A Green Place for Dying

by R. J. Harlick

  Although most sweat lodges are temporary structures intended for limited use, Marie-Claude had built a semi-permanent one that could be put quickly into action. The fresh boughs suggested she’d been planning a sweat ceremony until her ultimate despair had taken over. Fortunately, dry firewood and kindling were stacked at one end of a platform. But I couldn’t find matches.

  Marie-Claude, lying where I’d left her, was now shaking. I had to act fast. I ran to the workshop and found a barbeque lighter resting beside an oil lamp. Grabbing it and some of the birchbark we’d used for our baskets, I hurried back to the sweat lodge, fearing I would no longer find her inside. Thankfully, she hadn’t stirred. I hoped her desire to live was taking over. I placed some kindling along with the birchbark in the central fire pit. My hands trembled so much, it took me a several tries to flick the lighter into action. Once the blaze had taken hold, I added more kindling and a couple of logs.

  I was shivering almost as much as Marie-Claude. We had to get out of our waterlogged clothes, but we needed something to warm us up until the fire was able to heat up the sweat lodge. Remembering the wolf skins the Lightbodys used for bedding, I raced back to the wigwam to retrieve some.

  In all this time, Marie-Claude hadn’t moved from the position I’d placed her in. And her eyes remained closed, although she kept whispering over and over again, “It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault….”

  I extracted some boughs from the pile and placed one of the wolf skins over them, fur side up. Then I struggled to remove her drenched clothing, all of it, down to her bare skin. Although I’d had little experience undressing babies, I was sure they would offer more help than she did. I half-shoved, half-dragged her onto the warming fur. Her lips and her fingernails were blue. Her entire body shook. As I wrapped the rest of the wolf skins around her, her eyes briefly opened and regarded me with such overwhelming sadness that I wondered if I’d done the right thing by saving her. But no, I couldn’t have left her to drown, the same way I couldn’t let her die on me now.

  I ran back to the lodge to get more furs. By the time I returned, I could feel the heat starting to fill the sweat lodge. Marie-Claude appeared to be asleep in her cocoon of warmth, while the furs’ guard hairs quivered with a life of their own. I threw more logs onto the fire and wondered if I could chance leaving her alone while I ran to the house to get dry clothes for both of us. But remembering the depth of despair in her eyes, I wasn’t entirely certain that she had decided to live. I wouldn’t chance it. Instead I laid her wet clothes out on the opposite platform as near as I could to the fire and did the same with mine. After throwing more wood onto the fire, I burrowed my naked, shivering body under the soft warming furs and waited.

  What I was waiting for, I wasn’t certain. But I dearly hoped that after a sound sleep Marie-Claude would wake up glad to have been given another chance at life.

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  I awoke to a hissing sound and a low murmur. Exhaustion and the warmth of the furs had lulled me to sleep. Except now I was hot, very hot. My face was dripping with sweat, as was my body. At first I was confused, not sure of where I was or why. But when realization hit, I threw off the hot furs and crawled over to the pile covering Marie-Claude. Except she wasn’t there.

  I frantically scanned the dark interior and finally saw her opposite me through the clouds of steam rising from the central pit. She was kneeling on cedar boughs, rocking back and forth, chanting in Algonquin. While she rocked, she dipped a wooden ladle into a birchbark basket filled with water and tossed the liquid onto the hot stones at the bottom of the pit. Another cloud of steam billowed upwards.

  Beside her, several items were laid out on the pinkish-orange underside of a length of birchbark, as if they were sacred items from a medicine bundle. They included a pink and green beaded necklace and a Barbie Doll dressed as an Indian, complete with fringed garments and a feather in her black hair. I wondered if these belonged to her missing daughter. Smudge from a bowl of burning cedar wafted over them. Its sweet burning smell mingled with the cleansing scent of the fresh cedar and the burning sensation of the steam.

