Peeling Back The Layers: A Story in Three Acts

Creative non-fiction

By John RC Potter

The Third Act

“You’re in big trouble now!” I shouted out the upstairs bedroom window into the inky black night. At that precise moment when I was feeling very big about it all – telling, more than warning,  my oldest sister that she was in for it – the storm window inexplicably dropped with a sudden bang.  The middle finger of my left hand bore the brunt of the fallen window, and the nail was shattered in  two, with blood gushing from the wound. 

Three of us huddled around the bedroom window that particular late evening: my sister, Jo Ann, who was two years older than me, and my sister, Laurie, who was two years older than her. It was the late winter of 1967, the year of Canada’s centenary, which was celebrated across the country. Perhaps more importantly, it was the year that my oldest sister, Cheri, had a turning point in her young life: at 14, she was discovering boys, exploring her femininity, and uncovering the more troubled side of her personality. She had gone with a group of students to Expo ’67 in Montreal earlier that year, which may or may not have been the catalyst for her rebellious and complicated nature to be exposed. 

That evening our father, as usual, was working late at the gas station he owned in the town  of Clinton. In addition, he also farmed; during his entire life, Dad always had two if not three jobs to provide for his large and expanding family. We lived on a farm on the first side road to the west of town. Our mother had five children by that point, between the ages of 14 (Cheri) and five (my youngest sister, Barb), with my three oldest sisters having been born within four years. This was not untypical of farm wives at that time, nor in generations earlier. 

Unfortunately, due to Dad’s long hours at work, it fell on Mom’s shoulders to raise and discipline her brood. When Cheri became a young teenager and became increasingly rebellious and difficult to manage, our mother no doubt despaired. Mom had dealt with bad nerves and sporadic poor mental health for many years, the worst of which had been after my sister, Jo Ann was born, when our mother was in a deep depression for months. Since then, Mom experienced mostly good mental health, and even during difficult times, she was first and foremost an attentive, loving, and  caring mother. Although we children all had moments when we tested Mom’s patience, Cheri’s teenage rebellious streak must have been a great trial to our mother. 

On that eventful evening in the winter of ’67, our oldest sister had gone out with friends after school and not returned. My other sisters and I knew that Mom was both worried and upset because she suspected Cheri was in with a bad crowd. Our mother would have communicated with Dad at the gas station, but he could not leave work and, in any case, expected that Cheri would soon come home. 

As the evening progressed and Cheri had still not come home, our mother became increasingly agitated. It was a school night, and Mom told us to go to bed. My three older sisters slept in the large bedroom at the top of the stairs that had two double beds in it. I had the smaller bedroom just off their room; a curtain rather than a door separated the two bedrooms. Laurie, Jo Ann, and I were in our respective beds when we heard the low rumble of a vehicle coming up the road. We jumped out of our beds and ran to the window in the girls’ bedroom that faced the gravel road in front of our house. The car’s lights were out, but from the sound, we knew the vehicle was running. 

We opened the bedroom window and peered into the night, trying to see what was happening in the car. We were sure that our sister, Cheri, was in that vehicle. Finally, she emerged from the passenger’s side of the car: from the inside car light, we could see our sister in her fake fur mini jacket, tight clothing, and go-go boots. I pushed the window up higher to hear what was being said, and at that moment, I yelled out into the night to my sister. Then, unexpectedly, the window fell on my finger. 

I ran downstairs and into the kitchen, and my poor mother, already obviously stressed beyond endurance, heard my tale of what had happened. She guided me to the bathroom and turned on the cold water to run over my bleeding finger with its shattered nail. The bathroom was just off the kitchen, and through the open door, my mother and I could see my sister Cheri wander into the kitchen rather provocatively and nonchalantly. Cheri wondered what had happened to me, no doubt, in an attempt to divert attention away from herself.

My mother was shaking with rage and relief, all in one commingled emotion. She had been worried sick that her daughter could have been abducted or in danger, although no doubt common  sense told Mom exactly what Cheri was up to during her absence from late afternoon to late evening. My mother, who never or rarely would strike her children, said Cheri would be punished with the belt. 

I was staring in amazement from the bathroom, the cold water still pouring over my numbed and near-frozen finger, as my mother chased my sister around the kitchen table. Cheri was laughing, which only incensed my mother further. As Mom went to grab Cheri, my sister’s fake fun fur jacket came off in my mother’s hands. Cheri ran out of the house and into the cold winter night on a journey that would have many repercussions for the rest of her life. 

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The Second Act  

“Look at her...she’s not even crying!” 

