Dear Jean;

Kick at the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight.
(“Lovers in a Dangerous Time.” Bruce Cockburn)

I hope you don’t mind that I’m writing this letter to you. I’ve tried so hard to think of how I would speak to Claire of this next part of our lives, of our time at the farm, but every time I try to write of these things to her, I’m overwhelmed with the fear that I carried the whole time we were there. Then on the heels of that fear comes the same slow burning anger, which built up inside me in a way that I’ve never felt anger before or since – and I realize that both of these feelings, the fear and the anger, are too dark and intrusive to be worthy of the letters that I’ve been sharing with Claire.

I’ve also realized that, more than the fear or anger, I remember that time with a profound shame that has been ebbing its way back into my life lately. In time I would like to deal with that shame and how it has haunted me, but I will never be able to speak of it to Claire. So I turn to you and trust that you understand that it’s with great respect and gratitude that I share these pages with you.

So many kids with whom I’ve worked have gone through periods of denial, of blocking out the trauma that they’ve experienced in their lives. I’m not like that; I remember so many details of every day and every night that we spent on Saltspring Island. They’re all there, intact and clear. They accuse me, in their clarity, of “faking it”: if it was all so traumatic why is it still so vivid? Doesn’t it make sense that I too would bury the memories, or hide from them? The best I could do was learn to ignore them.

I remember the darkness of the first night when we arrived at the farm . . .

Every muscle ached as I tried to sleep with all the other children on the palette of blankets on the floor of the attic room. I could hear soft snores around me in darkness so complete it made me nauseous with panic that I could barely contain.

I finally gave up trying to sleep and spent most of the night sitting up at the little window, looking out to the silhouettes that hinted at a world outside. For hours I ran my finger along the splintered wooden window frame; brittle, ancient flakes of paint fell to the sill where I arranged them into neat little piles.

I worked at finding some shreds of goodness on which I could focus to get me beyond the fear. I tried to believe, as I strained to see the outlines of the apple trees in the yard, that this place would be just like the dreams I had of Granny’s house; farm life had always sounded so warm and inviting when Sophie told us of the wonderful summers she and mom had had there as little girls. It was the only image that I had of what it would be like to live on a farm, and I fantasized about recreating it here with mom.

Earlier that night, coming over on the ferry, mom had spoken with warm excitement of this farm that she now called home. She told me of how lovely it was, nestled on the most beautiful part of the island. They had sheep, four goats and many chickens. There were barn cats and a big old German shepherd called Blue who wore a bandana. It was so dreamlike, hearing of it in mom’s voice, softer now that we were alone, and the old car wasn’t running. Mom had the most beautiful voice – like a song sometimes – and when she spoke like this, of dreams and a future, I could believe that we were waiting to be ferried to heaven.

But now and then an inflection on a certain word, or a pause before she began to speak again on a higher note, would break the spell of her soothing tones, bringing back her other voice, shrill and nervous, recalling the screams and snarls that she had hurled at us, or the mumbling soliloquies that I’d heard too often through her bedroom door when we all lived together in Vancouver.

How many times during that first night at the farm did I lay my head against the window frame and doze only to wake up, my heart racing and my body covered in sweat, startled by the absolute blackness that surrounded me? I was so grateful for the early dawn when the finest wash of light gave some definition to the room. When this first light soothed me enough, I went over to lie beside Claire and hoped beyond hope that these lumps of bedding that I could barely make out around us, would stay asleep for a while longer.

I remember the meeting the kids of the "family" . . .

I must have slept for some time because when I rolled over to check on Claire, the sunlight had flooded the room through the small window where I had held vigil most of the night. I could make out a half dozen pairs of eyes, watching us as we slept on the floor: it was like being surrounded by cannibals. It took me some time to distinguish these eyes and sort them as to gender and age.

Jacob was the leader of the group and looked to be about seven or eight, although he proclaimed himself to be “infinite”. He stood above us, bold and firm, defiantly displaying his authority in the presence of a new and older member of the pack, afraid that I would challenge his position.

His striking black hair and pale blue eyes were also found in one of the younger girls, his sister, Miriam. She was an extension of Jacob, and at six-years old she followed his every move. There were two “babies” as Jacob called the little pair who, I had guessed, were probably three-year old girls but turned out to be a girl and a boy. I was uneasy as I watched them wrestling with squeals of delight, wrapping themselves in the blanket that Molly had made for Claire.

