Chapter 2

“How long did you think you would get away with it?” He inquired. He thought he would kick her feet out from under her right off the start. He had.

His words hit her hard. She wanted to deny their premise. Could she? Should she?

“Please don’t further embarrass yourself with denials. I have a comprehensive file on your life. You have been living your lie since your first year of university have you not?”

She was scared, she was indignant, she had done so much for these people. She got angry and then she got smart quickly. There was no way out. What did he want, “What do you want?” There, it was out in the open.

He just smirked at her, “What are you offering?” Her mind was flipping through options at just shy of the speed of light or as fast as a highly educated intelligent woman who is about to lose everything can flip.

She arrived at the perfect answer, “What do you want?” He laughed. It was genuine laughter. It seemed to break the tension in the air.

He calmed to become serious again, “I want you to tell me what is going to happen when someone opens up the can of worms that is your past!”

He waited a minute then added, ‘Do you want your perfect life to end today?” She couldn’t help herself, her head was shaking, no. “Then stop scheming and answer my question. Now!”

She started a touch at his tone and the pain that his bark suggested could follow.

“I would lose everything. My position as department head, possibly my tenure. My life would be ruined. You know this. Please what do you want from me?”

“What would it mean to you if I were to make you a member of my tribe.”

She was thinking of her answer when he demanded her attention in the command of his baritone, “Stop thinking and scheming. You just said your life is on the line. Act like it! I want immediate, honest answers to all my questions all of the time. Do you understand me?”

Immediately, “Yes Sir”. Like she had seen in the movies.

“Don’t delay again or by the great spirit, I will ensure you don’t do it again! Now answer my question.”

“It would mean everything to me. I have always felt indigenous in my heart. Iaxan in my soul since I first read the name. All my studies have been about indigenous cultures. All my efforts have been directed toward the betterment of indigenous people. I would be deeply honoured should you and your people embrace me.”

“I thought you might. Now let me ask you a moral question.”

“If you were chief and believed that your primary responsibility in life is to protect the people you serve, what would justify your asking these same people to embrace a known liar who has perpetrated fraud for personal finical gain and prestige for as long as you have?”

Fast answers, “I know it sounds bad but...”

He cuts her off, “I don’t need the butter and don’t even want the bread. Get to the meat.”

Understanding the analogy she says, “I promise I won’t do anything like it again. I promise.”

He chuckles again, “A liar’s promise. You expect me to take that to my people?” His tone rose as he spoke then, glaring at her in silence.

She is beginning to accept that there may be no way out of this. She is physically slumping. He witnesses this.

“Let’s try a different tact,” he offers, continuing, “when, or how do you forgive friends or family, students even, when they have done something you saw as wrong? How do you forgive?”

Fast answers, “I guess when they apologize. The person corrects the issue. Tries to make it right. Stops doing something that bothers me, and I forgive them. I guess.” He’s been nodding along in understanding.

“When the perpetrator makes right you can forgive, agreed?” Now Mary Jane was nodding in agreement. They are making progress.

“So you need to make the wrong you have done to us right. Am I applying you’re reasoning correctly?” He came forward in his garden chair as he spoke. Mary Jane had to nod in agreement.

“So MJ how are you going to make fraudulently changing your heritage using a university computer, a cybercrime, accepting a degree and other accolades under devious pretences, receiving grants, pay cheques and benefits fraudulently for all those years making it grand theft based on dollar values wouldn’t you think?” She hears the last as rhetorical and doesn’t offer an answer.

“Taking away the one indigenous spot available at the university for all these years. Depriving a truly indigenous person of the opportunity and rewards that he or she could have received. That you have stolen from them.”

“How are you going to make this right Ms. Mary Jane Holiday, Dr. Mary Jane Holiday, head of a university department? Respected around the world as a leading academic in indigenous culture who is supposed to be indigenous herself and thus holds evolutionary links to her chosen field of study.”

Tears are now freely falling from Mary Jane’s eyes. She starts to shuffle, “I am indigenous, only from the Philippines,” she whined.

“Tell me MJ, how are you going to make this right?”

Fast answers and she doesn’t have one. Doesn’t have the beginning of one, she needs time. He won’t give it to her he comes again, “No good answers? I’ll bet.”

“I have had someone find out for me just what the university would do if they found out your entire fraudulent history. Their first instinct would be to hush everything up fast. You retire and everyone just moves on. No harm no foul. They may even forget about the stolen funds. Hell, I bet they would even give you a severance. If it was all kept quiet. They just might.”