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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781452586076 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Balboa Press |
| Publication date: | 12/10/2013 |
| Pages: | 230 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.52(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Finding Heart Horse
A MEMOIR OF SURVIVAL
By Claire Hitchon
Balboa Press
Copyright © 2013 Claire HitchonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-8607-6
CHAPTER 1
Sweet Sixteen
When I turned sixteen, nothing happened. I thought girls had sweet sixteen parties, and everybody celebrated and felt happy. But nobody knew it was my birthday. Nobody ever knew. As far as I knew, I didn't really exist, because my birthday never happened. And if I didn't really exist, no one would notice if I disappeared.
And no one did.
I hadn't planned on leaving her that day. It was like any other day. I went to school; I came home; I did my homework and chores. After dinner I announced that I was going out with my friend Gail, and my mother tightened her face and told me I'd better be home early or else. Everything she said after that was just white noise. I tuned her out and took off.
I hadn't told her that we were meeting a couple of guys in their twenties and we were all going to get high. It's not like I was reckless or anything; I was an honor student and had already passed grade ten of the Royal Conservancy of Music, the highest level possible, and I'd won several awards for my classical piano performances. She always made sure I could perform.
I liked hanging out with Gail. I didn't know her well, but she was very striking—a tall, thin girl with a pixie cut and great big eyes, heavy with mascara. She reminded me of Twiggy.
And like Twiggy, Gail wanted to be a model. She always did seem destined for something greater than Belleville. Our Canadian town on the northern shores of Lake Ontario was charming and quaint, but it was no place to plan a future. It was obvious Gail wasn't sticking around Belleville, which made her all the more intriguing.
I didn't know Gail's friends. They were older, in their early twenties. She was dating one of the guys, and the other guy was his friend. Smoking pot was what kids did back then, so that's what we did. It wasn't like we were getting in trouble. It was just a night out having fun.
As they were dropping me off in front of my house, I noticed my mother. She was standing in the sunroom, her hands on her hips, her neck stretched halfway across the yard, glaring as she tried to figure out who was in the car. I don't know what it was, but something about the look on her face that night, made me do it. I'd had enough.
One of the guys—not Gail's boyfriend but the other one—climbed out of the car to let me out, and that's when I did it. I knew she was watching. I had never kissed a guy before, but for some reason I reached right up, grabbed his head, and planted a huge, passionate kiss right on his lips. My mother was furious—I could tell by the throbbing anger flying through the air. As I walked past her and into the house, the jabbering began.
"You worthless whore! Carrying on like a piece of trash. We're Hitchons, you hear? Pillars of the community! We can't have you ruining our reputation with your antics. What will the neighbors think?"
"What will the neighbors think?" had become a familiar refrain. She may not have had much concern for me, but she had an awful lot of concern for the neighbors, and I felt an immense sense of satisfaction knowing that for once I'd actually given the neighbors something to think about.
But I knew she'd take it out on me. I knew whatever was coming was going to be bad, and I just didn't want to put up with it anymore. So while she was jabbering away behind me, calling me the spawn of Satan and that sort of thing, I picked up my guitar and my pink stuffed elephant—why I picked up my pink stuffed elephant, I have no idea, but that's what I did—and I walked out the front door as casually as if I were going to get the mail.
And I kept on walking, down the drive, past the mailbox, and down the street, while she screamed behind me, "What will the neighbors think?"
Auntie Mame and Grandma are in the kitchen at the lake. Whispers pass between them as I listen at the door.
"She fits in so well, don't you think, for an adopted child?" Auntie Mame says. "I'm so glad she is musical like her parents. Makes things easier to explain. I wish we could have been around more when she was little. I told you, Pearl, that daughter of yours was way too hard on her. We needed to watch out for her more." Grandma glances in the direction of the door and nods her head.
I tiptoe out the side door and sprint to the lake like a deer fleeing a fire. I'm not sure what that all means. I'll find out someday; I know I will. That's my secret.
The police found me a couple of days later, but my mother didn't want me back. I was staying at my friend Brian Brown's place. Brian was my age, but he already had his own place in a rundown strip of row houses. They were pretty shabby, but that didn't matter. I just thought it was cool that he had his own place.
Since there weren't very many people our age with their own places, it wasn't very hard for the police to find me. A few phone calls was all it took, because, let's face it, there weren't many other places for me to go.
"She's pretty upset," my dad told me after picking me up at the police station. I could tell that he was upset as well, but I could also tell he was relieved to find me. My father was a big man with a small mustache, and he drove with both hands on the wheel, looking straight ahead. We drove in silence for what seemed like forever.