One of Keith’s sisters had emphatically stated these words. All eyes turned toward the front porch, where my grandmother was sitting in the same chair in which her youngest son, Keith, had always sat and watched the passing cars on the highway; because he could not go to school, it helped him pass the time by keeping track on paper the number of vehicles and other details. Keith would never sit in that chair and on that porch ever again. He had been a sickly child most of his short life until he passed away in his eleventh year. 

“She’s not even crying!” my aunt repeated what she had just said to the rest of the family, gathered and grieving in the little house on the highway in the village of Brucefield that day in  1957. 

My grandfather, with tears running down his face, turned to his daughters and sons who were gathered with him and said, “Your mother is crying; you just cannot see it; it is more painful to cry inside than out.” 

My mother was there that day and in tears at the loss of her youngest brother, who had never gone to school because he was to some degree mentally retarded, a term that was used back then but would be considered politically incorrect now. 

In 1957, Mom was only 25 years old, a young mother and farm wife who already had three  daughters in the space of four years – two toddlers and a baby. When my sister, Jo Ann, was born in 1956, my mother experienced postpartum depression that deepened and lengthened for many months due to a history of bad nerves. After sessions in the hospital and specific treatments for mental illness that were considered innovative at that time, by 1957, my mother was beginning to recover. Then her youngest brother, Keith - whom everyone in the family doted on - died after a short illness, casting yet another shadow over my mother’s life.

During my childhood, my sisters and I would ask our mother about Keith, the boy whose life had been too brief. In particular, I was quite fascinated with the boy I saw in my mother’s family photo album. I was born in 1958, a year after Keith passed away, and for whatever reason, I felt a connection with him. I enjoyed hearing stories from my mother about Keith and how he loved to sit on the porch and count the cars that went by on the highway. I would wonder what it had been like for him to live a life largely at home and somewhat limited by his mental abilities. I knew he was deeply loved by all in his family: for his siblings and parents, he was their adored and special boy. 

There was another story related to Keith that my siblings and I never discussed with our mother. Our cousins told us that they had heard a story about Keith and the reason for his impaired mental ability. If true, it meant that Keith had not been born mentally impaired; instead, it happened due to an accident when he was a baby. Apparently, Keith had been left in the care of two of his older sisters when Grandma was not in the house. According to the story, Keith was left alone and rolled off the sofa onto the living room floor, sustaining a lump on his head; however, at that time, it was not considered an injury with future complications. Our cousins told us that our mother had left Keith unattended momentarily. My sisters and I later speculated that if this were true, it might well account for our mother’s mental health issues that afflicted her life sporadically  from her teenage years and throughout her entire life. 

When I was a teenager, I began to do gardening for my maternal grandmother, whose house was just around the corner from the high school. In my final year of high school, I moved in with Grandma, whom I respected and loved as much as one would a parent. Living with my grandmother allowed me to walk to school in mere minutes and to go to my part-time job at a nearby convenience store. 

During breaks in the gardening or when living with my grandmother and having time to sit and chat in the evening, I would sometimes ask her about Keith but never mentioned what I had heard as regards the possible reason for his mental impairment. However, my grandmother did tell me that although it was a significant loss when Keith died, it was also rather a relief because she had wondered what would happen to him after she and my grandfather were no longer alive. It had been one of her greatest fears, not knowing what would happen to Keith without her. 

I recall a day in particular, sitting in Grandma’s attractive and neat living room when we talked about Keith. My grandmother, who raised 11 children, was always a seemingly unsentimental and practical woman and one of the wisest individuals I have ever known. When we talked about Keith that day, she peered across the room and into my eyes: Grandma told me that she had always wanted to write a story or book about her life but suspected she would never do it. My grandmother then said that she hoped one day I would write a story about her life or at least about her youngest son, Keith, to keep the memory of his short life alive. Furthermore, it should be called ‘This Old House’ because that had been Keith’s favourite song for several years before he died: he would listen to that melody and happily sing along as he sat on the front porch counting cars and watching the world go by. 

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The First Act  

The bogeyman. The creature under the bed. The shadow that is death in disguise. The kind stranger who kills.

Childhood is a wonderful world of the imagination with extremes: at one end, the fantastical and joyful landscape of lightness and hope; at the other, a frightening and jittery underworld of darkness and fear.  

When I was a child, my mother told my sisters and me a story from her youth. It was when she and her siblings had experienced the mythical bogeyman who became a reality. Of course, our mother did not tell us this real-life tale to scare her children. She was at all times a fiercely protective and loving mother, despite having dealt with a lifetime of bad nerves and mental breakdowns. It seemed to me that our mother told us this story because it was still on her mind after all those years; that she could not be rid of the memory of that night decades before when the bogeyman appeared as the man in the doorway.  

