Prudence (24 page)

PRUDENCE

THE WIGWAM—AUGUST 3, 1952

M
y dear daughter I am going to do a terrible thing. That’s what they say it is, a terrible Sin, they say, but I don’t think so and it’s only because I love you that I am making my plans. Yes love there is no other word for it. No other way to describe it. Richard calls me Sweetums and Honeydrop but it is only the honey he is after he is such a simple man he confuses honey with the taste of honey but that’s how boys are—they don’t understand what it is to live in the world. They don’t know how it is to live in it but I do and let me tell you it is an awful thing. It is an awful thing to be torn between wanting it and hating it and the only thing to do is to let it go and for that I am sorry so very very sorry because who knows maybe you would grow into a big good girl and a strong girl who would find everything I might have missed and could not see. But
Such Is Life.
I once thought I could steal life from life and have it be my own my very own. This is what I thought when me and Grace left out of _________ with nothing of our own and not a word of English to share between us. I was thirteen and this was 1938. The village was not a good place it weren’t much more than a gathering of drunks and when the veterans got their checks it was a constant party everyone putting on their finest vests and their clean trousers and the whiskey would pour and if it ran out everyone would make for the nearest logging camp and if there was no whiskey for them
they would drink whatever they could find even kerosene and all these Indians would be lost in the woods and many would fall asleep there and when they came back they would be covered in mosquito bites and with great knots on their heads from when they ran into tree branches and tree trunks. It would have been funny but they were a rugged bunch and me and Grace had no one to take care of us no one to look after us and so sometimes we would sleep in the church but they found us there anyway. As I say I was thirteen and that was something they wanted because when they were drunk those village men thought of nothing other than what might be hidden between my legs which was nothing special then let me tell you. Nothing special at all. I was as plain as unbroken ground but this is the thing about men—they always think there is something valuable hidden down there where they cannot see and so they will endeavor to see it no matter what. That is what happened when me and Grace were staying in that cabin next to the store right under the nose of the BIA agent, but he couldn’t care less for us since we had no allotment to sell and no timber to lease and so we were beneath his notice and it was there the first time and it must have been spring because I was just thirteen and it was warm out and we had only one dress each I remember both they was dresses from the missionaries and I don’t believe in God or the Spirits they never done nothing for me but I believe in a dress, a pretty one, because then people see you as respectable. There was no windows in that cabin it was more of a storeroom than anything and there were sashes but no windows and the mosquitoes had quite a time with us till I took my extra dress and tacked it over the window and took yours and chinked it around the other window so at least we wouldn’t get eaten alive they were ever a nuisance and a plague and the heat was unbearable with the windows covered but it was easier to sleep in the heat that way and you complained and were still at an age when you wet the bed which is a funny thing because we didn’t even have beds and had to make do
with flour sacks and feed sacks and it gives me some satisfaction now that when you peed the bed it soaked down into the corn and flour and so all of the proud men of the village and all their livestock such as they were which wasn’t much were eating our piss. They were awful people with no pride and no consideration for the desperate times that were our times such was our lot I remember it was around that time because our woolen dresses were thick enough to shut out the bugs and most of the light. Yes it must have been June because we would shut ourselves in the storeroom when it was still light out as I didn’t dare show myself when those village men were drinking and did our best to sleep and snuck handfuls of corn from the sacks but one of those old men came in he knew where we were and he was whiskeyed up and he was one of them who had been away to the Great War and he said in the dark you girls are in here I know it and he felt around with his hands and I thought then if I was quiet enough he wouldn’t find me and he stumbled over the sacks and then tripped on some iron hoops and said goddamn it all I can’t see a goddamn thing though I could see him plain through the cracks in the logs but that’s how whiskey works on a man it makes him blind and he said this here is a little shit shack and I’ll find you I swear and of course he did. I am glad to this day he found me first because you were only about nine and were sleeping just hard even with that stinking man tripping around in the dark and his hand found my ankle and he said there you are girlie there you are now and he did what he would and then staggered out when he was done and you never woke and I thank God for that because my sweet little sister I didn’t want you to be scared. I was able to clean up after he was done and in the morning I snuck out around dawn and made to burn my bloody underthings in the burn barrel behind the store but the owner was awake and he said you girls stay away from here I don’t want you stealing anything and I didn’t argue because I didn’t want him to see my clothes so I had to bury them along the north wall of
