Nobody Cries at Bingo (25 page)

“He probably wants to shine your medals,” I offered dryly.

Samantha grinned and went to the back to sit with him. Mike gave me a shy smile.

I slid over. He sat next to me and I noticed that he smelled kind of nice. Perhaps, second best wasn't so bad after all?

Mike talked about their last ball game and then said something that surprised me even though it shouldn't have.

“I was talking to my mom last night and I told her about you.”

“Oh.” My face turned red as I realized he liked me. Oh yes, he smelled very nice, I thought as I leaned closer.

“Yeah, she said we're cousins. Weird, huh?”

“Nope, not weird at all,” I said flatly and slid closer to the window.

Within a few hours, everyone on the bus was asleep, except Samantha and Jared, who joked together the whole ride home. Even though it pained me to hear it, eventually the sound of their laughter lulled me to sleep.

T
HE
C
ONSCIENCE

M
Y OLDER SISTER
T
ABITHA WAS THE SUPREME
ruler of her four younger siblings since the first of us stumbled out of our mother's womb. I'm sure she sighed when she saw my head, “What is this now? I am already so comfortable being an only child. I have my toys, my bedroom, my pet chicken. What am I supposed to do with this round-headed, chubby-cheeked interloper? Must I feed it, must I pet it, must I like it?”

She chose to enslave us. “Go get me a pop.” “Open that door.” “Close that door.” “Hit yourself.” No matter what the order was, we would rush to complete it for her, often banging into one another in our haste.

Everything Tabitha did was perfect. She would place her long legs on the walls and shimmy to the top of the hallway in her bare feet. Then she would look down at us with her head resting on the ceiling as we stared up at her, open-mouthed. “How did you do that? Are you magical?” Later, we would try to imitate her but our short legs would not allow it.

Tabitha could take her bunny rabbit T-shirt and make the rabbit hop by tugging on her T-shirt. She could take an ordinary apple, suck on the seeds and pelt them across the room like bullets from a gun. As we danced around trying to avoid the seeds, we wondered: how could one person be so talented?

Tabitha was also our in-house baby-sitter. She made the rules and then broke them depending on her mood. As the next oldest, I was Slave No. 1. Not an exaggerated title — it was a real title, with attendant privileges and obligations. Those privileges included having the choice seat next to the bag of chips and second last cup of pop. And, of course, I had a measure of control over my bedtime. Often I got to stay up later than my other two siblings and keep her company as she waited for our parents to get home from bingo.

Celeste felt this was unfair since I was only one year older than her. She fought this injustice with the determination and persistence of the French resistance. Long after we thought she had gone to bed, I would hear her creeping down the hallway. When she reached the doorway of the living room, I would spot her from my perch on the couch. I mouthed the words, “Get to bed.”

“No!” Celeste mouthed back, the word escaping from her lips, making it sound like a petulant ghost haunted the hallway.

Then depending on my annoyance level at her various shenanigans during the day, I let her sit there a few minutes before I ratted her out. It was a never a question of IF. I would rat her out. I had to. Staying up late wasn't a privilege if my other two siblings could experience it. Also, if I didn't tell, then I might lose my place as Tabitha's favourite. I had angered Tabitha once and still remember the stinging feeling of seeing my siblings raised to the level of demi-god in my place.

Once caught by Tabitha, Celeste screamed at the top of lungs as we pushed her towards the bedroom. She cried hysterically, “It's not fair! Dawn gets to stay up!”

“Well, you're not Dawn, are you?” Tabitha coolly replied. Her younger siblings never flustered Tabitha. If I yelled that I hated her, she smiled and said, “I love you too.” What could you do in the face of such self-possession?

Celeste screamed all the way back to her bedroom. Then as the door was shut and held closed, her screams got momentarily louder until they receded into violent sobs and then, mercifully, turned into grumbles as she made her way back into bed.

Afterwards, Tabitha and I watched TV in the living room. “That kid drives me crazy,” Tabitha said, allowing me to see a crack in the wall.

“I know, I know,” I murmured comfortingly as I poured more pop into her cup.

