WINTER 2000

Subordinate

Sondra Ball
Mickleton MM

We both worked in the museum library:
cataloguing old documents,
putting manuscripts into acid free folders.

I was known to a large circle of people,
active in the Mennonite Church,
a name among professional historians.

Almost no one at all had heard of her.
She was known only to her clan,
her family, and a very few acquaintances.

She was born on an Indian reserve,
and had spent most of her childhood
there, or in the fields alongside migrant workers.

She was struggling to master the mores
of the white middle-class people
I had lived and worked among my entire life.

Late one morning, I forced her to the floor
between dusty stacks of old books
in the vault (after carefully locking the door).

“Don’t tell anyone what happened,” I said.
“No one is going to believe you.
They will just think you’re a lying Indian.”

And because she knew I was respected,
and she was just a young Indian,
she never did tell.

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