Resilience and Redemption 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.

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.

“That little birch tree. Even here they shine.”

Clara looked again. A little birch, no taller than Clara herself, stood alone in a small square of dirt carved out of the pavement for it. The rain had stopped and the clouds parted for the muted sunlight of dawn. Clara watched as the leaves of the little tree captured the light, shining silvery and soft. The old woman looked at her with eyes as black as night and placed her hand over Clara’s.

“The power of Creation is everywhere. In the tree, in you, in all of them.” She gestured to the others. “Never forget.” The old lady settled back into the variegated shadows of the cell, her deeply wrinkled hands folded. Clara gazed at the little birch, blocking out the restless sounds of the cell.

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.

She didn’t have to call [John Lennon] this time. With the car back in order after the border pillaging, Clara walked around toward the driver’s door and that was enough for him to know. He ran to her through the purple flowering weeds, tongue lolling and happy. Weeds. She remembered George telling her once that Indians were like weeds to the white people. Something to be wiped out so their idea of a garden could grow. He told her weeds were indigenous flowers. “Clara, you’re an indigenous flower. Don’t ever think of yourself as a weed.” That’s what he said to her.

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 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?

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.

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.

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.