At our next family visit in October, only Dad came. He explained that he had been up north and couldn't get back for our visits. Mom, he said, was sick. Cheryl easily accepted the explanations. She was, as usual, affectionate with him. But I knew the truth about them. I was aloof but polite. I had thought once of telling him about what a bad place the DeRosier farm was. But now I didn't bother. He wouldn't care. He'd pretend to care but he wouldn't do anything about it. I didn't have much to say to him. As children, that would be the last time Cheryl and I would see him.
Winter and spring passed. Life with the DeRosiers was the same: miserable. I had become bitterly passive and I now said fewer prayers. I was sure that God had heard me say I hated him but He had not heard me ask for his forgiveness. Three more visits were arranged but our parents never showed up. Each time, Cheryl would end up crying. She was beginning to change. Before she had been outgoing, always talking and normally cheerful. At the last two visits, I tried my hardest to bring out her laughter but was rewarded only with sad smiles and I suspected they were only to make me feel good.
By the end of June, I had passed Grade Six with a low B average and that was because English, French and Math were easy for me. I felt torn in different directions and often changed my mind regarding my parents. Sometimes, I would think of the life I would have been leading if we were all together. So what if we were poor and lived in slums. Being together would be a million times better than living on this horrible farm. Other times, I would remind myself that my parents were weak alcoholics who had made their choice. And then I would loathe them. Or I would think of the Dions and all their religious teachings. What was the sense of praying to a God who didn't care about me either? On Cheryl, it was still the question of how I was going to live as a white person with her around. I had seven more years of probably being stuck with the DeRosiers and if not them, then in some other foster home. Seven years of not having control of my own life.
Most of the kids in my class were excited about the summer holidays. Some were going away on trips. Me, I was just going to be alone, unloved, with nothing to look forward to. For seven more years⦠I wondered how I was going to ride them out.
In July, Mrs. DeRosier had her husband move an old musty-smelling dresser from one of the outbuildings into my room. It had a cracked, spotted mirror on it and it looked like it was about to fall apart. But I was grateful to have something to put my things in and wondered why the small kindness. Later, Mrs. DeRosier went out and bought an old cot at an auction and had it put in my room. Since it was in worse condition than the one I already had, my curiosity was really aroused. I suspected that Maggie knew the reason but I knew better than to ask her. She and Ricky had stopped calling my parents drunkards. I knew it was my lack of reactions which made them ignore me for the most part. Now, they were constantly at each other to their mother's mortification. And to my amusement.
I was weeding in the garden the morning the car drove into the farmyard. I glanced at it, not really caring who it was. I looked again, surprised to see Miss Turner get out. My face had a grin from ear to ear when I saw Cheryl getting out on the other side. I dropped my garden tool and ran over to them.
“Cheryl, what are you doing here? Are you here for a visit?”
Mrs. DeRosier had her plastic smile showing and she said to me in a pleasant tone, “I wanted this to be a surprise for you, April. Your sister has come to live with us. We all thought this would be a good idea, because your parents haven't been coming to your visits.” She then took Miss Turner into the house for a cup of coffee.
I turned to Cheryl and asked her why she had moved from such a fantastic place like the MacAdam's home.
“They asked me last month if I would like to move with you. I asked why you couldn't come there because it was awful here but they said they didn't have the room. I told them I liked them and all that but I'd rather live with you, any day. So here I am.” Cheryl shrugged and grinned, as if she had pulled off a masterplan.
From the day she arrived, I changed. I was more alert and openly defiant towards the DeRosiers. I mostly just wanted to protect Cheryl from them. We did all the chores together and while we did them, we joked around a lot. While we did the outside work, Maggie would lay on a blanket, to tan herself, choosing a spot close to wherever we happened to be working.
Once, she ordered Cheryl to go in and get her a glass of lemonade. Cheryl said, “Get it yourself.”
We were weeding in the garden and I was further away from Maggie and behind Cheryl. I stood up and eyed Maggie with a silent threat. Maggie got up and went off to get her own drink.
