The Liberation of Ravenna Morton

by Suzanne Jenkins

  April, always the peacemaker, went over to Regina. “I need to talk to you right away, sister. Will you both excuse us?”

  “What is it? I need to clear the air between Dad and me.”

  “You’ll thank me if you stop now,” April whispered. “Trust me.” In a split second, she decided she’d only share her grandmother’s letter with her sister, that and the information she’d gotten from George about the way Peggy died. The journal and anything that was directed against Mike, well, April pretty much decided that would stay secret for now. And if she did share it, it would be with Mike, away from the cabin.

  She could feel Regina’s shoulders relax.

  “Okay,” Regina finally said, resigned. “But I’m coming back. We need to finish this once and for all.”

  Getting her sister’s coat off the hook and helping her into it, April looked over at her parents. They were waiting, Mike at the table with a mug in front of him and Ravenna standing nearby, ready for service. It was the same posture she’d seen her parents assume again and again. Was anything so important as to cause them pain? They were old; wouldn’t they be gone soon enough?

  When they got outside, April knew Regina was transferring her anger from Mike over to her.

  “What was so important that you had to interrupt me? I think he was finally hearing me.”

  “I have something you need to read. Where can we go?”

  A roadhouse a few miles away was dark enough that they could sit in anonymity and talk. April opened the car door for Regina, and at that moment, her heart went out to her. Her sister was eleven years older than she was, and her life had been harder than April’s had been. They were silent as she drove, Regina’s breathing gradually slowing down.

  “I forgot its Saturday night,” April said when they pulled up. “It’ll be noisy in there.”

  “I can read through noise,” Regina said. “I need a beer.”

  They walked in, two beautiful women, and heads at the bar turned, a low whistle emitting from a loaded patron.

  “Okay, fuck. I’m getting my head shaved,” Regina said loudly.

  “Stop,” April said, laughing, grabbing menus. “I’m hungry. Mama’s deer didn’t cut it for me today.”

  They took the menus and sat down at a booth in the corner. The waiter came over, Regina ordered a beer, and April got chili cheese fries.

  “I thought you were a vegetarian?” Regina said sarcastically.

  “Yes, well, I’m not in bondage to it,” April said defensively.

  “Okay, what’s so crucial that you had to drag me away from a good fight?”

  April opened her bag and brought out the letter Peggy had written, the one Esme had read.

  “I’m warning you, this is not going to be easy. It’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Give it here,” she said, impatient. She put her reading glasses on and began to read, holding the letter up to the little battery-operated candle on the table. April watched her, and as she read, Regina looked up at her sister and then down at the paper again, unaware their drinks had arrived, oblivious to the growing noise and crowds.

  ***

  Peggy’s Letter

  After Robert died, I knew that my life was a ticking bomb. The things that happened to me were slowly rising to the surface for me to deal with, or not. I chose not to feel. Ravenna would receive the brunt of my suffering. I singled her out to feel what I was unable to face.

  I’m about to confess a situation that was common among my people. We were petrified knowing what might happen, but in our household we didn’t speak about it, so when it happened to us, we had no plan. My family fled the scene instead, leaving me behind. Yes, the story is that first, I was stolen away from my family, and then they abandoned me. What could be worse for a little child?

  I was only eight years old. When I think of that age, I think of my Johnny, who at age eight wanted nothing more than to sit on my lap and hug me. But because I was damaged after being kidnapped, it was difficult for me to hold him, to not push him away. I tried to be patient with him, because I remembered being age eight in our household. I remembered needing what I would not receive.

  We lived here, on the river’s edge where I live now. My family lived much the same way Robert and I did, from hand to mouth. My father worked at logging, just as Robert did. It was about the same for my people in those days; Indians did the dangerous work. My father climbed the tallest trees and topped them before the loggers came in to cut them down.

