Nish, p.4
Nish, page 4
Leon has a hockey practice after school, so he won’t be home for another hour, just before dinner. I don’t know what to say or do with my mother and her reddened eyes and my silent father, so I decide to go to my room to do my homework. But if I’m being honest, I’m mostly trying to hear my parents’ conversation.
My room, which I share with Leon, is located at the end of the hallway, on the right. Our house is small, and no matter where you are, if we open the door, we know what’s going on. My mother often says that the house is made of cardboard. In the winter, electric heat is far from enough. And the wood stove in the basement, as my mother likes to repeat while adding a wool layer over her shoulders, only heats the floor. This is the only type of home available to the Innu in Matimekush. The bigger houses are where the white people live. My father rarely complains about the state of the house. I think he’s used to it. He’s always lived here. Not like my mother.
Fortunately my mother has a talent for decorating. She follows interior design trends as best she can and often fills her luggage with small frames or cushions when she goes to Quebec City or Sept-Îles, since there are no decoration stores here.
Thanks to my mother, our house is cozy and well decorated. When we look at the other houses around here, we’re not always sure if we’ve arrived in the 2020s yet. But we don’t really care.
No matter how hard I try, I can’t hear anything. I imagine the look on my mother’s face, that smile she gave me earlier, a smile I didn’t know she had. Both my parents remain silent. My father hasn’t said a word since I arrived. The minutes until Leon arrives seem endless, heavy, slow.
The news will be bad, for sure. Scenarios are running through my head. Unemployment, someone dying, illness, more drilling and digging in the ground with the damn mines, as Kukum Francine would say, etc. One of the scenarios I’m imagining involves a grey-haired moustachioed guy with round glasses from the government coming to tell us that our village has to be moved, again, because prospectors have found an oil deposit in our soil. The government did this in Western Canada a few years ago with other Indigenous communities. And how many times did my mother’s Nation, the Wendat, have to move before settling permanently in Wendake, near Quebec City, over three centuries ago? And the Innu of the coast? And the Anishinaabe? We in Matimekush have been displaced a few times. It’s always the same for Indigenous people. Maybe it’s the orange lakes. Everything is polluted, I bet. Damn mines! Kukum Francine has told us enough about this. It wouldn’t be surprising if this kind of news is the cause of their concerned faces. Where would we go? Farther north?
No, come to think of it, if that were the case, Kukum would already be organizing kitchen meetings to try to change things, to find solutions. She would be here with us. Once she came to get Leon and me to take us to a band council meeting. All the Chiefs were there. We must have been six years old at most. She took us to the table where the Chiefs were sitting and began a speech that went something like this:
“These are my grandchildren, Leon and Eloise. They’re still young, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t think about them. They speak the Innu language with their father at home, but at school everything is done in French and in English. This is not normal. We must also teach them Innu-aimun. Otherwise it will be lost. Our language is important. Our culture is important. Our land is important. It’s not just about the money.”
Finally I hear the side door open. Leon comes in with all his hockey gear and goes down to the small concrete room in the basement to dry it. I hear him climbing the stairs three at a time saying he’s awfully hungry, so I come out of my den and head to the kitchen. My mother pushes the box of cookies she left on the table toward him. Leon looks at her, and I see in his eyes that he makes the same observation I did. We don’t need to talk to each other to understand.
“Sit down, kids. We need to talk to you,” says my mother.
“What’s going on?” my brother asks, looking worried.
My father is still silent.
“Do you remember when your father went to Sept-Îles two weeks ago for work? Well, it wasn’t just for work. Your father went for cancer screening tests.”
“Cancer? What cancer?” I feel my mouth going dry.
“It turns out that they found a tumour in your father’s colon and he needs surgery and treatment.”
“His colon? What is that?”
“It’s part of the digestive system. I’ll show you later on the Internet.”
