The Mi'kmaq Anthology

by Lesley Choyce

  The employment was not hard, and my baby was finally born at the Boston City Hospital on August 11, 1951. She was so small and pretty. I examined her all over — she was perfect. I cannot give her away, I love her, she’s mine, mine, I was thinking to myself. She is not going to be a foster child. The couple I worked for wanted my baby, but I couldn’t decide to agree, even after they named her Phyllis Rose. I thought she was just beautiful and did not want to part with her. I found an apartment where the landlady offered to care for my baby while I worked. One day I came home and the landlady said the baby would not take the bottle. I took her to the doctor. “The baby’s windpipe is narrow,” he said, “how do you feed her?” I did not know what could be done but to take care of the baby myself. From that time I took care of the baby, everything was fine. I applied for a Mothers Allowance from a Social Agency to take care of my own baby.

  When she was about two years old I thought she would be old enough to leave with a sitter. While I was planning this I had an unexpected visitor. A man came knocking on my door. He was tall, handsome, he spoke English and asked for his cousins. He was from Portland, Maine. I told him where the men lived with their wives, explaining that they were at work but would be home soon. I was so flustered I forgot to ask his name. A while later I heard the sound of Micmac spoken just below my open window. I looked out and saw one of the men the man was looking for, Leo Johnson, a construction worker. “There was a handsome fellow looking for you,” I told him. “Oh boy,” he said, “it must be Howard,” meaning his younger brother.

  That evening, I met the young man, Frank Joe, again, but with another Micmac I had promised to marry. We were sitting at a restaurant table talking Indian when I noticed I had lost my keys that were on the table. I was petrified of waking my landlady to get into the apartment. After I rang the doorbell my landlady was fit to be tied, for there standing just inside the alcove was the young man from Portland, Maine. “You got me into trouble,” I hollered at him; I wanted to wring his neck. The rest of the week I could not go anywhere; he had my keys, but I did not know it. Finally, a letter arrived from Portland with my keys in the envelope along with an apology, and asking if he could visit me. The day he arrived was Sunday and I was getting Phyllis ready to visit a friend. “May I come in?” he asked. “My landlady is fussy about men visitors,” I told him. I left the door of my apartment open for her benefit.

  We made polite conversation, mainly speaking about my brother Matt whom he had met before me; I also knew his sister Theresa. I spoke English because I thought he liked conversing in that language. Finally he asked if I would speak Micmac. We talked in Micmac from then on. “I’m leaving to visit a lady friend, are you coming?” He asked the name of the lady. When I gave her name, “No,” he said. I didn’t know that there was bad feeling between them. I learned later that when her son had been caught stealing in Canada, Frank Joe was supposed to be with him. My husband-to-be explained that he had never stolen anything in his life, and I believed him. On about our third visit he asked me to marry him. “What will I do with the guy I promised, who went home to Canada to attend the funeral of his father?” I asked him. Frank Joe looked into my eyes and said: “The same thing I will be doing to my girl friend back home — a Dear John letter.” We wrote the letters home and married not too long afterward. At first it was like playing house. He worked at the Massachusetts General Hospital, coming home, he read the paper and we ate our meal which I tried to cook the way he liked. Little Phyllis loved her new dad, but my other little boy was not to his liking. I took him to my sister in Canada; there he found a home where he was loved until he died.

  One day my husband came home from work. “We’re going home to Canada,” he announced. I packed our belongings and our small baby, my heart in a turmoil. I loved him so much, I followed him blindly, jumping at everything he wanted me to do. Expectations for the future I hoped would be better. A job was waiting for him at the Victoria General Hospital in Halifax. He had applied without my knowledge. Again we settled down, on Victoria Road, in Halifax. The job was putting food on the table, but not much extra. He worked hard, his time with us unpredictable. Finally, another move to Eskasoni, Cape Breton. The two children we had I thought cemented our relationship. My love for him overlooked any unpleasant quarrels we had. Eventually he went back to Halifax, with me staying with his family. On one of his visits home, I saw a woman’s picture in his wallet. I tore the picture to pieces. But I felt secure in his arms — the woman did not mean anything. He went back to Halifax. The torn picture faded from my mind. I was too busy with my three small children, all before school age.