The last two in Jacob’s band were Juniper and Island: they were twins I later found out, but were nothing alike. Juniper, a tall dark girl with hard eyes, seemed very old for her six years; Island, her brother, brushed his soft brown hair from his face and gave me a quiet smile that sealed us as allies. No one spoke but Jacob.

“What’s wrong with him?” Jacob demanded, looking down at Claire; she was still sleeping very deeply. I was sure by now that mom had given her some kind of sleeping pill when we had stopped in Vancouver. I was worried. This very deep sleep was so unusual for her.

“She’s just sleeping. There’s nothing wrong with her.” I answered and lay my hand on her back to assure myself that she was still breathing. My hand sprang from where it had touched her when I realized how thin she had become: I could see each ripple of her rib cage through the “My Little Pony” T-shirt that Sophie had put on her so many days ago.

“Why doesn’t she get up then?” Jacob shot back, nudging her leg with his foot and tossing his long, uncombed braid over his shoulder.

“We’re just tired,” I answered wiggling down a bit lower under the covers, letting him know that I was preparing to go back to sleep myself. Jacob looked at us for a few seconds then turned and grabbed Molly’s blanket from the two little ones. He pitched it across the room calling to the others to follow him downstairs. Like a military commander whose troops obeyed with differing degrees of enthusiasm and awareness, they all followed him except Island, who knelt down and stretched himself out along Claire on the other side. The three of us lay there: me, with my hand on her arm (I was too frightened to lay my fingers on the protruding ribs) and Island, stroking her fire red curls, brushing them away from her face. We slept.

I woke from a dream of large birds swooping down at me and pecking at my hair. But the place between dreaming and waking was broad that morning and it felt as if the dream wasn’t really over when I sat up. Island was gone and Claire was still sleeping soundly. I looked around the room. Its low, angled ceiling of darkened particleboard between ancient beams was stifling in the heat of the late morning; the room didn’t seem to be able to hold enough air.

I got up from the pile of blankets on the floor, noticing for the first time the musty smell and the grunginess of the scratchy, grey wool blanket that covered me and the uncomfortable itchiness of my unwashed skin and hair. I made my way over the piles of bedding to the top of the stairs where I’d seen the others go down to the main part of the house. I wanted to find mom; I was hungry and I had to go to the bathroom.

I remember the house . . .

Everything was eerily still. I went a few steps down towards the kitchen and sat on the worn step where the softwood was contoured and polished by so many feet. I ran my fingers along the ancient crack in the plastered wall, subtle under the many layers of paint. I waited for mom, for someone to come and talk to me, to take me through this unfamiliar place. No one came.

From where I sat on the step, I could see the large plank table in the center of the kitchen with its cobbled benches and scavenged chairs imprinting a feel of awkward impermanence on the room, mocking my dreams of a farm like Granny’s. There was no matriarch presiding, glorious and welcoming in her embroidered apron, surrounded by the richness of tools and memories that she had collected for years. Instead I saw paisley print kerchiefs tacked to window frames that served as curtains. The industrial sized pickle jars of flour, rice and beans were lined up where I had imagined the matching canister set to be. Jam jars of greenish water and brown edged daisies lined the rough wood countertops.

I made my way to the bottom of the stairs and looked into the room beside me that might have been the dining room in the original plan of the house, but whose floor was now covered with large pillows of all different colours and materials. The walls were surreal, like someone’s nightmare: a painted fantasy mural filled the space so completely that there seemed no room for humans, or plants, or furniture, or air. The wall were covered with shocking swirls of star-tailed comets, dark and extravagant forest scenes of unicorns, evil looking wizards and trolls with piercing eyes amid trees whose dark branches entwined over and around the window and the small door leading to a crawl space beneath the house. The ceiling/sky was midnight black with washes of some unknown galaxy spraying from the entrance to the next room. There at that doorway, all of the fantasy suddenly stopped and I walked into a different world in a room of musty, broken down, overstuffed furniture, (abandoned years ago by more discerning decorators) which was now covered with a collection of dirty children’s clothes and gardening tools. The walls of this room were overhung with at least twenty different macramé projects in-progress: plant hangers, wall hangings with pieces of driftwood and sea shells, a shelving unit incorporating three squares of Plexiglas. These thick, long, hanging ropes made the room almost cell-like, with the look of dried blood dripping down the walls.

