Birdie (21 page)

WHERE SHE BEGINS – WHEN MAGGIE MADE TWO JOURNEYS

ati-itohtew
: s/he begins going along

Maggie sees herself: young and pretty. She is holding Bernice’s hand and helping her through the muskeg. They sit on some moss and dry their feet and legs;
Kohkom
talks to them in Cree and the young girl listens raptly. Valene comes up into the muskeg, and she knows it’s a dream now, because Birdie’s hands are brown and bear no trace of the ravages of the fire.

She smells them before she sees them. They smell like your sharpest fear. Heads down, shoulders hunched, they smell women and are excited – almost unable to contain their gait. She holds Bernice to her and makes a grab for Freda but is quite unable to hold them. They are gelatin and she keeps grabbing them but can’t keep a grip.

Valene takes them and puts them under her belly flap.
Kohkom
is still as can be. Maggie feels something in her bones. Lets go of her girl. And walks towards the wolves.

MAGGIE

S
HE WAS SITTING
on a bus. In the window, she saw the pain etched deep into her face. And. Something else. Her reflection showed her a
mososkwew.
*
Someone with no love. No children. That ache that used to occupy the gash of removal was now more like a bruise. It only hurt when she touched it. So. She didn’t.

Maggie hopped off the bus and started walking down the street. She had looked at the little map of Vancouver that she grabbed from a coffeehouse in Gibsons. They had terrible tea, but she hadn’t had a good one since she left home. Days ago. Days in strange cars with strange travellers to get to a place she knew nothing about. Gibsons had been a nice surprise, though. The place was bigger than she had imagined, with the same trees and coastline that she saw on the TV. But, no flat picture could do justice to the feeling of the land. She hadn’t travelled much but had been enough places to know that this was not always the case. She felt something move in her when she was on that land. Something powerful, joyous and horrific at the same time.

She had gone to see the tree everyone was talking about. Something in her would not rest until she saw it. When she got there, a few people were around, but no one was camped out there on a death watch. Back home, people had said there were crowds out at the tree near Gibsons, but if there was one it was long gone by the time Maggie got there. She was the only person there for portions of the day. She went and sat near the tree, on the ground, trying to see if it was alive. To her
eye, it looked like it was dead. There was a smell of something though. It took her a minute to recognize it: it smelled like dirt. Not garden dirt. Not forest dirt. But white dirt, like in the old stories. When she was alone, she talked to it. It was a relative, anyways, so she thought it was only right. She started out cordially and ate lunch with the tree, offering it tobacco and then some of her coffee and muffin.

*
Spinster.

Later in the afternoon, she had to wait for a skinny little woman in an old car (Malibu?) to leave. She kept sitting in her car and, to Maggie, it felt like she was waiting for her to leave. Maggie walked a bit and went to sit down on a picnic bench, had a smoke and then walked back to the little tree. That little white woman was still in her car, still staring at the tree. Maggie walked over to it and took her seat on the grass again.

Once it got dark and they ran out of small talk, Maggie told the tree her secrets. About her brothers. About growing up and away from them. About her kids. About Bernice and how she was in the San. About the
Pimatisewin
in her family’s territory. About the fundraisers to make it better.

Before she left – she had to catch the 10:20 bus to Vancouver – she pulled out a little pouch and said a prayer to the tree. She dug a hole near its base and planted her thanks and good wishes in the earth. Walking to the bus depot, a feeling landed in her. Something familiar but old. Like she hasn’t felt it in a while. She wondered if it’s just her head playing tricks on her because she has been behaving since she left home.

She walked to the tiny bus depot, just making it in time. The trip takes two hours. This seems crazy to Maggie, since
the little map says it is only a pinkie-nail away. A pinkie-nail is about fifty miles. It didn’t matter. She was in no rush.

Walking from the bus depot, she had to ask people for directions three or four times. Some just walk away from her. One man asks her to be more specific.

“Where on the Eastside?” He had looked at her, concerned. “You know, you shouldn’t go there at this time. You could get …”

“Missing.” Maggie smiles at him kindly. “I will be fine, thank you. Can you tell me where the bars are?”

At that, presuming whatever he presumes about Indian women going to Eastside bars, he gave her directions.

She had never been to Vancouver. Never been to a city this big. Never been to the Indian bars in any city. She thought about her family, sends a prayer to Valene and Bernice. She chose this city and this neighbourhood because she knows someone like her can disappear here.

She finds the bar. Heard the music.

Hey-ya-hey ay yay yah hah.

Hey-ya-hey-ay-yay-yah-hah.

Hey ay yay hey yah

Hey ay yay hah.

Walked in the door. And did.

