Finding a Voice (12 page)

I
woke up the next morning with a feeling of unease. I hadn’t slept well again. Every thought, when I had woken in the night, had been to do with details of taking Chris away. But awake, in the real world, I was losing my nerve.

I would have thought I had inherited more of Mom’s spirit of following her heart, doing what she thought was right for the moment, with no thought as to the practicalities. But mostly, much as I usually didn’t like to admit it, a whole lot of the way I tackled each day was like Grandma, each decision weighed and analysed, always planning for the difficulties that probably would come up.

I got dressed slowly, at the same time reading the advert for the conference yet again. Was it completely crazy to think about taking Chris to it?

I still had the magazine in my hand when the door to my room burst open. I jumped, not expecting Mom to be awake at this hour of the morning.

‘I thought that today would be the perfect day for you to stay home from school!’

I just looked at her in disbelief.

‘Well don’t look so excited!’ she teased. ‘When was the last time you had a proper day off? We could do something fun, something you would like to do.’

‘I’d like to go to school,’ I sighed.

‘I don’t know why you are suddenly so keen on going to school,’ Mom sniffed, going on casually, ‘We used to have that in common you and I – misfits in the old secondary school department. I looked forward to sharing school horror stories when you reached about twenty – old enough to realise the ridiculousness of the conformist agenda of it all.’

‘How long have you known how unhappy I was at school?’ This was news to me. I never told her anything about school.

‘Well of course you would be forlorn, my awkward wildebeest in the midst of lions! It will make you far more interesting as an adult though.’

It had always been easy for me to not talk about school. Mom had hardly ever referred to my school life at all. She had certainly never asked about how happy I was. I had always assumed that she was too wrapped up in her own problems to even notice much about her daughter’s life. From the time I was five I had instinctively tried to shield her from knowing how hard it was to face each school day. It had never occurred to me that she knew how miserable I was, and was actually
glad
about that.

‘What’s this?’ she asked, picking up one of the brochures
strewn on my dresser.

‘Do you really care?’ I asked, snatching it out of her hands.

‘Well, I suppose not, Jo.’ She dropped the brochure on the floor. ‘To be honest, you
have
been a bit boring lately. If it’s because of this sort of thing, I suppose I don’t really care.’

The words hit me in the stomach like a medicine ball shot out of a cannon. I had spent my whole life tuned into the slightest whim Mom might have. I had tried to sense any crack in her happiness before she even knew it herself, so that I might make sure that she didn’t have to spend one minute unhappy if I could help it.

Now the one time that I cared about something, something important, she dismissed it without even wanting to know about it. Dealing with her difficulties coping with life was one thing, coping with complete rejection of who I was finding out I was, was quite another thing.

For once, I could not keep my composure with her. Blink as I might, I could not stop the tears that threatened to collapse me. She just looked at me, smiling a slow smile and raising her eyebrows.

‘Oh, Jo, you must learn to control your emotions!’

I couldn’t concentrate in science class with Mr Jenkins. Mom’s words kept going through my head, and each time I said them to myself I became more determined to help
Chris. ‘
You must learn to control your emotions
.’ Fear? Just control it. Worry about how Mom might be? Just control that.

It was the usual routine of me working on an assignment, while Mr Jenkins popped his head in now and again on his way to and from making sure all the SE kids were getting on okay.

‘Done yet?’ he asked for the third time.

‘Not yet,’ I said.

I had barely started the assignment. The book was open, and I kept starting to look for the answer to question two and then I would drift into thinking about the logistics of getting Chris from the school to the train station the next day. I was trying to remember if there was a lift on every bus that went past the school, or only on some of them. I would have to check out the bus schedule.

And just when thoughts of the craziness of the whole idea started to creep in, I would again feel the weight of my conversation with Mom that morning. I had wanted so badly for her to be okay this time. I had worked so hard for it. And for what? She didn’t want to be normal, and worse, she wanted me to be unhappy.

And Chris
was
unhappy. My plan might be crazy, but at least it would be trying to help someone who actually might want help.

A few minutes later Mr Jenkins returned, but this time Dr Sharon was right behind him. My heart jumped. It was
Thursday, not our usual Monday meeting day. My first thought was that there was something wrong with Mom. Habit. I wondered if I would ever not have to worry about her. But then I remembered that it would be Francie that would be at the door if there was a problem with her.

