Another snippet from my memoir:
From the time I was eight, mum was alone with my sister and I, as dad died “of a sudden heart attack”. One time, when I was 11, I played a terrible prank. I felt sorry for a bunch of kids because they seemed bored, so I looked around wondering what I could do to cheer them up. I saw a sprinkler, and an open car window, and decided to put the sprinkler in the car.
Someone told on me, and the doorbell sounded off in our apartment. We answered the door and it was a blonde woman who said "Are you Sharon?" I answered yes. She said that someone told her I'd put the sprinkler in her car, and that it needed a cleaning anyway, no damage had been done, and that if I would towel it off, we could call it even.
Suddenly my attitude was transformed. I'd believed that adults didn't have feelings. She proved me wrong, and how sweetly! I was glad to towel off her car, and stopped playing pranks now that I'd been so politely awakened to the fact that adults do, after all, have feelings. I would go on to do some awful things though, out of necessity at times, at others out of boredom, and once, out of malice.
But mum turned out to not have let it go. She drove me to a social worker, with letter sized pages listing complaints about me, things I'd never heard of. The only complaints I ever had from her were "You kids are lazy. You never help mummy. ", and once, when my friend had brought his vinyl records over that had warped in the sun so I could pretend to mum that they were her records as a joke, well, she wasn't happy about it. She cried, and I told her "They're not your records! They're Michael's! He has the same records as you!" But she remained saddened and never did see any humor in what Michael and I had done.
The social worker, Lenny, said "Mrs. Smith, could you let me have a moment alone with your daughter?" Mum assumed that he was going to give me the third degree, and she was disappointed when she came back into his office, and Lenny said "Sharon's basically a good kid, but there's a place for her in a group home, if that's what you want." It was like a cartoon, she looked so angry. I could almost see steam coming out of her ears. Not only had I not been chastised, I'd been praised.
Someday soon after that, mum asked if I wanted to go to a group home. I said yes, and off I went. Sherri and Miles were the group home parents and were relaxed hippies. I didn't give them any trouble and they didn't give me any grief. They had a sweet young daughter with blonde hair. We had a wonderful Jamaican housekeeper named Kathleen.
One time during the lunch hour, I was making French fries on the stove, and a flame materialized in the middle of the oil. I figured that water put out fire, so I took the flaming pot of oil to the sink, and turned on the tap. The fire then overflowed the pot onto my hand, but I managed to get the back door open and place the pot on the balcony before I let it go. I closed the door. The kitchen suffered no damage. I guess the balcony did. I don’t remember how the balcony fared. Kathleen said she saw my silhouette and thought I was in the fire, so I guess the balcony was in flames. My hand looked like a pepperoni pizza for a while.
After a year at the group home, I was given an appointment with a social worker at the office of the group homes. He asked me if I'd done anything bad lately. I thought about it and couldn't think of anything, so answered no. He then asked me if I'd done my homework. I said "Of course not, I've come here straight from school." He said "Come here. Take off your pants.", and he put me face down on his lap. He spanked me sort of, but really he was just molesting my buttocks, until I felt the warm liquid of his sperm on me and then felt him wipe it off with a tissue. That ended the appointment.
Soon after that one day, I was told I'd gotten a foster home for having been good. I was glad, wow, a family, a mom and dad and kids and even a dog. It turned out to be a disaster. The foster father expected me to worship him. My gratitude wasn't what he wanted. It was never enough. I had to be in awe of him, or nothing.
He would look at me in the rear view mirror of his station wagon that the whole family was crammed into, expecting me to be swooning in awe of him. I was simply grateful, but that wasn’t what he was after. His eyes turned wrathful. Another time, he showed me his train set in the basement. Again, I was grateful and impressed that he’d taken me in to foster, but I wasn’t in awe of Peter beyond that. Yet another time, he was hammering some wood plank at the back of the house, and he turned his head to look at me. Again he was disappointed and angry, because my face must have revealed that I wasn’t infatuated with him.
One night, he wouldn't let me sleep. He was in the hallway saying I know you're awake you little bitch. Stuff like that. He started with “Good night, Sharon.”, and I didn’t answer because I knew it was late at night, and I thought he’d be embarrassed when he realized what time it was, so I was trying to save face for him, by pretending to be asleep.
Eventually he said "Sharon, your mother's on the phone." I knew then that he wasn't going to stop, that it would only escalate, so I finally answered "Peter, I know my mother's not on the phone. If you don't leave me alone, I'll call my her." He told me to go ahead, so I went through the motions of walking to the phone in the kitchen and dialing. Before I could finish dialing he forced the phone down of course. At some point, I saw he had a tumbler in his hand, and there was a bottle of whiskey or something in his bedstead. His wife was standing meekly in their bedroom in her nightgown not knowing what to do.
