Nobody Cries at Bingo (32 page)

I rolled down the window and spit out my gum.

Mom learned to drive when she was thirty years old. Before then she was completely reliant on others for transportation. With four kids and an errant husband, this meant a lot of weekends stuck at home. A friend laid down the facts for her: she could never leave a man on foot. After a few weeks of instruction on the reserve's grid roads, she went and passed her test.

This is why her teaching style blended instruction with motivational fear tactics. “Do you want to be trapped for the rest of your life? Do you want your grocery shopping to be done at the nearest convenience store? Because I am not going to drive you around like Miss Daisy! No way, Jose. You get your ass into that car and start driving right now.”

She taught the basics well. Parallel parking, shoulder checking, awareness of blind spots and signaling — these were tested and retested until I was a highly capable driver. Mom's problem was she always took it one step too far. “When you pass a car, you have to stay exactly two metres from the car. Exactly!”

I got tired of her rules and sought help elsewhere. “Dad, can you teach me? Mom is driving me crazy.”

My dad could understand that. She drove him crazy too. He was a confident driver, the type of person who in the case of an accident would assume that the car was at fault, or the dog or the train. He laughed at my frustration. “Just tune her out.”

“It's kind of hard when she's sitting right next to you,” I whined.

Besides, she wouldn't let me play the radio or daydream. Whenever she saw my eyes glaze over as I contemplated my new life as a licensed driver, Mom would slap my arm and awaken me to reality.

“Oh no, you're not having any fun yet. Not on my watch!” she said.

Without taking his eyes off the TV, Dad reluctantly put on his jacket and threw the car keys at me. “Let's head to the valley. I'll grab a coffee,” he said.

Driving with Dad was immediately cooler than with Mom. He didn't wear his seat belt and he didn't expect anyone else to do so either. Instead of critiquing every inch of road driven and smacking his lips against his teeth, Dad stared straight ahead and tuned me out. It was twenty kilometres to Lebret and with each one my confidence grew, perhaps too quickly. I drove down the hill heading towards Lebret and left my foot on the gas. Our speed increased and then doubled, then tripled. The short stubby trees that dotted the hills began to fly by.

“Slow down.” The words were delivered in an emotionless monotone. He knew his order made perfect sense and expected it to be carried it out immediately.

It was a simple request and normally I would have calmly stepped on the brake. Before I did, I glanced at the speedometer and panicked when I saw the needle was way over the sixty kilometres that I was used to. I stomped on the brake. The car squealed in outrage and we skidded uncomfortably close to the three hundred metre drop on Dad's side of the car.

“What the hell!” My dad jumped back from his window.

The car slowed to a turtle pace. I gave Dad an apologetic smile. “Whoops.”

“Why would you do that?” He stared at me as though he had just discovered me.

“I slowed down like you said.”

“You stomped on the brake. Why would you stomp?”

I shrugged. “The brakes are touchy.”

“You have to be smooth. Do you understand?”

“Should I start again?”

“No. Pull over.” He opened his car door and walked around to the driver's side.

“Dad!” It was too late. My dad had retired as a driving instructor and would never be lured out of retirement again.

The first driver's test did not go as planned. Expectations were high in any event. Not only did I expect to pass; I wanted a perfect score to wave in my mom's face. “See, I AM Mario Andretti. Suck your breath in now!”

The instructor was a masculine-looking woman who simultaneously chewed gum and sucked on her teeth.

“Turn here.”
Smack. Sigh. Smack.

“Turn here.”
Smack. Sigh. Smack.

“How am I doing?”

“No comment.”
Smack. Sigh. Smack.
“Pull over a bit, you're too close to the middle of the street.”

She directed me out of the city for the two-point turn. I executed it flawlessly and knew my mother would have been proud. Then I turned and drove back towards the city. The instructor asked for another parallel park in front of the motor vehicle department. Parallel parking was my mom's specialty and I almost laughed as I pulled in and turned the wheels perfectly.

She made a notation on her clipboard and told me to follow her in.

I walked in behind her. She went behind the counter. I waited.
Smack. Sigh. Suck.
“Well, you got a perfect score.”

“Yes!”

“I had to correct you once and that's an automatic fail.”

My eyes began blinking of their own accord. “What?”

“Better luck next time.” She turned her attention to her next victim. “Keller? Keller!”

I took my results out to the parking lot where my mom waited.

“Well?”

I could not speak. Mom took the form out of my hand and looked at it. Then she patted me on the shoulder and said nothing.

After two weeks of more lessons, I passed the second test with ease. Everything fell into place. The instructor was a happy looking guy who took pity on my sad eyes and nervous smile. The test was short, only fifteen minutes. Then the instructor shook my hand, “pleasure doing business with you,” and handed me my license sheet.

I walked out the door proudly knowing that from now on I was free to go wherever I wanted, to visit whomever I wanted — forever.

I forgot to read the small writing. The cars were my parents' and the keys were often in their pockets, which meant I was still at their mercy.

“Why did I work so hard to get my license if you weren't planning on letting me go anywhere!” I cried in frustration.

“Life is unfair,” Mom sang.

“My house, my rules,” Dad harmonized behind her.

They were right: life was unfair. Life was also ironic because the last I heard Jolene still did not have her driver's license. And reportedly, she still does not listen.

