“Oh God, why did you let me be born? Why? Why was lever born? Why do you let these bad things happen to Cheryl and me? You’re supposed to be loving, protective and just. But you’re not, God! You’re none of those things if you can let all the bad things happen. You’re just a phoney! And I hate you. You hear me? I hate you!” That’s how angry I was. I started crying and by the time I finished, I was overcome with remorse for having thought those things. At last, I was able to say my prayers and ask God to help me be strong and good.
For the rest of that month, the DeRosier kids taunted me about having drunkards for parents. It was new ammunition for them to use against me and it bothered me a lot. One Saturday morning, they started in on me again and finally I made my feeble defense. “They’re not drunkards! They’re sick. That’s all. Sick!”
“Sick? Boy, what a dummy you are. But then half-breeds are pretty stupid, aren’t they?” Maggie said maliciously.
“Yeah. Your parents didn’t know how to take care of you. They just know how to booze it up,” Rick added. And then they started mimicking drunken people and talking to each other with slurred speech, laughing at intervals.
“No!” I screamed.
I ran out of the house, across the grain fields, running as hard and as fast as I could. They had acted and sounded just like my parents and their friends. I remembered. I could run all I wanted but I couldn’t run away from the truth. When I reached the edge of the woods, my sides were aching. I stopped and sat down, my back against a pine tree. I was panting and sobbing very hard. As I caught my breath, I could picture my parents.
“So. That’s why you never got any better. Liars! That’s what you are! All those promises of getting well. All those lies about taking medicine. Liars!
You told us, ‘Soon, April. Soon, Cheryl. We’ll take you back home as soon as we get better.’
Well, you lied to us. You never intended to get better. You never cared about us. You made Cheryl cry and you don’t even care. And because of you, I’m stuck here. I hate you both for lying to us. And I hope I never see you again.”
I got up and started walking back to the house because I still had floors to wash. I stopped and thought, “No. Why should I? They can beat me if they want to. I don’t care. I just don’t care anymore. To hell with them! To hell with my parents! To hell with everyone, except Cheryl. Even the Dions didn’t answer my letters. They lied too. They didn’t really care for me. But that’s okay because I don’t care for any of them either!”
I turned back into the woods and made my way through the heavy underbrush. I don’t know how far I walked before I came upon a small clearing which bordered the Red River. The sunlight filtered through the towering trees, warming even the shady spots. The area was alive with the sounds of birds, squirrels and bugs. But I felt at peace, the tensions from the past months were lifted. I knew I felt this way because I was all cried out and I had decided that for now, I didn’t care about anything. I didn’t even feel guilty about using the words ‘to hell’.
I wasn’t really thinking about anything when I noticed my arms and hands. They were tanned a deep, golden brown. A lot of pure white people tanned just like this. Poor Cheryl. She would never be able to disguise her brown skin as just a tan. People would always know that she was part Indian. It seemed to me that what I’d read and what I’d heard indicated that Metis and Indians were inclined to be alcoholics. I guess that was because they were a weak people. Oh, they were put down more than anyone else, but then, didn’t they deserve it? Anyways, I could pass for a pure white person. I could say I was part French and part Irish. If I had to, I could even change the spelling of my name. Raintree looked like one of those Indian names but if I changed the spelling to Raintry, that could pass for Irish. And when I grew up, I wouldn’t be poor; I’d be rich. Being a half-breed meant being poor and dirty. It meant being weak and having to drink. It meant being ugly and stupid. It meant living off white people. And giving your children to white people to look after. It meant that kids like me, had to take what kids like the DeRosiers gave, and none of that was good. Well, I wasn’t going to live like a half-breed. When I got free of this place, when I got free from being a foster child, then I would live just like a real white person.
