Nobody Cries at Bingo (3 page)

I overheard my mom and her sisters discussing it. “I didn't even notice it when I rented the place. I just opened my curtains one day and there it was,” Mom said.

“Looks dangerous,” one of my aunts commented.

“I might as well forget about keeping the kids away from it. I could scream myself silly and they'd still run over to it. Look around, there's nothing else to play on for miles.”

It was true. The slide was the only thing in Young's Point that looked like it might have been built with kids in mind, although there was no evidence that kids were supposed to enjoy it. For one thing it was at least three storeys high, a height that was challenging even to teenagers. My aunt's teenage boys had to dare each other to climb it.

“Go on Norm, try it out.”

“Why me? You're the one who wants to do it,” Norman replied.

“Cuz if you don't, we'll tell Dad we saw you smoking.”

“Assholes. Here, hold my smokes.”

Also, the slide was made completely out of a raw, unvarnished wood, and reinforced potato sacks were necessary to its enjoyment. We had none so we slid down on our bums and jackets. Each time you went down, you crossed your fingers that you wouldn't get a sliver in your hand or worse, your butt. Prayer doesn't always work and more than once I would find myself next to Tabitha as she gently pushed a sliver out of my palm.

“Stand still!” she ordered.

“I'm trying!” I said even as I stamped my feet in a hypnotic dance of pain and pleasure. It was scary to have a piece of wood in your hand but it also felt good to have her hands pressing it out. A sliver was so easily healed that it was the best of childhood hurts. In the hands only; a sliver in the butt was not so easily cured. Tabitha refused to work on those ones. Those were Mom's realm and saved for bath day.

Our quiet neighbours followed along beside us and did whatever we did with far less enthusiasm.

“How come they're so quiet?” I asked Tabitha.

“It's cuz they're from the north,” Tabitha explained.

I couldn't wrap my head around that completely. “We're already north.”

“More north.”

“Like the North Pole?”

“No. Just north.”

Mary laughed at everything my mom said, which made her mom's best friend. She would laugh into her hand like a little kid, her laugh escaping in a squeak. “
Eek, eek, eek
.” She laughed especially hard when my mom would say something naughty . . . like about men.

“Go play!” Mom yelled at us as we stood at the doorway from the living room.

In the kitchen they would talk, my mom's bossy confidence slowly overtaking the woman. Soon Mary was opening up to my mom. She talked about how she wanted to move back to her reserve in the north. She said her husband had come down here for work but he had changed. He was no longer nice to her. She felt the need to say these things even though her bruised face and timid manner had already told everyone the story.

“Well, if it happens again, you can come here,” Mom said.

I shuddered as I listened around the corner. Mary's husband was the size of a bear. Our dad's anger was a scary sight to behold but Mary's husband was terrifying even when he was smiling.

Mary laughed at Mom's bold words. It wasn't the “
eek, eek
,” it was a full laugh that came from her gut. “No,” she said still laughing, “I couldn't come here.” Her eyes climbed up the walls of the house, lingering on the narrow beams and thin drywall, the windows and the door with only one lock.

Every day before five o'clock rolled around, she packed her kids up and rushed back to her house. Mom stood at the door and watched her go. She turned to Tabitha — who sat in as Mom's confidante when there were no other friends or sisters around. “If I hear about that man hitting Mary again, I'm gonna rush over there and knock his head off. I swear I will.”

“How will you know if he hits Mary?” I asked from around the corner.

“Was I talking to you? Go play.”

I took a step backwards into the living room and pretended that I couldn't hear my mom's conversation. Adult conversation was interesting, if confusing. How come women always got mad when men hit them? Yet when David hit Celeste or me, Mom never got angry. She'd say, “Let him play with you and he won't get so mad.”

Celeste and I had already agreed that David was no fun and that was that. He would
never
play with us.

Dad showed up one day. There was no phone call to warn us, but Mom didn't seem surprised when he filled the doorway with his broad shoulders.

His arrival was like Christmas to us kids and not just because he arrived on Christmas Day. Without hesitation, Celeste and I launched ourselves onto his lap. We were his girls, his pony-tailed bookends of love.

We also sat there because we were able to push David away with our feet when he tried to get close to Dad. David toddled up to Dad with his chubby hands held expectantly over his head, his tight striped T-shirt slowly working its way up his big belly. He stopped at the base of Dad's chair, and looked up, baring his big dimples and deep soulful eyes rimmed with dark eyelashes only to find himself facing the business end of a stocking foot.

“What a suck David is,” I told Dad, as David's cry rang out.

“He is always crying,” Celeste added, her eyes crazy with delight. It was hard for her to hide her love of making David cry, especially since she was so good at it.

Tabitha and Dad had a different relationship than the rest of us. Their relationship was one of going places. Tabitha's small head looked even smaller next to his as they pulled away in the truck.

“Chips and a drink! Chips and a drink!” Celeste and I sang from the doorway. We were unable to cross the barrier of the doorframe and we yelled our orders by leaning our heads out like flowers straining for the sun. We were confident that Tabitha would deliver our requested goods and we stood at the front door waiting until they returned.

It was in the kitchen that Mom and Dad negotiated their relationship. Neither was good at words so they used silences instead. My mother's long pause as she took a sip of her coffee and stared out the window told him that she would not go back to being hit whenever he felt like it. And he better lay off his damn drinking, too. Dad stirred milk into his coffee cup. The gentle turn of his spoon told her that he was a different man.

