Pepsi banged about in the bathroom and came out with her freshly coiffed mohawk and her backpack slung over her shoulder. “What’s up your butt?” she said.
“Do you want me to leave? Is that it?”
“Do what you want. This place is like an oven,” Pepsi said. “Who can deal with this bullshit?” She slammed the front door behind her.
The apartment was quiet now, except for the chirpy weatherman on the TV promising another week of record highs. I moved out to the balcony. The headlights from the traffic cut into my eyes, bright and painful. Cola and Aunt Erma bumped around upstairs, then their bedroom doors squeaked shut and I was alone. I had a severe caffeine buzz. Shaky hands, fluttery heart, mild headache. It was still warm outside, heat rising from the concrete, stored up during the last four weeks of weather straight from hell. I could feel my eyes itching. This was the third night I was having trouble getting to sleep.
Tired and wired. I used to be able to party for days and days. You start to hallucinate badly after the fifth day without sleep. I don’t know why, but I used to see leprechauns. These waist-high men would come and sit beside me, smiling with their brown wrinkled faces, brown eyes, brown teeth. When I tried to shoo them away, they’d leap straight up into the air, ten or twelve feet, their green clothes and long red hair flapping around them.
A low, grey haze hung over Vancouver, fuzzing the streetlights. Air-quality bulletins on the TV were warning the elderly and those with breathing problems to stay indoors. There were mostly semis on the roads this late. Their engines rumbled down the street, creating minor earthquakes. Pictures trembled on the wall. I took a sip of warm, flat Jolt, let it slide over my tongue, sweet and harsh. It had a metallic twang, which meant I’d drunk too much, my stomach wanted to heave.
I went back inside and started to pack.
Home Again, Home Again, Jiggity Jig
Jimmy and I lay in the graveyard, on one of my cousin’s graves. We should have been creeped out, but we were both tipsy.
“I’m never going to leave the village,” Jimmy said. His voice buzzed in my ears.
“Mmm.”
“Did you hear me?” Jimmy said.
“Mmm.”
“Don’t you care?” Jimmy said, sounding like I should.
“This is what we’ve got, and it’s not that bad.”
He closed his eyes. “No, it’s not bad.”
I poured myself some cereal. Mom turned the radio up. She glared at me as if it were my fault the Rice Crispies were loud. I opened my mouth and kept chewing.
The radio announcer had a thick Nsga’s accent. Most of the news was about the latest soccer tournament. I thought, That’s northern native broadcasting: sports or bingo.
“Who’s this?” I said to Mom. I’d been rummaging through the drawer, hunting for spare change.
“What?”
It was the first thing she’d said to me since I’d come back. I’d heard that she’d cried to practically everyone in the village, saying I’d gone to Vancouver to become a hooker.
I held up a picture of a priest with his hand on a little boy’s shoulder. The boy looked happy.
“Oh, that,” Mom said. “I forgot I had it. He was Uncle Josh’s teacher.”
I turned it over. Dear Joshua, it read. How are you? I miss you terribly. Please write. Your friend in Christ, Archibald.
“Looks like he taught him more than just prayers.”
“What are you talking about? Your Uncle Josh was a bright student. They were fond of each other.”
“I bet,” I said, vaguely remembering that famous priest who got eleven years in jail. He’d molested twenty-three boys while they were in residential school.
Uncle Josh was home from fishing for only two more days. As he was opening my bedroom door, I said, “Father Archibald?”
He stopped. I couldn’t see his face because of the way the light was shining through the door. He stayed there a long time.
“I’ve said my prayers,” I said.
He backed away and closed the door.
In the kitchen the next morning he wouldn’t look at me. I felt light and giddy, not believing it could end so easily. Before I ate breakfast I closed my eyes and said grace out loud. I had hardly begun when I heard Uncle Josh’s chair scrape the floor as he pushed it back.
I opened my eyes. Mom was staring at me. From her expression I knew that she knew. I thought she’d say something then, but we ate breakfast in silence.
“Don’t forget your lunch,” she said.
She handed me my lunch bag and went up to her bedroom.
I use a recent picture of Uncle Josh that I raided from Mom’s album. I paste his face onto the body of Father Archibald and my face onto the boy. The montage looks real enough. Uncle Josh is smiling down at a younger version of me.