“You lazy half-breeds,” was her comment as she stalked off. I bent down to resume my weeding.
Cheryl turned to me and said, “See? That's all there is to it. They got no guts.”
Before Cheryl had come, the DeRosier's dog, Rebel, had always followed the foster boys around, down to the barns or out to the fields. Now, he stuck close to Cheryl's side. When I took Cheryl down to my favorite spot by the river, the big yellow mongrel came with us. Cheryl told me the MacAdams had taken her to see this movie, “Old Yeller”, and Rebel looked like Yeller. She'd tell me all about the television shows that she'd seen. Since I'd moved to the DeRosiers, I wasn't allowed into the living room, except to clean it. Our privacy at the river was protected for us by nature. A few times, the DeRosier kids had tried to follow me before. Maggie found the underbrush too scratchy and too difficult and she had given up. Ricky had come down with a bad case of poison ivy the first time. The second time, there had been too many mosquitoes for his liking.
When school started in September, the DeRosier kids got the other kids on the bus to pick on Cheryl and me. Cheryl was easy to goad and she'd get into verbal exchanges of insults. It was impossible for me to convince her that was exactly what they wanted. At home, there was a constant testing of wills between the DeRosiers and us. I grew tired of feeling I always had to be on guard. I preferred the passive state I'd been in before Cheryl had come. I was worried that Cheryl would get into physical fights when I wasn't around. Fist fights were for people who couldn't keep their self-control. Furthermore, they were undignified. Cheryl hadn't made any friends in her own class, so she sat with Jennifer and me at lunchtimes. We had different recess periods. I guess she managed to keep out of fights because I never heard of any.
When our report cards came out before Christmas, Cheryl had maintained her high grades, despite the extra chores she now had. My own average jumped considerably. Knowing by their mother's reaction that the DeRosier kids had done poorly, Cheryl and I gloated. It was one of the few things we could rib them about and we took full advantage. We'd say things like, “Hey Maggie, you told us that half-breeds were stupid. Well, if we're stupid, you must lack brains altogether.” Well, maybe we overdid it a little. It was the only time I referred myself as being a half-breedâto spite them.
It was after Christmas that Cheryl got into trouble at school. She told me all about it at lunchtime. That morning, her teacher had been reading accounts of how the Indians had scalped, tortured and massacred brave white explorers and missionaries. Cheryl's anger began to build. All of a sudden, she had loudly protested, “This is all a bunch of lies!”
“I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that,” the teacher had said calmly.
“Then I'll say it again. I'm not going to learn this garbage about the Indian people,” Cheryl had said louder, feeling she couldn't back down.
Everyone else had looked at her as the teacher approached her desk. “They're not lies; this is history. These things happened whether you like it or not.”
“If this is history, how come so many Indian tribes were wiped out? How come they haven't got their land anymore? How come their food supplies were wiped out? Lies! Lies! Lies! Your history books don't say how the white people destroyed the Indian way of life. That's all you white people can do is teach a bunch of lies to cover your own tracks!”
Jennifer interrupted Cheryl's story, “You said that? To the teacher?”
“Gee, Cheryl, tactful, you weren't.” I teased.
Cheryl sighed impatiently, “You want to hear the rest of my story or discuss my tact?”
“Lack of tact,” I corrected her.
She gave me an impatient look and I said, “Okay, okay, go on.”
Jennifer asked, “Yeah, what happened next?”
The teacher had marched her down to the principal's office. Cheryl had been scared but she was also stubborn. She believed she was right and she intended to stand up for her beliefs, no matter what they dished out.
Her teacher had explained Cheryl's disruptive behavior and then left the principal's office.
“So what's this business of upsetting your history class? Learned men wrote these books and you have the gall to say they're wrong?” the principal had boomed in his loudest voice.
“They are wrong. Because it was written by white men who had a lot to cover up. And I'm not going to learn a bunch of lies,” Cheryl had said, more scared than ever before.
The man then pulled a strap from his drawer and said, “Now, I don't want to have to use this but I will. You'll go back to your classroom, apologize to your teacher and to the class and there will be no more of this nonsense. All right?”
