Annie Muktuk and Other Stories

by Norma Dunning

  When we started to cut wood we only cut in the area around the school. Father LePage found out that a local mill was hiring area farmers and paying them to cut. He signed us up saying that this would be our financial act of contrition. At last we could add to the much needed money for the running of the school.

  He was smart about things though. Father LePage always made sure that we were in our desks on inspection day. The third Monday of every month. On Sundays we attended High Mass. It was our only afternoons that were spent away from the woods. Father LePage is the meanest white man I had ever known. I had hoped that I would never know another white guy until Joshua came into our lives.

  Joshua tells us he is eighteen. He was raised on a farm and only went to school to Grade Four. He tells us about his mean, “bastard dad” who thought the purpose of having children was to have them work the farm. He tells us stories about his dad chasing him to beat him for not working hard enough. Joshua ran away when he was fourteen and came closer to the city. He couldn’t find any work there and found some on another farm. A lumber mill opened not far from Winnipeg and Joshua went to work there. He cuts trees in the morning by himself and picks us up each working day at noon. This is what I mean—you don’t have to ask white people questions. They will tell you everything whether or not you want to hear it.

  Joshua is nice to us. He lets us take breaks with him and he talks about his nights of drinking with his friends in the small town of Pine Falls. He talks about Indian women and how they look just like us. Suzanne and I never say a word. We don’t tell him that we don’t like Indians. Our mothers taught us to never like them. Said they were double-faced, saying one thing in front of you and the opposite as they walk away.

  Today is the first day I have kept something that belonged to a white man. A cigarette. I can smell the sour tobacco tucked away in my shirt. I feel the tingle of having done something terrible. I giggle to myself. I’m proud of this one small act of revenge against Father LePage and all he represents. I am being naughty and I love it. Joshua stops the truck and Suzanne and I lift our axes. We are ready for another afternoon in the cold fall air.

  “Hey, hey now,” says Joshua. “What about that smoke—shouldn’t you light that up before you go to work today?”

  “Not right now,” I say with a smile. “Let’s get our work done first.”

  “OK. But we’re gonna have a smoke together before this day is over. Alright?”

  I like Joshua. He has the kindest brown eyes that I have seen since I last saw my father’s. He reminds me of home.

  12

  Every day in the bush I think of Hikwa. I do this because I am afraid that I will forget her. I am afraid that I will forget her perfect eyes. The sound of her voice. The tinkle in her laugh. Her energy. I wish for the day that I see her again. In my mind I will give her the best life imaginable. A life happier than mine is.

  We hear she is the best student at her school. The best athlete with the highest average in French in the province in Manitoba. She is famous that way. Her bedroom must be a place filled with ribbons and trophies. The gold dress smiles each time she shows him a new one. He ruffles her hair and always says, “Tu es mon champion.”

  If I could see the way Hikwa can, I would see that her life is not perfect. She is an Eskimo in a white school. I would see how the other girls laugh at her shortness, at her straight black, bristly hair and all her “Inukshuk.” I would see how she ignores those girls because at night Papa LaFlamme’s eyes beam at her.

  But I have only my imagination, not sight, and in my imagination they always have dinner together in a candle lit room. A room of quiet. A room of peace. A room of safety.

  “My little one,” he says, “Say the Hail Mary for me. First in English, then in French and tonight, lastly, in Spanish.”

  In my dreams of her, Hikwa knows many languages. She is smart and kind to the gold dress.

  Clearing her throat first, she opens with, “Hail Mary full of grace. Je vous salue, Marie, pleine de grâce Dios te salve Maria, llena eres de gracia…”

  I grin at the thought of her talking in all sorts of ways. Hikwa is clever and strong. I often wonder if a dull loneliness aches inside of her like it does in me. But I know that whatever is inside of each of us, our ways will never leave us. We were taught to always know what is ahead, behind and beside us as we walk about our days. To study the earth. We were taught to know the wind, the moon, and the stars. We are Inuk. They can’t take that from us.

  I wonder if she remembers me. I wonder if she remembers the faces of our mothers. My biggest fear is to have all of their faces wilt from each of our memories.

