Free As Long as the Rivers Flow by James Bartleman

she had sex, she thought not of the teenager in bed with her, but of Father Antoine and the nuns. How enraged they would be if they knew she was flouting and undermining their hypocritical moral principles—and under their very noses! She did not even care if she became pregnant, since the worst that could happen would be expulsion from the school—something she would welcome.
    In her final years at the school, Martha appeared calm and resigned to serving out her time. She had her moments of laughter and joy, and even if she was not able to forgive Sister Angelica, with thepassage of time she came to understand that the nun, like her, was a victim of forces beyond her control. But most of the time, she seethed with pent-up rage, almost weeping when students were punished as she had been by being tied to the overhead steam pipes in the basement, beaten and thrown into solitary confinement in the coal cellar. She could not stand hearing the nuns say, again and again, that the students should be grateful that God had sent emissaries into the middle of nowhere to educate Stone Age savages and to save their souls. She never forgave them for not telling her when her father unexpectedly died of a heart attack.
    But it was Father Antoine that she loathed the most. Whenever they passed each other in the halls, he smiled at her and she averted her eyes. Try as she might, she could not shut him out at night when she relived in her nightmares the abuse she had suffered at his hands for so many years. During Sunday mass when he spoke about the love of God, she paid no attention to what he was saying and devised imaginary tortures for him. Sometimes, he was standing in a classroom, his head covered with a urine-drenched sheet as the students jeered. At other times, he was her prisoner and she was lashing him as the nuns once beat her. And if on that Sunday he was preaching about hell, she saw him immersed in fire and brimstone, suffering untold agonies for what he had done to her and to the other girls.
    When, a decade after her admission to the residential school, Martha was discharged and sent home, she left with the rudiments of a high school education and with emotional wounds so deep they would never heal. It was no comfort to her that the school closed its doors for good shortly thereafter.

4

Returning Home
    W HEN M ARTHA RETURNED HOME at the age of sixteen, the chubby six-year-old who had been taken away in a float plane so many years before had become a tall, attractive, physically mature young woman with fine, dark-brown facial features and angry black eyes. Much of this anger she reserved for her mother. For Martha had never forgotten what her mother had told her that summer after her first year at the residential school.
    “Stop making up stories,” she had said, squeezing her arm and hurting her when her daughter tried to tell her Father Antoine was touching her where he shouldn’t. “The government will cut off our family allowance cheques,” she had said, “if you don’t go back to school.”
    From that moment Martha believed that her mother valued the money she received from the government over the well-being of her daughter.
    Martha never mentioned Father Antoine to her mother again in the years she was away. After the death of her father, who had been the quiet but solid force keeping peace in the family, a gulfopened between mother and daughter that grew more pronounced each time she returned home for the summers. When Martha entered the family cabin in late June 1972 carrying a bag filled with her possessions from the school, her mother sensed veiled hostility.
    “So look who’s finally made it home,” she said, taking the initiative. “I guess we’re going to have to find some way to get along. But I can’t afford to feed you out of my welfare money and you better get down to the band office and apply for your own.”
    When Martha responded in what she remembered of her language, her mother laughed at