Chapter 1
1936
I was 6 years old when they came to get me. I heard the truck come rumbling down the track before I saw it. I still sometimes wake from dreams when I hear a truck shifting noisily in the night. We all knew it would be arriving that day to collect me. I sat on the front step staring at the toes of my shoes which my gran had polished the night before. The black paste did little to hide how little leather remained to cover my toes.
I pulled my skirt tight around my knees and refused to looked up at the truck though it was so close I could smell the diesel. Peaking under my lashes I could see the bare toes of my gran standing on the step beside me. I so desperately wanted to grab her legs and bury my face in her skirt and plead for her to let me stay.
But I didn’t move. I knew she would only pull my arms from her legs and pull my chin up to look her in her dark eyes. She would stay sternly, “Hazel Steinburg, you will not cry. You will go to school. You will learn to read and write and everything else they teach you. You will be good and you will make this family proud. Understand?” To which I would nod my head and mumble, “Yes Gran.” For this was how it played out each day since I first found out I was to leave.
I had thought I would always live with my mother and gran. For as long as I could remember it had been just the three of us. I knew my family was different from everyone else on the reserve but I didn’t care. I thought my family was perfect, that is, until the day I came home with a black eye. That was also the first time I saw gran really mad. I was only four and she nearly rattled my brain out my ear when she grabbed my shoulders and started shaking me.
“Where in the world have you been girl? And what in the world have you been doing?” Spittle sprayed my face and for the first time I was afraid of gran.
“I was over at Ruth’s house,” I stuttered, “Her brother called mother a bad name and when I told him to take it back he laughed at me and said I didn’t have a daddy because he couldn’t stand the look of me.”
Grans tight grip was lessening on my shoulders, “Did he hit you?”
“Oh no,” I rushed on, “it was Ruth.”
“Ruth? What in the world would possess her to hit you? You’re not telling me everything.” Gran let go my shoulder only to shift her grip to my wrist. She pulled me the table and made me sit down while she dipped a cloth in the basin of water. As she started to sponge clean my face she prodded me to continue, “Tell me the whole story my little cob.”
The words tumbled out of me, “I asked Ruth what Bobby meant, when he said my daddy left because he couldn’t stand the look of me, because I’m pretty, momma always says my hair is so beautiful like the wings of a raven, that’s what she says, and you’ve said it too Gran, why wouldn’t my daddy like the looks of me? Well, I asked Ruth and do you know what she said, she said that my daddy probably left because he wasn’t really my daddy… because he wasn’t an indian and that I’m too indian to be his. How can I be too indian?” Gran was looking at me funny but I kept on, “So I told her what’s it matter? She’s indian too. And then she did the worst thing ever, I’m never going to be her friend ever again… she said yeah but at least my dad loves my mom and knew what he was getting into. And well, that’s when I jumped on her and started hitting her, and I was winning until Bobby pushed me off her and then when Bobby was holding my arms so I couldn’t hit her anymore she punched me right in the eye! Can you believe it Gran! I’m never talking to Ruth again as long as I live!”
Gran set the cloth on the table and stared at it for a long time, I started to wonder if I should leave but as soon as I shifted my weight her slender fingers were around my wrist once more.
“You sit back down my little cob.” She gently tucked a loose strand of my long black hair behind my ear and focused her eyes on mine. I always felt in those moments, when I was completely at the centre of her attention, that I must be like the mouse when the eagle has it in it’s sight. “Hazel, you are going to hear a lot of unkind, untrue, and unloving words in your life. They are a fact of life. Every person makes their own choices, your momma and your father each made their own choices and those are really the business of no body else. But here’s the thing, the choices each of us make will always affect someone or something else, we are all connected.”
I squirmed under her gaze, “But I’m not too indian! Why wouldn’t he be my daddy? And, those things they were saying, that was wrong!” I shook with rage.
“Yes, my little cob, they were cruel but it doesn’t matter what they say. What matters is what YOU choose to do,” Gran cupped my face with her hand, “Do you hear me? You control your actions, “her eyes were flashing again and I already knew what she would say next, “You should not have hit Ruth.”
“But Gran!” I protested.
“No buts!” Gran stood quickly from the table, “There is no reason to hit another person, that is not how you have been raised. When your mother wakes up you will tell her what you have done and you will go to bed with no supper. And tomorrow,” Gran stood to her full height, a tiny towering 5”2’, “tomorrow you will go over to Ruth’s house and you will apologize to her and her mother, do you understand?”
“Yes, gran.” I mumbled.
As mad as I was at Ruth that day I always knew that there must have been some reason why I didn’t have a father when all my friends and cousins did. Whenever I asked my mother about him her eyes would fill with tears. She would give my arm a weak squeeze and with a half smile she would promise to tell me about him some other time, when she wasn’t so tired.
She was always tired.