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It was in the waning days of the late 1930s. The Great Depression was receding in the  distance, but still being felt by many. In particular, there were still drifters, hobos, and men of all ages and descriptions riding the rails and wandering the roads as the 30s wound down. In the farm country of southwestern Ontario, it was common for these men to try to find temporary work from farmers. Men often stopped by a farmhouse and asked the housewife if they could speak with her husband about doing some odd jobs or being a hired hand for a time. More often than not, there was no work to be had nor even money to pay for wages, or the farmer already had a hired hand. If their husbands did not require any hired help, the housewives would usually provide any drifter with a meal or some food for the road. 

At the time, parents would leave older children in charge of younger siblings when necessary. On that particular evening, my mother and her siblings were at home alone. Their parents had gone to a local function, possibly a school or township meeting. In my mother’s family, the two oldest boys would have been responsible for their four younger sisters and brother. Their ages at that time ranged from eleven to four years old. At a certain point that evening, the children went to bed upstairs at the old farmhouse in Tuckersmith Township; in each respective room, three children slept in one big bed. The three boys were in one bedroom, and the three girls were in another one nearby; both bedrooms were located near the top of the stairs. No doubt to save energy, no lights were kept burning in the house. It was in darkness. I recall my mother commenting on how dark and quiet that night had seemed. Perhaps she and her siblings felt the  absence of their parents, with the knowledge they were on their own.

Creak. Creak. Creak.  

The children in their respective bedrooms heard the old wooden stairs give a whispered warning that someone was at the bottom of the stairs. That someone was coming upstairs. 

Groan. Groan. Groan.  

The worn floorboards at the top of the stairs sounded a hushed alert that someone was now just outside the bedrooms.  

“Who’s there?” called out one of the boys from his bed. No answer came back.  

In the other bedroom, my mother and her sisters lay in the big bed with the blankets up to  their noses, peering into the darkness. From both bedrooms, the children could just barely make out a shape in the inky darkness. An apparition. But not a ghost. A man. They could hear his breathing as he moved from one to the other of the opened doorways of the two bedrooms.  

“Is that you, Harry?” one of my mother’s brothers asked the voiceless shadow in the corridor. He was no doubt hoping the figure in the doorway was their neighbour from down the road who was often at their home, and sometimes helped their father on his farm.  

It must have felt to the children that the bogeyman had come to life and decided to visit  their home that night. My mother and her sisters lay in their bed, hearts beating faster with rising fear. Who was the man in the doorway? Why was he not saying anything? 

Then the man turned from the door of the boys’ bedroom and came back to the doorway of the bedroom where the girls were trembling under the covers.  

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.  

The timeworn floorboards in the girls’ bedroom murmured their soft but urgent alarm. The dark shape stood beside the bed. The silence in the room was overwhelming.  

Suddenly the bogeyman turned and started to walk back into the hallway. He paused outside the boys’ bedroom door one last time, and then began his descent down the stairs.  

Creak. Creak. Creak.  

Groan. Groan. Groan.  

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.  

When the children knew the apparition, the bogeyman had left the house, they all bounded from their respective beds. All of them had been scared within an inch of their lives. They discussed who it could have been, why he had come, and why he had not spoken. When their  parents returned home later, the children excitedly informed them about the nocturnal visitor. As parents, they would have wanted to allay fears, not wanting to alarm, or upset the children further.  One wonders if they were worried that something terrible could have happened to their children that night. They assumed it was a drifter or a hobo, who had entered the unlocked farmhouse, perhaps in search of food.  

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Who was that man?  

What were his intentions?  

Why did he not speak?  

Were my mother and her siblings in danger? 

One thing seems clear to me:  

sometimes the bogeyman is real.  

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John RC Potter is an international educator from Canada who lives in Istanbul.  He has experienced a revolution (Indonesia), air strikes (Israel), earthquakes (Turkey), boredom (UAE), and blinding snow blizzards (Canada), the last being the subject of his story, ‘Snowbound in the House of God’ (Memoirist). The author’s poems, stories, essays, articles, and reviews have been published in various magazines and journals. His story, “Ruth’s World” was a Pushcart Prize nominee, and his poem, “Tomato Heart” was nominated for the Best of the Net Award. The author has a gay-themed children’s picture book that is scheduled for publication. He is a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Recent Publications: “Heimat” in Overgrowth Press (Poetry) March 14, 2025 – Overgrowth & “Clara Von Clapp’s Secret Admirer” in The Lemonwood Quarterly (Prose) Clara Von Clapp’s Secret Admirer – The Lemonwood Quarterly