Up Ghost River (19 page)

“Where were you?” Joan asked. I had decided to wake up early on Sunday morning and go fishing.

“Thought I'd catch our lunch at the Albany. Here, I brought you something.” I held up a walleye we could share for supper.

“Ed. Didn't you think of bringing me with you?”

“You were busy.”

“Looking after your brothers and sisters.”

“Joan, they can take care of themselves.”

“No, they can't. Danny is four. Marcel is five. Mike is six. They are way too young.”

“Well get Denise, Jane or Leo to look after them.”

“They need an adult.” All wemistikoshiw lived in constant fear that their children might harm themselves. We tried to let them learn by example, and they did their best to watch over their every move.

“Joan. They are Cree children. They can run free.”

“This isn't the bush, you know.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Well they aren't growing up on the land anymore. They could get run over by an ATV. Or stick their fingers in an electrical socket. Or burn themselves on the stove.”

“They are used to all of that stuff.”

“Ed. They spend their childhood inside. They don't grow up making their own toys and building their own fires. Life is different now. They need to be watched constantly.”

“Joan. I have nine brothers and sisters. There's no way we can watch them all at every moment of the day.”

“Well, it would be easier if you weren't off fishing by yourself.” I sighed. I had wanted to help, but it had blown up in my face. I was so frustrated. I needed a drink.

“Fine,” I said.

That night, I went to the living room chest where Pa normally kept his homebrew. I wanted to down the lot, but of course I couldn't. And Pa would know if I diluted it too much. Then he'd get angry and shout, and cooped up inside, that felt like blows raining on my head.

Why was Joan so hard on me? Didn't she see I was trying my best? I had tried to do what was right, and now she was mad. I was just trying to please her. I'd thought she was different than the rest. No such luck.

“What are you doing?” Marcel was sleeping on a mat by the homebrew chest and had woken up.

“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”

“That's Papa's,” he said, pointing to the bucket of homebrew I had in my hand.

“I know.”

“That's not allowed.”

“I know. Go back to sleep.”

My daughter was born early. That's why things got hairy. If she had been on time, we would have bought our plane tickets and flown out to Moosonee and been hanging about in the hospital by the time Joan went into labour. No one on the reserve had a phone, except for Father Daneau, so I hurried to the airport, a wooden hut a five-minute walk away.

The pilot had radioed ahead and an ambulance was waiting at the runway when we arrived in Moosonee. Joan was sweating and shaking and wanted to be sick all the time, but nothing came up. I told her how as a boy, I had seen a midwife or
keshayyahow
deliver Rita out in the bush. How the old woman had boiled red willow in a big pot and how she'd given it to Ma to drink and after she had, Ma stopped moaning so much, and how when we landed, the nurse would make Joan drink something to ease the pain. How the
keshayyahow
brushed Ma's hair away from her face, just as I was doing now with Joan. How she had helped Ma to relax by breathing deeply, just as Joan was finding her own rhythm of breath.

“I know you are going to be fine. I can feel it. In here.” I put my hand on her belly. She touched my hand.

“What does it feel like?” she asked softly.

“It feels like strength.”

The doctor wheeled Joan into the birthing room. When I tried to follow he told me to wait outside to ensure patient hygiene, but by then I'd had enough of wemistikoshiw men telling me what to do. I forced myself past him into the birthing room and got myself a mask. Then I washed my hands and put on latex gloves. The doctor watched me doing this, and then shrugged and started fastening Joan's feet into the metal stirrups.

Joan was pushing and saying, “I can't, I can't,” and I said, “Yes, you can.” She squeezed my hand until my knuckles felt broken, and I told her to focus on her breath. Then the doctor said, “Almost there,” and Joan looked like her eyes might pop out of their sockets. We heard an
Uh-oh
, and I looked down and saw that my wife's womb seemed to have swallowed the doctor's whole arm. “What is it?” Joan asked and tried to see beyond the bulge of her stomach. The doctor turned to the nurse and said, “Let's get it out quick. Get me 141 D,” and she went to the drawer and got what looked like a giant pair of blunt scissors. Joan looked like she'd just been shot. “Relax, sweetie,” the doctor said. Joan moaned in pain.