Every morning she would be gone before I woke up to the sound of our three chickens. She walked each morning before light into town. There she spent the whole day cleaning and cooking for two different families. When she got home, often well past dark in the winter, I would snuggle beside her at the table while gran filled a bowl with the stew that she left to warm on the back of the stove. While she ate she would absentmindedly rub my back stopping now and then to encourage me to tell her about my day. I would happily prattle on about gathering the eggs, or about the herbs gran had shown me that day, or about who I played with. When I asked about her day and what the families were like she would only smile and say, “One day you’ll see for yourself Hazel. They have four bedrooms, can you believe that, only the youngest share a bed. And running water, heated, to the kitchen and the bathroom, wouldn’t that be so nice in the winter?”
One night I asked her why we didn’t have those things.
Mother put her spoon gently on the table and turned to face me. “Oh Hazel, how do I explain this to you, you are so young? It is just that we are not the same as them, that’s all. We’re different.”
“How are we different mother?”
“Well, they are smarter, they all go to school and learn all these things.”
“But you went to school mom, you’re smart.”
“Yes, I went school but I’m not the right kind of smart.”She looked over at gran who was keeping her face towards the stove, “The people in town…”
“The white people?” I asked.
“Yes, the white people, they just know different things from us, they have better jobs, they work hard and have more money, that’s why they have more things then us.”
I jumped up on my knees and slapped my little hands on the table, “But mommy! No body works harder than you! I know you work hard! And you are the smartest person in the whole world!”
Mom pulled me into her arms and as I buried my face in her chest I breathed in her sweet smell of sweat mixed with the smell of the dust from the road, “Oh my sweet girl, you bring me so much joy.”
Considering that we were the only family I knew on the reserve who did not have a man in the house, we were doing okay.Our home was the small log cabin that my grandfather had built as a young man. With only three rooms it was cozy but more than enough space for us though I often wondered at how crowded it must have been when my mom was a girl to share that little space with her five brothers and three sisters. The main room contained our large table with two benches down each side and a large chair at each end. More then once I had overheard mother and gran discussing whether to sell the table. Mother would argue that we didn’t need such a large piece of furniture and that the money would be very welcome. But gran always won, she would run her hand along the back of the chair and I could tell she was seeing grandfather sitting there once again, and she would chid my mother about how we had the woods and would always have food to eat.
But sometimes we didn’t. While mother spent all day working in town, gran would spend the day in the garden. Each fall I would help her in the kitchen as we canned the tomatoes, {more about food}. Some days we would walk down to the river to fish. I was so proud of myself when I learned to clean my own fish. We would set these out to dry and store them in the cellar that Grandfather had dug beside the house along with the potatoes, carrots, turnips and apples. But even with all our work throughout the summer we often ran short as the long winter months drew on. As we waited for spring we would be reduced to eating the few eggs from our chickens instead of selling them and whatever my uncles would trap and bring us. Many nights the stew gran served to mother was little more than boiled water with a bit of potato and the stew bone. And even then, mother would often spoon the tiny bits of potato into my hungry mouth.
Besides the large table the room had an old stove that we used to cook and heat the cabin. Gathering enough wood was always a difficult chore for gran. She often called upon her children to help her stock up the pile by the door each fall. As a child I loved those days. While my uncles brought wagons of wood from the forest to stack I was free to run and play with my cousins.
My cousins and I all looked very much a like. We all shared grandfathers nose my gran would tell me as she gave mine a gentle wiggle. Where her nose came down in a little nob at the end, like a little beak, ours were all straight across the bottom, wide and fat. I was smaller than my cousins, though the same age as some, and smaller than Ruth who shared the same spring birthday, but that did little to slow me down in keeping up with everyone as we would run to the woods and throw our own powwows around small fires the boys would build. I loved to dance. And would forget the time as I threw my head back to watch the branches of the trees spin above my head while I bounced and swayed to the rhythm.
I had known that mother had travelled away from Gran when she had to go to school as a girl. I had known that she had stayed there all year, coming home only for the summer.
I knew these things about school but I still wasn’t prepared for them to mean anything to me personally.
It was midsummer the year that I turned six that gran told me I would be going to the school in the fall.
One day, as Ruth and I sat playing with our dolls I asked her what she knew about the school. I knew that I could not ask mother and gran would only mutter about how ridiculous it was. Ruth was the youngest in her family and I knew that her sisters and brothers had already spent a number of winters at the school. I was sure that she would be able to answer some of my questions.
She didn’t look up from her doll Jane, “They don’t talk about,” she glanced around to make sure we were alone, “but sometimes I hear Bobby crying at night, he talks in his sleep, says a lot of things that don’t make any sense.”
“Bobby cries?” I asked in confusion, I couldn’t imagine him ever crying. He didn’t even cry the summer he fell from the apple tree and broke his arm.
Ruth looked up from her doll and I could see fear in her eyes, “Yes he does, but don’t you dare tell him I told you!”
“I won’t, promise! But why don’t they talk about it? Don’t they like learning to read? I can’t wait to learn how to read!”
“Well, mom and dad always make them show what they have learned the first couple of days home from school, but then dad tells they aren’t allowed to speak english anymore and that they need to be learning the things they need to know in order to take care of their own families one day. That’s why Bobby and other boys are always gone most the summer, dad takes them north to teach them to hunt and trap.”