My period is vicious this month. I’ve got clots the size and texture of liver. I put one of them in a Ziploc bag. I put the picture and the bag in a hatbox. I tie it up with a bright red ribbon. I place it on the kitchen table and go upstairs to get a jacket. I think nothing of leaving it there because there’s no one else at home. The note inside the box reads, “It was yours so I killed it.”
“Yowtz!” Jimmy called out as he opened the front door. He came to my house while I was upstairs getting my jacket. He was going to surprise me and take me to the hot springs. I stopped at the top of the landing. Jimmy was sitting at the kitchen table with the present that I’d meant for Uncle Josh, looking at the note. Without seeing me, he closed the box, neatly folded the note, and walked out the door.
He wouldn’t take my calls. After two days, I went over to Jimmy’s house, my heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my temples. Michelle answered the door.
“Karaoke!” she said, smiling. Then she frowned. “He’s not here. Didn’t he tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“He got the job.”
My relief was so strong I almost passed out. “A job.”
“I know. I couldn’t believe it either. It’s hard to believe he’s going fishing, he’s so spoiled. I think he’ll last a week. Thanks for putting in a good word, anyways.” She kept talking, kept saying things about the boat.
My tongue stuck in my mouth. My feet felt like two slabs of stone. “So he’s on Queen of the North?”
Of course, silly,” Michelle said. “We know you pulled strings. How else could Jimmy get on with your uncle?”
The lunchtime buzzer rings as I smash this girl’s face. Her front teeth crack. She screams, holding her mouth as blood spurts from her split lips. The other two twist my arms back and hold me still while the fourth one starts smacking my face, girl hits, movie hits. I aim a kick at her crotch. The kids around us cheer enthusiastically. She rams into me and I go down as someone else boots me in the kidneys.
I hide in the bushes near the docks and wait all night. Near sunrise, the crew starts to make their way to the boat. Uncle Josh arrives first, throwing his gear onto the deck, then dragging it inside the cabin. I see Jimmy carrying two heavy bags. As he walks down the gangplank, his footsteps make hollow thumping noises that echo off the mountains. The docks creak, seagulls circle overhead in the soft morning light, and the smell of the beach at low tide is carried on the breeze that ruffles the water. When the seiner’s engines start, Jimmy passes his bags to Uncle Josh, then unties the rope and casts off. Uncle Josh holds out his hand, Jimmy takes it and is pulled on board. The boat chugs out of the bay and rounds the point. I come out of the bushes and stand on the dock, watching the Queen of the North disappear.
Notes on the Authors
ALEXIE, ROBERT ARTHUR (b. 1956) was born and raised in Fort McPherson in Canada’s Northwest Territories. He became the chief of the Tetlit Gwich’in of Fort McPherson, served two terms as vice president of the Gwich’in Tribal Council and helped obtain a land claim agreement for the Gwich’in of the Northwest Territories. He now lives in Inuvik. He has published Porcupines and China Dolls (2002), and The Pale Indian
(2005).
BOYDEN, JOSEPH (b. 1966) is of Irish, Scottish and Métis heritage. He writes about the First Nations voice, heritage and culture. He teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of New Orleans and splits his time between Louisiana and Canada. The novel Three-Day Road won the Giller Prize in 2008, and he has published the short-story collection Born with a Tooth (2001), Through Black Spruce (2009), and Extrardinary Canadians Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont (2010).
DANDURAND, JOSEPH A. (b. 1964). Kwantlen First Nation, BC. His published works are Upside Down Raven (1992), I Touched the Coyote’s Tongue (1993), Crackers and Soup (1994), No Totem for My Story (1995), Where Two Rivers Meet (1995), Burning for the Dead and Scratching for the Poor (1995), Please Do Not Touch the Indians (1998), Looking into the Eyes of My Forgotten Dreams (1996), Shake (2003), and Buried (2008).
DAVIS, LAUREN B. (b. 1955) was born in Montreal, Quebec, lived in France for over a decade, and now resides in Princeton, New Jersey, where she is Writer-in-Residence at Trinity Episcopalian Church. Rat Medicine and Other Unlikely Curatives (2000) was her first collection of stories. The Stubborn Season (2002), was chosen for the Robert Adams Lecture Series. Her novel, The Radiant City (2005), was a finalist for the Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Prize. An Unrehearsed Desire (2008) was long-listed for the Relit Awards. Her short fiction has also been short-listed for the CBC Literary Awards. Davis has taught fiction writing at the WICE (Paris), The American University of Paris, The Geneva Writers’ Conference, and Seattle University’s Writers’ Conference in Allihies, Ireland. Davis has also lectured on writing at Trent University, Rider University, Humber College and The Paris Writers’ Workshop, and has done numerous readings.
