Read Online They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson - Free Book Online Page B

you better than anyone! Remember, I’m the only one who’s known you All Your Life,” implying that she knew me better than I knew myself.
    Sometimes I used to cry on Dad’s shoulder. “Oh, Dad, she criticizes everything I do … sometimes I think she just hates me!”
    “You’re wrong,” he’d say gently. “She admires you … she loves you … she wishes she could be just like you.” But I didn’t believe him. Why would she want to be like me?
    Dad never disciplined me—he left that up to Mum and her silver hairbrush—but he occasionally disciplined the boys with a long thin bamboo cane that he kept in his closet for this purpose. It was supposed to be holding up his tomato vines.
    “You’ll get three of the best!” he’d shout. “And if you cry, you’ll get three more!”
    For me, the worst of it was the calm before the storm. Dad would order the boys to go to his bedroom, take down their pants, bend over the four-poster, and wait for him. The cruelty of it seared my heart, yet I felt powerless to stop it. When I took a bath with my brothers afterwards, I could see the angry blue stripes and red welts on their little backsides as they climbed gingerly into the tub. I remember the night when I’d finally heard enough.
    I was eleven years old, hiding behind the curtains in my bedroom. I had my hands to my ears trying to block out the screams of Sandy and Robin in the bedroom next door. Every swish of the cane as it whooshed through the air landed on the beat of Dad’s forceful words.“You—can’tmake—strongsteel—without—ahot—fire!” he bellowed, as if he were trying to convince himself. Then I heard him say, “This hurts me more than it does you!”
    When Dad finally emerged from the bedroom, his shoulders were slumped and the cane dangled loosely in one hand. He looked exhausted. But I was waiting for him. I leapt at his chest, attacking him with my fists.
    “You cruel, cruel man!” I shouted, surprising myself.
    I fled down the stairs, out the verandah door, and down to the lake in the dark, throwing myself into the depths of the lilac bushes that towered over the path.
    Dad had looked momentarily confused, startled by my outburst, and only then did I realize it wouldn’t have taken much to stop him. I understood in that moment that it wasn’t something he wanted to do … it was something he felt he had to do, some version of misguided discipline he’d experienced in his own childhood. He must have been beaten hard at boarding school.
    I heard Dad calling for me but I didn’t answer. I wanted him to worry.
    Upstairs, Mum was at the boys’ bedsides trying to soothe their tears—but we all knew that it was she who’d brought this on. When Dad arrived home from the office, it was Mum who told him of the boys’ transgressions; she of the comfortingkisses-after-the-fact knew exactly what punishment she was setting them up for. Why would she do this? Why didn’t she know better? I could never understand it. She seemed to have no trouble standing up to Dad on other occasions.
    Some nights, after we were tucked in bed, Mum sneaked out to art class, and when she came home Dad would crumple up her drawings and throw them in the fireplace, raging thatshe should have stayed home and washed the dishes instead. I’d hear her slam a cupboard door and yell, “There’s plenty more where those came from!” Then I’d hear her pour herself a drink and shout, “And while you’re at it, you should thank me … because I’m going to be supplying paper for your fire for the rest of the winter!” I’d hear the metal ice cube tray clatter into the sink as she stormed out of the room.

    Almost every other year I skipped a grade at elementary school, so that by the time I graduated to grade nine at the public high school, I was only twelve years old. Many of my classmates were sixteen—including Ernie, who worked after school as a gas jockey at the corner Esso station. Ernie had greasy,