As Long as the Rivers Flow (21 page)

Raising his arm to protect himself from the flying papers and bric-a-brac, the manager jumped from his seat and backed away saying, “You’ve had your fun, now get out or I’ll call the cops.”

“On what charge? I haven’t hurt you—not yet anyhow. Now give us keys to two rooms if you know what’s good for you!”

But Martha just wanted to get away. “Come on, Spider, I wouldn’t stay here now even if he were to get down on his knees and beg us.”

She marched out the door followed by her son and drove off into the night. Two hours later, unable to keep her eyes open any longer, she tried her luck at a motel near Blind River. This time, she trembled when she asked for accommodations, afraid the woman behind the desk would refuse them, and was angry with herself for feeling grateful when the keys were handed over with a cheery “Enjoy your stay.”

The next day, Martha grew moody, and paid no attention to Spider who quietly sipped his whisky and did his best to cheer her up as they continued their journey home. At Pickle Lake, they took rooms at a motel for the night, but, anxious to be on her way,
Martha woke Spider at two in the morning and in the moonlight retraced in reverse the trip she had made on the winter road with Olavi. And when the next morning she saw the reserve from afar across the sweep of ice-covered Cat Lake, a host of bitter memories engulfed her: her departure by float plane for the residential school forty years before, the birth and removal of her son, the years of separation from her daughter and the death of Nokomis.

Trying hard to keep herself under control, Martha drove directly to the band office to see Joshua and pulled up alongside a collection of pick-up trucks and snowmobiles scattered across the parking area. After telling Spider to wait in the car, she left it running to keep him warm and got out. A stray dog, its ribs showing, greeted her tentatively, wagging its tail in the hope she would have a scrap of food to share. Three children, who should have been at school at that time of day, leaned against a large graffiti-splattered black and yellow sign bolted to the building wall that said: If the Parents Drink, the Children will Sniff. Hatless, without mittens, and wearing lightweight running shoes in the minus-thirty-degree temperatures, they stared at her blankly, wisps of smoke seeping from their half-open mouths and cigarettes dangling from their fingers.

Martha climbed the steps to the landing, opened the battered steel door and stepped into the foyer. A hand-written notice in English and in Anishinabe syllabics politely invited visitors to remove their boots before entering the main part of the building. After adding hers to the others lined up neatly on old newspapers along the wall, she took off her coat and carried it into the reception area. A dozen reserve residents, many of them friends and relatives, were sitting on plastic chairs, their parkas across their knees, gossiping animatedly. Some were there simply to pass the time of day. Others were waiting to see the chief or one of the band councillors to lobby for better housing, jobs or band funds to send one of their
children out to Thunder Bay, Sudbury or North Bay for post-secondary education.

A well-swaddled four-month-old baby girl peeped out from a
tikinagan
propped up on a chair beside her grandmother. Two five-year-olds played hide-and-seek on the clean but heavily worn linoleum floor behind the garbage bin. Colourful posters on one wall warned expectant mothers about the dangers of fetal alcohol syndrome, overweight people about the risks of Type 2 diabetes and young people about the hazards of drug use. On another wall, there were blown-up photographs of Native hockey players and coaches who had made it big in the National Hockey League: Jonathan Cheechoo, Reggie Leach, Bryan Trottier and Ted Nolan.

On another wall, above a large-scale map of the community and its traditional territory, a sign proclaimed:

“Hey, it’s Martha. Welcome home, everyone’s been expecting you.”

“How was the big city? Back to stay?”

“You gonna work here in the band office again?”

“What a nice outfit!”

“You must feel awful about your mother. Too bad you couldn’t make it back for the funeral.”

Martha was overwhelmed by the warmth of the greetings and the babble of friendly voices, and went around the room shaking hands.

“Bojo! Bojo!
News sure travels fast. It’s great to see you. I’m back to stay and will have plenty of time later on to catch up on the news.”

Just then Joshua came down the hall. Now in his mid-sixties, he
looked exactly like the grandfather he had become, with white hair, comfortable paunch, friendly wrinkled face and with a pair of reading glasses dangling from a chain around his neck.

