Barbie
03-01-2004, 04:10 PM
My biological mother wasn’t secure enough (financially and psychologically) to take care of me, so she let her parents adopt me.
My grandfather (a.k.a. dad) died when I was eight, and all I remember of him was how yellow his skin was and how depressed and bitter he looked all the time, before he died.
As legend has it, he took all the money when he died, so it was up to my 60 yr old grandmother (a.k.a. mom) to raise me on pensions and savings.
When I was twelve, my mom thought that it would be a great idea to move herself and me from a small town in BC to an even smaller town in Northern BC. (Pop. 3000 [most in the bush])
She decided to do this with only two weeks left during the summer holidays and at an age where I was suppose to make the step from Elementary School to the big time Junior High. She felt that I (along with all kids at 12 years old) was not ready for Middle School. In Northern BC, where the towns are so small they aren’t designated for Middle School, Grade 7 was still in all Elementary Schools.
My sister was a community butterfly. She made it her business to know everyone in that town and every single kid in that community knew that if they needed an ear, a shoulder or a place to sleep because they couldn’t go home, they could all her. She would be there to help out.
Of course, my older sister had been in this community for 6 years at this point – a teacher at the High School. We were more than welcome to come and live with her for the year.
I was flabbergasted. I was all set to join my friends at this big step in our lives.
Instead, not only was I being thrown back into an Elementary school with the “babies” I was being torn from my friends, who I KNEW were going to move on without me.
I wasn’t even afforded the opportunity to say good-bye to many of my friends, or give a forwarding address as most of them were still away from home from the summer holidays.
The weekend before I was to start school, we were off. My mom found suitable renters for our house and she packed us up and in just the backseat of the car and the truck we had nothing of comfort from our “home”.
I didn’t talk to her the entire trip. I didn’t talk to her for two weeks. I didn’t talk to anyone for two weeks. I stopped eating the moment I found out what was going on, and within the month had dropped 15lbs.
I would go to school and I would go home. Go to school; go home. For a whole month I did this. I hadn’t received a single phone call from a single person that was from my hometown and I wasn’t allowed to make any long distance phone calls either to see how everyone was doing. Had I been able to, I would have known that my best friend’s parents were separated and getting a divorce and that my best friend had become suicidal. [When I was 15 she slit her wrists. Her attention getter worked. She died and her memorial got a lot of attention. More than 300 people gave their condolences.]
It took about a month and a half for me to chat with and socialize with several of the kids that were in my grade. They were really nice and they sure did try to make me feel welcomed. Perhaps they had lived in the bush for so long (the town was a Pulp and Paper town) they might have just thought that I was the cats meow because I was new blood.
By October 15 my mom had me going to a see a doctor. I still wasn’t eating and when I did speak to my mom it was all in anger. My tone was not that of a polite young girl.
I think my mom was at this point finally regretting the move. Finally rethinking the whole situation and actually put herself in my shoes. Of course, I wasn’t interested in forgiving or looking on the bright side of things. I was after all, entering my teens.
Northern BC is cold in the winter. It’s easy to understand why some people think that Canada is nothing but igloos. It gets pretty cold, but the Aurora Borealis is something to feast your eyes on.
The town that I was living in wasn’t that big, so it’s easy to understand that the homeless or even the stranded (didn’t make the last bus out to the bush) have no place to get shelter and warm up in the winter. I hated this winter. It was the winter that my mom and my sister felt that I was up to the task of going out to the shed and get wood for the wood stove. (One of those boxed up metal ones that you can cook on; with the pipe running directly out of the house onto the roof.)
It was quite the task of suiting yourself up and walking in 3ft high snow for 100ft and back again. I was lazy; I know that. When I would get back into the house, I rarely put the wood down. I would half throw it from the front door – like throwing lawn darts of horseshoes.
It would hit the stove with such force and the metal would rattle and reverberate all through the bungalow house. It was enough to wake the dead.
“BARBARA! STOP DOING THAT!” my mom would yell.
I would smile.
I don’t remember what I did on December 12, 1985. I don’t know if it was a school day, or if it was a weekend. I do know that my sister still hadn’t done much of her holiday shopping. She was up late watching TV and wrapping gifts for the numerous children that she felt she needed to buy things for. Some, she didn’t even really know but they were kids of colleagues I’m sure.
I know that it was cold that day. It was in the negative 20’s (Celsius) and the wind-chill was piercing. My mom had brought in a lot of wood when the sun was still out and there was a lot of wood piled up beside the wood stove.
