As Long as the Rivers Flow (5 page)

Sister Angelica slapped Martha across the face to get her attention, looked into her eyes and whispered urgently to her in Anishinaabemowin.

“God has sent you here for a purpose,” she said. “Now just do as you’re told and you’ll be happy.”

It would be the last time Sister Angelica would speak to her in their language. Martha, however, even if she recognized the words, in her confusion did not understand what the nun meant. Sister Angelica, who was trying to prove to the other nuns that she was now a fully assimilated and civilized person by beating the children in her care, slapped the little girl again.

The two nuns took her in hand, yanking off her clothes, throwing her calico dress, stockings and moccasins into a garbage bin, pushing her into the shower and releasing a wall of water on her as she lay on the floor. They dragged her out, towelled her off and sat her down on a chair. While her colleague held her down, Sister Angelica took a pair of shears and cropped off her braids and molded her remaining hair into a Robin Hood cut. After pouring coal oil, stinging and foul smelling, on Martha’s scalp “to kill the lice,” the nuns led the sobbing child to the girls’ dormitory where they outfitted her
in government-issue undergarments—white blouse, grey skirt, black stockings and black shoes—to make her look like every other girl in the school.

After they left, other girls, friends and relatives from home, gathered around, anxiously trying to comfort her and telling her the nuns were neither bearwalkers nor Wendigos, but in her state of agitation and rebellion, she did not want to believe them.

When she refused to eat her dinner and sobbed throughout prayers that evening, Sister Angelica strapped her. As she did so, the nun told the little girl that every student had to follow the rule of silence.

Martha cried herself to sleep that night. The next day she wept during prayers, over breakfast and in class, each time receiving a strapping from Sister Angelica. By the end of the first day, physically and psychologically drained and with the palms of her hands swollen and red, she accepted the view of the older girls that the nuns were not bearwalkers. They were only horrible women wearing black dresses that dragged on the floor.

Martha also saw that she was not the only one being punished. For that same day, she saw nuns strap children with leather belts, slap them with open hands, hit them with pointers, and force them to eat their vomit after being sick on their plates.

The nuns would have been surprised if anyone had told them they were being cruel. For they all came from large Quebec farming families where ties were close and kisses and love were lavished on them by their parents, uncles, aunts and grandparents. But in the briefings they received before leaving to work in the residential school, their superiors told them that the Church had learned hundreds of years ago that the best way to save the souls of Indians was to take the children away from the bad influence of their parents and educate them with a firm hand.

“Your task will be hard,” they said. “Indian children are like little animals and need strong discipline. You will sometimes have to be harsh but it will be for their own good.”

Thus, as the nuns beat their little victims, they assured them with an air of morose selflessness they were being chastised for their own good and for the love of God, and they sincerely believed that they were doing the right thing.

Martha learned to obey the nuns without question and the punishment stopped, but she still missed her mother and was desperately lonely. One night, she closed her eyes and pretended that she was back home in bed, drinking in the wild smell of the balsam needle mattress and snuggled up under soft bearskin covers between her parents. And when morning came and she pushed open the door, she saw images from the time before she had been sent away that she thought had been lost to her forever: The first dusting of snow on the black spruce trees, the outstretched wings of crows, ravens, pelicans and eagles framed against the late fall sky, the lake so calm it had turned to glass, and ice newly formed along the shore.

And her father, as was his practice after visiting his fishing nets in the early morning, was on the beach cleaning northern pike, white-fish and pickerel and throwing the scraps to the gulls circling overhead. She ran to him and he picked her up and he hugged her and he told her he would never let anyone take her away again. She smiled and fell asleep, happy to be home again, if only in her imagination.