"I can't take you back there," he finally explained. "She isn't ready for you to come back." I knew she'd never be ready for me to come back. She wasn't ready for me to appear in her life in the first place. And now that I knew that, now that I had learned the truth about my appearance in her life, I knew I would never go back.
Mother tells me every day that she can send me back.
"Don't get too comfortable. If you don't do as I say, I'll send you back."
Back where? I wonder. I thought I lived here. But I really did wish she would send me somewhere else. That's my secret.
My dad rented me a room in a boarding house, and it worked out for a while. I was finally independent, but my dad stopped by and called regularly to be sure I was still going to school and staying out of trouble. Eventually, though, I had to leave when I got caught throwing a bag of pot out the window. I don't even remember why I threw a bag of pot out of the window, but I must have had a good reason at the time. Unfortunately, my dad was on his way over to visit me just when I tossed it, and it landed right in front of his feet.
To teach me a lesson, he called the police. They gave me a lecture, assured me I was on the path to ruin, said that if I didn't shape up, I'd amount to nothing, and then they sent me on my way. They didn't even ask about my mother; she was respectable, so why would they?
I got thrown out of the boarding house for tossing the pot, and still my mother didn't want me back any more than I wanted to go back. Her friend Mariel stepped in and said she'd take me.
Mariel and my mom had been friends for years; they were service wives together. My dad and Mariel's husband, Andy, always ended up getting transferred to the same places, so the two wives got to know each other pretty well. They were good friends, but once I moved in with Mariel, that pretty much ended their friendship. Mariel just had no idea what was really going on in that house—not until I moved in. Once she knew, I don't think she wanted to know my mother anymore.
We had just taken our regular seats in church when the old lady sitting next to me leaned over, a dead squirrel swinging from her neck and breath like old feet, and whispered, "Oh, you look so pretty today, Claire. Your hair is always so nicely done, and your dress is so lovely." She didn't know that an hour earlier I was screaming in pain as Mother brushed my hair in a state of inexplicable rage and slapped me hard when I said I didn't want to wear that dress. Nobody knows. Not now, but someday they will. That's my secret.
I was living at Mariel's when I turned sweet sixteen, but as I've said, no one really noticed. I didn't tell Mariel; after all, it was my mother who should have thrown me a party. But, of course, the only thing she ever threw regarding me was thrown at me, so I don't know why I was expecting anything. I guess I was just hoping that year would be different, since it was my sweet sixteen and all.
Then I got hit by a car and found myself in the hospital. My mom blamed Mariel for not watching me better, and Mariel decided it was best if I left. So that's exactly what I did.
CHAPTER 2Psychedelic Nights
I found a new home with a group of other people living in a farmhouse not far from the city. One of the guys was Randy. Randy was a pot dealer who hung out with Brian and the gang, and I thought he was pretty cool, not like the guys in high school. I didn't even go to high school anymore, anyway, not since I'd run off to Brian's.
Randy was handsome and slender with long, curly dark hair and a mustache, and he dressed like a medieval poet, in puffy white sleeves and dark vests. In an era known for its fashion flamboyance, Randy always kept it understated, if not a touch theatrical.
Randy had a knack for theatrics. He entered every room as if he were suddenly on stage. But he kept his ego in check, while keeping us entertained. He had a great sense of humor, and he was full of energy. People were just naturally drawn to him. People always surrounded him, as if he was some sort of mischievous mystic. Like everyone who knew him, I always felt special when I was with Randy.
Randy took a liking to me almost from the very beginning. Most of the girls seemed to conform pretty quickly to their place in the counterculture, accepting their roles as pretty playmates and wholesome domestic queens. But a few of us didn't want to cook and sew and be content as dutiful co-wives. We wanted to be where it was happening, and that just happened to be among the men.
I didn't actually set out to be different; if anything, I think I was pretty naïve about the hemp selling, not realizing that in the sixties, women were expected to stay on the margins of the counterculture, not in its epicenter. I wanted to be in the epicenter. And hanging out with Randy seemed to be getting me there pretty quickly.
"Hey, babe," Randy said to me one day, putting his arms around my waist and talking into my neck and hair, shortly after we met up at Brian's. "I really dig how you're always doing your own thing, always close by, but playin' so hard to get."
I didn't see myself as playing hard to get at all. I simply wasn't ready for sex. After all, I was only sixteen years old and just barely out of junior high. This new world may have been opening itself up to me, but it was new, nonetheless. I was stepping into it cautiously like approaching a wild horse.