A deathly silence envelops the small kitchen on Mush Street. It is as if someone has thrown a large rock at my chest. My arms are numb, and if I wasn’t sitting, I’m sure I’d fall to the floor. I look at my brother. He seems to be in the same state. In fact, I know this even from a distance.
After a few seconds that feel like long minutes, Leon, who is not in the habit of beating around the bush, asks the question that I’ve also been wondering about.
“Dad, are you going to die?”
At that moment, my father stands up and looks us in the eye for the first time since our arrival. He says in a shaky voice, “I don’t intend to. I’m going to do what it takes to get better.”
“But, will you be able to be treated here, in Schefferville?” I say through my parched mouth.
“No, unfortunately.”
“In Sept-Îles, then?” asks my brother.
“Not there either. I have to go to Quebec City for a few weeks. I’m going to live with Aunt Emilie for a while.”
Emilie is my mother’s sister. She lives in Wendake, my mother’s community, about fifteen kilometres north of Quebec City, with her two daughters, Alice and Jeanne, who are five and eight. My Aunt Emilie has been alone for several years now. She and her husband divorced when Alice was just a baby. He worked in James Bay on the hydro-electric dams, so he wasn’t around much for my cousins, whom I have only seen twice.
“And how long will you stay? How long exactly?” my brother asks.
My mother answers for him: “First, your father will have surgery to remove the tumor. Only after the surgery will we know more about the treatment that the doctors will prescribe. The surgery is in three weeks. Your father and I will leave then. You’ll stay with Kukum for a few days, a week at the most. It’s going to be okay. David is thirty-eight years old. He has his age on his side.”
I take refuge in my room to cry without making noise. I would have preferred it to be the orange lakes story after all. In private, I type “colon cancer” into Google.
LEON
There is a big black hole in my head. Or maybe not a hole, but a storm. I don’t know what to say. I watch my sister walk away toward the bedroom. I know she’s upset.
Without thinking, I wrap my arms around my father’s neck.
“Hey, Dad. It’s going to be okay. Tshishatshitin.”6
My mother interrupts this slightly awkward display of affection. “I didn’t make dinner. I’m going to go get some pizza at Blabla. A big pepperoni and cheese as usual? There’s a game tonight. Boston. Let’s watch it together. Eloise? Eloise?”
My mother didn’t see my sister head for our room. My twin pokes her head through the door frame. She gives a small, heartfelt “yes,” but her smile is forced. I can tell she’s upset by the news.
“At least it’s Boston, Elo,” I say, looking at my sister, still perched in the doorway.
I turn to my father. His shoulders already seem straighter than before, as if sharing his secret has taken the weight off him.
“This will be the last time we get Blabla for a long time. Your father needs healthy food,” my mother warns us as she closes the door.
It’s not like we eat badly at home. My mother always tries to make balanced meals, as much as it’s possible at the fifty-fifth parallel. Food is very expensive here, especially fresh vegetables and fruits, when there are any. We often eat canned vegetables or fruits, but at least we eat them. Otherwise we eat vegetables that can be kept for a long time, like potatoes, carrots or turnips.
I was very surprised the first time I went grocery shopping with my mother in Sept-Îles three years ago. I had my tonsils removed and had to stay there for a week because they had to make sure I was healing well. We stayed in the empty house of one of my father’s cousins, who lived most of the time in Uashat with her boyfriend, in the heart of Sept-Îles. We were able to buy Oasis orange juice and lots of fruits and vegetables. I mostly ate my vegetables in soups and my fruits in smoothies, but it was already better than what I was used to eating. The thing that stood out for me was the size of the grocery store and the selection that was available. There were foods that I didn’t even know about, like Asian pears or purple cauliflower. My mother had never seen cauliflower like that before. She said we had to buy them to try them. Two days later I found purple cauliflower soup in my bowl for dinner. It was weird. Let’s just say I enjoyed the Jell-O for dessert more.
