by Mikaela Brewer for The 44 North
Senior Editor
In honour of Foster Family Week and Adoption Awareness Month, this story is inspired by the Child Welfare League of Canada’s Beyond Neglect Program, which “seeks to garner a better understanding of how we can best respond to the conditions that place children at an increased risk of neglect, with a distinct focus on meeting the needs of children and families.”
Please engage with further information & resources below:
***
Every Halloween, bobbing on the ocean in Big Barnie, my parents read aloud our favourite ghost story at midnight: The Little Mermaid.
“Even the ghosts of the sea were cold,” my dad, Jack, whispered, making use of the gap in his teeth. He frizzed up his blue-black hair so it looked spiked with hair gel.
Always with the ad libs. Last year, just after I’d turned 13, I stood on the slightly uneven deck boards, arms outstretched like propellers. I wanted to be strong enough not to need to hold on as Big Barnie rocked across the Labrador current.
My parents were cuddled together under a blue knitted blanket, leaning against the mast. They took turns reading, but it was mostly my Mom trying to connect my Dad’s tangents back to the actual story. I loved it.
It wasn’t long after that night that I wondered if she might actually be out there—a gentle, kind, strong-hearted, and curious mermaid. My Mom.
***
The hail landed in chunks thicker than my hand, pattering off of a rare trail of icebergs flowing down the cold Labrador Current in the North Atlantic. They’d broken off in the Arctic and floated south along Canada’s east coast until they reached the Gulf Stream. We were in the colder water that night, not far off the coast, and Big Barnie—our family work and home—was set to bring back a fresh crop of fish from the spooky October fog.
But it was a clear night. Strangely clear. As my parents read the fairytale, I could see and smell over Barnie’s rail. The moon bounced off silvery fish scales. We watched the harmless, small bergs crawl across the water like white beetles. But in the gathering night, we didn’t expect or see the storm coming. Thunderstorms closer to shore had generated hail that we never would have predicted.
The Little Mermaid was about to give up her voice when ice smashed the book from my Mom’s hand, breaking her fingers. She screamed. The top deck looked like it had been coated in sea salt.
“Get below, Jackson. Now!” My Dad yelled, heading to the helm to turn the boat back toward Halifax harbour. Big Barnie rocked like a teeter-totter each time a chunk hit the deck.
“But I can help! Let me help!”
“Please, honey, we’ll be fine. We just need to turn around and get out of the storm. It has to be localized this far out.” My mom spoke softly, but hurt. She stood, bracing her arm. Her dark brown, silver beaded braids looked ethereal.
“You go too, Hannah.”
“Like hell, Jack. It’s my boat!”
My Dad smirked and rolled his eyes. My Mom stood her ground.
“Fine, let’s get moving. Barnie, you did it. You’re having your moment, my friend!”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as I climbed down the stairs, gripping both wet railings to keep my balance against the harsh rocking. Something really didn’t feel right.
And it wasn’t. Big Barnie was a strong, sturdy center console. But they belonged to my grandparents. Big Barnie wasn’t actually big, and they didn’t have ample cabin space. We didn’t have much money, I understood. Barnie was home.
Their hull and keel tore as they rammed into a jagged rock shoal. The water came in fast. I heard both my parents’ bodies thud against the deck before I lurched, slipped, and tumbled down into the cabin, knocked unconscious.
***
“Hi,” a gravelly voice spoke as I woke up, immediately smelling and tasting staleness. A hospital bed.
I sat up, eyes bleary, and reached for my glasses. I couldn’t yet tell who was sitting on the end of the bed. A rough hand placed my glasses in my palm, and took my other hand in theirs. Dad.
“Hi,” I returned, quickly aware I hadn’t used my voice in a while. I mentally searched my body for injury, but my Dad interjected.
“You’re okay. A mild concussion. You just slept through the day yesterday.”
“Where are we?”
“Home. Halifax.”
“What happened?”
“We hit a hell of a storm. Out of nowhere. Big Barnie’s irreparable. But we’ll donate their organs.” He winked, seeming his usual, witty self.
“Where’s Mom?”
“Well,” he hesitated. I saw the frailty and slippage of what I would better understand a year later.
“Dad. Where’s Mom?” My voice creaked with worry.
He looked me dead in the eyes with unfaltering confidence. “She decided to stay.”
“What? Where?”
“In the ocean, silly. Don’t you know?”
“Dad, I don’t understand. What the hell do you mean?”
“She’s from the sea. She decided to go home.”
I blinked. I couldn’t wrap my sleep-saturated brain around this. “Dad, I’m not 5. Please don’t do that. Just tell me what happened. Please. Is she—”
“Jackson, Jackson, Jackson. Trust me. She’s okay.” He squeezed my hand, but his eyes betrayed him.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, so where is she?” I glanced around, thinking she might be asleep in a bed near mine.
“I told you. She’s a mermaid once again.”
