Maisie Character Analysis

[Dad] smelled of woodsmoke and fish, and that primal smell tumbled me back in time to a thin memory of me and my mom meeting him at the dock, him tossing me in the air, me laughing so hard my belly hurt. He would carry me home like I weighed nothing, my face in the crook of his neck, rough sea salt rubbing off on my face. They told me that after I was taken, no one told them where I was. They still didn’t know which school I’d been sent to. I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d tried to find out. They must have. But the angry question kept rising in my anyway, and their constant affection began to disgust me.

I lasted a month. No matter how hard I tried, […] these people, though kind and loving, were like strangers pretending to be family.

Not so long ago I was at the Balmoral and met a girl from up there. After the expected ritual of who your aunties and uncles are, she told me she was sorry about my mom. I didn’t know, but she didn’t need to say more. I had so many dreams at the Indian School about going home to her. Dreams about sleeping safe in my own room, playing on the beach at ease and without fear, and cooking with her. What I so desperately needed was to be standing on that stool by the stove, carefully stirring under her watchful eye like when I was little. To be little again, living without fear and brutality—no one gets that back. All that’s left is a craving, insatiable empty place.

I left Lucy alone again that night. […]. I grabbed my special bag and headed for the Kingsway bus, ready for the transformation again. When I first got out of the Mission, I only had to go out maybe once a month, sometimes once every two months even, and I would be fine. That unbearable panic and urge to scream that I could barely suppress would ease. But now, it seemed like every day all day, it was all I could think of. The last few months the Old Man had given me something to smoke. Called it horse. Said I’d like it, and I did. Made it hard to remember and easy to forget the disgust I felt for him, for myself, for my need to do it again and again, like it might make it all go away.

Not long after her arrival in Vancouver, Lucy quit her evening routine of rolling the giant pink curlers in her hair and securing them against her scalp with the bobby pins she had brought with her from the Mission School. She was mesmerized by the hippie girls who sometimes wandered away from Fourth Avenue into the downtown core. She saw their white-pink lipstick, dramatic kohl eyes and long, straight, hair, shiny and swaying, unhindered by the brittle freeze of hairspray. In the years since Lucy’s departure from the Mission, her hair had grown past her shoulder blades. She thought it grew faster now that it was free of Sister’s temper and her well-used razor […]. She watched the hippie girls living with a freedom that came naturally without anything or anyone to fear or resist. She wondered if they could even imagine a life without such abandon.

Lily’s pale little face seemed to hover in the air in front of Clara, soaking and shivering on that bench, and once again the rage rose up in her. She leapt from the bench and ran across the parking lot, the rock raised high above her head. With a scream, she threw the rock through the lobby window of the Manitou, and then raced away into the night. She could hear the wailing of the alarm bell as she ran.

[Dad] smelled of woodsmoke and fish, and that primal smell tumbled me back in time to a thin memory of me and my mom meeting him at the dock, him tossing me in the air, me laughing so hard my belly hurt. He would carry me home like I weighed nothing, my face in the crook of his neck, rough sea salt rubbing off on my face. They told me that after I was taken, no one told them where I was. They still didn’t know which school I’d been sent to. I couldn’t help but wonder if they’d tried to find out. They must have. But the angry question kept rising in my anyway, and their constant affection began to disgust me.

I lasted a month. No matter how hard I tried, […] these people, though kind and loving, were like strangers pretending to be family.

Not so long ago I was at the Balmoral and met a girl from up there. After the expected ritual of who your aunties and uncles are, she told me she was sorry about my mom. I didn’t know, but she didn’t need to say more. I had so many dreams at the Indian School about going home to her. Dreams about sleeping safe in my own room, playing on the beach at ease and without fear, and cooking with her. What I so desperately needed was to be standing on that stool by the stove, carefully stirring under her watchful eye like when I was little. To be little again, living without fear and brutality—no one gets that back. All that’s left is a craving, insatiable empty place.

I left Lucy alone again that night. […]. I grabbed my special bag and headed for the Kingsway bus, ready for the transformation again. When I first got out of the Mission, I only had to go out maybe once a month, sometimes once every two months even, and I would be fine. That unbearable panic and urge to scream that I could barely suppress would ease. But now, it seemed like every day all day, it was all I could think of. The last few months the Old Man had given me something to smoke. Called it horse. Said I’d like it, and I did. Made it hard to remember and easy to forget the disgust I felt for him, for myself, for my need to do it again and again, like it might make it all go away.

Not long after her arrival in Vancouver, Lucy quit her evening routine of rolling the giant pink curlers in her hair and securing them against her scalp with the bobby pins she had brought with her from the Mission School. She was mesmerized by the hippie girls who sometimes wandered away from Fourth Avenue into the downtown core. She saw their white-pink lipstick, dramatic kohl eyes and long, straight, hair, shiny and swaying, unhindered by the brittle freeze of hairspray. In the years since Lucy’s departure from the Mission, her hair had grown past her shoulder blades. She thought it grew faster now that it was free of Sister’s temper and her well-used razor […]. She watched the hippie girls living with a freedom that came naturally without anything or anyone to fear or resist. She wondered if they could even imagine a life without such abandon.

Lily’s pale little face seemed to hover in the air in front of Clara, soaking and shivering on that bench, and once again the rage rose up in her. She leapt from the bench and ran across the parking lot, the rock raised high above her head. With a scream, she threw the rock through the lobby window of the Manitou, and then raced away into the night. She could hear the wailing of the alarm bell as she ran.