Black Water by David A. Robertson

Author:David A. Robertson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2020-08-11T00:00:00+00:00

Kēkach-Mitataht (Nine)

I pack up and leave the hotel room at last and find Dad waiting in the lobby, in the sinking couch, looking fresh and ready to go. This is more like him. Being late at the airport was an outlier. He’s probably been up at least as long as me and doing more productive things than staring at a couch, out a window, or at the ceiling.

A cool breeze mouths at our skin when we leave the hotel, a breath coming in off Little Playgreen Lake. We’re meeting our guide, Eric Ross, at the York Boat Diner for breakfast before heading out onto the land. We take a long time to make the short walk from the hotel to the restaurant because Dad moves slowly, but I don’t mind the pace. The subtle wind follows us across the parking lot in whispers, but it’ll be gone soon enough. I was worried about the weather leading up to the trip, but the sky is perfect.

Eric’s waiting for us outside the restaurant, leaning against the front of his truck. He’s probably in his sixties, with grey hair in a military brush cut, and he’s thick. Stocky. Some people look like their dogs; Eric looks like his truck. But he’s warm and friendly—I can see it instantly when the three of us exchange salutations. He talks to us like he’s known us for years, not a few seconds. Most Norway House community members are like this. They have a small-town congeniality that I recall from my summers in Melita.

Inside the restaurant, Dad sees somebody he’s known for years, Charlie’s nephew Grant Queskekapow, another United Church minister. The server has just delivered his breakfast, and we join him at his table. The only English I hear for the next half hour is when we order our food—Dad a hard-boiled egg and me a bowl of oatmeal and some toast. Otherwise, Grant, Eric, and Dad speak in Swampy Cree. I don’t understand any of it. I just sit there smiling broadly, laughing when the others laugh, as though I’m in on the joke. I love hearing Dad speak Cree, I always have, but there’s something bittersweet about it, and the two opposing feelings can be hard to reconcile. I’m always brought back to that conversation we had driving home from the golf course in Winnipeg one afternoon, when he said his biggest regret was not teaching me his language.

I regret it as well, especially in moments like this. Not only because I feel left out, although that’s a part of it, but because, after all the work I’ve done to establish a firm sense of who I am, of my indigeneity, it feels like there’s a piece missing. I say ekosani when thanking people in public, in emails, in book inscriptions, on social media, but the word feels somehow empty. So I smile and I laugh and I listen, all the while wondering what could have been different, despite a promise I made to myself not to regret the past, because it’s part of the journey that led me here.

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