Then a question came to mind. What about Cheryl? How was I going to pass for a white person when I had a Metis sister? Especially when she was so proud of what she was? I loved her. I could never cut myself off from her completely. And she wouldn’t go along with what I planned. I would never even be able to tell her what I planned. I sat there thinking but the problem wouldn’t be resolved. Well, I had a long time to figure that one out. For sure, she would never turn out to be like the rest of the Metis people. She and maybe Mrs. MacAdams were special people. Cheryl was already a whole lot smarter than all the rest of the kids in her class and that counted for a lot. I sighed, stood up and stretched. Now I felt ready to face whatever the DeRosiers had in store for me. One day I would be free of them. One day…
For the first two weeks of the summer holidays, Maggie was going to Vancouver to visit her grandmother. I looked forward to the day when she would be leaving because she, more than Ricky, made my life miserable. She had started coming into my room whenever she felt like it, saying it was her house and she could go wherever she pleased. One night, she was looking at my suitcases thoughtfully and then she said, “I’m going to borrow your suitcases for my trip.”
I looked up at her surprised and said, “You can’t just ‘borrow’ my suitcases. They’re mine! Besides, what if I had to move while you’re gone?”
“Move? My mother’s not going to let you move from here. C’mon Ape, I’ve got to start packing tonight,” she said in what was supposed to be a coaxing voice. I knew very well that her mother would let her have her way but I still felt stubborn.
“Look, you owe it to me. You live in my house and eat our food. You’re just lucky I don’t tell Mother about your selfishness.” With that, she dumped all the things in my suitcases on the floor and took them with her.
When she came back from her trip, she kept my suitcases. I asked to have them back several times so I could put my clothes back in them. But she only ignored me. One day, I entered my bedroom and my suitcases were there. They had been scratched up as if Maggie had deliberately tried to cut into them with a knife. Inside, there was dried red fingernail polish poured to form the words, ‘Ape, the bitch.’ I was angry but there was nothing I could do about it. I couldn’t even show them to my social worker because it would be Maggie’s word against mine. I thought that would be the end of it, but it wasn’t.
That same night, during supper, Maggie said, “Mother, Ape let me use her suitcases and I forgot to give them back right away. So you know what she did today? She went up to my room, threw my stuff around and stole some of my money and my jewelry. I wasn’t going to say anything about it but it makes me mad that she can just come into my room and do that.”
I couldn’t believe what she’d said and I looked over at her with complete astonishment. I practically growled at her, “You bloody liar!”
Mrs. DeRosier slammed her fork and knife onto the table, stood up and came over to where I was sitting. She slapped me across the side of the head, took a vise-grip of my arm and yanked me out of my chair to shake me. It seemed to me that all happened at the same time.
And she was screaming, “Don’t you ever talk to my daughter in that tone of voice again! Who the hell do you think you are? We take you in because your parents don’t want you, we give you food and shelter and this is how you pay us back?”
Then she asked Maggie, “Is your room still in the same condition that April left it in?”
“Yes, it is,” Maggie answered her, pathetically.
To me, she ordered, “March up there right now. We’re going to see what you did. And then you’re going to get the strapping of your life.”
I’d never seen Maggie’s room before because the upstairs was off limits to me. Her room wa
s beautiful. The fancy furniture all matched and was white with gold trimming. Her bed even had a canopy over it. The wall-paper was of pink and yellow roses. But right now, books, papers, and clothing littered the deep pile rug.
“You must be a sick girl, April, to do this kind of thing. What did Maggie ever do to you?” Mrs. DeRosier asked.
All the while, I was being shaken about like a rag doll. She marched me back down to my room and started to look through my things. In one of the pockets of my coat, she found some money and some earrings. Maggie was standing at the doorway with a deep look of satisfaction on her face. While Mrs. DeRosier went for the strap, Maggie said softly, “That’s what you get for bugging me, April Raintree.”
The beating I got that night was one of the worst but I wouldn’t cry. That seemed to infuriate Mrs. DeRosier all the more. I was sure that after that, Mrs. DeRosier would have me moved. I thought the beating would have been worth it after all. I waited for things to start happening but over the next few weeks, nothing more was said about the incident.