  I thought it best to not disturb her. I wasn’t certain she realized I was sitting opposite her. With her eyes closed, she seemed to be performing a ceremony. Perhaps she was praying for the safe return of her daughter.

  I let the hot steam fill every pore of my body as I swayed to the rhythm of her chanting. It felt good. The nervous tension I’d felt after saving her was draining from my body. My main concern now was to somehow convince her that life was worth living. This ceremony gave me reason to hope. I doubted she would perform it if she intended to go back outside and drown herself. But then again, she might be asking the Creator for forgiveness before doing just that.

  I became so immersed in my own thoughts that I wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she suddenly stopped chanting and starting speaking in French in a low, soft voice. She was praying. And I realized with a sinking feeling that she was praying for forgiveness for what she had done to her daughter.

  Before I had a chance to digest the implications, she opened her eyes, and their pale blueness stared at me through the swirling steam. Damp tendrils of hair snaked over her bare shoulders and onto her sagging breasts. Her thinness was evident in the protruding ribs and hipbones.

  “Meg, je suis trés désolée,” she apologized, then switched to English. “I made you get wet in that filthy swamp.” Her voice sounded stronger.

  “Don’t worry about me. I was already soaked from the rain. How are you feeling now?”

  “Merci bien pour me sauver. Thank you for saving me. You have given me a second chance. What I tried to do was wrong. I have prayed to the Lord and to the Creator for forgiveness.”

  “Do I have your word that you won’t try it again?”

  She nodded. “It is against God’s will. Dying was the easy way out. I must live so that each day I am reminded of what I have done to my daughter. It is my cross to bear.”

  I tensed, afraid to ask the obvious question.

  She answered for me. “I killed my daughter.”

  What I’d feared. Fleur had been found dead. Was this the trigger for the mother’s attempted suicide? “I’m so sorry, Marie-Claude. Where did they find her?”

  “They haven’t found her, yet. I only know she is dead. I feel it in my heart as only a mother can.” She stabbed at the limp flesh covering her heart.

  “But you can’t give up hope. We didn’t find any evidence that placed Fleur with Becky when she died. Fleur could still be alive.”

  She shook her head vehemently. “No, she is dead and I killed her.”

  “What are you saying? That you actually harmed her?”

  “I sent her away.”

  “But you didn’t shoot or kill her with a gun or other kind of weapon, did you?”

  “I might as well have. If I hadn’t thrown her out of the house, she would be here safe and sound with me.”

  “But I thought the reason for her leaving was to find a summer job in Ottawa.”

  “That’s what Jeff wanted people to believe. He was very angry with me.”

  “Why did you throw her out of the house?”

  “I found drugs in her dresser.”

  “What kind? Marijuana?” I couldn’t see Fleur using anything stronger.

  “No, it was some pills in a bottle. The label said they were Oxycontin. I’d read some place that they are a narcotic and only available via prescription. Fleur’s a healthy girl. I knew no doctor had given them to her.”

  “Did she say where she got them?” Eric would be very upset to learn about this. For the last several years he and Will had been waging war against drugs on the reserve and thought they’d finally got the upper hand.

  “No, she refused to. Just said a friend had given them to her to hold onto. But she wouldn’t give me his name. She insisted that she hadn’t taken any. And I believed her until I came across the nude photos of her on her c
omputer. I was so angry, I told her to get out of the house. Mon dieu, can you imagine taking pictures of yourself naked then sending them to your friends, like a putain. I’d raised her to be better than that.”

  “But I think with today’s teenagers, these nude photos are really intended as innocent fun. Sexting, they call it.”

  “I don’t care what they call it. Good Catholic girls don’t do such things.”

  “Was this when she went to Ottawa?”

  “Oui, I was so angry I refused to take her to the bus.” Her voice drifted off as she dropped her gaze. “I didn’t even say goodbye.” She whispered. “Mon dieu, my own daughter and I never said goodbye to her. What kind of a mother am I?”