‘I have a few moments before I have to head off to another school,’ Dr Sharon said, ‘Is it okay if I talk to you now?’

‘Okay,’ I agreed, though I didn’t feel like it was at all okay. I was kind of embarrassed by having stormed out of the room on Monday. Just seeing her now brought the confusion and anger back to the surface, adding to the hurt from my conversation with Mom that morning.

Dr Sharon assumed her usual position, relaxed but distant, across the table from me.

‘I didn’t want to leave it a week before seeing you, since we didn’t finish our time together the other day.’

‘I’m sorry I left,’ I attempted to make our relationship tidy again, but it was getting harder and harder to put my feelings into the locked box I usually kept them in.

‘Why sorry? You were upset.’

We just sat there a minute then. Dr Sharon always seemed completely at ease with silences. I, on the other hand, could never stand them, except with Chris. Chris was different of course because there had never been anything but silence from him in our friendship, but also because I never felt that he might be quietly judging me.

‘It’s not easy to just sit back and let someone be unhappy you know,’ I defended, ‘especially when it has probably been their whole life they’ve been unhappy.’

‘I can see it’s upsetting you.’

‘Not anymore,’ I divulged. ‘Maybe nobody else cares, but I do.
I
won’t just sit back.’

‘You’re very strong that way, Jo. Look at the difference you have made in Chris’s life. He is lucky to have such an understanding friend,’ I was surprised to hear her say, ‘and yet … you have had to sit back and wait an awful lot in your own life haven’t you?’

I wanted to let the tears come, I really did. I wanted to agree with Dr Sharon, to admit that I had waited my whole life for something to be better: for a break from always taking care of Mom, and yet never doing it well enough; for a friend that I could have come to my home; for a week without worry.

I couldn’t risk crying now though. If I opened that box of feelings, I wouldn’t have the strength to go through with my plan. Maybe I had failed in keeping things okay for Mom, but I wasn’t going to fail Chris now – even if I didn’t have a clue how I could pull it off.

‘It’s okay to ask for help,’ she offered.

I was relieved when the bell rang and I could head off to second period, narrowly escaping crying on Dr Sharon’s shoulder, which I thought surely would have ruined her
expensive suit jacket.

When the lunch bell rang I was slow to head off to help Chris with lunch. For the first time since I had met him my heart just wasn’t in it. Ironic. I’d never been more concerned for anyone as much as I was concerned for Chris right now. Yet I didn’t really want to see him.

Things had been strained between us the last few days. He still wasn’t smiling and I had been too distracted with trying to come up with some sort of plan to ask him many questions. I wouldn’t let him down though. Besides, where else would I go?

I was in before Chris. He was a bit late. I put my head down and tried to calm the jumpiness of my stomach. Nothing seemed right anymore. My feelings were playing chase with my thoughts and it all seemed mixed up together. I was angry with Mom but I was sad about her too. I was sad for Chris, but I was scared too about actually taking him to the conference. Did I know what I was doing?

It had seemed so simple last night. Get Chris on a train. If it was so the right thing to do, why wouldn’t my stomach stay still? Was I
truthfully
trying to help Chris – or was I using him as an excuse to escape myself?

Flo wheeled him in and I looked up, giving him as much of a smile as I could muster.

‘He’s been ready for lunch since this morning, I’d say. Every time I say your name his face lights up,’ said Florence.
‘He wasn’t happy about our holdup waiting for the microwave to be free.’

Chris didn’t seem to be smiling now though. He was looking at me with furrowed brows.

‘Always glad to see you too, Chris,’ I said, trying to feel like I meant it.

Florence left and I pulled out the book that Chris had been reading.

‘No,’ he indicated with his head.

‘I don’t feel like talking today, Chris, if that’s okay.’

He didn’t answer that.

So lunch was quiet, both of us reading, as Chris ate and I turned pages. When he was finished eating, I put the book down.

‘Anything you want to say today, Chris?’

‘Yes,’ he indicated.

I took out the battered cards from my backpack, and laid them out. H O M E S A D Chris slowly spelled. Home. Sad. Tears came to my eyes and then when I looked at Chris, there were tears in his eyes too.

The medicine ball had been thrown at me again. There was only one thing I could do. Chris couldn’t be clearer in his plea for me to help him.

‘That’s it. We’re going.’

L
ooking back, I would not be able to believe that I headed out of the door of the SE wing without a single thought as to where we were going. But that’s what I did. I just started walking, trying to manoeuvre Chris’s chair as quickly as I could with his arms waving frantically in front of me.