FAVEL, FLOYD (b. 1964) is a Plains Cree theatre and dance director, playwright and journalist. He earned his dramatic credentials at the Native Theatre School in Ontario, the Tuak Teatret in Denmark (a theatrical school for the Greenland Inuit, the Sami of Scandinavia, and Native Americans), and the Ricerca Theatre in Pontedera, Italy. He is one of the founders of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre which is a theatre training program for Indigenous People. His work and methods have been presented at the Denver Art Museum, National Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC, Santa Fe Institute of American Indian Arts, The Globe Theatre, University of Victoria/Australia, Enowkin Centre, UBC-Kelowna, Santa Fe IAIA, New Dance Horizons. He is currently Vice President of the Native American Church of Canada.
HIGHWAY, TOMSON (b. 1951) was born on the Manitoba/Nunavut border to a family of nomadic caribou hunters. He enjoys an international career as playwright, novelist, and pianist/songwriter. His best-known works are the plays The Rez Sisters (1988), Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing (1989) and Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998), and the children’s books Caribou Song (2001), Dragonfly Kites (2002), and Fox on the Ice (2003). For many years, he ran Canada’s premiere Native theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts (based in Toronto), out of which has emerged an entire generation of professional Native playwrights, actors and, more indirectly, the many other Native theatre companies that now dot the country. Among the many awards he has won are the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play and Best Production (three-time winner, five nominations), the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama (two nominations), the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award (two-time winner), the Toronto Arts Award (for outstanding contributions made over the years to the City of Toronto cultural industries, the National Aboriginal Achievement Award, and the Order of Canada.
IPELLIE, ALOOTOOK (b. 1951) is an Inuit illustrator and writer. His published works include Paper stays put: a collection of Inuit writing edited by Robin Gedalof with drawings by Alootook Ipellie (1980), Arctic dreams and nightmares (a collection of drawings and stories) (1993), The Diary of Abraham Ulrikab (2005), Abraham Ulrikab im Zoo: Tagebuch eines Inuk 1880/81, a German translation of The Diary of Abraham Ulrikab (2007), with David MacDonald The Inuit thought of it: amazing Arctic innovations (2008), and with Anne-Marie Bourgeois I shall wait and wait (2009).
KING, THOMAS (b. 1943) was born to a Cherokee father and a mother of Greek and German descent in California, but is a Canadian citizen and has spent much of his adult life in Canada. For ten years, he was a professor of Native Studies at the University of Lethbridge and he is currently a professor at the University of Guelph where he teaches Native literature and Creative Writing. His creative and critical writing has been widely published, and his books include The Native in Literature: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives (1987), All My Relations: An Anthology of Contemporary Canadian Native Fiction (1990), Medicine River (1990), A Coyote Columbus Story (1992), Green Grass, Running Water (1993) was nominated for the Governor General’s award, One Good Story, That One (1993) and Truth and Bright Water (2001).
MOSES, DANIEL DAVID (b. 1952) is a registered Delaware Indian, and grew up on a farm on the Six Nations lands located on the Grand River near Brantford, Ontario. He currently teaches in the Drama Department at Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario, and pursues independent writing projects. His published works and productions include Delicate Bodies (1980), The Dreaming Beauty (1990), Almighty Voice and His Wife (1991, 2009-10), Coyote City (1989, 1991), The White Line: Poems (1991), The Indian Medicine Shows (1995, 2002), Big Buck City (1998), Brébeuf's Ghost: A Tale of Horror in Three Acts (2000), Sixteen Jesuses (2000), Kyotopolis (2008), and the nonfiction collection Pursued by a Bear (2005).
NOLAN, YVETTE (b. 1961) was born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, to an Algonquin mother and an Irish immigrant father. Raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she lived in the Yukon and Nova Scotia before moving to Toronto to serve as Artistic Director of Native Earth Performing Arts. Her plays include Annie Mae’s Movement (2006), BLADE (2010), Job’s Wife (2003), Traps (2004), The Starlight Tour, Two Old Women and Video (1995). She is the editor of Beyond the Pale: Dramatic Writing from First Nations Writers and Writers of Colour (2004), and Refractions: Solo (2010), with Donna-Michelle St Bernard. She was the president of Playwrights Union of Canada from 1998–2001, and of Playwrights Canada Press from 2003–2005.
