Black Apple (12 page)

Unless . . . Rose Marie were to stay at St. Mark’s all summer. An interesting thought, and not one impossible to implement. It was likely in Rose Marie’s best interests to remain at the school in a stable, spiritual environment, both body and soul nourished. She would check to see if the girl’s home living situation had changed.
Oui
, she’d write a letter to the Charles Camsell Hospital in Edmonton and learn of Mrs. Whitewater’s condition.

Opening her desk drawer, she found she still had had two pages of linen stationery and a bottle of quality black ink. Perhaps things were finally falling into place.

T
HE DORM WAS
finally dark. Even the senior girls had finished whispering and were sleeping quietly, except for Abby First Eagle, who, as usual, made little piggy snorts. Unable to find the grey river and drift down it to sleep, Rose Marie opened her eyes. A hazy shape hovered at the foot of her bed, so she quickly shut her eyes again.

She smelled smoke. Raising herself on one elbow, she was ready to scream “fire,” to wake Taki and Martha and Maria and to run down the stairs and out the front door, because that shadow sister must be trying to burn them alive!

Instead, a downpour of daylight. She sat up, letting it soak through her, warm and delicious.

“Mama!”

Standing over her, Mama held a braid of burning sweet grass in one hand. With the other hand she pushed smoke over her daughter, clean and warm.

“Oh, Mama, I been thinking of you.” She reached for that soft, familiar body, leaning into it.

“Nitan.”

“How did you get in the school, Mama?”

As Mama smiled, shimmering smoke blew through Rose Marie’s sparrow bones, washing her.

“Sinopaki,” Mama whispered, the name a robe of fresh air, and she heard her creek splash over smooth rocks at the edge of Mama’s voice. Just over Mama’s shoulder, on the bank, a breeze billowed the damp clothes hanging on the bushes to dry.

“We’re home, Mama.”

“Aa.”

“I love you,” she said, and Mama said it back in a way that was wide and warm and free as summer. Sunlight fell from Mama’s eyes, skittered over the surface of the creek, and flashed back at them. “I’m so glad you’re here!”

Mama held her until she drifted off to sleep.

  *  *  *  

On the way down for breakfast the next morning, she told Taki about the visit. “Everyone was asleep except me. Mama snuck in.”

“How did she do that, Rosie?”

“I don’t know.”

“You sure you weren’t dreaming?”

“It was real! Never mind, if you don’t believe me.” She stamped ahead of Anataki biting her lip against the sudden sting of tears. Mama had been at St. Mark’s. She
had
!

  *  *  *  

At the end of that week came the longest day. The following week, the students were herded outside after breakfast to await the yellow buses that would take them home.

Rose Marie was playing tag with the other first-years when Sister Cilla rushed up to her. “There you are. Dear, oh law, Mother Grace wants to see you. Come with me.”

As soon as Rose Marie entered the office, Mother Grace, her face pulled tight, motioned her to sit down.

“I just got a letter from the Charles Camsell Hospital, the sanitorium. I have some terrible news for you,
chérie
. God rest her soul, your mother has passed away.”

Mother Grace reached over and patted her hand. Rose Marie saw her do it, but she didn’t feel it.

“You won’t be getting a bus home today,
chérie
. There are other arrangements in place for you this summer.”

“No, I don’t think so, Mother Grace,” she said. The bump above her eye throbbed.

“I’m very sorry, Rose Marie.”

Now Mother Grace was coming around the desk towards her, stretching her hand out to pat her shoulder. This time she felt the woman’s palm right through her dress, and it was dry as a stale bread crust. A hankie squeezed into her fist.

“The buses are here,” Mother Grace said, looking out her window. “Would you like to go out and say good-bye to your little friends?”

“Anne!” She ran down the hall and out the front door.

The first-years were chattering in a group, talking about everything they were going to do that summer.

“Horses!” Taki yelled.

“Ride in my uncle’s car!” whooped Martha.

“You sound like a bunch of squirrels,” Rose Marie shouted at them.

