As Long as the Rivers Flow (8 page)

“I am so sorry, auntie,” she said, and walked toward her silent mother who had likewise just guessed what had happened.

In tears, her aunt rushed wildly at Martha, seized her by the arms and began to shake her.

“How could you? You promised me you would protect him! It’s your fault!”

Martha’s mother intervened. “Don’t blame her. She’s just a child. You gave her too much responsibility!”

The aunt released Martha and asked, “At least tell me how he died. Did he suffer?”

Martha said nothing, not wanting to cause even greater pain by providing the details. Her aunt, however, mistook her reluctance to speak as an indication of a lack of concern, and after giving her niece a nasty look, returned to her home to break the devastating news to her family. Even later, when the other children told the aunt what had really happened, she never forgave her niece—for she had promised to protect Little Joe and had failed to do so.

When Martha climbed aboard the float plane in late August to return to the residential school, she was accompanied by another six-year-old, this time a girl. In the years that followed, as they turned six, a procession of other children accompanied them on the flight. Humiliated and hopeless after the beating she suffered when she had tried to help her cousin, and embittered by the ongoing sexual abuse from the priest, Martha did nothing when she saw Sister Angelica leading the girls to Father Antoine’s office.

As the years went by, the priest became more and more demanding, and Martha coped as best she could by retreating within herself and numbing her emotions. At times she gazed at the photograph on his office wall and wondered who the people were. The young priest in the picture was obviously the son of the happy mother and
father who stood on each side of him. But who were the kids in the picture? Were they the brothers and sisters of the priest? Were they cousins or neighbours? Had they just come from church? Had they just had lunch or dinner? What had been served? What had they talked about? Were his brothers and sisters still proud of him? Would the parents have been pleased to know that at this very moment their son was forcing himself upon a helpless child?

One day, however, after she turned twelve, she could take no more. She would kill herself, she told Father Antoine, if he did not leave her alone, and she meant it. The priest, who preferred much younger girls in any case, summoned her no more.

By that time, Martha had become completely disillusioned with life and was desperately lonely, and from time to time would allow a teenage boy to sneak into her bed at night. It was easy to arrange. The nun on duty at her dormitory was hard of hearing and slept soundly from when the lights were turned off until the first bell announcing the start of a new day the next morning. The anxious boy would wait until it was late enough, and slip quietly into the dormitory and join Martha. No one ever reported her, and she was never caught.

Each time she had sex, she thought not of the teenager in bed with her, but of Father Antoine and the nuns. How enraged they would be if they knew she was flouting and undermining their hypocritical moral principles—and under their very noses! She did not even care if she became pregnant, since the worst that could happen would be expulsion from the school—something she would welcome.

In her final years at the school, Martha appeared calm and resigned to serving out her time. She had her moments of laughter and joy, and even if she was not able to forgive Sister Angelica, with the
passage of time she came to understand that the nun, like her, was a victim of forces beyond her control. But most of the time, she seethed with pent-up rage, almost weeping when students were punished as she had been by being tied to the overhead steam pipes in the basement, beaten and thrown into solitary confinement in the coal cellar. She could not stand hearing the nuns say, again and again, that the students should be grateful that God had sent emissaries into the middle of nowhere to educate Stone Age savages and to save their souls. She never forgave them for not telling her when her father unexpectedly died of a heart attack.

But it was Father Antoine that she loathed the most. Whenever they passed each other in the halls, he smiled at her and she averted her eyes. Try as she might, she could not shut him out at night when she relived in her nightmares the abuse she had suffered at his hands for so many years. During Sunday mass when he spoke about the love of God, she paid no attention to what he was saying and devised imaginary tortures for him. Sometimes, he was standing in a classroom, his head covered with a urine-drenched sheet as the students jeered. At other times, he was her prisoner and she was lashing him as the nuns once beat her. And if on that Sunday he was preaching about hell, she saw him immersed in fire and brimstone, suffering untold agonies for what he had done to her and to the other girls.

When, a decade after her admission to the residential school, Martha was discharged and sent home, she left with the rudiments of a high school education and with emotional wounds so deep they would never heal. It was no comfort to her that the school closed its doors for good shortly thereafter.

W
HEN
M
ARTHA RETURNED HOME
at the age of sixteen, the chubby six-year-old who had been taken away in a float plane so many years before had become a tall, attractive, physically mature young woman with fine, dark-brown facial features and angry black eyes. Much of this anger she reserved for her mother. For Martha had never forgotten what her mother had told her that summer after her first year at the residential school.

“Stop making up stories,” she had said, squeezing her arm and hurting her when her daughter tried to tell her Father Antoine was touching her where he shouldn’t. “The government will cut off our family allowance cheques,” she had said, “if you don’t go back to school.”

From that moment Martha believed that her mother valued the money she received from the government over the well-being of her daughter.

Martha never mentioned Father Antoine to her mother again in the years she was away. After the death of her father, who had been the quiet but solid force keeping peace in the family, a gulf
opened between mother and daughter that grew more pronounced each time she returned home for the summers. When Martha entered the family cabin in late June 1972 carrying a bag filled with her possessions from the school, her mother sensed veiled hostility.

“So look who’s finally made it home,” she said, taking the initiative. “I guess we’re going to have to find some way to get along. But I can’t afford to feed you out of my welfare money and you better get down to the band office and apply for your own.”

When Martha responded in what she remembered of her language, her mother laughed at her.

“You know even less Anishinaabemowin than you did last summer. You’d think you’d put a little effort into keeping your language.”

When Martha tried to help run the household, her mother was not impressed.

