Over dinner and after a drink, Spider surprised Martha once again by opening up and revealing a thoughtful side to his nature.
“You know, this is the first time in years that I’ve been inside a normal house. I used to have okay adoptive parents but I was a jerk and left to be a punk. For years, I lived in squats and thought I was really cool. Then I got older, started to drink too much, got too violent for the punks, and they wanted nothing to do with me and I ended up under the Gardiner. Can’t tell you how much I hate that life. Doing really stupid things, begging for money for booze and worse, living with a bunch of losers, and having no hope whatsoever. I’d do anything to turn my life around.”
“Well, maybe you can,” said Martha. “I want you to look at this photo.”
She handed a photo of a group of laughing people with bottles of beer in their hands standing in front of an old shack.
“Now, do you recognize anyone? Take your time.”
“That must be you,” said Spider, pointing to a much younger Martha.
“Who’s that standing beside me?”
Spider looked carefully at the young man beside Martha for some time before quietly saying, “Looks like me even if it’s not.”
“It’s your father,” said Martha. “I loved him but we didn’t get along. You were our first child but, I’m ashamed to say, we were poor parents and the Children’s Aid took you away. I hope someday you’ll be able to forgive me.”
Spider looked intently at the photo and said, “Is that really you? Is that my father?”
“It is,” said Martha. “But I haven’t seen him in years and have no idea where he is, or even if he’s still alive. You also have a sister called Raven. She’s now twelve and lives back on the reserve.”
“You must have had your reasons for letting them take me, but what happened?” said Spider. “Didn’t you want me? Did you give me away? Did you ever look for me?”
“It’s a long story, Spider, and I’m not proud of what happened. Come back to the reserve with me and I’ll tell you all about it. Your sister needs me and she’ll be happy to see the brother she thought was gone for good. Once we’re back home, I’ll help you shake your drinking problem.”
PART THREE
~
The Healing Circle
2003
11
Back to the Reserve
ONE EARLY AFTERNOON IN JANUARY 2003, after spending the morning delivering her furniture, rugs and appliances to Nora to use at the shelter, Martha packed her clothes, books and mementos into her car and set off with Spider on the long drive to the reserve.
As she pulled out of the heavy Toronto traffic on to Highway 400 north to Sudbury, she thought back to how unprepared she had been to cope with life in the big city when she had made this same journey by bus in the other direction. So much had changed. Now a woman in her mid-forties with a hint of grey in her hair, she had her failures but was happy with what she had accomplished during her time in Toronto in acquiring an education and a profession.
It had come as a surprise, but she had discovered that she had felt as much at home, if not more so, in the city as she had back on the reserve. Tens of thousands of Native people, many of them middle class, now lived in the big city. If so inclined, she could have attended Native dance, theatre and music productions every night of the week. Moreover, as a dark brown Native Canadian, she had been at ease in the crowds of new Canadians from Asia, Africa and Latin America who had made migrated to Ontario’s capital in the years since she had left home.
But to the west of Sudbury on the Trans-Canada Highway in search of a room for the night, she discovered that even though a new millennium had begun, some things remained the same in her Canada. She pulled up before a motel with vacancies flashing out in front on a neon sign, and accompanied by Spider, pushed open the front door and went in.
The overweight, balding, middle-aged night duty manager watching the local evening news from a television set suspended from the ceiling over the reception desk was a self-proclaimed expert on Indians, and he did not like them. In the 1960s, when Martha was still a child at residential school, he had been a pimply-faced, longhaired high school dropout with bad teeth and clunky glasses stocking shelves at a grocery store. He had but two interests in life: cars and girls. The purchase for three hundred dollars of a used, rusted, two-tone black and yellow 1953 Pontiac hardtop convertible, with two hundred thousand miles on the odometer, power steering, power windows, power brakes, leather seats and push-button radio, had satisfied his craving for the perfect automobile.
But when he tried to entice the white girls of his town to climb into his Pontiac and drink bootleg gin and make out, they laughed at him. He then took to roaming the back roads of the surrounding reserves that dotted Manitoulin Island and the northern shores of Georgian Bay and Lake Huron in search of an Indian girl who would be so impressed with his car that she would be willing to hop into the back seat and have sex with him. But every Indian girl he met told him to get lost.
At hockey games, he would sit with his friends and utter war whoops and yell out “Wagon burners!” whenever Indian players stepped onto the ice. Then one night after a game, a group of Indian teenagers trashed his beloved Pontiac and gave him a beating he hadn’t forgotten forty years later when Martha and Spider came in from the winter cold in search of accommodation for the night.
“You gotta pay with a credit card if you want to stay here,” the manager told them, eyeing Spider’s ponytail as he turned off the sound of the television.
“No problem,” said Martha, and she reached into her bag, extracted a card and handed it over.
“Two rooms please.”
Without looking at it, he placed the card on the desk and slid it back.
“We’re full up. Try somewhere else.”
“What do you mean full? Your sign says you have vacancies.”
“So it does,” he said, “but I’ll soon fix that.”
