“Did you get all of these bruises today?” he demanded.
Annie snatched her arm back. “I, uh―”
A door slammed.
“Where’s my goddam kid?” a man yelled.
Mr. Pierce staggered into our living room. He reeked of sour beer and cigarettes, and his clothes looked like they hadn’t been washed in months.
“Where ish-ee?” he slurred. “That little bitch.”
My father’s mouth thinned. “Mr. Pierce, watch the language. There are kids around.”
The man blinked. “What the hell you talkin’ about? She’s my kid. I’ll talk to her how I want.”
When Mr. Pierce noticed me sitting next to his daughter, he scowled. “Get away from that white kid, you worthless piece of―”
“Mr. Pierce!” my father bellowed.
My mother strode to my side and pulled me off the couch. Her arms surrounded me protectively and I could almost taste her fear.
“C’mon, Annie,” Mr. Pierce growled. “We gotta go home.”
He lurched forward, steadying himself against a table. His expression was a combination of defiance and something else, something more primal―fear.
“Outside,” my father hissed in a deadly tone.
Standing at least three inches taller, yet weighing much less than Mr. Pierce, my father was no coward. He escorted the man to the front door and I swear I saw Annie’s father actually cringe.
I followed Annie to the door, afraid of what her father would do once they reached their house.
“Are you going to be all right?” I whispered.
“Yeah,” she mumbled. “Oh and, uh…thanks.”
On the porch, we anxiously watched as the men exchanged angry words in the pouring rain. Mr. Pierce tried to walk away, but my father grabbed his arm, restraining him. He glanced at Annie, then yelled something in her father’s ear.
I couldn’t make out the words, but I know that whatever he said, it made Mr. Pierce’s face go white as a ghost. Without a word, the man stumbled down the driveway.
As my father joined us on the porch, Annie slid the blanket from her shoulders and motioned for me to take it.
I shook my head. “Keep it. You’ll need it out there.”
“I’ll bring it to school on Monday,” she said. “See ya.”
She took off, following her father at a safe distance. At the bend, she turned and waved at me. I waved back.
“Let’s get inside,” my father said. “A storm’s coming.”
A sharp crack of thunder vibrated through the sky.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “A real big storm.”
At the urging of my mother, I invited Annie to my birthday party the following day. I was surprised when she actually showed up at the door, a gift in hand. Some of my other friends from school came to my party too. Denise gave me a new watch with a stopwatch and light. Goldie gave me an ABBA eight-track, a pair of earrings and a poster of the Bay City Rollers. And Annie gave me a skirt to tie around my bathing suit.
My mother told me I could have two friends sleep over. The ground had dried during the day so Goldie, Annie and I had a sleepover in a tent in my backyard. We stayed up the entire night talking, playing Truth or Dare and listening to my eight-track. At midnight, we told ghost stories and tried to make shadow creatures. It was a great birthday.
When we went back to school the following Monday, I fully expected Annie to return to her constant torment of me. But she greeted me with a smile at the door and walked me to my desk.
If anyone had told me back then that Annie Pierce and I would become friends after I rescued her from certain death, I would have laughed.
But it happened.
Goldie, Annie and I became known as The Three Warriors.
That was my father’s brilliant idea. My parents had gone to Victoria to see Dr. Michaels and had seen a movie in the theatre―a western called Three Warriors, starring Randy Quaid. That’s how we got our name. From that moment on, we were inseparable. We went to matinees at the Rec Centre, had countless sleepovers and spent the summer swimming or walking along the shore.
Annie grew in many ways that year. She became a free spirit and everyone was touched by her vivaciousness. Whenever she came over, I couldn’t help but remember my mother’s words.
Forgiveness sets you free.
It was strange, but it was almost as if by saving Annie’s life I had saved her soul. And by forgiving her, both of us had been set free.
But some people didn’t deserve to be forgiven.
Annie’s father was arrested in mid-July. The following month, he was sent to prison for child abuse.
I suspected that my father had something to do with that.
At first, I thought Annie might blame me for the sudden departure of her father, but instead she happily moved in with her aunt who lived on the edge of town.
“We need a motto,” she said one day. “The Three Warriors motto.”
But none of us could think of one.
That weekend, when we were having a sleepover at Goldie’s house, we acted out the story of Sisiutl. Goldie played the monster, Annie played the warrior and I played a fair maiden who needed rescuing. It was then that I remembered what Nana had said the night she first told me Sisiutl’s story.
Great warriors never stop trying.
That became our motto.
Throughout the next year, my mother’s health fluctuated back and forth between bouts of dizziness and periods of healthy calm. By the following summer, she found it difficult to stand and paint, so she began pulling up a chair to the easel. Bit by bit, her stamina was stolen from her. Before long she slept more than she was awake.
