The next phase of my education finds me back on the reserve. We go to a two-room school. Grades 1-4 are downstairs and Grades 5-8 are upstairs. Our teachers are a married couple who live with their son and daughter in the nicest house on the reserve, the teacherage. Each grade 1 sits in a different row. Before we go out to recess, we have to have a tablespoon of cod liver oil. Sure tastes awful! School is serious business. We must not talk because the School Inspector might stop by and we will be in trouble if we're caught misbehaving. We write a lot in scribblers and it has to be neat, again because the School Inspector expects that. We have to memorize verses and recite them to the class. Roy has trouble remembering his lines - he speaks Ojibway at home and has trouble with English at school. The teacher makes him stand at the front of the class until he can remember his lines. I wonder why the teacher doesn't let us help Roy. Strange, but I don't remember Roy coming back after that. I read about how we (Indians) lost so many wars and took part in so many massacres. I wonder why I was born an Indian. The feeling is shame because my people are savages.

Several years later I make it to high school. It's in a little town seven miles away from the reserve, so we have to go by bus. I'm happy at first because I'm with a lot of my friends. Eventually they leave. Someone laughs at Brenda because she gives the wrong answer in class. She's too embarrassed to come back. My brother is big for his age and he knows how to track a deer for miles, set snares for rabbits and catch a lot of trout. My family is proud of him because he provides food for most of our meals. But, he can't understand algebra or science and, consequently, has the lowest average in the class. When the first term reports come out with everyone's marks in descending order on them his name is at the bottom. He decides to quit. Someone calls my other brother "a pesky redskin" constantly. He, too, leaves. Sharon's mom dies and Sharon takes on responsibility for her younger sister. Another one goes.

Eventually, I'm the only Indian in a school of 400 students. I try to make friends with the white students, but they live in homes like the ones I only see on T.V. --- hydro, indoor plumbing, central heating. They all have nicer clothes than I do. Most of my wardrobe comes from a rummage sale and I am afraid that somebody will recognize their cast-offs. I spend my summers working in the tobacco fields to pay my way. They take vacations that I can only take in my head. My mom tells me to quit, too, because I'm a girl and I don't really need an education. The feeling is confusion because I want what they have. Eventually I move to Toronto. I'm told life might be better in the big city because there are no jobs on the Reserve. I am determined to make something of myself.

I see other Indians, but they walk with their heads down and that makes me angry. I decide I'm not going to be like that. I'm going to prove that I can live just like white folk. I turn my back on my people. I marry a white man. My mom is happy because she says that no, she will not have to worry about me. We have, first a girl, then a boy. But happiness eludes me. The kids and I are alone a lot. I start to drink out of loneliness and frustration. Down and down I go. I don't fit into the white man's world and I can't go back home. Too much pride. I have to quit drinking, but it's so hard. I go in and out of the hospital - taken there by an ambulance eight times one summer. Children's Aid commits me to the psychiatric ward for a "cure" or I will lose my kids. They do go to a foster home for a while. I make up my mind that I want them back, so, I start the longest uphill climb of my life. I do it alone because my white husband just doesn't understand. We go our separate ways, but I take the kids. I have no self-confidence. I have to support myself and these kids, but I can only get a job pounding a typewriter. I decide to go back to night school so I can get a better job. The feeling is desperation because I have so much responsibility and I don't know if I can make it alone.