He reached under the desk and pushed a button to turn off the illuminated sign. Sitting down, he picked up the remote, turned on the sound of the television and resumed watching the news.
Martha watched him quietly until he looked up.
“Look, lady, gimme a break. I got nothing personal against you but I’ve got a living to make. I never to rent rooms to Indians. They’re nothing but trouble—drinking and fighting and disturbing the other guests. So why don’t you do me a favour and let me watch television in peace. And while you’re at it,” he said, raising his voice, “go somewhere where you’ll be welcome. There’s at least a dozen reserves around here. Try your luck at one of them. You’ll be with your own kind.”
Martha protested. “But we have our rights. The Charter says you have to treat us fairly. I could take you to court.”
“Then sue me. Canada’s a free country.”
It was a kick in the stomach and a return to the racism Martha had experienced at the residential school and seen on her way south. Defeated, she picked up her credit card and beckoned to Spider to follow her back to the car.
It was not in Spider’s nature, however, to walk away from a fight. “So you want us to sue you,” he said and walked over to the desk. With one sweep of his arm, he brushed everything—a rack of brochures on local tourist attractions, pens, papers, registration book, plaques declaring that the motel accepted Visa and MasterCard and was a member in good standing of the Canadian Automobile Association, the Better Business Bureau and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce—to the floor.
Raising his arm to protect himself from the flying papers and bric-a-brac, the manager jumped from his seat and backed away saying, “You’ve had your fun, now get out or I’ll call the cops.”
“On what charge? I haven’t hurt you—not yet anyhow. Now give us keys to two rooms if you know what’s good for you!”
But Martha just wanted to get away. “Come on, Spider, I wouldn’t stay here now even if he were to get down on his knees and beg us.”
; She marched out the door followed by her son and drove off into the night. Two hours later, unable to keep her eyes open any longer, she tried her luck at a motel near Blind River. This time, she trembled when she asked for accommodations, afraid the woman behind the desk would refuse them, and was angry with herself for feeling grateful when the keys were handed over with a cheery “Enjoy your stay.”
The next day, Martha grew moody, and paid no attention to Spider who quietly sipped his whisky and did his best to cheer her up as they continued their journey home. At Pickle Lake, they took rooms at a motel for the night, but, anxious to be on her way, Martha woke Spider at two in the morning and in the moonlight retraced in reverse the trip she had made on the winter road with Olavi. And when the next morning she saw the reserve from afar across the sweep of ice-covered Cat Lake, a host of bitter memories engulfed her: her departure by float plane for the residential school forty years before, the birth and removal of her son, the years of separation from her daughter and the death of Nokomis.
Trying hard to keep herself under control, Martha drove directly to the band office to see Joshua and pulled up alongside a collection of pick-up trucks and snowmobiles scattered across the parking area. After telling Spider to wait in the car, she left it running to keep him warm and got out. A stray dog, its ribs showing, greeted her tentatively, wagging its tail in the hope she would have a scrap of food to share. Three children, who should have been at school at that time of day, leaned against a large graffiti-splattered black and yellow sign bolted to the building wall that said: If the Parents Drink, the Children will Sniff. Hatless, without mittens, and wearing lightweight running shoes in the minus-thirty-degree temperatures, they stared at her blankly, wisps of smoke seeping from their half-open mouths and cigarettes dangling from their fingers.
Martha climbed the steps to the landing, opened the battered steel door and stepped into the foyer. A hand-written notice in English and in Anishinabe syllabics politely invited visitors to remove their boots before entering the main part of the building. After adding hers to the others lined up neatly on old newspapers along the wall, she took off her coat and carried it into the reception area. A dozen reserve residents, many of them friends and relatives, were sitting on plastic chairs, their parkas across their knees, gossiping animatedly. Some were there simply to pass the time of day. Others were waiting to see the chief or one of the band councillors to lobby for better housing, jobs or band funds to send one of their children out to Thunder Bay, Sudbury or North Bay for post-secondary education.
A well-swaddled four-month-old baby girl peeped out from a tikinagan propped up on a chair beside her grandmother. Two five-year-olds played hide-and-seek on the clean but heavily worn linoleum floor behind the garbage bin. Colourful posters on one wall warned expectant mothers about the dangers of fetal alcohol syndrome, overweight people about the risks of Type 2 diabetes and young people about the hazards of drug use. On another wall, there were blown-up photographs of Native hockey players and coaches who had made it big in the National Hockey League: Jonathan Cheechoo, Reggie Leach, Bryan Trottier and Ted Nolan.
On another wall, above a large-scale map of the community and its traditional territory, a sign proclaimed:
Homeland of the People of Cat Lake First Nation Developers must check in at the band office
“Hey, it’s Martha. Welcome home, everyone’s been expecting you.”
“How was the big city? Back to stay?”
“You gonna work here in the band office again?”
“What a nice outfit!”
“You must feel awful about your mother. Too bad you couldn’t make it back for the funeral.”
Martha was overwhelmed by the warmth of the greetings and the babble of friendly voices, and went around the room shaking hands.
