When Stella reached the water she peered in and looked at all the pretty stones on the bottom. It didn’t look deep at all, so she slid down on her stomach into the water. But it was suddenly over her head and she was choking. Stella scratched at the rock with her fingernails until she managed to pull herself out. She looked up, there was Mom looking down, smiling at her as if she really wasn’t there. Mom had been watching the whole time but had not helped her. That was when Stella knew Mom did not love her; Mom wanted her dead.
When Stella was six, Mom died. She cried for a little while because she thought that was what everyone wanted her to do. Dad lifted her up onto his knees and told her he had met Mom many years before when he had a job way up north. She had come south to marry him but had had a hard life away from her family. He said he missed her a lot, and he knew how much Stella must miss her as well. But she didn’t really; Mom had wanted her dead.
Stella became really worried when Dad told her he was sending her to residential school because he couldn’t take care of her anymore. But he told her that the white people there would teach her all sorts of useful things. So she helped Dad pack her clothes and they walked hand in hand along the dusty reserve road to the railway station early one morning.
The train arrived in a lot of smoke and noise and confusion and they got on board. The seat was made of some sort of cloth but was so hard and itchy that Stella got up and stood at the open window looking out at the trees, houses, and barns that rushed by. The rocking of the passenger car and the clickety-clack of the wheels on the track made her sleepy, but the smoke and ashes pouring in the window made her cough and kept her awake. Another train went slamming by, going the other way. She cried out and stepped back in fright and Dad laughed, lifted her up beside him on the seat, and told her there was nothing to be afraid of.
Dad bought her a chocolate bar and a bottle of pop and pointed out things to her as they went along — cows and horses and cars, things like that. Dad had never been that nice to her before and Stella was really happy. She went back to the window and watched the sun race behind the telephone poles and yet never move. She thought of Mom who was dead and felt guilty for not being sorry. She thought of Dad who was still alive but who would grow old someday. She wanted Dad to be like the sun racing behind the telephone poles, but never changing and never dying and making her feel sad.
It wasn’t fun anymore when they got off the train. It was dark and she was tired. A man was waiting for them at the station and he took them in a car to a big building where there were lots of lights burning. She went in with Dad and the man, and everyone was friendly, but when she turned around to say something to Dad, he was gone. He had left her alone with a lot of strangers.
Someone took her someplace and cut off her braids and shaved her head. Someone else poured coal oil on her naked skull and it stung. Another person gave her new clothes to put on. After she had something to eat, Stella went to bed. That’s when she got real homesick and started to cry. She missed Dad a lot and didn’t understand why he had left her. She told herself he’d be back in the morning, but when he didn’t come back, she knew he had never loved her either. He had just been pretending when he had been nice to her on the train.
Stella did not see her father again for ten years. Every June at the end of the school year the other children left to pass the summers with their families, returning when school started again after Labour Day. Each year, Stella would spend the summer at the school together with a few other children who either had no homes to go to or who were unwanted by their families. For the first few summers she was disappointed, but each time he did not appear, she made excuses to herself for his behaviour: He had been attacked and beaten up by burglars. He had slipped and broken a leg. He didn’t have the money for the train fare.
As she grew older, however, and her father still didn’t come for her, her disappointment turned to desperation and then to anger. She blamed her mother for dying and her father for leaving her in the hands of people who beat her for coming late to class, who asked her to their offices to touch her private parts and in return to reveal their private parts to her, who made her work long hours cleaning floors and scrubbing pots and pans, who fed her slop hardly fit for animals to eat, and who allowed the big kids to bully the small ones.
As more years passed, her anger turned to a deep feeling of betrayal and bitterness. No one ever said she loved her, held her when she was upset, or took her hand when she was sick. To the staff, Stella was just one of hundreds of Indian inmates to be fed, watered, and educated in the ways of the white man until they were released back into their communities like prisoners who had served their terms. By the age of thirteen, Stella was bullying the smaller students as she had been bullied. By the age of fourteen, with her wide hips, large breasts, and a loud laugh, she radiated an animal magnetism that attracted grown men and rendered adult women uneasy in her presence. By the time she was fifteen, she decided she would not let her father get away with leaving her in such a place, and wrote him a letter:
May 30, 1915
Dear Dad,
I am your daughter and you haven’t been nice to me. You took me to the school when I was six and forgot about me. I am now fifteen. The people here have been mean to me. Beatings, lots of awful things. I guess you don’t care otherwise you would not have left me in such a place. The others get to go home for the summers. You forgot me. You never came although I used to wait for you. I remember going to our place at the Indian Camp in Muskoka in the summers and the fun I had there playing in the water with the other kids when I was a little girl. You are responsible for me aren’t you? If so, come and get me on June 30 when school is out and let me have some fun this summer. I’ll be outside on the steps with my things. Please don’t let me down!
Your daughter,
Stella
P.S. Don’t forget to come. It’s not too much to ask.
On the last day of the school year, Stella waited outside on the school steps with the other students going home for the summer, but her father did not come. She had had enough. She would make him sorry and teach a lesson to all those people who had mistreated her over the years. She would go to Toronto and make her own way in the world. She got to her feet, left the bag with her clothes behind, exited the school grounds, and began walking south on the gravel highway.
A car pulled up beside her and the driver rolled down the window, stuck his head out and said “Want a lift?” Stella opened the door and climbed in.
“Running away from school?” the driver, a middle-aged white man wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and tie, asked her. His jacket was lying on the back seat.
When Stella didn’t answer, he said, “I thought so, but don’t worry, I won’t tell on you. How do you like my jalopy?” he asked, putting his car in gear and continuing down the road. “Just bought it,” he said, patting the dashboard. “It’s a brand new Model T Roadster, the only one in this neck of the woods. It’s my car and I can do anything I want with it. My wife has her own, but it’s not a Roadster: she uses it to drive the kids around and go shopping. And to show you I’m a fine fellow, in addition to letting you ride in my brand new fancy car, I’m going to share a drink with you.”
Stella took the already opened bottle of gin that he held out to her, raised it to her lips, and drank deeply. It was the first time she had tasted alcohol, and it burned her throat. But it was good. She took another long drink and that was better. She took a third, longer drink and that was even better.
“Hey, slow down, that’s all the booze I got in the car,” he said, yanking the bottle from her hands and drinking from it until there was no gin left. Stella leaned back in the seat and closed her eyes, her head spinning. A few minutes later, she felt the car turn off the highway and she opened her eyes as the white man drove up a gravel driveway and parked in front of a house secluded in a