“Welcome home, Martha,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Come on down to my office. We’ve got lots to talk about.”

Joshua led the way down a narrow hallway past offices marked Housing, Education, Health Services, Child Welfare Services, Employment, Economic Development, and Accounts.

“We are now self-governing,” he said. “At least, that’s the theory. Ottawa has given us responsibility to manage more of our own affairs and we do the best we can. But for reasons best known to itself, the government provides less money to us for education and child welfare than it does to white people for similar services in their jurisdictions. It’s unfair and frankly racist.”

Joshua invited her into his office, closed the door, told her to take a chair and settled into his creaky seat behind a desk piled high with papers.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, Martha. You really look good. My wife and I have often talked about you over the years, wondering how you were making out in Toronto. Now that you’re home, I want you to know you can count on me to do anything I can to help you, just like in the old days.”

Martha nodded but said nothing and Joshua carried on talking, bringing her up to date on her mother’s funeral and the latest local news. Raven, he then said, had taken time off from school and was at his house.

“Let’s go get her.”

Martha did not move. What if Raven was to reproach her for not coming home for so long? Should she tell her that her beloved Nokomis was the one at fault? Or should she say nothing and just shoulder the blame?

Joshua asked Martha what was wrong.

“I’m sorry if I haven’t been paying attention,” she said. “It’s just that I’m worried about how I’m going to be able to face Raven.”

“I can’t deny you’re going to be in for a rough time,” said Joshua, “since she thinks you abandoned her. I don’t know what advice to give you. For what it’s worth, Raven is an extraordinarily sensitive twelve-year-old filled with a great love of life. Someone who’s stayed away from the lost kids wandering around here at night getting into trouble. My wife and I’ve got a soft spot for her since our kids have long since grown up and are making lives of their own in Thunder Bay. She’s also a born leader, speaks fluent Anishinaabemowin and knows all the stories about Nanabush, Gitche Manitou and the Thunderbird by heart.

Martha stared at Joshua wide-eyed, his words not registering.

“Nokomis taught Raven the traditional ways and when she was able,” Joshua went on to say. “She even took her out in the summers to the old trapping cabin. And in Nokomis’s last years, Raven took care of her all by herself and did a real good job. I just wish the other kids in the community were as well brought up.”

“And there’s another thing,” Martha said, interrupting Joshua. “I’ve brought Spider home with me and he’s now a man of thirty with big problems. He was living on the streets of Toronto and is an alcoholic, just like Russell was, and he can’t go a day without drinking. It’s going to be a handful to look after both of them.”

“You really have bitten off a lot,” was Joshua’s response. “But that’s great news. Spider and all those kids who were taken away so many years ago belong with their own people, not with the whites in the city.”

Putting off the time she would have to see Raven, Martha asked when she could start her new job.

“As soon as you can. We’re swamped with work and the demands keep coming. Everyone wants a better house but no one
makes an effort to keep what they’ve got in good repair, the water treatment plant keeps breaking down, people don’t even try to feed themselves with country food, prices are high at the co-op, almost everyone’s on welfare, the bootlegger’s the only one who’s making any money around here, and there’s no work except at the band office.”

Joshua sighed. “Everybody, especially my own relatives, are at my door day and night, complaining and looking for something for nothing. And I’m only human.”

Three months earlier, Raven had prepared a letter to her mother to tell her Nokomis had been suffering from diabetes for many years but had managed to keep it under control with medication and by watching her weight. Recently, however, her vision had blurred until she could hardly see, her blood pressure had shot up and she suffered from pains in her heart. During one of his periodic visits, the doctor recommended that she be evacuated by air for treatment at a hospital in Thunder Bay, but Nokomis had said no, saying she would rather end her days at home rather than go to a big, impersonal hospital on the outside.

Raven had ended her letter by asking her mother to come home when there was still time. But she tore it up at the request of Nokomis. “I would rather end my days with my granddaughter than with a daughter I have not seen in years,” she said.