the shack and if I ever went back to that village even now if I went back I imagine those rags are still there it’s funny how something rotten will always stay that way and so in the light of day I buried my underthings and I had no replacements no spares. I saw that man the next day. He had come in from the logging camps with his winter’s pay that’s why he was there and he was proper in his vest and his canvas pants which I saw he took a great care to mend and with you right behind me I walked up to him you wouldn’t even look at him but kept looking to the side and he was standing in front of the agency with our father and they said morning girls and I could tell neither had slept and I said father I need a little money for a dress just a little money and he said now you know I got no money for you why don’t you go look for some berries to sell or do what I say and go out and peel some pulp they’re always looking for pulp peelers and I said Grace needs looking after and then I got up my nerve and said to him but all the while I was looking at this man I need underthings mine are all wore out and I am practically a woman now aren’t I? My father were hardly a man he were more like a season, he came around once a year to do what he’d do to our mother while she was still alive and then he’d be gone again. Still if he knew what this man this friend of his had done there would have been blood and that man were quite the coward. Still our father didn’t say nothing and so I repeated myself ain’t I a woman now I can show you if I like. Right up there in the sun on the steps with the whole village to see. That man who came in the shack was turning red he wanted everything to stop. Well Jesus Christ ain’t you a little something-something said our father. The other man said aw look I got what the girlies need but he surely meant something else with those words though my father didn’t catch his meaning and he took a dollar out of his pocket and handed it over and my father says if you want to throw your money away at my kids I won’t stop you. And he snatched that dollar and didn’t look back but went right to the trader’s and bought me some
cloth they surely didn’t sell underthings in the village and the peddler who came through with such items didn’t come but twice a year and only when the logging outfits had just paid out their rolls we didn’t have stores like you have nowadays and I figured I could make myself what I needed and with the extra I got us some lard and a bag of oranges and we ate all the oranges straight away and when everyone was good and drunk we cooked ourselves some bannock on sticks over the trash barrel and it felt good to have some fat in us there’s nothing like grease to make you feel you’re alive. But that man must have thought we had ourselves an arrangement because he came back two nights later and it was the same thing he was fumbling around in the dark and cursing he was even drunker than before and I didn’t want you to wake up so I kicked out my foot so he could find it and he said ahh there you is girlie there you is his English wasn’t any good and they say men are dogs but they aren’t even that smart. They aren’t any better than foxes who just follow the same paths no matter what especially when the going is hard which is why they are so easy to snare because he meant to do the same thing he done before but I wasn’t about to let him ruin my underthings which I had just made because I couldn’t be sure of getting any more money so I said just wait and I took them off so he wouldn’t rip and tear anything and he did his thing again and he was quite satisfied and he said sure I got what you want but how would he know what I want and then he was so drunk he retched up his whiskey in the corner of the shack before he left he might have been as dumb as a fox but he more of a pig than anything else and he kept coming back and every time he did I was able to get a little more from him though I have to say he must have thought I liked what he was doing but I didn’t and that’s the truth though you can’t tell that to anyone without them nodding like sure sure they know that’s what I say but the truth is something different. It is the truth. I don’t expect that bastard understood it because after the first few times he came after me I learned
the more I acted like it was something I wanted the faster he finished and it got so that I put a dab of lard down there so it wouldn’t hurt so bad not that he could tell the difference between pig fat and a woman’s pleasure which I never felt not once in my whole life. They say it’s a wonderful thing a thing that takes your breath away. Anyway this is how we got through the summer or the part of it when the bastard still had some money to throw away but so it came one night he showed up with another man and I knew what they were after and the bastard made to do like he usually did with me but then the other man was standing there and talking real loud saying so where is she then you said she’d be here and you were but you were ever a hard sleeper and you knew nothing about the hard choices life had forced me to make and I said don’t you touch her don’t you dare I’ll scream and I’ll raise such a fuss you’ll never be able to walk around the village again but for your shame and