“What did the article say?” Theresa asked. She felt denuded in a way; she had had a mother and father once, a nice mother and father, and now she had been advertised in the newspaper like a pet dog or cat.
“They were always sad, sometimes real sad. Once in a while, there was a child whose parents got killed in a car accident. But most often, it was a ‘family problem.’ Sometimes that meant that the father deserted the mother and the children. Sometimes both the father and the mother deserted the children. With the Indians, usually it was some problem related to drinking. Most of the children in the paper were Indians or Negroes. Most of the time they were cute, but lots of times the child would have some handicap or the people would bring the child back when they found out the problems it had.”
“What did they have for me?” Theresa asked quietly.
“Well, they said you were a happy little girl with a lot of laughter. That your bad moods were rare and that after one, your smile would always be there. We didn’t see how a little girl taken from her mother could be like that, but you were. They gave your age, and they said you were intelligent and well behaved, and that you were up for adoption or foster care for family problems. It was only when I went to the agency that I found out that your father was drinking. At the time, I didn’t think that drinking was hereditary.”
Theresa took this as a thinly veiled reference to her having lost her own two children because of her drinking.
Mrs. MacNeil went on. “Even at seven, you were the cutest little girl, with those high cheekbones and that round, chubby, smiling face. I would wonder often how you could smile so much in that picture in the paper after all you went through. Indians have that gift, I guess.”
As if to confirm that in a backhanded way, Theresa smiled broadly.
“So I thought it over and thought about whether Dad would go along with it. He usually goes along with what I think. Dad was working as a clerk in the furniture store then. He didn’t have the salary he had later when he got in at the post office. Children’s Aid was giving a monthly allotment then of I forget how much for each child you’d taken in. So we took you, and that extra money helped to clothe Ann and you and to put food on our table, and Ann had a nice little chum in the bargain. Dad sure was surprised when he came home from work that day and saw this scared, chubby little Indian girl sitting on the edge of the couch, afraid to take her coat off.”
The conversation had at least helped Theresa understand better her place in the MacNeil family.
Chapter Seven
I
Theresa awoke in her apartment on Delisle Street near the Université de Montréal. She saw the clock across from her bed as she awoke. It was eight o’clock.
The smell of breakfast filled the apartment. Shane was in the kitchen finishing the omelettes. Theresa rose from the bed. She went to the bathroom, washed and combed her hair. The long, black, silky tresses shone in the least amount of light. At least, she thought, her ancestry had given her some advantage over white people.
The table was set with her cloth serviettes. Toast and cantaloupe slices were already on the table. She looked in the kitchen.
“What do you want?” she said tauntingly. “What kind of bribe is this — omelettes, cantaloupe?”
“What’s the matter; can’t I spoil you one day out of the week?”
“If you wanted to spoil me, you’d make breakfast the other six days too.”
“I’m just giving you a little treat because the rest of the day is going to be filled with work,” Shane said.
“Work! This is Saturday; neither one of us works.”
“That’s what you think,” said Shane, delighted to be scheming.
“Just what have you got in mind?” Theresa asked.
“I need some yellow birch for some snowshoes. I thought we’d drive up to Saint-Donat and take the bush there and see if we could find some. Want to come?” The question was unnecessary. It was understood that they’d go in the bush together, around Montreal, whenever the pitifully few opportunities to do so presented themselves.
“Anibicwabo ki wi minikwen na nongom? Kiga madjipiton midjim acitc anibicwabo nopiming abitozang?” Shane asked.
Theresa tried to understand what he said. “Do I want to… something about tea?”
“Do you want to make some tea now and do you want to bring some food and some tea in the bush at noon?” Shane went on to translate this into her language, Algonquin. “Ki wi anibicwaboke nongom minawatc ki wi madjipiton midjim acitc anihicwabo nopiming kitci wisiniek abitozang?”
“What are we ever going to do?” asked Shane.
Theresa thought a minute as she was making the tea. “Either you have to learn Algonquin, or I have to learn Cree.”
“Lucky they aren’t that far apart,” said Shane.
“All the same,” Theresa said, “all I recognize are ‘tea’ and ‘drink’ from what you said.”
“Language is the base of culture,” Shane said. “If we can’t hang on to that, we don’t have much. You were lucky that you left Ottawa Lake only when you were seven so you had the Indian language already.” Shane’s statement called back memories to Theresa. She could see and she could feel the actual moments of separation from her mother.
“When Mommy knew for sure that we were going to be taken from her, she desperately wanted to give me some-thing of hers to remember her by. She gave me a copy of Ka Titc Jezos, the New Testament in Algonquin. Mommy believed in it very much. She made me promise to read it every day.”
“Did you?” Shane asked. He was very curious, though he felt slightly ashamed at asking her to recall painful history.
“Yes, I did. Every night. Though through the years I no longer believed in the religious message. But it was the only thing I possessed that belonged to Mommy.
