There are no innocent bystanders

TW: anti-Indigenous racism, SA, child abuse

******

Under a moonbeam-glowing brass cross, a black-clad man bent over the sagging single bed. The small figure on the bed lay stick-still, rigid, eyes wide and alert, white thin cotton nightgown ending above equally thin brown wrists.

“Get up. You must pray before bed.”

“I prayed, Father.” His dark shadow hovered on the far wall, a malevolent texture scored by the creak of bedsprings.

“Nonsense, get up.” The girl still did not move. The man snatched off the cover and pulled the girl to her feet.

“Kneel, I say. What is that? Did you wet the bed?”

Silence, tears sparkling in the moonlight.

The priest lifted the nightgown, pulled off the wet undergarments. Pushed the girl facedown onto the bed. A belt buckle rattled.

Flames leapt up, obscuring the scene and Anna wrenched herself awake, tears streaming down her face.

In the dark pre-dawn of her room her eyes scoured the corners for danger, the blood in her ears pounding as if echo-locating the retreating dream images. After long minutes of forcing herself into deep breathing, she swung her legs out of bed.

The last three weeks, every few nights. The same nightmare. Might as well get coffee, there would be no more sleep tonight.

***

At lunch Anna slowly chewed her egg salad sandwich, listening to conversations swell and swirl around her in the cafe.

“What a sin. Imagine, those poor kids.”

“She goes, ‘well, it wasn’t ME, obviously,’ but her phone was right there.”

“The Catholic Church has a spotty history, but nuns killing people? I mean. Hardly seems likely.”

“Really? Ever met a nun?”

“... way overpriced. I bought my brother one of those drums from Amazon though.”

“Probably killed each other. Barely civilized.” Someone burped.

“God you’re ignorant.”

“...just animal bones, probably.”

The television screen over the counter showed an animated “215”. A ribbon at the bottom of the screen read “Buried bodies, hidden secrets. Indigenous heartbreak.”

Finishing her tea, Anna unlocked her phone on the way out, opened her news app. Head down, she picked her way through the regular panhandlers. A splay of feathers at the corner caught her eye, all that was left of a crow, probably hit by a car. There was a new shop open at the corner. A piece of paper was tacked in the window, “Moose Gallery. P’jilasi. Come in.” A taxidermied weasel in the display window beckoned her inside.

A woman sat behind a counter on a stool, her pink sweatshirt glowing against the white walls. Her dark straight hair was parted in the centre and her eyes looked glossy black like a deer’s. Her thumbs tapped restlessly on her phone. She glanced at Anna and bobbed her head in greeting.

On the walls hung paintings of landscapes, animals and people. One display featured spindly birds, bears, a whale, stick people with triangle bodies. Spirals, stars and scratchy lines, a distinctive style. She browsed the shelves: notebooks with more Indigenous art, soapstone carvings from northern First Nations, porcupine quill art, baskets, traditional medicines. A carved wooden crow drew her to a corner. There, a diorama piece showed a twin bed, a child lying in it, a dark figure bent over the bed. A brass cross on the wall. A menacing shadow on the far wall. “Robert Pettipas Snowbear is one of the most celebrated Canadian Indigenous artists alive today,” Anna read on a wall plaque.

She heard the creak of bedsprings, drew in a sharp breath.

“That’s Snowbear’s newest stuff, that.” The woman behind the counter gestured. “The residential schools, like.”

“Horrifying stories,” replied Anna. The metallic clink of a belt buckle played in her mind.

“Yeah, my grandmother was a survivor.” Still looking at her phone.

“I’m so sorry. We–white people are the worst.”

Now the woman looked at her, just stared levelly. Anna felt a kind of panic in her belly, the way she did when she couldn’t read someone, couldn’t tell the right thing to say to get them to understand how likeable and harmless she was.

“Pettipas – my mom’s maiden name was Pettipas. Is Snowbear from around here?”