In September of ’79, the Three Warriors began grade eight. We were placed together in a classroom with an odd-looking―fresh from university―teacher. Mr. Foreman was short, very scrawny with thinning blond hair and his elbows pointed outwards when he walked. We called him ‘Ape-Man’ behind his back. He wore brown thick-framed glasses perched on the tip of his long, crooked nose and he always dressed in open-collared shirts like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever―a movie my mother absolutely adored.
Mr. Foreman somehow survived the first two weeks in our classroom. But the poor man became the target of numerous practical jokes. One day, he hastily departed for home after enduring a grueling day of pranks. Strangely enough, he never returned.
Goldie thought that perhaps it was the chair that had been carefully taken apart, then rebuilt without screws or nails that had done him in. Annie and I figured that he’d simply had enough of walking around with thumbtacks stuck in the butt of his jeans.
Regardless, our class was quite content with a substitute teacher who filled in until the principal could find a more permanent replacement. He found Mrs. Makowski a week before Halloween and she turned our miserable, unruly classroom into one of manners and rewards. She was the teacher responsible for molding my hidden artistic talent.
The first week of November, I brought home a special project and showed it to my mother.
“Mrs. Makowski asked me―just me―to design a poster for the school play,” I said proudly. “It’s in December.”
I set to work on the poster that weekend after borrowing some of my mother’s art paper and watercolors. I worked in her studio and she gave me tips and suggestions before she went to lie down. When I was finished, even I was amazed. Romeo and Juliet had never looked so beautiful―or so tragic.
I raced downstairs to show my parents. My father was sitting at the dining room table while my mother sat on the couch. Her painfully swollen feet rested on the coffee table.
I showed the poster to my father first. “What do you think?”
“It’s terrific, Sarah. You did a great job.”
Beaming, I held the poster up. “Do you like it, Mom?”
My mother managed a smile. “I love it. Mrs. Makowski is going to love it too.” Without warning, she clutched her chest.
My father rushed to her
side. “Daniella?”
“I’m fine, Jack,” she reassured him, her lips faintly tinged with blue. “It was just a sharp pain.”
Watching them, I felt a growing suspicion that they were keeping secrets from me, that something was wrong with my mother. Whenever I asked them, they’d always say that she was much better.
But she didn’t look better.
In fact, she looked much worse. She was sleeping more during the day, her ankles and legs were always swollen and she repeatedly lost her balance. Not to mention the fact that my parents were spending more time in Victoria every month.
I rolled up the poster, tied it with a piece of string and tucked it away in my backpack by the back door. When I returned to the living room, my father was sitting beside my mother on the couch, holding her hands while tears ran down her face.
That’s when I knew that something was terribly wrong.
“Mom?” I interrupted. “Is your PPH back?”
They exchanged nervous glances and my mother released a troubled sigh. Then my father scooted over and patted the space between them.
“Have a seat, honey,” he said.
I stared at him and saw the agonizing torment in his eyes. It terrified me. I sat down and my stomach twisted into tight knots.
“Yes, Sarah,” he said. “Mom’s PPH is back. She’s…very sick.”
The soft catch in his voice broke my heart.
“It’s serious, isn’t it?” I asked my mother.
She turned away, unexpectedly overcome by a fit of coughing. A thin trail of blood escaped from the corner of her mouth, but she didn’t notice.
“It’s time, Jack,” she said.
My father squeezed her hand and wiped the blood from her face with a tissue. “I know.”
“Time for what?” I demanded. “What’s going on?”
My heart began to pound and my entire body shook.
“Sarah, honey,” my mother whispered. “I-I’m not just sick, I’m…” She turned to my father, her eyes pleading with him.
He moved beside me, clasped my hands in his and kissed me lightly on the forehead. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this.”
Then he said three words that completely shattered my life.
“Mom is…dying.”
thirteen
Those three small words exploded in my head like a nuclear bomb and I felt the world crumble beneath my feet.
“No you’re not,” I argued. “You’re lying―you’re both lying!”
My father reached for me. “Sarah, just hear us out.”
“No!” I shoved his hands away and leapt to my feet.
“Sarah,” my mother said. “We need to talk―”
Ignoring their pleas, I turned away and fled upstairs to the sanctuary of my room. I slammed the door and threw myself down on the bed, sobbing wildly.
“It’s not true. She’s getting better. They told me that.”
I yanked a pillow over my head and cursed my parents under my breath. But their words echoed persistently in my mind until all I heard was, ‘Mom is dying’.
My parents were liars. My mother couldn’t possibly be dying. She was much too young. She had years and years ahead of her.
“Sarah?”
It was my father.
“Go away!” I shouted, my voice muffled by the pillow.
I heard the door creak.
“Sarah?” he whispered. “We aren’t lying.”
I felt the bed shift under my father’s weight. He stayed with me, silent and motionless, even though I refused to acknowledge his presence.
Five minutes ticked by.
Then five more.
I sniffed back my tears, exhausted…numb. I tossed the pillow to the floor and rolled over on my side, noting the redness in my father’s eyes. He’d been crying. My father rarely ever cried.
“This is a very difficult time for Mom,” he said, his bottom lip quivering. “For all of us. Right now she needs your love and support.”
