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Tears in the Grass

Page 19

by Lynda A. Archer


  Maybe it was Louise’s fatigue that caused her to let her guard down. Since Elinor had come to live with her, Louise hadn’t been sleeping well. She spent far more time than she’d like worrying about Elinor. Worrying that she’d fall down the stairs, worrying that she’d fall asleep with a cigarette still burning, worrying that her mother would burn the house down. One day Louise came home from work to find her mother with the oven on and the oven door wide open. When Louise suggested Elinor turn up the furnace, Elinor said there was no need to heat the whole house, and she liked seeing the red of the oven coils. Louise prayed her mother didn’t toss paper or scraps of wood into the oven to see the element glow even redder.

  Louise dialled the number. Later her mother would say it was meant to be. The signs were all there: her assistant out of the office, Louise distracted, restless, more likely to act on impulse. If Anita had returned the call, she might have dismissed the person as a crank.

  After two rings a woman answered.

  “It’s Louise Preston. You left a message?”

  “Yes. Yes I did. Thank you. Thank you for calling. How are you today?”

  “Fine.”

  Bad idea to have called, Louise thought.

  “I wondered if you would …. I’m … I’m not quite sure how to say this.”

  Louise crumpled the message and threw it at the wastebasket.

  “Is Elinor Greystone your mother?”

  Louise hesitated. “Why do you ask?”

  “I’m sorry to intrude. Is she your mother? Did you find her?”

  “I’m not in the habit of giving out personal information over the telephone.” Louise wove her fingers through the coils of the telephone cord.

  “Of course, and I wouldn’t, either. It’s just that I’ve been searching for my mother for months. Well, years really. And when I saw that picture of that woman on the television a few months ago, I thought there was a strong resemblance. I should have called sooner, but for a couple of weeks I thought it wasn’t so. Then I was quite sick and not able to do anything.”

  The woman took in a deep breath. “My name is Victoria Witherspoon. I was adopted at birth, never met my mother, but my parents told me she was Indian and I was born in Saskatchewan. There was no birth certificate.”

  In the past few weeks Louise and Alice, on weekends and after work when they could manage it, had increased their search efforts. Alice had visited reserves near the location of the residential school. She’d talked with chiefs and elders, even a couple of students who’d been at the school when Elinor was there. One woman remembered Elinor, even that there had been a child. No one had any idea what happened to the child. Louise had made repeated calls to Indian Affairs; they had not been co-operative. Whatever records they had, they weren’t letting go of. She contacted Vital Statistics; no birth had been registered. John, bless his heart, knew a couple of priests. He called them, asked for their help in accessing church records. He was still trying. Louise yearned to find the name of the nun who had taken the child, and the names of the priests. Probably all dead. Did they need to start visiting cemeteries in the area?

  Louise pushed back her chair and moved to the corner of her desk, as far as the phone cord would allow.

  “Is Elinor your mother? Did you find her?” Victoria asked again.

  “Yes. And yes.”

  “Surely this is awkward for you. Perhaps a letter? I could tell you more about myself. I have so many questions. Would that be all right? If I sent a letter?”

  Louise pawed through the leaves of the ivy plant that trailed over her desk, pinching off yellowed and brown leaves. She poked her finger into the soil, still moist.“Pardon?”

  “Could I send you a letter?”

  Louise guided her body back into her chair. Bright Eyes? Her mother’s child? Probably some gold digger. Maybe she should tell her that up front, save her the cost of the postage. Her mother had no money. “Sure … I’ll look out for it.”

  “In a few days I’ll get it over to you. Maybe a bit longer; my energy is limited these days.”

  “Do you mind if I ask where you live?”

  “In southern Ontario, a small town called Kincardine. Do you know it? It’s on Lake Huron. Quite a lovely area.”

  “I’m not familiar with it.”

  “Well then, I won’t keep you,” Victoria said.

  “Hang on. I want to get your name down. And your phone number, can you give it to me again?”