“He’s from Mi’kmaqi, yeah.” She was back on the phone, and Anna hoped she had imagined a quick eyeroll.

An object shaped and strung like a snowshoe, with dangling feathers and a few sparkling beads woven onto it, caught Anna’s eye. She checked the price tag. Sixty was steep, but maybe this was what she needed. “I’ll take this dreamcatcher. I’ve been having recurring nightmares. Weeks now. Kind of like…” she glanced back at the diorama. “Like I’m seeing someone get abused. It’s horrible.”

The woman silently extended her phone to receive the tap payment. In the pit of her stomach, Anna knew she had once again overshared.

***

Anna took the dream catcher into her bedroom, attaching a sticky hook to the window to hang it. She put her hand on the webbing, closed her eyes. Imagined an energy vibration passing through it. She had seen the smaller, perfect circle versions of course, but this was more rustic, the bent willow around the frame still looking like part of a tree instead of a suede thong wrapped around a plastic hoop. Perhaps fate had directed her feet today.

She rifled her spice drawer, pulled forth some stale ground sage. She poured some into a thick clay bowl, over a tea light. She lit the tiny wick and waved the sage into the corners of the room. It smelled a bit more like wax than sage, but surely it would help. Last, she allowed the smoke to drift up onto the dreamcatcher. If this didn’t fix her nightmares, nothing would.

***

“Hi, Mom,” Anna said, setting down her phone with the speaker on so she could continue preparing supper as her mother described her day: big trip out to the pharmacy, stopped at Tim Horton’s, it’s all Filipinos working there now, imagine, she wasn’t sure they made the coffee the same.

Anna sighed. “Mom, I don’t think you can make Tim’s coffee different.”

“Well, I went into a restaurant with your father once and he got something called Turkey Coffee and it was very different.” The archness of a senior mildly contradicted.

“Yes, Mom, Turkish coffee is different, I just mean if they are at Tim Horton’s all they have are the Tim’s coffee and coffee makers…. The franchise doesn’t leave a lot of room for creativity.” Soothing her mother as she cut up brussel sprouts to roast.

“Mom, do we have any Indigenous relations on the Pettipas side?”

“Indians?”

Anna imagined the mix of scandal and bewilderment on her mother’s face, heard her draw in a long drag on her cigarette.

“Mom, no one calls them that anymore. Mi’kmaq.”

“Their status cards say Indian.”

“Because changing laws is hard, I guess.” Anna swung her knife, beheading a carrot.

“I dunno, mom always said your great grandma Lottie had hair that was as black as–”

“Lottie?” Anna cut her mother off before another problematic phrase could erupt from her.

“Yeah. I don’t know much about her though.”

***

“Did you wet the bed?” This time Anna heard a zipper and a belt buckle. She squeezed her eyes, trembled, woke up drenched with sweat. “Two hundred fifteen bodies,” she breathed into the dark. Looked at the window. The sticky hook had let go. The dreamcatcher was on the floor.

***

Anna pulled the package from the mailbox, ripped it open as she walked up the stairs to her condo. Pulled out the tube. Spit in it. Had it back in the mail before the afternoon collection.

***

As she waited for the results, she read avidly. Indigenous memoirs, reports, essays, poetry. She went to the Archives and the local Friendship Centre. She called her uncle to ask what he remembered about Lottie and family history.

She went to a Mawiomi with her friend Liv, who enjoyed the drumming and knew how to play Waltes. Bought beaded earrings shaped like tiny red dresses. She began posting about missing and murdered Indigenous women on Facebook. Began noting time in terms of what moon was upcoming. Between the egg-laying moon and the frog-croaking moon her DNA results arrived. Eagerly she signed on to the website.

- 68% Southern and Central England

- 30% Northwestern European / France

- 1% Northern Wales

- 1% Southern Europe / Italy

She searched “how accurate are online DNA results” and found a 2007 article on a Wordpress blog that proposed that there was insufficient DNA samples from verified Indigenous sources around the world for the results from commercial companies to be valid. The article may have been nearly 15 years old, but she was fairly sure the truth of it still held.

