Black Apple

by Joan Crate

  “Aren’t you worried about losing your job?”

  “I ain’t worried. Besides, I got something to say to you, Sinopaki.”

  She stopped. He knew her home name! Someone from the Reserve must have told him, but he hadn’t gone back there since she’d arrived. From time to time, friends and relatives passed through, and maybe someone had told him, someone who knew Aunt Angelique, her mother’s sister. Whom she never saw anymore and had all but forgotten. She had forgotten so much. She smiled up at Frank, her old name—her real name—a small treasure between them. Maybe it was time to start remembering.

  There is so much I have to tell you, Mother Grace, she would write that evening. I hardly know where to begin.

  “You belong with me,” he said, taking her hand in his fire fingers. “I know who you are and where you come from.”

  I have worked hard at Our Lady of Sorrows. I have prayed, asking the Lord for guidance and the Virgin Mother for intercession. I wanted to be pious and faithful. I have tried.

  “We can have a good life together,” he said.

  “What kind of life?” She needed him to explain, to convince her.

  “A good life,” he repeated. “Maybe in the old way.” He glanced over her shoulder at the cars buzzing by them on the road.

  “What do you mean, exactly?” She willed him to look at her, but he just shrugged and started to walk, letting her hand drop.

  “Maybe live in the bush like your parents,” he said after a few minutes, as if he were considering the idea for the first time. “We could look for their old house. Or I could build us a place if I can find land no one owns.”

  “Is there enough game to live on?” She thought of Papa with his gun, traps, snowshoes, and Mama’s snares. Her parents had been known as skillful hunters, but there were days when winter had dragged its frozen carcass into spring, and the family had nothing left to eat but a few licks of powdery dried meat and shrivelled berries. Now, with the white men hunting too, there might not be enough to go around. She ached for the old life as she remembered it—sun, creek, bush, mountain, and sky with Mama and Papa and their snug bed of hides, with Kiaa-yo too—but she wasn’t sure it was possible anymore. She needed to know. She needed someone who knew.

  “The Reserve, then.” Frank sounded uncertain. Then his gunfire laugh. “We could even stay in Black Apple. Union says they’re going to get us accident insurance. If the mine won’t get me out of bucking, we could live on that while you push me around in my wheelchair.” He grinned, but she didn’t grin back.

  She went to work, and all day long, she blinked a blizzard from her eyes.

  * * *

  She had planned to finish her letter to Mother Grace that night, but she couldn’t. The storm in her head pushed against her skull, and even her eyes throbbed. She put down her pen and crawled into bed. She didn’t even pray.

  She was watching the dancer onshore, trying to see his face, when the water began to rise around her. He kept dancing, unbuttoning his white shirt as his thighs drummed, his feet rose and fell. Sliding off the shirt, he unzipped his woollen pants. The water pulled at her knees, splashing up her legs. Floundering, she cried out as it sucked her in.

  The dancer wore nothing but a breechcloth. He stopped dancing and looked over. Finally, he saw her. He dove into the water.

  She woke up. The blizzard was gone. She stared into the deep night. She knew what she would write to Mother Grace:

  I have watched a shape moving towards me. As it gets closer, I can see it more clearly. You would call it my destiny perhaps, Mother Grace. It’s possibility, I think. Possibilities. There are as many as there are feathers on a bird, and it has not been easy choosing among them, believe me. Believe in me, Mother Grace.

  But the dream was pulling her back.

  Lifting his face from the river, Joseph snapped his head back, flinging water from his long hair. “Come home, Sinopaki,” he said, reaching for her arm. “Where you belong.”

  Laughing, she shook off her brother’s hand. She didn’t need his help. She was quite capable of swimming on her own if she knew where to go, if she really tried. Her arms pulling, legs kicking, she slid through the water like a fish.

  She awoke before dawn and finished the letter to Mother Grace.

  Love, she wrote at the bottom, then stared at the word, amazed.

  Rose Marie.

