When the train arrived in Gaspé City, Hector McGregor and his family were there to meet me. They drove me to a small village named Pointe-Navarre where they lived. As it turned out, I spent most of my time doing housework and baby-sitting while Hector and his wife visited people, attempting to build a congregation. I did manage to sing in French during a few services. After I was there about a month, Brother McGregor caught me talking one evening to a French boy who didn’t attend church. The brother mercilessly scolded me, saying I’d go straight to Hell if I didn’t change my ways, and I watched the French boy shrink away, taking his leave. A kind young minister named Jean Joyale tried to take my part while Brother McGregor delivered his wrath, but the damage had been done. The brother said, “I’ll have no boy-crazy teenager making out in the churchyard and interfering with my ministry.”
“You’re a dirty-minded hypocrite!” I yelled back. “Your biggest ministry is having kids.”
“Let’s just talk about this,” Brother Joyale interrupted in French.
“This isn’t your concern,” Brother McGregor said sternly.
That was that. I packed my things in silence and was delivered to the train station a few days later. Only the warm hugs from Brother McGregor’s wife and children let me know I’d be missed.
When I returned home from my learning experience, I once more abandoned my dream of becoming a missionary. I knew I could never possibly live the uncompromising life my parents and the church expected of me.
ADDICTED TO BAD BOYS
My next big crush was on a young Maliseet boy named Alfred who used to visit his sister next door to where we lived. He was lean and brown with dark, menacing eyes—eyes so black I sometimes felt mesmerized when I looked into them. I was intrigued by the alluring primitiveness of his behaviour, the raw, passionate sex that seemed a foreboding certainty. He had a long, angular face with a hooked nose that reminded me of a hawk. He smelled like the cedar and pine he spent hours carving into animal figures. He was an artist, vaguely magical and mythical, and there for me.
I was hungry for the touch of those rough, callused fingers, but again I was too afraid to give in. Our summer romance was limited to probing tongues and awkward caresses that tried to coax shy nipples through the confines of cotton. I never knew he had another girlfriend—a tough, husky white girl—until one day she made her presence known. I was sitting outside on my doorstep when she stormed right up to me, a hostile figure suddenly too close for comfort.
“Who do you think you are?” she screamed. I stood and edged away from the house, not wanting my mother to hear what was going on. I didn’t have a clue who the girl was.
“W-what are you talking about?” I stammered, noticing she had her fists clenched by her sides. I continued backing away as she advanced.
“What are you doing with my boyfriend?”
“What boyfriend? Who are you talking about?”
“Alfred.” She raised her hands and lunged at me.
I stumbled, shocked into silence for a moment. “Alfred? I didn’t know he had a girlfriend.”
“Well, he does,” she said, pointing at me, gritting her teeth. “And if I catch you messing around with him again, I’ll drive that little white nose of yours down your throat.”
My cheeks were flushed and I felt tears spring to my eyes. I had never been threatened before and I wasn’t about to attempt fighting a girl with arms like a wrestler’s.
“There’s nothing going on between Alfred and me,” I lied. “Besides, I already have a boyfriend.”
“That better be true!” she screamed in my face. “If I find out different, I’ll wrap that long hair around your throat!” She glared at me, deciding what to do next. Then she backed away, still watching me, before heading onto the road that would take her the three miles from Haneytown to Oromocto. She sure does talk strange for a white girl, I thought.
Fearing for my life, I told Alfred I couldn’t see him anymore when he came to visit his sister a few days later. He didn’t offer any objection. No decrees of love for me, no long pleas of devotion. I had a sneaky suspicion his girlfriend must have already warned him off. After all, she was twice as tough as he was.
GRAMMIE MILLS’S DEATH
I didn’t see Grammie Mills as frequently as I would have liked in my early teen years, but I thought of her often. I wondered what she would say if I had been able to talk to her about boys. I didn’t think she would get as mad as my mother when I tried broaching the subject. Grammie Mills never got mad at me.
It was a freezing cold morning, February 13, 1967, when my father received the call informing him Grammie Mills was gone. Ordinarily I would have been at school, but on this particular morning I was home with a cold. My father was told there had been a fire caused by overheated ductwork in Aunt Edna’s Lakewood home on the outskirts of Saint John. Aunt Edna had already left for work. A neighbour had noticed smoke billowing from the house and alerted the fire department. When the firemen arrived, it was too late. They had discovered my grandmother’s body on the kitchen floor, three feet from the door. Aunt Edna’s German shepherd, which had lain faithfully next to Grammie Mills, had also perished.
The policeman notified my father that Grammie had been overcome by the smoke. She never suffered. Not a bit.
“The police want me to go to Saint John,” my father quietly told us, his hand still on the receiver. “To identify the body.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I stood there, watching the pain etch deeper into my father’s face. It was too much for me to bear. Without a word I headed to my bedroom. I stayed there, unwilling even to say goodbye to him as he left.
The following day, when my father returned from Saint John, he didn’t talk about Grammie in front of me. He wouldn’t mention her name. I noticed that some of his dark brown hair had turned white. It had happened in less than twenty-four hours. I’d read in one of my books about a man whose black hair turned completely white after coming face-to-face with a demonic spirit. I was afraid for my father, but I didn’t want to know what had happened, what had made his hair change colour in what seemed like nothing more than an instant.
Grammie Mills’s funeral was held in Fredericton. All during the service I stared at the casket, determined to rip it open and have one last look at her to make certain she was really inside. I couldn’t believe they required such a big box for such a tiny woman. I wanted it all to be just a bad dream. I wanted to wake up and see her visiting us again for a big Sunday dinner. I wanted to hear her gruff little chuckle as she greeted me with a warm, perfume-scented hug and kiss.
Sitting with my mom and dad in the funeral chapel, I recalled how purely delighted my grandmother used to be when I brought her flowers. She didn’t like winter and so it seemed unfair to me that we would be taking her for her last car ride in the middle of a winter storm. She should be surrounded by sunshine and daffodils, I reflected.
I glanced across the handful of people, all dressed in black, who sat stoically listening to the words of some dreary hymn. My aunts (Aunt Lois looked so much like Grammie), parents, brothers, cousins, and other relatives I’d only met at funerals stared straight ahead as a minister stood to pray for my grandmother. You’re too late, I thought, concentrating on holding back my tears. Too late.
Two ministers conducted the funeral service: Dr. Harold Mitten from Brunswick Street Baptist Church, where my Aunt Lena, Dad’s other sister, and my cousin, Heather, attended faithfully; and Archdeacon A. S. Coster, the Anglican priest who had married my parents.
How can you look so calm! I longed to shout. It was impossible to measure the amount of pain my relatives