that’s what I thought at first.

  Next to Kelly, I felt about as exciting as a bowl of cold cream of wheat. She was eight, three years older than me, and she took every chance to show me how tough and/or daring she was. During our first weeks together, she ran barefoot through a swarm of red ants, threw herself from a tree branch twenty feet off the ground, mixed spit into her parents’ tub of yogurt, and showed me a blister on her arm the size of a banana that she got from falling against the woodstove. She wore a too-small T-shirt with an iron-on rainbow nearly every single day, and she always had something in her mouth; if it wasn’t food, it was one of her fake joints. She liked to dry clover, roll it into one of her dad’s Zig-Zag papers, and then smoke it while pretending it was a reefer—something that always gave her parents a good laugh. And she did like to chew gum, as it turned out, but not the kind you could make from tree sap. Her gum was pink and rubbery and sweet smelling, and she blew it into huge bubbles that popped onto her face in a sticky mess.

  Kelly and her family had been in Lake Minnewanka for a year and a half, but they still lived much like city folk. Their reason for coming to the bush was never completely clear to me, but Larry did spend a lot of time writing letters to the government (with no return address), which he would drive to the town post office once a week with his family in tow. Since they weren’t big on bathing and cleaning in the lake, they would also hit the Y for showers and laundry while they were at it. Not much of a hunter, Larry kept a large store of wheat puffs, Kraft dinner and canned pork ’n’ beans in the tipi to feed his family.

  Maybe it was because of this constant pull between two worlds that Kelly hadn’t taken well to the wilderness. I would walk along the shore with her, pretending to be interested as she went on and on about how much she missed things “back home,” a place where she was able to watch TV, lie on her waterbed and neck with her ten-year-old boyfriend.

  Me around the time we lived in Lake Minnewanka.

  “I’ve even Frenched, you know,” she said to me, digging in her pocket for her father’s roach clip. “It’s really gross. But cool.”

  “Wow,” I said flatly, thinking of the many times I’d seen Karl and Mom’s tongues touching. I couldn’t imagine anything grosser, except maybe real sex.

  Kelly struck a match and lit up one of her joints, blowing smoke through her nose like a bulldog. “Your parents are pretty dumb to be growing pot, you know,” she said.

  “They’re not my parents,” I told her for the fiftieth time. “Karl isn’t my dad.”

  “Whatever. You know what’ll happen to you if the cops find out?”

  “Of course,” I said lightly, picking at a line of tree sap. “We’ll go to the slammer.”

  “Not true. Your parents will, but you’ll go to the orphanage.”

  “Orphanage? What’s that?”

  “A place for kids with bad parents. Or parents who don’t want their kids anymore.”

  I swallowed hard. Well, now I had it, my answer to where I would go if Mom ever gave me away. But Kelly, I knew, was not someone to show fear in front of. Casually, I rolled my tree pitch into a ball and popped it into my mouth.

  “Oh yeah? Well, Karl isn’t scared of the cops. We already got busted once, but we escaped. The cops chased us down but we were faster. So there.”

  I turned away, but not before I caught the look of shock on Kelly’s face. After that, I became a bit more interesting to her.

  LARRY AND SUSANNE SEEMED to do almost everything in the nude—cooking, eating, wood chopping, even hiking. Susanne had a body like a Buddha, skinny legs with a huge belly and boobs. As for Larry, he had a funny-looking wiener. Unlike Karl’s and Papa Dick’s, Larry’s looked like it was inside out. Sometimes, when he sat by the fire, it would inch out of its skin like a fat purple slug. I couldn’t help but stare, even though he caught me looking once and shook his finger at me like I was a naughty girl.

  One night, I was sleeping soundly when I heard a scream. I sat up in bed, my heart racing. “Mommy!” I called out into the darkness. “What was that?”

  She didn’t answer, so, clutching Suzie Doll by one arm, I got up and felt my way across the tent. Mom’s bed was empty. Tears sprang to my eyes. From outside I heard another shriek, this one even louder than before. I crept to the door and peeked out.

  Larry and Susanne’s tipi glowed orange in the night. That’s where the screaming was coming from, I realized. I tiptoed down the path and quietly lifted their door flap.

  Susanne was lying naked on her bed, turned away from me as she moaned. Mom was sitting beside her, rubbing her lower back while Larry paced the floor with his arms wrapped around his head. Karl sat on the tipi’s only chair as if none of this was happening, reading a Rolling Stone magazine with a picture of John Denver on the cover. I looked for Kelly, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  “Cea,” Mom said calmly, waving me inside. “Come on in. Susanne’s baby is almost here.”

  My jaw dropped. “Baby?”

  “Yes. Didn’t you know she was pregnant?”