  13

  “Hey, do you girls want to come out to a dance at the Legion?” We are taking our break with Joshua. Fifteen minutes each afternoon.

  Joshua, he always says words we don’t understand. He has built us a beautiful fire and we are boiling a pot of water to make tea. Heavy, wet snowflakes fall from the grey sky. I am darting my head back and forth trying to catch snowflakes on my tongue before they melt over the fire. A game I used to play at home. Suzanne is sitting on the stump next to mine, rubbing her hands together and stamping her feet. We look at each other and shrug.

  “A dance. Do you want to come out to a dance?”

  Suzanne shakes her head but I know she doesn’t understand it any more than I do.

  “Do you girls even know what a dance is?” asks Joshua, pulling a cigarette out of his heavy jacket and handing one to me.

  “No,” I say as I spin the cigarette between my fingers. I snap it up into the air and lean in and catch it between my lips. Suzanne laughs. I pull the match from my bra and strike it against a rock, lighting the small tube in one flashy motion. Suzanne laughs even harder.

  “You girls are dumb. You know it? I asked you if you wanted to go to a dance. Friday night. OK?”

  “What’s a ‘dance’?” I ask with a glint in my eye. This should be fun. “Show us.”

  Joshua moves towards Suzanne and wraps one arm around her bulging waist. Takes her tiny, chubby fingers from one hand and holds them high into the air. He hums a song. I watch Suzanne shuffle out of step. Plunking her square feet onto his and each time, Joshua winces and wrestles his boots out from under hers. He starts to sing, “My Sister and I.” At first we all laugh at his attempt, but as the song progresses our laughing turns to silence. Joshua doesn’t understand.

  Joshua croons words that talk about fear and the sky. His song ends with night time and crying.

  Suzanne pulls her hand from his and plops back down on her stump. I sit on the ground next to her and hold the hand that was just in Joshua’s. I toss my smoke into the flames. We both stare into the fire. Tears are sliding down Suzanne’s face.

  “What? What now? Shit, you girls. Here, I’ll get the water.” Joshua pours the hot water and we each take a turn dipping our shared tea bag into our tin mugs.

  “I don’t get it. What did I do wrong?” asks Joshua. “OK, and whatever it was that I done wrong, I’m truly sorry for it. Alright? I don’t get you girls at all.” Joshua shakes his head and pulls another butt from the deck.

  Suzanne and I squeeze our hands together. I know that it is not my place to speak. I wait for Suzanne to say the words that will help Joshua understand.

  “It’s the song, Joshua. Not you,” Suzanne whispers, rubbing her thick palms across her high cheek bones. I copy what she is doing. The tears and the thick snowflakes have turned my face to mud.

  “I never heard those words before you said them. I never knew that people wrote songs like that for everyone to hear. We only hear hymns at school.” Suzanne says. She is avoiding the real story. I play along. This is how it is supposed to be with the white people. Only tell part of the truth. Never the whole truth.

  “Wow, a song by Jimmy Dorsey can make you bawl like a calf stuck in barbed wire! Holy Shit! If Jimmy only knew the effect he had on women…man that guy must get laid a lot.” Joshua blows onto his mug and sits dow
n on the ground next to Suzanne.

  “Geez, you two…I’m sorry. I really am.”

  I hop up onto my feet and take Suzanne’s hands into my own. “Come, sister—we will show him the music from home!”

  I look over at Joshua and say, “Watch this. Jimmy Dorsey, my ass!”

  I lean in close to Suzanne’s mouth and with my lips smiling, taking a big breath I say, “Ooooma OOooma OOOoma!”

  Suzanne replies, “A-Yuk A-Yuk A-Yuk.” High pitched like the birds coming to shore for a landing.

  I place my hands on her forearms, she puts her tiny palms on my forearms and together we mix our sounds. The sounds we know best. The sounds we were born to sing.

  “Ooma A-Yuk A-Yuk Omma A-Yuk.” It all becomes one giant sound with only the earth understanding what we are saying. We sway back and forth and change the pitch. We alternate between one being high and the other low tones. We are lost in the magic of what we know best. The sounds we first heard in our mothers’ wombs. We sing for a long time and end our song with a long, swaying hug.

