Free They Left Us Everything by Plum Johnson

slicked-back hair and a comb sticking out of his back pocket. He always wore a leather bomber jacket, pointy shoes, and white socks.
    At the end of grade nine Ernie cornered me at the back of art class. He pulled out his switchblade, and as he slowly cleaned his fingernails with the tip of his knife, he explained that he needed my final art project to hand in as his own. Naturally, I gave it to him. When Mum and Dad found out why I’d failed art, they packed me off to a boarding school in Toronto. I didn’t understand why I had to live away. Dad drove into Toronto every day—why couldn’t I come home every night with him? Mum said it was because it was time for me to “be around girls.” Dad said boarding school would “build my character.” I knew what that meant—courage in the face of adversity—but I figured Dad already gave us enough of that at home. I pleaded with him not to send me away, but he was unmoved.
    “There are some things in life we all have to do, whether we like it or not!” he thundered. “You just have to learn to suck it in.” He took his big white hanky out of his pocket and handed it to me.
    Dad’s rules were far stricter than those imposed by the school. When boarders went home on weekends, Dad insisted I stay in, like the girls from Venezuela and Abu Dhabi. When we lined up on Fridays to receive our allowance issued by the school bursar, Dad instructed them to give me only half, complaining that the recommended amount was far too generous. And he wouldn’t allow me to call home. Sometimes the matron took pity and offered her phone, but in those days Oakville was long distance and I had to reverse the charges. Collect calls were intercepted by the operator; I couldn’t communicate directly with Dad unless he agreed to accept, so the operator always had a longer conversation with him than I did.
    “I have a collect call from your daughter, sir, will you accept the charges?”
    “Why does my daughter wish to speak to me?”
    “Your father wants to know why you’re calling.”
    “Tell him I’m sick! I’m in the infirmary! I want to speak to my mother!”
    “Your daughter is sick, sir.”
    “Nonsense! Tell her to pull herself together.”
    “But she’s in the infirmary, sir.”
    “She’s in good hands.”
    “Sir? Could she speak to her mother?”
    “No! I give her quite enough allowance and I will not accept collect calls.”
    “But …”
    “Over and out!”
    Then I’d hear the operator say, “I’m so sorry, dear … I hope you feel better soon.”

    On stormy days Dad took us sailing in his Snipe. It was a two-person racing dinghy, but he crammed all five of us into it. He stuffed me in the hull—“for ballast,” he said. We wore heavy orange life jackets made of kapok, which were so waterlogged they were like lead weights. They would have drowned us for sure, had we ever tipped.
    Dad carried the wood centreboard down the street, five blocks to the harbour, and we lagged behind, lugging the heavy canvas bags stuffed with sails. After scrubbing the boat clean, we spent ages preparing the sails—sliding their tiny metal clips one by one into the narrow brass channels on both sides of the mast before finally hoisting them up and casting off.
    Dad preferred sailing when seven-force gales churned the water as rough as the ocean. He shouted nautical orders at us (“Hard-a-lee!”) and then sat at the helm with his hand gripping the bucking tiller, forcing the bow into the wind, heeling the boat over, the mast almost parallel to the water. His face mirrored the tension of the sails: jaw set tight, facing the icy spray head-on, daring us to capsize. The boys in their bloated life jackets hunkered down for the ride, but I was stuffed inside, upside down, pressed against the wooden ribs, paralyzed with fear. Occasionally he’d pull me out to wave to Mum. She’d be on the verandah, anxiously peering through her binoculars.
    At the end of the day we lowered the sails and