I
would like to thank, sincerely, my mom, Gloria Belcourt, my aunties (and little mothers) Donna, Val and Bunny, and my sister Cindy for teaching me about good women. Bernice gets better because they are good and treated me like a healthy, smart, writing daughter, niece and sister before I knew I was any of those things. Maria Campbell has taught, mentored and bossed me around since the day we met. This work would not exist without her critical eye. She was the first to read it and the last to read it. My stepmother Sally made a home for five strangers and provided us with home and shelter. I am thankful to her every day.

This has been an incredibly hard book to write. I am able to do so because my dad, Warren Lindberg, the late and great Harold Cardinal and the still great Chief Bernard Ominayak taught me about good men and how good men listen to women. Each has, at different times, offered me home and safety. I am richer for knowing them. I am thankful as well to Elder Stan Wilson who checked my Cree and who saw this work as part of a spectrum of freeing writing. My brothers Korey and Kris are raising good men, and I am thankful for the love they put into the world.

My agent, Carolyn Swayze, took this ragged manuscript and got it on the desk of the lovely Jennifer Lambert at HarperCollins. Jennifer has made this something readable and absorbable and I am thankful to her for that. She brought in Jane Warren for some of the heavy lifting and she made the book better.

I am thankful to the people and the inherent leadership of the Lubicon Lake Nation who endure, survive and thrive. Thanks particularly to Chief Ominayak and The Elders Council, Councillors and the Whitehead family, who have provided me with a place to sleep, belly laughs over meals and a lifetime of lessons. I am also thankful to the people of my ancestral home, the Kelly Lake Cree Nation, for providing me with a safe place to land.

Priscilla Campeau, Leah Schwerin, Carol Gale – all book lovers and true loves of mine – fed me, my brain and my soul. They are the reflection within which I can best see myself.

For many, many reasons, I am thankful to my friend and love Duncan Cook. For teaching me about healthy men, strong mothers and kind daughters – all under one roof.

The Phils in my life let me talk and write to them my ideas and snippets of drafting. Thank you to my good friends Jeffrey Keller and Darren Dugan. My friend Bevan Audstone taught me about openness and boundaries.

Kate Sutherland, Larissa Behrendt, Constance Backhouse and Martha Minow told me that I could write and should write. They read my stuff along the way and encouraged me to write in my own way, own time and own voice. I am forever
thankful for them. They, along with my sisters Bev Jacobs, Val Napoleon, Candice Metallic, and Janice Makokis, Ivy Lalonde and Tanya Kappo took it as a given that I was smart and kind. In turn, I came to believe it.

I am thankful to Elder Stanley Wilson for sharing his thoughts with me on the use of my mothertongue in this book. As well, I am grateful to the Cree Language Resource Project (CLRP) dictionary and the Online Cree Dictionary for much of the Cree language and many of the translations in this work.

Finally, for any mistakes I have made in my writing, my interpretation, my thoughts, I am sorry. This book is meant to free, not to capture, a life. For those who see themselves in Bernice, I hope this frees you a little, too.

Who is Bernice?

Bernice Meetoos is a big Halfbreed (Cree) woman. She is from Kelly Lake, but has no reserve. She lives at Loon Lake, Alberta. Her family has a house on the reserve but they are not status Indians and are not allowed to live there. She is smart, gentle and damaged by a childhood that blew up and splattered everyone around her. She is an adventurer and a bookworm. She is beautiful.

Where is Loon Lake?

The fictional Loon Lake is a reserve in what is now known to many as Alberta. If it existed, it would be north of Grande Prairie and east of Dawson. It has forest all around and a few big hills. Grande Cache with a different splendour and less incline.

Why is there so little about Maggie in the book?

Maggie is the fifth woman in the book. I wanted her to be present and a driving force, but I didn’t want her to overshadow Bernice. The mother’s story and essence can overshadow and be more intense than the child’s, sometimes. For Bernice to truly
be
the story, she had to be, in an emotional sense, alone.

Also, I didn’t want to indict Maggie. The pain that visits Bernice is no one’s fault, but also, no one takes responsibility in the text. I wanted the reader to know that Maggie has life, spirit and kindness, and that she has a sense of ownership of the problems
facing her family. I did not want to detail them because Bernice would not know them and I didn’t want to hyper-responsibilitize the women in the work.

There is a book in Maggie. I don’t think you have heard the last of her.

Why the shifting verb tense?

Bernice is able, eventually physically but at the outset mentally, to shift time and space. She is able to move about her life with fluidity and no timeline. The emotions, the events or the healing may move her and define where and who she is. I didn’t want the verbs to control her, but to serve as an indicator of her fluency with time.

What do the stories of these women represent?

I think they can represent the multiplicity of women’s experience. There certainly is a sense that women can make their own families, and that diverse women can have entirely separate experiences and draw together to heal and help each other. My hope is that the reader can also get a real feeling for the beauty and kindness in our communities. We have the tools to make good medicine, to make good families and make good decisions.

Thinking about it, the stories can also provide a layering of thoughts about women and the impact on us of colonization, and our susceptibility to other kinds of violence and to erasure.

