My
Sister is Missing, Does Anybody Care?
Blythe,
is a sleepy little hamlet with about 1,500 to 2,000 people and around an hour
away from one of the largest reserves known to the residents in Blythe and
surrounding towns. There are only a handful of First Nations people that live
in this town and most of them are there because of previous flooding on
neighboring reserves that surround Blythe. They reside in the town’s only
motel-the Blythe Inn.
The
Blythe Inn, situated behind the Community Centre had seen better days. When the
inn first opened up, its owners had taken such pride in caring for their
establishment. They had made sure they were always on top of the upkeep of the
place, were courteous and polite to those passing through their doors, and even
stopped and chatted with those who were passing by on the street. When the
initial owners, after owning the inn for 25 years, decided to transfer the inn
to a new couple, the change in ownership impacted all of Blythe.
The
new owners, though they meant well, got behind in the upkeep of the inn, and
the building lost its previous charm.
Business there wasn’t what it used to be, and it soon became a place for
what Blythe residents called the “down and out.” The inn became a place that
surrounding First Nations communities sent their residents to stay in during
flood season. Some First Nations residents only stayed until they got the okay
from reserve officials to head back home, but there were others that just
stayed on.
There’s
anger on the part of some of the full time residents of Blythe about the First
Nations people that reside in their town. To them, the floods have been over
for quite some time, and the First Nations people were a drain on their little
town’s taxes. Though some First Nations stayed at the inn, there were a handful
that were scattered around the town, it was beginning to make Blythe residents
more annoyed and fed up.
Blythe
residents who are predominantly non- Native were of the opinion that “those
Indians just need to leave and go back home, because they have homes and they
can’t just keep having a free ride at our expense.”
Anne
and her two daughters, Jean and Alex were three of the First Nations that
stayed on in the community, but instead of living at the inn, Anne rented a
nearby house and had been there for over a year. Though things were a bit tough
for them, they managed to do okay. Anne had secured a job at the little grocery
store in Blythe that was not far from the little house she rented.
Her
two daughters, though struggling at first to adapt to their new living
situation, had seemed to be okay. Her
two daughters had always been close, and Jean, her oldest daughter took over
the role of taking care of her little sister Alex while Anne worked to make
their new living situation bearable.
That
was until Jean, who was an impressionable young teenager started experiencing
depression and almost volatile mood swings, that left Anne and Alex scared. Jean
soon disappeared, and became all that Anne and her youngest daughter’s could
focus on. Their lives changed forever, the day Jean left during one of her
angry mood swings and never came home.
Today
there are posters plastered all over the little community of Blythe. A
beautiful young teenaged girl with big doe like brown eyes, shoulder length
brown hair, and a slight build stares out at you everywhere. The poster is on the
two small grocery store noticeboards, and a couple of random telephone poles
that are scattered here and there on the main drag. One more poster greets you
as you walk into the Blythe Community Centre.
In
the poster that you see throughout this small community, you can see a certain
sadness in the young girl’s eyes, as she stares out at you from the hastily put
together poster that was made about her-the poster made on a cheap inkjet
printer in Blythe’s Community Centre. The image of this girl makes you want to
reach into the poster and hug the girl close to you, but you can’t. You can
only look at the picture and wonder, “why has this girl gone missing?”
This
young girl- Jean is the first to go missing from this community, but its
reminiscent of what is happening in big metropolises throughout Canada. It
brings to mind the grisly events that unfolded in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside
and how the disappearance of so many women, between 1978 and 2002, went largely
ignored. You think about the over five hundred Missing and Murdered Aboriginal
Women and the negative portrayal and/or lack of coverage that the mainstream
media has given to this issue. It makes you stop and ask “How many other young
girls will go missing before the police or Canadian government does something?”
Jean went missing on June 25, 2012, four days after National
Aboriginal Day. She was 18 years old. Alex didn’t really understand why the
Canadian government had National Aboriginal Day- which is a day put aside for
First Nations, Inuit and Metis people to celebrate and showcase their rich
culture and traditions with the general Canadian public. Since its inception in
June 1996, many cities and communities celebrated it, but as it rolled around
each year, Alex would just roll her eyes and say “I’m Indian every day, why
should I celebrate who I am for just one day, when I am in the same skin every
day?”
