Closing his eyes, Father Antoine would hear once again the words of the Huron Carol, composed by the great Jesuit missionary and martyr Saint Jean de Brébeuf, who had been burned at the stake by the Iroquois with a necklace of red-hot hatchets around his neck in the early years of New France. It was his favourite hymn and he never failed to be inspired by its call to Christians “to take heart, for the Devil’s work was done.”
Chrétiens, prenez courage,
Jésus Sauveur est né.
Jésus est né, Jésus est né,
In excelsis gloria!
Outside the door to the church there would be a Christmas tree decorated with holly, wreaths and coloured lights. Inside, there would be a Nativity scene of a miniature village in ancient Palestine, with Mary, Joseph and the baby Jesus surrounded by the Three Wise Men and shepherds with their sheep and lambs. A sweet smell of incense and flowers would fill the church, rows of candles would be blazing on each side of the sanctuary and the bells would be ringing.
And he, Father Lionel Antoine, beloved shepherd of his parish, would be there, tending his flock on one of the most important and joyous celebrations of the French-Canadian religious calendar year.
Then the desolate sound of the wind, blowing day and night out of nowhere over the foul-smelling, salt-water mud flats separating the school from James Bay, would bring the priest back to earth. Loneliness would engulf him, and he would put down his book, rise from his chair, and begin wandering aimlessly through the deserted halls. As he passed the dormitories, he would hear the muffled sobs of some frightened, homesick student and would feel a sense of solidarity mixed with envy. Both of them, student and priest, he could not help thinking, were prisoners in exile from their homes serving out harsh sentences. But the child would be free to return home after ten or twelve years while he was condemned to remain in his prison until he retired.
As the years went by, Father Antoine grew bitter, and he shut himself up in his bedroom and adjoining office, emerging only to say mass and teach catechism. He let himself go to seed, bathing infrequently, allowing an unkempt beard to take root on his face and wearing the same clothes for weeks at a time. He gave up reading and even stopped listening to Hockey Night in Canada on the radio, even though the Montreal Canadians year after year were now winning the Stanley Cup.
These changes did not go unnoticed by the nuns. In an effort to cheer him up, they dipped into the budget allocated for the children’s food and sent away for expensive, high-quality meats, butter and vegetables. Soon they were preparing, and anxiously delivering to his office, meals of roast beef covered in rich gravy, meat pies and tomato sauce, homemade bread lathered in butter, mashed, roast, and French-fried potatoes, baked beans and bacon, hot, heavily buttered toast, apple pie with whipped cream, roast chicken and braised Canada goose.
Naturally, with such a rich diet, the good Father became fat. When he became fat, he became remorseful, aware that in the eyes of the Church, gluttony was a venial sin only, but still, something to be ashamed of. He felt even worse when he went one day into the dining hall where the students were eating their evening meal. What a stink. What flies and cockroaches. What minuscule portions. What unappetizing dishes of lumpy mashed potatoes, greased bread, cornstarch pudding and powdered milk. The food was not fit to eat by any civilized being.
For a few moments, he felt a twinge of conscience—what the nuns gave him was so much better. He soon got over it, however, when he remembered that at their homes back on reserve, the children subsisted on a diet of game, lard, bannock and tea—fare, in his opinion, that was vastly inferior to what they received at the school.
The day came, almost inevitably, when he could no longer control himself and he molested a little girl. At first he was afraid because she fled his office in hysterics and told the nuns that he had hurt her. But no one believed her and he realized that he was free to do anything he wanted without fear of sanction. The Indian girls were under his control, and the nuns, even if they were to take the word of a child over his, would never think of calling the police or reporting him to his superiors. He was after all, a priest, and they had been trained to obey priests without question. In any case, the residential school was far from Quebec and if word was to trickle out to his superiors, the worst that would happen, he was now convinced, would be that he would be transferred to another residential school where he could carry on as before.
He thus informed the nuns that in his village, le curé had played a big role, when he was a boy, in helping him deepen and enrich his religious sensibilities. He wanted to do the same for a select group of Indian girls because, he said, more needed to be done to encourage religious vocations for women.
“I will pick them out myself,” he said. “All you have to do is to bring them to me in my office and I will provide them with private spiritual guidance.”
Pleased to see him show interest in his work, the nuns followed his instructions conscientiously and, over the years, sent a steady stream of hand-picked little girls to his office where, after passionately and sincerely professing his fatherly love to each in turn, he sexually assaulted them. Only, he told himself, his actions did not really constitute assault since he was always gentle. He was not, he convinced himself, an ogre, even if his little visitors sometimes cried. He was certainly not a pedophile, since in his way of thinking, pedophiles preyed on little boys and not on little girls.
To the delight of the nuns, Father Antoine emerged from his depression and began to smile again. He had, they concluded, finally adjusted to life at the school and found a reason for living.