I remember being aware of things that were missing in these rooms as I made my way through the house . . .

These absences came to me slowly over the next few hours. They weren’t strikingly obvious at first, manifesting more as something odd, something not quite as it should be: a kitchen without a sink, ceilings without lights, a hallway without a bathroom, and walls without books. But strangest of all were these rooms without people or sound, reinforcing the dream sensation that clung to me like cobwebs: a nightmare in daylight.

These absences were odd but conversely, there were many things that appeared in unusual places that seemed just as peculiar: torn polyethylene on the outside of all the windows downstairs that distorted the world beyond the walls and muffled the sounds of nature. There was an entire wall of plastic milk crates overflowing with empty jam jars and plastic yogurt containers. I passed through a dark passage on my way outside where drying herbs and hanging plants clawed at my hair and shoulders. The screen door wore patches of mesh, sewn into place to repair its many rents and holes, and wobbled on its loose hinges when I made my way outside.

In the yard, Island was sitting on the bottom step, looking across the field to where the other kids were running between the trees at the edge of the clearing. On his lap lay a large jar turned on its side; blades of grass lined the bottom and rusty, jagged holes had been pierced in the cover. Now and then, he petted the jar of grass, as if it were a cat. I sat down beside him to see if I could see any animal life inside. “What’s in your jar?” I asked. He lifted it to eye level and pointed to a place beneath the top layer of vegetation but I still couldn’t make out what it held.

The need to find a bathroom was becoming more urgent and I asked Island if he could show me where it was. He placed the jar with such gentleness under the wooden step, and rearranged the long grass that was growing there, to keep the jar hidden. He walked around to the back of the house to show me where an outhouse stood, nestled in a clump of lilac bushes. He never said a word.

Once inside, the powerful smells of lye and ammonia blocked out all my other senses and brought me back so many summers to the music festival outhouses: temporary but strangely peaceful and comforting for the privacy they offered during those very communal gatherings. As I sat there, alone in this two-holer, (would anyone really expect to share it with me?) I remember observing that it was a very solid structure -- as outhouses go. It had a proper window up high to let in the light and mesh screening for ventilation. There were pieces of patterned silky material tacked to the walls and a collection of magazines: Harrowsmith, the Farmer’s Almanac, a tract from Sri Chimnoy and an ancient copy of National Geographic with an African warrior on the cover. It wasn’t until a few days later that I realized that this was the only reading material that I ever saw on the farm.

When I came out of the outhouse Island was no longer there. I remember thinking that he was more like a spirit: coming to offer me comfort by his presence, but then returning again to his spirit world. I walked around the yard that surrounded the house, taking in the property, looking for someone besides Jacob and crew that I could talk to. I had to believe that mom wouldn’t have just left us here alone in this place. Where was everyone?

I saw the barn, weathered and gray. One of the large main doors was open and yawning its blackness from inside; it hung askew from a broken hinge and its corner was permanently wedged into the long grass. The house and barn were the only real buildings that I could see on the property and they sat at the top of a hill with grassy fields rolling down to the road. From certain points you could see the ocean peaking through the tract of forest on the other side of the roadway.

It was all as beautiful as mom had promised, but the beauty came to me with a haunting fear as I watched an owl soaring from the barn to a large cedar tree at the edge of the field. Part of me knew that I was awake: I could hear the birds and the wind, I could feel the sunshine, I even went to the bathroom. Yet in my isolation I felt the uncertain frustration of one who can’t quite put things in a context of reality, as if I was still dreaming, alone, observing, waiting for something to happen.

A movement from behind the house caught my eye: a cat, marmalade orange and therefore not well camouflaged, came from around a shed at the back of the house. As I approached I could hear the clanking of metal on metal. The smell of a wood fire came from the chimney pipe on the other side of the structure. I looked in and nearly wept with relief to see two young women, who appeared to be not really much older than I was. One of them was working over a boiling pot on a large iron stove with a baby strapped to her back; the other was putting her sleeping infant in a hammock sling attached to the walls of the shed.

