Hail Mary, full of Grace
the Lord is with Thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women,
Blessed is the fruit of. . .

I wish I could say this prayer in Anishinabe. N'mishomiss, my grandfather and the chief of the West Bay Reservation for many years, taught me to pray in Anishinabe. N'mishomiss is a devoted Roman Catholic.

This morning, I feel scared as I try to remember. I've said this prayer at The Legion of Mary, the religious group on the reservation. There, we pray together. I am not forced to say every word or sentence. I feel safe and happy there. This morning, my mind empties and I forget. Nobody is allowed to help me. I have to say this prayer by myself. For sure, this is doomsday.

"Mary Louise, stay after school and write The Hail Mary on all the blackboards and then stand in the cloak room and repeat it until I return."

I write until my arm feels like falling off. At last, the blackboards are full with Hail Marys. I say them aloud over and over again in the cloak room. I am alone. I feel weird and sick. Miss McNulty does not come back. Maybe she forgets I am still here. I need her permission to go home. I have chores to do. I have to bring in firewood and feed the pigs.

I knock on Miss McNulty's kitchen door. I almost picture her eyeballs rolling. I am not used to her loud, screechy voice. She sounds like the pigs we kill on our farm. The door finally opens and out comes Miss McNulty almost pushing me down. Straight for the class room goes bent-over Miss McNulty, like "the crooked man who walked a crooked mile." Her legs or whatever must be bothering her again. She checks the blackboard carefully. She orders me to sweep the steps.

"Make sure you sweep the corners properly. Then you may go." I run all the way home without stopping. I'm going to tell someone what happened at school today. I know my mother does not like to hear something like this. One of her rules is "Children should be seen and not heard." She nearly always listens to other people's sayings. Like Miss McNulty, she hits me, except she uses long branches off trees. I try to stay away from her, not tell her anything, even when I know it's the truth.

N'mishomiss is different. His rule is to always tell the truth. "Mishomiss! Mishomiss! Where are you?"

I run to the barn and find him in his workshop. He is fixing Queen's harness. Queen is one of his ponies. Mishomiss looks at me with a question in his eyes. He sits himself down, takes his pipe out, fills it with tobacco. He points to the glass bottle filled with sweet tea. I fill two cups with tea. He reaches out his hand to take one cup; I keep the other and sit in front of him in one of his handmade chairs made out of tree stumps. N'mishomiss looks at me, stays quiet while I tell him my day at school. When I finish talking, he quietly puffs his pipe. He is in deep thought. I wait for him to finish thinking. He takes his pipe out of his mouth.

"Are you telling me the truth, Brother (his nickname for me)?"

"Aehn (yes) Mishomiss." This time he does not laugh or smile as he does when he catches me telling him big or funny stories.

Soon, a younger, kinder teacher takes Miss McNulty's place at Lakeview Indian Day School.

- Mary Lou C. DeBassige

From No More Masterpieces: Short Prose by New Writers edited by Guy Allen et al. Reproduced by permission of Canadian Scholars' Press Inc.