the bastard laughed and said it don’t matter none I don’t walk around as it is but his friend was quiet and he must have been thinking about it hard I knew who he was. He had a wife and kids and put on quite the show being such an important ceremony man but he was ever a man even though he was a ceremony man the bastard made rough with me and said just open your legs and close your mouth we got ourselves an arrangement and I did as I was told and while he was at his business I looked over at his friend who couldn’t take his eyes off us and I said let’s see you wipe your kids’ tears off while your fingers smell like my sister’s pussy and he walked out. My tongue was the only weapon I had the bastard slapped me hard then and told me to mind what I was doing and I did but I knew things would only get worse. The next day we packed up our stuff and went to the church and I told the priest a sad story about how we were practically orphans and needed to go to Flandreau and he said the salvation of our souls and our education were surely the most important things and in a short while we were on a
wagon over to the railhead and from there we rode the train to Flandreau. It was exciting to be moving that fast across the hills and then the prairie and over the Red River and you squealed and laughed to see everything moving by so quick and said this is how birds must feel and I think you were right I felt like the master of the sky and that nothing could touch us if only my dear that were somehow true.

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T
he train let us off at Grand Forks and to us it was truly a big city we had never seen anything like it and we thought the grain elevators the grandest of houses because we had no idea people didn’t live there and we stood in all the people until the conductor came up to us and shook his head and read the cards that had been hung around our necks on necklaces of butcher’s twine to see who we were and where we were going because neither of us could speak English and couldn’t read either and he sat us in his office and gave us bread with real butter and it was a delicious thing to eat that sitting in a chair like proper ladies and we were careful not to get our dresses dirty he sat there in his office himself and worked on his papers and the work and the papers seemed like the greatest of mysteries and we thought him in his uniform and with his pocket watch and his papers a great person maybe even some kind of chief we didn’t know he was but a lowly stationmaster or something like it. But I want you to know that he was a great man because of his kindness. He was a kind man. All he did was treat us like the children we were but that was surely something that had never happened to us before. After some time he motioned for us to follow him and we did. He showed us another train and then we were off again this time heading south and it wasn’t that long not more than a few hours and we were at Flandreau and it was impressive with all the buildings made of brick and a creamery and a power plant there were electric lights everywhere which were
something we were not used to at all and showers and dormitories and beds and everything you’d expect and it was truly an amazing place and mr brophy himself came out to meet us and he was an impressive friendly man and he showed us around along with the supervisor of the girl’s dormitory and they brought us in and showed us where we’d sleep. They put my things by my bed but I didn’t see another for you and I thought maybe they’d put you in a different building for younger girls which they did. We had us three good years there and I did as I was told and got good marks and never once got in trouble. I was graduated and they said they had a place for me in Wisconsin far to the east. It was like a death sentence to me. I had no choice and so I went. I lasted as long as I could and then I came back for you. I had always been by your side and protected you and it broke my heart truly it did more than anything else to see you looking up at me when I was leaving and questioning me with your eyes because you understood what that girl told us but you didn’t dare say anything but I would come back for you. No one knew you like I did and no one knew your fears or the things that made you laugh or anything that a mother would know because that is what I had been to you. I said in our language so the older girl wouldn’t understand don’t worry about any of it but be ready for when I come for you because I already got a plan. It took me a few months to get enough money. But I got it and came back for you. We left in the night because you were my life and I was yours and we would always be together come what may we knew enough about the bush to take care of ourselves we were as they said wild animals and there is safety in that wildness and I knew that we could find someplace better than the damned village someplace far from loggers and whiskey someplace that had respect for us and our girlhood and where we would be together and it was to that brighter future that happy island we directed our footsteps. It was slow going we were no longer birds
skimming over this green earth but worms that burrowed into all its low places and no one wants to be something like a worm but they survive and haven’t far to fall not far at all we were happy to be together and we knew we would make it. We was going to Canada because they have lots of Indians up there so many you can get lost in them. That was my plan.