Family Theme Analysis

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.

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.

“What’s wrong? Whaddo I do?”

“Jeez, stop rocking her so hard, you’re freakin’ me out.” Clara dug through the basket where she’d dumped all the stuff they’d brought home from the hospital. She grabbed a little booklet with a picture of some rich white lady giving her baby a bottle. Do’s and Don’ts: Feeding Your Bundle of Joy. “Here,” she said, “gimme the baby. You read.” Clara started rocking the baby, trying to stay calm.

Lucy flipped the pages, reciting headings: “Formula…Breast Milk…Bloating…Gas…Gas! I bet she has gas.”

“Okay, genius, but what do we do about it?”

Lucy flipped another page and was visibly relieved by the illustration of a mother burping her baby. “Hand her over.”

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.

[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.

“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.

He knelt and started planting the tiger lily bulbs in front of the headstone, remembering a time, when he was very little, when she would tell him the old stories about Tiger Lily and Weesageechak, and the living stories of her parents and theirs. He knew she would love having a bright-orange spray rising, year after year. The flowers reminded him of her sturdy beauty. He rose and shook the dark earth from his work gloves, picked up his tools, gave his handiwork one last look and headed for his truck.