After living in many different foster homes, Owen and Martha are suddenly moved to Toronto, where Sister Charlotte comes to take care of them.
When Sister Charlotte limps through the front door, they shouldnât have been surprised. But they are. Her face is lined, her skin is grey, and her is hair dead and stringy. Sheâs not wearing a nunâs white head-cover; her plain blue dress with black socks and flat black shoes is the nun uniform for the Sisters of Sorrows.
The first thing she says, before even being introduced, is âWhat a relief. These stronger pills are a miracle. Iâll be back in shape in no time.â
When Owen and Martha realize that the narcotics being supplied to Sister Charlotte are being paid for by the Vatican, and that the house they are living in seems to be hidden within the Catholic system, they want to know why. Their search uncovers multiple foster-care secrets being covered up by that branch of the Opus Dei called The Society for the Protection of the Faith.
After living in many different foster homes, Owen and Martha are suddenly moved to Toronto, where Sister Charlotte comes to take care of them.
When Sister Charlotte limps through the front door, they shouldnât have been surprised. But they are. Her face is lined, her skin is grey, and her is hair dead and stringy. Sheâs not wearing a nunâs white head-cover; her plain blue dress with black socks and flat black shoes is the nun uniform for the Sisters of Sorrows.
The first thing she says, before even being introduced, is âWhat a relief. These stronger pills are a miracle. Iâll be back in shape in no time.â
When Owen and Martha realize that the narcotics being supplied to Sister Charlotte are being paid for by the Vatican, and that the house they are living in seems to be hidden within the Catholic system, they want to know why. Their search uncovers multiple foster-care secrets being covered up by that branch of the Opus Dei called The Society for the Protection of the Faith.
Chapter 1
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OWEN
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I was found lying face up in the Open Hatch drop-off container at North Bay General, my twin sister face down on top of me. I remember what I thought was the swish-swishing of the hospital doors as the nurse took us to Neonatal. Of course, I was only a few hours old, too young to remember anything. But, if the swish- swishing was coming from my baby sisterâs tiny mouth pressed against my tiny ear as she drew her last tiny breath, I would remember. We were twins so that would have been a different kind of remembering. Although just the other day, the day after my eighteenth birthday, in fact, standing in the cemetery with Martha, my foster sister, and Peter, my foster father, watching the smoke slanting from the crematorium chimney into the spires of St. Maryâs church, I could hear that same swish-swish in what I thought was the wings of a white pigeon landing on the crematorium roof.
After one month in the neonatal unit, I was placed by Catholic Family and Childrenâs Services for the Diocese of Nipissing with Audrey and Robert Reynolds. They lived in a ranch-style house in the North Bay suburbs. Audrey was a fat forty-something; Robert was a thin elementary school teacher. Audrey took me to mass twice a week, and every Sunday afternoon to Tim Hortons for chocolate donuts. The donuts were for her, not for me. She fed me Cheerios from a plastic bag that she kept in her purse.
I was five years old when Audrey enrolled me in Saturday Play Time at the North Bay Library, which she pronounced âlibary.â While the other kids played silly games, I sat at one of the big round tables
2Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Good Night, Mr. Knight
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and taught myself to read. I got curious about the four deaf ladies who arrived every Saturday morning at ten oâclock and sat at a table in the corner. They looked like the Channel 12 Breaking News women that Audrey watched every evening at six oâclock, except these ladies talked with their hands. As I watched the dance of their fingers, I felt my brain organizing the wiggles into patterns. I found a book on American Sign Language and pretty soon I could read what they were saying. So, like an electronic CIA bug under their table, with the sound piped remotely into my ear without the ladies knowing, I could tap into their secret conversations.
I learned how they removed hair from their legs. I thought you just shaved it off and flushed the stubbles down the sewer. Thatâs what Audrey did. But no, they used wax. The following week I learned about blind dating sites. I thought I read that wrong. They werenât blind; they were deaf. But no, because the next week, they talked about going to bed on the first blind date. They each said no, that was wrong. Then they talked about all the times they went to bed on the first blind date. Well, of course, now I know they were talking about a different kind of going to bed.
After playtime at the library, me and Audrey had a Big Mac and fries and cherry pie for lunch. Audrey talked about going on a diet. Thatâs all she could think about â that and eating.
âInside me is a thin woman yelling to get out, Owen.â
To shut up the thin woman, Audrey filled her mouth with more Tim Hortons, like on TV when you shove a rag into the mouth of the guy you put into the trunk while you drive to the two-rut road through the bush to the secluded spot where you take him for a boat ride.
One day, she said, âI think Iâve found a solution to my weight problem, Owen. I have to get rid of all this tempting junk food.â
So she laid the chocolate bars sheâd just bought on the table. She took her time unwrapping each one, like she was opening presents at her birthday party. She broke each one in half and placed the pieces on a plate. Then she opened her mouth for each half, chewed on it, and swallowed each one by one until they were gone, not there to
Allan Davis       3
tempt her. Problem solved. Except that afterward she seemed disappointed with herself, as though she felt like a failure. Perhaps it was because Robert had given her a diet book the day before.
