In Search of April Raintree

by Beatrice Mosionier

  IN SEARCH OF APRIL RAINTREE

  BEATRICE MOSIONIER

  25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

  © 2008 by Beatrice Mosionier

  Pages of this electronic publication designated as reproducible may be reproduced under licence from Access Copyright. All other pages may only be reproduced with the express written permission of Portage & Main Press, or as permitted by law.

  Your purchase allows you to do the following:

  • Install the product on one or more computers used by you, at home and at work.

  • Reproduce pages, electronically or graphically, where noted for your classroom use.

  You are not permitted to do the following:

  • another person to use the product.

  • Rent, loan, sell, distribute, or redistribute the product to any other person or entity.

  • Make the product available on any file-sharing or application-hosting service.

  • Electronically send the product to another person.

  • Copy the materials other than as necessary to support the uses permitted.

  Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Portage & Main Press gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Province of Manitoba through the Department of Culture, Heritage & Tourism and the Manitoba Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Government of Canada through the Canada book fund (CBF) for our publishing activities.

  Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada.

  Print format ISBN 978-1-55379-173-7

  PDF format ISBN 978-1-55379-180-5

  ePub format ISBN 978-1-55379-257-4

  PORTAGE & MAIN PRESS

  Tel.: 204.987.3500

  Toll free: 800.667.9673

  Fax: 866.734.8477

  E-mail: books@portageandmainpress.com

  www.pandmpress.com

  Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  Author’s Note

  Reading Group Questions

  About the Author

  1

  Memories. Some memories are elusive, fleeting, like a butterfly that touches down and is free until it is caught. Others are haunting: you’d rather forget them, but they won’t be forgotten. And some are always there. No matter where you are, they are there too. I always felt most of my memories were better avoided, but now I think it’s best to go back in my life before I go forward. Last month, April 18th, I celebrated my twenty-fourth birthday. That’s still young, but I feel so old.

  My father, Henry Raintree, was of mixed blood, a little of this, a little of that, and a whole lot of Indian. My sister, Cheryl, who was eighteen months younger than me, had inherited his looks: black hair, dark brown eyes that turned black when angry, and brown skin. There was no doubt they were both of Indian ancestry. My mother, Alice, on the other hand, was part Irish and part Ojibway. Like her, I had pale skin, not that it made any difference when we were living together as a family.

  We lived in Norway House, a small northern Manitoba town, before my father contracted tuberculosis. Then we moved to Winnipeg. I used to hear him talk about TB and how it had caused him to lose everything he had worked for. Both my Mom and Dad took medicine, and I always thought it was because of TB. Although we moved from one rundown house to another, I remember only one, on Jarvis Avenue. And of course, we were always on welfare. I knew that from the way my Dad used to talk. Sometimes he would put himself down, and sometimes he counted the days till he could walk down to the place where they gave out cheques and food stamps.

  It seemed to me that after the welfare-cheque days would come the medicine days. That was when my parents would take a lot of medicine, and it always changed them. Mom, who was usually quiet and calm, would talk and laugh in a loud, obnoxious way, and Dad, who already talked and laughed a lot, just got clumsier. The times they took the medicine the most were the times when many other grown-ups would come over and drink it with them. To avoid these people, I would take Cheryl into our tiny bedroom, close the door, and put my box of old, rusted toys in front of the door. Besides the aunties and uncles out there, there were strange men, and they would start yelling, and sometimes they would fight, right in our small house. I would lie on my cot, listening to them knocking things over and bumping into walls. Sometimes they would crash into our door and I would grow even more petrified, even though I knew Mom and Dad were out there with them. It always took a long time before I could get to sleep.

  There were days when the aunties and uncles would bring their own children. I didn’t much like their children either, for they were sullen and cranky and wouldn’t talk or play with us, or else they were aggressive bullies who only wanted to fight us. Usually, their faces were dirty, their noses were runny, and I was sure they had done “it” in their pants because they smelled terrible. If they had to stay the night, I remember I would put our blankets on the floor for them, stubbornly refusing to share our cot with them. One time Mom had let a little girl sleep with us, and during the night she had wet the bed. It had been a long time before the smell went away.

  My mother didn’t always drink that medicine, not as much as my father did, and those were the times that she would clean the house, bake, and do the laundry and sewing. If she was really happy, she would sing us songs, and at night, she would rock Cheryl to sleep. But that was one kind of happiness that didn’t come often enough for me. To prolong that mood in her, I would help her with everything, chattering away in desperation, lest my own silences would push her back into her normal remoteness. My first cause for vanity was that, out of all the houses of the people we knew, my mother kept the cleanest house (except for those mornings after the medicine days). She would tell her friends that it was because she was raised in a residential school and then worked as a housekeeper for the priest in her hometown.

  Cheryl and I always woke up before our parents, so I would tend to Cheryl’s needs. I would feed her whatever was available, then wash her, and dress her in clean clothes. Weather permitting, we would then go off to the park, which was a long walk, especially on hot summer days. Our daily routine was dictated by our hunger pangs and by daylight. Darkness brought out the boogeymen, and Dad told us what they did to little children. I liked all of Dad’s stories, even the scary ones, because I knew that Cheryl and I were always safe in the house.

