Five October 1966 #5
“I don’t know. Your mother never said.” She turned away to place a stick of hardwood in the stove. I looked out the little window above the wash basin, admiring the colour of morning.
“You think it could be Big Ben?” I asked, without turning around.
She was quiet at first and I let myself believe, only for a moment, that he might be. She seemed to be deep in thought, as if conjuring the right answer.
“I suppose. They were friends, good friends. He’s the same age, and you were born before he and Sally got friendly. But Ben’s a good man. If he thought you were his child, he’d claim you.”
“Maybe she never told him.”
“Where is all this coming from? Who’ve you been talking to?”
“No one. Just that everyone else has a father but me. I don’t have a mother or a father. Just think it’s a bit unfair, that’s all. And Ben’s light like me. And he has green eyes.”
“His father was Acadian, died of a fever before he was born,” she said, shooing the cat off the counter.
“His mother could say the Lord’s Prayer in French and thought she was better than the rest of us because of it.
” She rolled her eyes and threw me a smile.
“And don’t you worry, Aliet, you got me. ”
She stood behind me and reached around, filling the palm of her hand with bubbles from the dishes. She stepped back and blew a soapy pile of bubbles into my hair and laughed.
I didn’t want to tell her what Kenneth had said.
How my light skin was a focus of torment for him.
How I wanted the word half-breed not to be applied to me.
And I did have Kiju, and each day I was grateful for that, and I would never want her to think that she wasn’t enough.
So I wiped the bubbles out of my hair and went to get ready for bed.
I only saw Kenneth once more that autumn.
I worked hard to avoid him. I was sure he would want revenge for his bloody nose.
Each time I stepped down from the front stoop of our little house, I checked over my shoulder.
Each time I visited the outhouse, I would peek through the crescent moon window before leaving.
Yet despite how careful I was, he found me anyway.
It was the middle of the day, and Sally and the new baby were napping inside the house.
The other two boys were playing on the ground while I worked at carving.
After Kenneth crushed the wooden acorn, I had started something new.
I took a piece of old maple and sanded it down until it was thin.
Then I found a perfectly intact leaf, no rips or pieces missing, and was trying to etch the veins into my piece of wood.
I was so intent on getting them right, my head down, knife in hand, that I didn’t see him approach.
The boys took no notice, they were used to people milling about.
I let out a shocked cry when Kenneth reached over and knocked the wooden leaf out of my hand.
“What are you doing?” I yelled.
“You got me in trouble. It’s called payback.” He reached to the ground and took the carved leaf and broke it in half. “That’s for breaking my nose.”
His nose did look bad, and the skin around his eyes was black and blue, but I was sure I didn’t hit him hard enough to break it.
“You started it.”
“I was just saying what’s true. Half-breed. You think you’re better than us with your ghost skin.”
I looked down at my summer skin, still not as brown as his, and felt ashamed and then angry that I let him make me feel that way.
“No, I don’t.” I wished I could have thought of something cruel to say to him, but my mind was muddled.
“You’re gonna get all high and mighty,” he snickered.
“You’re an ass, just like your daddy,” was all I could muster, and immediately regretted it, using that language in front of Sally and Ben’s boys.
I wanted John to walk by and defend me, for Kiju to come around the corner, for Sally to step out of the house, for Big Ben to take him by the collar of his T-shirt and drag him away. But no one came.
“You’re not a real Indian. Kiju should send you to live with the man with the missing thumb.”
I stood up and started toward him. “Your daddy ain’t full either.”
He started to back away. He didn’t run like I wanted him to, but walked confidently, knowing I couldn’t go anywhere, I couldn’t leave the boys. He smiled, turned and walked away.
There are some people who don’t know how to be happy.
They find joy only in misery. And I believe that Kenneth was one of those people.
He found joy in other people’s misery; he sought out hurt instead of love.
He dismissed friendship and replaced it with scorn.
He found injustices where there were none and he held on to them.
And for reasons that, at the time, I thought had nothing to do with me, I became the focus of his hurt, his anger.
I wonder, if I had known the truth, if I could have changed things back then, if I could have been the bigger person.
Maybe things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did if I had known.