It was only when we were in the main building that my heart began to race and I began to think of where we were going – if we made it out of the school.

I looked at my watch. We had about fifteen minutes before the end of lunch. There wasn’t much time to inconspicuously stroll out of the school without being noticed. And it wasn’t like Chris’s big blue beast of a wheelchair helped us to blend in. As soon as Flo walked into the little room where Chris and I had shared lunch for two months and found Chris not there, the search would be on.

The hallways were much easier to get through than they usually were when I wheeled Chris to and from art though. It was a nice day, and most people were still outside. The farther we got from the SE wing the louder my heart seemed
to beat. I sped up, expecting at every turn to be caught. We went around the last corner before the main door so fast Chris’s chair was nearly on two wheels.

And nearly ran right into Sarah. Who I had been trying to avoid for two months.

I hadn’t exactly
not
seen her all that time. It was a big school, but not
that
big. But when I had seen her, I had suddenly become very busy looking in the opposite direction, pretending that I hadn’t seen her.

Now I couldn’t avoid her. There wasn’t even anyone else in the foyer. And I couldn’t think of a worse time for it.

‘We’re late.’ I blurted the first nonsense that made it from my brain to my mouth.

‘Oh, well,’ Sarah was out of words too. ‘Anything I can go to with you?’

‘No … it’s an appointment,’ I managed before going on.

I practically ran outside into the bright sunlight.

We had to get far away quickly. I headed to the city bus stop two blocks away. The only bus line that I knew from here was the one that went to my suburb on the edge of town. I knew the buses ran every twenty minutes at this time of day, but I didn’t know how often the wheelchair-accessible buses ran. All I could do was hope that a bus came soon and hope that it was a bus that Chris could get onto.

I found out right away that pushing Chris’s chair in the school was a whole lot easier than outside. Some of the sidewalks
had sloped sections to get on and off, but they were not always where I wanted to cross the street, and I had to backtrack a couple of times. I had to be careful when we came to dips and uneven bits as Chris’s chair threatened to tip.

It seemed to be ages before we were at the bus stop, but when I looked at my watch there were still a few minutes before the end of lunch hour. I pulled the little levers to put the brakes on Chris’s chair as Flo had taught me to do when I started to go to art class with him.

I hadn’t said a word to Chris since leaving our room. Now I looked at him and gave a shaky smile. His face was drained of colour and his eyes were wide with fear. His arms and legs were still moving wildly.

‘It’s okay, Chris. I know what I’m doing,’ I tried to reassure him, even though it was a complete lie. ‘I
hate
that group home you live in. I’d cry every day if I had to live there.’

He was banging his head to the right repeatedly, ‘No.’

‘I’m listening. No more group home.’ Seeing how upset he was helped me to calm down. ‘Home sad’ was the first real communication to me about how he felt about his own life. I was doing the right thing. Sure it was crazy, and I didn’t know what we were doing, but anything had to be better than seeing Chris so unhappy.

I kept looking at my watch. The end of lunch bell would be ringing now. Where was the bus? What if it didn’t come
soon? I would give it five minutes and then I would have to come up with another plan.

But sure enough, the bus did barrel down the road in two minutes – and it was an accessible one, as I could tell as soon as the doors opened and the hiss of the hydraulics lowered it to sidewalk level.

I tried to appear casual as I went to drop the change for two fares into the fare box.

‘You don’t have to pay. Disabled companions go free with a Disability Card,’ the bus driver said, covering the change slot.

‘Oh … yeah. I forgot,’ I fumbled.

He didn’t ask to see Chris’s card; I supposed it was pretty obvious that he met the criteria, even if he didn’t have a card.

I managed to flip one of the front benches up and was trying to figure out the straps to secure the wheelchair, but the driver came back to do that. He was slow and methodical in tightening everything and checking it again before returning to his driver’s seat. Several people let out loud sighs of impatience with the delay. So much for being inconspicuous.

I glanced at Chris, wanting him to reassure me, but his eyes were turned down.

I looked around. Nine people. Not many people, but nine people who could identify us when the alarm bells were raised at school. There wasn’t a chance that they would not
notice us – well maybe the woman way at the back that didn’t look up from her book, but certainly none of the rest.

Through all of this I was thinking. The conference did not start until tomorrow. I was still hoping for some miracle there, some sort of great place to go. In order to even have a chance to find Chris some better options, we had to disappear long enough for me to think through a plan.