On other nights, Martha recreated in her mind the storytelling sessions she had attended the previous summer around the campfire back on the reserve. She saw herself edging closer to the fire as the flames glistened cheerfully on the face of an elder sitting on a log happily telling the legends of her people. She watched the gentle old man sip from his mug of black tea and rise to his feet to
demonstrate how Muskrat dove down into the waters to bring back a handful of mud out of which the world, known as Turtle Island to the Anishinabe people, was formed. She marvelled as he described how the first man and woman emerged out of the body of a dead animal to people Turtle Island. She looked on with rapt attention as he pointed up at the Milky Way and said it was actually the handle of a bucket holding up Turtle Island and a bridge across which the souls of the dead crossed on the way to the Skyworld. She laughed as he described how Nanabush turned stones into butterflies to bring delight into the lives of unhappy kids just like her. She fell asleep with a smile listening to him tell her that the Anishinabe people had lived in harmony with nature since the beginning of time, and she should never forget that Gitche Manitou was the Great Spirit.

She then discovered the joys of making up her own stories and creating her own imaginary friends. Lying in her cot in the school dormitory with only the sounds of the other lonely children sleeping around her, she imagined she was back in bed in the family cabin. It was the middle of the night, and in the distance she could hear the reassuring howl of a wolf singing her a friendly serenade. Closer to home, an owl hooted, telling her it would be keeping watch over the family’s cabin throughout the night.

But what was this noise? Could it be that a little animal was lost, homesick for its mother and whimpering outside the cabin door? She eased herself out from under the covers and crawled out of bed, being of course careful not to disturb the sleep of her parents. She tiptoed to the door, pushed it open and stepped outside. There, sitting in the welcoming moonlight, was a baby bear.

The little bear said his name was Makwa, and his parents had sent him off to bear residential school far from home. He had been lonely and had been badly treated, but he had managed to escape.
When he reached home, however, he discovered that his parents had died. He was thus sad and needed a new family.

“Why, you can be part of my family and be my friend,” said Martha. She brought the little bear into the cabin and introduced him to her parents who welcomed him as if he was one of their own. From then on, Martha always had a friend and was never lonely. The two friends then came across a little raven, named Kagagi, who had fallen from his nest and he likewise became part of their family. The three became inseparable playmates and had many adventures.

On one of their adventures, they met the beaver who lived in a nearby marsh. Mr. Amick was his name and he was busy cutting down birch and poplar trees to repair his dam and to stockpile food for his family to eat over the winter. At his invitation, the three friends visited his lodge in the middle of the pond, taking deep breaths, swimming under the water to the entrance, and by some magic not getting wet. Once inside the cosy living room, they met the many members of the Amick family and spent an afternoon drinking black tea with sugar, eating hot, fried bannock filled with raisins and discussing all manner of interesting things.

It was not long before Martha carried over into her daylight hours the world she had created for her nighttime relief and comfort. She would wake up early while the other girls were still asleep and let her mind run free, searching for a suitable adventure to begin her day. Once, she thought of flesh-eating monsters and journeyed back in her imagination to the family cabin to discover that it was late winter and there was no food to eat. To make it worse, there was a gigantic Wendigo lurking outside, hiding in a tree just waiting to devour anyone who left the safety of the cabin.

A nun rang a bell to summon the girls to rise and go the bathroom. Martha put her story on hold as she washed and dressed but
eagerly returned to it afterwards during morning prayers. As she recited the rosary along with the other children, she saw from behind her closed eyelids her father pacing up and down in the cabin trying to come to a decision on what to do. She begged him not to go outside for he would surely suffer a horrible death. But he paid her no attention and began his preparations to leave, telling her that even if the risk was great, he had to hunt to feed his family. Besides, he wasn’t afraid of any old Wendigo. After all, if it dared attack him, he would shoot it with his rifle.

By the time Martha was eating her breakfast, her father had gone out the door and was struggling on his snowshoes through the snow, holding his rifle at the ready, anxiously watching out for the Wendigo and looking around for game. Ahead of him on the trail was a caribou. He lifted his rifle, aimed, pulled the trigger, and the animal fell. After offering a prayer to Gitche Manitou, he pulled out his hunting knife and started to cut it up into steaks. But suddenly he saw the Wendigo sitting on a branch of a tamarack tree, licking its lips, preparing to jump on him and tear him limb from limb.

