As Long as the Rivers Flow (28 page)

“She was hanging by a wire from a clothes hook in the closet. I blame myself and feel bad. I should have listened to her and told her I loved her.”

A long silence followed, disturbed only by quiet weeping from someone in the audience, and the woman began again.

“When I look back, I realize I was always too impatient. She could never satisfy me. I wasn’t there to fix dinner for her. I never encouraged her to do good in school. I was always shouting at her, just like the nuns used to do to me at residential school.”

Her husband held his head in his hands and loud, convulsive sobs racked his body. “It gets worse,” the woman said, reaching over and trying to wipe away the tears of her husband with her hand. “When she was just a little girl, she told me her grandfather was touching her in her private parts and doing things to her. I freaked out because that’s what Father Antoine used to do to me, only worse. But to my shame, I blamed her for tempting her grandfather. I slapped her just as I had been slapped by the nuns when I asked them to tell the priest to leave me alone. She must have felt bad. Just
like I felt when that happened to me. I know it went on for years and I never did nothing to stop it. I’m so ashamed.”

It was then Jonathan’s father’s turn and he started speaking in a low voice. Not a sound could be heard in the room and everyone strained to hear his words.

“I feel awful,” he said. “He was our baby. Our other kids were a lot older and they spoiled him. The last time I saw him he was smiling. He hugged me and said he loved me. I should have told him I loved him. Maybe he wouldn’t have done it. He was so happy and full of mischief when he was a little boy. When his brothers and sisters left to live on the outside, he got real quiet and sad. In the letter we found after he died, he said he had no hope and life wasn’t worth living.”

Holding tight to the talking stick, Jonathan’s father looked down at the floor, unable to find the words to continue. Ten minutes of silence followed and he began again, this time shouting angrily.

“How do we give our young people hope when they have lost their language and culture and they don’t know who they are? When they see us adults lying around all day with no work and doing nothing? When there are no books in the school library to read? When they’re not learning to read and write in school, what are they being prepared for? Their role models are the bootleggers and young Native hookers, the drug dealers and gang members in Regina and Winnipeg they watch on television programs. They see people on television driving fast cars, living in big houses and eating in fancy restaurants, but they know they’ll never have any of that stuff.

“We gotta help them. We need to find a place where they can hang out and do fun, healthy things, like listen to hip hop music, play Ping-Pong and shoot some pool. We need recreation facilities.

“As parents, we need to pay more attention to family life. I bet if we were to eat together at least once a day it would draw us
together. Why not take the kids hunting and fishing on the weekends? Why not spend the summers with them on the land? That way we’d all learn about how life was in the old days, before all these suicides. Most of all, we gotta stop blaming all the bad things the white man did to us for all the bad things we do to our kids. The last residential school closed in this province almost thirty years ago. We got to move on and get a life!”

When Sara’s mother took hold of the talking stick, the words burst from her mouth like air from an overinflated balloon pricked by a knife.

“I know why she did it. She went out to Thunder Bay and spent the winter with my sister. She went to school and did good. She went to pow wows and to events at the Friendship Centre. She loved the big drum and Native culture and became a jingle dancer. At my sister’s church, they respected Native spirituality. They said there was one creator for everyone. When she came back, the other kids said she was putting on airs about her good grades and made her feel ashamed of them. The neighbours told her not to practise jingle dancing in front of the house and I didn’t stick up for her. They said it was superstition and a dance of the devil. When she played pow wow music in the house, the other kids said their parents told them not to listen to it. It was pagan. She felt bad ’cause they took away her pride in being Native and she decided to die. She told me she was going to kill herself and I went to the nursing station for help. I know the staff there ’cause I got diabetes real bad and they’re always helpful. But they said they had no resources to work with suicidal people. They telephoned the doctor at the hospital in Thunder Bay. He asked them if they thought she was really serious and they said they didn’t know. Kids were always threatening to kill themselves they said but not too many followed through. He prescribed some pills and said he’d interview her the next time he came to the reserve.
I saw her take a rope that day but I didn’t do nothing. I’ve never been any good at making decisions especially since I came down with diabetes. I was looking out the kitchen window and saw her climbing a tree. She tied one end of the rope to a branch and the other around her neck. She looked at me and I looked at her. I should have run out and told her to come down. But I froze. I couldn’t even cry out. She hung on to the tree for a minute looking at me and I tried to call the nursing station to ask them what to do and she jumped before they came on the line. I’ll never forgive myself. You know I never even told her I loved her. She was only thirteen.”

