Here is a cut/paste from my memoir manuscript.
The baseball bat to the bridge of my nose, happened when I’d been climbing down the stairs to the basement of the house in St. Eustace, Quebec. As I stepped down the stairs, I saw my sister in the doorway below, just her bare tanned shoulder and her long silky dark hair. She had her back to me. I thought that she must be reading there. Next thing I knew, whack! I couldn’t see for 5 to 10 minutes. Anne (I will call her in this book), said “ I didn’t know you were there.” She must have heard me coming down the stairs and swung the bat when she thought she could break my nose and shove the bone into my brain. She claimed to have been practicing her swing.
I didn’t tell anyone about it. No one really ever talked with me, so it never came up. My little mind couldn’t contemplate the horror that my sister was trying to kill me, so I just distracted and cheered myself, with TV, Archie comics, candy, and jumping on my friend Steve’s bed. The candy dependence began with a gift from dad:
One day, mum told me to go greet dad at the front door. I did, and that was the only eye contact I remember ever having with him. His eyes seemed to register that I loved him, and he was very happy at that instant, but then he brought his hand out from behind his back. In it was a brown paper bag, with candy in it. I wanted to tell him that I didn’t want the candy, that I wanted more eye contact, but I didn’t have the vocabulary, so I acted happy about the candy so as not to hurt his feelings, and I went down into the basement, sat in front of the TV, and got high on the sugar.
Anne's attempt at drowning me happened in the pool at a hotel on our vacation to Florida. She held me down in the deep end, under her. At first I thought she was just joking around, so I humored her, staying down without a fight. I watched her face, which was above the water. There was a big smile on it.
Eventually, my lungs felt like they were going to burst into flame. The pain was excruciating and mounting by the second. I then struggled, to let her know that the joke was going too far. At that point, her elbows locked to ensure I’d remain submerged below her. The pain insisted that I fight. To warn Anne of what was to come if she didn’t relent, I began to dig my fingernails into her ankles. I saw her big toothy smile vanish as she let go of me. She had a lot of murder mystery books. They must have taught her that her would-be bloody ankles would have given her away.
The electrocution happened when I was in the basement, under the stairs, where I had a pretend house. A lamp was missing, so I went to Dad’s work table and retrieved it. I noticed that the three pronged plug was missing half it’s rubber, exposing the metal prongs. I didn’t know enough about electricity to realize the danger of wrapping my little hand around that plug and inserting it into the wall socket.
I plugged it in, and couldn’t remove my hand from the plug. My legs were convulsing underneath me. I called for Anne, who was in the trusted position of babysitter. She came bounding down the stairs and stood watching me as my legs continued to convulse. I just happened to have a friend over, the only time I remember ever having one over. What great timing. Steven. He gave Anne ample time to do something to help me, and then he must have realized she was just going to watch me die, so he came up behind me, grabbed the bottom of my white t-shirt, and pulled me off the current.
I suspect Anne cut the rubber off that plug. There’s a pattern. Other attempts to kill me. Other deaths, the timing of them. Dad's death just when he was embarking on getting to know me. Then there was Pete, our canary’s death, just after I got the only meaningful compliment mum ever gave me, for bringing out the best in him. Pete and I got along really well. I’d open his cage door, take my shoes and socks off, wiggle my toes, and Pete would fly down to the floor and chase me around the apartment in Ville de La Salle, Quebec. He also would sing along to a record we had of birdsong.
It was after that compliment mum gave me about bringing out the specialness in Pete, that I came home one day to find mum and her boyfriend John (This was after dad died, of a sudden heart attack I find suspicious.), in the kitchen with Pete in a small basket on the table, unable to hold his head up. He had a bright red gash on his pale yellow head. I screamed, or rather screeched. John put him in a warmed oven. I guess I buried him in the backyard. I was told he flew into one of the clasps that hold the living room mirror to the wall. Now, looking back, seeing a pattern of deaths that occur just after I begin to get close to someone, I think it must have been Anne, who put that gash on Pete’s head. The suspicious deaths include dad, Pete, Nan, and eventually even Mum.
Dad asked me one day, if I wanted to go horseback riding. This was the only time I remember my dad speaking to me. I said yes. The next thing I remember is being at a ranch, dad being on a horse ahead of me, at the beginning of a forest trail, with many other riders on horses. My horse stopped, and wouldn’t budge (though I think I poked it a little with a hair pin), and dad’s horse continued on without me. The rancher came and led my horse back to the ranch, and led me into a room with a big fridge. There, he told a young woman to keep me occupied with pop and chips.
After an hour or two, some man sitting on a bench with two other men said with his Quebecois accent, “What happened, your father fall of a horse and die?”, and slapped his hands on his knees like it was hilarious. Next thing I know, my Godmother, Inga, drives up and says “Get in.” I do, and she proceeds to drive away from the ranch. I said “Where’s dad?”. She didn’t answer, she just looked ahead at the road coldly as she kept driving. I then yelled insistently “Where’s dad?”. She answered deadpan, “He’s dead.”, and kept driving, as I heard myself wail.
Today, having put two and two together, I suspect that Anne used her elaborate chemistry set she got for Christmas (or maybe her birthday), to poison Dad with a sandwich or something. I mean the timing; just after he begins to try to spend some quality time with me. Pete, dead, after mum compliments me about how well we got along. Nan, dead after she starts getting me to sing for her. And eventually, even mum would die of a mysterious illness shortly after she finally decided she liked me and sent me a Walkman. There’s a pattern, so I suspect Anne didn’t just attempt to kill me, but may have attempted and succeeded at killing several others.
_____
There was a logbook that dad wrote in, about his cub scouts. I could tell by reading it, that he was a sensitive caring person. All that thoughtful writing about his boys. Also, there were voice recordings on cassette tape, of him reciting xmas carols. Not singing them, but speaking them, and I liked his voice. These items were only shown to me after his death. He was never mentioned, and the recordings, both written and audio, were never to be seen again.
Nan would get me to sing the song from the movie The Sound of Music, Edelweiss, in the living room on Harrigan street in LaSalle, Quebec. I remember her giving me a nickel or a dime, after I sang for her, and how flattered and grateful I was for it. Soon afterward, I was told Nan was changing a light bulb in the kitchen, stood on a chair, and the chair collapsed under her. She broke her hip, and she was flown from Quebec to British Columbia, to a hospital in Kamloops. Anne flew to visit her, and Nan died soon after the visit. Part of a pattern. I wonder if Anne loosened the screws in the chair and then loosened the light bulb.
Before nan died, Anne was saying she was racist, and mum was saying she was selfish. They didn’t explain why they were saying such things, and I suspect that they just didn’t like her because she was emotionally intelligent (though not educated emotionally enough to see how vicious Anne was), and same with dad.
Decades later, Mum would send a Walkman across Canada to me, seeming to finally miss me. Soon afterward, Anne called to say that Mum had swelled up from her breasts down, and the doctors couldn’t figure out why. I got to talk to mum over the phone. I asked her if she was scared, and she answered yes. Next thing I know, Anne calls me up, and tells me mum died. We both wept audibly. I remember marveling at how her wailing sounded just like my own. But there’s that pattern again, of the timing of people’s deaths, being just after getting close to me (or trying to).
