Cruelty and Trauma Theme Analysis

With less than a hundred yards behind him, Kenny ran back, untied the punt and pushed it back into the water. Let them think I drowned. Once again, he reached the crest of the hill. Not far off, the main road, a grey-black ribbon, wound toward the harbour. He thought of that cop who didn’t believe him, and rather than risk capture again, he walked along the craggy shoreline. Just as the last light of dusk seeped into the darkening sea, he stepped onto the docks and made his way to the far end, away from junctures, searching out areas where the fewest people might be. The throaty call of the owls warming up for the nightly hunt got him thinking about bears and coyotes hungry for the day’s remains from the boats, and he wandered back in the direction he’d come from, craving some sort of shelter.

They fell into an easy routine, tending the smokehouse, carefully preserving the half-smoked salmon, managing a simple life. On Sundays, they would stay home all day with the curtains closed, just in case the visiting priest got wind of Kenny’s return. Neither of them spoke of their years apart, and over time the truth of their separation grew between them, like a silent wound, untended and festering. Kenny started spending more time at the docks, visiting the fishermen and making friends […], Bella started spending less time at the smokehouse and more time at the kitchen table, smoking and gazing out the window. Sometimes she wouldn’t even hear Kenny when he came in from a day of wandering. He would slip into the chair beside her and marvel at the two-inch ash at the end of her smoke.

Lucy counted, a habit she never slipped out of since that first day in the classroom when Sister had hit her over and over with her pointer stick because she didn’t know her letters. Now she counted everything, especially when she was nervous, which seemed to be more and more often. She counted the cots in the dorm, the desks in the classroom, the tables in the dining hall, the panes in the windows, the seconds it took for the clouds to cover the moon. It calmed her. Tonight, she counted the seconds it took for Edna to return to the dorm, one thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four. It was as if Edna wouldn’t come back if she didn’t count. Five thousand, six thousand, seven thousand. Finally, she returned, looking like a wiry hobo with her pillowcase slung over her shoulder, bulging with the promise of a good feed.

[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.

Lucy left the lights off and quietly sat at the kitchen table. She watched the usual goings-on outside her window but remained distracted and overwhelmed by the flood of memories she’d worked so hard to keep below the surface. Clara had been there with her at the Mission School, but she was older and they hadn’t talked about it much. It was an unspoken agreement between them: the past was the past. It’s hard to run from the past, but once stuffed away, they knew it couldn’t be allowed to poison the present moment. They couldn’t be who they were now, with their lipstick, paycheques and rooms, if they were also those children, or the children who’d left the other children behind.

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.

Lucy looked away. “You’re gonna think I’m stupid.”

Clara laughed. “I already know you’re stupid, so what can it hurt?”

The two giggled, startling Baby-girl. Lucy held her closer and she quit her half-hearted fussing. Lucy looked away again and blushed. “I thought they wouldn’t give her to me.”

“What? You see? I knew you were stupid.” They giggled again, but this time Clara stood up and put her arm around Lucy and the baby.

Lucy whispered, “Were we ever allowed anything good?”

They sat in silence together, lost in a shared truth rarely spoken.

Clara rallied first. “Let me hold her!”

Beaming, Lucy handed Baby-girl over.

The infant cooed and gurgled in Clara’s arms.

The grainy image of a group of Indians in front of a big old white church zoomed into close-up. There stood a slight brown woman, her fist in the air, microphone pressed toward her face. A detached voice rose above the chatter: “Tell us why you’re here, Mae.” She looked straight into the camera, fearless, furious, determined. “Who do these white people think they are? Our people saved their raggedy asses when they got off the boat, freezing and starved. They returned the favor with hatred and murder. There weren’t so many of them and it changed everything. There ain’t so many of us and we will change everything, too, and we will change everything, too, and I will lay my life down to take back what’s ours.” Clara was transfixed by this woman.

Look, I don’t want to waste your time. The only reason I am here today is because I need to hold on to my hope that I will get out of here sooner than later. I know what you need me to say. You want to know I’m sorry. That I’ve been rehabilitated. That I deeply regret my wrongdoing and I will never do such a thing again […]. You already know that I have a clean record in here. Not one disciplinary note. Not a single one. And this is the only crime I ever committed, if you must call it a crime. But I am not sorry. Not at all. You have no idea what that mad did to be and a whole lotta other little boys. He deserved what he got and more. Where was the law when he was beating us, breaking bones, and other, even worse things?

I wandered up and down the six-block stretch of East Hastings, the heart of skid row, the gathering place of the unwanted. It didn’t take long to figure out I wouldn’t find work there. I jumped a Stanley Park bus, not sure where it would take me, and I watched the character of the neighbourhoods change from skid row, to the business core, to department stores, upscale apartment enclaves, and, finally, Burrard Inlet and the rich greenery of the park. Stepping off the bus at the park entrance, I felt as though I had been holding my breath all this time and finally, in the sanctuary of the park, I could let go and breathe easy.