“Come ’ere, Rosie,” Taki said.

She started to shake.

“What’s the matter, Rosie?”

“My . . . my mama’s dead!”

“Oh, Rosie!” Taki put her arm around her waist and pulled her close. “It’s like the worstest thing.”

Clamping her teeth down on her lip, she pulled away. “Have lots of fun riding your stupid horse with your stupid brothers!”

A few feet away, the doors of the first bus huffed open and the driver yelled, “C’mon!”

Anataki shifted towards it, glancing back.

“Just go,” Rose Marie cried. “I don’t care!” She turned and ran back to the school, up two flights of stairs, and into the dormitory.

Sister Cilla had already unlocked the shutter on the low window, but it didn’t want to budge. Rose Marie squeezed her small fingers into the crack and pried it, splintering the dry wood, and,
ow
, getting a sliver. Below, three buses sputtered down the road, away, far away from her. Sucking her finger, she watched the dust settle. It plugged her nose and clogged her eyes, making the world runny and sore. There had been buses and Taki and Mama. Things had been—and just like that—they were gone.

After a while of trying to see and breathe and suck blood from her finger and bitten lip, she spotted a plume on the horizon. It was coming towards the school. Forest Fox Crown’s truck! She pounded down the stairs, ran through the front door, and flew to the road as fast as she could go.

Squinting, she could make out Papa in the passenger’s seat, Aunt Angelique beside him, driving. She ran towards the truck, shouting. It ground to a stop just a few feet from her, and Papa jumped out. She flung herself at him.

“I’ve come to get you.” He wrapped his arms around her. “To take you home”—the words she had wanted forever and ever to hear.

“Oh, Papa.”

He crouched and spoke, his voice suddenly slack as an old rope. “Mama’s gone, Sinopaki. To the Sand Hills.” He hugged her tight, but she was too stuffed up with dust and sad to hug back. Papa kept talking, the words English and Blackfoot, all mixed up. Then he stood up.

“I’m going to see that Mother Grace. I have to tell her you can come up north to Aunt Katie’s house with me.” He held out his hand, and she grabbed it tight.

Inside, Mother Grace was working at her desk. Her mouth folded when she saw Papa at her door.

“I’ve come for my daughter,” he said, looking down at her.

Mother Grace lifted her chin. “I’m sorry, Mr. Whitewater, but you won’t be able to take Rose Marie with you today.”

“What?” Papa stepped forward, so she did too, still clinging to his hand. He was Medicine Man. Blessed Wolf. Nothing could stop him.

Don’t let Mother Grace stop him
, Rose Marie prayed to herself.

“I’m afraid, Mr. Whitewater, it’s come to our attention that you no longer have a proper home for your daughter. We’re very sorry about your recent loss. Great is the mystery of Godliness.” Mother Grace glanced at her, eyes softening as if she were doing something nice, not something mean, but when she looked back up at Papa her eyes turned to glass splinters. “It’s in the child’s best interest for her to stay with us at the school until . . . your situation changes. Naturally, you can visit every Sunday during the regular visiting—”

“No,” Papa interrupted. “She is my daughter. Mine!” He let go of Rose Marie’s hand and thumped his chest with his palm. Mother Grace winced. “You can’t keep her from me.”

Oh, her papa was strong. He would take her home for sure!

“That’s where you’re wrong, Mr. Whitewater,” Mother Grace said in a low voice. In that moment, Rose Marie hated-hated-hated her!

She slipped behind Papa, peering out.

“What did you say?”

“I’ve discussed the matter with Father Alphonses, the priest at Hilltop who also presides over the Reserve. You must know him, Mr. Whitewater. In addition, I have written a letter to Indian Affairs and received a reply. I have instructions to keep Rose Marie here at the school for the summer. I can show you the letter, if you like.”

“Show me,” Papa demanded, stepping forward.

Mother Grace rustled through the papers on her desk, then stood, handing one to Papa. He looked at it, his eyes going over it one, two, three times. Rose Marie pressed harder into him.