  I watched her shoulders convulse in silent weeping.

  By now the outside coolness had begun to seep in. The distraught woman had become so absorbed in her guilt that she’d forgotten to pour more water onto the hot stones. But with the burning coals long since having died out, I had a feeling that the stones had cooled down too much to produce any more hot steam. I gathered some wolf skins and crawled over to Marie-Claude, careful not to bump my head on the low ceiling. I sat down beside her, wrapped a couple around her and some around me.

  I tried to comfort her. “You’re no different from any mother, who’s upset and worried about the bad influences in her daughter’s life.”

  “But I made no attempt to find out where she was going to stay in Ottawa. I just assumed she would stay with my brother. But I didn’t call him to make sure she arrived. I didn’t even try to contact her on her cell.”

  “But surely your husband would’ve called.”

  “He didn’t. When he came to me wanting to know if she’d arrived safely, I pretended I’d already talked to her. I wanted to teach her a lesson. I wanted to let her know that because of her bad behaviour, her family no longer cared for her.” The tears coursed down her cheeks. “Mon dieu, I am such a bad mother. I should be punished for leaving my child alone in the big city and not caring.”

  I draped my arm around her shoulders. “But I know you. You love your children very much and you’re a good mother, a very good mother. You were just being human. Fleur hurt you badly. Besides you thought she was safely with your brother.”

  She murmured, “Oui. I never thought she wouldn’t go there. So when Richard called me two weeks later and mentioned that she wasn’t at his place, I became very worried. I tried calling her on her cell, left messages, but she never returned my call. That’s when I told Jeff what I’d done.”

  “And what did he do?”

  “He was very angry with me. Told me it was my fault. He called the Ottawa police, but he didn’t tell them about the argument. Still, the police just said she was a runaway and would come home when she wanted to. This made Jeff even madder at me. He drove many times to Ottawa to look for her. But didn’t find her.”

  “Did you go too?”

  She shook her head. “No, Jeff wouldn’t let me. Said she might run away if she saw me. Mon dieu, me, her own mother.” She looked up at me beseechingly. “You see, it’s all my fault. I’ve killed my own daughter.”

  Another flood of tears descended as her body shook with her grief and guilt.

  I wanted to offer her a life raft, but I felt paralyzed by my own guilt, for I too had caused the death of a loved one and knew the agony of never being able to forgive myself. I also knew the terrible impact this could have on a family. No matter how hard they tried to pretend otherwise, they couldn’t forgive you either. They might not tell you to your face, but it came through in the small slights, the forgotten birthdays and infrequent calls and the relentless criticism for even small misdemeanours. Even when they thought they were being nice to you, they couldn’t quite remove the reproach that constantly lurked behind their gaze.

  I suspected that this was behind Jeff’s sudden change in behaviour. He was unable to forgive Marie-Claude, and he wanted to make her pay. It would explain why he wouldn’t let others near her, why he seemed to want to keep her confined to their home.

  But maybe there was something I could do to help the stricken woman. “Tell me, have the Ottawa police resumed their search for Fleur?”

  “No. Jeff’s gone into Ottawa today to see if he can convince them. They still say she’s just a runaway and will come home when she’s ready.”

  “And what do you think? Do you think she is angry enough to stay away?

  “No, it’s not like Fleur. I could see her being mad at me for a couple of weeks, but not for this long. She would miss her sisters, and even if she didn’t want to talk to me, she would call them.”

  “Do you know if she has?”

  “No, they say not.”

  “Are you sure they would tell you, if Fleur told them not to?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose they might want to protect her if they knew about our argument.” A glint of hope suddenly appeared in her eyes. “Do … do you think you could ask them? They might tell you.”

  “I will try. They might not tell me, but perhaps with Summer Grass Woman’s help they would.”

  For the first time in a long while, I saw her lips waver in a smile.

  At that point, the moose hide covering was suddenly whipped aside, and Jeff stepped inside, startling us both.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  Jeff's scowl deepened as he confronted his wife. “I thought I told you to stay in the house.”