“Bojo! Bojo! News sure travels fast. It’s great to see you. I’m back to stay and will have plenty of time later on to catch up on the news.”
Just then Joshua came down the hall. Now in his mid-sixties, he looked exactly like the grandfather he had become, with white hair, comfortable paunch, friendly wrinkled face and with a pair of reading glasses dangling from a chain around his neck.
“Welcome home, Martha,” he said, kissing her on the cheek. “Come on down to my office. We’ve got lots to talk about.”
Joshua led the way down a narrow hallway past offices marked Housing, Education, Health Services, Child Welfare Services, Employment, Economic Development, and Accounts.
“We are now self-governing,” he said. “At least, that’s the theory. Ottawa has given us responsibility to manage more of our own affairs and we do the best we can. But for reasons best known to itself, the government provides less money to us for education and child welfare than it does to white people for similar services in their jurisdictions. It’s unfair and frankly racist.”
Joshua invited her into his office, closed the door, told her to take a chair and settled into his creaky seat behind a desk piled high with papers.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, Martha. You really look good. My wife and I have often talked about you over the years, wondering how you were making out in Toronto. Now that you’re home, I want you to know you can count on me to do anything I can to help you, just like in the old days.”
Martha nodded but said nothing and Joshua carried on talking, bringing her up to date on her mother’s funeral and the latest local news. Raven, he then said, had taken time off from school and was at his house.
“Let’s go get her.”
Martha did not move. What if Raven was to reproach her for not coming home for so long? Should she tell her that her beloved Nokomis was the one at fault? Or should she say nothing and just shoulder the blame?
Joshua asked Martha what was wrong.
“I’m sorry if I haven’t been paying attention,” she said. “It’s just that I’m worried about how I’m going to be able to face Raven.”
“I can’t deny you’re going to be in for a rough time,” said Joshua, “since she thinks you abandoned her. I don’t know what advice to give you. For what it’s worth, Raven is an extraordinarily sensitive twelve-year-old filled with a great love of life. Someone who’s stayed away from the lost kids wandering around here at night getting into trouble. My wife and I’ve got a soft spot for her since our kids have long since grown up and are making lives of their own in Thunder Bay. She’s also a born leader, speaks fluent Anishinaabemowin and knows all the stories about Nanabush, Gitche Manitou and the Thunderbird by heart.
Martha stared at Joshua wide-eyed, his words not registering.
“Nokomis taught Raven the traditional ways and when she was able,” Joshua went on to say. “She even took her out in the summers to the old trapping cabin. And in Nokomis’s last years, Raven took care of her all by herself and did a real good job. I just wish the other kids in the community were as well brought up.”
“And there’s another thing,” Martha said, interrupting Joshua. “I’ve brought Spider home with me and he’s now a man of thirty with big problems. He was living on the streets of Toronto and is an alcoholic, just like Russell was, and he can’t go a day without drinking. It’s going to be a handful to look after both of them.”
“You really have bitten off a lot,” was Joshua’s response. “But that’s great news. Spider and all those kids who were taken away so many years ago belong with their own people, not with the whites in the city.”
Putting off the time she would have to see Raven, Martha asked when she could start her new job.
“As soon as you can. We’re swamped with work and the demands keep coming. Everyone wants a better house but no one makes an effort to keep what they’ve got in good repair, the water treatment plant keeps breaking down, people don’t even try to feed themselves with country food, prices are high at the co-op, almost everyone’s on welfare, the bootlegger’s the only one who’s making any money around here, and there’s no work except at the band office.”
&
nbsp; Joshua sighed. “Everybody, especially my own relatives, are at my door day and night, complaining and looking for something for nothing. And I’m only human.”
Three months earlier, Raven had prepared a letter to her mother to tell her Nokomis had been suffering from diabetes for many years but had managed to keep it under control with medication and by watching her weight. Recently, however, her vision had blurred until she could hardly see, her blood pressure had shot up and she suffered from pains in her heart. During one of his periodic visits, the doctor recommended that she be evacuated by air for treatment at a hospital in Thunder Bay, but Nokomis had said no, saying she would rather end her days at home rather than go to a big, impersonal hospital on the outside.
Raven had ended her letter by asking her mother to come home when there was still time. But she tore it up at the request of Nokomis. “I would rather end my days with my granddaughter than with a daughter I have not seen in years,” she said.
Thus when she met her mother at Joshua’s, Raven was torn between joy at seeing her and anger at being abandoned when she was just a baby. Uncertain, not knowing how to respond, she lashed out, giving vent to years of frustration. “Who are you?” she said. “I’ve never seen you before. What do you want from me?”
Disappointed, but not surprised at her daughter’s greeting, Martha took a seat on the couch. She decided to say nothing about the real reason she had not returned home, not wanting to tarnish the memory of Nokomis in the eyes of her daughter, and left it to Spider to take the lead.
“Hi, sis. I’m the big bad brother you’ve probably never heard of. Everyone calls me Spider after this mark on my forehead. I just met Mom a week or so ago and don’t know her much better than you do. I decided to come up here to reconnect and sort out my life.”
As Long as the Rivers Flow Page 16