Nobody Cries at Bingo (10 page)

While they were tending to their rodent guillotines, I felt a sense of relief. My sister and Rachel were not interested in calling me names. Instead we went bike riding . . . sort of. Rachel rode her bike while Celeste and I walked beside her. We mostly talked about Rachel's relationship with Adrian, which had been upgraded, to “going out.” Rachel was rather blasé about the relationship and refused to giggle or act excited. Her lack of giddiness grated on me.

“You said that you wanted to marry him when we were talking in our playhouse,” I pointed out.

“I didn't say that. I said that he would make a nice friend.”

“You said you wanted his babies. Now are you going to have his babies or what?” Everything else on the trip had turned out badly; I wasn't going to give up on Rachel and Adrian's happily ever after. No ambivalent eleven-year-old was going to ruin the dream.

“I don't know. Okay!” Rachel rode faster on her bike forcing Celeste and I into a light jog. As blood rushed from my head, I no longer had the energy to keep up my line of questioning.

Our cousins lived on the Big Eddy reserve. It was named after the river that cut through it. On one side of the river was the city of The Pas and on the other side was the reserve. Even though we also lived on a reserve, there was still a sense of culture shock. Big Eddy had over a 1000 band members while our reserve had fewer than 300. The reserve had its own shopping mall, rink, school and various band stores. It even had a paved road!

There were similarities too. As Celeste and I walked, the sight of the same cheap bungalows, yards filled with old cars and skinny yapping dogs, comforted us.

Big Eddy teemed with young people. At night, crowds of teenagers and pre-teens walked down its highway looking for something to do. Kids here had social lives. This was new to Celeste and me. At home, our social lives consisted of hanging out with our cousins who lived a mile away or, if we got ambitious, our cousin who lived two miles away. Once we'd walked one of those treks, there wasn't much energy to do anything other than walk back home.

Rachel's friend, Mandy, rode up on her pink bike. Mandy was the same age as us but looked younger because she was so small. She was curious and checked us out from afar before riding closer. I found that people from Big Eddy had a need for the upper hand . . . or maybe they just though they were better. That was a huge insult by the way. Telling someone that they “thought they were too good” was the worst thing you could say about them. With the exception of calling them fat.

Despite still smarting from the insults from the day before, I still had some confidence, inborn from being an older sister. I asked Mandy if I could ride her bike. She said no, explaining that I was too big for her bike. I knew this was unreasonable. I outweighed her by about twenty pounds not two hundred. I pointed this out to her. Mandy continued to demur so I snapped. “Is that a real bike or is it made out of papier mache?”

“You're fat!” Mandy said and then pedaled out of my reach. I thought about chasing after her but there were too many unknowns — like who were her cousins? And how mean were they?

“That Mandy is a jerk,” I told Celeste and Rachel on our way home.

“Oh, yeah. Well, she's cheap, that's all,” Rachel replied. “You can ride my bike.”

I looked up excitedly.

“When we get home,” she added.

Mandy's insult worried me more than I could admit to Celeste and Rachel. It showed me that it wasn't just my cousins; I was too fat for Big Eddy reserve. And if I wanted to make it through the next four weeks, I had to learn to deal with the insults.

Being the fat kid makes you a lot faster on your feet. You must anticipate the insults and be ready for them. I would leaf through the TV guide, making sure to avoid those shows that would call attention to weight. Anything starring Dom Deluise or Dolly Parton was to be avoided at all costs. I didn't anticipate all the jokes that could be made out of Orca or even Jaws. I silently cursed the producers. How could they not know that a movie about a creature composed of blubber or one with razor sharp jaws and huge appetite was an open invitation to fat jokes?

I was the fat kid and barring some inexplicable thirty-pound weight gain in one of the other kids, I'd better buckle down and accept it. I tried to find other labels for myself. I made sure to fix the beds every morning and asked my aunt if I could help her with the dishes. “Well, aren't you a hard worker,” she said.

Yes I am, I smirked to myself. A hard working kid was a helluva lot better than the fat kid.

Malcolm saw through my act, “Hey, brown-noser, get your lardass out here to play some tag.”