  “Of course.” Victoria recited her number.

  “What’s your birthdate?”

  “Well, like I said, I don’t have my original certificate. I do have a birth certificate. I guess my father, being a physician, he managed to get one.”

  “And what’s the date on it?”

  “It says April 27, 1893.”

  “Thank you. And … and for place of birth, what does it say?”

  “Yes, well, that’s the funny part that I will tell you more about in my letter. Ontario. It gives Ontario as my place of birth, but that’s not what my father told me.”

  Louise emptied her briefcase. She stared at the stack of files. She picked up one, fanned through the pages, and dropped it to one side. The likelihood that this woman was Elinor’s daughter was such a long shot. Hundred to one, thousand to one odds. She had a sudden flash of worry. Where was the paper with the woman’s information? She slammed files around on her desk before noticing the paper on her chair: April 27, 1893. Her mother would have been fifteen or sixteen years old.

  She folded the paper in half and looked up to the photograph of her father.

  “Now what, Daddy? Should I tell her? Get her all excited. And if it doesn’t come to anything? If I never hear from this Victoria woman again?”

  She tucked the slip of paper into a drawer in her desk that she kept for confidential files. She was not going to tell Elinor, or Alice, about the call. Not yet.

  Like a lawyer building a case, she needed more evidence.

  30

  They met in the north end of the city, a part of town that Alice rarely had cause to go to, it being the poorer, more industrial area. Most of the people who’d come for the meeting — rarely were there more than twelve or fifteen — were at the snack table at the back of the room, chatting, joking, fixing coffee or tea, grabbing cookies, an apple or orange. The numbers hadn’t diminished since Alice’s first meeting, but they’d not grown, either. It was a fluke that Alice had found out about the meetings. Wanda had hired a Native man to repair her fence. When he’d finished the work she’d invited him in for tea. She asked him what he thought about the plans for the amusement park on Indian burial lands. At first he didn’t want to talk about it, but when Wanda said she thought it was appalling, he agreed and told her there were plans to protest. Wanda later told Alice she must go to these meetings. Although fearful, Alice knew Wanda was right.

  One of the elders, a stocky man with a pocked face wearing a blue bomber jacket bearing the insignia of a local electrical firm, rose to give the prayer. He spoke first in Cree, then in English. He thanked the Creator for his support at this difficult time, for bringing everyone safely to the meeting, for the food and everyone’s good health.

  Thomas, a tall, muscled man with a braid down his back who was dressed in faded blue jeans and a blue Toronto Maple Leafs T-shirt, spoke next. One of the organizers, Thomas, had a voice that was deep and resonant. Alice thought he’d be good on the school playground during recess when you wanted to get the kids’ attention. Thomas said their letters and petitions and telephone calls to municipal and provincial officials had gone unnoticed. “No more attention given to them than a waterfall gives to a grain of sand,” he said. The groundbreaking was going to happen within the next couple of weeks. It seemed their cause was of less importance than a gopher in a wheat field. (The province had recently approved funding to assist farmers with containing an outbreak of gopher activity on farmland.)

  After Thomas’s update, a skinny man with braids and a scar that
ran the length of his left cheek spoke. He said they’d all heard the stories from their ancestors. “We’re agreeable and helpful, and the next thing we know we’re living in a corral, with barely enough land to support three horses. I don’t think we’ve got any choice. We are not amused. We don’t care to be amused. We don’t think our ancestors will be amused. And we’ve been riding real horses for a couple of hundred years. I, for one, am not getting on a pink-and-green horse that has a pole stuck through its belly and never shits.”

  Some chuckled and nodded. Others refilled their coffee, lit cigarettes. There was a communal exhalation of smoke.

  A young woman, her hair in braids, her hands covered in scabs, who seemed to need a drag off her cigarette after every fifth word, said they needed to stop holding on to their anger. Indian agents had been selling parcels of land to the local farmers in her grandparents’ time, before she was born. “What kind of progress is it that shows no respect for the dead, or the living, for that matter?” she asked. “I say we go there, join hands, lie down, and put a stop to progress.”

