Night falls over the environs of Kanata, Ontario, and I made sure I am firmly indoors before the darkness comes. It's very important to be inside when it gets dark, not only for the safety of oneself but for that of others. Mother was always very specific about that, and she made sure that I understood the Rules. The Rules are everything in this life and probably the next, no getting around that.
"Jeremiah, you've got the Curse, both from your father's people down in the Caribbean and my own Ojibwe tribe, and I am so sorry," Mother told me, right before I began my freshman year at Carleton University. The previous spring I graduated top of my class at Ellsworth Kingsley Academy, a private school located in Kanata which takes only the cream of the crop. Mom teaches Mathematics there. How I got in is a story for another time, ladies and gentlemen. This right here is more important...
"Yes Mom," I replied, as though I understood. I was quite naïve in those days, a burly, dark-skinned young man with an Afro, the unlikely result of an Afro-Caribbean restaurateur and a proud Ojibwe First Nations woman getting together. As it turns out, underneath it all, my Haitian father and my First Nations mother had a lot more in common than most people realized. For starters, they were both born under a bad sign, the Sign of the Wolf.
"Son, what we are is a gift, not a curse," my father, Eric Marseille, hotly countered, and he shot my mother a reproachful look. For a moment, my parents stared each other down while I watched silently. Such a contrast between them. My father is six-foot-four, chubby, with charcoal skin, a smooth shaved head, and lively brown eyes. NBA legend Kevin Garnett always reminded me of my old man.
My mother is a wee woman at five-foot-seven, and she's thin and wiry, with dark bronze skin, sharp features, and long dark hair. Those dark eyes of hers locked onto my father's, and after a brief moment, he shook his head and looked away. That's how things always worked in our household. Dad and I learned a long time ago that Mom always gets her way.
The three of us sat at the dinner table in our townhouse located in the Hazel-Dean area of Kanata, just a normal family having supper. On that night, supper consisted of buttered bread, orange juice, and of course, lots and lots of meat. We're big meat eaters in the Marseille family. I've been eating meat my whole life. The only difference between myself and you is the fact that I like my meat kind of...raw.
"Eric, if you're teaching our son to give in to his worst half, you're doing him a great disservice," protested my mother. Mom is no stranger to protests. She's been protesting her whole life. She was taken from her family and brought to the Residential Schools, where some well-meaning white folks made her forget what it means to be First Nations and forced her to embrace the ways of the White man. They even gave her a new name, Annabelle St-Preux.
To this day, Mom bristles when people bring up the history of the Residential Schools, and what the Canadian government did to thousands upon thousands of First Nations people in the name of progress and integration. When Prime Ministers Harper and Trudeau apologized on national television for those terrible things, Mom scoffed and told me she hoped they burned in hell. It's a sore subject in our household, to say the least...
There's a lot of things that we the Marseille clan don't discuss, and my worst half, a s Mom puts it, is one of those things. In private talks, when Mom isn't around, my father told me of his idyllic youth in the Quartier Morin region of northern Haiti, where he was born and raised. Apparently, there are many of our kind there, and they live peacefully among the people of Haiti, who accept the Loup Garou as agents of mother nature, rather than something to be feared.
I know the province of Ontario like the back of my hand, and although family have trips have taken me to places like Winnipeg, Manitoba, and even Boston, Massachusetts, I've never been to the island of Haiti. I long to visit it, though my father told me he left because of a family feud which he won't discuss. My mother dislikes the idea of my going there because the island is full of our kind, and therefore off-limits...
"Don't I get a say in this?" I asked, timidly raising my hand, and Mom and Dad looked at me as though I had two heads. I may not be the most normal guy in the cosmos but at eighteen years old, I was sick and tired of my parents always acting as though I had no say in my life. Given what we are, I knew that deviating from the Rules or calling attention to myself was to invite disaster. Still, enough was enough...
"Jeremiah, son, of course you do, it is your life," Dad replied, and Mom looked at me, with a sad little smile that made my heart wince. She nodded in agreement with Dad, but otherwise remained silent. Believe it or not, Mom has always been a woman of few words. Dad and I kind of have a way of understanding her, and of relating to one another. It's not just because we're a family. It's because of what we are...
"Mom, Dad, I want to see the world, I was thinking of taking September to December off and start school at Carleton University in January instead," I replied, and I sighed, and waited. It didn't take my parents long to blow up. Mom's eyes turned bright yellow for a moment, something which happens when she's really angry or scared. It was over in an instant, and her eyes resumed their normal dark brown color. Phew.
"Jeremiah Taylor Marseille, your father and I worked our butts off to pay for your school, and this is how you repay us?" Mom said, her voice quiet and full of wrath. I looked at my mother and father, and braced myself for the storm. For the next hour, Mom railed against my life choices, and my foolishness and youthful arrogance. I argued with her while Dad wisely kept his mouth shut. In the end, I would not budge, and neither would Mom...
"I'm going," I said, and I rose from the family table and walked away from Mom and Dad without another word. I locked myself in my room, my nice, spacious bedroom, filled with posters of everyone from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, whom I learned about during a trip to Boston a few years back. I admire liberal political figures from around the world the way other young guys and gals admire professional athletes and Hollywood celebrities. Don't ask.
Lying in bed, I thought of all the twists and turns my life has taken recently. After my days at Ellsworth Kingsley ended, I kept in touch with this young woman named Megan Westward, whom I've always had a crush on. Tall and willowy, with reddish hair and lively brown eyes, porcelain skin and the most generous mouth, Megan is the gal who has haunted my dreams ever since, well, forever.
"You should come to the University of Ottawa with me," Megan said to me, a few months ago. We were hanging out inside the Rideau Shopping Center, the busiest place in the City of Ottawa, Ontario. Unlike my friends, I seldom come to the city, finding the noise overwhelming. Also, the smell of so many humans packed in one place awakens parts of me I prefer not to believe even exist, thank you very much.