One day early in the new year, Sister Angelica told Martha that Father Antoine wanted to see her. The nun knew why, for she had been among the little girls he had summoned to his office when she was a student at the school. At the time, she had accepted what he did to her passively, and being gullible by nature, had believed him when he told her that he loved her. Even though the priest had dropped her when she became a teenager, she remained fiercely loyal and passionately attached to him. She had never told anyone, not even the other nuns, about what took place behind his closed door.
In her opinion, Father Antoine had caused her no lasting harm and so she did not intend to warn Martha about what lay in store for her. Besides, the priest’s attentions, she had come to believe, had constituted a sort of test or rite of passage that you had to go through before you could go on to greater things in life. She wondered, however, if Martha would be up to the challenge.
Martha, oblivious to what awaited her, dutifully made her way to Father Antoine’s office along a corridor lined with reproductions of paintings of Jesus suffering on the cross, and knocked on the door.
“Entrez! Come in!”
Martha turned the handle and pushed open the door. Inside was a desk so enormous she could not see over it, and to one side a small table on top of which were a half-empty glass filled with what looked like red water, several slices of thickly buttered bread and a half-finished plate of meat and potatoes. On the wall behind the desk was a large black-and-white photograph of a group of people, a smiling young priest in the middle, standing in front of a big house. Shelves crammed with books covered the other walls. And sitting in front of the table eating his dinner was Father Antoine himself.
The priest put down his knife and fork, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and examined the little girl carefully from head to foot. Smiling gently, he motioned for her to close the door and come to him.
“Ma petite fille, you are so timid. But you are not here because you did anything wrong. You will not be punished. I have been watching you ever since you arrived and know you had a hard time at the beginning. You have coped well and seem to have a religious nature. I spoke to Sister Angelica who told me she has observed the same thing in you. I want to spend some time with you, and to help you in your spiritual growth.
“Here, come sit with me.”
Martha drew nearer, and the priest, after pushing the tab
le to one side to give himself room, pulled her onto his lap and held her close.
“Did you know, petite Marthe,” he whispered into her ear, “that you are named after a pious and famous woman in the Bible?”
Although Martha had made great strides in learning English, she did not understand what the priest was saying, and if she had, she would not have cared.
She only knew that she had been hauled against her will onto the lap of someone whose body smelled of sour milk, whose breath was stale, whose teeth were dirty, who had bread crumbs on his unshaved chin and who had hairs protruding from his nose and ears.
“Marthe, Marthe,” the priest said earnestly. “I have no friends here and neither have you. You are so sweet and innocent and we can make each other so happy.”
Martha squirmed, trying to escape, and was frightened and uncomfortable when he thrust his hands under her clothing, and with a fixed mirthless smile, did things to her that she knew were not right.
“Now, ma petite Marthe,” the priest said afterwards, as if she were his accomplice rather than his victim, “you are never to say what goes on here between us. I asked you to sit on my lap because I wanted to show you how much I love you.”
He lowered the silent girl to the floor, opened a drawer in the desk, extracted a candy and gave it to her saying, “I keep a supply of these right here and I’ll give you one every time you come to see me.”
Returning to his chair, he sat down and resumed eating his dinner.
Martha made her way to the door, pushed it open, let it close behind her and stood still for a moment. She then hurled the candy to the floor, burst into tears and fled crying to her dormitory where she threw herself on her bed and buried her head in a pillow.
“Well, Martha, what do you think of Father Antoine?” asked Sister Angelica when she came to see her shortly afterwards. “He’s a nice man, isn’t he? Did he speak to you about the love of God? Did he give you a candy? Did he ask you to come back? You’re such a lucky little girl!”
Martha turned her face away and refused to reply.
That night, while not fully understanding what had happened, she felt dirty. And try as she might, Martha was no longer able to use her imagination to escape the reality of life at the school.
The next week, when Sister Angelica came to her after class to tell her Father Antoine wanted to see her again, Martha began to cry.
“I don’t want to go. He did things to me I didn’t like. He scares me.”
Sister Angelica tried to reason with her. “There is no reason for you to be afraid. Father Antoine is a holy man who spends his nights in prayer. He has only the best interests of the little girls in mind when he asks for them!”
When Martha remained unconvinced, she took her by the hand and led her, still whimpering, to the priest’s office and pushed her in the door. In the weeks and months that followed, Martha, who had concluded there was no one who could protect her at the school, walked alone and dry-eyed to meet the priest each time he called for her.
In late June, when Martha returned home to spend the summer with her parents, she was anxious to tell her mother that the people at the school were mean to the kids and that it was an awful place. Her mother, however, despite the reassuring words she had offered to her daughter the preceding August, was well aware that children were badly treated at the school. But her way of dealing with painful matters was to pretend they did not exist. She certainly did not want to endure the mental anguish of listening to her daughter talk about her sufferings. There was nothing she could do to help her daughter anyway. There was no way out for her.
Thus, she avoided any mention of the school, and when Martha tried to tell her that Father Antoine was undressing and touching her where he should not, she refused to listen.
