My Father Could Have Changed the World. Instead, He Changed Mine

K uskowunusk is a dark cloud that holds the threat of a great rain that only the cumulonimbus can contain, and when we moved to my favourite home—the acreage, near Edmonton—the cumulonimbus gathered, and to me it was beautiful to watch the great storms from our big bay window in the trailer and feel the walls rattle with the thunder and watch the sky light up outside while the lights went out inside. How special was the moment when my mother lit the candles, creating our hearth. But while I marvelled at the awe of it, my mother felt the weight of it. The most formative years of my childhood were spent on the acreage, attending Camilla School. We lived there from when I was in kindergarten until grade three. Our trailer belonged to Kokum Thelma, and she rented it out to different family members over the years. My memories of this place are linked to driving toward it, approaching and anxiously awaiting the croaks of frogs, the crackling of grasshoppers, and the silence of sirens. Driving north on the St. Albert Trail from Edmonton, there was nothing to see but vast fields filled with canola, wheat, horses, and cows that framed a land of living skies that melted into everlasting sunsets fading behind Douglas, balsam, and subalpine firs. My anticipation reached its crescendo when we turned left at the main intersection that would take us to Morinville if we turned right. We had to drive slowly on the dirt and gravel road that formed small hills, up and down, for about eight kilometres until I saw the evergreen forest on the left, gently swaying in the wind, surrounding our property. Turning into the driveway, I saw the trailer up ahead and slightly to the right. We settled into our new home as if we had always been there, the blood memory of the prairies coursing through our veins. Each morning, I ran outside to the firepit after wolfing down a bowl of Oatmeal Crisp, ready to begin my day of adventures, sisters in tow, long hair in braids breezing behind me. I was a feral little girl who delighted in bare feet covered in dirt and a T-shirt stained with sap. My mother chased me around the yard, trying to force shoes onto my feet so she wouldn’t have to pick pine needles out of them later. On my way, I often saw the snares were full. I’d yell back to the trailer, “Dad, you caught a rabbit!” before running past the carcasses and into the trees. We gathered sticks and formed miniature teepees, popped the fuzzies off the pussy willows and placed them beside, pretending they were small animals. We snuck over onto the neighbours’ property and explored their forests and old abandoned barns. We climbed all over giant wooden farming spools, and Chayla and I would squeal at the spiders while Orleane picked them up and let them crawl over her arms. My sisters and I gathered small tokens on our adventures—wooden spools, interesting sticks, small blankets of moss, special leaves, and unique pinecones—before carrying them back to our own property, where we constructed ladybug fortresses, convinced we had built them the best home there ever was. We would capture dozens and place them inside just to watch them fly away, uninterested in the life we had given them. When the sun began to set and the noises of the forest whistled a warning, we burst out of the woods and ran toward the back of our trailer, past the well in the centre of the yard. We stopped when we got to the birch trees at the back, pulled off the papery bark, and practised our letters, Chayla still too small to scratch out anything legible but happy to pull off perfect little sheets. In the farming fields behind the birches, crops grew far above our heads and we ran through them until we reached the pond. Many rocks surrounded the glistening water and we squatted low in our rubber boots and flowy shorts with mismatched shirts, watching the tadpoles transform under the surface. When we saw the combines driving down the fields, we knew it was time to go home. We darted through the tall crops as quick as dragonflies, each second the combines inching closer and threatening our lives, until we reached the fence and climbed over—safe, in our yard. These were the happiest days of my childhood. I spent every waking hour in the trees. I made mud pies with my mom’s best pots, declared myself the leader of the yard with my sidekick sisters as we caught salamanders, saw a stick bug for the first time, ripped the legs off daddy-long-legs, got too close to wolf spiders, and watched a mischief of mice run through the tall grass when the combines came dozing down the fields. My fondest memories are from this home, even the memory of getting a strand of wheat lodged in my throat. I wanted to be like the men in movies who perched on wooden fences with wheat hanging from between their lips. My mother put peanut butter down my throat so the sharp edges wouldn’t cut my insides as she pulled the strand out. Talking with my mother later in life, I learned that her most unhappy memories are from this time. While I was writing songs about the trees and the sky and the clouds drifting on by, my mother was inside, with our father.