  “Hey! That’s ritzy. Can I try?”

  I step back and Joshua wraps his large hands around Suzanne’ forearms.

  He takes a big breath and out of his mouth falls something that sounds like a sneeze. We all burst out laughing. He takes another big breath and a giant burp fills the air, the kind that sounds as if your vocal chords have snapped. We are laughing so hard that I bend over and let loose one of the longest, noisiest farts I’ve ever had.

  Soon none of us can stand up. We are rolling on the ground like baby polar bears. Suzanne is turning into a very fat white woman with snow wrapping around her clothes in thick layers. I know that I have done one thing right today. I have made us both forget our real pain.

  14

  Father LePage is reviewing the ledgers.

  “Something is not right here…” he says aloud as he twists a strand of hair with his left index finger. It is a habit of confused thought that has lasted from his childhood.

  He takes the ledgers over to the small window because the snowflakes and frost are dimming the light in the room.

  “The girls work for twenty cents a day…I am discounted fifty per cent of what I had to pay on the wood for this school because of their labour. This means I get $1.20 per week each on the girls, plus fifteen cents on each cord produced and I am only paying $1.00 per cord. Now take that wage over one month and…. It does not make any sense. These girls must not be working as hard as they used to. Their production appears to have dropped.” He paces his office with the ledger in his right hand, twisting the hair on the left side of his head faster and faster as the confusion clears.

  “The reality is, with the amount of cords they produce, I am making less on these girls than I did last fall!” He pauses. “Sister Mary Rose!” he shouts at the closed door.

  Sister Mary Rose feels her head bolt up from her desk outside Father LePage’s office. She feels the same sharp pain jolt through her stomach. The pain that snaps like lightning inside of her every time he shouts her name. She hates these moments. These moments where she is made to bear the brunt of his wrath. Sister Mary Rose politely taps on the wooden door and enters looking at the floor.

  “Yes, Father?”

  “Look me in the eyes. For the love of God, Sister Mary Rose, look me in the eyes. I am tired of looking at the top of your tunic!”

  Sister Mary Rose raises her eyes. They are filled with fear, but today there is something else, too. A remnant from Bishop LaFlamme’s words.

  “What is going on with Suzanne and Therese?”

  “They are good girls, Father. They do such good school work each morning and they keep our fires burning here in the afternoons. I don’t understand why you are asking.”

  “I have been reviewing the ledgers and I have discovered a discrepancy!” This is what she fears most—his “discrepancies.” One after another. “Discrepancies” in the kitchen. In the number of candles used during mass. In the little boys who he thinks are sipping the communal wine. Father LePage smells out discrepancies like a dog.

  “Look at these ledgers, Sister. You see, it is in black ink on white paper. See!”

  Sister Mary Rose leans in towards the desk and examines the jumble of numbers running in crooked columns off the page in front of her.

  “See! You cannot tell me otherwise! Those little bitches—ah Mon Dieu, forgive my English. Those little girls. They are not PRODUCING!” he snarls. Grabbing the ledger from beneath Sister Mary Rose’s nose, he shouts, “I have PROOF! I am getting to the very bottom of this. I will take this to the Bishop. That man and his ‘No Bruises.’ I’ll show him!”

  Sister Mary Rose feels the bile rising to the top of her throat, the acid stinging in her windpipes. Clasping her mouth with her right palm she flees from the room and retches into the trash container beside her own small desk. She wipes the sweat from her forehead and looks up in time to see Father LePage gush past her.

  He stops at the door and turns back to Sister Mary Rose. “You say they are out in the woods with a boy, yes?”

  Sister Mary Rose nods. Her hands have anchored themselves tight to the corner of her desk.

  “Father LePage,” Sister Mary Rose says, clearing her throat and feeling her heart race against her chest. “Father, it is a poor day to be heading off to the woods!” For the first time she can remember, she speaks clearly and with authority. “Why not go tomorrow? Or whenever this weather clears?”