ROBINSON, EDEN (b. 1968) is Haisla, of the Kitamaak Reserve in B.C. Her published works are Monkey Beach (1997), Traplines (1998), and Blood Sports (2005).
SINCLAIR, NIIGONWEDOM JAMES (b. 1976) has had critical and creative work translated into several languages and can be found in periodicals such as Prairie Fire, Canadian Literature, The Goose, Urban NDN, Canadian Dimension, and The Winnipeg Free Press. In 2009, he co-edited (with Renate Eigenbrod) a double-issue of The Canadian Journal of Native Studies (#29.1&2) focusing on “Responsible, Ethical, and Indigenous-Centred Literary Criticisms of Indigenous Literatures.” Other short stories and essays have appeared in Tales from Moccasin Avenue (2006), Across Cultures/Across Borders: Canadian Aboriginal and Native American Literatures (2009), Stories Through Theories/Theories Through Stories: North American Indian Writing, Storytelling, and Critique (2010), and Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations (2010). Originally from St. Peter’s (Little Peguis) First Nation in Manitoba, he now lives in Winnipeg.
VAN CAMP, RICHARD (b. 1971) is a proud member of the Dogrib (Tlicho) Nation from the Northwest Territories. He is the author of a novel, The Lesser Blessed (1996), which will soon be a movie with First Generation Films, as well as two children’s books with Cree artist, George Littlechild, A Man Called Raven (1997) and What’s the Most Beautiful Thing You Know About Horses? (2003) as well as a collection of his short stories, Angel Wing Splash Pattern (2002). He is also the author of the baby book, Welcome Song for Baby: A Lullaby for Newborns (2007), which was given to every newborn baby in British Columbia in 2008 through the Books for BC Babies program. Van Camp’s new collection of short stories is called The Moon of Letting Go (2009). His first comic book, Path of the Warrior (2009), is out with Cree artist Steve Sanderson. His second will be Kiss Me Deadly.
VERMETTE, KATHARINA (b. 1977) is a Metis writer of poetry and fiction. Her work has appeared in sev
eral literary magazines and compilations, most recently, Home Place 3, Prairie Fire Magazine, and Heute Sin Wir Hier / We Are Here Today, a collection of Canadian Aboriginal writers, compiled and translated into German by Hartmut Lutz and students of Greifswald University. A member of the Aboriginal Writers Collective, and 2010-2011 Blogger in Residence of thewriterscollective.org, Vermette lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
(cover painting) Norval Morrisseau (1932-2007) was an Anishinaabe artist. Known as the “Picasso of the North”, Morrisseau created works depicting the legends of his people, the cultural and political tensions between native Canadian and European traditions, his existential struggles, and his deep spirituality and mysticism. He founded the Woodlands School of Canadian art and was a prominent member of the “Indian Group of Seven.”
Permissions
Robert Arthur Alexie “The Pale Indian” is excerpted from The Pale Indian (Toronto: Penguin, Canada, 2005) and is reprinted by permission of the author and Penguin, Canada. Joseph Boyden “Born With A Tooth” is reprinted by permission of the publisher, Cormorant Books. Richard Van Camp “Love Walked In” is reprinted by permission of the author. Joseph H. Dandurand “Please Do Not Touch the Indians” is reprinted by permission of the author. Lauren B. Davis “Rat Medicine” is reprinted by permission of the author. Floyd Favel “Governor of the Dew” is reprinted by permission of the author. Thomson Highway “Hearts and Flowers” is reprinted by permission of the author. Ipellie Alootook “After Brigitte Bardot” is reprinted by permission of the author. Thomas King “Coyote and the Enemy Aliens” is reprinted by permission of the author. Daniel David Moses “King of the Raft” and “The Witch of Niagara” are reprinted by permission of the author. Yvette Nolan “Scattering Jake” is reprinted by permission of the author. Eden Robinson “Queen of the North” is reprinted by permission of the author. Niigonwedom James Sinclair “Trickster Reflections” originally appeared as “Trickster Reflections (Part II)” in Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations (Eds. Deanna Reder and Linda M. Morra, Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier Press, 2010) and is reprinted by permission of the author. Katherina Vermette “what ndns do” is reprinted by permission of the author.
The Exile Book of Native Canadian Fiction and Drama Page 27