Up Ghost River (29 page)

After an hour, Sue-May returned. I asked her how it went. She said they were too busy to see her.

“What do you mean?”

“They told me to come back tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“The supervisor will be there then.”

“Do you want me to talk to them?”

“No. They said to come back tomorrow.”

At our healing session that evening, Dennis took me aside and asked how it had all gone.

“It's like she's still on the reserve,” I said. “She treats everyone with authority like they're an Indian Agent or something.”

“That's why I partnered her with you,” he said.

“Why me?”

“Because you're ready. You're steady enough that you can give back. You've done the hard work, and found your voice.”

I had long wanted to call Joan. I wanted her back in my life. Every time I asked Dennis about it, he told me to wait.

“Why? I need my family. They are everything to me.”

“What do they need?” Dennis asked.

“I think my kids need a dad.”

“And do you feel ready? Do you feel ready in here?” and he put his hand on my heart.

I did some smudging ceremonies over the next few days, and cleansed my mind, preparing myself for the talk. I needed to be in a mindset where I felt I knew how to listen to her needs and take them seriously. I had to remember how to follow the Red Road.

“Joan. Is that you?”

“Yes. Who's this?”

“It's Ed. Your husband. Ex-husband,” I corrected myself. We were separated, but she hadn't yet brought up divorce. Thank Gitchi Manitou for these small favours.

“Oh. Right. It's been a while.” I couldn't believe that eight months had passed.

“I know. My healer said I shouldn't call until I was ready.”

“
You
were ready?” She sounded bemused.

“There's a lot going on.”

“Here too. I'm taking care of your three children.”

“I know. I want to be involved.”

“Yeah. I've heard that before.”

“Things are different now.”

“That one too.”

“You're a hard woman.” It was supposed to be a joke.

“No. I'm not. I'm too easy actually.”

“Is there anything I can say that would impress you?”

“Actions speak louder than words.”

“I'm doing an apology dance as we speak.” I could hear her smile on the phone.

“I gotta go,” she said.

I called again a few days later.

“There's a woman I'm helping,” I said.

“A woman?”

“It's not like that. She's older.”

“Oh, I see.”

“She had some sort of operation. In residential school. It reminded me of something that happened to me. Something that I should have told you about a long time ago.”

“What, Ed?” she said, sighing.

“There was a man. His name was Mike Pasko.” And then I told her about the time I had gone with him to the Albany, and then about our trip to Montreal.

“Jesus, Ed,” she said, once I'd finished. We were silent for a while.

“Are you going to say anything else?” I asked.

“I'm in shock.”

“I should have told you before.”

“Yes. No. God, I don't know.”

At our next healing session, Dennis asked Sue-May and me to stay behind after our group work, then he left the room. Sue-May asked me to light a candle and turn out the lights. She wouldn't say why. We sat in the near dark, face to face.

“I had an operation. They cut me.”

“Who?”

“The doctors at the Camsell.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.”

“When did it happen?”

“When I was sixteen at residential school in Alberta. I was a ward of the state.”

“What happened?”

“They gave me a test. In math. There were three men sitting up high. Behind a table. They said I needed my appendix out.”

“You had appendicitis?”

“No.”

“So what happened?”

“I went to have surgery. I came out. I thought I was fine. But last year, I needed to have an examination, you know, for here.” She pointed at her stomach. “After, the doctor said my insides are all chewed up. Like they've been in a food processor. That I'd never be able to have a baby.”

I reached for her hand in the darkness. Her palms were as dry as moose jerky, but the tops felt soft like a baby's skin. We were quiet for a while.

I didn't know what to say. Years later we found out that she wasn't alone, that there were thousands like her—Leilani Muir and others—aboriginals, alcoholics, mentally handicapped and juvenile delinquents deemed unsuitable for procreation, who were sterilized without their consent.
⁸
When I met Sue-May in the winter of 1977, the Sexual Sterilization Act had been revoked five years earlier, but not before 2,800 people had been sterilized in Alberta. The Act allowed a residential school superintendent or principal to permit the sterilization of any student under their charge.

“Tell me about your kids,” she said.

“My kids?”

“They are eight, six and five, right?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

So I told her about the time that Joan and I had gone hiking with Albalina when she was a baby. We'd stopped in a spruce grove next to a creek and listened to the Standing Ones. I cradled Albalina and held Joan's hand. Near us the branches curled around each other.

“I hear something,” Joan said.

“What?”

“I love you,” she whispered in my ear.

“The Standing Ones didn't tell you that,” I replied, laughing.

“Does it matter?”

Afterwards we had gone home and made love. I hadn't meant to tell Sue-May all that, but she listened expectantly every time I stopped, as if wanting more.

The next day at the Camsell, I went in with her. We explained the situation at the information desk. The clerk, a tall man with delicate hands, raised an eyebrow and said he didn't think anything like that had happened here.

“Are you a musician?” Sue-May asked. “You have musician's hands.” The tall man blushed.

“I play jazz guitar,” he said. “But only on weekends.”

Sue-May nodded and looked him in the eyes. “It did happen,” she said. He looked at her, embarrassed, then looked back at me before going off to get his boss. A man in his forties returned. He had a thin mustache, which he played with as he spoke. He told us he'd look into it.

That evening it got to me. All of it. Sue-May, Lenny, Amocheesh, Bridget, myself: everyone who'd had their lives picked apart by the residential schools. I called Joan and told her about Sue-May.