  Although she had been to five or six meetings and was growing fond of many of the people, especially Thomas and his mother, Elizabeth, Alice had not spoken to the larger group. It was time.

  “Last week my VP, whom I thought understood, pulled me aside. He was polite, chose his words carefully. He told me there had been complaints from some parents, wouldn’t tell me which parents. Maybe I should cut back on the Indian ‘handicrafts,’ as he called them — stories about animals, visits from elders.” She shoved her hands into her pockets, made them into fists. “I was a fool to think he cared, that he understood. He understands as far as it meets his needs. I thought he wanted me at Northview so that the Indian students got a better deal. Now I’m thinking he saw me as a policewoman. Maybe I’d keep them in check. He could put in his annual report that he had an Indian staff member and there were fewer stabbings, drunken parents at the school. Maybe a couple of the Indian kids actually got some passing marks, learned how to do their multiplication tables.” She threw up her hands. “I’m sorry. I’ve gotten way off track. I think we need to act. Maybe set up a few bingo tables in one of their cemeteries.”

  The group nodded and cheered, banged on the tabletops. Others spoke, echoing Alice’s comments. When the meeting ended, the woman who was the chain smoker, Raylene, slapped Alice on the back and said she wished she’d had Alice for a teacher. She said she couldn’t take the name-calling, the bullying, and that the teachers were as bad as the students. She’d dropped out of school in grade seven.

  After the meeting, lingering with Thomas and Elizabeth in the parking lot, swirls of smoke from Thomas’s cigarette filling the space between them, Alice was restless, excited. With Thomas, Elizabeth, and the others, she had a sense of connection, kinship, a shared vision, a sense of community and history.

  Elizabeth said she’d make a batch of doughnuts for the protest. Thomas laughed and said if the going got tough, they’d make a peace offering of doughnuts to the police.

  “Or we could use them as ammunition,” he said.

  “A waste of good food,” said Elizabeth.

  “I can see the headline already,” Thomas said, “Indians charged with pastry assault on RCMP. Their punishment: provide a thorough scrubbing of all police uniforms until they are free of Indian crumbs.”

  “Thomas!” his mother said, giggling and swatting at him.

  “I like the image of a doughnut with white icing and sprinkles dangling from the end of a gun,” Alice said.

  “Do you two have any idea how much work doughnuts take?” Elizabeth asked.

  Thomas put an arm around his mother. “I’ll help you. We’ll make chocolate ones with red icing for us and white ones with especially big holes for the white cops. They can put two donuts together to make a pair of binoculars. Help them to see things more clearly.”

  “You are nuts,” his mother said.

  “But you love me anyway,” Thomas said, a grin on his face.

  “Don’t push it.”

  They were readying to part when Elizabeth asked about Elinor. How was her health? Did they need help with her? Would she like a visitor?

  “She’s frail … but she’s all right.” Alice hesitated, surprised by her own tears. “I think her time is coming.” Her mother had been adamant that they not tell others why Elinor had taken off, the fact that there had been a child.

  Elizabeth squeezed Alice’s hand, then drew her into a hug, patted her back. “Sometimes it’s a blessing,” Elizabeth said.

  Alice strolled to her truck. Thomas honked and waved and shouted, “Doughnuts!” as he sputtered by in his green Volkswagen Beetle. When Alice had first seen Thomas’s contortions trying to cram his six-and-a-half-foot, two-hundred-pound body into the car, she’d asked why he’d chosen that vehicle. He said it served as a daily reminder of a body, a person trying to get somewhere and into something where he doesn’t fit. “Kind of like Indians in white society,” he said. “You never really get comfortable. That’s why you have to keep your own culture.”

  There was chaos on the prairie when the fires came.

