Two young girls and a boy giggle at him. He winks. Their young mother is pretty. Elijah gains altitude with a few sweeps of his arms. The train hits a curve and throws him onto a bench beside an old sleeping man. The man’s eyes open.
“Whiskeyjacks should fly better,” he says.
Elijah looks at him. “How do you know my name?”
“I don’t,” the man says. “I was dreaming. There was a flock of whiskeyjacks.” He looks confused. “They were pecking at something dead.”
Elijah stands and walks back to me.
“What did the old man say to you?” I ask.
“He knew my name. Claims he was dreaming of whiskeyjacks.”
“It’s a sign,” I say.
“Everything’s a sign to you.” Elijah looks out the window. “Hey,
there’s
a sign,” he says, pointing outside. “It says Abitibi River. But you wouldn’t know that, considering you’re a heathen.”
I look at him, then look away.
A wide river passes a hundred feet below us. Our stomachs rush up as if we are falling. We stare at the river running north back to our home, and for a moment I know that Elijah feels sad as me.
“Look at that island,” Elijah says, pointing to a spit of sand that forces the river to split, a few trees on it. “It’s like the island we slept on when we finally made it out of the fire.”
He stares at the black water, then at the bank of mud and sand, lighter against it. I know he will miss this place, he realizes at this moment. But he will not dwell on it. Just as quickly as we came upon the river, we are past it.
MAMISHIHIWEWIN
Betrayal
I
AWAKE EARLY
on the second full day of our paddle to find that once again Nephew has slept outside by the fire. The morning is cool, and so I build the fire bigger. I brew some tamarack tea and sit by him, begin talking even though his eyes are closed and he may not hear. My words will sink in.
Listen carefully, Nephew. My Frenchman came back to visit me often in those first months of our bonding. I moved to my summer place when the season arrived, letting him know where to find me. He visited me there too, and like the frozen rivers that gave way to the warmth, something inside me broke and flooded so that all I wanted was him.
You must realize once more, Nephew, that in this world of hardship we must grasp the moments that are offered to us. My Frenchman and I were voracious, consuming one another so that we were constantly sore in the most pleasant way. We said little, but over the summer we each learned some of the other’s tongue. Our language was the physical. We loved against trees, on riverbanks, in the water when it was warm enough. It was a good summer. I’d visit my mother and she saw the difference in me, knew what I was discovering. She made me drink bitter tea that kept me from becoming pregnant. She warned me with her eyes to be careful of this one, that
wemistikoshiw
were not to be trusted, but I ignored it, too full of him, too flushed with him.
The autumn called us away from each other, he to hunt moose for his town for winter, me for a very different reason. That feeling came back to visit me, the one that brought warning of difficulty to come. I went back alone into the bush to decipher it, rebuilt the shaking tent frame that I’d let collapse and grow moss.
For days I tried to summon the souls of animals to come to me in my tent, but it was as if I’d somehow offended them and I sat there for hours at a time, praying and rocking, burning sweetgrass and searching the blackness for something to show itself to me. My first thought was that by losing my childhood I’d also somehow lost my power to see beyond the day. Or maybe it was that I’d chosen a
wemistikoshiw
for a mate. I realized that this is how I thought of him now, as my mate.
It struck me that I could not focus on both. And so I chose him. I was young and the emotions of the young are as strong a pull as the Arctic tides that suck fishermen’s canoes out into the bay to be lost forever. I walked out of my shaking tent with no answers to what was coming, and the not-knowing was a strange relief. Not having to be the one divining answers was a weight lifted from me. I could just be normal, suffer the sweet pains that came with my young age. The bad feelings of danger still nudged at me, but I pushed them away with thoughts of him.
Winter came upon us again, and I kept my own dwelling now, having made sure that my mother was safe and living with other
awawatuk
. The Frenchman came to me often, and we kept each other warm through even the coldest nights, but as spring approached once more, a mood came over him. He did not smile as often and visited me less. When he did come to me, he did not love me as frequently as he had. I thought I smelled another on him, but the scent was never the same, and so I pushed those thoughts aside.