People never understand how lonely it is at the top. I understood. After all the kids had gone to bed, Tabitha had no one to talk to and certainly no one to run and get her snacks. I stepped in and filled the void. I would sit next to her on the couch and watch music videos with her and agree with her comments. “Bryan Adams is a babe, I would marry him in a second.”

I thought he was gorgeous too. Even if I didn't think so I would never making the mistake of offering a different opinion. The duty of Slave No. 1 was to be agreeable and comfortable company, not unlike the TV itself. I had seen what happened to people who were not agreeable.

During one period, Tabitha and I watched
Rock'n'Roll High
School
at least a hundred times. The movie went completely over my head and I couldn't figure out what it was about or why the Ramones were hanging out in some teenage girl's shower. “I wish that was me,” Tabitha sighed. I — on the other hand — checked behind the shower curtain every night with some trepidation.

Tabitha who was five years older than me was in high school by the time I reached Junior High. My Judy Blume books warned me that the transition from child to teenager was a precarious business. Tabitha made puberty look easy. She slipped her slender shoulders into a faded denim jacket, and shone. She eased her way down the hallway, a mixture of elegance, grace and confidence . . . surrounded by all the fun people. I squeezed my chubby bum into pink jeans and chased the crowd, always ending up on the fringes. I clung to my friends and they peeled my hands off of their arms. “Be cool, Dawn. Be cool.”

I paced in my room and formulated plans for popularity. “If I could just throw a party, I know I could get a lot of friends. Now how do I throw a party? I need beer. How do I get beer? I get fake ID. How do I get ID? I become friends with an older kid. And how do I make friends? I throw a party . . . This is impossible!” I would throw myself face first on the bed.

Celeste listened to my concerns and offered tips of her own. “Maybe you could just serve coke at your party? Most people like coke except for David, he only likes 7-Up. That's why I drink it all up on him.”

Tabitha would know how to fix my unpopularity but she was too busy with her friends to pay attention to me. Everything had changed when she reached high school. She had no more need of Slave No. 1 or even a chubby sidekick; she had real friends who had cars and could drive to visit us. I was not pleased to be booted from my lofty position and I made my displeasure known. I played pranks on her, hiding her car keys, hanging up on her friends when they called, and telling on her for not doing her chores. Not surprisingly, I was not her favourite person.

Nothing I did could quell her popularity. Five minutes after our parents went to bingo, her friends arrived at the house. Celeste, David and I would be excited to see all the teenagers in their leather jackets and blue jeans. “Hi, who are you?”

“Where's Tabitha?” they asked without even glancing at our faces.

Our desperation for company could not be easily dissuaded. “What's your name? How old are you? Is that your car? How come you wear only black?”

Tabitha rescued her friends and ushered them past our curious eyes. Her bedroom door shut in our faces.

We stood outside the door listening to the laughter and music. They were having a party right inside our house; this was impressive. We weren't invited; this was disappointing. The three of us retired to the living room and returned to irritating one another as best we could.

When annoying each other became boring, we turned to annoying other people on the reserve. We had a party line on our phone. This invention allowed many families to share the same phone line. Everyone had his or her own special ring and you only answered the phone when you heard your ring. At least you were supposed to. We picked it up whenever it rang and listened to other people's phone calls. Most of them were boring discussions between old people who were dying of something terrible. If you were lucky you might encounter a conversation between two teenagers. Boyfriends and girlfriends were the best. You had to be careful not to giggle. Clark, a fifteen-year-old who lived about twenty minutes from us, had a girlfriend in the city and he was attempting to seduce her from his bedroom on the reserve. Every night he tried to convince her to buy a bus ticket and travel all the way to Balcarres.

“What would I do there?” she would ask smacking her gum.

“There's lots to do,” he lied smoothly. I nearly choked on my water.

“I'm not going to have sex with you,” she replied sharply.

“I just want to be near you. To hear every breath you take . . . every move you make . . . I'll be watching you.”

I made a sound that was a cross between a cough and a snort.

Clark heard this and his tone immediately changed from Sting-inspired wheedling to annoyance. “Who's there?”

I held my breath and went completely still.

“Get off the phone, you fucking creep, before I kick your ass,” Clark snarled.

