As Long as the Rivers Flow (19 page)

His hair wet, Linden pushed open the door and went over to join Martha. After kissing her on the cheek, he removed his coat and sat down.

“Now what have you got to tell me that’s so important you wanted to meet me here rather than over at my place,” he said, leaning forward and smiling confidently. “I hope I’m not in trouble.”

“Of course not,” said Martha. “We’ve really hit it off in the short time we’ve known each other and I thought it would be a good idea to see where we’re going, especially after last night. But
first why don’t you order a coffee and let’s talk about something else for a while.”

For the next hour, Martha and Linden drank coffee and leisurely rehashed the events of the previous evening. They both laughed when they remembered the earnest seriousness of the guest who wanted Martha to provide an expert opinion on the links between Picasso and the Woodland School.

When Martha thought the moment was right, she broached the issue of their long-term future, confident that Linden would want their relationship to continue and become stronger. If that were not the case, surely he would not have insisted on holding a dinner party in her honour.

“You’re really special to me, Linden,” she said. “But our backgrounds are so different. Do you think we can have a future together just the same?”

But Linden’s reaction was not what she expected.

“Martha, Martha, my dear, adorable Martha from the north,” he said. “This is a surprise. I’ve always tried to be honest with you. I really like you, but I’m a little worried when you mention a future together. When I had my divorce, I concluded I’d never be the sort of person who would ever want to be tied down. We’re friends. Why not leave it at that? If at any time, either of us want to see someone else, we should feel free to do so.”

“Then maybe it would be better,” Martha said, “that we didn’t see each other again.”

Once again, Linden said she was being ridiculous, but he said it in such a way that Martha knew the relationship was over.

Martha’s heart was pounding as she trudged back to her apartment in the rain from the coffee shop. How could she have misinterpreted the signals coming from Linden so badly? She now regretted
being overeager and pushing him to commit himself. Perhaps if she had given their ties more time to mature, he would have come to care for her as much as she did for him. But now that was too late. Now all she had left were regrets.

But by the time she met Nora for lunch several days later, Martha had come to a different conclusion. After describing in detail the events of the dinner party, she told her astonished friend that she and Linden would not be seeing each other again.

“I was naive and it wouldn’t have worked out anyway. But what makes me so mad is that I now think he used that stupid dinner to put me on display like an exotic animal. It was some sort of exam to see how I’d perform with his friends and I failed. Just like I flunked his term paper on Duncan Campbell Scott. The more I think about it the madder I get, and the happier I am to be rid of him.”

“Men are all the same,” Nora said. “I can tell you from personal experience they just want to get you in bed and when they get tired of you they drop you.”

“You’re probably right, at least as far as Linden’s concerned,” said Martha. “He’s shallow-minded and manipulative. But the sad part is I liked him and will miss him despite everything. The next man I fall for will be different.”

“That’s what they all say,” said Nora. And the two women burst into laughter.

“Okay, okay,” Nora said. “Let’s drop the subject and do something really interesting. I always go to the big powwow that takes place every year at this time at the Skydome. Why not come along and keep me company?”

M
ARTHA’S EXPECTATIONS WERE NOT HIGH
when ten days later she met Nora at the entrance to the Skydome, the covered stadium where the Toronto Blue Jays play their home games. Pow wows were not part of the cultural life of Cat Lake First Nation and most other remote fly-in reserves of Ontario’s far north, looked upon by many people as being somehow anti-Christian and the work of the devil. Despite her years in Toronto, Martha had never attended one, assuming they were put on for the entertainment and amusement of the general public.

After paying their entrance fees, the two women joined the throngs of people heading for the bleachers. From on high, they looked down on a reviewing stand framed by banners, standards, flags and pennants. Around the reviewing stand was a carefully raked circle and around the circle were vendors selling Native crafts, music, books and clothing, and kiosks serving bannock, corn soup and other Native foods. Martha liked the carnival atmosphere and enjoyed seeing people of all ages, white and Native alike, having a good time.