At the time when the snow begins to melt during the day and then forms a hard crust at night, an
awawatuk
from the marten clan came
to me with a request. I knew when I heard the man approach on his snowshoes that he came to ask me a favour, that it would begin a chain of events that I was powerless to stop.
The Frenchman was with me. We brewed tea inside my shelter. We both went quiet at the sound of snowshoes approaching. A visitor in winter is rare and not always welcome. A winter visit often means that bad fortune has descended. I motioned for my man to sit and wait while I went outside to see who’d come. Outside I recognized his face. He was an old hunter who was known to be one of the last of the great trappers. His look confirmed what I sensed, and I knew then that what I’d been trying to push away had arrived now as surely as a blizzard.
After a formal greeting he told me how he knew and respected my father, how he also knew that I was my father’s daughter and had inherited his gift. He explained that his clan was hungry and had bad luck finding meat. He wanted me to divine for him, had brought a moose’s shoulder blade along with him from his part of the country.
I had no choice. Turning around, I walked into my lodge and told the Frenchman he had to leave. He didn’t put up a fight, but packed his things. Although he could not understand what the old man requested of me, he suddenly understood that I was not simply a young woman living in the bush alone. I lived alone for a reason. I had a gift that others wanted and needed. I was frightened by how sullen this made him, how he stopped speaking to me.
Before he left I whispered to him that it wasn’t his fault but that I had to be alone to do what was needed. I asked him to come back soon, but he didn’t answer. He left the lodge, leaving only the sting of his anger.
I walked out behind him, saw the surprise on the old trapper’s face at the sight of a
wemistikoshiw,
a look that he quickly covered, pretending indifference. When the Frenchman disappeared into the bush, I opened my door to the old
awawatuk
and built up my fire.
With the return of spring and of the blackflies, life grew a little easier again. But my Frenchman did not come to visit me. By early summer I wondered what had happened and spent long nights inventing stories. He’d hurt himself and lay prone in a bed in that town pining for me. Or he was all right but waited stubbornly and patiently for me to come to him and tell him I was sorry for so briskly dealing with him that late winter morning. In my darker moods I imagined him with other women.
I visited my mother and we spent long hours fishing and not saying very much. The silence was comfortable. I knew that she knew I had been visited by an
awawatuk
in a time of crisis and had done what I had to. She could also sense that I was alone again, that I ached for the Frenchman and the ache was not going away. My mother finally broke the silence.
“I would never have married your father if I had not pursued him,” she said. “I hunted him like you hunt a bear. I found out where he lived and I paid him a visit.”
I smiled at this story, my first smile in months, it seemed. For the first time in a very long time I felt sure now of my next move.
Late that summer I packed a few clothes and a few days’ rations and left my spot by the river. I began to paddle my canoe back to that place I had promised myself I would never return to. For the couple of nights I was alone on the water I built small fires onshore and stared up into a sky that took many hours to turn dark.
Some part inside nagged at me about what I was doing. I counted shooting stars like I was a child again. Every time I predicted the swath of light that cut through the sky just before it happened, I’d dare myself to turn back home before it was too late. But I didn’t. When I smelled the rotting garbage smell of that town again, I was immediately brought back to the day years ago when I had come here with my mother and young sister.
I beached my canoe close to town around midday. The sun was
setting by the time I built up the courage to walk through that place and look for him. I went through the Indian part of Moose Factory first, looking for faces that I knew. There were many that I recognized from my childhood and from my brief time at the residential school, and immediately it was obvious that an invisible wall, one impossible to breach, lay between me and the homeguard Indians of this white town. My clothing was in the old style, a style that only a few of the elders still knew how to make, most of it from the hides of animals.
