Living on D Street in her mid-teens in an all-girls group home, Grandma used to run away frequently. “Just for the hell of it,” according to her. Maybe to be cool, to be where the other girls were going. The girls were getting into trouble, it seems, and Grandma was too naive to understand.
One time, her and a girl named Candy took off to Montreal where they ran into some trouble, Candy especially. They smoked a bit of weed, and for some stupid reason, according to Grandma, they ended up in this guy’s house and he had laced a joint with some cocaine. Grandma says she always kept alert, despite the drugs, Candy, not so lucky. She was preyed upon that night, Grandma aggressively turning down her own proposition.
Another time, a girl named Mary and her ran off to her hometown island because Grandma told her they could stay on the island reserve for two weeks and according to the rules, no one could touch them. The friend was terrified of Natives, repeatedly saying she didn’t want to walk down the road because the “Indians”, as they were then called, will beat her up. Grandma’s mother responded, “Keep talking like that and they will!” Rather than reassuring the girl. The mother, for some reason, let them stay the full two weeks.
The second time Mary and her ran off to another city, and Mary again got into drugs and alcohol. Grandma and her got into a huge fight, for some reason unknown to Grandma’s memory and Mary soon threatened to kill her. Grandma jumped out of the car, mid-drive, and ran off down a hill to a random house and knocked on their door. They helped her, calling the group home, who came and picked her up. Mary had taken off by then, the police called.
She didn’t take off again after Mary.
That’s around when she got her first assault charge. A girl named Rachel kept giving her a hard time in the bathroom. They tussled. Grandma the only native in the house. Rachel didn’t even show up for court because she was back home with her parents by that time. Grandma got charged anyway. Rachel was excused.
Grandma used to go rollerskating a lot during this time, gliding along to the music without a care. She also rocked a lot in a swivel chair in the living room of the group home, playing her music, loudly even, without bother from the staff. Her only solice from the traumas.
One day she randomly saw her mother getting out of the car through a window. She had never visited her before in any of the group homes, so this was a surprise, causing Grandma great excitement. Missing her mother, despite her sadistic abuse. It was still her mother, after all. She soon saw Aunty Janet getting out of the same car, and the mood turned somber. Pa had gotten shot by the neighbour in the back of the head. He was in the hospital.
Mom and Aunty Janet emancipated her from the group home and they went to Aunty Janet’s house for four days, until Pa eventually succumbed to his death, later heading to the Island for the funeral. Grandma remembers Uncle Steve reading the Bible vigorously standing by Pa’s head while he was dying. She watched him take his last breath. Later sitting in the closed-in porch, Grandma remembers her mother saying “I bet you wish that was me.”
“Think what you want, but you’re wrong.” She replied.
Shortly following the funeral, Grandma found herself grounded for taking off the night her Pa was shot. They let her go to Disney World anyway, an amazing opportunity arranged by a con-man who six months later swindled the organization out of a bunch of money, leaving around 50 kids homeless. Grandma included. Fifty girls and boys, mostly disabled, to be rehomed. It was pandemonium.
Grandma ended up with Bob and Elizabeth on the reserve, finally getting a break from the man who had been molesting her from the group home. It had started when she was 14 and continued unnoticed by the group home staff. He ended up impregnating her at 17, the father of her only surviving daughter.
Grandma had been running away for years. She just hadn’t known what she was running from.
Have you ever run from something before you were old enough to understand what you were running from?
If this story stays with you, restack or share it. Someone else may understand their own story a little differently because of it.
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