(Halfway through the visit, Malcolm decided that it took too much effort to say “Bannock Belly” and started calling me, “Lardass.”)

At home when I felt stressed, I could retire to my bedroom with a book. Here I had no bedroom and they had no books. The only things to do were to play outside with the judgmental wolves or stay inside and watch TV with my uncle whose idea of good programming was back-to-back taped hockey games. I was caught between a rock, and a slightly bigger — way more boring — rock.

I stopped eating dinner with everyone else. There was no real dinner time anyway, not like at our house where we sat around the table and told our mom about our day. This was more like a scrimmage through the fridge and cupboards and then a free for all when one of the kids would decide to cook some Kraft Dinner. I stayed away from the kitchen and ate only when no one was looking.

“Isn't it strange how Dawn is fat but she never eats?” Nathan mused while wolfing down a half cooked cake.

I stared at his chubby cheeks and soft belly and knew that when I wasn't around he was the fat kid. In fact all of the kids, except Malcolm and Celeste, were within a few pounds of me. It was that I had been passed the torch and it wasn't possible to give it away.

I decided to fight back. I studied a picture of Malcolm in the living room. He had to have some weakness that I wasn't seeing. He had dark eyes, slightly slanted — I suppose I could get some mileage out of calling him “chinky eyes.”

But I knew better. My mom had taught us that racial slurs were wrong. My aunt had different views and one of her nephews had the nickname, “Nigger,” on account of his darker than average skin. Celeste and I cringed every time one of my cousins said the word. We asked Rachel what his real name was.

“Gaylord, but he likes Nigger better,” she said without a trace of irony.

Celeste and I avoided directly addressing him for the rest of the visit.

Malcolm had a long hawk nose which some might say was too big for his face. My own chocolate bar nose was a constant source of disappointment to myself and I did not want to invite the comparison. Malcolm's only flaw — if it could be called that — was that he had a set of Mick Jagger-sized lips. My own lips were more big than small so I knew I was taking a chance with this one but it was all I had.

The next time Malcolm fired one of his zingers at me, “Hey, Lardass, I found some gum under the table, you want it?”

I was ready.

“Maybe you should use it to keep your big lips closed,” I replied.

Silence filled the room. Malcolm looked shocked for a second, and then his pillowy lips broke into a wide grin.

“Oh so you noticed I have big lips? What else did you notice?” His eyes crackled with laughter as he welcomed the challenge.

I swallowed. “That's it. The lips. But they're really big!”

In my peripheral vision, I could see Celeste shaking her head ruefully. I had entered a gunfight with only one bullet.

Malcolm laughed. I admired his laugh; if only I could laugh then I could beat him. Malcolm wiped tears from his eyes and began his attack.

For the next few minutes, I listened as Malcolm discussed my weight problem and its possible implications: being harpooned after being mistaken for a land whale, falling into a well and being wedged in it, being shot by a moose hunter and ending up on someone's living room wall. He probably would have gone on but I escaped into the bathroom and locked the door.

“You can't take a joke!” Malcolm yelled from the other side.

Rachel and Celeste urged from nearby, “Ignore him!”

“Don't use the toilet!” my aunt yelled.

Celeste sidled up to the door a few minutes later and whispered. “Just come out. Or let me in.”

It was too late by then. I'd already started crying and once I started it took weeks to finish. Even after I was done, my face turned red and swelled like a tomato. I had to put cold compresses on it to return it to normalcy, which was impossible in a bathroom with no running water.

I climbed on the dusty sink and stared out the window at the dark bushes behind the house. Even though there were bears in those woods, at that moment I felt like I could walk home if I wanted to. Sure it would be hard in the beginning but once I got used to sleeping outside, I'd be all right. I could eat blueberries ((which I loved) until I reached the border, and then once I got into Saskatchewan, I could switch to Saskatoon berries (which I also loved.) The best part was after I got home I would be thin. Way thinner than Rachel, maybe even as thin as Celeste.

