Growing Up Native American (18 page)

My arm was dried blood from the wrist down to the elbow. And it hurt. Their faces turned like flat flowers of adoration to follow that hand's movements. I let it swing through the air, imparting a saint's blessing. I had practiced. I knew exactly how to act.

They murmured. I heaved a sigh, and a golden beam of light suddenly broke through the clouded window and flooded down directly on my face. A stroke of perfect luck! They had to be convinced.

Leopolda still knelt in the back of the room. Her knuckles were crammed halfway down her throat. Let me tell you, a saint has senses honed keen as a wolf. I knew that she was over my barrel now. How it happened did not matter. The last thing
I remembered was how she flew from the oven and stabbed me. That one thing was most certainly true.

“Come forward, Sister Leopolda.” I gestured with my heavenly wound. Oh, it hurt. It bled when I reopened the slight heal. “Kneel beside me,” I said.

She kneeled, but her voice box evidently did not work, for her mouth opened, shut, opened, but no sound came out. My throat clenched in noble delight I had read of as befitting a saint. She could not speak. But she was beaten. It was in her eyes. She stared at me now with all the deep hate of the wheel of devilish dust that rolled wild within her emptiness.

“What is it you want to tell me?” I asked. And at last she spoke.

“I have told my Sisters of your passion,” she managed to choke out. “How the stigmata…the marks of the nails…appeared in your palm and you swooned at the holy vision….”

“Yes,” I said curiously.

And then, after a moment, I understood.

Leopolda had saved herself with her quick brain. She had witnessed a miracle. She had hid the fork and told this to the others. And of course they believed her, because they never knew how Satan came and went or where he took refuge.

“I saw it from the first,” said the large one who put the bread in the oven. “Humility of the spirit. So rare in these girls.”

“I saw it too,” said the other one with great satisfaction. She sighed quietly. “If only it was me.”

Leopolda was kneeling bolt upright, face blazing and twitching, a barely held fountain of blasting poison.

“Christ has marked me,” I agreed.

I smiled the saint's smirk into her face. And then I looked at her. That was my mistake.

For I saw her kneeling there. Leopolda with her soul like a rubber overboot. With her face of a starved rat. With the desperate eyes drowning in the deep wells of her wrongness. There would be no one else after me. And I would leave. I saw Leopolda kneeling within the shambles of her love.

My heart had been about to surge from my chest with the blackness of my joyous heat. Now it dropped. I pitied her. I
pitied her. Pity twisted in my stomach like that hook-pole was driven through me. I was caught. It was a feeling more terrible than any amount of boiling water and worse than being forked. Still, still, I could not help what I did. I had already smiled in a saint's mealy forgiveness. I heard myself speaking gently.

“Receive the dispensation of my sacred blood,” I whispered.

But there was no heart in it. No joy when she bent to touch the floor. No dark leaping. I fell back into the white pillows. Blank dust was whirling through the light shafts. My skin was dust. Dust my lips. Dust the dirty spoons on the ends of my feet.

Rise up! I thought. Rise up and walk! There is no limit to this dust!

B
asil Johnston's
Indian School Days
is the poignant autobiographical account of Native American students who were forced to attend St. Peter Claver's Indian Residential School, later called the Garnier Residential School, in Ontario, Canada. The school eventually came to be called “Spanish,” after the village in which it was located. It was a name that, according to Johnston, was synonymous with “penitentiary, reformatory, exile, dungeon, whippings, kicks, slaps, all rolled into one.” The young students, many of whom arrived already damaged from orphanhood or exile from family and friends, met with little understanding or compassion from their instructors, an ascetic group of Jesuits who had been trained to disavow the world of emotions and feelings
.

This excerpt, “A Day in the Life of Spanish,” examines the monotony of life lived according to a rigid schedule, the never-ending struggle against hunger, and the dauntless courage of a group of Native American boys who practiced their own distinctive brand of resistance
.

A member of the Ojibway nation, Basil Johnston is a writer and a linguist. Two of his books
, Ojibway Heritage
and
Ojibway Ceremonies,
deal with Ojibway mythology and culture. He lectures in the Department of Ethnology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto
.

 

6:15
A.M. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! I WAS NEARLY CLANGED OUT
of my wits and out of bed at the same time. Never had any
thing—not wind, not thunder—awakened me with quite the same shock and fright.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

“Come on! Up! Up! Up! What's the hold-up? Not want to get up? Come on, Pius! What's wrong, Henry? You no like get up?”

Clang! Clang! Clang! Up and down the aisles between the beds Father Buck walked, swinging the bell as if he wanted to shake it from its handle.

“You deaf? You no can hear? Hmmm? You like sleep? No?” Father Buck asked as he stood beside Simon Martin's bed. He rang the bell even harder. There was no sign of movement from the still form. “Soooo! you won't get up, Simon!” And Father Buck seized one side of the mattress and lifted and overturned Simon, bedding and mattress together. Simon stirred.