  48

  Her Own

  MOTHER GRACE COULD not sleep. Lying in bed, she felt the pages of the letter she had just received from Rose Marie in her fingers. Dry as shed skin.

  That afternoon in her office, she had bent over until she thought her back would break. It took every ounce of her strength to wrench open the bottom drawer of her file cabinet. Pressing one hand against its frame to steady herself, she had reached in and stuffed the letter at the back, her fingers running over the dusty photographs of those two wretched religious she had hidden there twelve years before.

  Sister Mary and Father Damien had haunted her for the seven years until Rose Marie’s Visitation had answered her questions and sent them back to the past.

  Now, in her dark bedroom, the words of Rose Marie’s letter knocked through her mind. I hope you can forgive me, Mother Grace. I hope I can forgive you.

  She closed her eyes and willed her thoughts away from the weight of those words. Dieu Tout-Puissant, ayez pitié de moi.

  Outside, the wind wailed, a thin, haunting sound. Come, wind, she found herself thinking. Carry me away.

  And there it was at her window. As she lay still, she heard it rattle the small panes. The rattling grew louder, more insistent. The storm was picking up. So many storms over the years. I’ve had enough.

  Crash! Glass shattered and cold air blasted through the tiny bedroom. Despite the bone-chilling gust, she didn’t have the strength to rise and hobble downstairs. She curled herself into as tight a ball as her stiff bones would allow, just as if she were a child.

  The wind whirled through the room, trying to find her. Then it was on her bed, swooping at the covers clutched in her fists. It took her temples in its icy fingers and lifted her bed cap. Mon Dieu! She felt a frosty breath in her ear, surprisingly gentle. A breeze slid through her mind, blowing her thoughts clean.

  The sky was black as ink. Oui, black as all the words and numbers she had ever written in letters and ledgers, all the quotations, pleas, revenues, and expenses—the amounts—what she amounted to. But they were fading. Their black-and-white certainty was being swept away.

  Up, she rose. She flew. Immortel! She was sailing through night to daybreak, flying through the sky from St. Mark’s to somewhere else. Morning sun spilled over the horizon and blanched her old bones. Far below, diamonds glittered in new snow.

  The land was different, no longer an expanse of prairie, but well treed. Briefly, she wondered if she had returned to her childhood home, and suddenly she yearned to see her big brothers throwing snowballs, yelling and cantering through the drifts on their strong young legs, the little ones squealing with delight.

  Instead, she found herself above a road. A mountain loomed ahead, a skirt of trees falling from its stone waist. This was not Tête Rouge. Non, not her family farm.

  As she drifted gently down, she could hear boots crunching snow, and in the distance she made out a man walking towards her. She half expected it to be Brother Abraham, but no, she didn’t know this man.

  He carried a suitcase. Trailing behind him was someone else, a youth, it appeared, one hand gripping the handles of a paper bag; their breath broken pillows in the air, white down spilling, and they kept their eyes lowered. There was a solemnity about their procession, as if a serious business was to be carried out. Possibly they were travelling to a funeral, or maybe one of them would be leaving, perhaps the youth.

  Still in single file, first one, then the other turned down a wider street, the hills of snow on each side soiled by exhaust fumes. From an alley, a third figure emerged, falling in line behind the youth. All three trud
ged towards a dingy building with a Greyhound bus parked outside. The youth wore a hat, scarf, new overcoat, and boots, and though overwhelmed by clothing, the young limbs moved easily through winter. As young limbs do.

  Mother Grace turned her attention to the man at the end of the procession. He looked Indian, with shaggy hair.

  Was this a dream? Yet she was not asleep, she could swear.

  She felt an urge to get closer to this odd little parade making its way to the bus.

  And then she was right behind the first man, could reach out and touch his broad wool back if she wanted. She could hear his steady breathing as he took the suitcase to the side of the bus and set it in the baggage compartment. A big man, he turned to the youth, drawing close. “Keep in touch,” he said, his voice low. “Let me know you’re safe. You know I’ll be waiting for you.” His eyes were such a pale grey, they looked almost clear.

