Nobody Cries at Bingo (27 page)

This time it was not a gentle shove. This time it was multiple hands on my legs and arms, throwing me off the dock into the water below. “TABITHA!” I yelled on my way down.

I was not the only one thrown into the water as someone else took the opportunity to push his little brother in, too. Our heads popped up at the same time. I was on the verge of crying when suddenly he laughed. And then I laughed.

I got it, finally. “This is what it means not to care,” I thought myself. “This is pure unadulterated fun.” Fortunately I had enough self-awareness not to utter that phrase aloud.

On the ride home, I sat in the back seat. My sister's best friend sat in front beside her. They discussed their night, its ups and its downs. I can't remember what they talked about, it's not important now, as they've settled into families and careers and wouldn't even remember the boys they laughed about.

Instead, I remember the red cherry of their cigarette as they passed it between one another. I remember their laughter in between the songs on the radio. I see the way their hair moved in the wind, as it dislodged their hairspray and disturbed their feathered bangs. I recall the smell of their smoke, the way it tunneled out the window as we climbed the hill back to the reserve. I can still hear the hum of the car as I laid my head on the seat. I can feel the rough upholstery up against my pimpled cheek and the rocks underneath the car on the gravel road. I remember feeling safe knowing that it was my older sister driving the car and that she would get us home.

T
HE
W
AY OF THE
S
WORD

W
HEN
I
WAS GROWING UP MY HERO
was Conan the Barbarian. He wasn't just a comic book character — Conan was a way of life, a very simple way of life. When Conan wanted something, he took it. When someone stood in his way, he slew them. There were no annoying grey areas when you were a barbarian.

Uncle Frank introduced me, my siblings and all my cousins to Conan. He arrived from Manitoba one day with a bag filled with clothes and a box full of comics. I was ten and had no idea who Uncle Frank was. “This is your uncle,” Mom said pointing at the thin man with no hair sitting next to her at the table.

“Yeah, hi, okay,” I said, breezing by as I polished an apple on my T-shirt.

I would have kept walking had I not overheard the words, “horse ranch.” I stopped short, reversed and sat to my uncle's right as he laid out the plans for possibly the greatest single thing that has ever happened to the Okanese reserve — Uncle Frank's ranch.

Frank had no children but his interests in horses, comic books and candies guaranteed that they would always surround him. From the first day he arrived, all the kids within a three-kilometre radius spent all our free time at Uncle Frank's — a fact, which delighted our bingo-addicted mothers to no end. When the horses weren't available, or the weather was inclement or we had stuffed ourselves with too many cookies and potato chips, my cousins and I gathered in Uncle Frank's living room where we would leaf through his Conan collection. Each week, we'd fight over who got to read the latest issue, but it was just as easy to lose yourself in an old comic while a slow reader mumbled his way through the new one.

Uncle Frank had hundreds of Conan comics from various different series. You see, Conan led such a long and complex life that it had to be told from several different angles. There was Conan the Barbarian, Conan the King, Young Conan and the Savage Sword of Conan. The Savage Sword was my favourite because it was more of a graphic magazine than a comic book. On these pages, the artists took extra time and care to bring across Conan's heroic form, stylized muscles and the blood splatters of his foes. These stories were savoured; each word would be read, each panel would be studied, to achieve maximum Conan absorption.

Every time I opened a new comic, I read the italicized print above the first panel that described the world of Conan, “The proudest kingdom of the world was Aquilonia, reigning supreme in the dreaming west. Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jewelled thrones of the Earth under his sandaled feet.”

Through these magazines we learned all we needed to know about Conan and his life philosophies. There was a recipe for living in those comics: love those who love you and conquer those who don't. My cousins took this to heart and ran headlong into adventures like chasing down the bantam rooster until he turned on them and flew at their faces with his claws. They emerged from their adventures with bruises, scrapes and confident smiles. I always hung back, afraid of breaking a limb or scratching my smooth, plump skin. I knew I could be like Conan too, but in the distant future, far away from sharp claws and bad tempered chickens.

Part of the reason we loved Conan was we believed he was Native. The story of Conan mirrored the story of Native people. Conan was a descendent of the Cimmerians, a noble warrior people who made swords yet lived peaceably. They were attacked and annihilated by an imperial army who murdered the men and women and enslaved the children. Conan was one of those children and the only one to survive slavery (according to the movie.) He was the last of his kind.

This was exactly like our lives! Well, except for the last of our kind business. We were very much alive and well even though others had made a concerted effort to kill us off. Later, I learned that throughout the world, people thought that Indians had been killed off by war, famine and disease. Chris Rock does a comedy bit about this point, claiming that you will never see an Indian family in a Red Lobster. This is a misconception: my family has gone to Red Lobster many times. (However, we are most comfortable at a Chinese buffet.)

In Saskatchewan, most non-Native people were very much aware that nearly a million Native people still existed, mainly to annoy them and steal their tax dollars.

But someone had tried to annihilate us and that was not something you got over quickly. It was too painful to look at it and accept; it was easier to examine attempted genocide indirectly. We could read about the Cimmerians and feel their pain; we could not acknowledge our own.