  The time finally came when I wanted my own place, and to ration the money he sent me myself. One day in the winter I bundled my children and went to see the Chief; it was Wilfred Prosper at the time. “I will stay anywhere just as long as I’m with my children and don’t depend on anyone,” I told him. There were big snowflakes falling as I pulled the sled along home wondering what will become of us. On arriving at my mother-in-law’s, someone told me about a house a widow owned; she wanted someone to take care of it because she could not live in it. I offered to take good care of the house if she would lend it to me. When I moved in I scrubbed the wooden floors to whitened brightness. My mother-in-law got a corned-meat barrel, scrubbed it clean and ordered one of her sons to fill it with water for me. I only had a kerosene lamp for light, wood and coal for heat, but I was so happy to live alone with my small children. My time was spent making quilts, and scrubbing everything in sight. My children could now yell to their heart’s content.

  My happiness ended one morning when I couldn’t lift my head from my pillow. I went to see a doctor. “You have to go to the hospital,” he said. I wondered what was wrong. The doctor questioned me about my eating habits, the fluids I drank. I finally mentioned the barrel outside my doorway. The barrel was the culprit. The saline water had pretty much killed me by the time I knew.

  When I was better my children were happy to see me home. I never drank that water anymore. We enjoyed our home, my bringing up the children my own way and the in-laws at a distance were good to me. The children loved their grandmother when they saw her, but they were also wary of her cross attitude. I worked hard on the relationship with my mother-in-law, I wanted her to love me because of not having had a mother for so long. In many ways she tried to show her love, but always in a gruff way. The ability to express love was not in her because the two men she had married in her younger years were not for love but out of necessity. She could not understand how I felt about my husband, even after a beating.

  Finally, on one of my husband’s visits home, he decided to stay with us, so it was another move again to be near where he worked in Sydney, Nova Scotia. The familiar routine was there again: the barely existing pay cheque, bargain hunting for clothes, food or whatever else we needed. I had learned a long time ago how to budget on a small amount of money, “ro’kewtelikan,” “crooked buying.” As long as I had a large amount of flour, yeast and lots of wood, my house would smell of home-baked goodies. And I always got a lot of potatoes, onions, and bean pork for hash-a-wey, sliced potatoes cooked with bean pork and onions, simmered to make it taste good. I made sure our children ate good meals, they would not know hunger like at times I knew. Today my children remember that there was always lots of food. One compliment I received from my eight-year-old Francis: “See! I told you my mother would have home-baked bread and a clean floor!” But working at the St. Rita’s Hospital in Sydney was good for my husband. He had a circle of friends among non-Natives but also everybody in the community of Membertou Reservation became friends in a short time. He loved sports and liked to take along our son Francis, whom everybody called Junior. While Dad played ball on the reservation ball field, Junior who was two at the time, sometimes fell asleep behind the screen. The other team members looked out for the little guy.

  One day, when my husband was at work and the children playing outside, I looked out, as I always did
continuously, and noticed Junior was nowhere in sight. I was frantic. I asked the two older sisters where their brother was. “He was here just a minute ago.” We looked everywhere, even in the little stream behind my house. I had the community in an uproar, with everyone looking for my little boy. A while back, a small child had disappeared; he was never found. While everybody in the community was looking, a truck pulled in to my driveway and my son jumped out, full of stories of what he and “Uncle Wallace” had been doing. I yelled at my cousin Wallace for taking my child without permission. My favourite cousin’s face fell and he apologized: “I love the little guy and wanted to take him for a ride.” The idea of my child being taken without permission appalled my senses. I know my cousin was the greatest guy in the world, but I told him he should ask before taking Junior anywhere.

