Authors: Rudy Wiebe
Stolen Life (64 page)
“If you accept it,” I said, “then it’s over. If not … well, I’ll know where we stand. But I’m offering it to you, to let you know I’m really sorry. If you take it, then it’s finished.”
She said, “I’ll be proud to take it. Thank you.”
Both her eyes were black; her whole face one battered bruise. And I started to cry, knowing I’d done that to her. And I told her how sorry I was. I said, “Let’s never play these stupid games for them again.”
And she promised me that. I gave her all the Threes I had, and she told me about her visit to the doctor about her face. She told him she tripped and fell down the stairs, and we laughed aloud, our stories so close. But they also asked her whether she’d been in a fight with me. Why? I asked. Well, your hands and my face, and they keep a suspect file on everything, they’re always piling up files, every inmate carries sixteen tons of paper at least.
I said, “Let them suspect all they want.”
“Well,” she said, “you’re sort of yellow around the cheeks too.”
“That’s nothing to what else you did—every muscle is sore, every bone aches.”
“Let’s see your hands,” she said. I showed her. “Pretty bad, eh?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You’ve got guts, there’s no giving up. You’re a real Cool Hand Luke!”
So we laughed; and she and I agreed we would not shank each other. I went outside to my work in the yard. The Black inmate was there digging out dandelions; they sail in and grow, the stone walls of P4W don’t stop dandelions.
“I told those stupid women long ago,” she said, “leave Yvonne alone, I told ’em, quiet water runs deep. You became the Bear, you swatted her down with a huge paw.”
But I just wanted to be low-profile again. To be left alone.
And I was. Whatever they wrote down on my secret file, my official security rating remained medium. The Healing Lodge for Federally Sentenced Women at Maple Creek, Saskatchewan, was about to open; it would accept only minimum-security inmates, but in September 1995 I was transferred out of P4W with the prayer I would never see it again. I was brought back to the prairies, and for a few months I was held at the Regional Psychiatric Centre, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, less than two hours from Red Pheasant by car. My family has been known to drive farther than that for an evening beer, but no one came to visit me.
The year 1995 was my roughest in prison, even worse than 1993, when I lost my appeal. Maybe Sergeant Burnett’s good letter about me—no one asked him to write it—after he escorted me to North Battleford had something to do with my luck turning. Nothing official was ever said to me about the fight, and in fact, after I was transferred to the Regional Psychiatric Centre in Saskatoon in September, my security rating was dropped from medium to minimum. Then on 11 December 1995, I arrived at the Healing Lodge built in the hills south of Maple Creek on the land of the Nekaneet Cree Nation.
Okimaw Ohci. Still a prison, but with no wall or fence. Just tall poplar trees and air, the sacred ground of the Thunder-Breeding Hills sloping down to the long horizon on the prairie. Thank the Creator.
What You Did, and Where You Did ItToday makes it two years I’ve been in prison. Today I remember the pain and suffering not only of myself, but all who were involved. […] When I saw that man’s family in court, I cried within myself for them. As I saw the anger they had. […] I can’t help but want to give the dead man’s family love, love they will need so much. But they will never accept me as long as hate outweighs their pain. I pray they not hate us, because if they do, their little ones suffer. I know the man suffered, and was hurt in a most cruel and bad way. All dignity was taken away in his death. I don’t know if what Shirley Anne said about him was true, and now a lot of people perceive him as a child
molester. I don’t know. And truly, who am I to judge? None of it was intended to happen. I did not even hate the man, I pitied him. I don’t know why it happened. I can hate no one, and if I do, it doesn’t last. I do know, if what happened had not happened, I would have tried to help him again. […] I always need time to let the anger pass, then if he had come and we were alone, I know I would have talked to him.
–Yvonne,
Journal 1
, 15 September 1991
T
HE HEALING LODGE
in the Cypress Hills of southwestern Saskatchewan came into existence because of the Task Force on Federally Sentenced Women. In its report in April 1990, it recommended that the single Kingston Prison for Women—
P4W
—be replaced by five regional women’s facilities across Canada, and that a “Healing Lodge be established in a prairie location where Aboriginal federally sentenced women may serve all or part of their sentences.” Early in 1991, a Healing Lodge Planning Circle began to make plans and receive submissions, and in February 1994, the Nekaneet Band voted to grant a site for the lodge on its small reserve south of Maple Creek. The Maple Creek/Nekaneet submission was accepted because it “demonstrated a strong tradition of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal cooperation, an offering of sacred land … and a strong sense of responsibility.” Construction started in August 1994, and in December 1995 Yvonne Rose Johnson became the fifth federally sentenced woman to be accepted there.