  It was very rare when Mom would go downtown to the department stores where they had ride-on stairs. Mom didn’t like going shopping. I guess it was because sometimes people were rude to her. When that happened, Mom would get a hurt look in her eyes and act apologetic. On one day, I didn’t notice any of that, because that day I saw my first black person. I was sure he was a boogeyman and wondered how come he wandered around so easily, as if nothing was wrong. I stared at him, and he stopped at the watch counter. Since Mom and Cheryl were nearby and there were a lot of other people close enough, I went over to him. My voice was very shaky, but I asked, “Mr. Boogeyman, what do you do with the children you catch?”

  “What’s that?” His voice seemed to rumble from deep within him, and when he turned to look at me, I thought he had the kindest eyes I’d ever seen. Maybe, though, they changed at night.

  No, he couldn’t be bad. “Nothing,” I said, and walked back to my mother’s side.

  When winter came, we didn’t go to the park anymore. T
here was plenty to do with the snow around our house. Sometimes Mom would come out and help us build our snowmen and our snow houses.

  One December, we all went downtown to watch the Santa Claus Parade. That was such a thrilling, magical day for me. After that, we went to visit an aunt and uncle where Cheryl and I had a glorious old time feasting on cake, fruit, and hot chocolate. Then we walked home. Dad threw snowballs at Mom for a bit before he carried sleepy-eyed Cheryl in his arms. I was enchanted by all the coloured Christmas lights and the decorations in the store windows. I think that was the best day ever, because Mom and Dad laughed for real.

  Not long after that, many people came to our house to drink the medicine, and in the beginning, they all sounded cheerful and happy. But later, they started their yelling, and even the women were angrily shouting. One woman was loudly wailing, and it sounded like she’d gotten smacked a few times.

  In the middle of the night when everything had been quiet for a while, I got up to go to the toilet. People were sprawled all over the place, sleeping and snoring. One man, though, who was half sitting up against a wall, grumbled and shifted, and I saw that his pants were open. I knew that I should hurry, but I just stood there watching as he played around with his thing. Then he peed right in my direction. That made me move back out of the room. I went through the kitchen, and there was my Dad sleeping on the bare floor, still in his clothes. I wondered why, so I went to their bedroom. When I put the light switch on, I saw my mother. She was bare-naked and kissing a strange man. I guess she realized that someone was in the room, and she sat up while trying to hide her nakedness. She looked scared, but when she saw that it was only me, she hissed at me, “Get out of here!”

  I forgot about having to go to the toilet and went back to my bed. I tried to figure everything out, but I couldn’t.

  A few days later, I was sitting on my Dad’s lap and Mom was doing the laundry. A woman came to visit, but then it became an argument. She was shouting terrible names, and she began to push my mother around. Meanwhile, Dad just watched them and laughed, and even egged them on. To me this was all so confusing. I just knew that Mom shouldn’t have kissed someone else; my Dad shouldn’t have slept on the floor; that old man shouldn’t have played with himself and then peed on the floor; and right now, Dad ought to be trying to protect Mom, not finding the whole thing amusing. I squirmed off Dad’s lap, walked over to that woman, and kicked her as hard as I could, yelling for her to leave Mom alone. I heard Dad laughing even louder. But it worked, because the strange woman left.

  That winter, I noticed that my Mom was getting fatter and fatter. When winter was finished, my Mom got so sick from being fat that she had to go away to the hospital. One of our aunties came to stay with us. She and Dad would sit around joking and drinking their medicine. I used to wonder how come they all drank this medicine, yet no one ever got better. Another thing: they couldn’t all be sick like Mom and Dad, could they? So one evening while Dad and Auntie Eva were busy playing cards, I picked up his glass and took a quick swallow before he could stop me. Ugh! It burned my mouth and my throat and made me cough and choke. I spit it out as fast as I could. It was purely awful, and I was even more puzzled as to why they all seemed to enjoy taking it. I felt so sorry for them and I was real glad I wasn’t sick.

  When my mother came back, she wasn’t as fat as when she left. The snow was all gone too. We celebrated my sixth birthday and one of my presents was a book. I took my book with me everywhere. There was talk of my going to school in the fall. I didn’t know what reading and printing were like, but I was very curious about them. I looked forward to school. I promised Cheryl I would teach her reading and printing as soon as I knew how. In the meantime, I pretended to read to her, and as I turned the pages of my book like Mom did, I would make up stories to match the pictures in the book.

  A few weeks later, we came home from a day’s ramblings to find a real live baby in Mom’s arms. Mom was rocking it and singing a soft melody to it. I asked her, “Where did it come from?”

  “The hospital. She was very sick. She’s your new little sister, Anna.”

  “Will she have to take that medicine? It tastes awful,” I said, pitying the baby for being sick.

  “No, she drinks milk. The nurse came this morning and helped me prepare some,” Mom answered. I knew from the way she talked that she hadn’t taken any medicine so far. I hoped that, from now on, she wouldn’t have to take it anymore. I studied the baby for a while. It was so tiny and wrinkled. I decided I’d much rather play with Cheryl.

