As Long as the Rivers Flow

by James Bartleman

  Another teenager would then be found dead, lying in the underbrush by the side of the road from a drug overdose, dangling from a cord attached to a hook in a closet, or hanging from a rope tied to a tree branch outside a school as the other children proceeded to class in the morning. The cycle of grief, mourning and incomprehension would begin again.

  Why? Why? Parents, chiefs, religious leaders, teachers and the staff at the nursing stations all wanted to know why.

  Having thought of suicide during her darkest nights, Martha believed she knew at least part of the answer. Despite the signs of material progress, many of the communities were sick in their collective souls. In many families, the parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had spent their childhoods and much of their teenage years in residential schools where no one ever hugged them, unless it was to molest them. No one ever said “I love you,” unless it was a prelude to sexual assault. Dysfunction had cascaded down through the generations with survivors neglecting their children as they had been neglected. Or worse, they sexually abused them as they had been abused.

  But the main reason the young people were killing themselves, Martha suspected, was because they had lost their culture and had found nothing to replace it. When Martha was a child, families had spent winters on the land and summers in their cabins around the trading post, and there had always been enough people around to help out the lost generations who returned home broken in spirit. There had always been a few younger people who had managed to avoid attending residential school and were able to befriend the ones who had suffered, and elders who knew the old ways and could help survivors reconnect with their language and culture. However, in far too many places, the experience of the residential schools had inflicted too much damage, destroying the restorative power of the healers.

  To be sure, the Native leadership did what it could to cope. The sign at the airport had been changed from Cat Lake Indian Reserve to Cat Lake First Nation in accordance with a practice being adopted by Native communities elsewhere. The chief had said that it would inspire the people to have greater pride and confidence in themselves, but Martha doubted whether symbolic gestures would stop the rot. For the sense of purpose of the communities in her part of the Anishinabe homeland continued to die. The removal of so many children by the Children’s Aid Society had shaken them to the core. The people were angry, but they were also ashamed that so many of them had been poor parents. Few of them now had the heart to keep up the annual summer feasting, drumming and dancing celebrations. Even fewer sat around their campfires listening to the elders tell the old stories.

  More and more people were now attending services at new churches and accepting what they were told on Sunday mornings as the literal truth. The old view that the land was sacred and that there was mystic power and current running through and uniting all things was being quietly abandoned. The objective of life, they came to believe, was to love God, to fear the devil, to suffer stoically through their earthly existence and to rejoice in death that led to heaven.

  If anyone mentioned the shamans, the people would look at each other uneasily. At Cat Lake First Nation, only the elders and a few members of Martha’s generation who took an interest in the old ways knew what the reddish-brown pictograph of the ancestors paddling a canoe on the cliff face on the other side of the lake really represented.

  Although they had embraced the ways of the white man, the people felt betrayed. The bureaucrats in Ottawa, who were supposed to protect their interests, had spent enormous sums of money to change their communities into modern towns. But less than a decade later, the houses, band offices and schools, often constructed by shady contractors with shoddy materials, were falling apart. The drinking water from the new pumping stations and treatment plants was more often than not unfit to drink, and the sewage lagoons were leaking effluent into the lakes and rivers, killing the fish and poisoning the water supply.

  What future did the young people have, other than sitting around at home and collecting welfare cheques? They could not turn to their parents for advice since they had none to offer. So why not just give up and end it all?

  When she was feeling down, Martha would wonder whether Native youth were more prone to suicide than white youth. That would lead her to think about Spider, since he was the same age as many of the young people in the north who were dying. Had he been able to resist the temptation? Perhaps he was already dead. If he was not dead, maybe he was alone on the streets of Toronto, hungry and sick after being abandoned by his adoptive parents who had treated him as badly as she had been by the nuns.

  At these moments, she would feel bad and blame herself for not having had the will to tear herself away from the reserve to look for him in the big city when there was still time.

  One morning shortly after Christmas in 1989, Russell, his face scarred and bloated, his eyes cold and hard, his beer-belly hanging down over his belt, and his pants clinging precariously to his hips, pushed open the front door of the family home and came in unannounced.

  “Fifteen years,” Martha said, “fifteen years and you wander in as if it was just yesterday!”

  “Was just in the neighbourhood,” Russell said cautiously. “Thought I’d drop in and see you. No hard feelings about our little misunderstanding so long ago?”

  “I guess not,” said Martha. “A lot of water has gone under the bridge since those days. Have a seat and I’ll fix you something to eat.”

  Martha and her mother busied themselves preparing fresh bannock and tea and Russell made himself at home, stretching out on the couch and talking non-stop about what he had been up to since he had left the community.

  “You know, am I ever glad I got out of this dump when I did. To think I used to be satisfied living in that old shack. After I torched it, I headed off cross country to Mishkeegogamang where I know lots of people. I’d always been at home in the bush and it only took me a week to get there. A couple of Native guys came by selling drugs. They were from Thunder Bay and were peddling smokes, dope, coke and prescription drugs to Native high school students across the north. They had more business than they could handle, they said, and they asked me help out. In no time at all, I was rolling in cash. Had a nice car, nice apartment, the girls thought I was something. Then the cops got me,” he said, ignoring Martha’s mother’s look of disapproval.

