Lacey and the African Grandmothers (2 page)

I crossed the classroom to the kitchen as quietly as an antelope grazing. Lila, who worked as a secretary at Sequoia and liked to feed people, was slowly stirring a large pot on top of the stove. The steam made the kitchen warm and the air smell delicious. It also made Lila's face all shiny.

“It smells good in here. What are you making?” I whispered, popping a circle of carrot into my mouth and keeping another one in my hand. Lila doesn't seem to mind if I sneak carrot slices sometimes.

“It's beef minestrone soup. It has beef and beans and lots of vegetables. It tastes good, and it's good for you, especially if you are studying for exams,” she whispered back. She stressed the word “exams” and held her finger to her lips to signal me to be silent.

I finished chewing and watched her dump carrots into the pot. “Are all the babies sleeping?” She nodded.

In total, there are more than seven thousand Blackfoot at Siksika First Nation, mostly kids. Siksika has three schools now, but I go to school outside of the reserve in a very small place called Gleichen. Gleichen has only about 450 people who stay there, but it has two schools. The best school, Sequoia, is an “outreach” school. It's for teenagers who have dropped out of school, sometimes because they have children of their own. My sister, Angel, goes to Sequoia

When my school finishes, I usually head to Sequoia to look after the babies so the parents can study, although it's really the parents' responsibility to look after their kids, even when they're at school. I love to look after babies, and I love being in the kitchen with Lila and watching how her arms jiggle when she shapes dough into biscuits or stirs a pot of soup. I also like eating the things she makes and sampling ingredients when she isn't looking. It's better than being at home, where there is hardly ever any extra food. Eleven people live in my house if you count Angel's baby, and eleven people eat a lot of food. Dad says we could eat a vanload of food every week if he could afford it. Sometimes we do eat that much, and then there is only enough money to buy things like noodles and peanut butter until Dad gets another job playing music at a wedding or a party.

“OK. Time's up. Pencils down.” Mrs. Buchanan, the principal, stood up from her desk and spoke loudly. “Time to hand them in.”

No one looked happy. They scraped their chairs on the floor, gathered their tests, and slumped to her desk, one by one, to give them to her.

“That was a biter. Guess I'll be starting math over again next week,” groaned Kelvin as he handed her his papers. I was secretly happy that Kelvin might fail. He was the one person I truly hated.

“Maybe you'll surprise yourself. It could be a pass, you know,” suggested Mrs. Buchanan as she gathered the papers together.

“No way,” he said. “I'm better at failing than passing.” He slow-walked to the stairs, swishing his glossy hair and trying to look cool. Kelvin is my sister's boyfriend. He is two years older than Angel but, like her, he's in grade 11. I wish he would go away and never come back, the way his father had, maybe disappear somewhere in the city. There is nothing good about Kelvin except that he can fix things, like the amp for Dad's guitar, or my uncle's old van.

Kelvin likes cars best, though, especially shiny, fast cars. He likes them so much that he stole one so he could go to the city. That one wasn't shiny or fast, more like rusty and slow. But he took it anyway, even though it wasn't his and he didn't have permission. He got in trouble with the police for that, and now he has a criminal record. But the worst thing about Kelvin is the way he treats Angel, my seventeen-year-old sister. He treats her as if she is as dopey as a rock. He makes her feel small and stupid and worthless. I can't understand why she likes him so much.

I guess it's because of his looks. Kelvin is long and lean and has beautiful hair that falls over his eyes to hide what he is thinking. He likes to move his head in a slow circle, then jerk it to toss the hair from his face. You can see his eyes when he does that – angry eyes. He always seems as angry as a buffalo charging across the prairie to fight another buffalo. But today he looks like a troubled buffalo. Passing math is important to him. If he doesn't pass math, he can't reach his dream of becoming a mechanic. Still, I don't care.

As soon as they handed in their papers, the students scattered. Some went outside to hang out, some went to the bathroom, some went to check their babies, and some stayed to talk. Angel came into the kitchen.

“How was your exam?” I asked. She had studied nearly every night for two weeks. She needs to pass math, too, in order to get into college for nursing. I really want Angel to pass. She would make such a good nurse.

“It was hard, but I think I did OK,” she said, pouring a glass of milk. She lifted her head to breathe in the steam from the soup. “Smells good. What's cooking?” she asked Lila.

“Beef minestrone soup. It will be ready soon. I thought I better feed those tired brains by filling you up with beans and noodles.” Lila chuckled, then added, “Of course, most of you are already full of beans.”

When Angel left to check on her baby daughter, Kayden, I noticed two big square bags piled up beside the counter that separated the kitchen from the classroom, and some trays with little compartments and plastic covers. They hadn't been there yesterday.

“What are those things for?” I asked, and slipped the second piece of carrot into my mouth.

“We're going to plant seeds and grow pots of flowers to make Gleichen look better,” said Lila.

I lifted my eyebrows way above my glasses. “No one plants flowers here. That's for rich people in the city,” I said. “Besides, someone would wreck them. Remember how they put nice benches outside the post office, and they were spray-painted with bad words almost the next day?”

“Yes, and remember how students from Sequoia repainted them to cover up the ugly words?”