Out of breath, her eyes expressionless, she could say no more.

“I
WANT TO TELL YOU HOW THIS ALL STARTED,”
said Raven. “A bunch of us were hanging out one night behind the co-op like we always do. Some of us were sniffing and everyone was feeling bad. We never had anything to do and we were bored. Most of our parents sat around doing nothing all day but watching stupid shows on television like Jerry Springer and Judge Judy and didn’t care whether we were home or not. They didn’t care whether we got drunk or not. They didn’t care whether we went to school or not. They didn’t care whether we learned our language or not. They bought booze on welfare days and drank until they ran out of money. It didn’t matter to them if there was no money left over to buy food for us, and they didn’t care if we went to school hungry.

“Someone said, ‘What a life. It’s not worth living. Maybe the white people who say Indians are just a bunch of savages are right. Maybe we’ll grow up to be just like our parents. Why don’t we just kill ourselves now and get it over with. It’d be a good way to get even for all the bad things our parents have done to us. They’d come to our funerals and regret they treated us that way.’

“And when Rebecca, Jonathan and Sara killed themselves, their parents got all upset. They paid more attention to their kids dead than alive. There were big funerals with real nice plastic flowers, pictures of the dead for everyone to admire, long speeches and choirs of elders singing the old gospel songs in Anishinaabemowin. At school there were memorial services right here in the gym and kids wrote poems about them and their pictures were hung on the walls as if they were heroes.”

“And what makes you the big expert,” Jonathan’s father said, interrupting Raven. “You had it good, living with Nokomis all those years.”

“Yeah, and why didn’t you tell us if you knew all about it?” asked Rebecca’s father, who had not spoken to that point.

“Leave her alone,” said Martha. “How do you know how she felt? If you got to blame someone, blame me.”

“No, they’re right,” said Raven. “I should have said something. It’s just that I couldn’t.”

“Lay off the kid,” Rebecca’s mother said. “It takes a lotta guts to face everybody like that and what she’s got to say is important.”

The other parents nodded their agreement and Raven continued. “Rebecca, Jonathan, Sara and I made a deal to kill ourselves when we turned thirteen. We all knew thirteen was the right age to die, when we were no longer kids but before we became grown-ups and parents. We knew that in the old days, thirteen was the most important time in the lives of young people. They went into the bush and built shelters to meditate in and stayed there for days without eating or drinking until they received their spirit name and vision about their future from Gitche Manitou. They then went home and got married and started families of their own. They knew what they wanted to do with their lives and it was a time of celebration for everyone.

“But that was when Native kids had a future. Now we don’t become adults when we become teenagers, but drift along with no hope. We had nothing to lose and so why not die?

“Maybe I did have it better when I was a kid than the others,” she said, turning to Jonathan’s father. “But I joined in because I was having so many problems with my mother. She only came back from Toronto because she had to. She went through the motions of taking care of me, but I knew she wasn’t sincere because she never showed me any love and started to beat me.

“There’s something else, something I haven’t dared tell anyone before, not even Joshua. After each suicide, the dead started to visit those of us who were still alive. Now I’m the only one left and Rebecca, Jonathan and Sara are coming to see me every night. They stand around my bed looking at me sad-like, never saying anything but I know what they want. They want to be sure I understand they’ll never find peace in the spirit world unless I join them. I gave them my word, and if I don’t go through with my undertaking, I feel I’ll be letting them down. And they were let down so many times when they were alive.”