“What sort of person have you become, anyway! You come home spoiled by that school, expecting to be fed the food of the white man. But people like me can’t live without country food. You can’t shoot a gun, set a net, light a fire, chop wood, clean fish, cook bannock or smoke geese—let alone make moosehide moccasins and gloves. Why, when I was a girl, I could do these things before I was ten!”

Martha’s mother was not alone in finding it hard to love a child from whom she had become estranged after years of absence at residential school. Her remarks, however, confirmed her daughter’s impression that she belonged neither among the whites nor among her own people.

As the months went by and her relations with her mother remained strained, Martha slipped into a depression. Lacking the energy to get out of bed in the mornings, she sat around doing nothing in the afternoons, abandoned her efforts to learn how to
fish and hunt, and no longer tried to help her mother with the cooking and cleaning. From time to time, for no obvious reason, she broke down in tears.

Her mother was appalled when her daughter turned to her for help.

“You’re bringing shame on our family! You lie around all day letting your old mother do all the work and expect to be waited on hand and foot. In my day, Anishinabe people never got sick in the head. You’re just lazy and spoiled. Pull yourself together and above all don’t let the neighbours know what’s wrong with you!”

But Martha’s condition worsened and she was soon unable to sleep. Matters reached a crisis one night when she was, as usual, lying awake and rigid in bed, her senses on high alert. A cold moonlight flooded in through the open window, casting sinister shadows against the walls, and the normal sounds of the northern community assumed a menacing air. Children running and playing behind her house were making fun of her, the hoot of an owl was a premonition of death, and the distant howling of wolves was a direct threat. The dogs, responsible for protecting their human masters from wild animals, answered them from backyards throughout the reserve with irresolute and fearful barking, as if to say, “If it’s Martha you want, just come and get her. We won’t stop you.”

The wind in the black spruce trees whispered that she came from bad seed, from a flawed, inferior race, doomed to disappear and leave no trace on history. It said the nuns had been right—she and her people were Stone Age accidents of history who had been clothed in the skins of animals when the white man arrived, with no alphabet, no books, no music, no calendar, no domesticated animals, no cities and no monuments. It said the Native gods were inferior to the white gods, had been vanquished and would never return, leaving nature empty and forlorn. It said she
was weak, friendless and unwelcome in her mother’s house, in her community and in her country. It said she came from a place that no longer existed, was living a life that had no purpose, and ultimately, she and her people would disappear from history without a trace.

Suddenly a gust of wind blew through the open window, lifting the sheets on her bed. A malevolent force, perhaps a bearwalker, perhaps the Wendigo, was coming and was about to attack her. She wanted to seek safety in her mother’s arms, but if she tried, her mother would push her away. There was pounding on the door, laughter and the sound of children running.

She heard her mother struggle out of bed, fumble around sleepily and stumble to the door. She heard her open it and mutter: “Those kids. Their parents should teach them better manners. They should be in bed at this time of night.”

Martha thought of Father Antoine—how she sometimes secretly welcomed his summons, because he was the only one in all those years who ever displayed any affection for her—even if it was just to abuse her body. A possible exception was Sister Angelica, who had tried to encourage her to conform, not to kick up a fuss, if only for her own sake, since it would do no good. She remembered her sex sessions with the boys and felt dirty. A sense of dread seized her, locking her in an icy grip, a crushing weight squeezed her chest and stomach, feelings of worthlessness and self-hatred overwhelmed her. Her world was now a great black pit from which there was no hope of escape.

Slipping into a fitful sleep, she began to dream. She was a little girl of six again and it was her last summer of innocence before she was shipped away to residential school. Accompanied by her parents, she came from a tent, where there had been feasting, drumming
and dancing, to a campfire where the people had gathered to listen to a smiling old man tell the old stories. She edged closer and closer until she was sitting at his feet. There was much laughter and good-natured joking, and the little girl felt safe and secure, surrounded by people who cared for her.

The old man announced that he intended to tell stories about the Wendigo, paused as if lost in thought, and looked down at Martha. His smile was gone and his eyes were no longer friendly but were gleaming like burning coals sunk deep in his head.

“Little girl,” he told her, “children are not normally allowed to listen to the stories of the Wendigo. Should you insist, however, you can stay but you must be prepared for the consequences.”

The elder was actually a bearwalker but Martha was not afraid. After all, her parents were close by and she could count on them for protection. He shrugged his shoulders and began to tell his tales.

There was a flash of lightning and a distant rumble of thunder. The malicious gleam in the bearwalker’s eyes faded and was replaced by a glow of fear. He bent over, thrust his face up close to hers and spoke in a voice only she could hear.

“Little girl, I warned you, but you wouldn’t listen. Now, never forget what I tell you tonight as you go through life. The Wendigo can do more than just eat people. It can remove children from their mothers, steal their souls, make them hate themselves and their people, ruin their culture and turn them into soulless devils. Worse, it can change the children of these children into Wendigos. The cycle will continue until a shaman arrives in the form of a raven to break the cycle.”

All at once, a smell as foul as the one that used to pollute the dining hall at the residential school filled the air. The earth broke open and a repulsive winged Wendigo, as tall as a tree, emerged
and looked around, seeking out its prey. When it spotted Martha, its face turned from devil monster into human beast—assuming the lewd look that Father Antoine used to adopt when he abused her. Seizing her with its claws, it squeezed her chest and stomach until she could hardly breathe. Unable to cry out, she frantically motioned to her parents to save her.

Her mother and father anxiously pulled flaming branches from the fire and ran to the rescue, but as they drew near, their footsteps faltered, and they gave her up without a fight. The Wendigo cried out in triumph, opened its wings, and with a roar that sounded like the engine of a float plane taking off at full throttle, lifted Martha in its talons and flapped away across the lake and up into the sky—vanishing from the view of the small band of people standing helplessly around the fire.