Born with a Tooth (19 page)

He had a hard time concentrating on the first match. De Stubborn Headache attempted to lift Bulba off the ground but collapsed under his immense weight. Bulba lucked out and got an easy three count. Noah looked around him. The crowd had become braver. Kids and adults alike had filled up the third and second rows, and even part of the first. They'd also started making a little noise, but not much. Pink Panther laid out Fritz Von Schnitzel with rapid machine-gun punches, then climbed to the top turnbuckle and flew off, landing with a slap on the convulsing Schnitzel. Victory once again was the Panther's, and Noah was happy to see the good side winning.

Noah watched his hero climb into the ring alongside Kid Wikked. They faced off with Beef and Diesel. Noah's heart pounded. The bad guys dominated the first part of the match. Every time the ref wasn't paying attention, one of the bad men did something dirty. One time it was an eye gouge, another time a kick below the belt. But then Kid Wikked came back from a near tap-out, picking Beef high up into the air, then dropping him straight onto his own back, slamming Beef onto the canvas with a great boom. The crowd actually shouted out at that one.

The Kid tenderized Beef with foot stomps to the stomach, then tagged Chief Thunderbolt. Noah had never seen such a sight as Chief Thunderbolt dashing into the ring, landing
furious blows and tossing Wellington around like a doll. It was obvious that Beef was cooked. He had nothing left. But in the bad guy's corner, with the Chief's back to Diesel Machine, Diesel crashed his forearm onto the back of Chief's neck, a totally illegal move. Chief Thunderbolt dropped stunned to his knees, and Beef tagged out to Diesel. Diesel entered the ring and paced around Chief Thunderbolt like a lion, making faces at a frantic Kid Wikked. Then he began kicking Chief with loud stomps. The Chief fell onto his back, hurt bad. Noah's heart pounded. He could hear the butterflies in his ears. Diesel knelt on Chief's chest, his back to Noah, and raised his arms to the crowd.

This was Noah's chance. He pulled the stocking he'd carefully painted in the bright colours of the butterfly from his coat pocket and pulled it over his head, adjusting it so he could see through the little holes he'd cut for his eyes. He tore off his coat and kicked off his jeans to reveal the costume he'd created, ran from his seat and pulled himself onto the side of the ring. He quickly scrambled up the ropes and balanced himself on the top turnbuckle, lifting his arms wide to reveal the cape he'd painted orange and red and green, the wings of the butterfly. His wings. “I'm doing it” was all he could think. His ears were filled with the roar and rush of his blood, with the butterflies whispering to him, “You're doing it!” Beneath his cape Noah wore another pair of his mother's pantyhose, these ones black like a butterfly's body, and pulled up to his chest.

For the first time he could hear the crowd. He could make out Thomas' and Gerald's voices in the shouting. Some of the women screamed. Others were laughing with excitement. Noah looked across the ring at the awestruck face of Kid
Wikked. He raised his arms higher for the crowd to drink in his costume and shouted, “I am Butterfly Warrior!”

With his back still to Noah, Diesel Machine was completely unaware of his presence. Noah looked down at Chief Thunderbolt. The Chief looked surprised. He slowly, haltingly raised his arm from the mat and gave Noah a thumbs-up. Noah tensed, then leapt. It felt like he was in the air for ever. The orange and red and green cape made of his father's old dress shirt flapped behind him. He had just enough time to watch Diesel's head turn up to him. Diesel barely had time to shout, “Whoa!” before Noah landed on him, Noah's knee sharply striking Diesel's forehead and sending him off Chief Thunderbolt.

Noah landed with a whomp on the mat, and it was much harder and hurt much more than he had imagined. The crowd roared now. He rolled over, the wind knocked out of him, and stared at the lights above him. His knee ached bad, but his friends shouting his name excitedly helped ease the pain a little. Noah sat up just in time to watch Chief Thunderbolt put Diesel Machine in the Strong Bow before pinning him. An egg had risen already on Diesel's forehead and his eyes were closed. Noah raised his arms up in victory. They had won. The Indians had won.