Sara’s mother shrieked and began to wail. The other parents joined in, rocking back and forth in their chairs, their eyes clasped shut, and keening in black despair. The suffering of their children was continuing in the afterlife and there was nothing they could do to help them.

Raven, desperate to explain herself and bring their anguish to an end, rose to her feet and shouted at them: “Stop! Stop! Let me finish. I never really wanted to die,” she said, fighting back tears, “I just wanted my mother to say she loved me. I think the others just needed some reason to live and the love of their families.”

The parents, jolted back to reality, straightened up in their seats and began hugging each other. Someone brought them a
box of tissues and they wiped their eyes and started crying again in cathartic release. Members of the community were now doing the same thing. Tears streamed down under the sunglasses of Raven’s classmates.

Father Antoine held his head in his hands. The bishop looked down at the floor, unable to meet anyone’s eye.

Martha took Raven in her arms and hugged her and whispered that she loved her and that she had always loved her. Then, grasping the talking stick in one hand, she took the floor.

“I sure hope some good comes from all this suffering tonight. If it does, it won’t be because Father Antoine and the bishop showed any remorse. But I say, so what if they and people like them don’t say they’re sorry? Our pain is so great, we shouldn’t waste any more time on them. It looks like begging.”

“But that’s letting them off easy,” someone called from the back of the room.

“I don’t agree,” said Martha. “It’s easy to say you’re sorry when you don’t mean it. And we’re the ones carrying the burden anyway, not them. The only way to get it off our backs is to forgive those who harmed us, whether they accept their blame or not. That doesn’t mean we should forgive and forget, but we need to forgive to be able to start healing ourselves and get on with our lives.” Martha then dragged an astonished Father Antoine to his feet and hugged him, saying, “I forgive you.” She turned to the bishop and hugged him as well.

The parents of the children who had killed themselves, one after the other, left their chairs and followed her lead. And when the mothers put their arms around the priest, each of them said in a voice so low that only Father Antoine and the bishop could hear, “Don’t you remember? You raped me when I was a little girl but I forgive you.”

The members of the healing circle took their seats and the room was still.

“I have one last thing to tell you,” said Raven, picking up the talking stick again. “Last night, I visited the spirit world in my dreams and met Nanabush, and I told him I had come seeking guidance on whether I should fulfil my vow to join my friends on their journey of death or whether I should live.

“Nanabush looked at me for the longest time before answering.

“ ‘That is a decision only you can make,’ he said. ‘But just remember, the Creator put you on earth for a purpose and you will be going against his will if you kill yourself. I know you believe your life has no meaning. But have you never thought that just living gives meaning to life? Is not the experience of life the real meaning of life?’

“Nanabush then took me by the hand and told me to look deep down into the waters of Cat Lake. When I did, and the ripples on the surface cleared, I saw myself obeying the spirits of Rebecca, Jonathan and Sara and hanging myself by a rope from the black spruce tree that stands in our front yard. I saw my mother screaming and running out of the house and falling on the ground when she saw me swinging there. I saw Joshua coming to cut me down and hugging my mother. I saw the school close and all the kids running out crying, just like we did when the other kids killed themselves. I saw the people coming with gifts of food to my mother to try to comfort her. I saw the preacher talking to my mother and trying to help her.

“I saw the police come and take me to the nursing station where they put me in a body bag just like they always do. I saw them shipping me out like a piece of freight on a charter to Thunder Bay for an autopsy. I saw myself lying naked on a stainless steel countertop in a laboratory as a doctor wearing a white lab coat looked at the marks around my neck and cut me open to take samples from my organs to test for drugs and who knows what—just like they do on
CSI Miami
. I saw people from a funeral home take me back to the Thunder Bay airport in a black hearse. I saw my mother being comforted by Joshua and by the preacher at Cat Lake airport as my body was unloaded from the plane and taken to the school gymnasium for the funeral service.