As Long as the Rivers Flow (20 page)

The next morning, however, he was there at his usual spot.

“Any spare change, lady? I’m hungry and need something to eat.”

Martha pulled out a toonie and dropped it into his hand, trying not to be obvious as she stared at his forehead. The birthmark was there under a layer of grime. Afraid she might scare him away if she was to blurt out her discovery, Martha invited him to have breakfast with her at a nearby Tim Hortons.

“Their coffee’s good and they serve a great breakfast sandwich.”

“Okay, why not. As long as you’re paying.”

A short while later sitting at a booth drinking coffee, Martha took a closer look at her unsuspecting son as he ate his breakfast. His eyes were dull, his clothes were torn and dirty, he smelled strongly of wet garbage and skunky beer, his hair hung down over his face in discoloured strands, and his lips and eyebrows were pierced with rings. She had found her son but he was a wino on the streets! She had to fight to keep from crying.

Spider grew uneasy as the strange woman stared relentlessly at him.

“Why don’t you take a picture while you’re at it?” he said. “Never seen an Injun before?”

“I didn’t intend to be rude,” said Martha. “It’s just that I’m Indian too, from a reserve way up north and always feel bad when I see one of our people down on their luck. What’s your story?”

“I’ve no idea where I come from and couldn’t care less,” was Spider’s answer. “My mother gave me up for adoption when I was a baby. Probably too ugly to keep. No complaints though. You wouldn’t have another toonie, would you?”

Martha looked at him carefully and said, “I bet your mother really misses you.”

“Yeah, I guess. How about that toonie?”

Martha handed him his coin. “When I was only seventeen,” she continued, “my boyfriend and I had a baby boy who was taken away and put up for adoption. He’d be about your age now if he was still alive. He had a birthmark in the form of a spider’s web on his forehead just like yours, and we called him Spider.”

Spider looked at Martha, not believing for a minute she could be his mother, even though she had guessed his nickname. Perhaps he could play along and mooch more than just a toonie or two from her. She was, after all, well-dressed and probably had a good job.

“Well, what do you know! Maybe I’m your long lost son. Hi, Mom! What took you so long to find me!”

When Martha’s eyes filled with tears and she began to sob, Spider had second thoughts.

“Look, lady, I’m Indian but I’m not your son. I’m just a bum on the streets on the lookout for spare change to buy some booze. Do you know where I live? Under the overpass at the bottom of Spadina where it hits the Gardiner. Would any son of yours live in a place like that?

“Now leave me alone if you know what’s good for you. I don’t need no mother and I’m poison.”

He got up and left, but not before taking the twenty-dollar bill Martha thrust at him.

Spider was not at the entrance to the Eaton Centre when Martha went looking for him the next morning, and she took a cab to the underpass where he said he lived, determined to bring him home with her. It was raining, and a raw, wet wind off Lake Ontario was scattering torn sheets of old newspapers, plastic bags, empty shoe polish boxes and discarded toilet paper around the concrete abutments. There was no one to be seen and Martha at first thought no one lived there. But then she noticed the little shacks thrown together from pieces of discarded lumber, the piles of clothing, blankets and sleeping bags, the sleeping platforms built high up among the girders and a smouldering, rusted, fire-blackened barrel.

Martha went to the shacks, hammering on the doors, one after the other, calling out Spider’s name, half expecting to meet the street person she had run into the night of her arrival in Toronto.

In some places, there was no reply and she assumed the occupants were already out on the streets doing their thing, begging for money, buying booze and socializing with their friends. In others, her efforts were greeted by sleepy voices calling out: “Who’s there?” “Leave me alone, will you.” “Let me sleep.”

Finally someone told her to check out a pile of old clothes close to the burn barrel. There she found her son, in a sleeping bag buried under a pile of rags.

“It’s me, Spider,” she said, shaking him. “I’m really your mother. It’s true. I want to help you. Let’s go for breakfast and talk.”

Spider was curled up and asleep. When he did not respond, Martha shook him until he moaned and slowly opened his eyes
and stared with bloodshot eyes at the frantic woman hovering above him.