“Yeah, and remember how no one liked doing it? Besides, it wouldn't be so easy to fix flowers,” I said. “There would be broken pots and dirt everywhere. Gleichen would look uglier with all that mess.”

“Maybe the flowers wouldn't be wrecked. But if they were, couldn't you just clean the mess and start over?” I thought Lila had lost her mind. Repainting benches was one thing, but putting flowers back together?

Lila must have guessed what I was thinking, because she said, “Right now, if someone came in here and dumped this pot of soup down the drain, do you know what I would do?”

I shook my head, but I had a pretty good idea what was coming.

“I'd start peeling more vegetables and getting another pot of soup ready. And do you know why?”

I shook my head again.

“Because soup is important. It feeds hungry people, and it makes them feel better. And sometimes the hunger people have isn't just for food. Sometimes you have to feed people by letting them see beautiful things.” She stopped talking for a few seconds while she ran water in the sink to wash the cutting board and the knife. “So what would we do if someone wrecked all the flowers and broke the pots? Would we give up and let the badness win? Or would we keep giving goodness until the badness gave up?”

“We'd keep planting, I guess,” I said, as I slid off the stool. “But I'm glad I don't have to do it.”

“Ahem,
Lacey
,” Lila said loudly. I wasn't far enough away to pretend I hadn't heard her. “Mrs. B. and I thought you could take on the project. The older kids can help the young ones get the trays ready and plant the seeds, but she wants you to take care of the seedlings. They have to be watered every day, and the students here are just too busy to remember.”

I can't believe what she is saying. She wants me to waste my time growing plants and putting them in flowerpots so people could destroy them. “That's not fair,” I said. “This isn't even my school.”

“No, it's not your school,” said Lila, “but you are part of the community. It is your obligation to help when help is needed.” Her eyes and voice tell me she is serious.

I looked again at those bags and trays leaning near the kitchen counter, and I groaned. I knew they would make me do it.

Gleichen is so small that it's not really a town, but it has a grocery store, a gas station, a post office, a library, and a funny little park near the old water tower where there is a buffalo statue. It's hard to see the statue because someone planted big spruce trees there. When you are driving into town, you see the park and a big sign that says, “Glorious Past, Greater Future.” The sign is talking about Gleichen, but I think it speaks about everyone. We can all have great futures if we want.

On the corner of the main street is a small white church called the Gleichen United Church. It has three windows on each side, and at the tops of the windows are squares of colored glass – yellow, blue, and red – that make pretty patterns when the sun shines through them. The upstairs is a regular church where people come for services, and sometimes other things. Downstairs, in the basement, is the Sequoia Outreach School. It's a special school where kids who've dropped out of high school can get a second chance. Mrs. Buchanan believes in second chances. “You can't change your past, but you can change your future,” she always says. Mostly what she means is that we all have to get an education and learn to look at things differently. She tells everyone they can do anything if they set their mind to it.

Sequoia Outreach School was located in the basement of the Gleichen United Church.

Sequoia school takes up the whole church basement, but it's only one classroom. The kitchen is at one end, and there's an area filled with playpens and baby carriers. There are boxes of toys and clothes that you can take home if you need them. There aren't any desks, except one for Mrs. B. and one for Lila. The students work together at long tables. There is also a folding screen that can be moved around when one of the girls has to nurse her baby, and a diaper-changing table in the bathroom that boys or girls can use.

Most of the First Nations kids go to school on the reserve, but I go to Central Bow Valley School, which is just down the road from Sequoia. My parents wanted my younger brothers and me to go to school off the reserve because they think it's important for us to learn about the non-native ways. They think that it will create better understanding between our peoples and that understanding each other will help us all get along. Sequoia is also for both First Nations and non-native kids.

A few days after Lila told me about the flower project, the little kids poked the seeds into the soil. The seeds looked really strange – like tiny curled-up brains. Then I was stuck spraying the dirt with water every day. I like making a fine mist with the spray bottle, but I won't tell anyone that. Every day, when I lift the clear plastic lids covered on the inside with droplets of water, the dirt looks the same as it did the day before. Growing flowers is even more boring than I imagined. I wish those little curled-up brains would hurry up and do some growing.

Chapter 2
Lessons from Kahasi

I
could feel the strength of the deer when I lifted the thick hide to my face. I breathed deeply and filled my nose with the smell of the smoke that was used to cure the hide. Kahasi (CAW-a-see) told me the smoke would make my moccasins strong and waterproof.

“Quit sniffing the hide. I need it to measure your foot,” Kahasi said. She is an elder, one of the senior members of our community. She is a grandmother with nice wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. She is also
my
grandmother, my father's mother.

“But it smells so good. I like the smell better than flowers.” Still, I did as I was told. I cleared a patch on the floor where I could lay the hide.

“You like the smell of the smoke? Don't worry. That will last a long time,” she said, in her slow, soft voice.

Kahasi traced the shape of my foot on the hide so the moccasins would fit just right. She said it didn't matter that my foot would grow because the leather would stretch as my foot did. She said that by the time the moccasins were too small, they'd be worn out anyway. She used her sharpest scissors to cut out the soles of the moccasins. Kahasi was going to sew the pieces together, but first I was going to sew a pattern with beads to decorate the upper.