An Excerpt from The Mason House

T. Marie Bertineau

Winner of SVSU’s Stuart D. and Vernice M. Gross Award for Literature

Born in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, T. Marie Bertineau still lives in the Great Lakes area with her family. A member of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community on the L’Anse Reservation, migizi odoodeman, Bertineau has had work published in the journal U.P. Reader and by the Native Justice Coalition and Waub Ajijaak Press. Of Ojibwe-Anishinaabe, French Canadian, and Cornish background, Bertineau regularly writes for the literary community found at carrotranch.com. The Mason House (Lanternfish Press, 2020) is her first full-length work. In addition to winning SVSU’S 2021–2022 Stuart D. and Vernice M. Gross Award for Literature, the memoir was named a 2021 Michigan Notable Book.

“You’re gonna love it here,” Janie said.

It was June now, and I was standing at the end of the hall in the Hubbell house talking to her on the phone. I had returned to Hubbell with Anne and Bo when everyone left Texas in March. Janie, along with the rest of my family, had settled in Oklahoma.

Anne had surprised me in March with the offer to return to Michigan. “Trese, what do you think about coming up north with us for the rest of the school year?” she asked. “Up north” was what we called home. “It might be easier for you to finish the school year in Lake Linden. At least you’ll know people.”

I welcomed the chance to go up north. I certainly did not want to start an unfamiliar school with only three months left in the year. “Do you think Mom and Dad’ll let me?” I asked, doubtful.

“Yeah.” she said, winking. “I already asked.”

I was grateful to Anne for bringing me back to Michigan with her, but it turned out to be a difficult adjustment. There was a vacant air to the area now, and a vacancy in me, too, like those once-lively motels outside Houghton.

One day, hopingtofill the void, Iwalkedalongthegravel shoulder thefewmilestoMason. I was dressed in straight-leg jeans with a three-inch strip of floral fabric economically though tastefully added to the hem to increase their length. They had once belonged to Lisa. The brown suede chukka boots on my feet were a size and a half too big for me, but they were all I had. Anne had passed them down to me; I tripped a lot. I even fell down the stairs at school twice, once spraining my ankle. More of life’s shoe conundrum.

I shuffled along the roadside in my too-big-but-cool boots, kicking grayscale stones left and right, pondering which ancestors might have mined them. I did that sometimes when I thought too much or when I was lonely. Every few feet I passed springs of snowmelt. They dribbled over blunt outcroppings of Jacobsville Sandstone, enhancing the ruddle in the rock. In early spring these rivulets gushed like geysers. I used to count them each Friday on the way to Gram’s. Most of them would dry up soon; the snow was nearly gone.

I had just passed the skeleton of Quincy’s Mill No. 1 its vast banks of windows riddled with broken glass, its brick and block remains scarred and crumbling when beyond the bend the first slanted roof of Mason came into view. I stopped. Beside me, Torch Lake reflected the leaden sky,slunglowlikeacold,emptyhammock.Theblackenedshellofaminingdredgelistedatwater’s edge, its hull swallowed up in muck, its gantry rusted to burnt cinnamon. Across the narrow channel, the spring-brown, wooded lakeshore of Upper Point Mills loomed silent and uninhabited.

Betweenthat andthemill,Istoodsandwichedindesolation.Acar whooshedpast onthe highway probably Houghton bound. A chill pricked. Why was I doing this? Ahead lay nothing familiar. Even Mason felt foreign now. What once was a welcoming sight the sight I longed for, the sight I called home had now become strange. Gram’s house no longer belonged to me. I no longer belonged to Mason. Iturned and headed back to Hubbell. I didn’t know where I belonged anymore. Over the past year, this feeling of not belonging had crept in and taken hold. I’d always reliedonGram tosootheme,butshenolongervisitedmydreams.Maybethatwasthedisconnect she’d given up on me. I had changed a lot since she died. I’d even started smoking. I kept a pack of Marlboro Reds hidden outside beneath an old kitchen sink that was stacked against the rambler. Sometimes I bought Salems, too, like Mom did when she drank. I smoked with Hubbell kids in the woods or in the old shack up the hill, the one pieced together with discarded wood panels in a mix of finishes. It had a flat, water-stained roof that bowed under snow and a floor of pine needles and decaying leaves. It smelled of Marlboros, marijuana, and moss. It was built by the older kids, but sometimes we took possession, when theylet us. We’d sit withinits cold, damp walls and rag about our lives none of us could brag and listen to someone’s bootlegged cassette of Nazareth’s Hair of the Dog. I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to be these days and didn’t necessarily like who I’d become. I couldn’t blame Gram if she didn’t like me much either.

THE MASON HOUSE byT. Marie Bertineau, copyright © 2020 by T. Marie Bertineau. Used with permission by Lanternfish Press LLP. All rights reserved. Photo credit: Natalie Carolyn Photography.