Kwe Read online

  Kwe

  STANDING WITH OUR SISTERS

  EDITED BY

  Joseph Boyden

  FEATURING CONTRIBUTIONS FROM

  Sherman Alexie, Margaret Atwood,

  Gord Downie, Tanya Tagaq Gillis,

  Lee Maracle, Yann Martel,

  and Michael Ondaatje

  CONTENTS

  Hey, Boys ~ Joseph Boyden

  A Day in the Life ~ Tanya Tagaq Gillis

  The Dogs Came to Lina ~ Madeleine Thien

  River Woman ~ Katherena Vermette

  The Missing Girl ~ Michael Winter ~

  Untitled Poem ~ Michael Ondaatje

  What Can Be Named in the Earth ~ Michael Ondaatje

  Opera ~ Michael Ondaatje

  Witness ~ Sherman Alexie

  Epiphany ~ Andrew Davidson

  From Pearl and the Storytellers’ Academy ~ Marilyn Bowering

  Long Time No See ~ Lynnel Sinclair

  Up the Shanghai River ~ Charles Foran

  Seven Matches ~ Gord Downie

  The Third One ~ Patricia Young

  Water Bird ~ Patrick Lane

  Because of What I Did ~ Richard Van Camp

  Night Comes Sometimes ~ Lee Maracle

  Night Skies ~ Lee Maracle

  Leaves and Thickets ~ Lisa Moore

  Rivered ~ Warren Cariou

  A True Story ~ Kyo Maclear

  Kindness Flowed Through the Generations ~ Taiaiake Alfred

  Interference ~ Lola Tostevin

  When I Was a Little Girl ~ Reneltta Arluk

  How We Felt About It ~ David O’Meara

  A sketch by Colin McAdam

  From Beloved of the Sky ~ Eliza Robertson

  Christ in the Jungle ~ John Vaillant

  November 2014 ~ Diana Davidson

  Dawn, After the Funeral ~ Patrick Friesen

  Ghost, Returning ~ Patrick Friesen

  This Sweet Old World, Sings Emmylou ~ Patrick Friesen

  November 24, 2014 ~ David Chariandy

  The Present, Missing ~ Garry Thomas Morse

  Like a Flower ~ Stan Dragland

  Gathering Voices ~ Joanne Arnott

  Guilty ~ Garry Gottfriedson

  All-Inclusive ~ Andrew Pyper

  Gingham Dress – 1967 ~ Mary Swan

  Mercy ~ Priscila Uppal

  IF Mother Could Have Spoken… ~ Wanda John-Kehewin

  God Loves a Drug Dealer ~ Susan Musgrave

  Oscar of Between, Part 17D ~ Betsy Warland

  22 Below ~ Melissa Auf der Maur

  Chasing Painted Horses ~ Drew Hayden Taylor

  Baffled in Ashdod, Blind in Gaza ~ Stephen Heighton

  Fire and Song ~ Eve Joseph

  Dominion ~ Lorna Crozier

  Catbird ~ Lorna Crozier

  1CountryBoy ~ Sarah de Leeuw

  At the Party ~ Bill Gaston

  The Blue Clerk: Versos ~ Dionne Brand

  Grief at Heathrow ~ Michael Crummey

  Beginnings ~ Alice Kuipers and Yann Martel

  A photograph by Rawi Hage

  Treaty Seven ~ Thomas King

  Wounded Knee ~ Thomas King

  Aflame ~ Margaret Atwood

  Passports ~ Margaret Atwood

  The Dear Ones ~ Margaret Atwood

  Something Profound Is Wrong ~ John Ralston Saul

  Contributors

  Copyright Acknowledgments

  HEY, BOYS

  ~ Joseph Boyden ~

  My friend Tanya, she’s pretty special. She’s thirty-nine. She’s an Inuk from up north. She’s the mother of two amazing daughters, and she’s really smart and good-looking. She’s an artist and a musician and her talent has found a way to blossom into the lives of many, many people. Tanya travels the world sharing her brilliance, her spirit, her orenda. She’s taken an ancient and traditional custom of her people and used her throat and her whole body to make something so powerful on the stage that I’ve witnessed strangers weep uncontrollably or smile like madmen or simply stand and stare with their mouths open or even leave the concert. She’s that good.

  Tina Fontaine was a special kid. She was fifteen, from Sagkeeng Reserve and living in Winnipeg. Her father was beaten to death by two drunken friends in 2011, and Tina’s family describes how she’d gone into a spiral since then, how she had drifted away from them and into child and family services care in Winnipeg. The family care system there is so over-stuffed that Tina was staying in a local hotel with little supervision. It was easy to run away, and so she did. The last time she was spotted was by two cops who’d pulled over a guy in his pickup truck. Fifteen-year-old Tina was his passenger. Despite her being flagged as a runaway, the cops let her go. Not too long after, while searching the Red River for another missing woman, Tina’s body was discovered in that river, stuffed into a garbage bag. Tina was a really good student and loved her family very much.