“You are like Oh-Ma-Ma, the first pregnant woman,” I said. It was an ancient Cree legend that I'd heard from friends at St. Anne's Residential School.

“She … was … in … pain … too?”

“Yes, the whole world was inside of her. She had to push really hard.”

Joan grabbed hold of me with both hands, and screamed as if she wanted the Earth to open. The doctor wiggled the scissor things, and I saw the first glimpse of hair, black like mine. Then we saw half of a squished elongated face, smeared with blood. Some floppy shoulders came next. “It's a girl!” the nurse said.

The rest of my daughter came quickly after that, tumbling out like the Spirit Gods from Oh-Ma-Ma. Then the nurse picked up the tiny thing covered in red and white gunk with bruise marks all over her face. The baby opened her toothless mouth and screamed with a volume that was surprising for one so small. I looked at her perfect nose and tiny fingers and toes and what flashed in my mind was the vision of an eagle, hovering above our heads. With a shift in the wind, she curled and dove.

We named her Albalina. It is a name that everyone likes as soon as you say it. I read it in a story in one of those
Life
magazines, about a native man who was travelling along the Amazon River with his wife, Albalina. I had promised myself that if I ever had a girl, I would name her Albalina. I thought about the strong, tanned woman negotiating one of the world's longest rivers, living from the riches of the waters, just as I imagined Albalina would one day paddle along and feast on the bounty of the Albany.

She had skin the colour of an Arctic fox in the summer, lighter than me, darker than her Ma. She was a strong baby who could scream like a raccoon in heat. We brought her home, and everyone came by to give us gifts. It was a wemistikoshiw custom, but one that felt natural, maybe because it was similar to our traditional gift Give Aways. Joan held Albalina, lying on our bed, and the gifts—moosehide booties and a few bibs—piled onto her legs.

“How much longer, do you think?” Joan asked me this question every few weeks. She's already found our living situation tight, but with a crying baby, it was near impossible.

“I'll ask at the band office again,” I said.

“You asked a few weeks ago. Do you think it will make any difference?” Normally, the waitlist for housing was seven years.
Sometimes they made exceptions for people who were particularly cramped, but our living situation wasn't any worse than anyone else's.

“I'm sorry, Joan. I'll ask again, but you're right. I doubt it will make much difference.”

“What are we going to do?”

“Maybe … uh … maybe we could spend more time outside?”

“We already do that!”

“I don't know!” This came out louder than I expected. Her shoulders slumped. She looked like she was about to tear up.

“Please, Joan.” I hugged her. “Please don't cry. I'll make it better. I promise.”

I tried to think of all the things that made Joan happy. Like photography. Her first camera, a Brownie, had been given to her by her grandmother, and it had become a passion. I found the number of a photography store in Timmins from the teacher friend of mine, John, who had first mentioned me to Joan, and went to Father Daneau's house to call the store. I asked whether they had a camera within my price range. As usual, I could only afford the cheapest option. A few weeks later, I surprised her with the gift.

“Thanks, Ed,” she said, smiling briefly.

I couldn't tell if it made her happy or not. Did it matter that it didn't have an FD lens? Or a faster shutter speed? It seemed like the wemistikoshiw had this game where only the most expensive object was worth having, which meant almost no one could afford it.

Things were changing on the reserve. Every year you noticed something different—someone had bought themselves a new television or a cassette deck, and then everyone heard about it through the moccasin telegraph and went over to take a look. Maybe I was paranoid, but all this stuff made me uneasy. Especially the houses that the government was building. Most people lived in one-room
places in the summer and spent the rest of the year on the land. We were free that way, maybe too independent. But it was hard to say no to a free house, especially one with lino floors and insulation. The free houses were the next step in changing our way of life: we put down our guns and paddles and came indoors.