To me, the stories represent freedom and the notion that we have stuff enough in us to get better. If we don’t, someone else will.

Finally, I think there is a thread in this quilt about the blending of new and ancient knowledge.

How did you think of this character?

Oh, I love Bernice. I still cry over her quiet strength, hard choices and pain. My celebrations over her good choices, healing and gentleness in the face of exceptional violence are never-ending. What I think about her is different than what I feel. She lives such an internal life for the bulk of this work that I had the fear that readers would not “get” how deeply she thinks, experiences and feels.

She is an amalgam of every woman I love, have been challenged by and am.

How much of it is you?

Lots of it. None of it. It depends on the day. Bernice is more willing to love and trust at the end of her story than I think I am. She has the same reliance upon an almost unspoken and Creator-given right to the love of women that I think I share. She loves her aunties like I do: fully. However, I quite love my uncles. Almost without exception, they were gentle, compassionate and kind Cree men.

Her hurt, and her silence in her hurt, is familiar to me and can evoke a real pang in my heart, even today.

My hope is that in my best moments I am as lovely and kind as she is.

What lesson is there in this for parents? For children?

It is not enough to talk love, you have to live love. Loving means acting. Acting loving means making hard decisions about the safety – physical, sexual, emotional and spiritual safety – of your children. If you are unsure, do not let your children spend any
time alone with any adult. If you are sure, ask yourself if you should be. Ever vigilant. Ever loving.

I hope some big buffalo of a gal in some small town (perhaps northern) pulls this book off a shelf when she is too young to see it. This is the book I wish I had found. Tell someone. Tell anyone. You have it inside you to be good, be well and get better.

Bernice gets skinny. Does she get well?

Well, she gets skinny and then she starts getting well. Skinny is not well in this book. Her Auntie Val is well. Maggie is not. Freda and Lola are somewhere in the middle. She comes into herself when she comes into her spirit, not when she comes into her body. She is sick in her skinniness, really, in the same way
Pimatisewin
is sick. She gets fed love as the tree gets fed love. She is better when fat with the love of women.

The book has a great deal of violence in it. Were you worried about how audiences would respond to it?

I was more worried that audiences could not relate to it – because not seeing it or knowing it exists makes it less understandable and sometimes more prevalent. At one point, one reader of an early draft said to me that sexual assault by multiple family members would be too hard for many readers to believe. In order to write this book, I had to write it for those of us who can believe it. Have experienced it. Have seen it. This is not to say that sexual assault is endemic to some communities and not others. I was worried about grounding this in an Indigenous context, that is true, because I feared that some readers would think that violence between adults and sexual violence against children by
adults would be seen to be an Indigenous issue. It is. It also is a non-Indigenous issue. When it happens to Indigenous peoples and when it happens to non-Indigenous peoples. Not talking about it, the degree, kind and prevalence, is the space within which the violence finds strength. Sexual assault may seem to be at the centre of Bernice’s story, but it is not. Bernice’s wellness and kindness is the centre of the story. The understanding that you can uncover and recover from sexual assault is important; knowing that you can make a healthy family, a healthy self and a “good life” is even more so.

The
Pimatisewin
is a large part of this work. What does it represent, to Bernice?

Loosely translated,
Pimatisewin
means “the good life.” In this work, I have written it to represent a tree of life. In actuality, the tree itself represents that there is wellness, beauty and potential for regeneration through nature. That potentiality exists only if you take responsibility (in this book, making a blood offering to give life and a feast offering to give thanks). Metaphorically, it is a reminder that life is outside ourselves, that regardless of what is going on in our minds, our spirits and bodies have an obligation to our natural environment to behave in reciprocal, healing and positive ways. For Bernice, the tree represents her responsibility both to look outside of herself and take care of her relatives and others and to behave and make decisions in a way that will allow her to live a good life. Her commitment to personal health and the good life is important, but she cannot live a good life by continuing to concentrate only on self.

There is a Storyteller outside of the women in the book that comes in some chapters of the book. Whose voice is
acimowin?

The Storyteller is the one who is recording Bernice’s story, her oral history, in a way that it can teach others. When I started the work, I thought that it was an old man and pictured him telling the story in a way that tied
Pimatisewin,
Bernice and her family’s lives together, years after they were gone, for people who needed to learn the lessons from a narrative and not a novel. If you read just those pieces alone, my hope is that you would understand the lessons she was taught. The Storyteller is entertaining, crass, an archivist and a lawbook author.

Closing thoughts for readers?

Look for the richness and joy, know that the pain exists, take responsibility for that which you create. I chose the name “Meetoos” from a number of names that resonated with me and from community members around me. When I told an Elder, she said, “You know that word means ‘tree,’ don’t you?” I had no idea. My closing thought is prepare yourself for the possibility that you don’t know all of the possibilities; grace and goodness can come just as fast and honestly as any other circumstance.