“But why do we have to go if they don’t think it is teaching us the right stuff?”
“Well, my mother says we have learn all we can so that we can get good jobs, so we can adapt.” Ruth’s nose scrunched in confusion, “But I don’t really understand. I just know I don’t want to go. But we aren’t suppose to cry about it, we have to be strong.”
“I’m strong!” I puffed out my chest and took Ruth’s hand, “And we will go together. We will be the smartest ones there and we will come home and our mothers will be so proud of us!”
Ruth gave a small smile and squeezed my hand back, “Yes, and my brothers and sisters will look out for us.”
I felt better knowing I wouldn’t really be alone at the school though inside my stomach turned with dread.
The part that unsettled me the most was that for the rest of the summer both gran and mother started acting different. Gran kept making my favourite treats, even though I knew we didn’t have the extra money for sugar. She made me a new doll, one with two long black braids and eyes that looked just like mine, even the wide nose matched my own.I named her Judy and took her everywhere with me. She was especially comforting as I could not understand my mother’s actions. As the grasses started to brown and then the winds of autumn began mother grew more distant each day. At supper she would pat my back only once and then pull her hand away as though my touch burned her. I would try to tuck myself under her arm and she would pull away and snap at me to leave her in peace, couldn’t I see how tired she was?She wouldn’t look me in the eye though sometimes, when I was playing with Judy, I would catch her staring at me. When I smiled back at her she would stifle a sob and run from the room.
That morning, as I sat on the step, listening to the truck rumble down the lane towards our little cabin, my mother was inside in our one bed. Gran had given me a bath and carefully braided my hair into two strands that lay down my back almost to my bottom. She then dressed me in my best clothes before taking me in to see mother. Her face was to the wall. Holding Judy tightly to my chest I whispered, “Mommy, I have to go to school today.”
There was no movement to indicate she heard me.
“Mommy?” my voice quivered, “Mommy, do I have to go?”
There was a soft cry and her shoulders started shaking.
Gran gently took my hand, “Say goodbye Hazel, tell your mother you love her.”
I swallowed back the lump in my throat, trying very hard to be brave, to be brave for my mommy, “I love you mommy.”I couldn’t get the words good bye to come out. Gran seemed to know and she gently led me from the bedroom and out to the front door, but not before I heard the muffled sobs.
A swirl of dust rose as the truck came to a rest in front of the cabin. Still I kept my eyes down as I heard the truck door groan open and the heavy steps of a man approaching.
“I’m here to collect a student.” The voice didn’t sound as gruff and scary as I expected and I raised my eyes just enough to take in the worn boots a few feet in front of me.
“This here is Hazel,” Gran lightly touched the top of my head, “It is her first year.” I was surprised to hear a hint of tremble in her voice and couldn’t help myself, I leapt to my feet and grabbed gran around the waist, burying my face in her stomach. Instead of pulling me away as I expected her to, gran dropped to her knees as her arms enveloped me. Though I couldn’t see I could hear the tears in her voice as the words I expected came, “Now, Hazel Steinburg, you will not cry. You will go to school. You will learn to read and write and everything else they teach you. You will be good and you will make this family proud. Understand?”
I raised my tear stain face to look at grans own wrinkled cheeks marked by tears. I nodded my head to show that I understood, and I did, I understood that no matter where I was she would still be here with my mother, waiting for me to come home, waiting and loving me.
“It’s time to go,” the man spoke the words gently as he picked up my bag which had my clothes. The smoked fish and apples gran had packed for me to take along where also in the sack. The man carried them to the back of the truck and set them inside before turning back to me. I still can’t remember what his face looked like, I only remember the toes of his boots and the tone of his voice, a voice that carried compassion mixed with sorrow.
I was still clinging to gran but now she started to pry me loose and lead me to the back of the truck. It was large and dark in colour. The back was open with wooden slats on the sides. As I approached I caught the distinct whiff of pig manure even though the bed of the truck had obviously been washed down. The man was waiting to lift me into the bed so I could take my place next to the other children. When my eyes caught Ruth’s where she was sitting tightly holding Bobby’s hand I could see that she too had been crying. Bobby glared at me. There were no tears in his eyes. His back was straight and his chin held high. He looked right at me and I sensed the challenge, was I going to be a cry baby like his sister or was I going to be brave?
I hiccupped back my sobs and gave gran’s hand a tight squeeze. “Tell momma goodbye for me gran,” the tears came again unbidden, but I kept my chin up just like Bobby’s, “I’ll see you at Christmas.”
“Yes, my little cob. Be brave,” gran squeezed back and released me as the man lifted me up into the truck. I grabbed my bag and quickly sat down next to Ruth, clinging to her other hand.
The man closed the back gate and walked around to the cab. A cloud of dark smoke burst from the tailpipe as he started the truck and began to pull out the lane. I bit my lip tightly to stop myself from sobbing aloud as I watched the form of my gran standing in the doorway slowly grow smaller as we bounced down the track away from all I knew.