My bedroom was about 80sf. A room that I’m sure wasn’t meant to be a bedroom, but rather a den. My bed was really an old 70’s style couch that could be pushed out to use the cushions as a mattress, with the back of the couch that could open up to use as storage. It was small.
My mother’s room was about the same sized but was an addition to the original structure. It was always very cold back there. No direct heat source and nowhere near my bedroom or the living room, where the wood stove was. You had to pass the basement door which I’m sure at one point was really the back door before the addition was made.
The basement was directly underneath the only bathroom in the house. My sister flooded the bathroom once and the result was seen in the basement where all her University books and other books from her past were destroyed and waterlogged.
My sister’s room was on the opposite side of mine and on the other side of the kitchen. It was the only room that had a proper door and a lock.
All of the rooms had plastic on the windows; the kind that you blow-dry to tighten and shield the wind from coming in.
I don’t remember what time I went to bed that day.
I know what time I woke up.
The loud clang from the living room was an indication that someone hit the stove while filling it up. Without opening my eyes, or rolling off my stomach I yelled from my room (door opened to allow the heat to come in from the living room), “MOM?”
No answer. That’s fine; she’s 80% deaf so she wouldn’t hear me anyway. I dozed off.
2:13AM
My eyes opened and I turned my head to look at my digital clock that glowed a fantastic orange.
I could hear my sister in her room screaming at the top of her lungs. “BARBIE! BARBIE!!”
Like a dream, I just laid there listening to her bellowing.
In between screams I could hear my mom at the back of the house snoring like an old drunk man. Nothing unusual. She had lung problems.
I closed my eyes. I almost dozed off.
The blankets were not on me and my extra long t-shirt had been pulled up past my waist. I got a chill.
I could feel something creeping up my back. In the “snaky” motions. Up and down. And then in figure eights. I could smell onions, cigarettes and booze.
Slowly, I sat up and turned over on my side to see what was going on.
The orange light lit up the silhouette of someone who had knelt beside my bed.
I said, “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Who are you? What are you doing?”
Nothing.
My sister is banging something on her bedroom wall continually screaming “BARBIE! BARBIE!! WAKE UP BARBIE!”
And that’s just it. I thought I was still asleep and it’s funny how time flies.
At 2:18AM I woke up.
He had his hand over my mouth and my nose. I thought I was going to suffocate. I started kicking and flailing my arms around trying to shake the wrapped covers off my legs, and trying to get him off of me.
I was pinned between the mattress part of the bed and the storage…right in the corner.
One handed he removed my panties and unzipped his pants. My flailing around actually helped him. Maybe if I had remained still and conserved energy…
By this time, his forearm was pushed down on my throat. I was trying to scream, but instead I would just gag.
It hurt. I was still a kid in a kid’s body and I wasn’t prepared for this. He was too big and at first I think he even thought that it wasn’t going to fit. But he made it fit.
And I sobbed and sobbed in between breaths.
I stopped trying to scream.
I could still hear my sister screaming from her room banging on the wall.
“THE POLICE ARE COMING SO YOU BETTER GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!!!”
At 2:29AM he was off me.
I just lay there and sobbed. I didn’t even try to cover myself. I just lay there dumbfounded.
He seemed to have run to the back of the house, where I’m sure he heard my mother snoring. That probably frightened him. No exits back there without waking the “drunken old man.”
Then I heard the front door slam shut and a gust of cold air came into my room.
My sister’s bedroom door opened and my first glimpse of light; the orange hue that came from my digital clock was washed away when my bedroom light flipped on.
My sister was hovered over me with her metal sand filled baseball bat. She started crying, “Oh my god! Oh my god! Barbie?”
I don’t remember the police coming. I don’t remember being at the hospital.
I remember the blood.
_____________________________________________________________________
My mom wouldn’t talk to me. She just looked at me with a smirk but never in the eyes. She never looked me in the eyes. No hugs. No comfort.
I regressed again and stopped eating. I didn’t like going to school anymore. It was a long walk on a road with forest on either side.
This was a small town. Everyone knew what happened to Barbie. Either people were trying to coddle me and get me to “let it out” and talk, or they would avoid me altogether because they wouldn’t know what to say anyway.
My sister knew the person who did this to me. She had taught him at the school. He was recently expelled. She tried to get him back in. She even tried to home school him, but neither worked out. His parent’s kicked him out of the house and so my sister told him that if he ever needed a place to stay for a night, give her a call.
He never did call before he would pop in. My sister would say that for 2 years (in the winter) she would be up at 6AM to get ready for school, and there he would be asleep on he couch.
I was excused from school early March 1986 (around my birthday) to go to court. I don’t remember the exact date.
I hadn’t been prepped before going on the witness stand.