  My wife, Amanda, I can claim that she’s special. She’s fifty, although when people hear this they don’t believe it. She’s a novelist and a screenwriter, and almost half a lifetime ago when she was twenty-seven she was brutally raped and left for dead in a Milwaukee neighbourhoood as she walked to her evening shift at a local bar. The assailant strangled her so hard that her contacts popped out of her eyes. He raped her and tried his best to kill her, and he came close. For a long time after, her skin continued to mottle and her eyes continued to bleed red. Almost half a lifetime later, that young woman at the wrong place at the wrong time is older and more beautiful and still wonders if that fucker still stalks the street, hunting.

  My friend Tanya the artist and musician was sexually abused through much of her youth. She allows me to tell you this. She’s turned the pain into art. In October, the day after performing for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, a triumphant performance by all accounts, Tanya was followed, in broad daylight, down the street and verbally assaulted by a white man who made it clear to her that he wanted to fuck an Indian girl and she was the one. He went on, as she tried to walk quickly away, to describe all of the things he was going to do to her. Tanya says she can’t count how many times this has happened to her and to most of her friends. Tanya describes her daily experience of simply walking down the street as living in a horror movie, a movie you can’t escape from, one that doesn’t end. After her treatment by this man, Tanya got back onstage that night and performed triumphantly, once again, in front of a sold-out audience.

  Amanda and I were in Winnipeg to watch Tanya perform with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. This was not so long after Tina Fontaine’s body was discovered wrapped in plastic at the bottom of the Red River. As I contemplate this confluence, I believe it might be possible that some small part of Tina is the child in these two women who lived, but I desperately mourn for the life of a young woman not given the chance. Not a chance to sing, not a chance to write, not a chance to breathe each day.

  Hey, boys, what are we to do? Hey, men, why don’t we question this sickness that beats inside too many of us? Shall we healthier ones spend our lives staring, not knowing what to do, just stand and look at our shoes or touch our faces and ask forgiveness for horrors we feel no part of? What are we men to do about this? Do we simply stand by and watch?

  How will we raise our own boys?

  I’m sorry.

  I’m so sorry, Amanda.

  I’m so sorry, Tanya.

  I’m so sorry, Tina.

  A DAY IN THE LIFE

  ~ Tanya Tagaq Gillis ~

  It’s 9 am, late for school

  Grade 5 is hard

  Rushing, stumbling to get my pants on

  Forgetting to brush my teeth

  Dreading recess

  The boys chase us and hold us down

  Touch our pussies and non-existent boobs

  I want to be liked

  I guess I must like
it

  We head back to class

  The teacher squirming his fingers under my panties

  Under the desk

  He looks around and pretends he’s not doing it

  I pretend he’s not doing it

  He goes to the next girl and I feel a flash of jealousy

  The air gets thinner and tastes like rot

  School is over

  Maybe the northern lights

  Will take me away

  There is yelling at home

  I leave to the arcade

  Watch out for old Oak Oak

  The old man likes to touch young pussy

  We try to stay away

  I wonder why nobody kicks him out

  Things are better at home now

  Three’s Company and a calm air

  Archie comics and Lego

  Goodnight

  THE DOGS CAME TO LINA

  ~ Madeleine Thien ~

  Of course it was a surprise to see them racing joyously towards her, galloping, twenty-eight years after they were believed drowned, and a stranger in a red parka signalled to her but Lina’s vision was filled with the animals who plunged in the sand as if they were running on foam, and she knew Mi Yung was approaching even though Mi Yung was no longer the teenaged girl in the red coat watching the ocean’s arrival, water and gravity bound up in a tight fist—that was love—that tight fist—that was them—because we arrive with too much and too little, every anthropologist knows we were once something else (helium, hydrogen) and one day will transform into another substance (carbon dioxide, hydrogen again) and Mi Yung’s belongings had been sent back to Korea and the red coat given away, and the dogs, too, tearing towards her, made Lina ask how much you could strip away of a person before there is no longer enough person left to exist, even as an idea, she had seen it in her lifetime, this dismantling of human beings, and if, say, she cut down all the branches of this arbutus here, how much would she have to cut before it was no longer a tree but merely wood, no longer a human being but merely human, the dogs leaped exultantly against the blue-black water which Mi Yung said must be heaven itself, black was the only colour rich enough to hold infinity, and when Mi Yung first came to Canada, she had been perplexed by the idea of a God in the white clouds because, for her, pure white was the ribbon worn at the death of a parent, emptiness, hospitals, and grief, boundless grief, yes, Lina had loved her with every molecule of her being and wanted to protect her, but Mi Yung knew that the dogs that circled her were not leaving, they were on their way, of their own accord, to the heavens, and every human being should be dignified with the responsibility of walking to their own end (“I never arrived in the universe, therefore how can I depart?”) and Lina had willed herself to laugh, then, at the riddles, she had vowed that if Mi Yung were taken she would never, never consent to belief, and the dogs, those dogs never came back, never came galloping, even something as relentless as the ocean could never arrive, as soon as it touched shore it slid back out again, maybe she was born at the unobserved, unlit centre and hour by hour, floated backwards, drifting or fighting, to the periphery. The dogs came to Lina (“One day in the future, no one will remember your arrival, and for them it will be as if you always existed”) and the ocean receded like the heavens, touched her feet, drew back, arrived, arrived, arrived.