I heard everyone settle down around ten pm and came out of the bathroom. The boys were in their bedroom planning the murder of Rachel's favourite cabbage patch kid. Rachel and Celeste were in her room discussing the injustice of Barbie doll clothing not fitting on all dolls. Celeste pointed out, “What if my cabbage patch doll wants to wear a mink coat? Now she'll feel too fat to wear nice clothes.”

My heart jumped at the word fat. I didn't feel like facing them. I walked into the backyard and sat down on the picnic table. The woods looked a lot darker and scarier close up. There was no path through the woods, just brambles and sticks blocking you in every direction. No wonder bears always looked so rough and matted when we saw them down at the dump.

I looked down at my legs as I swung them. Were they fat? They looked the same as they had always looked. (Though a lot less skinned since no one would let me ride a bike since I'd been here.)

I heard a noise a few feet away and looked up. Adrian stood by the camper. He was leaning his beautiful head against it and his shoulders were curled inwards as he silently wept. While every hormone coursing through my body told me to go over to him, I held myself back.

The next morning, I decided to bring in the big guns. My heart told me it was time; I called home. I tearfully asked my mom to come pick me up. She was either having a crisis of money or perhaps she was enjoying her vacation. I turned the tears full blast, and claimed that I was having migraine headaches and that I might be going blind and deaf.

“Well, if you go deaf and blind, then I guess it wouldn't really matter where you are then,” Mom reasoned.

I hung up.

A day later my mom called back. Her cousin Wha-hoo was travelling through Manitoba and said that he would stop by and pick up my sister and me. It was only 500 kilometres out of his way. He was a tall, friendly guy who had stopped by our house a few times and had coffee with my parents. I didn't like the idea of travelling with a relative stranger with a strange name but it was the best plan I had.

Wha-hoo pulled up at my aunt's house in a camper truck just like my aunt's. My aunt and uncle greeted him warmly as they set out the coffee cups on the table. Nobody asked him why he was there. I sat around the corner in the living room and nervously waited for him to tell them that he was taking us away. Mom had expected me to tell my aunt and uncle that we were catching a ride with Wha-hoo and I had not . . . mentioned it.

I didn't even know how to begin. “Um . . . I'm leaving because you think I'm fat.” By saying the words, I would be making the fat real. Instead I chose the far more awkward route of walking out the door after Wha-hoo carrying my backpack and dragging my sister's hand.

“You're leaving?” My cousins were stunned. Why would anyone want to leave Big Eddy reserve? Sure people went away for jobs and school and jail. But kids? Kids LOVED Big Eddy. It was made for kids, it was run by kids! It was the last kid stronghold in the world.

I wanted to pretend that it was my sister who wanted to leave. Unfortunately, her sad face would never back up that lie.

“You can stay if you want,” I had whispered to her the night before. She was loyal and didn't want to stay if I wasn't there. I felt there was some hope for her after all.

I knew I had to say something. I dropped my sister's hand and faced the confused people lining the verandah. The muddy yard was my pulpit and it was my obligation to deliver upon them the truth.

“I must leave you. Not because I want to . . . but because I must. You see, I have a brain tumor. And I'm dying. My mom told me I have to come back and spend my last few days with her.”

I thought my speech might inspire a few shocked gasps, perhaps a few tears, maybe even some regret at the ways in which they had abused me. Instead they only stared.

Malcolm bravely broke the silence. “You got a tumor alright. A big fat stomach tumor.”

Everyone snickered. Even my driver.

Aunt Beth told Malcolm to shut up. Then taking a look at Rachel and Celeste's sad faces, she suggested that Rachel go visit with us in Saskatchewan. The two girls ran inside to pack.

The three of us rode back to Saskatchewan in the back of Wha-hoo's camper. He offered to let us sit up front. We were smart enough to know that awkward conversation was a fate worse than death. We sat in the back of the truck and discussed the one-week visit. Celeste had had a pretty good time. There'd been cookouts and some rowdy games of tag. She'd even managed to weasel a cabbage patch doll out of Rachel's extensive collection.

Rachel confessed that she had broken up with Adrian before she left. “In the hallway as I was passing him,” she explained.