  I watched her shrink back into her wolf skins and knew her suicide attempt was best kept between the two of us.

  “It’s all my fault, Jeff,” I said. “I thought Marie-Claude could benefit from a sweat bath. You know how much she values their healing properties, so I suggested we come here. As you can see, we’re just finishing up.”

  His brow furrowed in suspicion, he glared first at me, then at his wife and back to me.

  Although she seemed to cower even further into the furs, she did take my cue and said in a surprisingly strong voice, “Oui, I am much better.”

  She glanced in my direction and smiled wistfully before turning her gaze back to her husband. “Did you have success with the Ottawa police?”

  Unable to stand fully upright under the low ceiling, Jeff moved to the other side of the barely warm fire pit, where he dropped down onto the cedar boughs and crossed his legs. His lips curled in distaste as he flicked a piece of cedar from his immaculate khakis.

  His coal-black eyes flashed in anger. “No, those bastards gave me some mealy mouth crap about giving the case their full attention, but I could tell they didn’t plan to do anything more than what they’ve already done.”

  “I thought Chief Decontie was going to talk to them,” I said, pulling the wolfskins more tightly around me.

  “He did and got the same response. He feels no more optimistic than I do.”

  “Surely Becky’s death is incentive enough?”

  “You’d think.” He shrugged. “I’d say it’s time to pull the media card. I doubt they’d want to see a headline that says, ‘Ottawa police are racists.’ I’m waiting for Eric to get back. He’s got some contacts at CBC and with the local papers.”

  Yes, Eric had been quite successful in his media campaign a couple of years ago, when it was discovered that a number of wells close to the Misanzi River that runs through the reserve had become contaminated by groundwater pollution from a mining operation further upriver. The company had refused to do anything about it until Eric turned the media attention onto them.

  “Sounds like a good idea,” I replied. “In the meantime, we could continue the search on our own.“

  “I’ve already tried that route. I turned Ottawa inside out searching for Fleur when we finally realized she wasn’t at Richard’s.” He glowered at his wife, who shrank even further into the furs. “And it didn’t get me anywhere. Ottawa’s too big a town. You need the capabilities of a city police force to carry out a proper search.”

  “Yeah, but they’re not doing their job,” I counte
red. “So why don’t I give it a go? I got to know the woman from the Welcome Centre who saw her with Becky. She might open up more to me than to the police.” I was certain a bottle of vodka would do the trick quite nicely. “Maybe she can give us some good leads to help narrow the search.”

  He waved his hand dismissively. “Sure, whatever. I’m going to concentrate on siccing the media on the cops.” He turned to his wife. “Come on, Marie-Claude, get dressed.”

  He gathered up her still-damp clothes and passed them to her. But instead of giving her privacy, he watched with his arms crossed against his chest while she struggled to get into them. There was no way I was going to dress in front of him, so I waited demurely encased in my wolf skins.

  Not a single word passed between the married couple, although I did notice that Jeff’s expression seemed to reflect a pensive sadness instead of anger. But he offered no help when her trembling hands made it impossible for her to do up the zipper of her jeans. I had to do it for her. As I did, I squeezed her hand and whispered that I would do all I could to find her daughter. Her eyes fluttered a brief thanks before returning to the haunted expression that had taken over with her husband’s arrival.

  Nor did he offer to help her stand up when she finished dressing. Instead he left it to me, and it wasn’t easy, particularly when my fur pelts kept threatening to slide off. Clearly she was still traumatized by her near-death experience and barely had the energy to stand. It took all my strength and dexterity to raise her off the ground while attempting to maintain my modesty. In the end I had to reveal more naked flesh than I cared to in order to pull her into a half-upright position. She wobbled to such an extent, I wasn’t sure how she was going to walk the distance to her house on her own, for it was obvious she wasn’t going to get any help from her husband.