  A time of drought; hardly a day went by without a fire. The herd hung in one place, thirsting but too hot to seek out water. The grass was so dry it crackled with a breeze and crunched beneath one’s hooves.

  Fires on the prairie move like the wind. They can leap higher than a rubbing stone.

  The fire I remember best came up fast and moved with the speed of a hawk plunging to earth.

  I outran that fire. Others did not. Not the young. Nor the very old.

  Screeches of panic.

  Hair and flesh on fire. The air filled with smoke and the bitter scent of flesh.

  Skin blackened and charred.

  I wanted to run as far as the great waters.

  Many of the bison who were burned but survived had their eyes swollen shut. The poor creatures bumped into one another, tripped over those who had died, and stumbled into the coulees. Eventually, they fell to the ground, weakened from starvation.

  Soon the vultures, owls, and wolves came.

  The fire in this museum was worse than the fires on the prairie.

  You hope that the curator, janitor, a fireman gets to you before it’s too late.

  For some, it was a second death.

  The museum got hotter and hotter. Walls collapsed. The glass burst, scattering fragments like raindrops.

  I wanted to turn away. I didn’t want to watch the gallery opposite mine.

  The fire flew across the floor and shot up the legs of the antelope. I saw the terror in the creature’s eyes. For a second I saw the wires and bits of wood. Then, only triumphant flames.

  I feel cold thinking of that time.

  The odour of smoke in my coat stayed for weeks.

  The worst was the curator. Shouting and shouting. Save the bison. Save the bison. Never mind about the others.

  Save the damned bison.

  The old Indian woman came again. She looks so tired; she doesn’t talk to me much even though I have tried to speak to her. She speaks often to someone else while she draws — Bright Eyes, I think the name is.

  31

  Shivering from the March winds and the dash across the park to her office, Louise wriggled into a thick sweater, shoved off her shoes, and sought out the worn brown moccasins beneath her desk. She leaned back in her chair as a wide yawn escaped her mouth. She’d had the same dream, the one with Ian Scott, again last night. It was the third time in the past two weeks. She dreaded sleep; she stayed late in her study, hoping that reaching a place of exhaustion would let her get through the night. In last night’s dream, Scott’s eyes were squinting and dark, filled with anger. He didn’t grab or chase after her as he had in other dreams, but no matter how far she ran from him or where she went, he was always waiting. And watching.

  She couldn’t talk to John. She couldn’t talk to anyone. To do that would incriminate herself. She must speak to Mar
y.

  She pulled the day’s mail toward her and flipped through the newspapers, brown manila and white legal envelopes. Her secretary had sorted the letters into professional and personal. Louise rarely got personal mail at her office. She stared at the large, awkward script on the plump pale pink envelope with its Ontario return address. Since their phone call seven or eight days earlier, Louise had thought often of Victoria, wondering when, or if, she’d send a letter. Wondering if there was anything she could do if no letter came.

  Louise sliced the letter opener through the fold of the envelope and slipped out the contents — several pages of unlined paper. On many pages, the writing drifted downward. In places the script was shaky. But despite these penmanship characteristics, what was written was legible.

  March 24, 1969

  Kincardine, Ontario

  Dear Mrs. Louise Preston:

  I have had a good life. I was blessed with wonderful adoptive parents. Nevertheless, in the last few years the desire to know my real parents has grown intense. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t wonder who my mother was. I confess I don’t understand this. Maybe it comes with age, since I hardly gave it a thought when I was younger. My parents were always truthful with me that they were not my birth parents. As soon as I was of an age where I could think of such things, it was pretty obvious that I didn’t look like either of them. They were both fair, and there was me, with my black hair and dark skin.

  My father was a physician. In Saskatchewan he had been the doctor for the Indian residential school in the valley. I never knew its name. Not until I was in my twenties did Father tell me that the priest at the school had asked for his help. One of the students had had a child. The priest asked Father if someone in his practice might take her. That was me! How simply things were done in those days.

 

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