Nobody Cries at Bingo (12 page)

I was into God during these years. Really into God. I prayed all the time and I felt that someone was communicating back to me. I had been reading about Catholic saints and how their devotion to God was rewarded with miracles. I wanted a miracle to happen to me — hopefully, the power of flight — so I told Him that I was ready to do His work. A pretty easy proposition considering that nobody had been into sacrificing Christians for at least a thousand years.

“Whatever you want from me, God, I will do. I will be your willing servant. I am ready to serve you. Just tell me what you want and I will do it.”

I sat still on my bedroom floor and listened. Eventually, a voice popped into my head. It sounded like my own voice. I figured God was just using my voice because he didn't want to drive me insane. The voice told me that I was supposed to help Shane.

“Help Shane?” I asked.

“Yes, help Shane,” the voice repeated impatiently.

I couldn't figure out what God meant by that. Shane wasn't in need of my help as far as I could see. He was the handsomest, cutest boy in the school. He could run the fastest and everyone loved him. He would run down the hallway at recess and make roadrunner sounds as he passed people, “Beep, beep.” He would grab at girls' bums and sing, “feelings, feelings” and we would cover our bums with our hands because that's what we were supposed to do. He would stick his head into the girls' bathroom and scream, “Are you having a bloody good time?!” He was all kinds of charming.

At school Shane was king of the playground. A group of boys followed him and copied everything he did. The girls would whisper to one another about him. Once they found out that I was “his girl,” they also whispered about me. There was no need to be jealous as Shane had plenty of love to share. He flirted with every girl in turn and then ran on to the next one.

Besides it wasn't so great being the “special girl.” One winter Shane found some ice in a ditch by the edge of the playground. Soon he was sliding across it.

“Don't do that,” I said.

“Why not? It won't break,” he said.

I took a tentative step onto the ice. It creaked beneath me. “It's too thin,” I said, as I backed up.

“It's thick!” Shane said, and then he jumped on it to prove it to me.

The ice cracked and his foot went through. The crack moved quickly towards me and my feet sank. The water was only up to our ankles but I still yelled, “You dumb idiot!”

I slogged out of the water only to see a large fire-engine red coat stalking towards us — it was Ms. Reynolds. She was eight feet tall and husky like a football player. I'd seen her ball out other students, particularly Shane, until they were blubbering messes. I'd never been on the receiving end of her wrath. She grabbed my hand in her huge paw and then Shane's and pulled us behind her.

I was too scared to ask where we were going. I looked at Shane; he winked at me.

She led us to the front doors of the school. There, in front of a hundred elementary school students, Ms. Reynold's spanked both of us with her racquet-sized hands. It didn't hurt since we were both wearing ski pants but emotionally it scarred me for life. To this day I get chills whenever I see ice, red coats, and Reynold's wrap.

After our beating we were placed in opposite corners and told to stand there for the rest of recess. Little girls wandered close to me and asked what happened. I told them about the ice and about how Shane had told me it would be okay. They nodded sagely; this was exactly why they did not play with boys.

“I am never playing with you again,” I told him after our punishment was over. “Leave me alone.”

Shane sat down next to me and then said. “Hey, did you know I had pizza last night? It had pineapples.”

“It did not.”

“It did. I promise you! It did!”

“You are a liar.”

“No! I'm SD Best!” This was Shane's name for himself and also his catchphrase.

“Shane!”

“That's my name, don't wear it out!”

Shane and I built forts in our basement and planned our life together. I would draw a picture of our house and show him all the bedrooms and the multiple living rooms.

“This is your bedroom, this is mine, this is Celeste's, this is Dylan's, this is David's.” The houses were always mansions because our future was bright and we planned on sharing it with everyone. We were going to need a very large house.

“I like you, Dawn.”

“I know.”

“I want us to be together forever.”

Moments later the fort would be destroyed, usually by Shane, but the promises remained.

I could hear mumblings through the walls. That's how you found stuff out. Mom and Geraldine's voices were lowered to whispers. It didn't matter how low they spoke because tension flows right through drywall. It would take years to piece the story together but I knew something was wrong, that a door was closing.

In my bedroom, I sat on my bed and prayed. “What do I do God? How do I help my friend?” He was silent so I knelt on the floor, sure that the sacrifice of my knees would show the heavens that I was serious. “Please tell me what to do, God.”

There was no voice in my head.

So I just went on as before. It was hard, though, because everything was changing at once. We hardly got to visit Shane and Dylan anymore because Mom never knew if they were going to be home or not.

“I don't know where Gerry is taking them,” Mom said. “I don't know if she'll even be able to keep them now that her and Richard are breaking up.”

