As Long as the Rivers Flow

by James Bartleman

  “We gotta help them. We need to find a place where they can hang out and do fun, healthy things, like listen to hip hop music, play Ping-Pong and shoot some pool. We need recreation facilities.

  “As parents, we need to pay more attention to family life. I bet if we were to eat together at least once a day it would draw us together. Why not take the kids hunting and fishing on the weekends? Why not spend the summers with them on the land? That way we’d all learn about how life was in the old days, before all these suicides. Most of all, we gotta stop blaming all the bad things the white man did to us for all the bad things we do to our kids. The last residential school closed in this province almost thirty years ago. We got to move on and get a life!”

  When Sara’s mother took hold of the talking stick, the words burst from her mouth like air from an overinflated balloon pricked by a knife.

  “I know why she did it. She went out to Thunder Bay and spent the winter with my sister. She went to school and did good. She went to pow wows and to events at the Friendship Centre. She loved the big drum and Native culture and became a jingle dancer. At my sister’s church, they respected Native spirituality. They said there was one creator for everyone. When she came back, the other kids said she was putting on airs about her good grades and made her feel ashamed of them. The neighbours told her not to practise jingle dancing in front of the house and I didn’t stick up for her. They said it was superstition and a dance of the devil. When she played pow wow music in the house, the other kids said their parents told them not to listen to it. It was pagan. She felt bad ’cause they took away her pride in being Native and she decided to die. She told me she was going to kill herself and I went to the nursing station for help. I know the staff there ’cause I got diabetes real bad and they’re always helpful. But they said they had no resources to work with suicidal people. They telephoned the doctor at the hospital in Thunder Bay. He asked them if they thought she was really serious and they said they didn’t know. Kids were always threatening to kill themselves they said but not too many followed through. He prescribed some pills and said he’d interview her the next time he came to the reserve. I saw her take a rope that day but I didn’t do nothing. I’ve never been any good at making decisions especially since I came down with diabetes. I was looking out the kitchen window and saw her climbing a tree. She tied one end of the rope to a branch and the other around her neck. She looked at me and I looked at her. I should have run out and told her to come down. But I froze. I couldn’t even cry out. She hung on to the tree for a minute looking at me and I tried to call the nursing station to ask them what to do and she jumped before they came on the line. I’ll never forgive myself. You know I never even told her I loved her. She was only thirteen.”

  Out of breath, her eyes expressionless, she could say no more.

  16

  Embracing Life

  “I WANT TO TELL YOU HOW THIS ALL STARTED,” said Raven. “A bunch of us were hanging out one night behind the co-op like we always do. Some of us were sniffing and everyone was feeling bad. We never had anything to do and we were bored. Most of our parents sat around doing nothing all day but watching stupid shows on television like Jerry Springer and Judge Judy and didn’t care whether we were home or not. They didn’t care whether we got drunk or not. They didn’t care whether we went to school or not. They didn’t care whether we learned our language or not. They bought booze on welfare days and drank until they ran out of money. It didn’t matter to them if there was no money left over to buy food for us, and they didn’t care if we went to school hungry.

  “Someone said, ‘What a life. It’s not worth living. Maybe the white people who say Indians are just a bunch of savages are right. Maybe we’ll grow up to be just like our parents. Why don’t we just kill ourselves now and get it over with. It’d be a good way to get even for all the bad things our parents have done to us. They’d come to our funerals and regret they treated us that way.’

  “And when Rebecca, Jonathan and Sara killed themselves, their parents got all upset. They paid more attention to their kids dead than alive. There were big funerals with real nice plastic flowers, pictures of the dead for everyone to admire, long speeches and choirs of elders singing the old gospel songs in Anishinaabemowin. At school there were memorial services right here in the gym and kids wrote poems about them and their pictures were hung on the walls as if they were heroes.”

  “And what makes you the big expert,” Jonathan’s father said, interrupting Raven. “You had it good, living with Nokomis all those years.”

  “Yeah, and why didn’t you tell us if you knew all about it?” asked Rebecca’s father, who had not spoken to that point.

  “Leave her alone,” said Martha. “How do you know how she felt? If you got to blame someone, blame me.”

  “No, they’re right,” said Raven. “I should have said something. It’s just that I couldn’t.”

  “Lay off the kid,” Rebecca’s mother said. “It takes a lotta guts to face everybody like that and what she’s got to say is important.”

  The other parents nodded their agreement and Raven continued. “Rebecca, Jonathan, Sara and I made a deal to kill ourselves when we turned thirteen. We all knew thirteen was the right age to die, when we were no longer kids but before we became grown-ups and parents. We knew that in the old days, thirteen was the most important time in the lives of young people. They went into the bush and built shelters to meditate in and stayed there for days without eating or drinking until they received their spirit name and vision about their future from Gitche Manitou. They then went home and got married and started families of their own. They knew what they wanted to do with their lives and it was a time of celebration for everyone.

  “But that was when Native kids had a future. Now we don’t become adults when we become teenagers, but drift along with no hope. We had nothing to lose and so why not die?