“You have no right,” he said. A vein throbbed through his voice.

Mother Grace’s eyes flickered. “I have every right.” Raising her chin, she fixed him in her hard glass gaze. “It is my duty and the duty of the residential school system to make sure our students receive adequate care.” Her words sounded clipped from her mouth with pointed scissors. “We would be remiss in our duties if—”

“Adequate care, eh? Beatings and sickness and self-righteous—”

“Not at this school, Mr. Whitewater. I don’t know what your experience might have been at another school, but here at St. Mark’s, everything is sanitary and—”

“She’s my daughter, and she belongs with me!”

“Nevertheless, I assure you that should your daughter be taken by you or anyone else, the authorities will be notified forthwith. Kidnapping is a most serious offence.”

Rose Marie took a backwards step from Papa, and another, but she didn’t rush. She wouldn’t do anything to attract Mother Grace’s attention. She inched to the door.

“She is my daughter!” Papa cried, his voice spraying a dark cloud through Mother Grace’s office.

Softly, Rose Marie stepped into the hall. She crouched. She would slip off her shoes and run soundlessly to the front door and down the steps to Aunt Angelique’s truck. She’d get inside and lie on the muddy floor. Then Papa would come out of the school, jump in, and they’d drive away.

“Rose Marie.” A hand pressed her shoulder. “Dear, oh law, what are you doing?” Sister Cilla asked.

After Papa left, his shoulders hunched, Sister Cilla held her by both arms. But as he swung open the front door to leave, she broke away, running after him. She could hear stupid, ugly Mother Grace and stupid, ugly Sister Cilla following her down the hall as she burst outside. The truck had started up, and she watched it toss dry stones and hot dust as it roared away, filling her up with grit.

Mother Grace came out and bent down beside her on the top step.
“Chérie,”
she said, “it’s for the best. I have plans for you this—”

“No,” she screamed. “I hate you!”

She ran inside the school and back upstairs to the dormitory. Finding her towel, toothbrush, and clothes gone, she thumped back down to the second floor and pushed into the room they kept her in when all the other kids were gone. The jail cell. Where that shadow sister used to live. Sure enough, Sister Cilla had already moved her things there, just as if she had known for certain, as if Mother Grace had told her to before Papa even came to the school.

She climbed on the bed and started jumping. The bedsprings shrieked, and she did too. She bounced hard and high. Reaching out, she grabbed the end of the crucifix that hung over the door. Yanking it off, she flung it against the opposite wall. Her feet hit the bed’s metal frame, and she crashed to the floor. “God damn, God damn!” she screamed.

“What’s going on up there?” Sister Margaret hollered.

Rose Marie got up and climbed back on the bed. Jumping, bedsprings screeching, she pulled the small palm crosses from above the bed. She broke the dry fronds to pieces and threw them around the room. She kept jumping on the bed until the springs sagged and the mattress slumped, belly down, to the floor.

“Should I come up there with my stick?” Sister Margaret bellowed.

She crawled under the saggy mattress and lay in the shadows. Everything hurt. Her eyes were burnt-out holes; her ears itched with tears; her forehead, skinned fingers, scraped knee, and stubbed toe throbbed.

“Mama,” she whispered. She closed her eyes, becoming very young again—her before-being-born self.
“Na-a,”
she moaned, the word she had once called silently to Mama’s body, her whole wide world.
“Na-a,”
now to the hard floor, the stale school air, all the sharp corners of this dead sister’s room, the stark space around her, sinking through her, a world of emptiness. “
Na-a
, please come back from the Sand Hills. Come back and take me with you.”

I’ve come to get you
, Papa had said as he knelt beside her in front of the school. With Mama gone, he and her baby brother were all she had left. He had told her he had come to get her, and it was exactly what she wanted, everything she had hoped for.

But he had lied, lied, lied!

O
N A PLEASANT
day in June, Mother Grace watched the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds in the schoolyard. From the shadowed doorway, she could discreetly observe the girls, and she spotted Rose Marie walking with her friend Anne.