It was in Okimaw Ohci that Yvonne could finally gather the courage to recall in sequence the crime for which she was sentenced, and the strength to speak it out.
After a ceremonial sweat led by her adopted father, Elder Gordon Oaks of Nekaneet, and further consultation with Elder Pauline Shirt of Toronto, Yvonne chooses a “good, wise” course of action. On 26 December 1996, in the Elder’s apartment at the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge, she speaks for hours into an audio recorder.
She will make five tapes in all and, as she states at the outset, they are there for use by the lawyers who will help her in her case, for me, and also for Judge Lynn Ratushny, head of the Self-Defence-Review
(SDR)
appointed by the Government of Canada. The purpose of the
SDR
is to make a “review of cases of women convicted of homicide which occurred in the context of an abusive relationship.”
On 29 December, Yvonne personally gives me a copy of the tapes when I visit her in the presence of Pauline Shirt. I began listening to them on 2 January 1997. I have heard and read about parts of these events before, but this is the first time I hear her speak, in a connected sequence, what she remembers of what happened in the basement of her house in Wetaskiwin, Alberta, on 14 September 1989. In the following excerpts, taken verbatim from the tapes, the events of that dreadful evening are seen through Yvonne’s eyes.
I have taken Pauline Shirt as my Elder, and she is present with me at the Okimaw Ohci Healing Lodge while I tell this, for spiritual support, guidance, counselling, and for friendship. Today is December 26, 1996. I do this in a ceremonial way, and it is covered under the medicine, and I believe the spirits are here to help me. My sole purpose in doing this is to give it to the Creator, to give it to the spirits in the hope to get some sort of understanding, to put some sort of closure to all of it. To make a bad situation better if possible […]. It’s time for me to be as a medicine bear woman and to deal with these things […]. Please try to hear me with your spirit […]. Then use your mind to do what you think is best […].
I have never denied that I was involved. I was angry at the possibility that this man [“Chuck” Skwarok] could be a child molester, sitting in my home, I was angry because I couldn’t talk to him about it, I was angry at myself that I had to try to convince myself to get angry or mad enough to even start to talk about it […]. And I couldn’t walk away, I couldn’t run away. It was my home. It was my children, I just didn’t know what else to do […].
The next thing I knew all four of us were down there in the basement. And everybody was fighting and I was just standing there.
Ernie would like bulldog him, and run him up against the wall, and then Shirley Anne […] would come up there and punch him right where his head was cut, she just made it bleed, punching him there.
A lot of wrestling around and blood was getting all over the place, he was bleeding pretty bad from his head. And I didn’t know how bad he was cut.
They were fighting and wrestling all over the place, it was mainly Ernie and Shirley Anne, you know that Shirley Anne, where I come from you’re taught to fight one on one, you fight until one guy says “I give up.” Everybody fights in Montana, but you weren’t allowed to pull hair after the fourth grade and if you want to fight you call that person out and meet them after school, it’s equivalent to having a gun showdown in the street. Nobody is allowed to jump in.
I didn’t like the way Shirley Anne would sneak in there. She was evil, she knew where she was hitting, every time. I didn’t figure she had that in her. And I didn’t like it.
Or Ernie, that he could fight that hard.
Here it was my home, my children I wanted to protect, and now I actually didn’t want them fighting him any more—and yet I had to try and save face that I wasn’t condoning his actions by telling them to leave him alone. So in my own warped way, and I know it’s not right, I didn’t say anything in the first place. I know it’s a twisted way of thinking to somehow defuse the situation at the time.
When Chuck was getting the best of Ernie, then Shirley Anne’d jump in there, and it just bothered me. She did all this to get us started and now she was doing this. I just didn’t like any of this.
So I would try to break it up, and told him, “Don’t fight me,” I told him, “All I want is get you cleaned up and outa here.” And Shirley Anne was standing there like a vulture, “Go,” I says, “go get some water. We’ll wash him up.”
She was mumbling around that she had to be sent away, but that was one of her chances to get out of the situation if she had wanted to—as she said later in court she wanted to so badly. She went upstairs and she came back, all she had was this tiny tin
pot of water, what good was that supposed to do? I put a rag in there and it soaked all the water up.
Washing Chuck, all I did was smear his blood around. I told Shirley Anne she was useless, so I went upstairs and brought a big pot of water back down. I had him cleaned off pretty good, and then he started bleeding again.
And I felt sorry for him, I felt really sorry. I would try to hold the rags on his face where it was bleeding so it would stop, and then he looked at me.
