I don't know why there was a canoe in the living room.
My biological mother Toni and I lived in a housing project in Elkhart, Indiana. The apartment was filled with junk—its own strange math, because we had nothing. We ate from food pantries. We walked across town to pay the utility bills. One year I got a toothbrush and toothpaste for Christmas, and…that was Christmas. And yet, somehow in the midst of all that accumulated nothing, lay a canoe.
I have no memory of the canoe ever touching water. No car rides with it strapped to the roof, no lake, no paddles. It just sat there in the living room like furniture.
What I do remember, unfortunately, is hiding in it.
When Toni got angry—and Toni got angry—I needed somewhere to go. A canoe! How convenient. I'd climb inside it, or crouch behind it, and Toni would yell from wherever she was that if I didn't come out right away, she would hurt me.
Which put me in a real catch-22. I knew that no matter what, she would hurt me. I could come out and get hurt now. Or stay hidden and get hurt worse later. Those were the options. I was five, maybe six years old, running that cost-benefit analysis from inside a canoe.