Thus when she met her mother at Joshua’s, Raven was torn between joy at seeing her and anger at being abandoned when she was just a baby. Uncertain, not knowing how to respond, she lashed out, giving vent to years of frustration. “Who are you?” she said. “I’ve never seen you before. What do you want from me?”

Disappointed, but not surprised at her daughter’s greeting, Martha took a seat on the couch. She decided to say nothing about
the real reason she had not returned home, not wanting to tarnish the memory of Nokomis in the eyes of her daughter, and left it to Spider to take the lead.

“Hi, sis. I’m the big bad brother you’ve probably never heard of. Everyone calls me Spider after this mark on my forehead. I just met Mom a week or so ago and don’t know her much better than you do. I decided to come up here to reconnect and sort out my life.”

“I’ve heard of you,” said Raven. “Nokomis told me about you. How that woman did such a rotten job raising you, the Children’s Aid came and took you away for your own protection. She treated me no better. She abandoned me when I was a baby and wouldn’t even come to the funeral of her own mother. I don’t know why she’s bothered to come back now that it’s too late.”

“Now, look, Raven,” said Martha, “I understand how you feel but I’m your mother and I’m responsible for you. Joshua phoned and told me about the death of Nokomis. I’ve wanted to come home to see you many times over the years but it just wasn’t possible. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do but I intend to be as good a mother to you as I can. Get your things together and let’s go home.”

In the months following Martha’s return, mother and daughter ignored each other, and the atmosphere in the family house was glacial. Martha coped by leaving home early each morning for the band office, immersing herself in her work and coming home as late as she could. After making supper for her family, she would wash the dishes and retreat to her bedroom, leaving Raven and Spider alone in front of the television. Spider would go out and spend his evenings at the home of Lester Weasel, the community bootlegger, using an allowance given to him by Martha to buy drinks. When he ran short of money, he had only to ask and his mother gave him more.

One night in late spring several months later, he returned
home in the early hours of the morning in a foul mood. A group of drunks at Lester’s had taunted him, calling him a “city Indian” who didn’t speak his own language and a failure who didn’t belong in their community.

“Look who’s talking,” Spider had answered. “You guys are just a bunch of hillbilly Injuns who think modern music is the Grand Ole Opry. I bet you think Elvis is still alive and haven’t ever heard of Mick Jagger, Kurt Cobain or even John Lennon.”

“You know it all, I suppose,” a tall, middle-aged regular with an enormous beer belly told him. “You’re just a skid-row drunk from the streets of Toronto. Someone whose mother used to put out for all the guys when she was at residential school. I speak from personal experience, since I was there.”

As an enraged Spider moved toward him, the regular winked broadly at the others, and said, “I also heard she was away for so long in the big city because she was making a good living down there on the streets as a hooker.”

Spider buried his fist in his stomach and shut him up but was soon fighting everyone in the room. The battle was unequal and the patrons gave him a drubbing, dragged him to the door and pushed him down the steps face-first into the ground. Humiliated, he picked himself up and limped home, bloody and drunk, to kick in the front door—just as his father had done thirteen years earlier when the house was owned by Martha’s mother.

“You dirty whore!” he screamed, when Martha came out of her bedroom. “You ruined my life once and are doing it all over again by bringing me to this goddamn reserve! Why didn’t you leave me in peace under the Gardiner!”

He smashed his fist into her face, blackening an eye and knocking her down before sinking into an armchair, blubbering, his eyes full of tears.

“I’m really sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Don’t know why I do things like that. Tell me you forgive me!”

By this time, Raven had emerged from her room.

“Look what you’ve done to Martha, you creep! Hitting your own mother! Get your drunken butt out of this house and don’t come back.”

“No! No! Please don’t go,” said Martha. “Raven, it’s just a mistake. He didn’t mean it. He’s had a hard life.”

“He’s not the only one,” said Raven, and she went to the gun rack, removed the family hunting rifle from its place and drove her brother away into the night—just as her mother had done to their father so many years before.