The judge smiled politely at me. He told me that they don’t usually see a lot of twelve year olds on the witness stand. Did I need water? Was I comfortable?
Do I know the difference between the truth and a lie?
If I needed a break at anytime, just let him know.
The Lawyer, “on my side” was the first to ask questions. You know, I don’t remember answering any questions, but one.
“Do you see your attacker in this courtroom today?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes”
The “other Lawyer” was next. Again, I don’t remember answering any questions.
I just remember that the lawyers were very nice to me.
I know now that he was sitting at the defence table, but I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone that it was him. I never saw his face. My orange light from my digital clock only created the silhouette.
He wasn’t convicted of his offence on me. I was unable to identify him. Regardless of the rape kit. I always thought that this was bullshit, but…but nothing.
He was convicted of break and enter. His punishment was that he wasn’t allowed into the community on weekends. That’s it. That’s all.
By the end of the school year, the relationship between my mother and I were forever changed. She was no longer my protector.
I blamed her for the whole “…unfortunate incident.” If I were left to go to Junior High back in my hometown, this never would have happened.
She blamed me for the incident.
I invited it, she thought. Then she said that I liked it.
She never treated me like her little girl anymore. Now, I was damaged goods. I was no better than her low life daughter who abandoned her child with her parents.
I was a dirty teenage girl who lusted.
After returning back to my hometown, all my friends had moved on without me.
Seven years of building relationships at Elementary school, washed away with the year.
Some of the mothers of the kids I had attended kindergarten through to Grade six started rumours about me being taken away for the year because I was pregnant. Nice story to hear upon returning.
Girls called me whore.
Boys called me all the time.
I started smoking.
I started lying.
I started goofing off in school and my grades slipped from honours to failing.
After I thought things were settled and I was learning about myself again and after I had Kristine and after I moved to Calgary and after I divorced her father and after my mom died and after I married Mike and after having all these surgeries and after recovering and starting fresh and on Saturday morning I learned…
The man who was not convicted of his assault on me, the man who was convicted of break and enter and was only ordered to stay out of the community on weekends, the man who unlooked the gate that housed most precious of humanly things, my pride…was convicted of the brutal rape and murders of three women in Vancouver BC. He has been sentenced to life in prison without eligibility for parole in 20 years.
I am so sorry for those women that died.
A chapter closed.
Barbie
My grandfather (a.k.a. dad) died when I was eight, and all I remember of him was how yellow his skin was and how depressed and bitter he looked all the time, before he died.
As legend has it, he took all the money when he died, so it was up to my 60 yr old grandmother (a.k.a. mom) to raise me on pensions and savings.
When I was twelve, my mom thought that it would be a great idea to move herself and me from a small town in BC to an even smaller town in Northern BC. (Pop. 3000 [most in the bush])
She decided to do this with only two weeks left during the summer holidays and at an age where I was suppose to make the step from Elementary School to the big time Junior High. She felt that I (along with all kids at 12 years old) was not ready for Middle School. In Northern BC, where the towns are so small they aren’t designated for Middle School, Grade 7 was still in all Elementary Schools.
My sister was a community butterfly. She made it her business to know everyone in that town and every single kid in that community knew that if they needed an ear, a shoulder or a place to sleep because they couldn’t go home, they could all her. She would be there to help out.
Of course, my older sister had been in this community for 6 years at this point – a teacher at the High School. We were more than welcome to come and live with her for the year.
I was flabbergasted. I was all set to join my friends at this big step in our lives.
Instead, not only was I being thrown back into an Elementary school with the “babies” I was being torn from my friends, who I KNEW were going to move on without me.
I wasn’t even afforded the opportunity to say good-bye to many of my friends, or give a forwarding address as most of them were still away from home from the summer holidays.
The weekend before I was to start school, we were off. My mom found suitable renters for our house and she packed us up and in just the backseat of the car and the truck we had nothing of comfort from our “home”.
I didn’t talk to her the entire trip. I didn’t talk to her for two weeks. I didn’t talk to anyone for two weeks. I stopped eating the moment I found out what was going on, and within the month had dropped 15lbs.
I would go to school and I would go home. Go to school; go home. For a whole month I did this. I hadn’t received a single phone call from a single person that was from my hometown and I wasn’t allowed to make any long distance phone calls either to see how everyone was doing. Had I been able to, I would have known that my best friend’s parents were separated and getting a divorce and that my best friend had become suicidal. [When I was 15 she slit her wrists. Her attention getter worked. She died and her memorial got a lot of attention. More than 300 people gave their condolences.]