The pow wow when it started, however, was not the
Hollywood-style commercial show that she expected. The master of ceremonies, an expert on Native dancing from a Blackfoot First Nation in Western Canada, began to speak from his place on the reviewing stand. “What you are about to witness,” he told the crowd, “is a celebration of Native culture by Native people for Native people. Non-Natives are welcome to participate in the intertribal dancing. Please show respect for the dancers, drummers and singers, and remember, alcohol and drugs are strictly forbidden.”

Then in one thunderous drumbeat, one hundred and fifty drummers smashed their batons down on two dozen big drums signalling to one thousand dancers, led by war veterans and elders bearing Canadian and American flags and carrying eagle staffs, to make the ceremonial grand entry. Everyone in the bleachers rose as a demonstration of respect, as the drumming, this time accompanied by high-pitched wailing, carried on. The master of ceremonies informed the crowd that the dancers were coming from the east entrance, the direction of the rising sun, and like the sun in its daily course, would move clockwise around the circle.

A voice sang out raising goosebumps on Martha’s skin. The words were not intelligible but she understood their meaning. They were a lament—melancholic, mournful and heavy-hearted, full of yearning for lost glories. They were a cry of defiance—fierce and raw, challenging those who had despoiled the world of the ancestors. They were a howl of the wild—wolf-like in their wails of loneliness and echo of the primeval. They were prayers to Gitche Manitou and the spirits of the departed shamans, appealing to them to return from their places of banishment to nurture their people.

Martha was transported back almost forty years to the Treaty Day celebrations on the shore of Cat Lake. The people of her childhood were singing, chanting and crying out. The chief was pounding on a water drum and it was echoing out across the waters
summoning the spirits to come join the festivities. Friends and relatives were shuffling around the inside of the tent in the direction of the sun on its daily travels. Outside, it was dark and a campfire blazed on the beach waiting for the community to arrive for an evening of storytelling.

A chief in full ceremonial dress stepped up to the microphone, breaking the spell, and asked the dancers to align themselves in formation in front of the reviewing stand. Another, the chief of the Mississaugas of New Credit First Nation, the people on whose land the pow wow was being held, welcomed everyone to his traditional territory. An elder stepped up to the microphone, lifted an eagle feather up high and intoned a prayer to the Great Spirit.

After lighting a smudge of sweetgrass in a bowl, the elder drew the sacred smoke toward her with the feather to purify her body, and blessed the dancers, drummers and members of the public. There was a moment of silence and Martha and Nora joined the crowd pouring out of the bleachers to join the dancers on the floor. Soon five thousand people, First Nation, Métis, Inuit and white, were travelling around the floor in time with the beat.

All of a sudden, the drumming and dancing stopped and the master of ceremonies announced that an eagle feather had fallen to
the ground from an eagle staff. Everyone waited patiently, aware that the eagle feather represented a fallen warrior and could not be touched until a special ceremony was performed. Four war veterans drew near and addressed to it a special song of respect. They bent over and touched it in turn, symbolically communicating with the spirit of the dead warrior before the oldest veteran picked it up in his left hand, the hand closest to his heart, and handed it to the owner.

That was the cue for the drummers once again to smash their batons against the drums with hammer blows and to join their voices together in a celebration of pride, affirming that Natives were the equal of the people from other continents who had come onto their lands over the centuries. The dancing picked up where it had left off. Jingle dancers circled, hopping from foot to foot; others, wearing masks adorned with eagle feathers and animal horns, whooped, crouched and leaped into the air. Some moved like grass blown by the wind and waved their shawls to represent butterflies flitting from flower to flower. Men, women and children inched ahead, holding their bodies erect, turning in circles and twirling hoops around their waists, necks and arms.