  “But I was lucky. My lawyer told the judge I’d been mistreated in residential school and that was why I had turned to a life of crime. It wasn’t my fault, he said. The judge bought the story, hook, line and sinker, and let me off, telling me to behave myself in the future.”

  “And you followed his advice, I suppose?” said Martha.

  “I tried, but I had bad luck. Got into a fight when I was drunk and stabbed someone and the bastard died. Got two years less a day in the Sudbury jail for manslaughter. Was never able to get it together after that. In and out of jail, on the streets, in halfway houses. Got to see the inside of jails in Timmins, Thunder Bay, Parry Sound and who knows where else. But I wasn’t to blame. It was the booze. I’ve been dry for six months now. That’s why I’m here.”

  Martha offered to put him up until he got settled. “But remember, things are different now and if you drink, out you go!”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ve learned my lesson. Tomorrow I’m going over to the band office to apply for welfare, and I’ll look up the old gang and try to talk someone into taking me hunting and fishing.”

  The first several days went well. Russell’s return had brought back memories to Martha about how much she had loved him when they lived together in the old shack and how terribly upset he had been when the Children’s Aid had come for Spider. Thus, although she should have known better, she did not push him away when he joined her one night in bed.

  A few evenings afterwards, he was in a bad mood because the chief and council had turned down his request for welfare.

  “I really need a drink,” he told Martha. “C’mon with me to the bootlegger
’s and help me drown my sorrows.”

  But Martha had no sympathy for him. “Listen,” she said, “I told you long ago my days as a drinker were over. And don’t think you can stay here if you come back drunk!”

  “Look whose playing the goody-goody now,” he said. “You were a slut in residential school and a drunk when you came home! Such a rotten mother the Children’s Aid took away our son. I’ll never forgive you for that.”

  He stormed out, returning in the early hours of the morning, drunk and in a foul mood, to kick open the front door and scream for Martha. Emerging from their bedrooms, the two women found him staggering around the living room. When Martha’s mother told him he had to leave, he became enraged and pushed her to the floor before collapsing beside her in a stupor.

  Martha helped her mother to her feet, settled her in a chair and went to her bedroom where she kept the rifle she used to hunt moose and deer. After opening a box of shells, she slid a cartridge into the chamber, slammed home the bolt, returned to the living room and prodded Russell in the belly again and again with the barrel until he groaned and opened his eyes. She then aimed at the space between his eyes, released the safety catch with her thumb, placed her index finger on the trigger and told him to get up and get out.

  “If you don’t, I’ll shoot you, you son of a bitch!”

  The next day, the police came across Russell sleeping on the side of the road and took him into custody. Since Martha’s mother was not injured, the women did not press charges and he soon left to resume his life on the streets. They never saw him again, but Martha was pregnant.

  Mother and daughter were delighted and looked forward to the birth of the baby. But as time went on and winter turned to spring, Martha began to worry. Was she bringing into the world a child who would drop out of school in grade nine like most of the kids on the reserve and drift into a life of alcohol, drugs, welfare and despair? Would Child Welfare come and take away her new baby?

  Her mother, however, told her no one in authority would bother her.

  “You’ve learned your lesson,” she said, “and you’ll be a good mother now. But don’t you think it’s time you decided what you want to do with the rest of your life? You’re not getting any younger and you’ll soon be in your mid-thirties. You’ve never left this place, not even to go out to Pickle Lake for a visit—You’ve always wanted to go to Toronto,” she added. “So why don’t you just go and get yourself a good job. In the old days, daughters would often hand over a child for the grandmother to take care of or maybe raise. Why don’t you do the same?”

  Martha was immediately suspicious. Did her mother want to steal her child? All the old anger suppressed for so many years boiled to the surface. Afraid of losing control of herself and saying something she would regret, she left the house and made her way to a secluded place on the shore of Cat Lake where she often went when she wanted to be alone and do some quiet thinking. Sitting down on a piece of driftwood, she looked up, and to her delight saw high in the clouds the ancestors, this time joyously paddling their canoe across the sky. Without knowing why, Martha felt reassured. Her mother had only the best interests of her family at heart and she could trust her.

  “I’ll go,” she told her mother on returning home. “You’ll do a good job looking after the baby and I’ll be able to keep an eye out for Spider. As soon as I get a job, I’ll send money to support you and the little one. But remember, once I’m established, I intend to return home and bring my baby back to Toronto to raise.”

  A daughter was born at the time of the Flight Moon, when birds that were hatched in summer begin to fly. Martha named her Raven, because ravens were instruments of deliverance in her dreams. And in January of 1991, she kept just enough money out of her savings to pay for her bus fare and a few nights in a hotel, gave her mother the rest, and prepared to leave for Toronto.

  PART TWO

  The Big City

  ~

  1991–2003

  6

  Leaving for Toronto

  THE MONTHS BEFORE HER DEPARTURE were not easy for Martha because, immediately after the birth of Raven, Nokomis insisted on assuming total responsibility for the care of her grandchild.

