The moon slowly moved over the sun. Its curve forming a dark silhouette that crept across the bright face, moment by moment darkening the sky. Across the landscape, rocks and trees seemed to sharpen as they drifted into this odd darkness. The stark edges of the surroundings became more distinct without the blinding glare of daylight or the fuzzy softness of night. Afraid to look upward, the people all walked with their heads down, shrouded in the long shadow of the moon. The blackness crept over the landscape as it crept over them, invariably seeping one by one into their hearts. Ancient memories rose in them, the darkness brought a foreboding that absorbed their spirit. In the darkness their hearts felt a longing, a loneliness they could not escape.
Their empty yards and unlatched gates seem so strange to everyone. The screen doors seemed to ache for a carefree spin out into the daylight. The quiet mornings ground slowly into silent afternoons and then to the long lonely night. Everywhere the adults longed for the squeal of a child, the unrestrained giggle of young girls, the brutish shouts of the boys, anything to break the spell. The streets were lined with only silent houses and empty, quiet sidewalks. A bicycle leaned against a garage, its abandoned handlebars bled rust onto the asphalt.
All the children were gone, all taken to the Indian School somewhere far, far away. They heard the talk; the children had gone to the school somewhere in the North, they weren’t sure where. Nakat, the lady next door, still cries every day for her children who left just last month. Peyak, in the red house up the street, doesn’t cry anymore, her kids have been gone for three long years. Osawa quit watching for his little ones to return, now he only searches in the bottoms of bottles. He stacks each one he finishes in long lines on his porch. The neighbors measure the years in Albert’s bottles, this strange calendar that sparkles on his front porch. The children haven’t come home, they don’t write or call, no one hears anything from them, not until they graduate from the school. They aren’t allowed.
The people mourned, realizing they had lost their children and there was nothing they can do about it. It was the Canadian Government and the Church that took their children to the school. Separating them from their families, from their old lives and from their heritage. They taught the Indian children a new and different way at the school, one that will help them blend invisibly with the white man and his government. The children are given new clothes, a new language, and a white man’s name. They learn new ways, are taught to disregard the old ways. Day by day the white man taught them to abandon what they were and become “Canadians".
The days passed in silence, as the roads and paths yearned for the small feet and voices of the children. Some word came, a child might sicken and die, one might run away from the school, but mostly there was nothing. The mountains strained for a whisper, a laugh, a happy voice, but all they heard was the sobbing. Silence became days, then months and then years.
Years later the grown children returned, one by one they graduated and left the school, most coming home. It was so strange because when these grown children finally came back, after all the years, they couldn’t wait to throw off their city clothes, the pants and shirts or dresses the white man gave them. Arriving home, they let their hair grow long, and most refused to speak English anymore. Taking them to the school, the Government had hoped the Indian graduates would not return to the reservations, but instead melt into society. But the children, now grown, rejected these new ways and returned home. Try as they might, the Government just couldn’t take the Indian out of them.
The sun finally returned in a fiery crescent as the day awakened from its lunar slumber and shadows lengthened in the bright sunlight. Osawa was gone, his shattered bottles was all he left his children. Nakat wept when hers returned, tears of joy seeing them again, tears of sadness and anger for all she had missed. Peyak sobbed now too, one of hers had died. Amidst this pain and anger the people held their heads high watching their children as they walked though the heat waves, returning one by one. They had risen from the darkness, from their knees, from the earth, firmly resolved that they would never yield again. At long last, they had come home!
Gender:
Points: 3406
Reviews: 35