Living with the hawk by Robert Currie Page B

some reason I thought of a swimmer standing at the edge of a pool, stretching out his toe to test the water. “The guys,” he said, “some of them, call her Anna Big Boobs.”
    â€œBlake!” It was my mother who spoke first. My father finished chewing something, swallowed, set down his fork. “Listen now,” he said, glaring at Blake. “That’s no way to talk. Not at this table — and not at school either.”
    â€œI don’t call her that,” said Blake. He looked as if he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. “I’m just saying what the guys say. Some of them.”
    â€œSome of them need to smarten up,” my father said, “and not be putting women down. Natives either.”
    â€œNatives,” Blake said, “they don’t pay taxes, you know.” He looked angry, but surprised too. I wondered if he was trying to get a rise out of our father, if he’d said more than he intended to say.
    â€œEnough!” said my father. “Now pay attention, both of you. Living in Palliser, there isn’t a reserve within a hundred kilometres. Result is: people don’t have much experience of aboriginals. You don’t know — ”
    â€œI know Anna,” said Blake. “She’s sharp as anyone in class. Got guts too.”
    He was backtracking now, making up for his last comment, sure, but he already knew her, and I didn’t. I felt a rush of heat somewhere inside, a flash of jealousy, perhaps, but that was crazy. Why would I be jealous? Besides, she was three years older than me. I wouldn’t have a hope with her.
    â€œWhat I was going to say,” — my father fixed Blake with a cold eye — “is this: you don’t know what it was like. All those native kids carted off to residential schools — parents crying, kids crying, government saying this is how it’s going to be, and we Anglicans, we went along with it, ran some of the schools, tried to make a home for them, but it didn’t work. It should’ve, maybe, but it didn’t. Some of those kids would get up at night, look out the dormitory window, see the smoke drifting from the chimneys of their own homes. Sometimes their homes were that close. They knew their parents were sitting around the fire, but they couldn’t go there. Huh, might as well have been in prison.” My father leaned towards Blake, his supper forgotten. I could tell he was warming to his subject. “On no, the bloody government wouldn’t allow anything like that. Got to knock their culture out of them, teach them the white man’s way. Those residential schools — ”
    â€œWe know,” said Blake. “Mr. Helsel’s got all kinds of clippings from the papers. He has us read them every time you turn around.” Blake looked at our father and decided to back off, to keep quiet.
    â€œWhole generations of aboriginals cut off from their parents,” said my father. “Never had a chance at family life, no chance to see how it is that parents go about raising kids. No wonder some of them have problems.”
    â€œA lot of them have problems,” my mother said. She nodded her head towards my father’s plate, his cooling food.
    â€œYou talking about Fort Qu’Appelle again?” But he scooped up a forkful of potatoes — he was finished speaking at us. Sometimes I wonder if other ministers are like that, so used to sermonizing they sometimes can’t resist dropping in a sermon when it isn’t Sunday morning.
    She nodded her head. “Our house was too close to the Fort Hotel. Growing up, I saw a lot of things I’d just as soon forget about. Saturday nights and the beer parlour. Like I said, a lot of them have problems.”
    â€œYes,” said my father, “I suppose you’re right. Doesn’t say much for the way we handle problems, does it?”
    Then I thought of Anna Big Sky; if she had problems, I