And there was something about his eyes, it all becomes weird, something happened inside me then and I’d look away from him, and then I would convince myself to have pity again and I’d try to help him and I would look in his eyes, and I would see that again.
And I could smell his sweat mixed with the water. I don’t know, just the smell and his eyes, I don’t know what the hell happened, I just stood back and looked at him and all of a sudden the pity I felt was gone, and I felt anger, this real bad anger. I said something to him, something about his eyes.
“You breathe like a pig,” I said, “you smell like a pig,” and I couldn’t understand and I says, “I can’t clean you up, you’re bigger than this!” I remember taking that whole pot of water and I spilled it on him.
And when I did that, I flipped again—I thought, I did that? why’d I do that?—it seemed really cruel on my part to have done that and I let out a scream and I just spun around and I took off across the basement.
And when I did that, then Ernie started fighting him again, and Shirley Anne too.
They accused him of being an abuser, fighting and yelling, and I don’t know what it is, but I felt sorry for him again. I came in between them and I broke them up, they were pounding him and throwing accusations and at that moment I wanted to protect him and I don’t know why but I turned around and looked at him.
And I told him, “Do you really know how it feels, to be raped as a child? Do you?”
He didn’t answer me, and when he didn’t answer me I hit him, and I told him, “Tell me, if you know, what it feels like for someone to rape you as a child!”
He said nothing and I screamed, and spun away from him and shot off across the basement again.
And the other two were all over him. Ernie yelled, “I’ll show him what it’s like, I’ll show him how it feels.” I was standing there.
Ernie was going to sexually abuse him. I was just standing there, I … I don’t know what really happened. Somehow Shirley Anne got his pants off, he was standing, his head was facing the dugout in the basement and Ernie was by the slide we had built for the kids, Chuck was bent over. He was saying,
“No—no—no.…”
And Ernie was working himself into a frenzy and trying to undo the string of the jogging pants he was wearing. And I was just standing there, I didn’t know what was happening, and Ernie yelled, “Take off his pants, take off his pants!”
And Shirley Anne reached over and pulled down Chuck’s pants. Ernie was going towards him. And then I came between him and Ernie again when Ernie was pulling down his pants, and in my own way I tried to stop him.
I told Ernie, “You don’t want to filthy yourself, you don’t want to do that.”
And somehow Shirley Anne was standing there and she had a table [stool] leg and she was saying, “Here, use this, use this,” and Ernie grabbed it, and somehow Dwayne wound up with it.
And I remember looking at Dwayne and looking in his eyes and I took it away from Dwayne and I told him, “I’ll do it!”
Because I knew Ernie would’ve done it, and I knew Shirley Anne would’ve done it, so I faked it.
I came in between them guys, and either Ernie or Dwayne was holding Chuck by his head in a headlock, I don’t remember, and Dwayne was saying something, “You can’t use that.”
Because the leg had a plastic tip at the floor end and a screw in the other; so I knew you couldn’t use this, but I was not intending on penetrating him.
And in the process of acting like I did, made me feel horrible. To be honest I did not penetrate him, I could never have did that or he would have bled. I just acted like I did, or otherwise Ernie would’ve raped him. I acted like I did, I took the leg and I threw the leg across the basement, “There!”
Everybody thought that I did, but I didn’t. And I says, “Let him go, let him go now.”
And I don’t know what happened again, someone started asking him if he was the guy going around picking up all the kids on the street. And then he started crying. Ernie said, “I knew it, I knew it!” and Wham! they were all over him again, Ernie and Shirley Anne fighting him again.
And I never told anybody, because I could never explain my own stupid actions. It made sense to me, then, to act like I raped him, but I didn’t. Otherwise Ernie would’ve did it, I did that to stop Ernie. But for some reason every time I did something to stop it, it wasn’t final, it didn’t, it made matters worse. It’s just crazy.
Then Ernie ran him headlong into the sewer stack. And he started bleeding more, I don’t know if it was from his head or any place else.
But now he had no pants on, only a T-shirt. And I didn’t want to look at him [Yvonne is now audibly crying] ’cause when I look at him I hated him when I looked at his nakedness. I hated to see his nakedness. They were beating him again, and again in my own strange way, I can’t understand, but I kind of hated him now when I saw his nakedness, I kind of hated him.
When they were fighting him I went upstairs and I got a knife.
I came back downstairs and said, “We’ll just tie him up,” you know, that seemed like another way to stop it.
When I wasn’t looking at him he wasn’t naked, but when I did look he was naked.
And I hated his penis. [Crying] And I hated his body. And I hated men.
