Nobody Cries at Bingo (36 page)

People were tense. I listened as some people tried to drive away their fear by pretending to be rational. “This is silly. These girls aren't witches. There's no such thing as witches.” The warble in their voices gave away their true conviction. I tried to empathize. If I believed in witches, then I suppose prosecuting (persecuting?) them would be a rather scary enterprise. Perhaps my hands would also be shaking and I would also feel the frequent need to urinate.

At every sound, people looked around themselves defensively as if they expected one of the teenage witches to fly in on a broom. If only Hollywood were around, they could have organized a group of young girls to march up the street with cats on their shoulders and black make up around their eyes! I looked at the road wistfully; no witches materialized. Instead, a black car pulled up and a priest, an Elder and a rotund Native man stepped out of it. It was either the set up to an old joke or our judges had arrived.

Three other families had been notified of the charges against their daughters. We were the only ones who showed up. Once again we had bucked the trends. I grabbed Mom's arm. “Let's just go.” But Mom worried that the real consequences of this fake trial would follow us out of the building and shook off my hand. “We're gonna see this through,” she murmured.

We sat at a table in front of the witch panel. The panel was made up of respected leaders both political and spiritual. On the far right was a councillor for the band. He was a large, red-faced Native man with stubby facial features. He looked exactly like a bear. Next to him sat a Native Elder, who looked like he would rather be on a horse than sitting on a chair, who introduced himself simply as Eddie. Next to him was a middle-aged white priest who called himself “Father Martin.” They would serve as the judges, jury and if need be, witch-dunkers.

As we took our seats, everyone's attention turned to us. I could hear the excitement rise in the room. Everyone now had a witch to focus on. I met all their eyes disdainfully, as I imagined a witch might, and thought about the spells I would cast.

Councillor Bear opened the proceedings with a speech about the nature of evil, which I think was basically an excuse to re-tell the entire
Exorcist
movie. Then he explained that the chief could not attend because of his daughter's birthday party. At the mention of the chief's name, everyone started clapping. By the time the applause stopped, Councillor Bear looked annoyed.

Councilor Bear asked us our names and we told him. Mom's voice shook as she spoke out loud. I stated my name, loud enough for the people at the back to hear. I am not my sister, is what my tone said, and I am not ashamed of her, my stiff posture added.

The latter was kind of true. When I first heard about my sister's tattoos, I immediately thought of trailer trash or rezzed out chicks. Because we were poor, all of my siblings had tried to be better than that. When I left the reserve, I stopped saying, “Aaaahhh” and “ch.” I stopped wearing sneakers with my jeans and hardly ever wore my AC/DC T-shirt out of the house. When the muffler on my car fell off, I replaced it. I wanted to be known as a person of status, not a status Indian.

Pam had no such desire. She immersed herself in rez culture: the accent, the clothes, the obsession with American rap and hip-hop. And she did so without one iota of shame. Because I had tried to hide everything that connected me to the reserve, I was in awe of her choice to do the opposite.

“We are entering a plea of Not Guilty,” I pronounced. These superstitious yokels were no match for me, I was going to beat this rap and then I was going to counter-sue. I would bankrupt the band to punish them for attacking my sister. They would rue the day they ever messed with my family; oh yes, they would be up to their eyeballs in rue.

Now, being only a second year law student, I hadn't participated in a real court yet. But I had watched many episodes of
Law and Order
with my mom, so I felt confident.

Councillor Bear looked at me as if I were a dime that he found on the floor of a casino, pathetic but somewhat useful. When he spoke, Councillor Bear stared at a point above my head as he spoke. “This is not a trial. This is an investigation into the accusations made against your sister.”

He then launched into a description of those accusations. He read from a page of lined paper:

Pam had been seen setting fires in the woods, then dancing around those fires while singing songs about the devil.

Pam had threatened other girls with curses.

Pam had made them have nightmares.

The Councillor called a young girl as a witness. The girl was skinny with heavily eye-lined eyes and purple streaks of dye in her hair. She refused to leave her mother's side no matter how much her beefy mom pushed her. “Go on!”

“No!”

“Get up there.”

“No!”

“Go!”

“Nooooo!”

The investigation stalled there. Not one to give up easily, the Councillor decided to give evidence himself. Not about my sister, but about witches in general.

He launched into a thirty-minute speech about his twelve-year-old foster child who had turned out to be a witch. With her knowledge of the dark arts, she had almost ruined his life. Because of her spells, he had trouble at work, gained sixty pounds and his marriage was threatened. Everything returned to normal after he got rid of the foster child.

“Got rid of?” asked Eddie the Elder, looking a trifle worried.