I stood at the open wall that looked out over the southern field where the goats were penned. The girl, having laid her baby down, turned to the stove and in that movement noticed me standing there. She gave a quick start but went immediately back to her work placing glass jars into the boiling pot.

“Hello?” I said, surprised that she hadn’t spoken first. Both girls lifted their eyes and nodded, then returned their attention to the bottles in the pot. “I’m Starla, Sarah’s daughter. Do you know where my mother is? I’m hungry; we haven’t eaten in a long time.”

“We call her Raven here.” One of them said into the pot in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

“I’m sorry?” I said, not understanding what she had meant.

“I said that your mother’s name is “Raven” when she is in the Family,” she explained without really answering my question.

“Oh, I see. Well, do you know where she is?”

She waited for a few moments before answering, as if she was trying to decide what her answer would be. “It’s market day in town. They’ve gone to the market to set up.” She went on, never lifting her eyes from her work. The baby on her back was pulling the hair under her kerchief with one tiny fist and hitting the top of her head with the other; she seemed oblivious to his blows.

“Do you know when she’ll be back? Or is there something that my sister and I could eat?” She shook her head – in response to the first question I guessed, because she then went to a table at the back of the shed and removed a piece of cheesecloth that covered a large pot of strawberry jam, thick and dark, with swirls of pink foam around the edges. I could smell its heavy sweetness from several feet away. She spooned some into a bowl.

“There’s bread in the kitchen,” she said, handing me the bowl and turning back to the stove. I thanked them and left the shed, heading into the house.

I remember being so worried when I went back up to the sleeping loft to find that Claire was still asleep.

Having surveyed our new surroundings, I realized how inappropriate a home this was for her and her needs. How would she ever get out of diapers if she had to run across the yard to the outhouse to pee? How would she learn to feed herself in a place where you have to hunt through the house for food?

I knelt beside Claire, watching her as she slept and recognizing almost nothing of my little sister. I reached over to try and wake her; I lifted the tiny shoulders onto my arm and, sliding my other hand under her legs, dragged her limp body onto my lap, like you would hold a baby to rock her. I began to talk to Claire, I began to call to her, to try and raise some response, some sign that she would wake.

First the rhythm of her breathing changed, then I could see her eyes under their lids, moving, searching. She opened them one after the other, focusing on nothing. I spoke to her: I whispered that I was here to take care of her, that I was glad that she was awake and that everything would be alright. I remember bringing her over to the tiny window from where we could see over the apple trees, across the fields and down to the ocean. We could also see Jacob, leading his band through the trees with piercing battle cries that left me feeling cold. I told Claire that it was a beautiful place. She didn’t see any of it but sat limply on my lap.

I stood up and gently pulled at her arms, to see if she would walk. She made her way blindly across the room, holding onto my fingers as a young toddler would. I got a fresh diaper from the package that mom had left in the corner, and changed the dirty one. We made our way downstairs, dirty diaper in hand, looking for a garbage can and somewhere to wash my hands. Every aspect of living seemed a challenge in this place, so difficult to accomplish.

At first, I heard it as a low rumble in the distance, then I realized that I was hearing the sound of a truck coming up the lane and pulling into the yard. With the pounding of the diesel engine and the creaking of door hinges, my world suddenly came back into focus and my dream spell was broken. I scooped Claire into my arms and went to the screen door to see who was arriving.

Watching mom as she jumped down from the back of the pickup truck was like being sucked into a whirlwind of sight and colour and sound: in her long flowing skirt and shawl, she danced around with delight when she saw us coming down the steps. She threw her head back and twirled like a top, her hair and beads and her outstretched arms inviting us into her dance, yet keeping us away with their wild projection. We all fell on the grass, with mom laughing and reaching out to wrap her arms around us as we landed beside her on the ground.

“Oh, my angels come to meet me. How are you, my babes?” she sang into our hair, laughing all the while.

That was my introduction to the farm where my mother’s new "family" lived. I was not quite twelve years old. That scene of the three of us on the ground in a warm embrace of frenzied laughter and sunshine is mostly a pleasant memory, if somewhat painful in the unwarranted hope that it gave me. I’ve come across that memory now and then over the years and despite everything, it’s always brought me a smile.

Thanks for listening to me, Jean.
Starla

Copyright 2003