Strike.

It wasn’t long after we made that decision to stay with Mom again that her workplace went on strike.  I was always told how unions protect people and if you were very lucky you’d find a job at a place that had one because it meant you had a job for life - but I’m convinced that it was the union that tore our little family apart again.  Once they went on strike, the money stopped coming in, and that was when the progress Mom and Dale had made started falling apart.  Mom would still leave the house everyday, but instead of going into the meat packing plant, she would walk the picket line and then go for drinks with the people she worked with.

It turns out that although Dale was working at an autobody shop, they were paying him peanuts.  Even though he wasn’t actually on the run from the police, he made them think he was, and so they paid him under the table - when they even paid him at all. 

Dale would to go to the shop and Mom would go to the picket line.  Mom would go for drinks, and then Dale would go for drinks too.  What little money they had became less and less, and they would both accuse each other of cheating on each other.  Meanwhile, me and my sister were going to school in Edmonton now, and trying to once again reinvent ourselves, but this time in a way bigger city, and with even less money than usual.  And that’s when it happened again.   They couldn’t pay the rent, and we were getting evicted.  The patterns that we thought we had escaped started reverting back to what they had been before.  The drinking, the lack of food, losing our home, the yelling and now the threats.When Mom went out with the people she worked with, Dale had decided that she was sleeping with the guys on the picket line, which made him absolutely crazy.  

We were woken up one night to the sounds of screams from my Mom because Dale was beating her again.  I’m not talking about a slap in the face - Dale tuned her up like he was fighting a man.  Punches in the face, kicks in the stomach, throwing her around the room and turning it into a big fucking disaster area.  I just remember hiding and waiting for it all to stop.   This wasn’t the first time I had dealt with the insanity of this man beating my Mom, and I knew better than to go out there and be a part of it.  I’d hide behind a curtain, or under the bed; or my favourite was in a pile of laundry in a closet.  I’d grab a blanket and spread it over everything as I burrowed my way inside the dirty clothes.  I figured that if I could just get away and stay hidden, I’d be okay.  When you go through these kinds of things, at first you start to cry because you’re scared, but after a while it all becomes about survival.  You hide because you don’t want it to happen to you, and then you drift off into another world.  The ruckus of the violence all around you becomes a chorus of indeterminate noise, and at least for me, it was something that I tried to block out as I disappeared into sleep.  I wouldn’t dream of violence or unnatural horrors - I would fall deep into a world of peace.  I don’t remember exactly what I would dream of, but I do know that it was never a situation where I was waking up in a cold sweat at night.  My dreams were a place of solace for me, and the one spot where I knew I could be okay.  That’s where I went.  I could escape into my dreams even as all of the madness unfolded around me.  I guess I was lucky that Dale never came looking for me because he probably would have killed me if he saw me.  But, I stayed there all night, only to wake up to the disaster I recognized from the past: busted furniture and glass, and a broken mother sitting on the floor with a dumbfounded look on her face.  Her face was a total mess after Dale had put his fists and his boots to her again, but what I really remember was the shame I saw.  My Mom really thought that being in this new place would make things different, and that we could have the “normal” life that we all were chasing.  But there was nothing normal about what we were dealing with.  Once again, we were going down a road of destitution.  No home, no food, no money, no prospects.

And no hope for the future.