  My mother tended the fields and her kitchen garden, hunted and fished, cut wood and made baskets, just as I do. She gave birth in the same room I gave birth, and I watched my sisters and brothers emerge from her body just as my children watched me.

  On the day they kidnapped me, my father was smoking a pipe, sitting on a stump right outside that back door leading to the Kalamazoo. He was shaving black ash splints for my mother’s basket making. I truly don’t remember what she was doing; she had taken the others somewhere in the morning, probably up the hill to work the field. Now I believe she knew they were coming, and was hiding my brothers and sisters. Maybe she thought I’d be strong enough to endure. We will never know.

  A group of white city people arrived on our doorstep, but when no one answered, they walked around to the back, and that’s how they found me. I watched them being disrespectful to my father. I remember a woman named Kitty came into the cabin without asking permission and looked around the neat, dark room with her lips pinched, like it was a pigsty. She told me to get my underpants and a warm coat, that’s all I would need.

  “Where are you taking her?” my father asked.

  “To Mount Pleasant,” the man with the group answered. “To the boarding school there.”

  My father looked furtive, and I knew he was praying that the rest of the family didn’t return until they had gone with me in tow. I remember thinking that I was a sacrifice for my brothers and sisters, and they confirmed it when Kitty asked my father if there were other children in the family.

  “No others,” he said and rattled off a string of Ojibwa phrases that made no sense to me. I thought he might be trying to intimidate our visitors, but they just looked at him with disdain and told me we were leaving. I was too frightened of exposing my brothers and sisters to ask if I could say good-bye to my mother, so I said, “Winanimiziwin,” terrified. “Giga-waabamin minawaa, indaanis.” I’ll see you again, Father. He didn’t reply, and it hurt me.

  I wondered later why he didn’t put up a fight. He let white people take his daughter without so much as a glance in my direction. He was more worried about my mother returning from wherever she was, risking the abduction of the rest of the family.

  Kitty took my hand, and we walked with the others to a small school bus. It was similar to the transport vehicles the police use now. There were other children already on the bus. They directed me to sit next to a little girl; she couldn’t have been more than five. She was heartbroken. It was clear she’d been crying for a long while. I later learned that she’d come from Battle Creek, that her mother tried to prevent the men from taking her to the school and was jailed because of it. Knowing this information gave me peace about my father not intervening on my behalf.

  The little girl wore an expensive dark blue wool coat and long white stockings and black buckle-strap shoes. I’d never seen clothes so nice. Her hair was clean and long, but it was a mess, some of it hanging in her face. Eyes swollen from crying, she was at the stage of misery where she was hiccupping. Green mucous was bubbling from her nose, and her face was beyond tearstained. She looked at me from under her wet eyelashes, and the hiccupping continued.

  “Huh, huh, huh, huh,” came from her throat, and every so often she would sob again.

  One of the men told her to shut up, and she fell against me. I could no sooner ignore her than I could a dog run over by a wagon in the road. I took the lining of her coat and brought it up to her face, over her nose.

  “Blow,” I said so
ftly. I cleaned what I could of the mess off her face and then put my arm around her and pulled her to me. It would be the way I would survive the hell of the boarding school, caring for the younger ones, giving them love and tenderness while I was abused. I often wonder if it made a difference, if the ones who I treated with kindness fared better in the long run because of it. Sometimes when my life here on the river is too much for me to deal with, I think of what it was like to nurture another human being. It helps a little bit because I was unable to transfer that compassion to my own children. Doing it to strangers used me up. It is so sad I was unable to do as much for my own flesh and blood. If I had known the effect it had on me, I would have never married Robert. I would have never had children.

  It was almost four hours in the bus to the school. Once, halfway through the trip, the bus stopped, and they told us to go to the woods to take care of business. I helped the younger children, as many as I could. They didn’t offer us water or food during the trip. I learned the little girl’s name was Sharon.