  “If you develop close ties with your baby,” she told her daughter, “you’ll never leave for Toronto, or you’d miss her unbearably when you’re gone.”

  Nokomis convinced Martha not to breast-feed Raven and used her pension money to buy expensive ready-made baby formula from the co-op. When Martha tried to feed and change her baby, Nokomis elbowed her out of the way. Martha persuaded her mother, however, to let her do the night shift.

  “I have to get up anyway to put wood on the fire,” she said. “It just makes sense for me to take care of her at that time.”

  Fortunately, Raven was a calm, well-behaved baby who cried only when she was hungry. Martha would get out of bed and carry the tikinagan holding her daughter from her bedroom into the living room and prop it up in an armchair. As she walked to the woodbox, she would talk to her quietly and the infant would solemnly follow her mother with her eyes.

  “I’m first going to feed the fire, my daughter, and then I’ll feed you. Is that okay? Do you agree? Because if I don’t, the house will become cold and we’ll all freeze. You wouldn’t want that, would you? Nokomis would be unhappy and we wouldn’t want to upset her, would we? Even though she loves us, she can sometimes get really grumpy!”

  Raven would look at her mother gravely with her enormous bright black eyes as if she understood what she was saying.

  Martha would open the lid on top of the stove, pick up the poker and stir the embers until they glowed red.

  “Now, my daughter, I’m going to give the stove something it loves to eat—some nice, black spruce. I cut it myself last spring in the bush, left it to dry over the summer and hauled it home in the fall. You were there with me, keeping me company, in such a hurry to be born, kicking me all the time to make sure I didn’t forget you were there, and I was so happy!”

  The fire would crackle after Martha loaded it with wood and she would say, “See, my daughter, the stove is thanking us for its supper and telling us it’ll keep us warm for a while yet.”

  Martha would place a bottle of formula in a pot of water on the stove to warm.

  “Now it’s your turn to eat. But first I must change your diaper.”

  After changing and feeding Raven, Martha would rock her gently in her arms, and quietly sing an old Anishinabe lullaby to her, repeating over and over, “Rock, little baby, go to sleep, mommy is watching.”

  We we we we we we we we we we

  Nbaa bebiins mamaaamasaa

  Nbaa bebiins mamaaamasaa

  The night before her departure, Martha got up around four in the morning, tended to the fire and changed and fed her daughter for the last time. She pulled a chair up and sat beside the stove, rocking her and listening to the sound of the burning wood as she reflected on what the future held for her and her family.

  Would she be able to find work in the big city? Were the stories others told about racism against Natives true? Would she find Spider? Toronto was far away and she would miss her daughter. But with any luck, their separation would not last long and she would be able to raise her in a place where there were good schools and a job for her when she grew up.

  When Raven closed her eyes, Martha gently put her back into the tikinagan, carried it into her bedroom, sat down and watched her sleep. Startled by the rifle crack of a tree exploding from expanding ice in its bark, she went to a window, scraped a peephole in the frost covering the glass and looked out. Wawatay, the Northern Lights, had turned night to day. Wanting to experience their beauty and power one last time before leaving the north, she pulled on her boots, donned her parka, opened the door and went outside. Green and red lights swirled down from the heavens to mingle with the smoke that rose straight up from chimneys throughout the community in the subzero temperatures before dancing off across the snow. Gitche Manitou was saying go
odbye.

  After going back inside, Martha sat up for the rest of the night beside the stove, watching the flames through gaps in the metal and savouring the peace and tranquillity of her mother’s home in winter. In the morning, she looked on as Nokomis took care of Raven. Neither woman spoke as they shared their final meal, since it was so hard to say goodbye. Martha dressed warmly, picked up the small backpack she had prepared the night before, kissed Raven one last time and prepared to leave.

  Her mother took her in her arms and hugged her.

  “I don’t want you to go before I say something I should have said years ago. I never told you, but I missed you terribly all those years you were away at residential school. Your father felt the same way and I think he died of a broken heart. I’m going to miss you again, even if I now have Raven to keep me company.”

  Martha stepped out into the dark of the subarctic morning and wiped away the tears freezing on her face. The morning star, hanging low in the sky, had by now replaced the Northern Lights, and the snow crunched underfoot as she made her way down the road. Dogs lay curled up in the snow in the front yards of their owners, their noses buried under their tails for warmth. Most houses were in darkness, their occupants still in bed after watching televison until the early hours of the morning.

  The evening before, she had dropped by the community hotel, a building with three bedrooms, a living room, a common bathroom and a self-serve kitchen used by contractors, truckers and other visitors to the community, to see if there was anyone there who could give her a ride out to Pickle Lake. The driver of a tanker truck, who had just delivered a load of diesel to the generating plant, promised to give her a lift, but told her she had to be ready to leave by seven.

  Now as Martha drew close to the hotel, she saw that he had kept his word. A truck, its motor throbbing and enveloped in a great cloud of gasoline fumes and frozen water vapour, was waiting. Grasping the handle to the door of the cab, Martha turned it, pulled it open and hoisted herself up onto the seat beside the grizzled old driver sitting behind the steering wheel.