Alex was always happy that her family never celebrated June 21,
because it wasn’t like there were many festivities in Blythe anyways. There
were only a handful of native people in Blythe, and if they did any
celebrating, it meant hitching a ride with someone and traveling an hour or two
to the nearby reserves of Bear Island, Jack River or Fisher River. And even
then, you couldn't really count on anything really happening, because it wasn't
like you were in the big cities of Canada, like Alex had heard of about of
Winnipeg or Toronto.
Alex remembers the day her big sister Jean went missing. She blames
herself because they had argued. She had been sitting on the worn out couch in
the living room of the little dilapidated house that they lived in with their
mother Anne. Alex was half lying on the couch, dressed in her favorite
black sweatpants and t-shirt. In one hand, she was holding a can of her
favorite pop- Diet Coke and in the other hand she was holding the worn and
taped up remote control. She was flipping through the television stations on
their ratty old television trying to find at least one show she could watch on
the crappy satellite service, her mom had just signed up for, when Alex heard
her older sister Jean’s feet stomping down the small narrow hallway.
THUMP…. THUMP… her sister’s feet went. Alex had giggled, thinking, “ Gawd, you
would think there was a herd of elephants coming through the apartment with the
way Jean walks!”
Two seconds later, there’s another thump, as Jean walks into the
living room and hits her shoulder against the wall. “Ouch!” Jean mutters, as
she kneads her shoulder where she had hit it a second before. She looks at her little sister splashed out so
nonchalantly on the couch and drawls
“Hey brat! What ya laughing about?
Alex looks up at her sister and says “Nothing”.
“Well, you must be laughing at something because there isn’t
anyone else around to laugh at.”
“WHATEVER!” Alex yells. A couple of seconds go by and Alex feels
her heart go into her throat. Jean is only a couple of feet away, and Alex can
feel Jean’s eyes boring into her. Alex has been fearful of her big sister as of
lately. She had been told over and over again from her ma that she couldn’t
upset Jean in any way, especially with the mood swings and outbursts Jean had
been having.
“I’m laughing at you and your dumb elephant feet,” she continues,
as she mentally tells herself “Ah crap! Why did I have to go and say that? Now
Jean is really going to be mad at me!”
Alex hadn’t always been afraid of Jean. It had only been in the
last two years that Alex saw Jean change. A million thoughts went through
Alex’s head as she started to think about how Jean used to be happy to stay at
home babysitting while their ma worked, and all the things that Jean showed her
how to do. She had loved it when Jean would go through her old clothes, after
getting a new batch from the local Sally Ann and say “Hey Alex, take these, I
won’t wear them anymore.”
Though they were pretty poor, Jean had always had a knack for
putting outfits together. Alex also loved how Jean used to show her how to sew
buttons back on her shirts, or iron the laundry. Sometimes they would rush down
the quiet deserted streets of Blythe to make sure they got some candy from the
grocery store before it closed. Jean never let her walk to the store herself,
because she was afraid that a stranger might pick Alex up. If Alex tried to
argue with her, Jean would shake her head and say “Don’t get pissed at me, I’m
only following ma’s rules.”
Shaking her head, Alex thinks, “Boy things have changed.”
Jean hadn’t been herself for quite some time. She was moodier than
usual, withdrawn and always wanting to sleep. Alex had noticed that over the
past few months, Jean had increasingly become someone else. She wasn’t the big
sister she had always known her to be with her. Jean would have more outbursts
of crying, yelling and even getting physical, throwing punches at the walls, or
taking scissors and cutting herself.
Jean thought she was hiding the cuts from everyone by wearing huge
long sleeved tops, but her mom and sister knew, and so did a couple of her
friends, but nothing was ever really done because Jean didn’t want to travel
all the way to Winnipeg just to get picked at by a shrink.