It took about a month and a half for me to chat with and socialize with several of the kids that were in my grade. They were really nice and they sure did try to make me feel welcomed. Perhaps they had lived in the bush for so long (the town was a Pulp and Paper town) they might have just thought that I was the cats meow because I was new blood.
By October 15 my mom had me going to a see a doctor. I still wasn’t eating and when I did speak to my mom it was all in anger. My tone was not that of a polite young girl.
I think my mom was at this point finally regretting the move. Finally rethinking the whole situation and actually put herself in my shoes. Of course, I wasn’t interested in forgiving or looking on the bright side of things. I was after all, entering my teens.
Northern BC is cold in the winter. It’s easy to understand why some people think that Canada is nothing but igloos. It gets pretty cold, but the Aurora Borealis is something to feast your eyes on.
The town that I was living in wasn’t that big, so it’s easy to understand that the homeless or even the stranded (didn’t make the last bus out to the bush) have no place to get shelter and warm up in the winter. I hated this winter. It was the winter that my mom and my sister felt that I was up to the task of going out to the shed and get wood for the wood stove. (One of those boxed up metal ones that you can cook on; with the pipe running directly out of the house onto the roof.)
It was quite the task of suiting yourself up and walking in 3ft high snow for 100ft and back again. I was lazy; I know that. When I would get back into the house, I rarely put the wood down. I would half throw it from the front door – like throwing lawn darts of horseshoes.
It would hit the stove with such force and the metal would rattle and reverberate all through the bungalow house. It was enough to wake the dead.
“BARBARA! STOP DOING THAT!” my mom would yell.
I would smile.
I don’t remember what I did on December 12, 1985. I don’t know if it was a school day, or if it was a weekend. I do know that my sister still hadn’t done much of her holiday shopping. She was up late watching TV and wrapping gifts for the numerous children that she felt she needed to buy things for. Some, she didn’t even really know but they were kids of colleagues I’m sure.
I know that it was cold that day. It was in the negative 20’s (Celsius) and the wind-chill was piercing. My mom had brought in a lot of wood when the sun was still out and there was a lot of wood piled up beside the wood stove.
My bedroom was about 80sf. A room that I’m sure wasn’t meant to be a bedroom, but rather a den. My bed was really an old 70’s style couch that could be pushed out to use the cushions as a mattress, with the back of the couch that could open up to use as storage. It was small.
My mother’s room was about the same sized but was an addition to the original structure. It was always very cold back there. No direct heat source and nowhere near my bedroom or the living room, where the wood stove was. You had to pass the basement door which I’m sure at one point was really the back door before the addition was made.
The basement was directly underneath the only bathroom in the house. My sister flooded the bathroom once and the result was seen in the basement where all her University books and other books from her past were destroyed and waterlogged.
My sister’s room was on the opposite side of mine and on the other side of the kitchen. It was the only room that had a proper door and a lock.
All of the rooms had plastic on the windows; the kind that you blow-dry to tighten and shield the wind from coming in.
I don’t remember what time I went to bed that day.
I know what time I woke up.
The loud clang from the living room was an indication that someone hit the stove while filling it up. Without opening my eyes, or rolling off my stomach I yelled from my room (door opened to allow the heat to come in from the living room), “MOM?”
No answer. That’s fine; she’s 80% deaf so she wouldn’t hear me anyway. I dozed off.
2:13AM
My eyes opened and I turned my head to look at my digital clock that glowed a fantastic orange.
I could hear my sister in her room screaming at the top of her lungs. “BARBIE! BARBIE!!”
Like a dream, I just laid there listening to her bellowing.
In between screams I could hear my mom at the back of the house snoring like an old drunk man. Nothing unusual. She had lung problems.
I closed my eyes. I almost dozed off.
The blankets were not on me and my extra long t-shirt had been pulled up past my waist. I got a chill.
I could feel something creeping up my back. In the “snaky” motions. Up and down. And then in figure eights. I could smell onions, cigarettes and booze.
Slowly, I sat up and turned over on my side to see what was going on.
The orange light lit up the silhouette of someone who had knelt beside my bed.
I said, “Hello?”
Nothing.
“Who are you? What are you doing?”
Nothing.
My sister is banging something on her bedroom wall continually screaming “BARBIE! BARBIE!! WAKE UP BARBIE!”
And that’s just it. I thought I was still asleep and it’s funny how time flies.
At 2:18AM I woke up.
He had his hand over my mouth and my nose. I thought I was going to suffocate. I started kicking and flailing my arms around trying to shake the wrapped covers off my legs, and trying to get him off of me.
I was pinned between the mattress part of the bed and the storage…right in the corner.
