Black Apple by Joan Crate Read Free Book Online

Maybe muskrat lived there. Maybe frogs. She didn’t know which animal-people were in this flat place, though she had seen gophers around the school, and, in the distance, a few prong-horned antelope, their noses sweeping the earth and poking the air, their scents calling Come get me. “Moon of making babies,” Mama called this time.
    The antelopes’ constant grazing warned of a coyote moon and dark months. Oh, if she just walked away from this horrible, crowded place, she would find the land beyond the school with its long rolling yawns and the mountains turned to small blue sighs in the distance. But she wasn’t allowed.
    Until Aunt Angelique’s marriage to Forest Fox Crown, she had been around other kids only when families visited or sick people came to Papa for healing. He was Blessed Wolf, the medicine man. She had no cousins except the two grown-big sons of Auntie Connie, and they had gone east to Coulee to work, disappearing into the coal mines at the time of first melt. Even after Aunt Angelique’s marriage, Esther and Adele Fox Crown had told her, “Your aunt, she’s not our mother, you know. Our mother died.” The second day of school, Adele said, “Don’t hang around us.” She didn’t even try.
    But now there was that one girl. “Anataki,” she started saying to her, whispering the last part of her name so that anyone close by heard only “Anne.”
    As soon as they began sitting together at meals and chasing each other at recess, Ruth and her cousins taunted them. “Midget,” they jeered. “The Name-Stealer and the Midget. What a good pair!” Pretty soon other kids joined in. Rose Marie didn’t know about Anataki, but she was getting pissed off.
      *  *  *  
    One night, just before lights-out, she was the only one at the bathroom sink. She turned on the tap, which was like an all-at-once creek flowing fast, and splashed water on her face. As she turned the water off, she heard someone creeping behind her. She looked up. Ruth! Ruth’s arm smashed her head down on the sink. Dizzy black blotches swam before her eyes. But she leapt. She hit and bit Ruth. Ruth screamed. She grabbed Ruth’s throat and squeezed. Ruth gasped, her mouth opening and closing like a fish drowning in air.
    A yank from behind. Oh! Her hair ripped from her scalp.
    “Get off my relative!” Bertha screamed.
    She wouldn’t let go of Ruth. If she did, the two of them would kill her. She clung to Ruth’s neck, watched her face darken and her eyes bulge. Bertha pulled Rose Marie’s hair harder, ripping another patch from her head. Rose Marie tried to twist Ruth’s head quick, the way Mama twisted the heads of birds she caught in snares, breaking their necks.
    “Stop that!” thundered Sister Margaret.
    Rose Marie could hear Sister wheezing behind. She let go. Ruth staggered and dropped to her knees.
    Bertha punched her in the side of the head. Sister Margaret clamped one hand to the back of Bertha’s neck, the other to hers. She half marched, half dragged them to the dormitory. All the girls stopped moving and stared.
    “Get away from your bed, Susie,” Sister Margaret ordered. “Sister Cilla, bring my stick!” Sister Margaret slammed both Rose Marie and Bertha against a bed. “Bend over.”
    Side by side, they hunched over, palms pressed to the mattress.
    Sister Margaret snatched the stick from Sister Cilla and, without hesitating, swung it with a whoosh against Bertha’s bum. Then Rose Marie’s. Whack and whack and whack. Rose Marie’s bones clattered and screamed. Sister Margaret kept hitting them, one, then the other. Rose Marie bit her lip bloody. She was not going to cry. Beside her, Bertha’s face was tied in a knot. The stick kept whooshing and hammering. The room filled with splotchy black bruises. Bertha started sobbing.
    “Bertha, you may go to your bed now. Kneel down and pray for forgiveness,” Sister Margaret rasped.
    Rose Marie turned her head and poured hate on Sister Margaret. Her bum