I pulled my hand away and pressed the ‘water’ call button on the side of my bed. I shook my head no. When the nurse came in, I demanded, aggressively, to know where my Mom was. The nurse’s face fell grave as he looked between my Dad and I. He said he’d get the doctor.
***
My Mom, unable to brace her fall or hold onto anything, had been flung over the side of Big Barnie when we hit the shoal. She’d been killed instantly on impact with the rock.
Dr. Arbre had asked my Dad to leave the room when they told me. And there was more.
“Your Dad, Jackson. Has he ever struggled with psychosis or schizophrenia?”
I shook my head, hardly knowing what these words meant. Dr. Arbre caught on.
“Has he ever seen or heard something that isn’t there? Something that causes him extreme distress or confusion?”
I shook my head again.
They nodded. “His brain seems to be protecting him from the pain of losing your mother—he believes she’s out there as a mermaid. And right now, it’s not exactly harmful, or causing much distress. But will you call me if that changes? We can offer you both care.”
My thoughts scattered like a broken window in my brain. I caught Dr. Arbre’s drift. One of my friends had been taken from his surviving Mom after his other Mom died in a car accident. She was drunk at almost every court date.
“Okay,” I said, unconvincingly.
I didn’t intend on leaving my Dad.
***
One year later
“Dad, please. We need to get these in crates,” I said as clearly as I could manage, crouched over a net thick with fish, swallowing tears. The sun felt hotter than usual, almost sticky on my bare back.
Dad, his speech slurred, was begging desperately. “One more minute. Any time now.” He’d climbed the mast and was searching the ocean through binoculars.
“Dad, I don’t think she’s coming back today.” I remembered to include the word ‘today’ because my jaw still hurt, bruised from the last time I’d forgotten. Thankfully, my freckles at least broke up the purple, yellow, and green.
“Alright, Jackson. Yes. Maybe it’s a bit cold out there. I just thought she might like to read it with me, you know?” He said this so lovingly that I almost broke. But I couldn’t. I wasn’t strong enough to fend him off yet.
“Read what?” Oh no.
“What do you mean, “What”? The same thing we read every year. How could you think you have any right to grow out of The Little Mermaid?”
“No, Dad, of course not. I’m sorry. I’m just tired. I’ve been hauling fish up all day.”
“You’ve been doing nothing. Wandering around thinking about why you can’t always go to school.” He was climbing back down now, and it took everything in me not to back into a corner. Even if I had, there was nowhere to go except the water. And it wouldn’t be the first time.
“Dad, please, you’re drunk.” I nearly whimpered.
But he didn’t stop. And his beer-soaked bottle sprayed glass across my legs as I leapt over the bow into the calm water, and swam the few kilometres to shore.
***
He hadn’t stopped looking for her. But he hadn’t stopped looking for me, either, in between.
I sat in a small pub where my Uncle John, Dad’s younger brother, always let me in for free warm soup. Frequently, it was the only time I ate all day. I’m 99% sure he knew exactly what was going on. His eyes followed my Dad when he eventually came in, an hour later, and sat across from me.
“Jackson.”
I didn’t reply, just dipped my sourdough in my fourth bowl of soup.
“What kind is it?”
I looked up, but didn’t answer. I looked back down again.
“Right. SpongeBob Alphagetti, duh.”
I cracked a slight smile. “It’s—”
“Broccoli cheddar, I know.”
I looked at him. His eyes were purple and red like a sailor’s warning sunrise.
“Do you remember because it’s my favourite? Or hers?” I asked coldly, confident he was calm now.
“Jackson. Yours. Of course, yours.” His voice was hard and pained. My words had hurt him.
“Dad, I’m scared.”
“Of me.”
“Yes.”
He put his hands on his head, digging dirty fingernails through his long hair. Mom used to cut it, so it hadn’t been cut for a year. His voice faltered. “I know.”
There were few moments when he came to me clearly like this. But even still, I never challenged his beliefs about Mom. I didn’t know if grief was as flexible as violence.
“Jackson, I’ve been thinking about something.”
“Alright.”
“I’m thinking maybe I’m not good for this.”
“For what?”
“Being a parent.”
My eyes narrowed and my brow furrowed with pain. “Yes you are.” It was almost desperate.
“No, Jackson, we both know I’m not. Another family could care for you. Give you a better life. Give you love.”
“You are love for me, Dad.”
He closed his eyes, and the tears trickled into his unshaven beard, now streaked with pale blue-white. “Oh, son. You are for me, too. But I can’t be it anymore.”
“Why can’t you fight for us? For me? Why can’t you just let her go like a normal person! We can be okay. You just have to try harder!” I was so heartbroken and angry that I didn’t filter my words.
“I’ve hit the shoals all over again, Jackson. Permanently. The shoal of trying harder. I can’t try any harder.”
“You just think I make it worse. Make you remember her.”