LEGEND OF THE SUGAR GIRL

W
hite men gave Indians a lot of gifts. Guns and outboard motors. Television. Coffee. Kentucky Fried Chicken. Road hockey. Baggy jeans and baseball caps. Rock-and-roll music and cocaine. But there is one gift that no one ever really talks about.

Once there was a young girl. She lived far up in the bush, past the Canadian Shield, so far up that deer could not survive in that harsh place. Her father was a hunter and trapper. Her mother made her family's clothing and cleaned the game that the father brought home, and she stretched and tanned the hides. They traded these pelts at the Hudson's Bay Company post for some of the
wemestikushu
's, the white man's, goods — goods that the
Anishnaabe
, the Indians, found made life a little easier in that cold place. They traded lynx and beaver, moose and marten and snowshoe hare and mink for flour and bright cloth, bullets, simple tools and thread.

The young girl had many brothers and sisters, and all of them helped their parents with cooking and sewing, hunting and trapping. In the winter they kept their home in the bush by the father's traplines, and in summer they moved camp to the edge of a lake where fish were plentiful. This young girl

wasn't so different from other young girls. She had a doll and her brothers and sisters to play with. Sometimes they would argue, but most of the time they got along. The young girl had a good life, especially in the summer, when it stayed light until late in the evening and the family would stay up with the light, playing games and telling stories.

But as all things must, this good life would soon come to an end. One day, after a visit to the Hudson's Bay Company post, the father came back with an ashen face. He sat with his wife and explained to her what he'd been told by the white traders at the post. A residential school had been built near the post, and the government had made it law that all
Anishnaabe
children must leave their families' camps and live at this school. “It won't be so bad,” the white traders told the young girl's father. “Your children can come back and live with you for two months every summer. Think of it this way,” the white traders said. “They will live in our world and learn our ways.”

“And what if I do not send them to your residential school?” the father said.

“Then we are no longer permitted to trade with you, and the government will send the Mounties and they will take your children anyways,” the white traders answered.

The young girl's father told his wife all this, and she cried. She knew they had to do what the government told them.

“We will go deep in the bush where they cannot find us,” the father said. “We will live the way the grandfathers did, and forget about these white men.”

“Even this country is not big enough that we can run away from them,” his wife said. “They have airplanes that will spot our fire smoke. You won't have bullets for your gun. You can no longer shoot a bow well enough to feed all of us. What kind
of life would that be for our children? Running and hiding the rest of our lives like rabbits.”

So the young girl's parents had no choice but to do what the government told them. When the geese left that autumn, they took the children to the residential school, where nuns in black habits, with stern round faces, waited for them.

The first thing the nuns did was cut the children's hair. The boys had their hair cut short so that it poked up from their heads. The girls' hair was cut in straight bangs, the rest of it hanging above the shoulder so that they could no longer braid it as their mothers and grandmothers did.

The next thing the nuns did was dress the children in stiff, itchy clothing. Then they told them that they were no longer allowed to speak Cree. If they did, their mouths would be washed out with soap and they would be struck with a switch. Some of the children laughed, the young girl among them, for they thought the nuns were joking. Who would hit children, especially with a switch? They were not dogs! The young girl was shocked when a nun dragged her to a room, put the young girl over her knee, hiked her schooldress up and beat her bare skin until she cried.

That night, and for the next several months, the young girl fell asleep to her own crying and the sound of the other children crying in the large room lined with beds. They missed their parents and the cook-fire and the smell of tanned leather.