  Our life in the community was good, the other women giving encouragement for my creative endeavors, but I couldn’t make anything worth selling. One of the women suggested I work in the non-Native houses, spring cleaning. I was glad to earn the five dollars for an all day cleaning: washing floors, walls, even high ceilings with wobbly stepladders for footing. One day one of the ladies told me: “You may work for me all week.” I was adding up the cash register in my head already before she finished talking! Each morning I would start out early after the babysitter arrived and catch the bus along with all the other women, work all day and try to hurry home to have supper on before my husband arrived. I didn’t want him to forbid me the freedom I felt being away from the house.

  One day on one of my house cleaning jobs I felt uncomfortable all day with headache and sore back. At four o’clock the lady of the house told me to come down and eat a lunch of milk, cake and strawberries. “You did a good job, removing the furniture and all, and then washing the walls.” I thanked her for the compliment. My head and back were still bothering me and I was in a hurry to go to the store to buy milk and a few things we needed. I headed for the aisle where I saw the milk when the world went black. The next thing I remember I heard someone say “Rita, Rita, what is wrong?” When I fell on the floor, the store clerks assumed I was drunk. An Indian woman, Isobel, happened to be walking by on her way home from work; they called her in. She saw me lying on the floor and knowing who I was she realized something was wrong; their assumption about me being drunk did not sound too good to her. When she bent over to me, I told her to call an ambulance. She rushed off to the telephone. The manager of the store brought a chair and water: “Sit here and drink this.” “Stupid men,” I thought, “they never know women’s problems.” Finally there was a crowd of people watching, an old lady standing there looking at me. I called her over near me, she bent down to listen. “Call an ambulance, I’m hemorrhaging!” The lady moved so fast the ambulance came soon after. I was rushed to the hospital; my husband came from home — somebody had told him I was at St. Rita’s Hospital. He thought I had had a car accident or something of that sort. “Stay home and mind the children,” my husband said.

  We moved back to Eskasoni, he hitchhiked back and forth to work everyday. Our life settled down to routine again, our children growing up into beautiful people, each with his own identity. Phyllis was growing up into a beautiful child. Evelyn whom we call Step always tagging along with Phyllis; Junior not yet at school age, and another little fellow my husband wanted to name Basil. Junior took after me, light skinned with curly light hair, Basil as dark as Frank. I called them “night and day.” Phyllis did not go back to Shubenacadie School from Membertou Reserve, but stayed home when we moved back to Eskasoni. We made arrangements for Phyllis and Step to go to school, Junior could wait for another year. Basil was a handful, always into some mischief. Once when he was standing by the side of the road playing with little cars in muddy roadways, my mother-in-law told me to dress him in brighter colours; “Nobody sees Basil in dark clothes, because he is the same colour as the mud.” He laughs at it today.

  I loved all my children, the ones I had before I met Frank and the ones born to us. My world was this man, who worked hard, lived hard, and tried to master the life we lived. The only snag was the drinking. I know the frustration of lacking some sort of achievement bothered him; I built up his ego — everything he did I praised, everything I cooked was to please him and the children. The hard life we had was going nowhere for him. The frustration became evident in his drinking and the battered syndrome became a periodic part of my life. Our children saw it all; they could not prevent it, but their love for me was what held me together. “Yi-ya (does it hurt), Mom?” they would ask, touching my bruises. I cried often into their hair, wiping my tears on their clothes; hugging a child I tried to receive comfort from their love for the pain consuming my soul at the moment.

  I had read somewhere that an open discussion of the problem often creates peer pressure. So I started to run away, telling my story to anyone who would listen. My children at that time were older. The young ones were mystified by my absence, but the older ones were eager to look after the little ones just so Mother might somehow resolve the problem. I did not hid my bruises under long sleeves anymore. I showed the bruises to my mother-in-law; the heel print on my breast drove her wild. She gave me comfort, finally expressing her love for me. I had always called her “Kivu,” “Mother,” the word held us together like a real mother and daughter. My brother-in-law, Andrew once asked me to run away with him to Boston. “I do not love anybody but my husband,” I told him. But he just wanted to remove me from pain, he loved me as a sister.

