Nobody Cries at Bingo (34 page)

Sandy was wrong about the second point as well. While we didn't wear our pride on our sleeves, we didn't want to be any other race. I wanted to make sure that Celeste was on the same page, so I asked her, “Do you want to be white?”

Celeste looked at me as I had grown horns out of my head. “Of course not,” she huffed.

I was relieved. The white girls already had everything; they couldn't have my sister too.

“So what did you tell her?”

“I asked her why would I want to be white? And she said, ‘how rude Celeste!' I told her if she mentioned it again, I would punch her in the mouth.” My sister smiled at her own viciousness.

I felt sorry for Sandy. I'm sure she was surprised to find out that even though the whites considered us inferior, we did not.

The white kids dominated the school while the First Nations kids pretended they didn't care. But they did care, and they showed how much by dropping out. When I started junior high, there had been at least fifteen reserve-raised girls in my class. By the time I graduated, there were none left. The others had transferred to city schools where they fit in better, where there were more Native students, more guys to crush on, more parties to attend. There were more races in the city too, so racists had to split their attention among Asian, Black, Aboriginal and immigrant students.

My old best friend, Trina explained, “In the country I'm an Indian. Up here, I'm a minority. You know?” I missed my friends but I understood their reasons for transferring schools.

I was lonely, but I knew things weren't going to change any time soon. I consoled myself that there were only three more years to go. I could deal with having one friend in some of my classes and blending into the wall in my other ones. There was always recess when I could detach myself from my classmates and join the small group of Native and Metis kids hanging out at our table in the library. We would survive.

While becoming invisible at school was a natural choice for me and my introverted siblings, this strategy wouldn't work for the brash and confident. When my aunt Beth had trouble with her two oldest sons in The Pas, Manitoba, she decided to send them to our school. One of them, seventeen year old Malcolm, had gotten into trouble with gangs in the area. They had offered him a choice between joining the gang or getting beat up. Malcolm chose to beat up the guy sent to beat him up. Though Malcolm had no fear of repercussions, his mom was scared for him and his younger brother Nathan — and drove them five hours south in the middle of the night.

They stayed across the road from us at Uncle Frank's. For my siblings and me, it was like we had been in a coma and now someone had brought us back to life with a shot of adrenaline straight to our hearts. From the day they arrived, Celeste, Dave and I were hanging out at Frank's. We loved being with our cousins who had lost none of their enthusiasm for everything mischievous. We watched as they transferred a tractor motor into a truck frame in order to make the world's first “truck-tor.”

“So are you coming to our school?” I asked.

“No, the goat is going to home school us,” Malcolm replied. “Boy, you ask a lot of dumb questions for someone who's supposed to be smart.” Malcolm was still as charming as ever.

“What's the school like?” Nathan asked, “Are there lots of pretty girls?”

“You're gonna have trouble — they don't like Natives at our school.”

Malcolm shrugged. “Where do they?”

A thrill went down my spine. My cousins weren't scared; they were big and bold. They had faced down violent, drug-crazed gangs; the spoiled white kids would be no match for them.

Nathan was in my year and I couldn't have been happier. Our first class together was math. I felt so proud seeing him walk in wearing his black jeans, ripped jean jacket and leather vest. I smiled at him and called his name. Every head in the class turned towards me; the other students had forgotten the sound of my voice. Now with the support of a cousin who HAD to be friendly with me, my voice was already louder and more confident.

Nathan sat behind me and tapped me on the shoulder to borrow a pen, then a piece of paper. Then he tapped me again. He handed me the piece of paper that read: “Where are all the Indians?”

I wrote, “This is all there is.” And handed it back. He read it nodding. Then he stared out the window for the rest of the class.

At lunchtime, instead of eating my lunch alone in front of my locker, I went to look for Nathan. I wanted to explain to him that it wouldn't be so bad, that he and I could have lots of fun even if no one ever talked to us. “We can study and we can write papers together and in science class, we can even share a microscope!”

By the time I found him, he had already found his friends. The school had built a place for students like Malcolm and Nathan. Half school, half detention centre — Remedial — was the holding cell for students who could not make it anywhere else. There were a lot of Native students in Remedial.

“You guys don't belong here,” I argued. “You both have good grades.”

“Nope. We failed our placement test,” Nathan said. He described how they had fooled around during the test period.

My self-esteem depended completely on my grades so I could not understand how someone would want others to think they were stupid. Nathan and Malcolm believed that the sacrifice was worth it; now they could hang out with the only other Native students in the school and do less homework.

I chided them for taking the easy path even as I inwardly congratulated them for finding a way out of the jail I'd been sentenced to. They rejoined their motley crew. These were students who had been sidelined early in their academic careers. All boys — they came from the poorest families on the reserve.

