The sun enters my house, insolent, blinds the books on the table, penetrates the rooms right through to the north door, its rays like a herd of luminous horses. It strikes my legs, bringing warmth, seems to bend to reach my cheeks, my eyes, my forehead.
The blue-tinged hills, the fields, the forests watch over your roof, even the snow safeguards the gentleness of the home you love for its remoteness, its distance from others, protected by the soft cloak of sky and stars. I didn’t have faith in my talent. I see you’re thinking of the pictures I drew of my cat and sold so successfully to neighbours.
You were twelve, my love, only twelve, don’t forget! You set up a table by the street and offered a free glass of lemonade with every print sold: at the end of the day, all your art was gone.
I loved music more than anything, but every time my band had a show, I’d lose confidence and worry what the audience would think of me; so I drank before each performance, then got the notes wrong, just as I’d feared. Eventually, my bandmates asked me to leave the group. But you have always stuck to your path, ma mère, keep holding fast.
I remember how hurt you were when your drawing didn’t win that contest …
The contest was for the whole elementary school, I was six. My big sister found her inspiration in a painting you were working on, a self-portrait, while I drew my teddy bear freehand — you were amazed. I was convinced I’d win, you were, too; I read the promise in your eyes. My sister won the prize, and the art teacher phoned home to make sure her pastel drawing wasn’t done by you; you were proud of my sister and sad for me. My life modelled itself on that contest: I was just as talented at everything, but shrouded by a veil I could never bring myself to tear away to let in all the light. My sister wrote a story, a tale they made me study years later in French class for its perfection and insights.
The one time you came to visit me here with your sister and her family, you wore a long black wool overcoat; you were so handsome, your braid floating on the fabric. I looked for that elegant coat among the few clothes left behind in your apartment. It was there, at the back of the closet, dirty, wrinkled and balled up like an old rag. I asked your father to keep it for me; the overcoat hangs in my closet, clean again, smart. Minus you.
Acne disfigured me for so many years, the most vulnerable years, the teen years. You’d exclaim, “You’re so handsome, my son!” And I’d be furious, thinking you were making fun of me. I suffered so much that nothing but food could calm me somewhat, I became fat. I was called “Pizza face,” “Extra-large all-dressed,” too. The day you told me I was obese and that it didn’t look good on me, you robbed me of my appetite. Another powerful hurt on top of the acne. That period in my life levelled any confidence I might have had in my looks, even after the stringent treatment that erased all signs from my skin of the scaling ugliness and showed the world my true face. You were right to see past the oozing scarlet pustules on my flesh. Just as your absence was part of me, so was the hurt inflicted by others’ words, seared into my soul with the red-hot irons of gratuitous cruelty. Later, I met the most beautiful girl in the world, but because I doubted myself, I turned into a sorry lapdog and she soon found love in someone else’s arms.
I remember, you were little still, you’d just started grade school and the minute you got home at the end of the day, you’d grab your schoolbag to go work with your friend Martin, who was hopeless in school; no one made you do it, it was your own unprompted choice …
I did help him, but the truth is, he copied my homework, he couldn’t make head or tail of either letters or numbers. You talk about my generosity, my big heart that got me into so much trouble because I could never say no to people living hand to mouth; I sometimes felt taken advantage of and that made me sad, but I’d still agree to help out. I loved it when you took me in your arms, moved by my good boy acts of kindness; even as a grown-up I sought your gaze, I was always the little boy waiting on his mother. I missed you horribly, so much so that I never grew inside; that tender, fragile spot curled up on itself the day I thought that, because you’d abandoned me, you no longer loved me. You know what I mean, you knew what I felt and your words weren’t enough to fill the deep, dark pit you’d dug in my gut, not unlike the one you feel now I’m gone. But all things are relative, nothing is bad in and of itself, there is only life: we each have strengths and weaknesses and humankind can seem so absurd, so insane at times. Don’t try to understand, instead live, walk toward the horizon you see each morning, be calm and serene, I repeat: I am with you and in you, I am part of your emotions and your flesh, more so than when I lived, I assure you, I’m at peace now, utterly free and content.
With my eyes closed, I saw you walking through the dark, dressed in black the way you always used to, leaning forward, striding across sombre skies toward a gap in the clouds, a light brighter than the sun. The moment, the sacred moment, arrived at last, and a silken warmth flooded my breast, irradiating my entire being.
You disappeared and left us the earth.
Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau is an internationally recognized visual artist and writer of Cree origin. She has published three novels, Ourse bleue, L’amant du lac and L’enfant hiver, and two poetry collections, De rouge et de blanc (honourable mention for the Télé-Québec award) and Je te veux vivant. An unpublished collection, “Le crabe noir,” won the literary prize for poetry and the booksellers’ prize for the Abitibi-Témiscamingue award for poetry. She makes her home in Abitibi. She has been invited to literary festivals in the Caribbean, Polynesian Islands and Europe with her novels and collections of poetry. As a visual artist, she was awarded the Regional Award of Excellence by Quebec’s Conseil des arts et des lettres and her work has been exhibited in Canada and abroad.
Susan Ouriou is an award-winning writer and literary translator who has published over 20 book translations, as well as 15 co-translations with Christelle Morelli. Ouriou was awarded the Governor General’s Award for Literary Translation in 2009 for Pieces of Me, and several of her translations have been featured on the honour list compiled by the International Board on Books for Youth (IBBY.) Ouriou co-founded the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC) and has worked as faculty translating and interpreting for the Banff Centre’s Aboriginal Emerging Writers (now Indigenous Writing) residency. She is also the author of a shortlisted novel, Damselfish, and a just-published young adult novel, Nathan.
Christelle Morelli is a French–English literary translator and teacher in the Francophone school system. She has translated the anthology Languages of Our Land: Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec and the children’s book Blanche Hates the Night, as well as done over 15 co-translations with Susan Ouriou. Morelli and Ouriou’s co-translation Stolen Sisters: The Story of Two Missing Girls, Their Families and How Canada Has Failed Indigenous Women was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation in 2015.
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