One handed he removed my panties and unzipped his pants. My flailing around actually helped him. Maybe if I had remained still and conserved energy…
By this time, his forearm was pushed down on my throat. I was trying to scream, but instead I would just gag.
It hurt. I was still a kid in a kid’s body and I wasn’t prepared for this. He was too big and at first I think he even thought that it wasn’t going to fit. But he made it fit.
And I sobbed and sobbed in between breaths.
I stopped trying to scream.
I could still hear my sister screaming from her room banging on the wall.
“THE POLICE ARE COMING SO YOU BETTER GET OUT OF THE HOUSE!!!”
At 2:29AM he was off me.
I just lay there and sobbed. I didn’t even try to cover myself. I just lay there dumbfounded.
He seemed to have run to the back of the house, where I’m sure he heard my mother snoring. That probably frightened him. No exits back there without waking the “drunken old man.”
Then I heard the front door slam shut and a gust of cold air came into my room.
My sister’s bedroom door opened and my first glimpse of light; the orange hue that came from my digital clock was washed away when my bedroom light flipped on.
My sister was hovered over me with her metal sand filled baseball bat. She started crying, “Oh my god! Oh my god! Barbie?”
I don’t remember the police coming. I don’t remember being at the hospital.
I remember the blood.
_____________________________________________________________________
My mom wouldn’t talk to me. She just looked at me with a smirk but never in the eyes. She never looked me in the eyes. No hugs. No comfort.
I regressed again and stopped eating. I didn’t like going to school anymore. It was a long walk on a road with forest on either side.
This was a small town. Everyone knew what happened to Barbie. Either people were trying to coddle me and get me to “let it out” and talk, or they would avoid me altogether because they wouldn’t know what to say anyway.
My sister knew the person who did this to me. She had taught him at the school. He was recently expelled. She tried to get him back in. She even tried to home school him, but neither worked out. His parent’s kicked him out of the house and so my sister told him that if he ever needed a place to stay for a night, give her a call.
He never did call before he would pop in. My sister would say that for 2 years (in the winter) she would be up at 6AM to get ready for school, and there he would be asleep on he couch.
I was excused from school early March 1986 (around my birthday) to go to court. I don’t remember the exact date.
I hadn’t been prepped before going on the witness stand.
The judge smiled politely at me. He told me that they don’t usually see a lot of twelve year olds on the witness stand. Did I need water? Was I comfortable?
Do I know the difference between the truth and a lie?
If I needed a break at anytime, just let him know.
The Lawyer, “on my side” was the first to ask questions. You know, I don’t remember answering any questions, but one.
“Do you see your attacker in this courtroom today?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes”
The “other Lawyer” was next. Again, I don’t remember answering any questions.
I just remember that the lawyers were very nice to me.
I know now that he was sitting at the defence table, but I wouldn’t be able to tell anyone that it was him. I never saw his face. My orange light from my digital clock only created the silhouette.
He wasn’t convicted of his offence on me. I was unable to identify him. Regardless of the rape kit. I always thought that this was bullshit, but…but nothing.
He was convicted of break and enter. His punishment was that he wasn’t allowed into the community on weekends. That’s it. That’s all.
By the end of the school year, the relationship between my mother and I were forever changed. She was no longer my protector.
I blamed her for the whole “…unfortunate incident.” If I were left to go to Junior High back in my hometown, this never would have happened.
She blamed me for the incident.
I invited it, she thought. Then she said that I liked it.
She never treated me like her little girl anymore. Now, I was damaged goods. I was no better than her low life daughter who abandoned her child with her parents.
I was a dirty teenage girl who lusted.
After returning back to my hometown, all my friends had moved on without me.
Seven years of building relationships at Elementary school, washed away with the year.
Some of the mothers of the kids I had attended kindergarten through to Grade six started rumours about me being taken away for the year because I was pregnant. Nice story to hear upon returning.
Girls called me whore.
Boys called me all the time.
I started smoking.
I started lying.
I started goofing off in school and my grades slipped from honours to failing.
After I thought things were settled and I was learning about myself again and after I had Kristine and after I moved to Calgary and after I divorced her father and after my mom died and after I married Mike and after having all these surgeries and after recovering and starting fresh and on Saturday morning I learned…
The man who was not convicted of his assault on me, the man who was convicted of break and enter and was only ordered to stay out of the community on weekends, the man who unlooked the gate that housed most precious of humanly things, my pride…was convicted of the brutal rape and murders of three women in Vancouver BC. He has been sentenced to life in prison without eligibility for parole in 20 years.
I am so sorry for those women that died.
A chapter closed.
Barbie