Besides the haircuts and clothing and days filled with clocks and classrooms and spankings and schedules, the oddest thing the young girl experienced was the food that the nuns made her eat three times a day. In the morning, she stood in a line with the others and was given a bowl of grey mush. Then
she was given a little milk to pour on the mush. But the most interesting thing was that she was expected to place a spoonful of sugar, white as snow on a lake, onto the mush and milk. The sugar made the bland food taste good. The young girl learned to like her breakfast because of it. It made a grey morning bright for a while. Soon, the girl got in the habit of sneaking a spoonful of sugar into her schooldress pocket. During the day, when she was bored or felt like a treat, she licked her finger and placed it in the sugar in her pocket, then stuck her finger in her mouth without any of the nuns noticing. She was very careful doing this, for if the nuns saw, they would surely beat her with a tamarack switch.

The days turned to weeks turned to months. The children became better at speaking English, but many still spoke their own language, sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose. Always, when they were caught, they had their mouths washed out with soap and were given a switching on the bare skin of their behinds. The young girl noticed that even the bravest boys, who on a dare would look a nun in the eye and insult her in Cree, could still be heard crying quietly as they fell asleep. The nights were the worst; nuns creeping like ghosts between the beds, hushing children with their bony fingers to their lips. The young girl looked forward to mornings.

When the children were very good, they were given a hard candy, sweet and brightly coloured, that they sucked on until the candy became a sliver, then disappeared. These were even better than white sugar to the young girl. The flavour was deeper, thicker. It made her think of warm sun on her skin, and made her feel the way you feel when you wake up in the morning and realize the day is all yours. The grey days of residential school passed more quickly with hard candy.

Spring came, and the children talked about soon going back to their summer homes by the lakes and rivers. This prospect made the children happy and, when they were happy, they behaved well. The nuns in turn handed out a little more candy. The young girl thought it would be a good idea to bring some of this candy home with her. She began doing favours for the other children, making their beds, tickling their backs, even giving away part of her dinner in exchange for the candy.

It wasn't long before she became possessed by the idea of hoarding candy. If she could get enough of it, she could have candy all the time and her days here would be much happier. She begged and finagled and traded so much that soon the other children began to call her by a new name. They began calling her the Sugar Girl. Some of them meant it to tease her, but the Sugar Girl was proud of her new name. The other children began to admire her intensity and focus on this sweet substance. Before long, they called her this name as a sign of respect.

Summer was a strange time for the Sugar Girl and her brothers and sisters. They had only spoken their language in secret and in whispers all year, and for the first long part of the summer, whenever they spoke Cree out loud, something inside them flinched tense for a beating.

Summer passed quickly, as summers do. Years passed quickly, as years do. Each summer as the children grew, they came back home remembering a little less of their language, until a time came when the Sugar Girl and her brothers and sisters could barely talk with their parents anymore.

During these years that the Sugar Girl was gone to residential school, her mother and father tried to live life as they'd always lived it. Father went out on the traplines or moose hunting, and Mother kept their home. But they were growing
older, and with age comes weakness. To cut and clean a moose is a young man's work, and hauling its weight back home is many young men's work. With no children to help them, the Sugar Girl's parents finally admitted that they had to do what other parents were doing. They moved to the reserve where the residential school was and, with the little bit of money the government gave them, they bought expensive food and necessities from the Hudson's Bay Company. The Sugar Girl's father had no choice but to laugh when he thought about how well the government and company worked together, how they were like two hands of the same body. One hand would give him something, and the other would just as quickly snatch it away.

The years passed, and the Sugar Girl grew up and eventually came to call the residential school home, just as the nuns and government had planned. As she grew taller, the Sugar Girl grew plumper. The nuns' food was very different from her family's food. The sauces, the desserts, the sweet teas and soda pops she discovered — all of them were thick with sugar. In some strange way, this food that she ate and grew to love replaced what had been taken away from her, and when the Sugar Girl felt sadness, the sadness that comes from deep in the stomach, she smothered it with her sugar foods.

The day finally arrived when it was time for the Sugar Girl to leave the residential school. Although she would never have imagined it when she first came there, she was scared to leave. Even though the nuns were generous with their whippings, they also gave her things she needed — her clothing, her food. But what they had neglected to give her was the ability to find these things on her own.