I knew he was bluffing; he didn't know who it was. It could be any kid from any of the ten families on our party line. Still maybe my breath was recognizable! My hand shook as I returned the phone to its cradle. Then I hurried into the living room where I became indistinguishable from my siblings.

While playing with the phone one night, I discovered that if I dialed our number our own phone would ring. Tabitha was having one of her meetings in her bedroom and I decided to bug her. I dialed our number and let the phone ring a couple times. I heard her bedroom door open. She always answered the phone as 90% of the time it was for her. As she hurried down the hall, I answered the phone. “Hello? Oh hi, Mom. Tabitha? Oh she's busy right now, she has a bunch of friends in her room so we're looking after ourselves . . . – “

Tabitha wrenched out of my hand. “Hello? Hello?” Her relief immediately turned into annoyance as she realized what I had done.

My brilliance was rewarded with a glare from Tabitha who then dragged the phone all the way into her bedroom where it, too, was locked in. David shook his head at my stupidity. “Clark is calling his girlfriend in ten minutes — tonight he's trying to talk her into sleeping in his bed — and now we're going to miss it. Idiot.”

Tabitha and I were further divided by our innate differences. If you put her in a room with a group of people, they would be drawn to her quiet confidence in a matter of minutes. If you put me in a group of people, I would find a book and ignore them, too ashamed of my incredible need to be liked to reach out. If there were no books, I would try to impress them with my knowledge of trivia. Sometimes Tabitha called upon my talents. Once while driving us home from school, she gave a good-looking guy friend a ride home. “Dawn, tell Zach some trivia.”

I pushed my glasses up on my nose and they quickly slid back down. “Well, what kind of trivia? Animal, place or thing?”

“Anything!”

Zach turned to me. He had green eyes, dirty blond hair and a huge head. “C'mon little Einstein, teach me something.”

“The . . . uh . . . the human head weighs 8 lbs.” Though, yours might weigh a lot more I thought to myself.

“That's funny, little Dude.” Zach answered. “Do another one.”

What was I? A human trivia jukebox? Part of me felt indignant at being displayed for this stoned slacker. The other, more dominant part of me, savoured any attention. I began spitting out facts without pause. “Diamonds can cut glass. The gestation period of an elephant is twenty-two months. The average human eats 100 spiders a year.”

When we finally dropped Zach off, I was shaking and sweating from pure effort. My sister bought me a pop.

The phone rang off the hook day and night for Tabitha. It seemed like she was always on her way out the door to a party, a concert, or god knows what type of tomfoolery. I begged my mom to set down some rules or invest in a cattle prod. I felt that my sister was headed for ruin. I'm not sure what kind of ruin — I was relatively ignorant on that subject. There were a few girls in my sister's year that had dropped out due to the size of their bellies. There was a listless shadow of a teenager walking the halls, his personality stolen by drugs. When he walked past, other students whispered, “Burn out.” There were students who had run-ins with the law — they got special visits from the police and even free rides up town. There were brutal fights on school property in which girls tore at each other's faces like wild cats and the loser wore the marks for months. I didn't understand the reason behind these things but I knew they must be avoided.

Like most parents, mine had no idea what they were doing. Tabitha was the oldest and the first teenager Mom had to deal with so Mom made up irrational rules. While she was outside hanging the laundry, one of these rules popped into her head. She declared it to us as we sat at the dinner table. “From now on, when Tabitha goes out, she will take Dawn with her.”

“And me,” added Celeste stubbornly.

“And me!” chimed in David.

Nobody paid any attention to them. Only ten and eleven, they had recently worked together on the theft of seventy-five dollars from Dad's wallet. Everyone knew which side of the trouble they worked on.

I don't know how Mom knew that I was the Jiminy Cricket of no-fun. Perhaps it was the way that I always told on everyone else. Maybe Mom had discovered this fact from viewing the neat placement of all my board games, with all original places still intact, beside my bed. Or maybe it was the time she walked into my room and saw me lecturing to my cousins and younger sister about the proper way to play with Barbie dolls. “Barbie has no desire to kiss Ken. Okay? He and Barbie are just friends. Also, Jolene — this is for you — Barbie does not like walking around wearing only heels, understand? She likes clothes.” Somehow Mom sensed — correctly — that I had a special knack for sucking the enjoyment out of any activity.