But it’s not the smell of purple cauliflower soup that I smell when my mother comes home. Instead, it’s a pepperoni and cheese pizza.
I clean my plate, as usual, then try to lighten the mood a bit. “Mom, are you going to buy all kinds of weird vegetables for Dad too in Quebec City and make him some purple soup with cauliflower?”
“Purple soup? No thanks, honey,” my father replies before my mother can say a word. “We’ll bring some caribou, right? Emilie loves it. So do your parents.”
Finally the whole family smiles a little.
It’s seven thirty and the game is about to start. I can’t help but notice that my father hasn’t eaten much. Neither did my mother. I gobbled down three slices, trying not to show too much enthusiasm given the circumstances.
Are you in pain, Dad? How did you sense that you had colon cancer? Is it hereditary? Can we get it too? Will you need a transplant?
All these questions are racing through the storm in my head, but I don’t dare ask them. Maybe I’ll ask my mother later.
My father is a pretty private man. I’ve long understood that tackling difficult or sensitive subjects is not one of the things he’s most comfortable with. My mother makes up for it. She’s more direct and doesn’t like to leave us with doubts. But tonight, there’s a big elephant in the room.
What a funny expression. My French teacher taught it to us at the beginning of the year, along with a lot of weird expressions that don’t say what they really mean. Like “le diable est aux vaches,” which means that nothing is going right, and “parler à travers son chapeau,” which means to talk nonsense about things you know nothing about. The elephant made me laugh. I imagined it in our home. It wouldn’t have much room! The expression comes from English, by the looks of it. It means that there’s an obvious problem in a group, but they choose not to talk about it for a variety of reasons.
I’m distracted as I watch the game tonight, like the rest of my family.
“A pass to Gallagher … And goal!”
The Canadiens win the game 6–2. It was 5–0 after two periods. A KO, as my father says. Just as he will KO his cancer.
I’m anxious to be alone with my mother so I can ask her my questions and she can explain. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity tomorrow if my father is resting or if he goes snowmobiling, if he’s well enough.
Later, once we’re in our beds, Elo and I talk about everything for at least an hour. We try to answer each other’s questions but find no useful answers, which just leaves question marks floating everywhere all the way up to the ceiling of our room.
6 I love you.
ELOISE
10:38 AM
I don’t think we’re going to be able to work on our science project at my house after all. Can we go to your house Meli?
10:39 AM
M: Uh … yeah probably. Wait, I’m asking my mom
10:40 AM
M: Yes it’s fine around 1:30. Is everything ok?
10:41 AM
I’ll tell you about it later. See you soon! I’ll call Ati to tell her
Since Ati’s parents are very poor, she doesn’t have an iPhone or a tablet, let alone a computer. If we want to reach her, we have to use the good old phone. Besides, we can’t use our cell phones for phone calls. You have to use the land line phones, the ones plugged into the wall, as my mother says. That’s because the fifty-fifth parallel doesn’t have a cell phone network yet. We’ve seen technicians digging to install fibre optics, but we don’t know yet when the network will be up and running. In the meantime, the kids in the village text on Messenger, Snapchat or my favourite app, Insta. Anyway, my mother banned me from Snapchat because she says there’s too much nonsense on there. At work, she heard about a contest for the most “badass” photo in Matimekush set up by kids in Secondary 4. She didn’t tell me exactly what she saw or heard, but in a small village like ours, everyone knows everything. Big Pinette took a picture of himself with a rope around his neck and a bottle of whiskey in his hand. I don’t know for sure because the picture disappeared afterwards. Since then, Snapchat has been banned for many of us.
“Hey, Ati! We can’t do the science project at my house. We’ll meet at Meli’s at one thirty. Is that good for you?”
I hear shouting and laughter through the phone.
“Is everything okay at home?”
“Oh yeah, that’s my dad trying to be funny with my brothers. I’ll be there. I heard about your father. How are you doing?”
Without a doubt, news arrives faster than fibre optics.