My heart would leap into my throat. I knew a bit about foster children from my aunts who had kept children for years and years. Sometimes the children went away and you never got to see them again.

I carefully chose my next words. “If she's gonna lose them, could we adopt them?”

Mom pursed her lips together and turned away without speaking, which means
no
in every single language in the world. I went to my bedroom and stared up at the ceiling. Was that my moment? Was that my chance to help my friend? When the saints did God's work, it was usually something big like defying a king — of course, they did usually get eaten by lions afterwards.

Things had changed over at our friends' house. Shane wasn't as smiley and Dylan was even quieter.

One day Celeste and I gathered together all the change in our drawers. We even rifled through Mom's jeans and found a few bills. On our next visit, we gave the money to Dylan and Shane.

“What's this for?” asked Dylan.

“It's for you guys. So you can run away.”

“All right!” said Shane, “we can buy some food with this money and go live in the woods.”

Dylan frowned. “Where did you get this money?”

“We found it.”

“We can't keep this, we'll get in trouble if someone finds it.” He pushed it back towards us.

“It's yours!” I was getting angry. For God's sake, didn't they realize that I was trying to do God's work? Why did helping people have to be so damned hard!

In the end, we compromised. On our next trip to town we spent the money on snacks and comic books that we read sprawled out on the boys' bunk beds.

On one of the last days, Shane and I went down to the stable. There was a single horse standing there and Shane caught her. It wasn't Ruby the assbiter, but a calm sorrel horse that had never been ridden (I didn't know that at the time.) Shane grabbed her by the bridle and coaxed her next to the fence where I was perched. He brought her close enough for me to climb on, clambered up in front of me and we rode around the barn.

“I love this horse,” I said. I loved all horses, except Ruby.

“Watch this!” Shane said, as he put his hands up in the air. I'm still not sure what he was trying to show me because at that moment one of his sleeves got caught on a nail on the roof of the barn. The sorrel kept going but Shane's progress was paused. Frantically he tried to pull himself free but we ran out of horse before it could be accomplished. I fell to the ground first. Shane lingered a moment longer in the air, then his shirt ripped and he came tumbling down.

“You idiot moron!” I jumped to my feet and dusted off my behind.

“That was great! Let's do it again!”

“Why do you have to ruin everything!” I said.

Shane laughed.

He ran off and found the sorrel that had wandered out of the barn. He pulled her back and we repeated the process. This time, Shane kept his hands down.

There was a trail that led away from Geraldine and Richard's house. We had never gone that way before. On this day Shane steered the pony in that direction. I clasped my hands around his narrow waist as we rode down the path.

B
OYS
C
ATCH THE
G
IRLS

F
OR THE MAJORITY OF MY SCHOOL CAREER
, I went to Balcarres School or BS as it was known on the side of our school jackets. Balcarres was a small school with less than five hundred students in total even though it included an elementary, junior high and high school. At some point in history the school had been huge. The classrooms had teemed with students and new additions had to be built to accommodate the overflow. Reminders of the school's glory days still lingered; it had a regulation sized football field and old football uniforms locked in the gym supply room. Its heyday had passed a long time before I walked through the door.

Unlike most of the schools in the area, this one was surviving. As other shut down, Balcarres greedily absorbed their students.

Part of Balcarres survival was due to its close proximity to File Hills. Each morning five busses carried the Native students in from the four reserves. Together the Native and white students could barely fill the classrooms, still we managed to create two separate worlds. The segregation began in elementary and grew more defined with each year. You might know Nina Buffaloskull's name in Kindergarten, that she could stuff three carrot sticks up her nose. By graduation you would not acknowledge her or her talents.

I had chosen my world on my first day at the school, as a new student, after February. My parents' — always thrilling — relationship had taken us from northern Manitoba, to Fort Qu'Appelle and back to the reserve in less than six months. My older sister and I had attended two different schools by the Christmas break. I was glad to be starting again; I hadn't liked my other two teachers. Both of them had been young and shrill and really adamant about singing every day.

When I saw Mrs. Green with her salt and pepper hair and her smile, just the right amount of friendly, and the right amount of firm, I knew I was in the right place. That's how everyone felt around teachers like that. You could trust your academic career in their weathered hands.

After the twenty-five year mark, such teachers no longer feared their students. They could size you up in thirty seconds and know exactly how much trouble you would give them. They knew which kids would make it and which kids would be shunted to the back of the classroom. Mrs. Green took one look at my messy hair that had fallen out of its braid, my clothes that were ill fitting but clean, and knew that someone was trying to steer me straight despite my natural proclivity towards sloppiness. It was my eager smile that gave away my defining quality — a desperate need to please. Mrs. Green placed me at the front of the classroom.