Back in the living room, we played happily, as if our toys were brand new. Celeste and I barely fought and we allowed David to sit next to us. Having Dad around made us feel like we were complete. Everything before he came had been an experiment and now our lives were real. We didn't know our new family was built on insecure promises and assurances. To our way of thinking, if Dad was here, then he was staying and now everything would be perfect forever and ever.

Except for one thing; I still couldn't ride my bike. Mom had explained the mechanics of it. “Get on and drive it.” Since she didn't know how to ride a bike herself- that was the extent of her advice.

Tabitha was a pro and had demonstrated the basic maneuvers. “Peddle like this. Push down, pull up. Keep moving and you won't fall over.” She would ride past me, turn around, and ride back and brake in front of me. “See?”

My dad added his sage wisdom. “You gotta just do it.”

“Uh, huh.” I nodded as I took in all their bicycling tips. I also examined my palms, which were pockmarked with gravel from the last spill I had taken. Every fall made me question my desire. “Is it really necessary to know how to ride a bike?” Why couldn't I just run everywhere? Or get Mom to drive me?

Watching Tabitha fly by, I knew it would be impossible to keep up with her if I didn't learn. And too, I could feel a pair of brown eyes watching from the steps. I didn't have to turn to know what I would see there: a pudgy little girl with golden hair. Celeste's eyes told me that she was determined to do whatever I could do, and preferably better. When we weren't working together to thwart David, Celeste and I were competing with one another to be the cutest, most loveable girl in the world. I knew this without knowing this and it was a powerful motivator. I could not give up.

I grabbed my green bike with its banana seat and began my journey. I pushed it beside me around Young's Point. I jumped on the bike, and rolled forward with it for a few second. It began to sway to the left so I jumped off. “Crap,” I said.

I ran beside it for a few seconds before jumping on again. I went around the Young's Point circle a full time without pedaling a single complete revolution. I imagined that everyone in the little houses was watching me and noting my failure.

“How you doing?” Tabitha called from the front yard where she was pumping up her tires. They were covered with patches but they still went flat every twenty minutes.

“Almost there,” I answered, as I jogged past.

I glanced at the kitchen window. Celeste sat cross-legged on the kitchen table watching me like an envious Buddha. Her eyes gave me a jolt of energy and I ran a little faster.

I tried again, the bike swayed heavily to the right and I jumped off. This was hard. My face felt red and sweaty and I was on the verge of giving up when I felt it: a warm hand on my shoulder. I looked behind me. There was no one there. I didn't feel scared because I knew what it was. A guardian angel. I had learned about these in my catechism class held in the church basement. Everyone had one and they were there to protect us, and, in my case, to teach me how to a ride a bike.

A few seconds later, I jumped on my bike . . . and didn't fall off. One moment, I was running beside my bike and the next, I was riding it. I could feel the wind in my face and the gravel being crushed beneath my tires. I whispered my thanks to God and then added a small apology for calling his helpers stupid. I had every reason to be magnanimous; I had my bike, my family, and Young's Point. I was unstoppable now.

I S
LEPT
T
HERE

F
OR MOST OF MY YOUTH, MY FAMILY
and I were nomads wandering from province to province. My siblings and I were experienced road travelers before the age of five. We knew what to pack for a trip, and what snack to bring. We knew how to balance our pop intake with bathroom breaks, though we were kids and the odd accident sometimes occurred, which is why David wasn't allowed to sit in the middle of the seat. We could play all day in the car, sleep in it all night without ever, not even once, getting carsick.

It's our destiny to travel; we're Nehewin, more commonly known as Cree. It was the French who started calling us Cree, which meant big mouth. I'm going out on a limb and assuming it was meant as an insult. The name caught on and everyone started using it, including us. There are a few Native organizations that still use the word “Cree.” That's like the French calling their government, the Association of Frogs. The Nehewin weren't exactly innocent when it comes to name-calling. Eskimo is a Nehewin word, which means raw meat eaters. This name also caught on, for many years much to the chagrin of the Inuit.

Traditionally, the Nehewin had no cities or towns, just places they visited depending on the season. Our territory stretched from the centre of Canada up into the early arctic, south into the Dakotas, east to Quebec and west to the mountains of British Columbia.

The tribe members were not random wanderers; their travels had a point. They were following the buffalo herds. This animal was our tribe's primary source of sustenance, shelter and fashion. The Nehewin's travelling habits were curtailed when the buffalo population, once an ocean of brown on the plains, withered to a few hundred. The Canadian government stepped in and created protected reserves for the buffalo where they now grow fat but remain wild. Then they created reserves for the Native people where they grew also fat and remain a little wild.

The travel agent for all our childhood excursions was a fun-loving young woman with a wild laugh; some may have called her daring, others reckless; we called her Mom. She followed no buffalo herd; only a desire for a better life that she felt was a hundred miles in the other direction. Mom was also a nomad for another reason; sometimes it is the only way to leave a man — this man being our dad.

“Shhh . . . get your shoes on. We have to go.” Mom would shake us awake. We would climb out of our warm bunk beds, without complaining.

From an early age, my siblings and I were practiced in the art of getting dressed in the dark. We'd pull on our jeans and t-shirts discarded the night before beside our beds, and stealthily slip on our jackets, like pudgy ninjas. We were a well-oiled machine . . . except when it came to our shoes. They were always the hardest to find. They would wander from the sides of the bed into the laundry hamper or find their way to the porch. Too many times I spent rummaging through the shoebox with my mom's angry whisper behind me, “C'mon, c'mon!”