“Don’t say that! Don’t say such things! I don’t want to know. Priests don’t do things like that! You’re just looking for an excuse, making up stories not to go back at the end of the summer.” Taking her daughter by the arm, she squeezed it hard saying, “What’s come over you? You used to be such a good girl. Now you don’t care about your family!” Martha was frightened. The loving mother she had known before she was taken away to school had been replaced by an angry woman inflicting pain on her.
“Don’t you know the government is sending us money every month as long as you stay in that school,” said her mother, continuing to berate her. “We are poor people and the money will keep coming every year until you turn sixteen. Don’t you understand we have a debt at the Hudson’s Bay Company store, and that money pays for our flour, baking powder and lard. You’d better get used to the idea, because you’re going to be at the school for many years to come!”
Afraid to talk back, Martha nodded her head to signify she would do as she was told. She had expected her mother would refuse to let her return to the school when she heard how horrible a place it was. Now she was in trouble for complaining and would have to spend years at the mercy of Father Antoine.
Just when it seemed matters could not get any worse, her aunt took her aside.
“Little Joe, my boy, has just turned six and must go to the school this fall. I know, and you know, that kids are not always treated well there. They can be lonely and they can be bullied by the big boys and hit by the nuns. I don’t want him to go but I have no choice. The trader has warned me that the Mounties will come and take him away if I try to hide him. I know it’s a lot to ask, but could you keep an eye on him and protect him for me? Don’t let him get lonely. He’s so small for his age and is so attached to me, he couldn’t cope without you.”
Martha had just turned seven, and she knew that there was little she could do to help her cousin. She couldn’t even take care of herself. But looking into the anguished eyes of her aunt, and being by nature compassionate, she promised she would ensure no harm came to Little Joe.
Her aunt hugged her. “I’m so happy,” she said. “You’ve always been a kind and gentle girl. With you looking out for him, I know he’ll be fine.”
A truly terrible year began for Martha and Little Joe. With her mother and aunt looking on, Martha and the boy climbed aboard the float plane that came to take them away at the end of August. This time she knew it was not a Wendigo, and was able to reassure Little Joe that nothing bad would happen during the flight. That would be the last time she would be able to help him.
At the dock, they were met by the same nun who had greeted Martha a year before. Without a word, she took Little Joe’s hand and led him up the hill to the residential school, motioning Martha to follow. At the door was Sister Angelica, waiting to assist her colleague in preparing the boy for his new life. When Martha offered to help, Sister Angelica paid her no attention.
Soon Martha heard the screams of Little Joe as the nuns undressed him, pushed him into the shower, cut off his braids and poured coal oil on his head. She held her head in her hands as she heard shouting, slaps being administered, renewed howling and silence. Later a grim-faced Sister Angelica led him into the dining room. He smelled of coal oil, his hair was shorn, he was dressed in regulation clothing and his face was covered in welts and swollen from crying.
Little Joe rushed to Martha, but Sister Angelica pulled him away, and told him in English that he was never to approach a girl again.
The boy, who did not understand English, said in Anishinaabemowin, “But Martha is my cousin. She is supposed to care for me.”
“Just do as she says,” said Martha in the same language. “She’ll hit you really hard if you don’t.”
Sister Angelica, who understood what had been said and did not like it, turned on Martha.
“Stay out of this! I don’t need your help to deal with this brat. Remember, it is forbidden to speak your heathen language here at the school. Besides, who do you think you are anyway, talking to a boy and interfering with the duties of a nun?”
She slapped Martha across the face, causing blood to spurt from her nose and down across her blouse, and ordered Lit
tle Joe to go to the front of the room. There she started to strap him on his hands and wrists.
As the other children watched in fascinated horror, Martha slipped out of her seat, walked slowly and deliberately to the front, caught hold of the strap and tried to stop the punishment.
“He’s just a little boy,” she said to the nun. “My aunt asked me to protect him.”
“Protect him? Protect him? His mother should be grateful for what we’re doing for him.”
With the help of another nun, Sister Angelica dragged Martha roughly from the room and down to the basement. There they tied her hands together and attached them with a rope to the overhead hot water pipes. The two of them pulled off her dress and flogged her with electrical cords until her bowels loosened and she fouled her pants. They then untied her, pushed her into the coal cellar and locked the door.
“You dirty savage, never, ever interfere with our work again! Let’s hope this teaches you a lesson.”
The next morning, they released Martha from her unlit hole but made her stand, stinking and filthy, in front of the student body, and contritely apologize to the nuns.
“Now let this be a lesson to the rest of you. Disobey us and you’ll get the same.”
The following day, Sister Angelica stopped her after class to say Father Antoine had heard that she had been misbehaving and wanted to see her immediately.
Martha burst into tears, and said she did not want to go.
“You ungrateful animal! You upset the school one day, promise to be good, and refuse to see Father Antoine when he asks for you. I once thought you would have a future in the Church but I was mistaken. From now on I’ll be keeping a close eye on you and you’ll pay heavily if you don’t do as you’re told.”
As Long as the Rivers Flow Page 5