Read Merkaba, a supernatural suspense series (Walk the Right Road, Book 3) for Free Online Page B

spoken of her family and what she had gone through as a child. She had tears in her eyes when she smiled at Alecia. “Little Sikwai, which means sparrow . He was only five years old. I remember his screams because they were my own. But nothing would come from my mouth. I trembled when men in uniforms grabbed me by the collar and put me on a bus, and my brother was screaming for our mother before they dumped him in my lap. I remember the bus pulling away and seeing my mother through the dirty window, stumbling in the mud after us. A policeman was hitting her and knocking her down, and when she was on the ground, he hit her with a club, over and over.
    Harriet got up and placed a pebble on the wheel between the east and west. “The school wasn’t about teaching us or giving us an education. Girls were separated from the boys and taught how to clean to be a housekeeper, while boys were taught a trade, menial labor. Our hair was hacked off on the first day, and we were given scratchy white-man clothes to wear. Ours were burned. One of the teachers there had this triangle-shaped face, these icy blue eyes, and her hair was always pulled tightly back. She walked around with a long yardstick and would beat us with it, our heads, backs, arms. It didn’t matter where she put the welts. It was anger so deep that she carried, and she was given the power to hurt us. And she got off on it—she’d become stronger, more powerful. She gave us our new names. Mine was now Harriet. We weren’t allowed to speak one word of our native tongues or be those dirty Indians again, she said over and over. There comes a point where you begin to believe you’re worthless, you’re nothing. And it wasn’t long before Wayah died, and there was only Harriet.”
    “Wayah means wolf . You never told me that was your name.” Alecia waited, knowing she couldn’t push her mother. She was surprised she’d shared this much. She knew what she’d survived was horrible, but Alecia didn’t know the details.
    “The school’s basic foundation was to destroy the Indian, and what it did was destroy each of us physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. I can remember standing in darkness for hours in line without being allowed to move, scrubbing the floor on my hands and knees until my fingers were raw and my knees ached to the point that I didn’t think I could stand. I remember watching as the other girls were raped, beaten with a strap by the men who wore the coats of God. And it was then that I saw into the face of pure evil. I would recognize that evil now if it walked down the street. You can never forget it.” As her mother spoke in a voice free of emotion, she circled the wheel, seeking rocks and placing them all in the same place between the east and the south. “My brother was sent to the boy’s school, so I never saw him again, but I learned later that he had been beaten so severely that his head was busted open, and he was left to lie dying alone. The other boys were forced to stand and watch and had to lie to the authorities when his tiny body was carted away. They had to say that he fell.”
    There was an eerie silence that fell over Harriet and Alecia as she watched her mother staring out into the trees. Harriet sighed, and something softened in her as she slouched a little and did something she hadn’t done in a while. She lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply before blowing out that poison. Her hand was shaking.
    “When I was there, it was the sixties, and it was said the schools were now civilized, that we now had rights. But we didn’t. We were supposed to see our families in the summer, but I wasn’t allowed. The others, I don’t know. I was sent to be a servant to the wealthy farmhands in the area. The reason, I was told, was that I needed to learn civility. I was ten. I never saw my mother again. I’ve never been back here because as soon as I was freed, I fled and went east with a one-way ticket as far as I could