Bruised and careworn, but still beautiful
Work In Progress, By Ivan Morgan
I first met Alberta Rich in 1986 when I got a job as a computer instructor at the St. John’s Native Friendship Centre.
Some clueless bureaucrats had decided homeless aboriginal people needed to learn how to use office computers and had provided money for that. I applied and was hired. This was long before email or the internet or even hard drives. What was I going to teach them?
Alberta was an Innu woman living in St. John’s. Like so many of her people back then, she had been brought to town for some reason and then released onto the street.
The afternoon I met her she was wearing a salmon T-shirt pulled over her big belly, and black tights. She was tall. On her feet were cheap sneakers, no socks. While clearly overweight, she had the most beautiful face, and as I was to learn, the most beautiful soul.
She had very pronounced high cheekbones, catlike eyes and a lovely, wide face full of kindness and joy. She had a distinctive voice — high pitched, raspy, sexy even. Her hair was shortish, wavy and swept back over her head, out of her face. And her wide thick-lipped smile filled the room. So did her hearty laugh. She would smile so hard her eyes would close. Hard not to smile back.
She looked like an old-fashioned movie star who had seen better days. Bruised and careworn but still beautiful, like Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard (Google it). She looked like no one else I ever knew. She was beautiful like no one else I ever knew. Behind all that bubbly joy was a very deep sadness.
I remember our first lesson. I sat her in front of the computer. She looked at the keyboard, laughing nervously, and put her hand over her mouth self-consciously as she did.
Turning her face to me she asked if she could switch chairs and just sit and watch me “do some computing.” Sure. As I sat there walking her through some of the applications she just stared adoringly at me. It was unnerving.
I did what I could to get her interested in computer lessons. She would mostly giggle and sigh and roll her eyes.
“You really know how to work that machine, eh,” she said with admiration. I told her I could teach her too. The machine has such great untapped potential.
Her eyes widened. “Like what?”
Like being able to store music and video and communicate all around the world for free and tap into practically every book, text or manuscript, movie or video ever created I didn’t say, as like most people, I could not see into the future.
With little conviction I lamely told her if she learned computer, she would be more employable.
Looking at me with her huge, brown soulful eyes, with all the sadness of the universe reflected in them, she asked me, “Why would I want that?”
She had me. I looked at her for a moment and spoke to her with the honesty her very presence demanded.
“Keep taking the lessons. I like your company. I have to do this to pay rent for me and mine. I promise to teach you a few useful things.”
She slapped her hand on her knee with a hoot and loudly proclaimed “Fair enough, darling — just don’t expect me to learn anything!”
We did continue and became fast friends. I learned from others of her horrific life and how she refused to even entertain the notion of going home to Labrador. I once asked her about her life in Labrador. It was the only time. I saw the joy leave her face. She got up and trudged out of the room and left. Message understood.
I showed her things like word processing. She would always listen attentively, being more interested in my interest than in the subject at hand.
She was next to illiterate but appreciated the fact that once a recipe or a list of friends and their phone numbers were typed into the computer, they never had to be typed again. She liked recording recipes.
I never met anyone who had been through more and still had such sweetness and joy. I never met anyone who tried harder to be happy. I never met anyone who failed so spectacularly.
Next week Part Two of Alberta’s story
Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com