  RIVER WOMAN

  ~ Katherena Vermette ~

  this river is a woman

  she is bright

  and she is beautiful

  she once carried

  every nation here

  but she is

  one of those women

  too soon forgotten

  broken like a body

  that begs without words

  only rough hands

  that reach out

  palms up

  this river is a woman

  she’s been dredged

  and dragged

  metal coils catch

  her tangled hair

  everyone wants to know

  her secrets but

  she keeps them

  won’t let them go

  unless she trusts you

  unless you ask real nice

  unless she just

  feels like it

  this river is a woman

  she’s full of

  good intentions

  bad regrets

  sometimes she just folds

  into herself

  can slow to a slush

  then rush into race

  currents indiscernible

  patterns intangible

  and below

  she goes even

  faster

  this river is a woman

  forever

  returning

  twisting north

  a snake carved

  into prairie grass

  hiding everywhere

  eroded with age

  etched into her edges

  and newly born

  every day

  this river is your lover

  she curls around

  you pulses

  and fills you

  like a heartbeat

  if you are very quiet

  all you hear is her

  this river is your mother

  she flows on and on

  and unnoticed

  slips in

  slides out

  as if she was never here

  as if she was always here

  this river is my sister

  she is bright and beautiful

  and brown

  sings soft every summer

  holds us up all winter

  and every spring she swells

  reminds us we are just

  visitors here

  this is her country

  she is that woman

  her deft voice

  reaches out

  broken by everything that has been

  thrown into her

  but

  somehow her spirit

  rages on

  somehow a song

  like her

  never fades

  THE MISSING GIRL

  ~ Michael Winter ~

  One summer, when I was fifteen, I used to get up in the dark and go salmon fishing. Sometimes, while I ate breakfast, my brother would come home. He’d be noisy, kicking off his boots in the porch. Goodnight, brother.

  Outside, under the moon, I got excited. I aimed the front wheel of my bicycle for the river six miles away. The pulp mill was glowing like something in a science lab. I felt cold and could hear my fly rod rocking where it was tied against the frame of the bike. I coasted along the ridge of my sleeping town that I did not care about, past houses where I delivered newspapers in the afternoon. All of it asleep. When I got to the highway I left the streetlights behind and felt I was cycling through a vast cathedral of darkness.

  The heavy body of a powerful engine accelerated past me: a police car. It illuminated the highway ahead and I was shaken by its quiet urgency. The car pulled over and waited for me.

  What are you doing out here, son?

  I told them about the salmon.

  Have you had luck?

  I said I’d caught three fish.

  All summer? That sounds like a lot of work.

  Have you ever caught a salmon?

  No they had never fished with a fly rod before.

  I could tell, though, they had arrested plenty of men in the middle of the night up to their knees in the river with nets strung across.

  Have you seen a girl out here?

  It was the other officer, leaning over to take a look at me.

  We’re looking for a girl about your age.

  I got to the river and hid my bike behind the shape of Mr Gill’s camper truck. Mr Gill lived in this camper—he had a woodstove on board—and I met him on the river every morning. He was sitting there on his rock, waiting for the sun to come up.

  They’re looking for a girl, I said.

  Mr G
ill’s eyes lay upon the shining dark water running past his boots and he tried to figure out who this girl might be. He turned to me as though I must have seen her and, if he was patient, I would tell him everything.

  No, I said in my head. No no no.

  Her name and face the next day, in the newspaper that I delivered to all of the neighbours. A story of a person that I’d met. There was a shortage of information and nothing about her was in the life I was living. Had I seen this girl in the dark on a highway? Of course I had and I could not speak of it. I had not the means or the language. We have to discover these stories, or we will never go further than telling the truth about bicycles in the dark and salmon, and some parts of men.

  ~ Michael Ondaatje ~

  In official histories,

  the bought one wrote about the buyer

  so the panorama of a life

  told you nothing of damage

  at every turn.

  Just Caesar.

  An authorized song, a sonnet

  with metaphors dragged in

  by their ears.

  A whore’s poetica, maybe,

  during his purposeful stride

  onto routes

  that will be on a famous map someday.

  He marches not to conquer

  the destination but to settle

  something there he cannot

  with those he knows.

  Like conscience after victory.

  WHAT CAN BE NAMED IN THE EARTH

  ~ Michael Ondaatje ~

  Thorianite, zircon, arkosa,

  terra rosa limestone. Peat

  in the Muthurajawela swamp.

  Green marble and rare graphite

  in their silent darkness.

  On sparser maps, hidden pure bodies of water.

  On the three floors of the zoological museum

  at Marcus Fernando Mawatha

  are mammals evolving through time

  stilled dioramas of wading birds

  stalking the river basins

  illustrations and recordings

  of how tailorbirds, hill mynahs,

  bill clatterers, and the drongo

  alter their plumage and call

  when migrating north.

  Maps of Altitude and Dialect.

  Also contour maps of drought,

  the forests destroyed by leaf-cutter ants.

  All data avoids the names of cities

  and harbours, so there

  is no evidence of human life.