“Everyone is so unhelpful,” I said. “And she doesn't even know why they did it.”

“Why did they do it?” Joan said.

“I don't know. I'm still finding it out.”

“Is she okay?”

“I think so. There's a sadness about her.”

“I can imagine.”

“Sometimes it sits heavy on her. Like in her shoulders. I try to help, but … anyway, I told her about you. About us.”

“What did you say?”

“I told her about the time that we went hiking with Albalina.”

“We did that a bunch of times.”

“Remember the time when we listened to the Standing Ones?”

“You were always trying to get me to do stuff like that.”

“Still am.”

“You're such a flirt.”

“I can't help it.”

“Listen, I should go.”

“Can I have five more minutes? There's something I want to tell you.”

“Another secret? Should I sit down?”

“No, nothing like that. I'm tired, Joan. And angry. I think I need to take those bastards to court.”

“Who?”

“The staff at St. Anne's. Mike. Everyone who has trampled on us and thinks they can get away with it.”

“Wow. That's a lot of people.”

“Joan, come on. Seriously.”

“Seriously. It's going to be hard work …”

“I know.”

“But I think you need to do it. I mean the whippings. The standing naked bed-wetting punishments. An electric chair. Being made to eat your own vomit. Brother Jutras's ‘medical exams.' The solitary confinement in the basement. There's just so much.”

“Yes. It's taken me a long time to come to terms with it.”

“How did you survive while you were there? How did you get through every day?”

“I had friends at first. They helped me. We helped each other. But after a while, it took a toll. Lots of us just shut down.”

“God. That's so sad.”

“We lost our voices. Lost our way. Didn't know what was right in our hearts.”

“Do you think that's why so many people in Fort Albany drink?”

“Yeah. That's part of it. For sure.”

“Well then I think a court case is a good idea. It will help people find peace.”

“All the records are in Fort Albany. I'd need to come back. How do you feel about that?

“You mean to move in here?”

Joan was working as an ESL teacher, and had taken over my parent's old two-bedroom when they got their bigger band house.

“Well … I guess I could live with my parents.”

“I'll have to think about it. I mean I can't just pick up …” She paused. “A lot has happened, Ed.”

“I know. I just wish there were some way to make things right.”

“So do I.”

“Joan?”

“Yeah.”

“That guy. Mark. Is he … still … in the picture?” I had heard through the grapevine that she was dating.

“Funny. I didn't know you knew. No.”

“I love you, you know …”

“Yes, I know.”

“What do you see right now?”

“What do you mean?”

“Outside the window.”

She got up to check. “Trees.”

“Today when I was driving home, I thought that the icicles hanging from the branches looked like phantom leaves. They're like all of us. Numb and just hanging there. Just a wind's breath away from falling off.”

“I can't be there anymore to catch you, Ed.”

“I know. You've already done so much. I just miss you, that's all. I miss your voice, your eyes, your skin. I miss everything about you.”

“I miss you too,” she said.

With these two hands, I build my home. I split the spruce wood, and plant my foundations in the earth. I hammer the roof, and ask for shelter from the wind and snow for my children …
what was it?
The prayer came to me.

“Hey man!” Nicholas interrupted my thoughts. I looked up at him from my pit. He was standing up on his idling quad. “What you doing down there?”

“Building a house. These are gonna be the foundations,” I said, pointing to some spruce planks.

“Sure looks big.”

“It will be. Five bedrooms.”

“Does the chief know you're doing this?”

“Yeah. I've told him.”

“You know it's illegal, right?”

Sections 18, 20, 35 and 53 of the Indian Act made it illegal for us to have our own land or houses on the reserves. We couldn't build or sell or buy on our reserve or treaty land without first getting permission from the minister—an empty clause, since he hadn't yet been known to give it.

“I know,” I said.

“And he's okay with it?”

“Yep.”

“What if everyone does it?” Nicholas said.

I looked around the spruce forest, imagining what it would look like if we took possession of the land we had once roamed. If we built our own houses, instead of the cheap, clapboard houses issued by the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development (DI AND). I saw a street of hand-built wooden houses, each with its own unique character, and kids laughing and playing out front.

“Maybe they should,” I said.

I built my house after returning home for good. After Edmonton, Joan and I moved to Toronto where I did a master's in Environmental Studies at York University; a choice based on the healing sessions I had done with Dennis LeRoy and George Callingbull. I wanted to take my Knowings back home, but knew that if I was ever to make any wemistikoshiw understand the importance of nature, and how it defines us, I needed to speak their language. I loved the degree; it was easier to concentrate and study once I had stopped drinking.

During that time, Joan took some university courses in education, and then we moved back to Fort Albany in 1987. We decided to build a house one kilometre from Fort Albany. I wanted to be as far away from St. Anne's as possible, but there was more to it than that. Lots of my
classmates had similar issues to me. I'd been through several cultural training workshops, healing circles and sweat lodges in Alberta, but you can never escape these things, not completely. They are always there, like the ghosts of the ancestors, whispering in your ears. The drinking in our community had worsened, as had the drugs—now the bootleggers were bringing in coke, speed, valium and painkillers. The effects were hardest on the kids, especially as the parents imitated people like Sister Wesley, Brother Jutras, Brother Goulet and the like who had raised them.

“What did he want?” Joan had come to chat. I looked at her. Man, I am
so
lucky. After all that, she'd taken me back.
One last chance
, she had said.
For the kids. I better not regret it
.