  The young face lifted to his words.

  It couldn’t be.

  They embraced. The man closed his eyes. He kissed the strand of dark hair spilling over the youth’s forehead, while the Indian man shuffled uncomfortably behind. “Remember I’ll be here, waiting.”

  As they broke apart, the Indian man moved to the youth. “If you don’t find him,” he said, stepping in front of the bigger man, “you know where you belong, Sinopaki.” He pulled off the youth’s hat and laughed.

  C’est vrai!

  Long, gleaming black hair tumbled around Rose Marie’s face. She was a woman, not a youth, not even a girl, her face fuller and softer than it had been when she left St. Mark’s three months before. She embraced this man too.

  “Thank you,” she said, turning to include them both, “for everything.”

  “Keep in touch,” the big man repeated.

  “Make sure you do,” agreed the Indian.

  “I will.”

  She took the bag and climbed the bus steps. The men shuffled closer, following her with their eyes until she had moved past the bus driver and disappeared behind steel and glass.

  The men remained standing outside, but Mother Grace had left them, was somehow with Rose Marie, watching them through the window. She sat down in the same bus seat and felt a young heart beat in her breast, driving out her old aches and pains.

  The motor coughed and turned over; the bus doors wheezed shut. Pressing her forehead against the cold glass, Rose Marie waved at the two men.

  Frank, both hands in his pockets, had moved back from the bus and was peering into the sun. Cyril found her in her seat, and stepping forward, he touched the window near her mouth. She could almost feel his fingers through the glass.

  As the bus backed up, she swelled with anticipation and waved excitedly at Cyril and the glow of Frank, who was moving forward and squinting now, trying to see her inside. She kept waving as the bus started down the road. She waved until it turned the corner and they vanished behind Wong’s General Store.

  The bus picked up speed as it headed for the highway. Then, suddenly, it started to slide, brakes squealing, passengers sprawling across the seats. As it screeched to a stop, she was thrown against the window.

  Rolfe Mooney rose up on the other side of the glass, his face not two feet from hers. Fear flooded Rose Marie, and a small sound of alarm escaped her lips. Mother Grace’s heart seized.

  Scowling, Rolfe staggered backwards.

  “Drunk as a skunk,” someone had said somewhere about someone, and she heard the bus driver open the door and yell, “Get the hell off the road!”

  The bus started up again, and she rubbed her hands together, jittery with anticipation and fear. She was journeying north to find little Kiaa-yo, big Kiaa-yo now—Joseph, her brother—and her aunt, her uncle, her cousins, all the relatives she hadn’t yet met.

  Ahead, the road unwound like a ball of wool. The sky was a brilliant blue, the snow a slurry of constellations. Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, such beauty in the world. Why had she so seldom seen it?

  Reaching into the large McBride’s shopping bag, Rose Marie pushed aside the carton of cigarettes Mrs. Mooney had given her and pulled out the lunch Mrs. Rees had made. As she peered inside at the sandwiches, butter tarts, an apple, two thick slices of lemon loaf, and an orange, she thought of the new dressing gown Ruby had sewn her, now tucked inside her suitcase. She felt humbled; she felt rich. At the front of her skirt, in the secret pocket Sister Bernadette had added three months before, was a crisp fifty-dollar bill from Cyril and two twenties from Frank.

  She had gained a little weight while in Black Apple, and the waistband was snug; she’d have to move the button once she arrived on Papa’s Reserve. She would be in a new place, a young woman making decisions for herself. She had already made one.

  Even if she couldn’t find Joseph or Aunt Katie right away—if the information about the Reserve that Frank had found from Forest Fox Crown was wrong, or if they were away somewhere, or their house was hard to get to—she’d be fine, she told herself. After all, she knew about people like Rolfe Mooney, Mrs. Tortorelli, and Father Seamus. If she could steer clear of troublemakers and instead find relatives and friends, she’d be fine. And if worse came to worst, she’d go to the priest on the Reserve or to the band office.