But that was just the most obvious difference. The Indians here seemed full, full of food, full of drink, full like I saw the white men look full. I became almost envious walking around, feeling the stares burrowing into my back. For so many years it was as if I’d gone hungry. My body was smaller than the others’, having rarely been able to feed itself to full. But I was struck as I listened to families talking and friends laughing and children running and shouting that what I had starved for was the company of others, others like me. When I realized that day that there were no longer others like me, my legs shook so hard in the middle of the dirt street with people all around that I thought I would fall down.
Parents called their children to them when I came close. The old converted Indians blessed themselves and closed their doors when I walked by. Young men pointed to me and stared when they thought I was not looking. The other talent the Cree have to rival their hunting ability is their ability to gossip.
When the sheer weight of the attention became too much for me, I looked for the fastest route out of this part of town. As I reached the edge of it, an old woman, her face as wrinkled and round as a dried apple, beckoned me to her with a long bony finger.
“Ashtum,”
she whispered. “Come here.”
I walked to her and she opened her door to me.
“You are the one,” she said, smiling toothless at me when I was safe inside. Her little cabin smelled of tanned hide and good food.
She sat me down at her table and brought me a bowl of stew. “Eat, then we’ll talk.”
I ate and she watched me carefully, none of the formal politeness of averted eyes in her at all. “You must watch yourself around here,” she said. “Or the same thing that happened to your father will happen to you.” I looked up to her, at her bold words. “The Indians around here know. You can’t stop talk from travelling. Some of them are happy that the old ways are still alive out in the bush. But there are lots of them Christian Indians now who are not.”
I nodded my thanks for her warning. “Do any
wemistikoshiw
know? Should I leave this place?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Probably they don’t. You’ll know as soon as you see them what they know. They are not very good at concealing their thoughts from their faces.” She laughed at this and I did, too. It felt good.
“Tell me more,
Kokum
,” I said after a while. She brought me tea and I sipped on it and waited.
“There is talk that a certain
wemistikoshiw
trapper was fucking you,” she said, smiling at me. “But that rumour I am not sure of, since it comes from their side.”
My smile dropped. “So that is the rumour?” I said.
She looked at me. “So it is true!” she said. I didn’t respond, didn’t need to. “Be careful of that one. They say he has a taste for red meat that he can’t satisfy. There are little half-French, half-Indian children running around this place that he refuses to claim.” I nodded thanks for the warning. “This is not the place for you, Little One. You are a
hookimaw,
from a strong family. Happiness is not yours to have. You are a
windigo
killer.” She said this as if it were a sentence being passed down.
She got up and went to a trunk near her bed, rummaged through it for a while, then came back to me with a handful of clothes. She held them up one by one so that I could see them. They were the
clothes of
wemistikoshiw
women, a long cotton skirt, a white cotton shirt, a brightly coloured bandanna to tie about my head.
“Wear these,” she said. I shook my head. “You must wear them so that you fit in with the others. Those clothes you wear make you a target. You look like a bush animal come too close to this human place.”
I took the clothes from her, thanked her as I made my way to the door.
I could feel her eyes on me as I walked back to my canoe.
I camped that night a little way from that place, my head buzzing with the knowledge that my world was not nearly as secret as I thought it was or wanted it to be. So they knew everything! I grew angrier with each passing hour, so that by dawn a plan had formed in my head. I bathed for a long time in the river, scrubbing my hair until it shone, rubbing my body to pinkness with the soft bottom sand. I changed into the clothes the grandmother had given me and carefully and tightly braided my hair on each side of my head. At high noon, I walked back into the town, a smile on my face so that I appeared a different woman, a shy, young homeguard Indian.
I walked toward the spire of the church, to the place where the residential school sat blank and white as a dumb child’s face. I had not meant to go here, but suddenly the idea of seeing Rabbit—your mother, Xavier—swept over me. Staying a distance away, I waited until the nuns released the children for afternoon play. I looked carefully through the group of older girls, for my sister would be fifteen winters now, but I did not see her. I stayed and looked until the nuns herded the children back inside.