Nobody Cries at Bingo (9 page)

When the game went well, the best you could hope for was getting to huddle in the dark, cold woods without getting a beating. Yet the whole game was worthwhile for that 30-second chase that happened when the Sasquatch spotted you. You'd run as fast your short legs could take you over the uneven terrain. The Sasquatch toyed with you, sometimes running past you and slapping the back of your head as he passed. You'd try to turn but he'd already be ahead of you again. You both knew there was no chance you could escape him at this point but you'd run anyway. And giggle nervously. This took away most of your breath so finally you'd fall onto the ground, paralyzed with laughter and fear. The game taught me a lot about night navigation and reconnaissance work. More importantly I realized I could run and pee myself at the same time.

Another reason we loved having our Manitoba cousins around was they always had at least one extra boy with them: a boy that we weren't related to! This was something new for Celeste and me. One summer they had a foster child named Adrian Fox staying with them. Fox: even his name suggested how cute he was. If you were wont to have daydreams about tall, dark and handsome princes, as I was, then Adrian fit the role perfectly. Even better, he came neatly packaged with a sad story of abandonment by his equally beautiful but depressed mother.

“She went crazy and tried to kill herself, right, Adrian?' Malcolm said behind the barn as he teased a rooster with a stick.

Adrian nodded with a soft smile on his face.

I was in awe of his reticence. Here Adrian had the saddest story in the world and he wasn't taking advantage of it. I talked about everything bad that happened to me. Once one of my uncles said that my younger sister Celeste was prettier than me and I didn't stop talking about that for two years.

I didn't even need to tell people in order to derive satisfaction from the story. On days when I was particularly bored, I would sit on my bed and replay those fateful words, “You're pretty Dawn but Celeste is like a wildflower . . . ” until I could make myself cry all over again.

Then after my supply of tears had run low, I rehearsed my brave speech to the offender. “A wildflower! Then what am I? A weed? A dirty stinkweed! What do people do with weeds? They cut them down! I am not a weed you mean, old man — I am a flower and there is no such thing as an ugly flower! You cannot appreciate my beauty because you are a sad, old man and you have no imagination.”

Now if I'd had a crazy, yet beautiful, mother and abandonment under my belt, I would have been set. Such unfortunate circumstances would have supplied me with enough self-pity for two lifetimes.

Adrian's story made him even more adorable to us. What girl wouldn't want to heal Adrian's broken heart? Celeste, our cousin Rachel, and I had crushes on him. Publicly we declared that we loved Corey Haim but we all knew that a real Adrian was a thousand times better than a distant Hollywood beau.

Each summer while the boys spent their time taunting the farm animals until the animals chased them, the girls decorated our playhouse in the woods. That summer, however, Adrian's presence lured us out of the bush more and more often.

At Malcolm's suggestion one night we were even cajoled into a game of strip poker. The game was a favourite of Malcolm's who thoroughly enjoyed mooning his younger cousins as they hid their eyes and screamed: “Gross!” He drank our disgust like ambrosia.

Strip poker was a new game for us. If one of the boys had suggested it before, all of us girls would have said, “No way, as if!” Adrian's presence made strip poker less repulsive, exciting even. We had no cards so we improvised with a bottle. Wearing three sets of clothes each, the game moved pretty slowly. Sadly the bottle never went near Adrian. Malcolm got impatient with the evening's pace and mooned everyone; unfortunately this was the moment that our parents walked in the door.

After our first foray into nude gambling, we girls began to play strip poker on our own. Strip poker gave us insight into one another's progress through the mysterious, and mostly gross, miracle of puberty. Some of us had breasts, some of us had hair in new places, some had neither. The dark light we chose to play in obscured anything else. Our cousin Dotty was the oldest of all of us and we were in awe of her breasts.

They were huge and Dotty was understandably very proud of them. Dotty had always been big. At least once a day someone called her names like huge cow, fat slob, and lazy pig. Adults can be very cruel. Unfortunately, having a life-long experience with obesity did not make the insults go down easier. But, the breasts took the sting out of the insults about her weight.

“I don't know why they tease me,” Dotty said to me one day. “It just makes me eat more.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, as I tossed another handful of potato chips into my mouth.

At the end of July, Auntie Beth had enough of living out of a suitcase and decided it was time to return home. My brother, sister and I begged my mom to let us go visit our cousins in Manitoba. My mom wouldn't let my brother go — he was only nine, six in personality — but she agreed to send my sister and me.

As this was going to be the longest visit ever away from home, Mom figured I wouldn't be able to do it. I was notorious for trying to walk back to our house in the middle of the night or calling my mom and tearfully asking her to come get me. She tried to give me an out: “You don't have to go. You can stay home and play with your brother. I'll tell the kids you have to help me out.”

I blanched at the thought of hanging out with my brother for the whole summer. His idea of fun was making car crash sounds while sitting on a pile of gravel. Not exactly an eleven-year-old girl's style. Besides, I knew it would kill me — literally — if my younger sister was off having fun and I was not. And then there was the Adrian factor. This morning, he had spoken to me. Sure he just said, “Can you pass the milk?” But it was the way he said it!

Even though we would be gone for four weeks, I didn't see the weeks so much as I saw it as twenty-eight days and twenty-eight chances to kiss Adrian. I replied that I would not need my brother's company for I was travelling north.

My aunt and uncle loaded us kids into the back of their pickup truck. As I look back, I wonder at the generosity of this couple. Who takes on another two kids when they already have seven? What drives people to want to be around children in such numbers? I suppose locking them in the back of a pickup makes the job easier.