  I shook my head. Not only had I not known, but also I was pretty sure I had never seen a baby before. In fact, I hadn’t even seen a picture of one; Mom had told me that Papa Dick took lots of pictures of me after I was born, but most of them were burned in the fire in our second tipi. And then I remembered Suzie Doll. I held her up in front of Mom’s face.

  “Mommy, will the baby look like this?”

  She smiled. “A little.”

  I crept closer and looked at Susanne’s sweaty face. “Why was she screaming?”

  “She’s in labor. It can be really painful.”

  Larry stopped pacing and bent over his wife. “Here, babe, this’ll help take the edge off,” he said, holding a joint to her lip
s. Susanne tried to inhale, but her breath caught in her throat and she started to cough. She squeezed her eyes shut and finally let out another long scream.

  I clapped my hands over my ears and backed away. “Mommy—”

  “Shh, it’s okay. This is how it’s supposed to happen. This is how it was when I had you.”

  She smiled at me, and I relaxed a little. But the screaming didn’t stop. In fact, it only seemed to be getting worse, turning Susanne’s face into a mask of pain as she panted and puffed. Sweaty strings of dark hair clung to her bare shoulders.

  Finally, after what seemed like hours, Susanne turned onto her back and started rocking side to side. “I think . . .” she said breathlessly, “I think it might be time . . .” She lay back on her elbows and pushed her hips in the air.

  “Okay,” Mom said, grabbing a basin. “Your water hasn’t broken yet, so let me take a look.”

  Susanne opened her legs wider, and I peeked over Mom’s shoulder. What I saw there looked nothing like a baby. A big balloon was bulging out of Susanne’s crotch.

  “Mommy, what’s—?”

  Just then, the balloon broke with a pop. Water gushed everywhere as Mom jammed the basin under Susanne’s butt. Most of it sloshed onto the bed and some even hit me in the face. I crouched down on the floor, and a soaking wet towel landed on top of my head. I clawed it off just in time to see another one flying toward me.

  “Cea! Help me clean up. Take that towel and start mopping.”

  I watched, frozen, as Susanne let out a scream that made the old ones sound like whispers. I dropped the towel and slammed my hands to my ears.

  Larry ran to Susanne’s side and knelt beside her, his face pale. “You can do it, babe, I know you can. Just—”

  “I can’t I can’t I can’t! It hurts too much!”

  “You can!” He held the joint out again. “Here, have a toke—”

  She batted his hand away, sending the joint flying across the bed. Mom reached over and handed it back to Larry. Then she pointed at Susanne’s shoulder.

  “She doesn’t need drugs right now, she just needs you.”

  It was the first time I had seen my mother look so in control.

  Larry nodded and took his place, and from the other side of the tipi, Karl glanced up from his magazine and smiled.

  “Do you feel ready to push now?” she asked Susanne. “Okay. Take my hands. Try to pull me toward you. My mother taught me this.”

  I watched as Susanne did as she was told. Her eyes squeezed shut, her face turned red and her hair fell forward as she grunted. She looked like she was taking a giant poop. I looked down at her crotch again, but all I could see was lots of black pubic hair and some whitish stuff leaking out in a thin trickle.

  “Mommy,” I whispered when Susanne grew quiet again. She was lying on her back, breathing hard as she moaned. “Where’s the baby?”

  “It’s coming. It might take a while. Why don’t you go find Kelly?”

  “Where is she?”

  “I’m not sure. She can’t be far, though.”

  I hesitated, torn between my urge to watch things unfold and my urge to escape. Finally, I turned away and left the tipi. The sky had brightened to a dark blue canvas painted with darker clouds. Over to the east, I could see the first rays of morning sun.

  I found Kelly down at the lake. She was sitting against a tree trunk with one of her fake joints. I could still hear Susanne from this distance, yelling and carrying on.

  “Hi,” I said, dropping down beside Kelly. “My mom says the baby’s almost here. Don’t you want to see it being born?”

  “Nah.” Kelly lit her joint and inhaled.

  It was cold out here. I wrapped my arms around my legs and hugged them to my body.

  “I think it’s going to be a boy,” I tried again, but Kelly stayed silent. I gazed out at the lake, silver in the moonlight, and wished she would say something. “What do you think it’s going to look like?” I meant a baby in general, but such a thing was obviously nothing new to her.

  “I don’t know. My parents, I guess,” she replied.

  From the tipi, we heard a roar follow the screams. Kelly glanced toward it, but she didn’t move. A moment later there was a sound that I’d never heard before. It was a high-pitched cry, but it sounded like it was coming from inside a tin can.

  “The baby!” I shouted, jumping up. “It’s here!”

  Kelly ground her fake joint out under her heel and put her arms around her knees. I stood beside her a moment longer, hoping she would get up, but when she didn’t I broke into a run back to the tipi. Even an hour later, when my mother and I returned home, Kelly still hadn’t shown up.