Once we had owned all of Canada and now we lived on tiny reserves. While reserves weren't as bad as, say, a slave labour camp run by Stygian priests, sometimes life was reduced to survival. Like Conan, all we had was our swords and our wits. And if we weren't allowed to bring our swords to school, then we would use our fists. There was an unspoken belief among the Native kids that we would fight to defend our people should anyone decide to annihilate us again. As Conan once said as he incited a group of slaves to overthrow their master, “I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees!” I think other people have also said this. Most notably, Mel Gibson in
Braveheart
.

My sister Celeste and I made swords out of tree branches and practiced our swordplay in the backyard.

“Today I'm Conan,” she announced proudly.

“No you're the Evil Wizard,” I replied. I refused to be the evil wizard because with my dark hair, brown skin and, well, evil personality, I worried about being typecast.

“You were Conan yesterday.”

“That's because I'm bigger.”

“No, just fatter.”

Thunk!
Our swords met and the resulting explosion reverberated up our arms. It did not matter that Conan was a man and we were girls; we were all Conan in spirit.

Besides, in the barbarian world, women were just as good fighters as men. Conan had several female sidekicks who fought alongside him (and who often became his lovers.) These women usually had long hair, feisty spirits and exceptionally large breasts. Perhaps there was a connection between hefting a sword and breast growth?

The women were just as much heroes as the men. There was Valeria, who was Conan's first love. She figured prominently in the Conan the Barbarian movie where her purple prose helped to cover her co-star's poor English skills.

Then there was Red Sonja who could not be beaten by any man. A goddess gave Red Sonja's her fighting powers and attached a powerful price: Red Sonja could never take a man as a lover unless he had bested her in battle first. Needless to say, this was quite a drag on Red Sonja's sex life. Only Conan connoisseurs will remember his lost loves: Tetra and Belit. Tetra made it through a couple of stories before she died and was reborn as an evil witch who tried to kill Conan. Somehow this experience did not sour Conan on women. He later fell in love with the Pirate Queen Belit. Belit had been a princess whose ship went down. She convinced a group of Kush pirates (who looked a lot like Africans) that she was a goddess and became their leader. Unfortunately as a Goddess, it was tough for her to show her affection for Conan in front of her crew, as a goddess does not have “needs.” I had such regard for Belit and Tetra that I ended up naming two horses after them.

All of Conan's girlfriends were warriors like him; he had no place in his life for skinny little chicks that didn't know how to defend themselves. Conan was very forward thinking for a man who lived in the time before the oceans swallowed Atlantis.

These warrior women were my role models because they reflected the women in my life. Native women were also warriors though not always by choice. They would show up at the band office on Mondays with black eyes, bruised faces and swollen knuckles and tell stories about heroic battles held the weekend before.

“Thought he could just come in and kick me around. Well, I showed him a thing or two.”

“He'll think twice about bringing the party back to the house next time.”

“Kicked him in the ass, right between the cheeks. Sure taught him a lesson!”

Then they would throw back their heads and laugh, sometimes stopping to cough up a little blood.

From what I could see, Native women were tough as nails. My mom worked anywhere from two to three jobs while looking after all of us plus whichever friend or cousin was staying with us. She changed her own tires and siphoned her own gas. Mom wasn't much of a warrior in the physical sense. She had a wry sense of humour that evolved from watching conflicts rather than from engaging in them. In her mind, it was better to mock the fools than to be one of them. As long as you could run faster than the fools, that is.

When my dad would come thundering home after a week long drinking binge, Mom would pack up quickly and stealthily escape through the other door. Then again, stealth is also part of being a warrior. Many were the times when Conan had to run away from an irate King after sleeping with the wrong Queen.

At school, Natives were assigned the role as the ass-kickers. Even if you were a girl, you were expected to be as tough as a boy. And if you grew up on a reserve, you were doubly tough. In grade one when the girls in the class decided to punish the boys, they enlisted my help as the only Native girl in the class. “You're tough, Dawn. Go beat up Matt; he's being mean to us,” they cooed into my ear.

How did they know I was tough? I wondered. I'd never fought anyone in the class; I'd never fought anyone outside of my immediate family. Perhaps they could sense the Cimmerian blood pumping through my veins.

Or maybe it was just that they saw the way the older Native girls punished one another in the schoolyard. They would throw down their jackets and pull out their long, dangling earrings, and run at each other with abandon. We'd make a ring around them so that they could have their privacy. Then we'd chant “fight, fight, fight!” so that they had proper motivation. The fighters would punch, pull hair, scratch, whatever it took to get the other girl down to the ground. For boys, that might be enough. For these girls, the loser not only had to fall to the ground, she had to stay down. And unlike the boys, these fights didn't end with good-natured handshakes.

My first fight happened when I was ten years old. I was outside of a bingo hall with my brother and sister and older cousins. We were playing on the playground equipment when a thin Native girl and her thin brother claimed the swings next to us. The two groups warily watched each other, each labeling the other group as outsiders.