There was only one option that I could think of. My cabin. We could go there to hide out until I had a plan. It would be tricky to get along the river bank, but it could be done. I knew every obstacle almost by heart. And who would look for us there? I didn’t think very many people even knew it existed, and if they did, no one would guess I would bring Chris there.

Just in case though, I rang the bell two stops before the one closest to my house and even after we were off the bus I pointed Chris’s chair in the opposite direction and started to walk that way until I was pretty sure there was nobody to see us. The houses along this stretch were set back from the road, with meandering expanses of lawn and surrounded by big cedar and spruce trees. Besides, there were no cars in any of the drives. The people who lived in these houses that backed onto the park along the river were probably mostly in offices downtown at this time of the afternoon.

My heart didn’t stop thumping until we reached the almost hidden path that lead down to the river. There were
dozens of these paths, most of them ending at the river bank. Nothing distinguished my path from the others, but I knew it with my eyes closed.

As soon as I steered Chris’s chair off the road onto the path, I realised that it was totally different negotiating the path in a wheelchair though. I had never thought of the path as narrow. Sure, the ferns brushed my arms as I walked through in places, and I pushed through bushes in spots, but the path was never lost. Now though, Chris’s chair only made it a few feet before hitting a barrier of leaves and branches. I pushed until his chair stopped moving forward, then went to the front of his chair and pulled until the branches gave way. I would just get us out of one tight spot and then we would come to another.

Even when we were on a relatively wide spot, the ground was treacherously uneven. Roots lurched out of the ground at unpredictable angles, threatening to launch Chris onto the ground. I had to inch his chair forward, ready to run to whichever side his chair threatened to tip over to, in order to set it back on four wheels.

It was exhausting. I was dripping with sweat by the time we reached the river bank. Well, by the time
I
reached the river bank – with Chris in tow. I had not had a chance to check in with him since we got off the bus. He was literally just a package until we could reach the cabin and I could pull out the cards so that he could let me know what he
was thinking.

I just had to keep going. By the time we got to the river, I was realising how difficult it was going to be to get us to the cabin. This is where the path ended. It was only another kilometre or so downstream, but it was a tricky kilometre. I had always skirted along the riverbank, holding onto branches to swing around places where the trees came right down to the water. There was no way I could do that with Chris.

In the end I took off my shoes and socks, rolled up my jeans and waded into the water pushing Chris’s chair. The bed of the river was full of big, rounded stones covered in green slime. It was very slippery, but at least the handles of the wheelchair gave me some stability. Still, the chair itself was not very stable as it bumped along into big holes and crevices between the stones.

The water was freezing, but I didn’t even feel it once we started down the river. Just like on the path, I would push Chris’s chair until it was truly stuck, and then I would go to the front to try to pull it out. Chris himself did not make it easy. He was flapping in panic. The river was pretty shallow, and his feet were well out of the water, but I imagined it must be pretty frightening to have no control, as your vehicle careens down a river.

‘Almost there, Chris. Sorry about all this,’ I said, trying to give him a big smile, which probably ended up more like a
grimace. Chris had a look of terror pasted on his face. We
were
almost there. Just one more bend and we would come to the little sandy beach. I found some more strength to push him around the bend without getting stuck once. Just one final push and we would be there.

I’m not sure what happened next. One minute I was standing up, relieved that we had made it. The little beach was just ahead. The next minute I was down in the water. And Chris and his chair were on top of my right leg. Pain shot through my leg when I pulled it out and scrambled upright, but I barely noticed that in my panic to get Chris’s chair out of the water. Somehow I managed to pull Chris, still strapped securely into the chair, onto the beach and then right the chair again. He was soaking wet, but at least he seemed otherwise all right.

It was only when I went to push him from the beach, across the little field to the cabin that I knew that I was not all right. My leg just wasn’t working. I couldn’t stand on it. I tried again. Shooting pain.

There was no choice though. The sun was almost behind the trees now. It would be getting cold soon. I had to get Chris inside and dried off. It was hard to stop from screaming with the pain.
One, two, three
. I concentrated on counting the steps to the cabin. I had pushed through pain before; at least this pain was tangible.

Sixty-one, sixty-two, sixty-three
. We were there. But for the
first time ever I did not feel the usual relief of arriving at my safe place. Instead cold, sharp fear gripped me. What had I done?