“But I kept that solemn promise to read from it every day. Something very good happened. From reading the book, I learned more of my language, and I had no trouble keeping the Indian I had when we were taken from Mommy. And it was a link to her.”
“You’re lucky you kept it. It wasn’t Momma MacNeil who was going to teach you Algonquin.”
“She was nice, I guess, but she wasn’t concerned about anything that was Indian,” Theresa agreed. “The odd time it even seemed to me that she thought that by raising us in Montreal away from the bush she was saving us from something.”
“Are we going to have children?” Shane asked.
Theresa smiled broadly in a way that never failed to charm Shane, no matter what it was she was smiling about. And her laughter was an elixir to him; it became a visceral need.
“The children learn the language of the mother, so I’ll learn the language of the mother. We’ll both speak Algonquin.”
Theresa laughed at how hard working Shane was from then on. “How do you say this? How do you say that?” he went around asking. For the first time, Theresa was obliged to think about her language in detail, and she found it a splendorous thing. An Indian language in the Algonquian linguistic family, it had similarities in grammar and vocabulary to Cree, in comparison with which it would almost be called a cousin language, as French was to Italian. The two Indian languages were not, however, as closely related as the French in Quebec and the French in France.
“How do you say ‘I see the table’ and ‘I see the tables’?” he asked Theresa, and he was happy to see that there was this further resemblance to Cree, in that both of the Indian languages had a plural verb form when the transitive verb had a plural direct object.
II
Theresa packed the lunch and the tea in the wooden grub box with a tumpline on it. Shane put it in the back of his pick-up truck and then put his chainsaw, his axes, and the wooden wedges and wooden mallet in the box in back.
They entered the Décarie Expressway and headed north. When they were on the Autoroute des Laurentides, they joined a heavy, fast-moving stream of cars on their way up to chalets in the Laurentians for the weekend.
“Cottage c
ountry,” Shane said.
“Wonderful,” said Theresa, with sarcasm.
“We’re part of it now and for the foreseeable future,” Shane pointed out. “It’s pathetic to see these people spend so much money on country cottages, and then have to scrimp for time to get there, just to have a little time in the bush.”
“I wish we didn’t have to stay here for law school — if I get in,” said Theresa.
“You’ll get in,” Shane assured her. “But we don’t have to stay.”
“If I get in, I have to stay,” Theresa said, determined.
Shane looked at all the new automobiles whizzing past them. For some reason, there seemed to be a greater number of automobiles that were new in Quebec, or at least this part of Quebec, than in other places he had been. “People scrambling to get ahead to have more money, and some day — this is the joke — they think they’re going to have more time. You notice how everything is so relaxed at Barrière Lake and at Moose Factory, especially with the old people?”
“Yes, I know,” said Theresa.
“That’s why I regret the rat race,” said Shane. “Just to get more material things.”
“You know I am not studying to be a lawyer just to have a fancy office and buy a new car.”
“I know that,” Shane allowed.
“Then…?”
Shane went on, “I can see how you and I could have money ahead and become caught up in the white man’s world as easily as these upward movers passing us on the autoroute.”
“I won’t.”
“I don’t think you will, and I don’t think I will either,” Shane said. “But if we become caught up in this money-hungry game, we wouldn’t be the first Indians who did. There are enough living in Ottawa and Montreal.”
Theresa let that train of conversation peter out. She reached into her pack and pulled out an audiocassette. She turned on the radio and put the tape in. The tape began playing: “Kije Manito kigi kljigonan. Kitci mackawiziwin ot aian, Win kakina keko oma oga ojitotc — wakwik aeitc akikak. Kakina dac omagatatamak.
“Nitam Kije Manito ogi ojian naben. Ogi ojian dac nasem kidjinazozitc. Nitam nabe Adam ijinikazogoban. Ot okoman Eba inikazogobanen…”
“What is that?” Shane asked.
“Algonquin.”
“Yes, of course it’s Algonquin. It sounds like something religious.”
“It is,” Theresa said. “It’s the Old Testament.”
“Look. I don’t believe in the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Bible or that religion. I had enough of it when I was a kid at Moose Factory.”
“I don’t believe in it either,” Theresa said, “but it was the only cassette I could find in Algonquin. It comes from some missionary group in California.”
“Well, if that’s all we have. We should record some of the old people at Barrière Lake.”
“Some of these people are from Barrière Lake — and Grand Lake Victoria and Maniwaki,” Theresa pointed out. “Notice the first woman, how clearly she speaks. She’s from Grand Lake Victoria.”
“Yes,” Shane agreed. “But what I mean is that we should record some Barrière Lake people with some bush stories or some stories about the old days. Leave that Bible stuff to other people.”
Just the same, he recognized the value of the cassette as a language tool, so they played it over and over again.
III
“Some of the nouns I don’t understand, but a lot I do,” Shane said, and he asked her the meaning of a few. “A lot of things I can almost piece together.”
“You’ll get it,” Theresa said. “We’ll keep at it, and then we’ll be speaking Algonquin well if we ever have children.”