“I had family who lived near one of the residential schools back in the ‘30s,” she told Liv. “What if I am seeing a relative in my dreams? What if that girl in the bed was my family?”

Liv sipped her coffee, a frown creasing her face. “Can you remember any other details about the space?” Later, she sent Anna an article about lucid dreaming.

***

Anna regularly responded to marketing surveys - she was on several lists for these. She began checking off “Indigenous” as her identity. Test driving how it felt in the anonymity of the online forms.

***

The dreamcatcher refused to stay in the window for longer than a few nights at a time. The hook fell down, the string broke. She went to a store on a nearby reserve, bought some sweetgrass. Waved the sweet smoke into the corners, enjoying how much nicer it smelled than the sage, which had given her a headache. She bought a small pouch of the kind of tobacco her grandfather had used in his pipe when he was alive. She tied a bit into a scrap of red cloth she found in her sewing kit and left it on the window sill.

She continued to read all the books that good allies were supposed to read. She looked up testimonies from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, scouring the pages for clues to her vivid nightmare. In her deepest heart, she knew she was connected to this scene. The girl’s large dark eyes haunted her.

A few weeks after she purchased the dreamcatcher, a new sign appeared in the window of the Moose Gallery. “Snowbear Art Show. Launch Thursday night, 7 pm.” Anna felt a flutter in her stomach. She pulled out her phone and entered a reminder into her calendar.

***

On Thursday, Anna was at the gallery at six. It was not yet open. She risked a quick dash to get a hot drink to keep her hands warm as she waited. A cat yowl startled her as she passed the alley beside the shop. Glowing eyes and a squirming rodent were all she could see in the shadows. Predators everywhere.

“Come in.” The pink sweatshirt had been replaced with a black sequined cardigan and an orange shirt over a ribbon skirt. Anna was one of about fourteen attendees. The rest all seemed to know each other. Anna nervously pulled on one of her beaded earrings, sipping the tea she had brought. In the midst of the lively chatter, she felt the silence around her like an inflatable spare tire. She felt big in the space, clumsy, awkward.

Snowbear was older than she had anticipated. He had a long grey braid of hair, sloped shoulders. He was tall, 6’3” or 6’4” she guessed. He wore jeans and a plain black t-shirt with a suede jacket. He moved from person to person, greeting people, shaking hands, murmuring Mi’kmaq words. She focused on a painting, a small child facing the corner of a classroom, a psalm written on the chalkboard over his head.

“Hello, welcome,” he said. “Thank you for coming.”

Anna nodded. “Hello. Kwe. I appreciate your art.” In her mind she tried to assemble the words that would let her bridge to her specific question about the diorama. Too late. He smiled politely, said thank you, and then looked past her to the gallery attendant, waving him to a microphone.

He spoke for twenty minutes, describing his upbringing in a nearby Mi’kmaw community. He made a joke about fry bread, and another about rez dogs. She laughed along with the crowd, trying to piece together what made the jokes funny.

She stayed as the snacks were consumed, and finally, as the attendant was clearly moving people to the doorway, Anna swallowed her anxiety and approached the artist again.

“I have a question about one of your pieces,” she said. He nodded and she barely noticed his eyes flick to a nearby clock. “The diorama. Can you tell me where the image came from?”

“The diorama, eh? That’s a dark piece. My grandmother told me a story about her time in residential school, a friend she had there. About one of the priests. Bad stuff.” The way he focused on her said her interest surprised him.

“I have seen that scene…” she stopped, wondered if he would think she was accusing him of plagiarism, of copying someone else. “I mean – this sounds crazy, and I’m sorry for that. I have seen that scene in a nightmare for over a month.”

He frowned. The attendant coughed.

“Is – is your grandmother still alive? Could I speak with her?”