The camper was its own country with its own customs and conventions. First of all, you weren't allowed to sleep. That was clear from the get-go. As soon as you lay down your head, the other kids descended upon you like a flock of hungry crows. You'd be teased, kicked, pinched and tickled. You would have no rest until the leader — Malcolm — was ready to rest. Unfortunately, Malcolm had the constitution of an ox and never slept. So neither did we.

Malcolm was one of those rare individuals who enjoy torturing others. Physical, emotional or verbal — it made no difference really, all forms of torture brought a gleeful smile to his face. I suppose child psychologists could have found the root of his anger and given it a diagnosis. I liked to think that he was mean simply because he was good at it.

The second rule of the camper was that you could not cry. Only pussies cried. If you couldn't hold it in, then you had to do it quickly and quietly before an adult noticed and started asking questions. Questions could lead to adult interference, which would inevitably lead to less fun. This rule was difficult for me because crying was a hobby of mine. I cried over pretty much everything including things that had not yet come to pass.

“Why are you crying now?” Mom had asked the week before, the “now” declaring her impatience with my favourite pastime. She didn't even stop sweeping the floor as she listened for my response.

“Someday Barkley is going to die,” I hiccupped. Barkley was our giant brown German Shepherd whose hobby was hiding in the grass next to the main road and chasing after cars that drove past our house.

A car eventually killed Barkley. Considering his daily itinerary, I think that's the way he would have wanted to go. Ironically, I didn't cry when I heard the news, although I did cry when I imagined our new dog, Barkley II, getting hit by a car.

It was a six-hour drive to our cousin's reserve from ours, and in between we stopped off at a provincial park. Aunt Beth pulled a plastic tablecloth over a picnic table and unpacked a few KFC family meals as all the kids made a long line in front of the table. I put two pieces of chicken onto my plate, looking forward to the fun that we would be having this summer.

“Two pieces? I never saw a girl eat two pieces of chicken before.” I looked up into my Aunt's surprised face.

“I always eat that much.” And more, I thought to myself. This would definitely not be a four-piece day.

Her question was uttered in a soft tone, not judging, just surprised. That softness was enough to awaken the wolves. Malcolm, in particular, smelled blood in the air. His head cocked to the side as his cunning mind began to formulate the insults that were to come.

After lunch was over, my uncle locked us back of the truck. While I would have rather spent the time napping from the heat of the sun beating down on the camper, the others wanted to play a game of Truth or Dare.

Without consulting one another, all three of us girls had decided in advance that we were going to dare each other to kiss Adrian. We would all respond to the dare with exactly the same high-pitched giggle, a softly uttered, “Gross, I can't” and then a reluctant dive towards his handsome face.

As anyone who has played it knows, Truth or Dare is a dangerous and revealing game. Before the ride was over, we discovered that Nathan did not like to eat dirt off of Malcolm's sneaker, that Adrian had a crush on Rachel and that I had a chubby belly. I already knew this. I had stared at myself in my mom's bedroom mirror enough times with my shirt lifted. I had memorized each and every curve of my tummy. I also knew that if I stood on my toes and sucked in deeply, you could almost see the shadow of my ribs. “That's what I'll look like when I grow up,” I whispered to the mirror nightly. The ritual was completed with a quick dance as I hummed Madonna's “Like a Virgin.”

I acknowledged that my tummy was chubby, but that did not mean I was fat and I said as much to the camper crew. Malcolm begged to differ. “You are fatter than everyone else here. So that makes you: fat.” Nobody dared disagree with his logic.

Malcolm also noted that my tummy had the consistency of bannock dough and so my new nickname was born: bannock belly. On their own, those two words weren't so awful except when you put them together, then they packed a nuclear punch. The repetitive “b's” gave the name additional power. Thank God my name didn't start with a “B” or the nickname would have stuck so firmly I would have been obligated to add it to my driver's license. As it was the nickname preceded my name awkwardly. “Bannock Belly Dawn.” It didn't quite fit and I would have suggested something more alliterative like “Dumpy” but that was hardly in my best interest.

By the time we reached our destination and Uncle Jack opened the back of the truck, I was ready to pack it in. I mentally rehearsed my phone call. “Mom, I've decided to accept your offer. Now if you can just drive six hours north and pick me up, I will gladly spend the rest of the summer making car sounds with David.”

When I saw the phone sitting on my aunt's living room table, I did not run to it. Six hours was not even close to one month and I couldn't give up so quickly.

Auntie Beth showed us around the house. There were three bedrooms, one for my aunt and uncle, one for the boys and one for Rachel and my sister and me. There was one door left in the hallway. “That's the bathroom,” Auntie Beth indicated. “The toilet doesn't work.” She pointed at the outhouse about twenty metres away from the house. “That's where everyone goes.”

Celeste and I stared at the outhouse.

“I'm kind of sorry I came,” I whispered to Celeste.

Celeste shuddered. “I'm sorry I drank two cokes.”

That night as I fell asleep next to Rachel and Celeste, I resolved to be stronger. Everyone got teased, at one time or another. This could be character building, I told myself. Someday I would thank Malcolm for his teasing. For a few minutes, I imagined various scenarios in which I delivered my thanks to Malcolm. In each daydream I was thin, beautiful and rich as I delivered the words, while Malcolm did not fare so well as he fought off leprosy, morbid obesity and a severe goiter.

The next day the boys were gone before the girls woke up. They had woken at the break of dawn and run off to do boy stuff. Before they had left for our reserve, they had set a bunch of traps in the woods and needed to check them. They returned later that day with the desiccated remains of gophers and gopher-like creatures.