Cheryl had shaken her head defiantly. “No. I won't apologize to anyone because I'm right.”
Then she had put out her hand, knowing he would give her the strap. He did. Each time he hit her, her resolve had grown stronger and stronger. When he stopped to ask if she was going to come to her senses, she answered, “Giving me the strap isn't going to change the fact that your history books are full of lies.”
Seeing he wasn't going to get anywhere, he put his strap away and phoned Mrs. DeRosier. She had arrived in about half an hour and was angry. She told the principal she had nothing but trouble with Cheryl. He left her alone with Cheryl in his office.
“You're going to do exactly as they wish or else I'll call your worker, have you moved and then I'll make sure you never see April again. Now, are you going to co-operate?”
Cheryl nodded meekly. The fight had gone out of her.
Before Mrs. DeRosier left, she had turned and warned Cheryl, “I'm not through with you yet, Cheryl Raintree.”
When Cheryl finished, the three of us thought it over.
“That was a gutsy thing to do, kid,” Jennifer stated, at last.
“Yeah, no tact but a lot of spunk,” I said, proud of her.
“I would never go through that, no matter how much I believed in something,” Jennifer said.
“Goes double for me,” I agreed.
“Aw, it was nothing. I would have backed off but I got stubborn. Right now, I'm afraid of what's going to happen tonight,” Cheryl said, getting up to leave for her classes.
I too, became bothered by Mrs. DeRosier's parting threat. No doubt, Cheryl was in for a beating and somehow I had to do something to prevent it. For the rest of the day, I was nervous.
That night when we sat down to supper, Mrs. DeRosier said, “Cheryl, since you already got the strap at school, I'm not going to give you another strapping. Instead, you won't have supper tonight. Now, go to your room.”
I let out a sigh of relief to find that was going to be Cheryl's only punishment. I told Mrs. DeRosier that I wasn't hungry, since Cheryl had to miss supper.
“Very well, go to your room and stay there. I'll get you for the dishes,” she said coldly.
After I finished doing the dishes, I returned to join Cheryl in our room. We were laughing about the fear we had felt over the heavy-duty punishment she was expecting, when Mrs. DeRosier came to our room to get her. Cheryl followed her off to the kitchen. Cheryl was gone for quite a while and I was worried. When she came back, I was shocked. Cheryl's long hair was her pride and glory.
Had been
her pride and glory. There was hardly any left and it was cut in stubbles. As she told me what happened, my anger mounted.
After she had finished telling me about it, Cheryl added, “And she made me sweep all my own hair from the floor. But at least, I didn't cry, April. Not once.”
Still, I wasn't going to let that woman get away with it, without at least, saying something! Rage made me overcome my usual fear of Mrs. DeRosier. I stormed into the kitchen and saw Mrs. DeRosier there. She looked quite satisfied.
“You⦠you witch,” I yelled, not choosing my words very carefully, “What did you do to my sister?”
Instead of answering me, Mrs. DeRosier turned and slapped me resoundingly. I had to give her credit, when she wanted to move quickly, she could. I ignored the sting from the slap and yelled, “You had no right to do that!”
“No two-bit little half-breed is going to yell at me like that,” Mrs. DeRosier screamed back.
Out came the scissors, again. I actually pushed her hand away from my hair. I think we would have had a fight except that she used the threat of separating Cheryl and me for good. So, in the end, I, also went back to our room minus my own crowning glory. I was still breathing hard when I walked in. Cheryl looked at me and did a double-take. Her eyes, like saucers, remained on my hair. Her mouth opened and closed a few times but she remained speechless. She had heard the commotion in the kitchen but Mrs. DeRosier's threat had kept her back. I looked in the mirror. My new hair-do looked worse than Cheryl's. There I was, the big, protective sister going out to avenge the humiliation of my little sister and I came back, myself properly humbled. It all seemed ridiculously funny and I started to laugh. Cheryl joined in. It was good to be able to laugh defeat in the face. Heck, our hair would grow back.