  “Maybe I did have it better when I was a kid than the others,” she said, turning to Jonathan’s father. “But I joined in because I was having so many problems with my mother. She only came back from Toronto because she had to. She went through the motions of taking care of me, but I knew she wasn’t sincere because she never showed me any love and started to beat me.

  “There’s something else, something I haven’t dared tell anyone before, not even Joshua. After each suicide, the dead started to visit those of us who were still alive. Now I’m the only one left and Rebecca, Jonathan and Sara are coming to see me every night. They stand around my bed looking at me sad-like, never saying anything but I know what they want. They want to be sure I understand they’ll never find peace in the spirit world unless I join them. I gave them my word, and if I don’t go through with my undertaking, I feel I’ll be letting them down. And they were let down so many times when they were alive.”

  Sara’s mother shrieked and began to wail. The other parents joined in, rocking back and forth in their chairs, their eyes clasped shut, and keening in black despair. The suffering of their children was continuing in the afterlife and there was nothing they could do to help them.

  Raven, desperate to explain herself and bring their anguish to an end, rose to her feet and shouted at them: “Stop! Stop! Let me finish. I never really wanted to die,” she said, fighting back tears, “I just wanted my mother to say she loved me. I think the others just needed some reason to live and the love of their families.”

  The parents, jolted back to reality, straightened up in their seats and began hugging each other. Someone brought them a box of tissues and they wiped their eyes and started crying again in cathartic release. Members of the community were now doing the same thing. Tears streamed down under the sunglasses of Raven’s classmates.

  Father Antoine held his head in his hands. The bishop looked down at the floor, unable to meet anyone’s eye.

  Martha took Raven in her arms and hugged her and whispered that she loved her and that she had always loved her. Then, grasping the talking stick in one hand,
she took the floor.

  “I sure hope some good comes from all this suffering tonight. If it does, it won’t be because Father Antoine and the bishop showed any remorse. But I say, so what if they and people like them don’t say they’re sorry? Our pain is so great, we shouldn’t waste any more time on them. It looks like begging.”

  “But that’s letting them off easy,” someone called from the back of the room.

  “I don’t agree,” said Martha. “It’s easy to say you’re sorry when you don’t mean it. And we’re the ones carrying the burden anyway, not them. The only way to get it off our backs is to forgive those who harmed us, whether they accept their blame or not. That doesn’t mean we should forgive and forget, but we need to forgive to be able to start healing ourselves and get on with our lives.” Martha then dragged an astonished Father Antoine to his feet and hugged him, saying, “I forgive you.” She turned to the bishop and hugged him as well.

  The parents of the children who had killed themselves, one after the other, left their chairs and followed her lead. And when the mothers put their arms around the priest, each of them said in a voice so low that only Father Antoine and the bishop could hear, “Don’t you remember? You raped me when I was a little girl but I forgive you.”

  The members of the healing circle took their seats and the room was still.

  “I have one last thing to tell you,” said Raven, picking up the talking stick again. “Last night, I visited the spirit world in my dreams and met Nanabush, and I told him I had come seeking guidance on whether I should fulfil my vow to join my friends on their journey of death or whether I should live.

  “Nanabush looked at me for the longest time before answering.

  “ ‘That is a decision only you can make,’ he said. ‘But just remember, the Creator put you on earth for a purpose and you will be going against his will if you kill yourself. I know you believe your life has no meaning. But have you never thought that just living gives meaning to life? Is not the experience of life the real meaning of life?’

  “Nanabush then took me by the hand and told me to look deep down into the waters of Cat Lake. When I did, and the ripples on the surface cleared, I saw myself obeying the spirits of Rebecca, Jonathan and Sara and hanging myself by a rope from the black spruce tree that stands in our front yard. I saw my mother screaming and running out of the house and falling on the ground when she saw me swinging there. I saw Joshua coming to cut me down and hugging my mother. I saw the school close and all the kids running out crying, just like we did when the other kids killed themselves. I saw the people coming with gifts of food to my mother to try to comfort her. I saw the preacher talking to my mother and trying to help her.

  “I saw the police come and take me to the nursing station where they put me in a body bag just like they always do. I saw them shipping me out like a piece of freight on a charter to Thunder Bay for an autopsy. I saw myself lying naked on a stainless steel countertop in a laboratory as a doctor wearing a white lab coat looked at the marks around my neck and cut me open to take samples from my organs to test for drugs and who knows what—just like they do on CSI Miami. I saw people from a funeral home take me back to the Thunder Bay airport in a black hearse. I saw my mother being comforted by Joshua and by the preacher at Cat Lake airport as my body was unloaded from the plane and taken to the school gymnasium for the funeral service.