“I don’t know what I think. But I do know what I feel—I have to take you to the agency. You’re such a good person. Better than I ever will be. What you need is to let me go. You deserve an adoptive family who can remind you of that every day. I don’t. I make you question it. We’ll go on Friday.”
“That’s only two days from now!”
It was almost like he’d stopped hearing me. Shut me out. “I’m going to check on the boat. Can’t remember if I tied it up.”
***
I don’t know how long I sat twirling my spoon in the empty bowl, but it was now past sunset. My stomach growled with anger beyond hunger, like someone I loved starving me of themself. I cried until my gut felt scooped clean of rage, the only thing left being grief, better known as love with a knife in it.
I said thank you to Uncle John before heading out into a storm I hadn’t heard. The sky was that shade of deep purple-gray, dense with storm clouds. The raindrops were so big they stung like ice. The sky was weeping cold hardness. I had to catch myself for a moment—it wasn’t Mom.
I started walking toward the marina, hoping my Dad was asleep inside our tiny cabin. There wasn’t room for both of us in the cabin of this boat. We alternated sleeping on the deck.
“Dad?” I called, loudly from the dock. There was no reply.
“Dad!” I thought he must be really asleep, which wouldn’t have been unusual. I climbed aboard to check, anyway.
“Dad?” I asked again, inching down the narrow, steep carpet steps. He wasn’t there. A pang of panic spread through me like lightning branches. I swivelled around, scanning the deck. I’d have seen him—there was nowhere to hide on such a small boat. The rain was loud off the boat and dock, but I heard a distant voice from the water.
“Hannah!” My Dad was swimming, already far out into the water and well into the potential paths of other boats. He was calling for Mom. I froze. I had no idea what to do. Nobody else was around with the coming storm. I was surrounded by boats—empty white and navy ghosts.
Not again. Not again. Not again. I ran around untethering, almost slipping multiple times, and began backing the boat out of the marina.
“Jackson! What the hell are you doing?”
Uncle John ran across the dock, worry directing the path of rain down his wrinkled cheeks. His full brown beard and mustache had turned the same colour as the sky. I asked him to get help, but I kept going.
It was hard to see as the waves churned, and I lost sight of Dad many times. When I got the boat to where I thought he’d been, or in the vicinity of where he could be, I threw the anchor over and dove in with it.
“Dad!” I screamed, my mouth garbled with water. I was being sucked under. We were far enough out for rip currents.
My consciousness began to blur until I heard an engine growl, followed by a strong arm around my ribs, which I assumed was Uncle John.
My brain fizzled in and out of awareness, frothing like white caps. It finally hooked on a voice I was afraid I’d never hear again.
“Jackson!” My Dad was hugging me, shaking my shoulders, trying to wake me up.
I coughed and sputtered over his back, and he hugged me tighter. He let go, and pivoted my shoulders to face him.
“Why would you come after me? Why!”
“Because you’re my Dad. And you’re sick. And I don’t want to leave you. And you don’t want to leave me. And—” I coughed again.
His brow creased as he turned to look out across the water. I could hear the throat of the Coast Guard’s engine clearing somewhere offshore, fighting the harsh waves.
“I can’t have you in danger like this.”
My heart sagged into my waterlogged lungs. I frowned as if to say, “Same with you.”
“But I don’t think I ever meant it would be permanent.” He handed me my glasses, somehow unbroken.
I focused and met his eyes. They were exhausted, but clear. Not bloodshot.
“We can find you foster parents. And work toward reunification. I will get some help.”
I couldn’t help smiling.
He smiled back, reaching to pull seaweed from my hair. “I mean, it’s stamped, really. Hannah named you Jackson. Maybe as a safeguard. Maybe she knew something we didn’t. Jack’s son. Always.”
This was a start. And I recognized hope. I hugged him again.
***
We ended up finding support through the Child Welfare League of Canada’s Beyond Neglect Program. Poverty, domestic violence, few social supports, and mental health issues are the top concerns that lead to youth being removed from their homes (Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect, 2008). We were vulnerable before my Mom died, and more so afterward. My Dad struggled to support both of us safely, and resources helped.
As we navigated this, together, Halloween came again—now a reminder of grief, love, and brave change. I’m thinking about ghosts. In all his longing, my Dad fought to see the one ghost he couldn’t. That search brought others to life because he was alone in ways I couldn’t change.
I wanted to see her out there, too. Selfishly, and maybe ignorantly, I didn’t want to believe she became a mermaid—I wanted to know it as fatally, desperately, and fiercely as my Dad did. I mistook that for a strong will—a choice.
But maybe the real ghosts—the ones who hide seamlessly in the low, cool clouds that wisp around the masts of a boat, or in a strange patch of warm water out on the winter ocean—are never meant to be seen. They’re meant to be felt.
The Little Mermaid didn’t save the prince that night. She brought him to where he could breathe. Maybe that’s what Mom did for us, too.