"Randy, stop!" I laughed, playfully peeling him off me. But before I could say anything more, his attention was turned away. It was someone asking him if they could score. Randy was the Pied Piper of pot; everywhere he went, a long line of pot-hungry hippies, looking to score, followed him.
Randy quickly noticed that while I wasn't at all promiscuous, I wasn't afraid to take some risks. The fact that I'd left home and run away, that I'd chucked my formal education for the chance to finally experience life and hang out with such hip guys, really seemed to turn him on. He just didn't quite know what to make of me; it was as if he'd never before met a girl who had her own thing going on, who played her own music and wasn't known as somebody's girlfriend. The combination of being risky but chaste really intrigued him. So it wasn't long before we were hanging out together pretty regularly.
"Come on, babe, I know you want me to be your first. Just a kiss, that's all," Randy said, taking my chin in his hand and looking into my eyes with his own dark, enchanting gaze. Never having had any experience with boys or men, except for that passionate kiss in front of my mom that sent me on my new journey, I was very innocent in many ways. Randy picked up on that. He used to tease me about how "sweet and sensitive" I was and yet how sad I always looked.
"You like to put on a tough front like you're some tough chick nobody'd better mess with, but I know you. You're my sad-eyed lady of the lowlands," he said, quoting the Dylan song that was popular at the time. "Why don't you tell me what you're so sad about, babe? You know Randy will make it better." He'd tease me like that in his gentle and fun way, but it was always in a sexual manner that made me nervous, scared, and most of all, happy to have so much of his attention when so many others were standing in line.
We often lay together on my bed, hugging and kissing, or sometimes Randy would just play with my long hair, gently pulling his fingers through it. It seemed an innocent enough gesture, quite gentle and loving. I don't think I was really thinking about what any of it would lead too. But I did know that Randy's persistence and patience had its limits, and it was only a matter of time before he would want to go all the way. Since I had never really had any affection shown to me, to suddenly have such a cool and popular guy treating me like he really wanted and liked me brought me so much joy and confidence. And the fact that everyone who knew him liked him assured me I was with a good man. I also knew from the way we were going that eventually I'd give in to Randy, but until that time, I just wasn't ready to go all the way.
As he was slowly drawing me in, another thing happened. Randy and I were becoming a team. He was so charismatic and could convince anyone of anything that when he started talking to me about being his partner in the pot trade, instead of backing away, I felt even more special. After all, these were the sixties, and the pot trade was just an extension of the pot culture, with scoring a joint as common as scoring a Starbucks these days. No one ever really distinguished between smoking pot and selling it. If you had it, you shared it; if you didn't have it, you looked for whom ever did and compensated them for their costs and trouble. And Randy always had it. He didn't cheat anyone, and he had good stuff. It was only natural that people came to him to score, and his reputation as a reliable source quickly spread.
"I just can't keep up with everyone, babe" Randy said, "Everybody's looking to score, but there's only one of me to go around! But you and me together, babe, that'd be something. Wouldn't we make a groovy team?"
The images he'd conjure of us sitting back in Jamaica like the king and queen of the dope world, delegating and distributing while the music played on and the smoke swirled in the air, were to a newly runaway teenage girl in the 1960s; it was the next best thing to having a movie producer assure me he wanted me to be his leading lady. Randy was fast becoming counterculture royalty, and knowing he wanted me by his side when it happened was an incredible feeling.
One night Brian threw a party and I went with Randy. I remember I was on my period, and that was always inconvenient. My mother had never let me buy sanitary napkins. She made me use an old, ripped-up sheet folded into a pad. It was really uncomfortable and embarrassing. I hated gym class.
Since I was on my own now, I could buy Kotex, which was much better, even though you had to use this elastic thing with clips to hold the pad in place. I wasn't really in the mood to party, but this was a big party and everyone would be there. Not going was simply out of the question.
Brian's house was the typical drug house, always full of people smoking grass and high on various hallucinogenics. When we got there that night, the place was even more crowded than usual. It was packed with people, with candles and incense burning, Led Zeppelin on the stereo, and the smell of pot heavy in the air.
Brian's place had turned into a shambles since I'd left. The legless living room couch was sitting on the floor with plastic milk crates turned upside down for tables. Dishes were piled high in the sink, food was scattered all over the place, and clothes were piled in heaps wherever a mattress, closet, or sofa might be. I pretended I didn't notice the sour and rotting smells and how my feet stuck to the kitchen and bathroom floors. Instead I did my best to just be a part of the crowd.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Finding Heart Horse by Claire Hitchon. Copyright © 2013 Claire Hitchon. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
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