Just as the tension became almost too hard to bear, the bell rang again ordering the children to their classrooms. Once again, Martha was obliged to set her story aside and pay attention as the nuns led the students through their lessons. But afterwards, as she carried out her obligatory chores, washing dishes and sweeping floors, she returned to her make-believe world.

Fortunately Kagagi had been watching the dramatic happenings from a nearby pine tree and the little raven flew as fast as he could to the cabin and tapped excitedly on the window with his beak.

“Come quick! Come quick!” he told Martha. “Your father is in great danger.”

Martha climbed onto the back of Kagagi, who had grown as big as the cabin, and the two friends rushed to the rescue, snatching her father from the claws of the Wendigo just in time.

Martha and Kagagi turned to face the angry Wendigo. Kagagi swelled to the size of a mountain and cried out in a voice of thunder, “Take that, you bad Wendigo,” and stomped him to death.

Martha, Kagagi and her father returned to their cabin with a supply of caribou meat as well as a bag of flour that they just happened to find lying on the trail, and the danger of starving to death or being eaten by the Wendigo was over.

And after one imaginary adventure ran its course, Martha would embark on another, and another and another, blotting out as much as she could the dreary daytime life of the school until it was time to go to bed and she could escape to her nighttime world of fantasy.

Sister Angelica, not suspecting that the little girl inhabited a parallel universe, mistook Martha’s serene demeanour and look of preoccupation for a natural sense of piety and allowed herself to hope. Perhaps Martha would become a novice at the convent in Quebec City where she had taken her vows. Perhaps she would return one day as a sister and become a teacher. It would be wonderful to have another Indian at the school who had risen above her lot in life who could be her friend and serve the Church.

S
HORTLY AFTER
C
HRISTMAS
, Father Lionel Antoine, responsible for the spiritual direction of the children and the nuns, took an interest in Martha. Lost in her own world, the little girl had not paid him much attention. To her, he was the fat, balding grown-up dressed in black who was constantly dropping into her classroom to stare and smile at the girls and make them feel uneasy. He was the priest who led prayers in the mornings and evenings in the chapel and who conducted the long church services on Sundays. He was also, she noticed, the one person the nuns treated with unfailing deference, and someone the older students made fun of behind his back.

What Martha and the others did not know was that Father Antoine was a lonely and deeply troubled man. That had not been the case when he was a child and adolescent. His parents, now long dead, had lavished love and praise on him when he was growing up, and he was well liked and known in his village as someone with a wry sense of humour, who was a passionate fan of the Montreal Canadians and their star players, Howie Morenz and Sylvio Mantha.

At the dances held every Friday night in the church basement, he had been a favourite of the older ladies, whom he never failed to ask to join him on the floor. He was always among the first to volunteer his services at the suppers and bingos organized by the Church to raise funds for missionary work abroad. An eager reader and passionate lover of books, he had haunted the village library, developing an interest in the history of the Church, in medieval music, in village life in New France and in nineteenth-century French novels. He had even put together an impressive personal library that he never tired of showing off to friends and relatives.

Most important, all his life he had been devout and had obtained consolation from his faith and joy from singing in the choir. He loved the beauty, mystery and ceremony of the Latin liturgy, the harmony and balance of the holy words chanted by the priest, and the scent of incense and the flickering of votive candles. On the day of his confirmation at the age of thirteen, he was overcome by the presence of the Holy Ghost and underwent a life-altering religious experience. He knew from that moment his vocation was to be a priest serving God in a small, rural parish, just like the one he called home.

When he told the village curé, his parents, his friends and relatives, they rejoiced with him. The curé marked him out for special favour, making him an altar boy, obtaining a scholarship for him to go to a classical college boarding school for boys in a nearby town, and using his influence in the Church to have him accepted at a seminary in Quebec City.