  When we pulled into the driveway, it was dark outside, but there was the yellow light of gas lamps coming from the windows of the building. It was the largest building I had ever seen, but in reality, it was only two stories. Sharon stayed close to me. We got off the bus, and a woman in a light-colored uniform told us to stand single file. I stood behind Sharon and hung on to the back of her coat. We were marched into the building along with another busload of children. We spent most of the evening marching and waiting. The younger children were exhausted. They didn’t offer us water or the use of a toilet. Our dormitory would be on the second floor, petrifying the smaller children, who were afraid they would fall to the ground.

  There was only one toilet for each dorm room. The beds butted up against each other; when it was time to get up in the morning, we had to scoot down to the end to get out of bed. Each small room held twenty-five beds or more. I saw small children beaten for wetting the bed, but it was almost impossible to get to the toilet at night, and there was always a long line to the bathroom.

  The next morning, they herded us like cattle into a vast dining room and gave us oatmeal, milk and bacon for breakfast. Most of the Indian children had never had milk before, and the introduction of milk as a staple in our diets would cause digestive problems. I had diarrhea for the first week. My eight-year-old brain was able to figure out it was the milk. I made sure Sharon didn’t drink hers, either.

  After breakfast, they told us to line up once again, and one at a time, they cut our hair. This was the worst punishment for many of the boys. Seeing my hair lying on the floor made me physically ill. While other children cried, I remember thinking to myself that if I survived this, I would gladly shave my head if it would lead me to freedom.

  After my hair was gone, I was told to strip off my clothes. I was wearing a cotton dress, something raggedy that was cut down from a larger castoff from an aunt. The little girl Sharon was beautifully dressed. Under her fur-trimmed coat, she had on a hand-embroidered dress, smocked across the chest. I saw something like it in the Sears Catalog. Uniforms were handed out, grey cotton dresses and black stockings. Boys and girls all wore the same shoes: lace up, utilitarian boots.

  We got our faces smacked and our hands slapped with wood rulers if we spoke our language. Everything Indian was forbidden. We never spoke English at home, but I learned it fast. I didn’t speak Ojibwe for eight years. If it weren’t for Robert, I would have never spoken it again. He helped me remember the words.

  Some things I can’t speak of; there’s no point in bringing up the ugliness, is there? Isn’t it enough that the government was trying to exterminate my people? Nothing that was done to me individually can be as bad as that.

  On my sixteenth birthday, they released me. Eight years. They gave me five dollars and a bus ticket to Douglas. The bus dropped me off in front of the grocery store. It was the first time I had been in a food store, and I was shocked at the food available; I bought an apple and a bottle of pop. I didn’t have any belongings; I’d entered the school with the clothes on my back and left it with castoffs from some charity donation.

  I wished there was a way I could get word to my family that I was coming home. The anticipation of surprising them fueled the six-mile walk. By the time I got to Riverside Trail, I was running, I was so excited. But when I got to where the path through the woods to the longhouse should be, it was overgrown. I knew in my heart that it was not a good sign. I made it through the brush to the cabin, my heart pounding against my chest. It can’t be good, I thought again.

  In a slight clearing stood my ancestral home, the longhouse, part of the roof caving in, attached to a log cabin. Waist-high weeds grew around the structure and in between the stones placed as a footpath to the river. The rarely used front door to the cabin was closed, vines growing up and disappearing through cracks. I decided to walk around to the back, along the river. Possibly, they were trying to disguise the cabin so intruders would think it was unoccupied. But when I reached the back, my hopes were dashed. My family no longer lived there. I was sixteen years old and alone.

  It was mid-May, so I could plant for the upcoming winter. It was the first thing I thought of. Not where would I live, or why they left me. I was already in survival mode. I walked down to the river and saw that my father’s dinghy was up on end, leaning against the tree where I’d last seen it. Turning to look at the back of the cabin, the rusty woodstove was still under the tin roof, and the wood supply was intact, although I could see a row of it had been pilfered because clear areas of dirt were evident where wood was recently removed. The thought that I was going to have to get a gun came to me. I had four dollars left from the mighty stipend allotted me from the federal government. I’d have to get the gun another way.