My dad warned me about following the ways of the wemistikoshiw too closely. He used to tell me that a lot during the summers I came home from high school. He said it was dangerous to get stuck craving their electric things and plastic objects. He said the Cree chief Big Bear had given a similar warning to his own people. Each time my dad said it, I nodded.
Okay
,
Pa. I get it
. But things were different now. I mean, you could talk about the days when the Cree used moss as diapers until you were blue in the face, but if you showed up somewhere with moss between your daughter's legs, you might as well have put poison ivy down there for some of the looks you'd get.

Our baby sucked up money faster than an ATV with a gas leak, especially now that Joan was no longer working. I began to rack my brain for other ways that we could make some extra money. I asked my old friend, Fred, what he thought when he came by to help me fix my canoe. He currently worked at the Hudson's Bay store, but was soon moving to Timmins to take a job in mining.

“How about you come with me?” Fred said. “It's not so bad. Three weeks on, one week off. It's where the money is at.”

I thought about the photos of mines that I had seen in magazines at the Ryans' house. Dark and cramped. Like the basement at St. Anne's. I'd once been sent there to collect a forgotten toilet pail. There was no light other than my torch and it smelled of piss and poo. I couldn't see the rats, but I could hear rustling. I shone my light in the corners and saw a flash of movement. Something grey and furry from the corner of my eye. I stepped forward and my foot slipped on something wet. I dropped the flashlight, stunned. It hit the floor and went out. Crawling
on the floor, searching for the light, my hands in dust and stickiness. That stuff never leaves you. Tony had gone in there for two days after we had tried to run away, and afterwards, he wasn't the same.

“That would be a step backwards,” I told Fred. “I'm already teaching ESL.”

“Suit yourself. But I bet Joan would be happier down south.”

I looked at him hard, then relented. “I guess. She's going a bit stir crazy on the reserve.”

“So what about it? We could hang out together. Just like old times.”

“I was thinking more … well, I already teach in Kash. I want to do that down south.”

“Down south, I think you need university for that.”

“I know, I know. Or working for a school. Something like that.”

“I tried to get an office job. Almost got it.”

“What happened?”

“Well, I didn't realize. You know how things are. I saw this cool photo of my hero, Russell Means.”

Russell Means was one of the leaders of the Occupation of Alcatraz which, in 1969, as part of the Red Power movement, had taken over the island in San Francisco Bay. Ever since the sit-in had begun, long hair and braids had become more popular on the reserves.

“And?”

“So I showed up in my braids. I told her I got the idea from Mr. Means. The boss looked like she was interviewing the devil.”

We both laughed. “What happened?”

“Oh, you know. She sat there and nodded a lot. Didn't say nothing, but I knew.”

“Did you try again?”

“Nah. What would have been the point?”

—

Joan had heard about a special on oranges and had me go to the Hudson's Bay store to check. I returned empty-handed—the oranges were sold out—but it didn't seem to matter; Joan was happier than I had seen in a while.

“Dad is wiring us some money,” she said.

“When did this happen?”

“Father Daneau just dropped by with the message. Don't worry. We don't have to pay it back right away.”

“Right,” I said and sat down. I had heard that before.
Don't worry, you don't have to pay it back until later
. Mike had said those words on the way to Montreal.

“Tell him we don't want the money.”

“No, I'm not doing that.”

“I said tell him,” I growled.

“Why should I? He offered. We certainly need it.”

“I am not accepting money from a white man.”

“I hate it when you say those sorts of things.”

“What sorts of things?”

“He's not a white man! He's my dad!”

I didn't feel comfortable accepting a white man's money, so we didn't get a loan from her pa. Instead, I managed to earn a few extra dollars by getting a job with the band council, picking up garbage. It wasn't so bad. The work was pretty easy, but it meant I came home stinky, which Joan didn't like. A few weeks later, while we were making dinner together, she presented another solution.