  Andrew (Kooj) was planning to go to Maine to work. He suffered from convulsions at the time, he showed me his “fit pills,” as he called them. One day, as we sat drinking tea while Kivu made dinner, he said “I saw myself last night.” I knew that if you “see yourself,” it is the forerunner of something drastic. Kivu had told me to lock up and to turn off all the lights. But Be’elukosi, “I worked for myself” — meaning he opened the back door to go out and relieve himself. As he opened the door, he “saw himself.” “It must be your pills, they make you see illusions,” I said. He showed me the colourful pills again. I ran up and told Kivu. She only said “Did you close the fucking door?” I pitied Andrew but could not get myself to hug him — he would have misunderstood my meaning. “I’ll see you before you go,” I told him. But when I ran across the road that day, he had already left. Kivu had the pills in her hand. “Look what he forgot,” she said. The next news was that he was found dead in Maine. A few months later I received a miraculous medal of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of Jesus, from an organization in the United States, “from a friend.” It had a message. I knew Andrew belonged to the organization — it must have been from him.

  In my thirties I began to write. The writing was like therapy for me. It began when my children, bringing their homework home, would point out certain things they did not like. I would say: “You have to write it as it says there, we did not do the writing to tell our history.” By this time, in the ’seventies, they were going to Junior High School and the immersion into an alien nation created minor problems. I taught my children not to make waves unless necessary. An incident that was brought to our attention was when one of our daughters refused to take off her coat. My husband, being a Councillor at the time, went to see the principal. He asked if her work was okay. “Oh, her work is okay,” said the principal. “Why the big issue about the coat then?” my husband replied. I thought he was ten feet tall.

  Another incident happened when two girls got into a fist fight. The non-Native was “aklasiewto’t” (white person beaten), meaning making a lot of noise about her condition but not hurt that badly. Meanwhile the Native girl hid her injury, a twisted ankle. An ambulance was called for the non-Native, and the police. Our leaders got into it then, and my husband said the police should not have been called. I remember he asked the principal if he had any teenagers of his own. “How do you expect to know how to treat teenagers if you don’t have any of your own!” I thought my husband was so brave to express out loud fe
elings which I just wanted to put on paper.

  By this time I was writing periodically for our Micmac newspaper. My children knew and helped in their own way; I greatly appreciated their efforts. One day I saw an item in the Cape Breton Post that stated that there was a Literary Contest at the Writers’ Federation in Halifax. I had a lot of handwritten poetry stored away, because my cousin Roy Gould, the editor of the Micmac News, had told me always to keep a carbon copy of everything. I borrowed a typewriter from somebody and went to work. My English was poor, the words frustrated, angry, crying, hoping for communication:

  A thousand ages we see

  In a space of a moment

  And burdens follow

  Out of old chronicles.

  Submission, I say, to obtain harmony

  But let the words die, that were written

  So my children may see

  The glories of their forefathers,

  And share their pride of history

  That they may learn

  The way of their ancestors,

  And nourish a quiet way.

  Our children read and hate

  The books offered —

  A written record of events

  By the white men.

  Compromise, I say, and meet our requirement

  Place the learning seed of happiness between us.

  (Poems of Rita Joe, page 21)

  When I was told I was one of the winners in the poetry contest I was very glad. The lady who phoned me told me I should be there to receive the prize. “May I come in Indian dress?” I asked. “Of course.” She sounded happy, probably visualizing a beautiful maiden in Native dress. “I won! I won!” I practically hollered at Frank when he came home. He looked bland: “What did you win?” Then I remembered I had not told him when I entered the contest. The reason I never told anybody was that if I didn’t win, nobody would know the letdown. I always do things that way, even to this day I never confide in anyone about a contest or any unusual undertaking I may be pursuing. If I fall face down, then it will be my face and nobody else’s.