Good for Nothing by Michel Noel

Author:Michel Noel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd
Published: 2012-01-03T00:00:00+00:00

5

SAM, CHARLOTTE, MANIE, Pinamen and the children have left for Manawane.

Everything has happened so quickly. They dropped me off at the reserve four days ago. I’m staying here in Manie’s house while they’re away. Manie is going to speak to Pinamen’s mother about Pinamen and me.

I wish I was going to Manawane, too, but I know it isn’t my place.

The night before they left, I tiptoed over to see Pinamen. I wanted to be close to her one last time, to breathe her in so I would remember the moment forever.

I was as quiet as a moth. I knew that every ear in the house heard me and knew what was going on, but I didn’t care. It was still private, still my business alone.

I rested my head in her warm, soft arms, and it was like the morning when we’d gone out to lift the net together. But it also reminded me that I was Métis, that I had no band number, that if she married me she would lose her Indian status.

I clung to her and swore that I would do anything to make sure that we would live together one day. Pinamen wept in the darkness. I could hear her heart beating.

We stayed like that until the crows started to caw. Then we parted quietly. And it was as if our separation was like a signal, because soon the whole household was up and getting ready to leave.

Before they left, we shook hands, kissed. Manie took me in her strong arms. As I closed the truck door I rested my hand on Pinamen’s arm. Her skin felt so soft. At the same moment that they drove off, a flock of snow geese flew noisily overhead, the sun glistening on their damp feathers.

I looked up at the geese and waved, happy to see them and hear their cries.

Right now I am flopped down in Manie’s big armchair. I lean back and rest my arms on the worn wooden armrests. I half close my eyes, like a cat warming itself in the sun. I rock gently.

Through the window on my left I can see the band office. The building looks the same as it did the day I left for Mont-Laurier. It’s as if the Ministry of Indian Affairs just stopped building it. The outside walls haven’t been painted, and the wood is cracked and blackened. The broken window of the entry hall is still covered with a sheet of plywood that has been warped by the rain.

The reserve is as dirty as ever. Empty beer bottles and crushed cardboard boxes are everywhere. Wrecked pickups and cars are rusting on the side of the road or in backyards. The dogs chase the rats from one scrap heap to the other.

But the most depressing sight is the kids who are playing outside. They’re pushing little boats that they’ve made out of birchbark, trying to sail them through the open drainage sewers that run through the old streambed. The brown waterway cuts the reserve in two and runs into the lake by the Hudson’s Bay Company warehouse.

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