  That summer, Cheryl and I spent whole days at the park. I would make us sandwiches of bread and lard so we wouldn’t have to walk back home in the middle of the day. That’s when it seemed the hottest. We played on the swings and slides and in the sandbox, as long as they weren’t being used by the other children. We would build sandcastles and install caterpillars and ladybugs in them. If the other children were there, we would stay apart from them and watch the man mow the park grass, enjoying the smell of the fresh-cut lawns, and the sound from the motor of the lawnmower. Sometimes the droning noise lulled Cheryl to sleep, and I would sit by her to wait for her to wake up.

  Two different groups of children went to the park. One group was the brown-skinned children who looked like Cheryl in most ways. Some of them even came over to our house with their parents, but they were dirty-looking and they dressed in real raggedy clothes. I didn’t care to play with them at all. The other group was white-skinned, and I used to envy them, especially the girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. They seemed so clean and fresh, and reminded me of flowers I had seen. Some of them were freckled, but they didn’t seem to mind. To me, I imagined they were very rich and lived in big, beautiful houses, and there was so much I wondered about them. But they didn’t care to play with Cheryl and me. They called us names and bullied us.

  We were ignored completely only when both groups were at the park. Then they were busy yelling names at each other. I always thought that the white-skinned group had the upper hand in name-calling. Of course, I didn’t know what “Jew” or the other names meant. Cheryl was too young to realize anything, and she was usually happy-go-lucky.

  Our free, idle days with our family came to an end one summer afternoon. We came home, and there were some cars in front of our house. One had flashing red lights on it, and I knew it was a police car. When we entered the house, Mom was sitting at the table, openly weeping, right in front of all these strange people. Empty medicine bottles were on the small counter and the table, but I couldn’t figure out why the four people were there. A nice-smelling woman knelt down to talk to me.

  “My name is Mrs. Grey. I bet you’re April, aren’t you? And this little girl must be Cheryl.” She put her hand on Cheryl’s head in a friendly gesture, but I didn’t trust her.

  I nodded that we were April and Cheryl, but I kept my eyes on my mother. Finally I asked, “Why is Mom crying? Did you hurt her?”

  “No, dear, your mother is ill and she won’t be able to take care of you anymore. Would you like to go for a car ride?” the woman asked.

  My eyes lit up with interest. We’d been in a taxi a few times and it had been a lot of fun. But then I thought of Baby Anna. I looked around for her. “Where’s Anna?”

  “Anna’s sick,” the woman answered. “She’s gone to the hospital. Don’t worry, we’ll take you for a ride to a nice, clean place. You and Cheryl, okay?”

  That was not okay. I wanted to stay. “We can stay with Daddy. He will take care of us. You can go away now,” I said. It was all settled.

  But Mrs. Grey said in a gentle voice, “I’m afraid not, honey. We have to take you and Cheryl with us. Maybe if your Mommy and Daddy get well enough, you can come to live with them again.”

  The man who was with Mrs. Grey had gone to our bedroom to get all our things. He came back with a box. I was more worried, and I looked from the woman to the man, then over to one policeman who was looking around, then to the other who was writing in a n
otepad. I finally looked back at my Mom for reassurance. She didn’t look at me, but I said in a very definite manner, “No, we’d better stay here.”

  I was hoping Dad would walk in. He would make them all go away. He would make everything right.

  The man with the box leaned over and whispered something to my mother. She forced herself to stop sobbing, then slowly got up and came over to us. I could see that she was struggling to maintain control.

  “April, I want you and Cheryl to go with these people. It will only be for a little while. Right now, Daddy and me, well, we can’t take care of you. You’ll be all right. You be good girls, for me. I’m sorry ...”

  She couldn’t say any more because she started crying again. I didn’t like to see her this way, especially in front of these people. She hugged us, and that’s when I started crying, too. I kind of knew that she was really saying goodbye to us, but I was determined that we were not going to be taken away. I clung to my Mom as tight as I could. They wouldn’t be able to pull me away from her, and then they would leave. I expected Mom to do the same. But she didn’t. She pushed me away. Into their grasping hands. I couldn’t believe it. Frantically, I screamed, “Mommy, please don’t make us go. Please, Mommy. We want to stay with you. Please don’t make us go. Oh, Mom, don’t!”

  I tried hard to put everything into my voice, sure that they would all come to their senses and leave us be. There were a lot of grown-up things I didn’t understand that day. My mother should have fought with her life to keep us with her. Instead, she had handed us over. It didn’t make any sense to me.

  The car door slammed shut on us.

  “Please, don’t make us go,” I said in a subdued, quiet voice, knowing at the same time that I was wasting my breath. I gripped Cheryl’s hand, and we set off into the unknown. We were both crying, and ignored the soothing voices from the strangers in front.

  How could Mom do this to us? What was going to happen to us? Well, at least I still had Cheryl. I thought this to myself over and over again. Cheryl kept crying, although I’m not sure she really knew why. She loved car rides, but if I was crying, I’m sure she felt she ought to be crying too.