  Father LePage stares at her. He appears confused by her outburst.

  “Why Sister, you have never…I mean, I have never heard you speak so much. What you say makes sense. It is poor weather and the girls should be back within the hour.” He glances at the huge grandfather clock stationed by the school entrance.

  “Perhaps I am acting in haste. Yes, I think you are correct. I will go another day. A day without snow and perhaps some sunshine. Yes.” He puts his coat back onto the rung, straightens the cap on his head, closes the door of his office behind him.

  15

  Bishop LaFlamme clears his throat and looks into Margarite’s eyes. Their pupils bulleted upon one another. One in anger, and one with the softness that was always there.

  “Please, sit, assi ma chérie.” Bishop LaFlamme says with a small laugh. He has adapted a rhyme that brings back a memory of his own mother.

  Margarite sits tall in the high-back chair. Like a wolverine ready to pounce on her subject. Every muscle in her body is ready to recoil. She is on guard, aware of everything around her. Her intuition is on the hunt.

  “When I was a young boy in France, so many decades ago, my own Mama would tell me, ‘Assi mon osti’ and we would laugh at her little poem—her attempt at humour. It became a small joke between us and as I got older I would say this to her when we would go out in the evenings for our meal. I am an old man but I still miss her. She died decades ago but somehow I can still feel her, in here,” Bishop LaFlamme points to his heart.

  Margarite does not blink. She looks at him and sneers, “At least you grew up with your own mother. I do not have that same privilege.”

  “Yes, I realize this.” Bishop LaFlamme clears his throat, continuing to look directly at her. He does not blink or move his eyes from her.

  “My purpose this morning in having you come to this office before you head off to school is twofold. Firstly, please tell me the scripture from Ephesians 4:26.”

  Margarite does not hesitate. She is first in all her classes. “Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath.”

  “Now,” Bishop LaFlamme is interrupted by a moist, mucus-filled cough. He pulls a cotton hankie from his side pocket and fills it with green and yellow goo. Streaks of red snake through his handkerchief. Margarite’s eyebrows rise ever so slightly.

  “Pardon me. It seems as I age my lungs like to remind me that I will not be here forever.” Bishop LaFlamme rolls the square cloth into a spongy ball and squeezes it back into his hidden pocket.


  “I have come to a decision. Something I wrestled with last night. As you have said, and you are correct, I was very privileged to be raised by my own dear mother. I cannot give you your mother but I can do this one thing—I can take you to see your sisters.”

  Margarite’s pulse picks up but she does not smile. She does not change her stoic stance. She remains erect in her chair. She feels her jaw tighten. She cannot release any sign of joy.

  “They remain at the school with Father LePage and as far as I know, no injury or physical harm has ever occurred to them. I have had my people watching over that school to enforce a rule I presented to him the day I took you from there. No child is ever to exhibit a bruise. He has, as far as I know, maintained that regulation.”

  Margarite does not flinch. Her hands remain gripped to the arms of the chair. Her mouth is a straight line. Emotionless.

  “I make an annual trip to the school. Usually in late spring, but because I think it is important for you to see your sisters, we will go this coming Saturday. Five days from now. We will take the sledge.”

  An uncomfortable silence strolls into the room and stands before Margarite and Bishop LaFlamme. Margarite’s mind is spinning. He has gone to see them four times before this. She feels anger crawling up their wall of silence. Saint Paul—“Be ye angry, and sin not.” She repeats the words over and over again silently.

  “Does this please you?”

  “Yes, Papa LaFlamme. Very much. I look forward to our trip together—and Papa, I thank you for this opportunity. I have longed to see them again.” She stands before Bishop LaFlamme and takes his right hand. Leaning in towards his ring, she places a quiet kiss upon it.

  “Very well. Head off to school then and I will see you at dinner tonight.”

  Bishop LaFlamme sits at his desk and wonders why he did not see a reaction of excitement from his young ward. He expected more. She has become very controlled, he thinks. She has lost her spontaneity. He puts it down to her age as he pushes back his heavy chair and pulls himself upward. The effort makes his cough return and he stands by his desk heaving and hacking.