“Is she really dying?” I sobbed.
“Yes, honey…she is.”
He reached for my hand. With a hoarse voice filled with raw emotion, he explained that my mother was given a life expectancy of two to three years. And that was two years ago.
“Mom’s condition has rapidly declined and the doctors don’t know what to do.”
My eyes burned. “There has to be something they can do.”
“They don’t know enough about PPH. And they’re only talking now about possible heart or lung transplants. But that’s so far off into the future.”
“But what about medicine,” I sobbed. “Or an operation.”
He shook his head. “They can’t do anything more for her.”
“You mean we just wait for her to…die?”
“We…wait. And we live.” His eyes swam with unshed tears.
That evening, we went outside and huddled together on the padded bench of the swing, my mother in the middle. Our hands were intertwined and our emotions billowed like the crashing waves below us.
For a while, we sat there admiring the full moon suspended over the restless ocean. When the sky darkened and the night air grew cool, no one noticed.
We were together. And that was all that mattered.
We didn’t talk about my mother’s sickness or her imminent death. No one said a word. We held onto her and onto each other, and as a light mist of snow mingled with our tears, we struggled to find a way to say goodbye.
But how could you say goodbye to someone you loved? How could you go on, knowing that you’ll never see them, hold them or talk to them…ever again?
That night, the only sounds we heard were the beating of our hearts and the soothing hum of nature―of life all around us.
The next morning, I called Goldie and she agreed to meet me on the beach. After I scrubbed my face, I braided my hair into two long plaits. Then I grabbed a warm sweater, darted outside and ran down the rocky path to the beach, half-tripping over driftwood and seaweed. When I rounded the bend, I saw my friend standing by the small dock. She was skipping stones like my father had taught her.
“So,” she said without looking at me. “What’s up?”
She always sensed when something was bothering me. She told me once that she could feel it in her Warrior blood.
“I, uh―”
My throat constricted and I couldn’t get the words out.
“It’s your mom, isn’t it?” she asked gravely.
I nodded. “H-how did you know?”
She looked at her sneakers, leaned down and tied one of the laces. “I overheard Nana talking to my dad,” she said. “She had a vision about bad spirits hovering over your mother.”
I didn’t know how to respond to her statement. So I told her the only thing I could. The truth.
“My mom’s dying.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I broke down. My chest ached as wracking sobs engulfed me. “My mom’s going to die, Goldie.”
Her arms flew around me in a death grip. She murmured words of comfort and she cried with me, cried for me and shared my pain. Who would’ve ever guessed that a dark-skinned Indian girl from Canada and a white girl from the States would have such a strong connection?
I thanked God and the Great Spirit for bringing her to me.
Goldie stayed by my side the entire week. When her parents announced that they were taking a trip to see some relatives in Alberta, my heart sunk. But Goldie and Nana decided to remain behind.
On the evening of the Dixon’s departure, I had a terrifying nightmare. I dreamt that I was running through the woods, lost and alone, my hands covered in blood. I awoke―gasping for air―and sat upright in the dark. Fumbling for the light, I turned on the lamp and stared at my hands. I breathed a ragged sigh of relief. No blood.
Restless and unable to sleep, I started downstairs for a glass of milk. But my parents were in the living room. They were arguing. I paused and hid in the shadows.
“I’m running out of time,”
my mother said. “Decisions have to be made.”
A groan. “You know I can’t promise you that.”
“But this is what I want.”
“Dani―”
“Promise me, Jack.”
In the silence that followed, I tiptoed midway down the spiral staircase and peered over the side. Scented candles flickered on the mantle, lighting the distraught faces of my parents. Sitting down on a cold metal step, I held my breath and watched them.
“We should let the doctors handle things,” my father said. “They know what’s right. They believe―”
“It doesn’t matter what they believe,” my mother interrupted. “They’re surprised I’ve made it this long, considering the shape of my heart and lungs. Do you realize how expensive it would be to keep me on a respirator?”
He bolted from his chair. “The expense doesn’t matter, Dani!”
“Of course it does,” she said, reaching for him. “You and I both know that they might have no other choice but to put me on life support. I could be there for years. And that would take all of our savings…and Sarah’s college money too.”
My father leaned forward, moaning in despair.
“Jack, look at me,” my mother begged. “I can’t paint, I can’t dance. I can barely walk from here to our bedroom.” She doubled over in a fit of coughing.
I gripped the stair rail and quietly rose to my feet. I wanted to escape. I didn’t want to hear any more. But my mother’s pleading voice drifted up to me.
“You have to promise me, Jack. I―I know that what I’m asking you to do is morally wrong. But sometimes you have to do what’s wrong…to make things right.”
“I can’t do that,” my father argued. “I can’t do what you’re asking me to do. You know that.”
I started back upstairs. Unable to resist, I looked back at them. They stood near the window, hugging each other and staring into one another’s eyes. Even from the top of the stairs, I felt their love…and their anguish.
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