Shane knew she wanted more children, and he very much wanted to have children with her. After playing the cassette several times, she turned it off and they continued their way up the autoroute through Sainte-Adèle, Val Morin, and the other small, sleepy Laurentian towns that had now become fashionable as ski resorts and centres for the chalet crowd.
He broached the subject that he knew was very sensitive for her, but as important to her as it was to him.
“Do you miss your children?” he asked gently.
And it seemed as soon as the last syllable reached her ears, her eyes welled up with tears. Shane reached across the seat, pulled her to him and put his arm around her.
With tears flooding her eyes, she began, “I think of them all the time. It’s like my heart was torn out every day. You don’t know how hard it is.”
Driving with one hand, he hugged her as close as he could.
“I thought of suicide, and I still think of it once in a while,” she said.
“Don’t think like that!” Shane admonished, “We’ve got each other.” Shane was reminded of something Jim Gull had said to him: “Theresa is only looking for one thing in life, a simple thing — someone to love her. I think she’s found that in you.”
“I know we have each other,” she said, “and that’s good, but you don’t know how much it hurts me to think about the children.”
“I can see how it would,” Shane said, holding her even closer. “I know you will never forget them, but the pain will lessen with time.”
“I don’t think it ever can,” she said. And she looked out at the forest going by almost as though she saw the faces of her two children in the trees.
Chapter Eight
I
They turned off the highway to Sainte-Agathe. The road now went through country that could be called bush. With the exception of settlers’ houses along the secondary road and the chalets and country homes of Montrealers that bordered some lakes and were also along the road, the uncut woods stretched away from the road as far as the horizon in all directions.
The road bridged a stream that was hurrying away with the spring runoff.
Shane and Theresa were looking at the same spot on the stream bank, but it was Shane who said, “Look at that mink with the frog in its mouth.”
Theresa saw no more than a dark, sinuous form on the bank. “You see more in the bush than I do,” she said with a hint of frustration.
“See the yellow birch up there?” Shane said, pointing to the side of a hill where the yellow birches were interspersed with maples, white birches, and the occasional oak.
“Could we cut one there?” Theresa asked.
“I’d rather not. We’d just get started and some officer of the law would come along and tell us it is not legal to be cutting a tree up here. That’s what makes me mad. The companies clear-cut anywhere they feel like it, and an Indian couldn’t even take one yellow birch without ending up in jail.”
“And it isn’t even their land,” Theresa said.
“Yeah,” said Shane, “They won’t let you make bail for pointing that out to them.”
II
They drove through the village of Saint-Donat and turned east, away from Mont Tremblant looming to the west. Soon they were on a bush road. They no longer met vehicles.
“We’re better off here,” said Shane, “on Crown land. If someone gives us a hard time, we can probably talk our way out of it.”
He stopped the truck by the side of the road at a spot where some yellow birches hid among some other trees. He took his chainsaw out of the back. Theresa shouldered his packsack containing wooden wedges, axes, and the mallet.
“It’s easy to see through the woods now,” Theresa said. “The leaves aren’t out yet, and you can see the trees far away.”
Shane’s walking through the woods roused a red squirrel, proprietary of its territory. When the squirrel became angry, a flight of birds, and two small hidden animals, joined in the uproar. The feverish antics of the irritated little squirrel caused Theresa to laugh all the way down to her toes.
As they walked away from the red squirrel and its friends, Theresa bent down and picked a plant. “Oh, look,” she said. “Here’s some akoskowewack.” Her almond eyes examined it intently. “What is it called in Cree?”
“I don
’t know,” Shane said, “And I don’t know the plant. What is the English name?”
“I don’t know,” she said, “But it brings love. My mother told me about it long ago.”
Shane walked up to several yellow birches in turn, Theresa walking behind him with the packsack. He disqualified one after the other, either because the trunks were slightly crooked or because they had branches.
“It’s good to walk in the bush,” Theresa said, not the slightest bit out of breath but rather seeming to develop more energy as she followed Shane up and down over the ridges on the flank of the hill. Her braids danced on her shoulders as she walked. “It seems like being in jail to have to stay in Montreal a few more years.”
Shane was going to point out that it would not be absolutely necessary. But then, they had been over that before, and she certainly would not want to hear it again.
He finally came up to a yellow birch that was eight inches in diameter and straight, without branches, for at least twelve feet. “Onicicin,” he said. Theresa was happy to see that he used the Algonquin word for “it is good” rather than the Cree word.
He quickly started the chainsaw and cut the tree down. Then he cut an eight-foot log from near the bottom of the trunk. He propped the top end of the log up slightly so he could begin splitting from that end.
“Can you give me the axe?” Shane said to Theresa, standing near him.
She looked perplexed, which in turn made him perplexed.
“May I have the axe?” he repeated.
She still had an uncomprehending look on her face.
“Oh, sorry,” Shane said, realizing the problem at last. “Wakâkwat ni mämesin.”
And she handed him the axe. She laughed delightedly at her own joke.
Speak to Me in Indian Page 5