At the end of the summer, Cheryl and I had another visit. When we got to the Children’s Aid office, we were told that our parents were not expected to come. I felt guilty about the resolution I had made a few months back. To make up for it, I told Cheryl how our family life had been when we were all together. That is, I told her the good things. I told her how Mom used to rock her to sleep and sing songs to us; how Dad always laughed and joked and played with us for hours, telling us lots of stories; how we would all go out to visit our aunts and uncles or that they would come over to our house; how Dad would bring out his fiddle and play while everyone danced jigs. I wondered if it was right to tell her only about the good things. Maybe I was lying by not telling her about the drinking and the fights. But then, Cheryl didn’t need to know that just yet. I wanted Cheryl to be happy as long as possible.
At our next family visit in October, only Dad came. He explained that he had been up north and couldn’t get back for our visits. Mom, he said, was sick. Cheryl easily accepted the explanations. She was, as usual, affectionate with him. But I knew the truth about them. I was aloof but polite. I had thought once of telling him about what a bad place the DeRosier farm was. But now I didn’t bother. He wouldn’t care. He’d pretend to care but he wouldn’t do anything about it. I didn’t have much to say to him. As children, that would be the last time Cheryl and I would see him.
Winter and spring passed. Life with the DeRosiers was the same: miserable. I had become bitterly passive and I now said fewer prayers. I was sure that God had heard me say I hated him but He had not heard me ask for his forgiveness. Three more visits were arranged but our parents never showed up. Each time, Cheryl would end up crying. She was beginning to change. Before she had been outgoing, always talking and normally cheerful. At the last two visits, I tried my hardest to bring out her laughter but was rewarded only with sad smiles and I suspected they were only to make me feel good.
By the end of June, I had passed Grade Six with a low B average and that was because English, French and Math were easy for me. I felt torn in different directions and often changed my mind regarding my parents. Sometimes, I would think of the life I would have been leading if we were all together. So what if we were poor and lived in slums. Being together would be a million times better than living on this horrible farm. Other times, I would remind myself that my parents were weak alcoholics who had made their choice. And then I would loathe them. Or I would think of the Dions and all their religious teachings. What was the sense of praying to a God who didn’t care about me either? On Cheryl, it was still the question of how I was going to live as a white person with her around. I had seven more years of probably being stuck with the DeRosiers and if not them, then in some other foster home. Seven years of not having control of my own life.
Most of the kids in my class were excited about the summer holidays. Some were going away on trips. Me, I was just going to be alone, unloved, with nothing to look forward to. For seven more years… I wondered how I was going to ride them out.
CHAPTER 4
In July, Mrs. DeRosier had her husband move an old musty-smelling dresser from one of the outbuildings into my room. It had a cracked, spotted mirror on it and it looked like it was about to fall apart. But I was grateful to have something to put my things in and wondered why the small kindness. Later, Mrs. DeRosier went out and bought an old cot at an auction and had it put in my room. Since it was in worse condition than the one I already had, my curiosity was really aroused. I suspected that Maggie knew the reason but I knew better than to ask her. She and Ricky had stopped calling my parents drunkards. I knew it was my lack of reactions which made them ignore me for the most part. Now, they were constantly at each other to their mother’s mortification. And to my amusement.
I was weeding in the garden the morning the car drove into the farmyard. I glanced at it, not really caring who it was. I looked again, surprised to see Miss Turner get out. My face had a grin from ear to ear when I saw Cheryl getting out on the other side. I dropped my garden tool and ran over to them.
“Cheryl, what are you doing here? Are you here for a visit?”
Mrs. DeRosier had her plastic smile showing and she said to me in a pleasant tone, “I wanted this to be a surprise for you, April. Your sister has come to live with us. We all thought this would be a good idea, because your parents haven’t been coming to your visits.” She then took Miss Turner into the house for a cup of coffee.
I turned to Cheryl and asked her why she had moved from such a fantastic place like the MacAdam’s home.
