As Stan became more involved in the dogmas of the church, I perceived a shift in his behaviour. He seldom joked anymore. He showed little emotion except at church, and he began questioning my every move. Sometimes he’d stare at me for hours without uttering a single word. There would be a deadness in his eyes, as if any light of recognition had been suddenly extinguished.
Then, without warning, a brightness would wash over him and he’d start talking cheerfully. He had been off somewhere and didn’t even seem to know it. These episodes sent shivers up my spine. There was new danger here I hadn’t anticipated.
One morning, as I was getting dressed, Stan grabbed my arm roughly. “Where’d you get that bruise?” he demanded, nodding at my bare thigh.
“I bumped into the door under the sink,” I said. “I forgot to close it when I cleaned the bathroom yesterday.”
He gripped my shoulders and shook me so hard I thought my neck would snap. “Don’t ever lie to me!” he spit, his face merely inches from mine.
I could barely speak but managed to say, “I’m not lying, Stan, honest.” Then I started to cry.
Just as abruptly as he had seized me, he let go and left the room. Later he acted as if nothing had happened.
I tried hard to be a dutiful wife. After I found out I was pregnant, I was no longer interested in sex. I felt little physical attraction to Stan, but I seldom said no to his advances. Sometimes I was actually quite fond of him. He was a great help around the house and often cooked me wonderful meals like chicken cacciatore or dried corn soup, a Mohawk dish I particularly enjoyed. And he was good company on those long nights as I anticipated the birth of my first child.
While I was pregnant I tried to do all the right things. I quit smoking and drinking and walked for miles, but my morning sickness often lasted all day and nearly the entire nine months of my pregnancy. Creamed mashed potatoes and canned sardines became my main fare. I craved so much fish I was afraid my firstborn might pop out squirming with gills and fins and a gasping fish mouth.
Like most first-time mothers, I was terrified something might go wrong. I became self-consumed, oblivious to anyone else’s needs or desires. It was only me and my baby. That was all that mattered. I went to church more frequently and prayed for a healthy baby.
Six days before my eighteenth birthday, on December 8, 1968, I went into labour with my first child while at a Sunday-night service in the same church where Stan and I had been married. My mother insisted we come home with her. I was so excited when she assured me it wouldn’t be long before I would be a mother. My dad drove Stan and me to the same hospital where I’d been born. Every two minutes Dad would ask me if I was all right. When my water broke as I was climbing out of the car, I suspected Dad would pass out.
The entire labour lasted five hours. At the time I thought, Ahah! I guess good hips do pay off, after all. I am a fine squaw. Yes, I am.
All seven pounds, five ounces of my firstborn was delivered into this world healthy and intact. My baby girl was astonishingly beautiful. Perfect, I told myself as I tickled her dimpled cheeks and rubbed the thick black hair on her little round head. She was so tiny and soft, so vulnerable. I could never have loved another human being as much as I did the moment the nurse placed her in my arms.
I named the baby Heather JoAnne as a special favour to my mother-in-law who had always longed to have a daughter. I felt sorry for her and hoped this gesture would make her treat me better. She told me she’d had the name picked out if Stan had been a girl, and since I had a cousin I liked with the same name, I agreed. But, secretly, I longed to give her some exotic name, a Mohawk one like Otsitsya, which meant flower. But, after all, Heather was a sort of flower, too, so I reasoned the name was just as fitting.
For days, lying in bed or sitting in the kitchen, I stared at Heather, astonished by how tiny and flawless she was, this wonderful being who hadn’t existed in the world a short while ago. I felt overwhelmed in her presence. It was a spiritual tugging that must have been pure love. She was mine to care for, and my heart seemed newly complete and blessed.
TAUGHT A LESSON
Bright and early one morning when Heather was about three months old, while I was preparing breakfast, Stan approached me with unexpected news. “God wants you to stop listening to music on the radio. It’s my job to make sure you stop listening.”
A few weeks later I was given further instructions. I was to refrain from wearing shoes with high heels. They were created to tempt men to lust. They were the tools of wanton women. While I agreed that women and men should dress modestly, I couldn’t see all the commotion about open-toed shoes or dresses that exposed arms. I never questioned Stan because I wasn’t prepared to provoke the wrath I knew was building inside him.
These proclamations soon multiplied and intensified. One day Stan slapped my face when I told him the church should pay as much attention to gossip among the congregation as it did to women’s clothing. I soon realized, with dread, that I was caught in a worsening cycle of oppression. Stan had tightened his hold over me. He was controlling my every move, questioning my every action, carefully analyzing each word I spoke for a treacherous double meaning.
For a while Heather became the centre of his existence. He seemed happy when he was around her, although he remained suspicious of my actions. The only time he appeared at peace was when he sat outside on our picnic table and played his guitar. Now he played only Christian songs; country and western was strictly forbidden by the church.
Our second child was born on a snowy Christmas morning in 1969. It had been a long, painful labour that lasted eighteen hours, but Jody Lee was as beautiful and perfect as his one-year old sister. He looked like a miniature of his father. There was no mistaking his heritage. Same black hair, same full lips, same Mohawk skin tone.
Stan seemed more interested in the baby boy when we arrived home than he had in Heather. It was as if he finally had an ally in the home already stacked with two females. He would sing to his son and hold him for hours. He even lightened up after the birth, as though a huge burden had been lifted. I knew he was as proud to have a son as I was, and maybe that pride made him feel better about himself, more capable to have fathered a son. He was eager to help out at home and rarely questioned my activities. It was as if the mistrustful stranger who had intruded upon our lives had disappeared completely. The shy, gentle Stan I’d first been attracted to was back.
My husband started acting strange once more just a month after Jody’s birth. That was the second time he hit me. I was tired and lost my patience when he didn’t respond to my request to help carry laundry in from the clothesline. When he ignored me, I screamed at him. He rose out of his chair and stormed toward me, raising his hand and slapping my mouth so hard my lip cracked and began to bleed. From then on things grew steadily worse. The slightest show of insolence on my part always brought a slap or shake.
It was 1970 and Stan was away a great deal on manoeuvres with the army. It was the year the FLQ crisis took place in Quebec, granting me a reprieve when Stan was assigned there as a peacekeeper.
That was when Kevin came into my life. I noticed him one day at a service station where we stopped for gas. I hadn’t seen him since I was thirteen years old, but I’d always considered him handsome.
Kevin had grown up only five houses away from mine in Haneytown. When he was