Alex isn’t relaxing anymore. She sits upright on the worn couch
and takes in the few minutes of silence between herself and Jean. The quiet is
broken when Jean asks
“So sis, where is ma hiding the money jar these days?”
Surprised at the question, Alex says “What? Jean, that money is
only for emergencies, we’re not supposed to touch it!”
“Well aren’t you the goodie two-shoes, not telling me where it is ”
Jean snarls.
“Tell me, where the money jar is Alex,” Jean continues
“Why what are you going to do with it? Asks Alex
“It’s none of your damn business what I am going to do with it! If
you don’t tell me where it is, I’ll take the monies you have hidden under your
mattress,” yells Jean.
Alex turns a bright red
YOU CAN”T TOUCH MY MONEY!” That’s my birthday money!” she screams.
“Well wait and see!” says Jean as she turns abruptly around and
runs back to the bedroom the girls share. Alex can hear things being thrown
around. A thump here, a thump there, a loud crash a second later and then like
a storm cloud, as she is deciding whether or not to call her mom at work, Jean
runs by, her shoes are on and her jacket is haphazardly thrown over her
shoulder.
BANG! The house walls shake, as the front door slams. There is a
flurry of noise briefly outside in the hallway but then all is quiet. Alex
starts to cry. She reaches for the phone to call her ma. Her fingers shake as
she punches in the number
3….1…4… 5….1..8…4..
The phone rings for a couple of seconds and then Jean hears her
mom’s familiar voice
“Blythe Foods, how can I help you?”
With her mom on the other side of the phone she says, “Jean’s
upset again. She.. she…she took off Ma!”
“Alex….Alex…calm down. Why was she upset? Do you know where she
went?
Alex sniffles and wipes her hand across her nose, as she tells her
mom about the argument over where the money jar was being hidden, and how she
yelled at Jean that she wasn’t going to tell her where it was.
Over the phone, Anne tells her youngest daughter “you stay right
where you are, and wait and see if Jean comes home. My shift ends soon, but
I’ll try to leave as soon as I can.”
“Okay, okay, ma, just hurry,” Alex whines.
Anne comes home from her job at the Blythe Foods grocery store an
hour later. She finds Alex curled up on the living room couch, her eyes are
bright red and swollen from crying and she is hugging a teddy bear. The
television is on, but Anne can tell that Alex is not taking any of it in.
Knowing Jean and her temper, Anne doesn’t think much of Jean being
gone at first. She thinks that Jean will calm down and come home soon. As Anne
and Alex sit in the small living room of their house in Blythe, they keep
nervously looking between the clock and the worn down front door of their
house. The clock hits 1am, and Jean still hasn’t shown up.
Anne knows that Jean has always been good about keeping to the
curfew that they had set 10pm on weekdays and 11pm on weekends. She reaches
over to the phone on the coffee table and calls the nearest RCMP attachment
office.
The phone rings three times before Anne hears a gruff voice say
“RCMP, what’s the nature of your call?
“Officer, my daughter Jean is missing,”
The RCMP tell Anne that Jean will come home, and that she probably
just went to a friends house to cool off. Anne tells the RCMP that Jean never
stays away longer than a couple of hours when she’s upset, but the RCMP don’t
listen.
“She’ll be back,” they tell her.
When the next morning arrives, and there is still no sign of Jean
Anne calls the RCMP again…They tell her the same thing “She’ll be back m’aam”
It’s like this for every day that Anne calls. They’re indifferent
to the fact that Jean was missing and something was wrong. They brush Anne off
every day she calls, and tell her “You’re being a nuisance, your daughter will
be back.”
Jean doesn’t come back though. She’s still out there.
Anne had Alex make posters with her sister’s picture and
information on it, and plaster it around Blythe. It’s been over a month since
Jean went missing. Alex walks down a side road not far from her house, like she
has every day since her sister disappeared. She goes out rain or shine and
looks at the cars she passes and the handful of people she sees. She wonders if
someone will stop her and say “Hey I’ve seen your sister, she’s okay.”
But nobody does. Alex is left with the thought
“My sister is missing, doesn’t anyone care?”