Snowbear shook his head, lifting his eyebrows. “No, Grandmother is with the Creator. But ...” He handed her a card. “Email me and remind me about this. I’ll see if Charlotte is up for a visit.”

“Thank you. Was Charlotte the child in the scene?”

“No, that was Charlotte’s mother. She passed away recently.”

***

Liv refilled her coffee, leaned in.

“It just makes sense. If the child in the scene just died recently – that’s when I started having the nightmare! And her daughter’s name is Charlotte and my great grandmother was Lottie… it’s too much coincidence. It’s true, I am Indigenous. Mi’kmaq. Well, I mean, part anyway.”

“Have you emailed him yet?” Liv looked again at the gallery leaflet. “You’re not related to him, are you? No? Good. He’s handsome!”

“Liv,” said Anna. “I’m trying to figure out what this means for my identity, my relationship with this land. Not land a date.”

“Sure, right. Of course.”

***

“Thank you for meeting me,” Anna said. “Can I offer you some tea?”

Charlotte was an older lady, at least 70. Slim, frail. Thick grey hair. Lots of rings on her knobby hands. Anna examined her, looking for any resemblance to the grandparents she remembered.

“Mint if you have it.” Loose dentures gave her a wheezy sibilant pronunciation.

Anna had a photo of the diorama on the table and Charlotte picked it up. “My mother lost her language. They cut all her beautiful hair. Before the school, she would go to the fields, pick berries with her family, my grandmother and uncles. After… she never felt like she belonged. Anywhere. That’s what she said.”

Anna put the tea in front of her, with a spoon and a small bowl for the bag.

“I often feel like I don’t belong anywhere,” Anna said. “Please go on.”

“She was sick a lot. Stomach sick. The food was rotten, not what she was used to. They would take her to the sick room. Father MacInnis and them. Sometimes she would wake up crying in the night. Sometimes she would wet the bed. The bed was usually damp. Lots of kids spent a night or two there. Lots of bed wetters.”

“Was Father MacInnis… abusive?”

“They all were,” said Charlotte firmly. “But he was bad, yes.” Her voice dropped to just over a whisper. “Mother never said, but I’m sure he raped her. A few times.”

“What evil,” said Anna.

“You know who I blame though?” said Charlotte, the strength returning to her voice. “Men have always been bad that way. But the nuns who knew. The nuns who watched the door. Who stayed in the room. In the corner. They WATCHED. That’s beyond evil.” She blew on the tea. “There are no innocent bystanders.”

***

As she washed the tea mugs, Anna’s phone dinged. Her mother. “Call me.”

“Yeah, so I asked Aunt Shoo if there was anyone in the connection who might have been native like you asked. She said maybe her aunt Sarah. She worked at the residential school, she might have had a native baby. Gave it up for adoption, of course. She had to leave the convent when she got knocked up. It was all hush hush. Great aunt Sarah passed a month or two ago, otherwise I’d ask her.”

***

Anna climbed out of the hot tub, wrapped herself in a thick towel. She did not want to sleep. She sat on the bed, trying to read. Her eyes drooped.

***

Different small framed girl. Same man. Same belt buckle. She was crouched in the corner, minding the door as she was told. Blocking her ears to the sobbing by mentally reciting Hail Marys. This is how we tame the savages, Father had told her. Same way we need to tame women who speak back to their superiors. The bruises throbbed still. The handprint on her face. “Your mission is to bring the savages to God,” Mother Superior had said. “Father MacInnis is God’s representative, it is not for the likes of us to question,” through tight lips.

Anna woke in tears.

***

She entered the gallery, walked back to the diorama. The price on it was near her credit card limit. Did a guilt purchase make sense? She had no land to give back. She thought again of the dream. Wondered how many children MacInnis had fathered. Wondered where Sarah’s baby had wound up. How many lives had he ruined? How many nuns had helped him? There were no clear answers.

This was her heritage. Hers to own.

She carried the diorama to the counter.