I recognized some of them. David had been in my class until grade four when he got stuck on math. Then there was Everett, who often switched schools three or four times a year, depending on which relative was keeping him. There was Jack — nobody knew what was wrong with him — but he had never been in regular classes. All of them had an unfit, unkempt look about them as if they had been looking after themselves since they were small children. They were the lost boys, and Malcolm and Nathan were their Peter Pan and Tinkerbell.

One of the lost boys was a white kid known as Samuel. He was mentally disabled. I don't know how the remedial students treated him. I knew that the mainstream students treated Samuel poorly. On a bus ride to a track meet, a few of the white boys had made him sit on the floor of the bus. I wanted to speak up but making a big fuss out of terrible situation can sometimes make it worse, so I didn't. (Also, I am a coward.)

My cousins adopted Samuel into their gang along with the other lost boys. They walked downtown together and hung out in front of the ice cream store. Malcolm and Nathan would flirt with girls and the lost boys would stand in the background and grin. Then they would wander back to the school at their leisure. After school, Malcolm and Nathan bid Samuel adieu, piled the rest of the Native boys into their truck-tor and drove everyone home. It had been two days and my cousins already had a better social life than I'd ever dreamed of.

Two new students — even Native ones — in the middle of the year did not go unnoticed by my schoolmates. The white guys noted their proud posture and their large muscles and decided to ignore them. The white girls kept looking and some went even further. Ginnie was a tall blonde in my sister's class. In the morning biology class, she whispered to my sister that she was interested in Malcolm and by afternoon's English class they were a couple.

“I like dating a Native guy,” she cooed to her friends as Celeste and I walked by. “He's a bad boy.”

Celeste rolled her eyes. “I hate that. Just cuz he's Native, she assumes he's wild and crazy.”

It would have been insulting except that Malcolm WAS wild and crazy. If he auditioned for a high school production of
Rebel Without a Cause
, Malcolm would have been the first person cast. His clothing, demeanor, language and even his walk screamed bad boy. I wasn't surprised that Ginnie was excited about him. They were a good match. Ginnie was also something of a bad girl; rumor had it that she had had intimate relations with a vegetable. It was also rumored that she had started this rumor herself.

Their romance became the talk of the school. Heads turned as they walked past. Both Malcolm and Ginnie found the interest exciting. It made me nervous. Before Malcolm and Nathan came along, Natives were disliked but generally ignored. Now, our dark skin was attracting attention.

A group of boys called out Malcolm and Nathan about a week after the relationship with Ginnie started. They told Ginnie that she had to break up with Malcolm or else they would fight him. Ginnie told the white boys, “I can see whoever I want! Nobody owns me! I may be a beautiful white woman but I am not a prize to be fought over!” The boys ignored her hysterics and told her the time and place.

Malcolm and Nathan gathered up their lost boys a few minutes before the fight. Celeste and I hovered near them.

Everything I knew about fighting I learned from watching movies. “Don't worry, it'll be over before you know it. Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee. Eye of the Tiger. Kumité,” I said, as I bounced around them, my anxiety making me bouncy.

Malcolm smirked. “Has anyone ever told you how much you resemble a chipmunk?”

Just him. Many times. I covered up my cheeks defensively. “I'm worried, that's all. I don't want you guys to get hurt.”

Malcolm laughed. “We won't even fight. You'll see.”

The white guys had not expected them to show up; this was apparent in the nervous smiles that crept across their faces.

Nathan wore a confident smile that comes from knowing that you will not be beaten.

Malcolm wore the stoic expression of someone who approaches violence as though it is work. And, not hard work, more like distasteful work, like taking out the garbage. The rest of the lost boys looked bewildered. This was more attention than anyone had shown them in their lives so far.

As the lost boys fanned out behind him, Malcolm walked forward and told the group of pale guys in front of him that he was ready.

Celeste and I stood on the sidelines. Ginnie hurried over to join us. “Today, I am a Native,” she said bravely and put her arms around Celeste and me. I was grateful that she had not found a feather to wear in her hair.

The white boys began the process of backing down. A young diplomat — I think he was on the student government — stepped forward and told Malcolm that it was all a big misunderstanding, “Nobody wants any trouble. It's just that . . . ”

“What?” Malcolm asked.

“That you guys think you can run this school or something.” The guy said it apologetically.

“Who says we don't?” Nathan asked. He laughed, which took the sting out of it.

A few others joined in the laughter and Malcolm allowed himself a faint smile.

It looked like the fight was unraveling until one guy — a known bully — yelled, “Samuel!”

Samuel stood in the centre of the lost boys; his height making him stand out like an oak among the willows. Slowly he turned his attention to the bully.

The bully gave him a charming smile, “Samuel, what are you doing with these guys? We're your friends.”

Samuel was confused.

“Whose side are you on Samuel? You're not an Indian, you're white!” the bully yelled.

Malcolm looked at Samuel. Samuel looked at the group of white boys and he broke free of the lost boys to join them.

“They made you sit on the floor,” I wanted to remind him. “They treated you like crap.”

Malcolm turned his lost boys around and walked away.