“Ah! Come on, Father,” Simon complained, articulating the expression in current usage at the school for “All right! Knock it off. Enough's enough.”

Simon sat up, rubbing his eyes. He was taking far too much time to please the young scholastic.

“You! You want see Father Hawkins?” Father Buck asked.

Not wishing to see Father Hawkins, S.J., Simon got up—as slowly as he dared.

From the other end of the dormitory came a muffled and disrespectful challenge. “Whyn'tcha pick on someone your own size, Father?”

The reaction was instantaneous. “Who says this? Who says this?” demanded Father Buck, red in the face and redder still in the ears.

While Father's attention was elsewhere, Simon, now remarkably wide awake, stuck out his tongue and shook his fist at Father Buck, much to the delight and amusement of the boys in the immediate vicinity. Father Buck, guessing Simon's conduct behind his back, spun around, but Simon, knowing the tactics of adults in games of this kind and having considerable skill in outwitting the enemy, was instantly transformed into a groggy sleepy boy, all angelic innocence, struggling to replace his rebellious mattress, sheets and blankets back on his bed.

Meanwhile, during Simon's mutinous behaviour and irrever
ent charade, most of the boys, some fully awake others partly awake, and a few in a trance-like state, carried on as if nothing unusual were taking place, folding their pajamas, tucking them under the pillow and then rolling back the top sheet and blanket to air the bed. Not until they had performed these steps did anyone proceed to the washstand.

Clank! Clank! Clank! went the washbasins as they were flipped right side up on the bottom of a long shallow sink that resembled a cattle-feeding trough. To the clatter of basins was added a hiss as water gushed from many spigots into basins or streamed over toothbrushes that were then thrust into little round tins of tooth powder. Clank! Hiss! Gargle! Scrub-a-dub! Scrape! Choo-choo-choo! were the only sounds heard from the washing area.

Occasionally there was a complaint. “Come on, hurry up!” Lawrence Bisto or some other student would growl. “Ain't got all day.” And, to lend force to the demand, he would prod the laggard.

“Hold your horses! Can't you see I ain't finished. What's a matter, you blind?” the laggard would retort, his tone of voice signalling that he was prepared to fight.

Clang! Clang! Clang!

“
Line up
!”

Two serpentine columns of listless boys formed.

“
Okay! Quietly
!”

But though tongues were quiet, boots beat down on the metal stairs, so that stairs, windows and railings rattled and reverberated from the bottom of the stairwell to the ceiling on the third floor.

In the recreation hall downstairs the boys either stood around in knots or sat slouched on the top board that served as a bench as well as a lid for the boxes that were built into the wall. But as I was to learn later, the boys were not really waiting in the commonly understood sense of the word “wait.” Though they may have appeared to be waiting, the boys were in reality exercising a form of quiet disobedience directed against bells, priests, school and, in the abstract, all authority, civil and religious.

Since the boys could not openly defy authority either by
walking out of the school and marching north or south on Highway 17 or by flatly refusing to follow an order, they turned to the only means available to them: passive resistance, which took the form of dawdling.

Only once in my eight years of residence did I witness the phenomenon of boys racing to line up and then maintaining the strictest monastic silence when no bell had rung. As well as I can remember, the incident occurred in the following manner:

“Ice cream!” someone yelled.

“Ice cream! Ice cream! Ice cream!” was repeated a dozen times across the playground.

Well, the announcement “ice cream” uttered either by La Marr (Antoine Lafrance) or Neeyauss (Angus Pitwaniquot) had the same effect as the cry of “Fire!” except that in this instance it operated in reverse. As the magic words “ice cream” went echoing from mouth to mouth across the yard, bats, baseballs and scoreboards were abandoned and 130 boys rushed to line up in front of the veranda, where goodies such as ice cream and candies were often distributed to mark some special feast or event.

Prefects, too, clutching the hems of their soutanes, sprinted across the yard in pursuit of the boys.

Panting and flushed with impotent rage, Father Buck demanded to know: “Who says this?” Back and forth in front of the twelve rows of boys, every one of whom was anticipating the issue of ice cream, strode Father Buck, looking darkly into the faces of the boys as if he could discern the look of guilt. He paused directly in front of Donald Fox and Joe Coocoo, two of our fellow inmates, already well known for their habitual disregard for rules, regulations, laws and the Ten Commandments. He peered into their faces.

“You!” Father Buck snapped at Donald Fox. “Did you say this?”

Donald was deeply pained. In his most aggrieved tone he said, “Not me, Father. Honest to God. You always blaming me for nothing.”

Father Buck continued to stare at Donald, dumbfounded that Donald should deny his guilt. Only Donald would sabotage a ball game and circulate false rumours. But before the young
scholastic could do anything rash, such as sending Donald to Father Hawkins for a thrashing, Father Buck's fellow teachers, Father Kehl and Father Mayhew, moved to his side. After a brief whispered consultation and a quick glance at his watch, Father Buck commanded, “You go back and play, until this bell rings.”

 

6:45
A.M.
Clang! Clang! Clang!