“Sent her back, y'know. To the orphanage-thingie.” Recognizing that he was losing his sympathy vote, the Councillor yelled, “She was a Satan-worshiper!”

Father Martin looked up as if someone had just called his name. “Satan?”

“Yes. She was a bride of Beelzebub!” The Councillor then explained that devil worshipers and witches were one and the same because in order to get their power, the witches had to marry Satan. This marriage could only take place after their menses had begun. His explanation sounded a lot like the plot for the movie
The Craft
.

Even though Councillor Bear was doing his best to entertain, his audience was beginning to get restless. Mercifully, he called for a coffee break.

“Can we leave now?” I asked Mom.

“No, I want to see what will happen.” Mom smiled politely at everyone who passed as if to say, “See, I'm nice. I'm not the mother of a witch.”

Once we got outside, she pulled a smoke out of her pack. I noticed that her hands were shaking. “What's wrong?”

Mom took a drag of her smoke and then exhaled. “What if it's true, what if she is a witch?”

I laughed. “C'mon, Pam?” I knew my sister. She didn't have the energy to be a witch. Being evil takes motivation; some get up and go. You can't be a witch and be good at video games. You can't spend twelve hours a day watching TV and be an honest to goodness bride of the devil.

Witch life was an active life. Witches went out into the wood and collected bat wings and goat's blood — that took effort. Pam thought microwaving pizza pops was too labour intensive and ate them straight out of the box.

She was not the type to talk around with powerful spiritual beings even if she did have a talent for chatting with her friends for hours. I doubted that spirits wanted to talk about kicking the shit out of the girl who kept stealing other girls' boyfriends. I didn't know any spirits personally but I hoped their interests were a little less prosaic.

But the idea had been planted in Mom's head and she wasn't ready to let it go. “What about that tattoo on her arm? That Love 69, isn't that the devil's number?'

I stared into her eyes and saw real fear there. Her question told me that I had underestimated her fear of the supernatural . . . and also that she had never watched a porno.

“That's not the devil's number,” I said carefully. “The devil's number is 666. Remember when we watched
The Omen
?”

“Oh, I never watch those kinds of movies, those devil-movies.”

“Well, I have and trust me, 666 was the number behind little Damian's ear.”

“Then what does 69 — ”

“Oh look! Breaks over, we have to go back inside!” My mom was an innocent and I wanted to keep her that way.

For the next part of the hearing, Councillor Bear pushed a podium into the centre of the room and told people to come and give evidence against the witches. Nobody got up. Then he plugged in a microphone and placed it on the podium. Suddenly a line-up formed around the room.

Surprisingly, few people were interested in the topic of witches. Many of them seized their moment in the sun to talk about everything that bothered them. We heard about garbage collection problems and mischievous teens that broke windows indiscriminately; we heard tales of huge potholes that were destroying cars and people who never looked after their animals. An individual would reach the pulpit and speak and speak and speak until they ran out of words. Then they would stop, without wrapping up or explaining how their point related to witchcraft. There would be silence as everyone acknowledged that they had spoken and then another individual take the podium and begin their speech.

The mother of the shy witness and also my sister's primary accuser, rose unsteadily to her feet. As she waddled to the podium, her head and body shape reminded me of two conjoined potatoes. She introduced herself as “Edna, a single mother.” Edna held a Kleenex to her face to capture the tears already dripping from her eyes. I was immediately impressed; now this was someone who understood drama!

Edna said she understood how kids could get sucked into witchcraft, there was so little to do on the reserve. I nodded in agreement. It was the same on my reserve. However, despite our boredom, we had never considered witchcraft. True, we did tear up a playing card outside the house at night and chanted, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary” in order to see a ghost. But that wasn't witchcraft that was a scientific experiment. (We didn't see a ghost. Probably this was because as soon as we finished chanting, we started screaming and jostling with one another to get back into the safety of the house.)

Edna said that she wished the chief and council would take pity on the poor children and their poor mothers. Then she finished by telling the audience that she loved her children. She closed her show by dissolving into loud wet sobs. It was the highlight of the afternoon.

I fell asleep for a few minutes around three pm. It wasn't my fault, I have low blood sugar and the early afternoon is the worst time for me. It didn't help that Councillor Bear had decided to re-tell his story about his evil foster child one more time. In the retelling, the girl had gotten even more evil and had somehow caused him to gain even more weight. I stared at his belly as he told his story. Perhaps it was the rhythmic movements of his belly swaying back and forth, up and down, like a bulbous pendulum that led me to close my eyes.

When I woke up the Priest was talking. Father Martin spoke about the church's involvement in the community and avoided any reference to supernatural topics. He said nothing about my sister or any of the accused. He had a benign smile that expressed none of his views on witchcraft.