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W uskoowun is when something lowers, when it is clouded, and my father tended to be just that—those darkened clouds that move quickly and hover low so that if you reach out your little fingers, you think you can touch them, but you can never really touch them, and don’t you know that people are never as simple as the worst things they do? My dad was a beautiful man with the most beautiful hair. His hair was long, cascading down his back, and he always wore it in a braid. My mom says I have his wavy chestnut curls. I also have his eyes, mouth, and woodpecker cheekbones. She also says I have his charisma and his power to make anyone believe anything. He could have changed the world, but instead, he changed mine. He changed all of ours. He was a warrior to be feared, snaring rabbits and bringing moose home from the bush. I can picture the man he would’ve been in the old days, before the colonizers took over our land. He would’ve been the strongest warrior in our tribe, especially because his great-great-grandpa was Chief Peeaysis of the Peeaysis band. He would have led battles, the same way Chief Peeaysis led the men to fight in the North-West Rebellion, despite the government’s threat to revoke their treaty status. My dad would have protected our people in the exact same way. He was a leader when he spoke, enchanting whoever was listening. A natural persuader. He would have made speeches that ended wars and brought courage when it was time to fight them. It was a gift he was born with and perhaps inherited from our ancestors, from Chief Peeaysis. I like to believe that in one of his lifetimes, this was one of his truths. In this lifetime, although he led a gang of drug dealers, he still embodied those traits. Earning respect, in his own dysfunctional way, in his own dysfunctional community. In prison, he earned the nickname Killer, because when he first went in, some guys came after him and he laid them all out, easy as breathing. His fury, his anger, when unleashed, silenced everything for miles. All my fleeting memories of my father from the acreage are of his anger, or of me in his shadow. In one strong memory, my sisters and I were in the back seat of the car, my mom was in the front, and my dad was in the driver’s seat. We were in some kind of work yard. This was years before my dad started selling drugs, or rather, this was one of the stints when he had a trades job. Our dog, Buddy, had just died after getting hit by a car in front of our property. My mother broke the news to my father, and I watched a flood of sadness wash over his eyes, but only for a second, until he covered it with anger. He punched the steering wheel over and over and over and then hopped out of the car, slamming the door shut. He paced in front of our vehicle, kicking the gravel road, screaming, and punched some kind of shed. I couldn’t understand why he was so angry at us about what happened to Buddy. We all loved him too. The silence in the car on the way home was palpable. Today, a part of me wants to hug that man, the small kid inside him, whatever it was that told him anger was the only acceptable expression of sadness. M escipicikewin is when something fully absorbs the water, and it also means picking all the berries, and these two things seem so disjointed that they couldn’t possibly share the same word, but they do and it’s because they both embody the idea of leaving nothing behind. All the liquid is absorbed and all the berries have been picked; there is now a deficiency of nutrients—a leaching has occurred. After my parents separated, my sisters and I split our time between them, one week with each parent, and my dad used his time strategically. Our whole lives we’d never had more than we needed. We’d always shopped for clothing at Walmart or the Salvation Army. When we lived on the acreage, I didn’t think much about what I was wearing because I mostly destroyed all my clothes, and chances were I was going to whip them off at some point anyway. But when we moved into the city, this changed. In grade five, I started noticing a difference in the way other kids dressed compared to the way I dressed. I suddenly wanted cooler jeans, purses, makeup, trendy designer shirts. There were these jeans that all the other girls had. I remember going back-to-school shopping with my mom—the first time we went shopping in a mall instead of at Walmart or Zellers. We went to Garage and I begged her to buy them. My mom saw the price tag and said, “Forty dollars?! I’m sorry, my girl, but we just can’t afford that.” “But please, Mom?! All the other kids have nicer clothes than I do. I’ll take good care of them,” I promised. I could see her contemplating, holding the jeans and calculating inside her head. “Okay . . . well . . . if you get these jeans, then you won’t have that much to spend on shirts and things.” I knew she was changing her mind. “Thank you! That’s okay!” “You need to know, now that you’re getting older, I can’t afford to buy all the expensive clothes. Once you’re old enough, you’re going to have to get a job so you can pay for your own clothes if you want the expensive ones.” I took in what she said as we walked to the cashier. I longed for the day I would turn thirteen and could get a job to start buying all the things I wanted. But when we went to stay with my dad, things were different from how I had ever known them to be. We would drive around in nicer cars, and every time he opened his wallet, there would be stacks of cash. When we went to school, he would give us forty dollars each to pay for breakfast and lunch. We always got food delivery or went out to eat at Chili’s or occasionally the Keg steakhouse. He took us shopping at the mall and bought us brand-name shoes, clothes, purses, everything. He provided us with everything we longed for materialistically during a time in our lives when we naturally cared so much about fitting in, about what our peers thought of us. My dad’s houses and possessions slowly became nicer and nicer, even though we never stayed in any one place for long, constantly moving, so much so that in the span of two years with our father after the separation, we lived in at least seven different places. Still, there is an allure to that consumerism when you’ve been accustomed to poverty. My mother couldn’t compete. She couldn’t provide the same nice things that my dad could. One day, I was in his car with him and I asked, “Dad, how do you make money? All I see is you driving around all the time.” “I’ll tell you something, but you gotta