Nobody Cries at Bingo (5 page)

Mom recognized their truck as it stopped beside us. “Oh shit, it's the Mormons.”

Two neatly dressed men stood outside Mom's door. They were tall and slim with cashew-coloured hair. Standing next to one another beside our car, they looked like that photo you get with your picture frames before you pull it out and insert the one of your sloppy relatives.

The man addressed her: “Ma'am, do you need some assistance?”

In the backseat, Celeste and I whispered to each other.

“How come he called Mom, Man?”

“Are Mormons the same thing as cops?”

“Why are their pants so neat?”

Up front, Mom considered her options: wait for help in the cold car or take help from strangers? She looked in her rear view mirror. There were no car lights coming up the reserve road so she reluctantly admitted that our car would not start. We were transferred to their truck in a few minutes.

The Mormons lived nearby in three large trailers. Even though we were poor, we associated trailers with poorer people. For instance, Uncle Larry lived in a trailer.

The Mormons were well off. They lived in trailers because the conversion business sometimes had them moving from place to place in search of a better source of souls. They had not yet established a permanent church on the reserve (and never would) but when they did, the trailers would be sold and they would set down roots and basements.

Their trailer was welcoming. We were astounded by the size of their living space. Not for the last time I realized that trailers were like icebergs; you will always underestimate their true size by forty per cent. Even more shocking was the realization that they had no TV. My siblings and I noticed this immediately, but we were too polite to mention it.

Two lady Mormons greeted us at the front door. They took our jackets and hung them up in the closet. My mom, suspicious, kept her jacket by her side.

One of the women offered us some cold juice. With the minus twenty-degree weather outside it was an odd choice. Perhaps the Latter Day saints do not feel the cold.

My mom thanked the woman. I could tell she was troubled because Mom drank only coffee from morning until night. However, she was respectful of other people's beliefs and instead of complaining, said, “Orange juice, what a treat. Yum, that hits the spot.”

After the sharing of juice, the Mormons stared at us and we stared back at them. With no TV, we were at a loss. They had children but they were in bed as it was way past six pm. One of the Morman ladies brought my brother a blanket as he fell asleep on the floor. First, of course, he bounced his head rhythmically for about two minutes before finally dropping off into unconsciousness. With nothing else to do, everyone in the room watched him. The Mormons looked from David to Mom, back to David again.

Celeste kicked David. He grunted and continued knocking his head on the floor.

“It's how he gets to sleep,” Mom explained.

The women continued to stare at him. None of us thought they were being rude. It was a strange thing to witness; even we thought so.

After David fell asleep, the silence in the room threatened to crush our skulls.

“Do you have any books?” I asked the Mormon lady nearest to me.

Mom glared at me. We were under standing orders not to make a fuss in someone else's house.

I couldn't help myself. Unlike Anne of Green Gables, I had no imagination. I had to be constantly entertained with cartoons, a book or a wrestling match with one of my siblings. Already I could feel my shaking hands creeping towards my sister's long hair.

One of the women smiled broadly and left the room. She returned with a large book, the Mormon bible. Eagerly, I grabbed it from her hands. I loved its heft. Inside there were no pictures but there were words, oh so many words. I began to read immediately. The woman was overjoyed, Mom decidedly less so.

“We're Catholic,” Mom said suddenly with no small amount of defiance.

The woman nodded. “We respect all religions.”

“She's . . . made her first communion, y'know, the ceremony where children commune with God.” Mom was reaching and she knew it.

“That's wonderful. However, it is important to allow children to explore.”

Mom gave up. She was no match for someone who had been trained in evangelical tactics since she was ten years old.

I read until my eyes began to glaze over, the whole time aware of my mom's glares boring into the back of my head.

Finally the men came in from outside. They had recharged our battery, fixed a tire that was going flat and done a quick oil change. They were truly miraculous, these Mormons.

Mom offered them some money. Of course they would not take it. For them the giving was the reward. And the chance that it would lead to new converts was a possible secondary reward. Mom picked up my sleeping brother, pushed my sisters towards the door and dragged me away from my bible. The woman pressed some pamphlets into my hand as we left. “Come back anytime,” she said joyously.

