Up Ghost River (16 page)

I didn't have any money. I'd never find the station. No one would understand once I got there. I would stop, shaking with fear, then will my feet to step forward. Sometimes it worked. Other times, I just sat down and didn't move for the rest of the afternoon.

Had I been born in a different body with a different history, I might have gone to the police. I could have reported him and
stopped it. Maybe he would have gone to jail. I knew from the radio news that that's what the wemistikoshiw did. But I wasn't wemistikoshiw. Our stories were different. In Fort Albany the police flew in to tell us about laws that we didn't realize existed. We were guilty. We had broken The Law. The Potlatch Ban, the Indian Act, the Constitution Act, the Land Act. You had broken the laws of Her Majesty's Kingdom. Did we understand? My great-granddad, John Metatawabin, was taken away by the RCMP for “Indian cultural activities.”
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We were never sure which ones finally sent the police over the edge; whether it was his braids down his back or the rumours that he did shaking tent ceremonies out in the forest in the dead of night. Who knows? Both were illegal under the Potlatch laws. The police flew in, arrested him, took him away on a float plane and that was the last we saw of him. He couldn't speak English or write, so we never heard from him, nor found out what had happened to him. My guess is that he died in prison.

One morning when the summer was almost over, I woke up and went to the toilet. I washed the stains from my underpants and put them back on, still wet. I looked in the mirror. My face looked like it was covered in boils: a smear of red and pus. I went back to bed and waited for Mike to awake. He got up and asked if I wanted any tea. Then he noticed the pimples.

“What's on your face?”

My hands reached up instinctively, touching them. “I don't know,” I said.

“Jesus. It's everywhere.”

He didn't touch me again. He drove me back to Kirkland Lake a few days later.

PART TWO

Indian secrets can be disclosed suddenly, like a storm.

Indian men, of course, are storms. They should destroy the lives of any white women who choose to love them.

—Sherman Alexie, from the poem “How to Write the Great American Indian Novel”

It was windy that day, windy enough that people were running about and tying down the tarps on their canoes. A couple of younger guys like me were hunched in their doorways, trying to light up. Days like these, I like to play a little game: roll the spark wheel and bet. If she took, I'd go down to the water. And if not, I'd go back inside my parents' home, tiptoe around my younger brothers sleeping on the floor, and go back to bed.

That's me, there. The small guy puffing with all he's got next to the Albany. The spark took all right. I'm there dragging down until the last breath, until my fingers and lips are burnt.

Why come back here? Well, Kirkland Lake wasn't home. Oh, it had felt sorta like home with the Ryans, but they only kept us for one school year. After them, we moved to the Tekaucs', the Russians. They kept to themselves. They watched TV in the living room, where us boys weren't allowed. Who knew what was going on most of the time.
Zatknis!
That's what I remember. We had no idea what it meant. We made jokes about it among ourselves and laughed bitterly, smoking forbidden cigarettes outside.

After that it was the Staymores, the O'Neils, the Hugheses. I went back to high school and forgot about Connie. She wasn't worth it. Too much trouble. Her and all the other girls. They wanted something I didn't have. Always on my case. Instead, I'd made the school track team for the 400 and 800 metres. I was short with thin legs but I loved the feeling of taking off, leaving everything behind. Just keep moving. I liked to bolt, whether it was from my crowded house or classroom.

Just before I graduated high school, a letter came from Ma to tell me that the community had appointed Pa chief. The village had met and talked for hours, then decided that he was the best person for the job. Thought he'd be the best person to preserve some of our sacred traditions. In his acceptance speech, he warned about some of the wemistikoshiw customs, like TV, french fries and bingo, coming to native communities and how we had to be careful.

Though I had always enjoyed TV at the Ryans' and my other foster homes, Pa had already been to a couple of reserves where they had TVs, and he said things weren't the same. People just sat there, watching the wemistikoshiw world blasted into their living rooms. They stopped going out on the land, and stayed all day on the couch. Stopped yakking over dinner to sit there and point at the coloured screen. Westerns, hockey, cooking shows, it didn't matter. Shiny box took their words.

We used to be great talkers. Stories a mile high and then some. Like my granddad who, during the great famine that we had at the start of the twentieth century, caught three moose and brought them back to town for everyone to share. Trophy stories, we called them. You couldn't take them too seriously. I mean, who really cared who brought back the big prize? The moose meat was gonna be shared around anyway. For me, it wasn't what I caught but that I felt my feet in the earth, watched the light flickering across the river's depths.

That I saw the water and the wind move together, like in some crazy electric dance. I can feel it right now. The loosening of all those knots in my stomach. Easing of the tension around my neck. Unclenching of my fists. We have a Cree word for this letting go, for the loosening that happens when you are out on the land. We call it
kayamenta
. The closest English translation is probably “tranquility.”

I was standing there, trying to light up my second cigarette when I saw her. A figure with flyaway hair, walking a ways downstream. She was white but she moved like she was native, as if trying not to leave a footprint, to leave the land beautiful and untouched. She was quiet too, just watching and taking everything in.

She looked up then and saw me watching her.

“You're Ed Metatawabin,” she said and her green eyes caught the fall light.

“Yes. Have we met before?”

“No, but I'm friends with your friend John. And you know teachers, we like to talk.”

“What did John say about me?”

“He said you're a very good teacher. You teach adults ESL, right?”