I would have to watch my pennies and try to get by on what Mike paid me and leave what was left of my cash stash alone. I wandered back to my room, put my supplies away and, after an undisturbed shower, lay back and scanned the want ads in the newspaper. My eyes burned and I closed them, thinking a short nap wouldn’t hurt after a long, wakeful night.

It was full-on dark when I woke up, gasping. I sat on the edge of the bed, letting it sink in where I was and where I wasn’t. I walked to the small sink in the corner and splashed cold water on my face. The dreams had faded over the years in prison and I thought for sure, once I was free, I would be free of them too. Why were they back now, when everything was looking up?

The sky seemed to hum with the spray of stars laid bare of clouds by the wind. Clara thought of another night sky, the full moon, small and cold, a bitter orb above the badlands as she lay there, wounded and certain her death was upon her. John Lennon had put himself between her and death, lying next to Clara against the deep chill that night. Turnaround is fair play. The near-full moon was golden and so bright it cast shadows. Still, there was something so completely unfamiliar about the earth in darkness, no matter how confident Clara walked in the daylight. Storm clouds recaptured the stars as she closed the porch door behind them.

Within a couple of weeks Mariah and Clara slipped into a comfortable routine. Mariah cooked and was thankful that Clara kept the woodbox full. Sometimes, on clear days, Mariah would take Clara out on her trapline […]. Whenever they found [a rabbit] in a snare, Mariah would reach into the pouch tied around her waist, put down tobacco with soft Cree words, and then knock it over the head, efficiently and even lovingly. She taught Clara the unique way of skinning a rabbit, much like taking off a sweater […]. Clara would get dizzy sometimes as she watched Mariah dress the rabbits, thinking back to Indian School and how Sister Mary would’ve knocked her on the head if she saw a return to such savagery. It pleased Clara, thinking of that evil woman and how she would see her Christian mission had failed, seeing Clara in the hands of this pagan.

[O]ver the next few weeks [Kenny] happily settled into a home life he’d only ever dreamed of. It seemed easier this time. It was just a matter of days when he was home last before those restless urges were on him. It was not a lack of love, but something inside of him that drove him, something he could never explain to Lucy, much less to himself. A pressure that only eased up if he was on the move. But this time, things were going well. The foreman put him on the books after only a week, telling him what a hard worker he was. He was always on time and never showed up drunk.

Kendra seemed to grow every day […].

They spent Kenny’s days off at the beach or the neighbourhood park […]. So it was a surprise to him when fall came and that old restless urge returned.

Over the next few months, Clara bit her tongue, listened and watched. She thought of what it was like to lose your freedom. She thought of her helplessness at the Mission and being under the thumb of Harlan and the city cops. She met with court staff, judges and prosecutors during her training and hung on their every word, gleaning everything she could. It wasn’t easy to say the words that all of them needed to hear, but Rose was right. This was about those people standing helpless before the law, often just trying to get by in a world they’d been abandoned to, entirely unprepared.

Later that night […] Clara told Lucy about her first case. The guy, not much more than a kid, had been caught stealing apples from a corner grocery. Clara leaned back in her chair. “He’d just been let out of Indian School, up north somewhere. They kept him until he was eighteen, then put him on a bus to the city.”

Lucy shook her head. “Those people. What was he supposed to do? Starve?”

“Yeah, that’s what I said. The judge didn’t like it much, but I tried to explain he just didn’t know what else to do and had nowhere to go.”

“Like us. Just thrown away.”

[…]

“Well, at least he’s not going to jail tonight […]. We’re going to find him a job. At least he’ll have one meal a day until then.”

Lucy yawned, stood, planted a soft kiss on Clara’s head. “Keep fighting, woman.”

“I’m just going to run down to the corner. I need some more cream for the gravy.”

“You want me to go?”

“Naw. Drink your coffee. I could use the air anyway.” She slipped into her jacket, hesitating, resisting the urge to turn the lock back and forth the way she would if Kenny weren’t there, counting the clicks before opening the door. It wasn’t that Kenny didn’t know. It was just that there was nothing he could do about it, so he left her alone about it. She gave him a quick smile and opened the door.

A half-hour later, Kenny stepped out of the office and headed for the men’s room. He barely made it into the stall before he puked. Why did the lawyer need to know all that? Kenny told him he was abused, but the lawyer said he needed details. More and more details. Kenny leaned over the toilet, his stomach in knots, heart pounding. He could smell Brother, leaning over him, hard against him, grabbing his hair. Kenny knew the pain in his side was his liver, but all he could think of were all those days of shallow breathing, avoiding the pain of broken ribs.