I remember this because, for my eighteenth birthday, my foster sister, Martha, gave me a personal care kit with a brush and a comb and nail clippers. I felt like a failure for all those years using Martha to help me catch bugs, never once realizing that, for her, my personal appearance was probably an embarrassment.
Robert didnât take me to McDonaldâs or Tim Hortons or to anywhere. He was too busy in his basement lab, processing and packaging his Economy Articulated Cat Skeletons mounted on attractive wooden bases. The cats came from the Humane Society for free, so the only cost in making them into skeletons was acid to eat away the fur and the flesh, and the wooden base they stood on. He sold them to the Ontario school boards, $59.99 plus tax.
Robert was in his basement lab, scraping scabbed blood off a cat skeleton. I asked, âHow do you kill the cats?â
He said, âThe Humane Society injects them with sodium pentobarbital.â
So I looked it up. As well as killing cats, it could be used as a truth serum to tell when people were lying. I asked Robert, âCan you get me some so I can tell when people are lying?â
He was busy separating cat skulls from the backbones for his sideline business, Skulls Unlimited. He hesitated. âWhy would you want to know that?â
âAudrey thinks youâve been lying to her about that woman who works at the Humane Society who gets you the cats. I thought you might like me to check it out.â
He went back to scraping with his wooden-handled hooker- picker thing. âThe pentobarbital has to be injected, and even if you got a needle, you canât buy the drug without a licence.â
The neighbours complained about the dead cat smell, and the city shut his dead cat business down. After that he sold Ant Viewer Observatory Cylinders on the internet. Raising and packaging ants didnât cause any smell.
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Audreyâs goal and plan for me was private gifted school, but Robert said no, so I started grade one in the same elementary school Robert taught at. After about a week, Mrs. McCarthy said to him, âYour little guy Owen is the smartest kid I ever taught.â
âWho?â
âOwen.â
âMy Owen?â He looked at me.
Mrs. McCarthy said, âHe needs to be in a gifted program. If heâs a foster child, he should be moved to that Montcrest School in Toronto.â
âAnd pay twenty-seven thousand dollars a year?â
âWell it was Bishop Humphries who mentioned Montcrest. Maybe he can get the money from the church. After all, heâs the major dumbo for Nipissing Foster Care.â
âWhatâs Bishop Humphries got to do with Owen?â
âNothing, other than Owenâs intelligence is being wasted up here.â
When Robert asked me, I said I didnât want to go. I liked it where I was.
So Robert bought me a junior scientist microscope kit and showed me the experiments in viscosity and liquids and laws of motion he was doing with his grade eight kids. These experiments led to DNA research in colour and tail shapes in guppies. I had three tanks of different types: spotted, rainbow, fantail, forktail. I had two separate breeding tanks, which made five altogether in my bedroom. Pretty soon me and Robert were selling weird-coloured guppies on the internet.
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Although this is a heartbreaking theme, Goodnight Mr Knight is written with a deep understanding of kids brought up under a system of foster care. It also contains moments of warm humour, and resonates with empathy for the kids and contempt for those taking advantage of them.
Owen and Martha are thrown together by the vagaries of the system, and as different as they are from each other, they are the only real support either one has. Owen, who says he was found lying face-up in an Open Hatch container, with his dead twin sister on top of him, is a gifted kid, desperately trying to teach himself. Martha is the opposite, plain, hard working and stoic.
The two are under the care of the CFCS â the Catholic Family and Childrenâs Services. When they find themselves moved to stay with a sadistic guy, Big Joe, their lives begin to change. Owen realizes he can fool Big Joe by working out the statistics of the horse racing, predicting the results, and that saves him from the physical abuse other boys have to endure. At last Big Joe is found out and the two move again, and again, until they are weirdly sent to a special school â with a drug addicted nun to look after them.
The depth of the child abuse is leavened by Owenâs sharp comments, such as âthe anti-abortionists promising more foster children for CFCS!â Â And when the magical Mr Knight is sent by the Bishop to supply drugs to the nun, Sister Charlotte, the kids become her carers with sad little cameo scenes:Â âSister Charlotte, are you stoned again?â is a wry comment from Martha.
Owenâs cynical comment perhaps sums up a lot of their lives when they both long to find out about their real families. âA mother is just the eggâs way of making another egg,â and Martha adds, âMy mother abandoned meâŚand my father left me with a drug-addicted nun.â
But grow up they do, and on turning eighteen they are part of Mr Knightâs sadistic over-dosing of Sister Charlotte as her role is now done. Â Big Joe hangs himself, which seems a fitting end to a nasty man, and justice seems to be catching up with the system. Â It does leave the question of how much the church is or was aware of the huge problems in its midst, and how far have they gone in covering up many of these abuses.
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