“Yes.” It had been a struggle, and a lot of hard work, but I had finally succeeded with my childhood dream of becoming a teacher. I didn't want to return to St. Anne's Residential School so I had approached the nearest reserve of Kashechewan, an hour away by boat. I had told their chief of my ambition, and he told me there was an opening and to apply for the job. I didn't have the wemistikoshiw certificates, but round here, I was more qualified than most as I was the only one from my year to complete Grade 13.

She stuck out her hand. “I'm Joan Barnes. I teach kindergarten at St. Anne's.” I shuddered involuntarily. “It's not that bad!” she said.

“Sorry, that's not it. It's cold for this time of year.”

“Tell me about it. You should get a warmer coat.”

Was she flirting with me? I never got much dating experience in high school and it was hard to say.

“Yes,” I said, racking my brain for a question that would keep her talking. “Where are you from?”

“Wilberforce,” she said. “It's about an hour from Peterborough.”

“You're a long way from home.”

“Yup. Well, I tried the Arctic, but there weren't any jobs up there.”

“The Arctic? What's in the Arctic?”

“I don't know. Polar bears. Eskimos. It sounded romantic, I guess. I grew up on Farley Mowat.”

In the north, we called Farley Mowat “Mr. Hardly-Know-It” for all the stuff that he made up. But it wasn't the type of thing that you'd say to someone you've just met, especially someone this beautiful.

“He's a poet,” I said. “A good writer.”

“I know,” she said, and grinned.

And then we both stood there, smiling at each other awkwardly, until she gave a half-wave and went back the way she came, treading lightly.

It was a Friday, and I got off work early and decided to go and see the woman with the green eyes.

St. Anne's was a place that I usually tried to avoid. Some of my brothers and sisters boarded here: Mary-Louise (twelve), Chris (eleven), Leo (ten), Jane (nine) and Denise (seven). I heard that it had gotten a little better since I was at school—they'd gotten rid of the whips and the electric chair. The smell of the place had not, and each scent—the bleach and baked beans—brought back another memory.

My plan was to meet Joan at her classroom, and walk her home. I stood outside her classroom, and shifted my weight between my feet as I waited for the final bell.

When it sounded, the door opened and the kids were running around my legs. My little brother Mike, five, who was in kindergarten but lived at home, saw me and grabbed my arms, almost pulling the flowers I had picked for Joan out of my hands. Suddenly I felt embarrassed about this wemistikoshiw custom. I hadn't dated much, especially a white woman—my body made me feel awkward. It was a sick feeling that began with Brother Jutras's medical exams and grew worse after my summer in Montreal.

“Hey, Mike,” I said. “Can you go and give a message to Leo for me? Tell him that Ma says hello.” It was a lame excuse, and he gave me a look that suggested he knew I was trying to get rid of him, but after a couple of urgent hints, he agreed.

“Oh! Hi, Ed,” Joan said, coming to the door. “Do you want to come in? I'm just getting my bags.” I watched her put her books into her rucksack and basket. So many of them. As she straightened, I handed her the bunch of bluebells.

“Oh, they're beautiful.”

“I was going to give you dandelions, but I was told that you're not supposed to.”

“Says who?”

“Isn't a dandelion a weed?”

“It is, but I like them.”

“Me too. In Cree, there's no word for weed. All plants are useful.”

“I like that.”

“Yeah, me too. Can I carry your books? Where are you going?”

“Sure. Just home. I'd invite you in, but we have to get permission to bring strangers home.” Joan lived at the “teacherage,” a row of houses next to St. Anne's. Natives weren't allowed in there. The higher-ups were worried about what they called “half-breed”
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children, which, like all their insults, made us sound more animal than human.

“That's okay. Maybe I could just come to your door.” I was living with my parents and three of my brothers: six of us in a two-bedroom house. Alex had gone to high school, and the others boarded at St. Anne's. Even when they weren't home for holidays, it was still crowded. I didn't want to take her home to that. Too many elbows and hair in your face. So we slowly walked back to her house and she told me that this was her first job and it was nothing like what they had taught her in teacher's college. Most of the kids spoke Cree at home, and whispered to each other in Cree, and she didn't know what was going on. I thought about all the times as a kid when I hadn't known what was going on, and the times when the nuns whispered to each other in English and I had sat waiting for punishment. Then I looked at her. I didn't normally talk to girls. They made my tongue feel thick and heavy. But Joan listened so carefully, it made me want to feel different.

“You wanna, uh … I'm free tomorrow evening. You want me to teach you some Cree?” The words came tumbling out before I had a chance to change my mind.

“Sure! I really need it!” she said, and smiled.

“Look up,” I said when Joan came to her front door. I backed up a few steps—I had homebrew on my breath to help me with my nerves, and didn't want her to notice. “The moon is translucent tonight, isn't she?”

“That's how you greet me?”

“I know, I know. Look up.” A flash of movement, and the flapping of black wings against fading blue sky. A flock of Canada geese. “Do you know what we call this month?
Obimahamowi peesim
. It's when the geese fly south. Their rhythms are so important around here.”

“Obi-maha-mowi-peesim. I like that. It's poetic.”

“You're poetic.”

“And you're a flirt. Is this my lesson?”

“No, let's go for a walk.”

We walked through the reserve toward the Albany as she tried to wrap her tongue around Cree's soft vowels and different grammar. She said it was like learning a combination of Arabic and Latin. I asked her if she could speak either and she said no, but after she was done here, she wanted to go to a place far away and exotic.

“Like where?” I asked.

“I don't know. Egypt. I'd love to go to Cairo. Or Marrakesh.”