“They asked me last month if I would like to move with you. I asked why you couldn’t come there because it was awful here but they said they didn’t have the room. I told them I liked them and all that but I’d rather live with you, any day. So here I am.” Cheryl shrugged and grinned, as if she had pulled off a masterplan.
From the day she arrived, I changed. I was more alert and openly defiant towards the DeRosiers. I mostly just wanted to protect Cheryl from them. We did all the chores together and while we did them, we joked around a lot. While we did the outside work, Maggie would lay on a blanket, to tan herself, choosing a spot close to wherever we happened to be working.
Once, she ordered Cheryl to go in and get her a glass of lemonade. Cheryl said, “Get it yourself.”
We were weeding in the garden and I was further away from Maggie and behind Cheryl. I stood up and eyed Maggie with a silent threat. Maggie got up and went off to get her own drink.
“You lazy half-breeds,” was her comment as she stalked off. I bent down to resume my weeding.
Cheryl turned to me and said, “See? That’s all there is to it. They got no guts.”
Before Cheryl had come, the DeRosier’s dog, Rebel, had always followed the foster boys around, down to the barns or out to the fields. Now, he stuck close to Cheryl’s side. When I took Cheryl down to my favorite spot by the river, the big yellow mongrel came with us. Cheryl told me the MacAdams had taken her to see this movie, “Old Yeller”, and Rebel looked like Yeller. She’d tell me all about the television shows that she’d seen. Since I’d moved to the DeRosiers, I wasn’t allowed into the living room, except to clean it. Our privacy at the river was protected for us by nature. A few times, the DeRosier kids had tried to follow me before. Maggie found the underbrush too scratchy and too difficult and she had given up. Ricky had come down with a bad case of poison ivy the first time. The second time, there had been too many mosquitoes for his liking.
When school started in September, the DeRosier kids got the other kids on the bus to pick on Cheryl and me. Cheryl was easy to goad and she’d get into verbal exchanges of insults. It was impossible for me to convince her that was exactly what they wanted. At home, there was a constant testing of wills between the DeRosiers and us. I grew tired of feeling I always had to be on guard. I preferred the passive state I’d been in before Cheryl had come. I was worried that Cheryl would get into physical fig
hts when I wasn’t around. Fist fights were for people who couldn’t keep their self-control. Furthermore, they were undignified. Cheryl hadn’t made any friends in her own class, so she sat with Jennifer and me at lunchtimes. We had different recess periods. I guess she managed to keep out of fights because I never heard of any.
When our report cards came out before Christmas, Cheryl had maintained her high grades, despite the extra chores she now had. My own average jumped considerably. Knowing by their mother’s reaction that the DeRosier kids had done poorly, Cheryl and I gloated. It was one of the few things we could rib them about and we took full advantage. We’d say things like, “Hey Maggie, you told us that half-breeds were stupid. Well, if we’re stupid, you must lack brains altogether.” Well, maybe we overdid it a little. It was the only time I referred myself as being a half-breed—to spite them.
It was after Christmas that Cheryl got into trouble at school. She told me all about it at lunchtime. That morning, her teacher had been reading accounts of how the Indians had scalped, tortured and massacred brave white explorers and missionaries. Cheryl’s anger began to build. All of a sudden, she had loudly protested, “This is all a bunch of lies!”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” the teacher had said calmly.
“Then I’ll say it again. I’m not going to learn this garbage about the Indian people,” Cheryl had said louder, feeling she couldn’t back down.
Everyone else had looked at her as the teacher approached her desk. “They’re not lies; this is history. These things happened whether you like it or not.”
“If this is history, how come so many Indian tribes were wiped out? How come they haven’t got their land anymore? How come their food supplies were wiped out? Lies! Lies! Lies! Your history books don’t say how the white people destroyed the Indian way of life. That’s all you white people can do is teach a bunch of lies to cover your own tracks!”
April Raintree Page 5