  The back door was closed, but unlocked. I pulled it open with trepidation; would the space be ransacked? The door was stiff, but I got it open, and a whoosh of fragrant air blasted out at me. My mother’s sweet grass for the baskets she wove was still abundant in the kitchen, hanging from rafters. I hoped I would remember how to weave; the thought setting my mind at ease that I might have gun money after all. Standing in the middle of the cabin, I saw that it was probably much like my mother left it. Shelves along the walls held glass jars of dried peas and beans, fish and tomatoes. I recognized dried onions and mushrooms. I would have food, too. Most of the furniture was gone, tables and chairs and a hutch. Baffled why it hadn’t been vandalized, I chose to believe the higher power pounded into our heads at boarding school protected it even though in my mind I knew that was a lie. Why would a house be protected and little children not? I wrestled with this dilemma for the rest of my life.

  I went to my parents’ bedroom; they taken the bedstead and a chest of drawers. The hanging rug, which separated the room from the rest of the cabin, was gone, too. I went to the back and opened the door to the longhouse. I slept here with my sisters. Our parents separated girls and boys; the boys slept near the end of the house, where the roof was caved in, and we girls were up in the front. The middle area was used for storage; deep holes dug in the ground, covered with woven mats now gone, once stored root vegetables and potatoes. I found tools my father left behind, his ax and a machete. I brought them to the front of the cabin. They’d be my weapons, if need be.

  Leaning up against the wall in my parents’ room was the ladder leading to the loft. I found two boxes, one of rags and one of old sheeting. I hoped I’d find a needle and thread in my search. I made a mental list of what I would need: sewing supplies, fishing line, a cook pot. I’d scrounge around the dump hole my family used about fifty yards from the house; I might find something useful there, too. I went out to the well and discovered they had taken the wellhead. The Kalamazoo River was horribly polluted by the paper mills in Allegan, but I figured erroneously that by the time the water got to Mac’s Landing it wouldn’t be too unhealthy. It would have to do until I could get the pump fixed.

  The first task was to cut some of
the grasses to make a bed. Dusk was falling, and I didn’t have much time. I’d learned to use the machete at school; grass cutting was one of the few outdoor tasks besides gardening that girls were allowed to perform. I thought cynically that they were preparing me to be abandoned by my own family. I swung the machete back and forth until the sun had set and I could no longer see. I was careful not to cut too close to Riverside Trail; I didn’t want to call attention to the cabin just yet.

  Gathering up the cut grass, I made myself a nice pad on the floor of the bedroom. I covered it with one of the sheets from the loft. Everything smelled of vanilla, the dried sweet grass hanging in the kitchen, and the fresh-cut grass. The next day I would let the grass of my bed dry out, but for now it would serve. I took my dress off and carefully placed it over the string that had one time held the privacy rug in my parents’ room. I could sleep in my underslip. I made sure the doors were locked from the inside. I couldn’t do anything about the unlocked longhouse, and there was nothing available to barricade the door. I discovered I could wedge the ladder up against the door, and then I felt secure.

  I drank the last inch of soda pop. The bottle might come in handy later. The cabin grew pitch black as the last rays of the setting sun made their way down past the water of Lake Michigan. I fell asleep soon after I closed my eyes, the horror of the boarding school a distant memory, but the pain of my family’s abandonment yet to be acknowledged.

  The next day I woke as the sun was overhead. I hadn’t slept that long in years. I crept outside, worried a passing boater might see me in my slip, but I needn’t have worried. In the bright daylight, the grasses were so high you could barely see the river.

  By the woodstove, I found a rusty jar lid that held a sliver of my mother’s homemade lye soap. I went to the protected cove and washed up before I put my dress back on. My hair was another matter; cut short, it spiked up like a boy’s. I wet it down the best I could.