  “I was then in a coffin with its lid open, dressed in my best clothes, my head and my body resting on soft red velvet cushions. Weeping members of the community passed by to kiss me and to say goodbye, just like they did at the funerals of the others. There was a guard of honour of kids from the school and my mother was standing at the head of the coffin wringing her hands and Spider had his arm around her shoulders. Someone read a poem I had written back when I was happy with my life, and the families of the other kids who had taken their lives were so upset they left the room. The preacher delivered a sermon telling everyone to be joyful, for I had gone to heaven, a choir of elders led the crowd in heartbreaking songs and someone started to play Amazing Grace on an electric guitar, just like they always do at all the funerals.

  “I looked up at the faces of my friends from school as they crowded around, and I knew that it wouldn’t be long before some of them followed me.

  “Then the coffin lid slammed shut and everything was black. I felt the coffin being picked up and carried away and I was ever so scared.

  “I called out saying that I had changed my mind, that it had all been a mistake and I didn’t want to die. But no one heard me.

  “A few minutes later, I heard the sound of the coffin being pushed onto the back of the pickup truck we use as a hearse. I felt the vibrations of the engine as the driver turned the key in the ignition and every bump as he shifted gears and moved off over the trail to the cemetery. There, I knew, an open grave awaited. Soon I heard the preacher say ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes,’ as clods of dirt rained down on the wood over my head.

  “No, no! I cried. I didn’t mean it! I don’t care if the Church treated my mother and the others bad at that residential school. I don’t care if my mother drinks and beats me. I don’t care if the people can’t get their lives together. I don’t care if they spend their welfare money on booze and drugs.

  “I want to take my chances with life! Thirteen is too young to die! I want to smell the air after a rain. I want to see the waves battering the rocks on the shore. I want to hear the call of the loon. I want to fall in love and get married. I want to touch the soft warm skin of my own baby. I want to sing and dance. I want to experience bad as well as good things. I want to travel, to live in Toronto, to see the world and come home and help my people. I want to grow old. I don’t want to become a spirit!

  “But no one paid any attention for I was dead and buried.

  “The image faded, leaving me with a feeling of absolute dread and hopelessness.

  “Nanabush then spoke.

  “ ‘It is now for you to decide whether the joy of living, even in pain, outweighs the finality of death.’

  “I chose life and woke up feeling happier than I had since my mother came back.”

  The members of the community sat in silence. They now understood that the land they lived on was sacred, and by forgiving their enemies and connecting with their ancient culture, they could find the strength to heal their wounds. And that night, before the people went to bed, they told their children that they loved them.

  EPILOGUE

  WHEN MARTHA WENT TO BED that night, she closed her eyes and Father Antoine came to her, just as he had so often over the years. This time, however, he was not the corpulent priest with bad breath who haunted her nights with flashbacks of abuse. Instead she saw him as he had become—a pitiful, ageing pedophile, unwilling to acknowledge, let alone apologize for, the harm he had caused her and the mothers of the children who had killed themselves.

  Earlier in the evening, Martha had told him that she forgave him. Now, several hours later, the rapture induced by the dynamics of the healing circle was fading. But that did not matter, for she did not regret making her gesture of mercy, and more importantly, she no longer feared him. The pardon she had extended to Father Antoine had banished the monster of hate within her, freeing her to deal with her depression and alcoholism and make a new start with her children.

  She was ever so proud of her children. The strongest member of the family, Martha recognized, was Raven, but she would still require much nurturing to reach her potential. Martha just hoped that she would find the mothering skills within herself to meet the challenge.

  As for Spider, she had been ecstatic when Joshua had brought him back. Even better, he told her he had not had a drink since the night he left the reserve and felt at peace with himself for the first time in his life. He knew himself, however, and would soon resume drinking if he returned to the city or remained on the reserve. He planned to return as soon as possible and live a traditional lifestyle away from alcohol in the tra
pping cabin of his grandparents and he hoped that his mother and sister could come to see him often. He wanted their company, and would need their help in mastering life in the bush and learning the traditional teachings.

  Father Antoine went to bed a deeply troubled man, for despite his words of denial, his encounter with the mothers of Rebecca, Jonathan and Sara had thoroughly upset him. Who could have guessed that his actions of so long ago would shatter their families and lead their children to kill themselves? As a priest, he knew there were few if any greater sins than murder, and taking your own life was self-murder. How many people had he destroyed over the years?

  The enormity of his sins made Father Antoine tremble. It was not as if he had not known that he was doing bad things. He had, however, convinced himself long ago that he was different from other men, and had been compelled by some blind force within himself to act as he did. Other priests were doing similar things without being punished by the Church, and this to him had been a sign that the hierarchy, if not approving his actions, at least understood his predicament.

  Now for the first time, he was ashamed of himself and realized that he had used his faith as a tool, an instrument, a means of rationalizing his unacceptable conduct. For during his years at the residential school, after the passion of his encounter with each little victim had dissipated, he would descend to the chapel late at night overcome with shame and remorse, get down on his knees, clasp his hands together, turn his face to the statue of Christ and pray fervently for forgiveness and vow that he would never again touch another little girl. In the course of the night, a feeling of great peace would come over him, and he would know he had been granted absolution.