The next thing I remember after Peter forced the phone down that night, is I’m standing in that same spot by the phone, and Peter’s at work, the kids are at school, and I’m alone with the mousy housewife. I phoned my social worker Sylvia, and told her Peter was going to hurt me. She answered in a dulcet tone that she was all booked up for the next two weeks, and that if I was still having concerns then, to call her.
That day I didn't go to school. I took my school books but left them at the railroad tracks. I guessed which direction would lead from Lac Deux Montagnes to the city of Montreal, and I walked, pausing briefly at a bridge covered with snow, to assess what strategy to take should a train come along. Somehow I made it, and took the city bus to my girlfriend Karen's apartment.
Karen's mother let me stay for a few days and then told me that I should call my social worker. She'd been nice enough to let me stay a few days, so I did what she'd told me to, and presto, suddenly my social worker had time for me. Turns out, if you're being abused, nothing, but if you're AWOL, immediate service! She delivered me back to the group home like a hot pizza.
There were new parents there, and they were like livestock farmers toward us kids. Just the basic necessities and no feeling. I was excruciatingly lonely and during a break from home economics class at high school, a 16 year old smiled at me (I was 12), and asked me if I wanted to go with her to Toronto. I said yes, because her smile was like rare sunshine to me. Her name was Carrie.
Carrie and I hitchhiked to Toronto and when we got there, we went to a pool hall/coffee bar, where Carrie proceeded to order me to perform sexual acts on a gang of men in the basement. I'd sensed that they'd eventually rip me apart like wolves, that it was just a matter of time.
One night, she had me go up into the loft of an upholstery business with a man who must have been hitting 60, and he forced himself into my anus, laughed upon hearing me weep. I went down to the bathroom in the dark afterwards, and when I switched the bathroom light on, I saw that the warm liquid seeping out of me wasn't ejaculate, but blood.
Another time, Carrie and some of the guys were at a party, and I did what I'd been trained to do: get men to blow their loads. I was sitting on a bed in an incredibly large apartment that was one room, and also on the bed was a man, one of the gang, who I’d already had sex with previously in an apartment. I unzipped his fly and sat on him, until he came, when I saw his face under me go red. Everyone at the party was silently watching, and I guess I embarrassed him. He must have thought that I was being dominant, because suddenly his demeanor toward me changed, from arrogant to respectful. He said “Good night, Bonnie.” On his way out.
The wheels started turning in my head. I thought to myself that maybe the new respect was a result of the guy thinking that I did it to embarrass him in front of 40 or so people. I hadn’t had any respect from Carrie and the gang up until that point. I began to build up steam to deliberately act like an emotional blackmailer, to have a chance to survive in that milieu. I figured it would at least buy me some time. I just knew though, that in a while, it would catch up to me and someone would take me out. It turned out though, that that plan never had a chance to build momentum, thank goodness.
Soon after that, Carrie, me, and another woman who wanted in on the pimping action, were in a bar. I never had trouble getting into bars at 12. I don't have any photos of what I looked like then, but I must have looked mature. I think the bar was called The Gasworks. Carrie and the wannabe pimp had a pill bottle of multicolored pills that resembled candy to me. I asked if I could have some, and they looked at each other and gobbled them up as quickly as they could between the two of them.
Soon, the bar closed, and I had picked up a man so that we would have shelter for the night. The man, I think his name was Eric, helped me walk the two doped up, groggy women to a submarine sandwich shop, to get them to eat to try to sober them up. Then we all got into a taxi and he brought us to his friends' apartment. There, Carrie and the wannabe pimp slept a long time because of the pills.
I stayed up, telling the three men there about what had been happening. Eric had left. The men sat with their jaws dropped listening to what I was saying. Then one of them, Tim, counseled me that I never had to sleep with anyone I didn't want to. He would later come onto me though, putting me in an awkward position, seeing that I was taking shelter under his roof.
When the wannabe pimp woke up, she immediately departed. Carrie then woke up, and offered herself to one of the men. He rejected her offer, and she confided to me that he'd said he was impotent, unable to obtain an erection. I think he was sensitive, and wasn’t attracted to her callousness.
Soon after that, Tim sat me on his lap and was lavishing attention on me, then led me into his bedroom, began taking off my clothes, and suddenly his girlfriend walked in, Linda. She’d been away. Carrie and I were told that we had to leave.