keep it to yourself.” “Okay, promise.” “Your dad is gonna be an undercover cop soon.” I felt important because he let me in on his secret. I was special. Each time I saw him, he would whisper little “facts” in my ear, and I believed him. I never suspected that my own father would lie to me. I worshipped him, and I felt special because he spoke to me like I was an adult. Once he told me, “Your mom cheated on me with many guys. That’s why we’re not together anymore.” I believed that during the week we were away from her, my mom was using drugs, partying every night, and hooking up with random guys from the bar. I once saw a straw in her car and took that as evidence of something she would use to snort cocaine. He fed me lies about her, and I ate them up. I started to resent her. Amid that resentment, I grew closer and closer to my father. P ikihtewatâmiw is when his breath is visible, like a vapour in the cold air, and what I love the most about this word is that a presence cannot be hidden; it conjures stories of ghosts in the forest and the idea of being haunted, and even then, even there, the breath like a vapour in the cold air is always there for you to see—the opposite of an unveiling but a reveal nonetheless. I don’t think my dad ever sat me down and told me that he was a drug dealer, but there were clues that something different was happening with him. It was a slow normalization. When you’re inside of something, when it’s all you’ve ever known, it’s hard to see it clearly for what it is. The first time I ever saw crack cocaine, it was sitting in mounds on my kitchen table. I was ten years old, and my dad showed Orleane and her friend and me how to weigh and bag it. He left to sell drugs, and we sat there, weighing and bagging. I knew how to turn cocaine into crack when I was in grade seven. I used to wonder what my dad was doing in the kitchen with a tin cup inside a metal pot. I remember the bead of sweat above his eyebrow and him yelling at me to get back into my room. It was like a game to see how much I could learn, how much I could take in, before being banished to my bedroom once again. Kids take in their surroundings in only a few seconds. When he picked us up from school, it would take hours to get home. He would grab McDonald’s for us, and then we would drive by people; sometimes he would chuck something out the window at them, and I cannot count on both hands how many times crackheads said, “Wow, your daughters are so beautiful.” I have a memory of being with him and his friend in the front seat as we drove down 118th Avenue and yelled profanities at the drug addicts and prostitutes. Dad was a big and powerful drug dealer, and I inherited that false sense of power. In grade seven, I ran my mouth, because who was going to fuck with me? No one. I was becoming more and more like my father. I started getting into fights, saving my lunch money to buy weed and, eventually, cigarettes and alcohol. I inherited the way he talked down to people, and I knew how to fight because he taught me. One look from my dad was all it took to make someone step down, and I knew that well. I admire my mother for never stepping down from him. I used to memorize every place that I drove to with my dad, out of a fear that if I needed to escape, I would know how to get back home on foot. Even though I wasn’t fully aware of what I was fearing, I could feel that something was unsafe. At some point, my dad told us that we couldn’t tell anyone what he did or the police would take him away and we wouldn’t be able to see him again. All I knew was that I loved my father and I wanted to stay with him. Better the devil you know. When I was in grade six, my dad got caught selling crack outside our apartment building. He had gotten up early that morning and told me he had errands to run. “But you promised today would be a family day,” I said. We were supposed to go to the West Edmonton Mall water park. “It will. I’ll be home around noon, and then we’ll go.” “Fine. I’ll be waiting. I’ll let the girls know.” He looked at me as he was heading out the door. “Dad?” “Yes, my girl?” “If you fuck this up, I’ll never forgive you.” “Wah, you think you’re the dad now or what?” He ruffled my hair. The day was overcast, and I sat on the spiral staircase that led to the lower floor where our bedrooms were. I held my flip phone as I waited for my dad to call. It was 11:30 a.m. and I hadn’t heard from him. My stomach was in knots. My heart was quickening and my stomach was curdling. I flipped open my cell and called him. “Dad, you need to come home.” “It’s not even noon yet. I still have some things to do.” “Dad, listen to me. Something bad is going to happen to you.” “Nothing bad is going to happen. I promise, okay? But I’ll be a little late. I’ll be there for two o’clock. Make sure your sisters are ready.” I started to cry. “Dad, listen! Just come home!” “Don’t cry. It’s gonna be fine. I’ll be home as soon as I can, okay?” I sat on the spiral staircase and didn’t move. I couldn’t shake the feeling. I sat in my bathing suit and shorts and waited, but I knew, one way or another, we wouldn’t be making it to the water park that day. At half past one, I called my dad over and over again, but he didn’t answer. I went into the room I shared with Orleane. “I think something bad happened to Dad. He’s not answering the phone. Can you try to call him from your phone?” “I’m sure he’s fine. Who cares?” She sat in front of the mirror, applying lip gloss. “Orleane, please just try to call him!” “Fine, don’t be such a freak.” He didn’t pick up. I paced up and down the staircase, unable to think about anything else. Why didn’t he listen to me? When the cops booted down our apartment door, a stroke of luck saved my sisters and me from being sent to child protective services. A childhood friend of my mom’s happened to drive by as my dad was being handcuffed outside the building. She phoned my mom, who pulled up within minutes. She called me and said, “Your dad is getting arrested. You have two minutes to pack as much as you can and get out back—now!” My sisters and I threw our clothes into duffle bags. As soon as we got out the door, down the back stairs, and into my mom’s car, our apartment was raided by the police and social services, and we miraculously escaped joining our fellow Indigenous children in the system. Excerpted from Soft as Bones: A Memoir by Chyana Marie Sage, 2025, published by House of Anansi. Reprinted with permission from the publisher.The post My Father Could Have Changed the World. Instead, He Changed Mine first appeared on The Walrus.