“Spider, it’s me. It’s your mother. Remember we had breakfast together yesterday. We need to talk.”

Spider, however, had a crushing headache and was furious that anyone would dare violate his privacy when he needed peace and quiet to sleep off his drunk of the previous night.

“Screw off, lady. Can’t you see I’m sick? This mother stuff is no longer funny. Go away and let me sleep.”

Martha left to buy a mickey of whisky and returned. She sat beside her sleeping son until the afternoon, when he woke up.

“Not you again! Go find someone else to mother! You’re becoming a real pain in the ass!”

When Martha showed him the mickey, Spider seized it and took a big slug.

“That sure was good. Now it’s your turn, Mom,” he said, holding the bottle out to her with a smile. “As they say, a family that drinks together stays together.”

When Martha declined, Spider became angry.

“What’s the matter? You too good to drink with me? Piss off why don’t you and leave me alone!”

Martha took the bottle and drank.

“Now that’s more like it. You can be Mom again. I’m hungry. What are you going to feed your son for dinner?”

“Why don’t you come home with me? You don’t think I’m your mother but that’s all right. I’ve got a spare bedroom, and I’ll give you good meals as well as something to drink if that will help you. Just don’t expect me to drink with you.”

“Now that’s the first time anyone’s ever made me an offer like that. I’ll come and call you Mom if that makes you happy, as long as you keep me in booze.”

Martha hailed a cab and brought Spider back to her apartment. Once inside, Martha showed him his room and told him to make himself at home.

“There’s the bathroom,” she said, “complete with a fresh towel, razor, toothbrush and a change of clothing. I don’t imagine you’ve had too many chances to get cleaned up under the Gardiner.”

Spider stayed in the bathroom for over an hour and when he came out, he looked ten years younger. He had removed the rings from his lips and eyebrows, his hair was washed and tied behind his head in a neat ponytail, his scraggly beard was gone and he had put on the new clothes Martha had laid out for him.

Over dinner and after a drink, Spider surprised Martha once again by opening up and revealing a thoughtful side to his nature.

“You know, this is the first time in years that I’ve been inside a normal house. I used to have okay adoptive parents but I was a jerk and left to be a punk. For years, I lived in squats and thought I was really cool. Then I got older, started to drink too much, got too violent for the punks, and they wanted nothing to do with me and I ended up under the Gardiner. Can’t tell you how much I hate that life. Doing really stupid things, begging for money for booze and worse, living with a bunch of losers, and having no hope whatsoever. I’d do anything to turn my life around.”

“Well, maybe you can,” said Martha. “I want you to look at this photo.”

She handed a photo of a group of laughing people with bottles of beer in their hands standing in front of an old shack.

“Now, do you recognize anyone? Take your time.”

“That must be you,” said Spider, pointing to a much younger Martha.

“Who’s that standing beside me?”

Spider looked carefully at the young man beside Martha for some time before quietly saying, “Looks like me even if it’s not.”

“It’s your father,” said Martha. “I loved him but we didn’t get along. You were our first child but, I’m ashamed to say, we were poor parents and the Children’s Aid took you away. I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive me.”

Spider looked intently at the photo and said, “Is that really you? Is that my father?”

“It is,” said Martha. “But I haven’t seen him in years and have no idea where he is, or even if he’s still alive. You also have a sister called Raven. She’s now twelve and lives back on the reserve.”

“You must have had your reasons for letting them take me, but what happened?” said Spider. “Didn’t you want me? Did you give me away? Did you ever look for me?”

“It’s a long story, Spider, and I’m not proud of what happened. Come back to the reserve with me and I’ll tell you all about it. Your sister needs me and she’ll be happy to see the brother she thought was gone for good. Once we’re back home, I’ll help you shake your drinking problem.”

O
NE EARLY AFTERNOON IN JANUARY 2003
, after spending the morning delivering her furniture, rugs and appliances to Nora to use at the shelter, Martha packed her clothes, books and mementos into her car and set off with Spider on the long drive to the reserve.