W
E'LL
T
AKE THE
W
HITE
O
NE

M
Y MOM WAS THE FAIREST CHILD IN
a family of twelve children — a family that large can be legally called a “litter.” Mom's hair before it was grey used to be cinnamon coloured and her skin now cinnamon coloured, used to be white. If we were black, she'd be known as the light-skinned one. Being Native, however, she was just called the fair one or the
monias iskwew
, which means white girl in Cree. Her brother, John, was the next fairest kid.

Mom's fair skin made a big difference in her life. When she was in her early twenties, people thought she was white so she didn't have to deal with the racism that was around at the time. She worked a series of jobs in which she sort of spied on the white people around her. She worked for the lawyer who defended the men in the infamous murder of a young Cree woman in The Pas, Manitoba. When we pumped her for inside information, she only commented, “The lawyer was very nice. Loved animals a lot. And he was enormously fat.”

She talked about being invited to parties that her Native-looking friends and family would not be invited too. “I never thought it was such a big deal, the racism. I floated back and forth. Never ashamed, mind you. It just wasn't a big deal to me.”

Mom's skin also allowed her to date men who were not Native. “I could have married this white RCMP officer, not sure why I didn't,” she'd say casting a sidelong glance at our dark-skinned dad lying on the couch.

The story she liked to tell the most happened when she was a child. She was six when a car owned by a white couple drove up her family's long driveway and parked in their yard. (This was unusual: not that white people had cars — at the time
only
white people had cars. I know it sounds crazy, but this was rural Saskatchewan. We only got running water in the late 1970s. Then we lost it in 1985. Then we got it back in 1986, but we couldn't drink it. Hopefully, this problem will be resolved before the end of the twenty-first century.)

The unusual part was that a white couple was even on the reserve. The world was still segregated back then. Whites did not go near the reserve. Indians did not leave. Although the Indians did not have a choice in the matter, it was illegal to leave the reserve without a permit from the local Indian agent until the late 1960s.

According to my mom, Indian agents abused their power. Some would withhold food rations to make people do their bidding. One agent had affairs with Native girls and when he knocked them up, he forced them to marry single dudes on the reserve. Apparently the job description for Indian agents began with the phrase, “Have you always wanted to visit the prairies and be a huge douche bag to Native people?”

So when a Caucasian couple drove to the reserve, it was a big deal. They and their family were not strangers to Native people. They bought hay and produce from enterprising Native businessmen who snuck off the reserve in the middle of the night to sell it to white farmers. The couple had even hired young Native guys to labour on their land. And like everyone else, they had seen the Native families when they came to town, the mothers wearing a tail of children. Perhaps they had seen this particular family and made their decision then.

Finding your way through the reserve is a tricky business. For one thing, there are no road signs and no addresses. People find their way by memory or else with the help of a guide. Directions are no help unless you've been there a few times, because they tend to sound like, “Turn at the hill that looks like a buffalo hump. Then keep driving past Rabbit Hill, take a right at the old Nokusis place and then a left at the new Nokusis place. If you reach the old, old Nokusis place, you've gone too far.”

When they arrived, my grandfather's yard was full of activity. The couple must have been momentarily entranced by the chaos: chickens, horses, pigs, goats, dogs, and children running to and fro.

Some of the children were in the midst of chores, others in the midst of avoiding them. The kids pulled away from their activities and picked their way carefully through the various types of animal shit to look at the car and the couple more closely. They ran their hands over the car. They stared at the couple who smiled in a friendly way to them. After a minute or two, the kids grew bold and asked them a few questions, “Would you like to buy some eggs? How about some milk? We got goat and cow milk if you want.”

Experience had taught the kids that white people meant money and the kids weren't afraid of money.

The man and woman introduced themselves to the children and began to ask them their various ages. The kids shouted their ages proudly. “Ten” “Nine” “Six” “Twelve” “Four” “Seven!”

About this time my grandfather William made his way out of the barn. He invited them to join him inside the house for tea served by my grandmother, Rose.

Grandma Rose was friendly in a careful way. She washed her hands free from flour and asked them to sit at the table. She was polite to white people but did not trust them. Grandma had attended the Indian Residential School in the valley and still remembered people in white sheets standing outside the school in the middle of the night, their hoods illuminated by the candles they carried.

Then her oldest daughter, Edith, had married a white guy and moved to British Columbia. The man was nice enough; his family was not. In an effort to fit in, Edith was pretending to be Italian. It made Grandma laugh to think of her daughter pulling the wool over her in-laws eyes but it wasn't a happy laugh.

My grandfather knew his way around the white world. He had attended university for a degree in music. He spoke four languages: English, Cree, French and Ukrainian. He felt comfortable sitting in the kitchen of any of the white farmers living around the reserve. It helped that he didn't look like the stereotypical Native: his eyes were grey, his skin was light brown and he often had a full beard courtesy of his Metis ancestors.

My grandfather figured the white people had stopped by to buy some chickens or vegetables from his immense garden. When you have twelve children, you can have a huge garden. And when you have a dozen kids, you probably should have a huge garden.

The couple got right to the point. They wanted to adopt a child. They pointed out the window at a five years old girl playing with her siblings. She was the fairest of my grandparents' children.

“It would be easier for her to fit in,” explained the woman.

“We would be able to give her a good home,” said the man.

“If you can't part with her,” the woman offered, “we could also take one of your boys. That one is also very fair.”