was tongue-tied, so I just smiled and asked him where he was living. He told me he was staying at his mother’s house in Geary and wondered if he could call me sometime.
“I’m married,” I said.
“Then you call me,” he replied. A few days later I did. I’d been seriously considering suicide as the only way out of my abusive marriage. I’d be in the kitchen, doing the dishes or cleaning up, my mind in a grey haze as I wondered about the ways to end my life. The same monotonous chores every day, the same swell of anger and subjugation. Plain deadness in my heart. No heart at all.
When Kevin came along, I knew he could tell I was an easy target for his advances. He had a reputation for courting discontented wives, but I didn’t care. The few stolen hours when I could manage a baby-sitter were my lifesavers. I savoured every minute spent with him driving over back roads, laughing at his outlandish stories, parking under the stars, or being passionate in the grass. It made me forget the prison my home life had become.
I carried the guilt of the affair with me, but I knew without Kevin I probably wouldn’t have survived. I also knew Kevin would have killed Stan if I’d told him about the abuse. As it was, Kevin was soon out of my life. He had another girlfriend who wasn’t married, so they drifted out west when the police started harassing him for a string of unsolved break-and-enters in the area. But an important part of him remained with me. I had become pregnant again.
Shortly thereafter, we moved into a row house in Oromocto provided by the base. We had grown out of the small two-bedroom house in Geary. The new dwelling had three bedrooms, a full basement, and a spacious backyard. There were children next door for Heather and Jody to play with, and one of my neighbours invited me over for coffee the same day we moved in. I was a nervous wreck by this time because I wasn’t sure who Stan would allow me to talk to.
About a month before my due date in March 1971 I felt a desperate need to get out of the house, I’d been cooped up for days with two active toddlers and was bloated and uncomfortable from the pregnancy. I asked Stan to baby-sit so I could walk to the mall, and he readily agreed.
Before leaving the house I made certain two-year-old Heather and Jody, who was just over a year, were dressed and fed. I didn’t want them making too many demands on their father. They looked so much alike, with their big brown eyes and thick black curls. There was no mistaking their kinship. As much as I adored them, I was relieved to take a much-needed break from their constant needs and steady demands for attention.
“I won’t be long,” I promised, pulling on my coat.
I experienced such relief at being able to round the aisles at the grocery store without Jody tearing open and eating half the order while Heather indiscriminately threw in bags of cookies and potato chips she wanted to gobble down for breakfast. The supermarket was like a pristine dreamworld. There was freedom amid the brightly coloured boxes and packages; everything was neat and immaculate, the refreshing air was so clean, and not a single person clung to me. Despite my hulking, quite-pregnant carriage, I felt light, unburdened, invigorated by the time I could spend exclusively with myself. Browsing through the magazine section in the market was as blissful as a vacation in Florida.
Done with my soul-lifting sojourn, I headed off on the gloriously silent walk home. The weather was springlike, even though I knew we’d be hit by a few more winter storms yet.
Stepping into the house and crossing the back-door threshold with my bag of groceries, I felt a peculiar tension in the air. I was about to call out “Hello,” but the word caught in my throat. Both of the children were screaming upstairs and my husband was sitting in the kitchen reading the Bible as if he didn’t hear a sound. I dropped the groceries and ran through the kitchen into the living room. Clutching the bannister, I bolted up the stairs as fast as my bulky body could carry me. When I threw open the door to the children’s bedroom, Heather and Jody were holding each other in manic fright, tears streaming down their faces.
“Mommie, it hurts,” Jody sobbed. He cried openly as he held out his chubby little fingers. “Hurts, Mommie. Hurts.”
Heather had a facecloth wrapped around her hands.
“Oh, my God!” I gasped as soon as I saw their fingers. Blisters covered Heather’s palms; Jody’s were almost as bad. Fear weakened every part of my body, my head rushing with torrents of confused, broken thought. I stood stunned in a tingling, unreal world, unable to make sense of this. Did Stan know the children were hurt? Was there fire somewhere? My eyes darted around for matches as I sniffed the air and raced into the bathroom for ointment.
“What happened, baby?” I asked upon returning. My hands were trembling as I uncapped the tube of cream. I was trying to appear calm, but inside I was screaming and shivering at once. It took every bit of willpower I could summon to force a reassuring smile as I applied thick ointment to my babies’ burns. Both children were whimpering, their chests throbbing with the remnants of crying fits, so I knew I had to remain calm. To press for an answer would only bring on another outburst.
I moved them both into Heather’s bed and covered them with my special blanket—a pink-and-white quilt with roses stitched in the corners that had been made by my fortuneteller grandmother, Grammie Brewer, decades ago.
Kneeling by the side of their bed, I kissed the tears away from their hot, smooth cheeks. I pressed my lips together, fighting back tears of my own, then began singing:
“Jesus loves the little children.
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white.
They are precious in his sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.
Jesus loves the little children…”
After three rounds of song, a soothing sleep stilled their sobs. Not once had their father checked to see what was transpiring.
As soon as I was certain the children were settled, I went back down the stairs, fury mounting with each step, blood pounding in my ears. Stan had moved from the kitchen and was now sitting on the couch. Unlike most Natives on the reservation, he wasn’t a staunch Catholic. He had converted to a charismatic evangelical movement. His Bible lay open on his lap and he watched me without the slightest trace of concern.
I snatched the Bible from his hands, threatening to hammer him with it. “What in hell happened?” I demanded through clenched teeth.
“There’s no need to swear.”
“I’ll swear if I want to,” I challenged, trying to keep my voice down so as not to trouble the children. “What did you do to the kids?”
“I taught them a lesson.” His voice never rose one octave. He remained seated and stared through me, eerily peaceful.
“What kind of a lesson?”
“They were playing with the lamps. Turning the light off and on. I warned them.” He nodded once.
“How’d they get burned?”
Stan said nothing.
I stepped closer, raising the Bible higher. “Did you see their hands?”
“I told them they’d get hurt if they kept doing that. Only one way to teach a child.” His eyes shifted to the Bible I was holding. “The Bible says that. Spare the rod, spoil the