Martha shuffled forward in a world of her own, her feet close to the ground, feeling the pull of Mother Earth. She was no longer in the tent at Cat Lake and no longer at the Skydome. She no longer knew who she was, where she had come from and where she was going. She forgot her happy years on the land as a child, the abuse at the Indian residential school, the men who had treated her badly and her deep and painful yearning for the children she had not seen in years.

Hypnotized by the repetitive beating of the big drums, the cries and chanting of the singers, the swaying of the dancers and the contagious energy of the crowd, she hoped the dance would never end. She was as lost in the magic of the pow wow as Spider
had been in the music of the punks that first night she spent in Toronto so many years ago.

When Martha left the Skydome that night with Nora, she was quietly jubilant, feeling connected to her aboriginal roots with an intensity and sense of belonging that she had not experienced since she was a girl. But before she could become further involved in the Native life of the city, she received a telephone call from Joshua, the friend who had helped her when she was in distress so many years before. Joshua had retired from his position as a teacher in Thunder Bay and had returned home with his wife to be a respected elder and chief of Cat Lake First Nation. He now had bad news to tell her. Her mother, Nokomis, had died and he wanted to express his condolences.

Martha burst into tears and hung up. After regaining her composure, she called him back apologizing for cutting him off. Joshua told her he completely understood her distress, for he too had loved her mother and already missed her. He told her there were practical matters to deal with. The funeral would be in three days. Could she make it back in time?

And what did Martha want to do about Raven? She was now living at his house, but a long-term solution was needed. Martha could send for her daughter and raise her in the big city. He recommended, however, that she return home and be a mother to her there in familiar surroundings. If she wanted a job, he could always use another bookkeeper at the band office.

“Of course, I’ll come home,” Martha told him. “I can’t make it back in time for the funeral since it’ll take a month or so to wind up things here, but I’ll be there by the end of January for sure. Could I ask you as an old friend to look after the funeral arrangements and take care of Raven until I return?”

“You can count on me, Martha,” he said. “I’ll stay in touch and work out the details on the phone. Don’t forget, a job in the band office will be waiting for you when you get home.”

With great reluctance, Martha began her preparations to depart. She would at last be reunited with her daughter but was worried that after so many years of separation, they would be strangers to each other. She was also dismayed at having to give up the job she had become so attached to over the years, the comfortable apartment she had called home for so long and the friends she had made in Toronto.

To make matters worse, the sensational stories constantly being carried in the press on the hardships being suffered by the people on Ontario’s northern reserves made her wonder whether she would have the strength to pick up her life where she had left it.

“Children at Pikangikum First Nation Burn Down School”; “Four Dead in Youth Suicide Pact at Webeque First Nation”; “House Fire Kills Family of Six at North Spirit Lake First Nation”; “Two Thousand at Kashechewan First Nation Evacuated Due to Flooding”; “United Nations Condemns Canadian Government for Neglect of Native Children”; “Government Slashes Expenditures for Native People”; “Water Supplies in Remote Native Communities in Ontario Polluted”; “Literacy Levels Among Native Children in Northern Ontario a National Disgrace”; “One in Five Native Children on Reserves across Canada in Care.”

Even though Martha had long ago lost hope of finding Spider, she deeply regretted having to leave Toronto as ignorant about his fate as she had been when she arrived in the provincial capital. Until one day when she passed a tall, emaciated dark-skinned person of uncertain age panhandling for change at the Yonge Street entrance to the
Eaton Centre. Martha had often seen him at this spot as she made her way to work but had always taken him to be just another jittery, prematurely ageing alcoholic on his last legs begging for money to buy booze.

Later that morning, however, as she sat at her desk during a lull in her work, her thoughts, as they often did at such moments, turned to Spider and the memory of the derelict came to her. He looked Native; he even looked like Russell. Could there have been a web-shaped birthmark on his forehead? She should have paid more attention to him. Maybe it was Spider. It was a long shot but she was not about to take any chances. She hurried back, but he was gone.