And I didn’t know what the hell I was feeling and I didn’t want them to beat him.
I didn’t want Shirley Anne to have control, I didn’t like any of it—but I was there.
So I went over and I cut this big thick cable cord that we had for our
TV
[…]. “Let me tie you up,” I says, “and they’ll stop fighting you.”
So he willingly laid on the floor and I cut the telephone cord, it was the really thin thin white see-through plastic that comes from a real old phone.
And I was over him, he was lying on his belly and I told him to put his hands behind his back. I attempted to tie him up but it wouldn’t work, I was so drunk I couldn’t keep my balance, I went back. I started falling backwards.
And I put my hand back to stop myself, and when I did that my hand touched his naked rear end.
And something happened to me. All of a sudden I was really mad at him again. I started saying that he’s a child molester, no good—and I put the cord around his neck and I pulled back on it real hard and it broke within seconds.
And when it broke, I moved away and they were back on him, fighting him again. Dwayne was there but I don’t remember him, the rare time, in the beginning, he’d only fight when Chuck was getting the better of Ernie and Shirley Anne. Later on he was just there.
Shirley Anne and Ernie were doing all the beating. I felt bad because I knew it was my fault, if I could have done something—so I suggested to them, “Let’s tie him up, let’s just tie him up.”
So Chuck sat down by the [floor-beam support] pole which Ernie had thrown him against, he put his arms around the pole and there was an attempt to tie him with the cable cord. But it was too big, too thick, it was old, old cable cord, so you try to tie it in a knot and you would let go and it would come undone.
Somehow while this was going on we got back on the conversation of him being the guy going around molesting all these children in the area. He wouldn’t say anything, he’d just start to cry. So I went to him.
“If that’s you, you should get help.”
And he said something about he would stop drinking, he’d sign himself in some place, he’d get help.
And it was really strange, all the time through that basement I was like a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. When he said that I says, “You know you hurt people, you hurt children.” And it was like I was shifted into another person, but I knew I didn’t, I didn’t have multi-personalities.
“Well, why don’t you confess,” I told him. “Why don’t you tell us? What you did? Where did you do it?”
He just started crying then, and I started getting mad because I knew, I knew it was him. And I did something mean again—to help him be honest I took his wrist and ran the knife over his wrist and I told him, “You either make your confession now or I’ll slash your wrist.”
That’s when he admitted that he was the guy that was abducting the children.
I let out a scream and I jumped away from him. I threw the knife on the floor.
And all I remember next is my old man picked up the knife, and he says, “Never, never leave that lying there!”
When Chuck admitted it was him, all hell broke loose and Ernie started fighting him again. So I turned around and I said, “Just knock him out!”
Because I thought if he was just out cold they would not fight him, while he’s knocked out. I told Dwa, he was going up on charges for knocking out these two police officers, Dwa was an ex-boxer, “Dwa, just knock him out,” I said, “it’s the only way to do it.” So Dwa tried to knock him out, but Chuck wouldn’t even pretend he was knocked out. He just fell over, and got back up again, he was sitting there. And Ernie lost it and said, “I’ll knock him out!” He came up with the side of his foot, hit him on the side of the head. Chuck went over, they were wrestling around.
I said, “I’ll knock him out,” and I took the cable cord and wrapped it around his neck and he went like this a couple of times to take it off […]. When I pulled, I slipped. I was pretty drunk and soaked and wet from the water that was all over the place and when I fell over and got mad, I couldn’t pull, I was sliding across the wet floor and I did something cruel.
I put one foot behind his head and one foot on his shoulder. And I pulled real hard for two or three seconds, and then I let go.
Chuck started gagging, and kind of coughing. I just got up and went [away] again, I just got out of the situation.
Ernie says, “I’ll knock him out.” Chuck was on his belly and his head was tilted sideways, but it was tilted back. Dwayne was standing on top of his back, and Ernie came and kicked him in the back of the head.
And I heard this crack. I don’t know what it was. And Ernie kept kicking him on the back of his head, on the neck. Then Shirley Anne came and did the same thing, and I got mad at Shirley Anne and I grabbed her and threw her. And I heard a gargling sound. And Ernie got mad again, and took the
TV
cord that was around his neck and he just pulled it straight up, till he lifted him up off the floor by the cord that was around his neck.
He didn’t seem to be fighting or anything. Ernie started pulling him around with it. Shirley Anne was siding with him, there was never no plan, for minute to minute or even second to second. I think Ernie was jealous because Shirley Anne was talking on the phone sexually to Chuck and since he had slept with her the night before, he would make himself look like a man for her […].