“I’ll tell you about it later. See you soon, ma puce!”
Ati and I always say goodbye like that since we heard it in a French movie. Because my father is resting in the chair and can’t help but overhear our conversations, I go short and sweet.
“Are you okay, Dad?”
“Yes, yes. I’m fine. I just didn’t sleep well last night. Are you going to Melina’s?”
“Yes, after lunch. We have a project to do.”
“Oh yeah? What’s it about?”
“Indigenous science. We don’t know what exactly yet. Do you have any ideas?”
“Hmmm … medicinal plants? Kukum knows a lot about that. Your mother too, for that matter.”
He smiles a little. I can tell he’s listening to me, but his head is obviously elsewhere. He probably wants everything to stay as normal as possible too.
“It’s cold outside. Take my snowmobile. It’ll be faster. Next year we’ll buy one for you and Leon. You can share it. I was your age when I got my first snowmobile. My cousin Neil gave it to me when he moved to Baie-Comeau,” he says with a yawn. “Okay. I’m going to get some rest now. I want to go to your brother’s game later.”
It’s strange to see my father lying in the living room on a Saturday morning. Usually he’s already on a roof or repairing a porch, holes in walls or even faucets. He is a carpenter, but here we don’t limit ourselves to someone’s title. If you can do it, you do it. My father does a little bit of everything. He’s always ready to help, a little too much even, according to my mother. Saturday is usually hole-in-the-wall day. People party too hard on Friday night and the consequences are felt the next day. Except for the last Saturday of the month, when it’s usually less bad. Fortunately, it never takes my father more than a couple of hours, then he’s back for lunch. But today is different. He’s here with us.
My father’s snowmobile is white and blue. It’s not a racing machine — far from it. The important thing around here is not to go fast, but to get where you want to go. I understood that at a very young age. As the snow isn’t often packed by other snowmobiles, you have to make your own way as soon as you leave the village. The snowmobile has to be strong, agile and light, in case we get stuck.
My father doesn’t use his snowmobile that much — he has his pickup truck to transport his tools and equipment. Not everyone has a truck here, but every family has a snowmobile. Often two or three, even. When we want to go for a ride on the land, to go hunting, to go to the outfitter, to go for a ride, we take the snowmobile. Otherwise, we walk. And when there’s no snow, we go out on our ATVs.
I prefer the snowmobile. I was eight when I learned to drive it. That’s about the normal age to learn here. But since I was still little, my father always sat behind me. Sometimes it was my mother, but very rarely. She preferred to stay in the sled with my brother, then with me when we took turns. My father let us move the snowmobile on our own at ten years old. And at the age of eleven, we could drive a little farther, as long as my brother and I were together.
Now I can borrow the snowmobile alone without any problem. Same thing for Leon. But I like walking. Except at dusk maybe. The distances between houses isn’t a lot, but Meli’s house is in Schefferville, a little farther than the others, and at minus seventeen, even if it’s April, taking the snowmobile seems to be the thing to do. And then there’s the wind that makes the thermometer drop to minus a thousand degrees, as my mother says.
It’s a beautiful day. The sun is shining and the light bounces off the snow to my eyes. I squint even though I’m wearing tinted Ski-Doo glasses. Everything is so quiet. I pass no more than two pickup trucks and three snowmobiles on the ten-minute drive to Meli’s house.
Meli’s parents rented their house when they arrived two years ago. It’s one of the rich houses, as we call them here. It’s one of the two-storey houses made of white or grey brick that are rented or lent to teachers, doctors or professionals who come to work in one of the two Indigenous communities, Matimekush or Kawawachikamach, for one or more years, in order to make them feel welcome and, above all, to make them stay. Meli’s house is part of a rare batch of houses that were not destroyed by the company that owned the iron mine when it closed in the 1980s. I heard that Schefferville was big in those days — about eight thousand people, apparently. Now you have to divide that by ten.
