country song we could think of. The other passengers appeared to enjoy the free entertainment. A few even sang along.
The vodka and musical camaraderie made me forget any misgivings I had about meeting Stan’s relatives. By the time we reached Belleville, I was pleasantly intoxicated and ready for a new adventure. Even Stan was well lubed and much more talkative than usual. When we started out on our journey, he’d been unusually quiet. I suspected he had mixed feelings about his mother. He’d told me she’d never been easy to please.
Stan’s cousin, Melvin, was waiting for us at the station. He was a small, wiry man in his mid-thirties who didn’t have much to say, but he did have a welcoming smile that put me at ease.
Afraid of not impressing Stan’s mother, I wore a dress, a ridiculous silver sequined full-skirted thing that should have been reserved for New Year’s Eve. I had an eye for the gaudy, craving all the attention I could get. By the time I stumbled off the train in Belleville, the dress looked as if it had spent weeks hiding in the bottom of my clothes hamper. Shrugging, I downed the final drink of vodka from my cup. That last gulp of Silent Sam took the wrinkles out of any imperfections I might have felt about my appearance. We headed for Melvin’s car, the click of my red high heels resounding through the parking lot.
When we arrived on the doorstep of Stan’s mother’s house, I was teetering slightly. A white woman came out to meet us. She smiled at Stan but made no move to embrace him. Her eyes shifted to me and I could sense the instant hatred. A snarl actually cut through her features. No one else came out to meet us, so I assumed this was Stan’s mother, Loretta, though I couldn’t remember him telling me his mother was white. We entered the small green bungalow, located in the town adjoining the Tyendinaga Reserve. It was packed with ornaments. I’d never seen so many ceramic figurines. There were animals, birds, men and women, and salt and pepper shakers on every shelf and table. While there seemed to be no particular theme to the collection, I noticed they were mostly white. Loretta’s husband had died years ago and she was alone and bitter. We were two women vying for Stan’s affection. Being white herself, maybe she knew exactly what it was that attracted me to Stan and despised me for it.
The day after we arrived other family members came to call. They were polite and attentive. The trip became an endless round of visits and introductions. Everyone who met me stared with interest, but few spoke except to each other in Mohawk. They would point, openly sizing up my large, firm breasts and wide hips with obvious approval. On a few occasions I had to stop myself from offering my teeth and gums for inspection.
Stan’s paternal grandparents came for a visit. They lived only a few streets away from his mother’s home. They, too, had moved off the reserve many years earlier. They were sweet and kind and went out of their way to make me feel comfortable. They were from old Mohawk stock; no white blood had dared trickle through their veins until their son married a woman whose ancestors hailed from Scotland. Stan had been the only cross-breed from that union, and I am sure they hoped he’d get back on track and marry one of his own kind before the blood got too diluted and they all faded away.
Stan was plenty dark. You couldn’t tell he had white blood in him. When I first met him, I thought he was Mexican or Spanish. His grandparents appeared more like the Indians I’d seen in history books.
“This is my little white squaw,” Stan said when he introduced me to his grandparents with a wide grin. They laughed when Stan started calling me Little White Squaw occasionally, and I laughed, too, thinking it was an honour that would prompt my acceptance into the community. One of Stan’s cousins had accompanied Stan’s grandparents. He called me yakonkwe, with the k pronounced like a g. I liked the way it sounded and decided it must be something special until I learned it was simply the Mohawk word for woman. Little White Squaw sounded much more romantic, I decided. I was proud of my new Native title. I never dreamed it would condemn me to a limbo between the aboriginal and white cultures.
I devoured everything I could find about Mohawk history. One story that stuck in my mind was the journey of displaced Mohawks from New York State who had crossed the border to arrive in what later became the Province of Ontario. In 1784 they settled beside the Bay of Quinte. When the Mohawks lost their homeland during the American Revolution, the British Crown promised the small group of survivors a new homeland. A mere twenty families, approximately a hundred people, made it through the slaughter by the Americans.
Captain John Deserontyon, a Mohawk serving in the British army, led the surviving Indians to the spot that was eventually named Deseronto, where they settled and became known as the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte. Stan, along with more than six thousand others, was a direct descendant of these brave people who were called the Keepers of the Eastern Door. I wasn’t sure what that meant, but it certainly enhanced Stan’s legendary appeal in my mind.
CHILD BRIDE
When Christmas holidays ended, I stayed in Deseronto with Loretta. She said she’d like some company and knew a place where I could find work. Keen to win her friendship, I agreed. Stan went back to Gagetown to rejoin his Black Watch unit, which was soon renamed 2RCR. By this time we had decided we’d tie the knot that coming March, and Stan believed it would be good for me to get to know his relatives and keep his mother company.
Loretta silently tolerated me for a while, but it didn’t take long before I bore the brunt of her bad moods. She drank whiskey or beer daily and never stopped complaining about how hard her life had been.
“No one helped me out when I met Stan’s father,” she said. “You’re lucky you’ve got a place to sleep. Nothing good ever happened in my life and nothing ever will.”
I’d be washing dishes or dusting one of her ornaments while she sat at the kitchen table in her nightgown and curlers, complaining for hours. In the midst of such acrid regret I realized how kind my mother had actually been in comparison.
I would make sporadic attempts to persuade Loretta to like me; I’d offer to style her hair or fix her up with some makeup, but she’d just wave me away. She seemed so unhappy that I actually felt sorry for her. In a drunken stupor, when she accused me of being interested in her boyfriend, Rollie, a skinny truck driver who visited every couple of weeks, I gave up and simply tried to stay out of her way. I’d hardly even spoken to the guy He gave me the creeps.
I spent hours writing poetry in my journal and jotting down general happenings.
It didn’t take long for me to grasp the great difference of opinion on skin colour between the Native men and women. White was definitely in with the males from the reserve (the Mohawks preferred to use the word territory instead of reserve). And they liked a woman “with a little meat on her bones,” too. I became a popular item, and I was thrilled, basking in all the attention. I never imagined white meat would be considered such a delicacy.
The next month brought a flood of calls—from Stan’s friends and cousins, all strangers to me—ranging from polite chitchat to outright sexual offers. One very short, overweight cousin asked me if I missed my nookie. He told me he’d take care of me if I was up for it. I told him he’d never be up enough for it and to go straight to Hell.
One of the younger men, a childhood friend of Stan’s, was especially friendly and I enjoyed talking to him on the phone. His name was David and he patiently related to me several Mohawk legends. My favourite was the one about a deity named Peacemaker who summoned eagles to act as lookouts for signs of danger so the Mohawk people would be forewarned and could escape before they were harmed. I often wondered if the eagles had been there in New York State before the American Revolution, but I never asked David. He hated to be interrupted in the middle of weaving his tales.
Of course, the women didn’t see me as the treasure I felt I had become. They were quick to indicate they considered me tainted goods. Cold, silent stares in the grocery store and heavily accented curses over the phone were frequent. “Why don’t you stay where you belong?” they’d say. “Stop hanging around our men.”
Within two months I returned to New Brunswick, devalued again, driven away by racist hostility. I found myself back with my parents and brothers in the little house in Haneytown. Back in a predominantly