  But she expected to find her relations.

  And beyond that, she was out of expectations. They hadn’t done her any good in the past. Recently she had discovered choices, something she had never had before, and she wanted to make her own, not be caught up by the ambitions others cast out like nets, catching her up and dragging her behind them.

  The sky pressed against the bus windows, singing with snow. Ahead, the road kept tugging them on. From the corner of her eye, she spotted a silver wolf slipping into the woods, its luminous coat and star eyes glowing. There, piercing the air, a raven flew ahead of the bus, its wings flapping like Sister Cilla’s habit used to when she ran.

  She was the air in the bus, the wind chirping at the window, that raven, ragged in the wind but flying strong.

  She was Sinopaki at the beginning of her life. She was Mother Grace at the end.

  She had never been so free.

  Afterword

  IN 2015, THE Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released a report based on extensive evidence of the egregious treatment of children at the residential schools, with the goal of educating all Canadians about this dark era in Canadian history.

  In Black Apple, I visit the residential school environment not because I want to—it’s a disturbing setting—but because with my characters and their time frame it couldn’t be avoided. Nor should the reality of residential schools in North America, their political aims, often horrendous conditions, and dire consequences be forgotten. Those survivors who reveal their experiences, whether openly or confidentially, do so at great personal cost in order to break the conspiracy of silence around Canada’s residential schools, a reality that continues to affect generation after generation.

  At the same time, Black Apple is a work of fiction. I wanted to explore the psychology of those who worked at the schools, often well-meaning individuals whose sense of religious, cultural, and/or racial superiority allowed them to think of their service as a personal sacrifice for the greater good, one for which they were neither adequately compensated by the government nor admired by their charges, the result sometimes being acts of cruelty and depravity of which their younger selves would never have believed their older selves capable.

  A few former residential students do speak of kind and loving people who made their experience more bearable. Rare as they were, those people had a sense of truth and conscience not tied to a particular institutional policy but rather to true wisdom and an attitude of respect.

  In Black Apple, I wanted to show the many sides of human behaviour, to find, through fictional re-creation, a greater truth about who all of us are as a people.

  Acknowledgements

  IN THE WRITING, editing, and publishing of this book, I owe so much to so many.

  First of all
, my sincerest thanks to those who shared their experiences with me. I am truly grateful.

  Thanks as well to Canada Council for their assistance in the writing of this book.

  I’d also like to thank several writer friends for their considered advice: Kimmy Beach, Leslie Greentree, Carolynn Hoy, Joann McCaig, Blaine Newton, Susan Ouriou, Roberta Rees, Jill Robinson, Cathy Simmons, and Barb Scott. I am indebted to Ruby Eagle Child for help with the Blackfoot language, to Judy Dussault for information about life within a religious order, and to the people at Sage Hill Writing Experience. I very much appreciate the insight, patience, and advice of my editor, Phyllis Bruce, as well as her team at Simon & Schuster Canada, and the support of Martha Webb, my agent.

  Love and thanks to my partner, Kamal Serhal, to my four amazing children who always stand behind me, their partners, and my two wonderful grandchildren.

  My research took me to many beautiful places in British Columbia and Saskatchewan, but most of my time was spent in southern Alberta. I also searched through some websites and many history books. Books that were particularly valuable include Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools by J. R. Miller; Residential Schools, The Stolen Years, edited by Linda Jaine; Resistance and Renewal: Surviving the Indian Residential School by Celia Haig-Brown; and Indian School Days by Basil H. Johnston.

  JOAN CRATE was born in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, and was brought up with pride in her Indigenous heritage. She taught literature and creative writing at Red Deer College, Alberta, for more than twenty years. Her first book of poetry, Pale as Real Ladies: Poems for Pauline Johnson, has become a classic. Her first novel, Breathing Water, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Book Award (Canada) and the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1989. She is a recipient of the Bliss Carman Award for Poetry and her last book of poetry, subUrban Legends, was awarded Book of the Year by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta. She lives with her family in Calgary.