As she pulled out of the heavy Toronto traffic on to Highway 400 north to Sudbury, she thought back to how unprepared she had been to cope with life in the big city when she had made this same journey by bus in the other direction. So much had changed. Now a woman in her mid-forties with a hint of grey in her hair, she had her failures but was happy with what she had accomplished during her time in Toronto in acquiring an education and a profession.

It had come as a surprise, but she had discovered that she had felt as much at home, if not more so, in the city as she had back on the reserve. Tens of thousands of Native people, many of them middle class, now lived in the big city. If so inclined, she could have attended Native dance, theatre and music productions every night of the week. Moreover, as a dark brown Native Canadian, she had been at ease in the crowds of new Canadians from Asia, Africa and
Latin America who had made migrated to Ontario’s capital in the years since she had left home.

But to the west of Sudbury on the Trans-Canada Highway in search of a room for the night, she discovered that even though a new millennium had begun, some things remained the same in her Canada. She pulled up before a motel with vacancies flashing out in front on a neon sign, and accompanied by Spider, pushed open the front door and went in.

The overweight, balding, middle-aged night duty manager watching the local evening news from a television set suspended from the ceiling over the reception desk was a self-proclaimed expert on Indians, and he did not like them. In the 1960s, when Martha was still a child at residential school, he had been a pimply-faced, longhaired high school dropout with bad teeth and clunky glasses stocking shelves at a grocery store. He had but two interests in life: cars and girls. The purchase for three hundred dollars of a used, rusted, two-tone black and yellow 1953 Pontiac hardtop convertible, with two hundred thousand miles on the odometer, power steering, power windows, power brakes, leather seats and push-button radio, had satisfied his craving for the perfect automobile.

But when he tried to entice the white girls of his town to climb into his Pontiac and drink bootleg gin and make out, they laughed at him. He then took to roaming the back roads of the surrounding reserves that dotted Manitoulin Island and the northern shores of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron in search of an Indian girl who would be so impressed with his car that she would be willing to hop into the back seat and have sex with him. But every Indian girl he met told him to get lost.

At hockey games, he would sit with his friends and utter war whoops and yell out “Wagon burners!” whenever Indian players
stepped onto the ice. Then one night after a game, a group of Indian teenagers trashed his beloved Pontiac and gave him a beating he hadn’t forgotten forty years later when Martha and Spider came in from the winter cold in search of accommodation for the night.

“You gotta pay with a credit card if you want to stay here,” the manager told them, eyeing Spider’s ponytail as he turned off the sound of the television.

“No problem,” said Martha, and she reached into her bag, extracted a card and handed it over.

“Two rooms please.”

Without looking at it, he placed the card on the desk and slid it back.

“We’re full up. Try somewhere else.”

“What do you mean full? Your sign says you have vacancies.”

“So it does,” he said, “but I’ll soon fix that.”

He reached under the desk and pushed a button to turn off the illuminated sign. Sitting down, he picked up the remote, turned on the sound of the television and resumed watching the news.

Martha watched him quietly until he looked up.

“Look, lady, gimme a break. I got nothing personal against you but I’ve got a living to make. I never to rent rooms to Indians. They’re nothing but trouble—drinking and fighting and disturbing the other guests. So why don’t you do me a favour and let me watch television in peace. And while you’re at it,” he said, raising his voice, “go somewhere where you’ll be welcome. There’s at least a dozen reserves around here. Try your luck at one of them. You’ll be with your own kind.”

Martha protested. “But we have our rights. The Charter says you have to treat us fairly. I could take you to court.”

“Then sue me. Canada’s a free country.”

It was a kick in the stomach and a return to the racism Martha had experienced at the residential school and seen on her way south. Defeated, she picked up her credit card and beckoned to Spider to follow her back to the car.

It was not in Spider’s nature, however, to walk away from a fight. “So you want us to sue you,” he said and walked over to the desk. With one sweep of his arm, he brushed everything—a rack of brochures on local tourist attractions, pens, papers, registration book, plaques declaring that the motel accepted Visa and MasterCard and was a member in good standing of the Canadian Automobile Association, the Better Business Bureau and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce—to the floor.