Boys shuffled into lines as slowly as they dared without having their names inscribed in the prefects' little black books. It would have been easier to line up immediately without waiting for the bell, but that would have been seen as surrender.

Father Buck must have imagined himself a commander and we his soldiers as he stood in front and stared us into silence. Even when there was silence all around, he still felt constrained to command it. “
Quiet
!” It was not until he had obtained a sepulchral silence that he nodded to his colleague, Father Kehl, to open the door. “Okay! And no talking.”

Our route from the recreation hall to the chapel was not direct, through the first corridor, but round about outside, along the south side of the building. We trod it in hail, sleet, blizzard and deluge. Had there been fire and brimstone, we would have walked in that as well.

At the word “okay,” the teams proceeded outside, where they converged into two columns, with the youngest and smallest in front and the oldest and biggest boys at the back. When the two columns shuffled to a halt in the left aisle, they stood at reverent attention.

“Clap,” snapped the clapper in Father Kehl's hand. Down on one knee we dropped in united genuflection, remaining in that position until the clapper clapped a second time in signal for us to rise and to stand once more at attention. Only after one more clap did we slide into our assigned places in the pews.

Moments later, under the heavy escort of Miss Strain and Miss Chabot and wearing pretty hats and dresses, the girls from St. Joseph's entered the chapel in much the same way as we had done except in one particular. Their movements, pace, halting, genuflecting, rising and entering the pews from the right aisle were regulated not by a wooden clapper but by the clapping of
the hands of female prefects who glowered and frowned just as severely as our own keepers, in an effort to make sure the girls did not cast lustful glances at the boys or receive similar glances.

When mass was over, we were ushered out with the same order and precision as we had entered…clack! clack! clack! We went directly back upstairs to make our beds according to a pattern more than likely of Jesuit invention. The dormitory, even though the beds had received a thorough airing, was rank with the smell of piss from the “pisskers' section.” Once the beds were made we were led downstairs.

 

7:25
A.M.
Clang! Clang! Clang!

For once the prefect did not have to yell to bring about peace and order. The older boys, anxious to eat, assumed the role of enforcement officers, delivering what were called “rabbit punches” to those who persisted in talking, as samples of what was to come if the talker did not at once desist.

Silently we filed into the refectory, which, from the state of the furnishings and settings, was a more appropriate term than “dining room.” There were sixteen long tables of an uncertain green flanked by benches of the same green. On each table were eight place settings, consisting of a tin pie plate, a tablespoon and a chipped granite cup. In the middle were two platters of porridge, which, owing to its indifferent preparation, was referred to as “mush” by the boys; there were also a box containing sixteen slices of bread, a round dish bearing eight spoons of lard (Fluffo brand), and a huge jug of milk. It was mush, mush, mush, sometimes lumpy, sometimes watery, with monotonous regularity every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. The boys would have vastly preferred the Boston baked beans that, along with a spoonful of butter, were served on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays.

Not until we had said grace—“Bless this mush,” some boys said in secret, “I hope it doesn't kill us”—could we begin. But no matter how indifferent the quality, no boy, to my recollection, ever refused his portion of mush. During the meal there was little conversation except for the occasional “Pass the mush” or “Pass the milk” and the clatter of spoons, which served as knives and forks as well.

 

7:55
A.M.
Clang! Clang! Clang!

After grace of thanksgiving, it was outside to the recreation hall. Except for the lucky ones in Grades 1, 2 and 3, everyone went to his assigned place of work. The seniors, in Grades 6, 7 and 8, went to their permanent occupations: to the barn, to tend horses, cows, sheep, pigs and all their products; to the chicken coop, to look after chickens; to the tailor shop, shoe shop, electrical shop, carpentry shop, blacksmith shop, mill or plumber's shack. These were jobs of standing and responsibility in the adolescent community. The other boys, from grades that had no status, waited outside the storeroom for the issue of mops, pails, sponges, soap, rags, brooms, dustpans, dust-bane and other janitorial paraphernalia for performing the menial tasks of washing, sweeping, mopping, dusting, polishing toilets, corridors, refectory, chapels, kitchen, dormitory, scullery, every conceivable area.

“
Johnston
! Number
forty-three
!”

“Yes, Father.”

“I have special job for you,” Father said, handing me a mop, pail, soap and a peculiar, curved oval brush such as I had never before seen. Up to this time in my life the hardest and most detestable forms of work that I had performed were reluctantly carrying either wood or water for my mother. I really didn't want to work but, if work I must, it was better to begin with something special rather than with some plebeian labour.

“Come with me!”

Father Buck led me directly to the toilets, which were so vile with the reek of human waste that I nearly choked and disgorged my mush. Even Father Buck, who must have been aged about twenty-three or twenty-four, gasped as he issued his instructions: “Wash the bowls with this and the walls with this, and the urinals with this, and the floors with this, no?…And make clean and smell good…no? I come back.” I thought that Father Buck staggered slightly as he went out and breathed deeply to cleanse his lungs.