  I HAD BEEN RIGHT: the baby was a boy. Larry and Susanne named him Benjamin, and Benjamin really liked to cry—especially during the night. Since their tipi was easily within shouting distance, Mom gave me cotton pads to stuff in my ears when I went to sleep. Other than that, Benjamin was pretty boring. When he wasn’t crying he mostly slept, except when he was stuck to one of Susanne’s boobs, whose nipples had turned dark brown. Mom liked to sit beside Susanne while she nursed the baby, stroking his soft head.

  “Isn’t he precious?” she said to me. “It reminds me so much of when you were little.”

  “Yeah.” I touched his tiny fingers. “Will I have a baby someday?”

  “If you want to, honey. I hope so. I would love to be a grandma.”

  “Yeah. I guess I’ll have a little girl then. Boys are kind of noisy.”

  She smiled at me. “Wasn’t it magical watching the birth?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I answered, suddenly shy, and then I thought of something. I knew perfectly well how babies were made, and yet Mom never seemed to get pregnant.

  “Mommy, why don’t you get pregnant too?”

  She smiled, stood up and led me out of the tipi. When we got to our tent, she brought me over to her bed and reached under her pillow, taking out a shallow plastic cup. “I use this,” she said. “It’s called a diaphragm.”

  I gazed at it from a safe distance.

  “Here, I’ll show you how it works.” And with that Mom pulled down her pants, squatted over the bed and stuck it up her crotch. “You see? It rests against the cervix and keeps the sperm from getting in.”

  “Oh.” I blinked and turned away, more than a little put off. I had been planning to ask her if I could use her diaphragm thingie as a dish to feed Suzie Doll, but I didn’t really feel like it anymore.

  IF KELLY WAS LOOKING for trouble before her baby brother was born, it was nothing compared to afterward. Which would have been fine, except that she also wanted someone to get into it with, and of course that someone was me.

  She would seek me out each morning to bug me about setting the outhouse on fire, putting ants in the alfalfa sprout jar, or running away back to the city with her. Reminding her that we would be caught was pointless, as she would just shrug, blow a bubble until it popped on her face, and then continue on to her next badass idea. By the time we’d been in Lake Minnewanka for a couple of months, I’d had about as much of her as I could take.

  One day, feeling worn down, I waited until her mother called her in for lunch and then took off into the woods by myself. I liked being alone in the forest. I had already hiked it in every direction from our camp, so I knew my way around really well. Besides, I had Karl’s red flags to keep me on track. Karl liked to go into the woods to tie them onto tree branches, doing what he called “marking his territory.” Every now and then, he would bring along his surveyor’s tape to measure how much land he had and then write it all down in a little spiral notebook, which he told Mom he would use one day to prove something called “squatter’s rights.”

  Today seemed like a good day for horse riding. I picked up a long branch from the ground, put it between my legs and started running through the trees. It felt good to be away from Kelly, who always laughed at me when I rode stick horses or talked to rocks like they were my friends. Twigs scratched at
my bare legs, but I didn’t care. I was pretending that Papa Dick was hiding in the bushes, admiring me as I rode. Wow, Cea sure can control that wild beast, he was thinking. I had long ago given up trying to pretend he and Grandma Jeanne never existed, but I wondered if I would ever see them again.

  I heard a twig snap behind me and turned. I knew to hold perfectly still if I saw a bear, and to play dead if that didn’t work. There didn’t seem to be any animals around, but I decided to head back to camp just to be safe. I set off running, leaping over logs and crashing through bushes. After a minute, I saw a path up ahead and stopped. It petered out into the bushes behind me, but ahead it forked into two trails. They weren’t real trails—the ground was just a little worn in places from Karl’s footsteps. I knew he tied his flags about every half mile, and from where I stood, I couldn’t see any. After thinking for a while, I chose the path on my left, but a few minutes later I noticed an unfamiliar clearing. I went back and tried the right fork, hoping to recognize something, but nothing jogged my memory. Come to think of it, I wasn’t even sure I had taken a path at all that morning, especially in my hurry to get away from Kelly. Increasingly desperate, I looked for a tree trunk and found moss growing on one side. I knew that moss always grows on the north side of trees, but since I had no idea which direction the camp was, it did me little good. I sank to the ground and took a deep breath.

  I was lost.

  Stay put and someone will come, I said to myself in my head. It was one of Papa Dick’s top five rules of the wilderness: stay where you are if you get lost, know your edible plants, avoid a large animal’s eyes, dress warmly in layers and never leave home without matches and a knife.

  I put my face in my hands and started to cry. I had left home wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and the early-afternoon sky was quickly turning cloudy. I had no matches, and I certainly didn’t have a knife. And, having skipped lunch, I was starving. One of Papa Dick’s phrases rung in my head: Hypothermia can also happen in summertime. He would have been furious with me.