Outside Mom smacked the back of my head. “What were you thinking?” she asked, “You have a church.”

I shrugged. If the Mormon lady had handed me a copy of Satan's Bible I would have read it. If she had pressed a copy of
Mein Kampf
in my hands, I would have given it a go. For me, the real reward was a book to distract myself from our ever-changing landscape. No matter where we went or how we got there, I wanted to know that I could depend on a book to centre myself. Books were my cigarettes.

We drove out of the Mormon's yard back onto the main road. Mom turned the wheel north towards our cousins who lived in the valley. We would either go visit my auntie Squaw and her kids or my auntie Bunny and her kids where we would stay for a night or a week or a month. Those decisions would be made in the front seat, and the inhabitants of the back seat would accept them, knowing that it did not matter where you rested your head as long as you woke up with family.

A S
POOKY
H
ALLOWEEN

I
N
S
ASKATCHEWAN,
H
ALLOWEEN OCCURS SHORTLY AFTER THE
first snowfall and right before snow makes itself a permanent nuisance. Sometimes, however, the weather turned bad even before Halloween, which meant our costumes had to fit over our puffy winter jackets. The number of princess costumes ruined by Saskatchewan winters must number in the millions.

Halloween was the night when we would stand beside our mom and hand out candy to the local kids and young adults. I remember the cold wind flowing into the kitchen as my mom drew the trick or treater inward. We'd see plenty of princesses and cowboys and Star Trek uniforms. The real highlight of Halloween was a teenage boy dressed in his mother's dress, his chest padded with his own sweat socks, his deep voice mocking a lipstick-smeared mouth. My mother would grab onto the boy's arm and yell for the rest of the family to come enjoy the show. A boy dressed as a woman! Was there nothing funnier in this world? Not in Saskatchewan, apparently.

Finally, it was our turn. We'd run to our bedrooms and pull our pillowcases off our pillows. Although we would often beg for the fancy store bought candy bags, our homemade versions were even better. They never ripped and leaked out precious candy, and they could fit thirty pounds of candy with ease.

Costumes were the next concern. They were never more complicated than whatever mask our mom found in the drug store the night before.

“Celeste, didn't you say you wanted to be a princess?” she would say handing the mask with blonde hair and blue eye shadow to Celeste.

“That was me!” I always wanted to be the Princess. I felt it was my right as the girl with the longest hair in the family.

“Oh Dawn, don't be such a grouch. Take the ogre mask.”

Sometimes we would attempt to create our own costumes. Since all of us lacked even a shred of artistic talent, this always ended in failure. One year Tabitha tried to make Celeste into a bum. She layered Celeste in oversized clothes and socks, put marker on her face to imitate whiskers and as a finishing touch, exhaled her cigarette smoke over Celeste. Celeste still looked like Celeste at the end of the day, albeit a dirty-faced, smelly version.

Celeste stamped her feet. “I look stupid!”

“Well, I don't know what else to do,” Tabitha said abandoning her project like it was fifth period Chemistry. She returned to her teenage interests (stealing smokes from Mom and pouting.) Celeste cursed her trust in her big sister's ability and went to scrub her face in the bathroom mirror.

Jolene and Adelle, our cousins down the road, lacked even our limited funds, yet they outshone us. They never had store-bought costumes, make-up or masks. Still each Halloween they wandered into our house convincingly clad as witches, grannies and yes, even bums.

“Your whiskers look cool,” I said enviously.

“Wet coffee grounds.”

“Where'd you get your pants and shirt?”

“We tore apart Dad's suit and sewed a patch on the ass.”

“How did you make the smoke stains on your teeth?”

“Oh, those are real.” Adelle and Jolene had been stealing smokes for years.

Every year we watched the Halloween warning films in school: do not walk alone, do not walk down unlit streets, do not wear masks with narrow eyeholes, and do not eat candy before it goes through an x-ray machine. None of these warnings made much sense to me.

I lived on the reserve where there were no sidewalks and the closest house to us belonged to our Great Uncle Ed who handed out candy, money and kittens if you knocked on his door and yelled “trick or treat” — he didn't really get Halloween. Also, he would hand out those things any old night of the year, so where was the novelty?

Even if you had the energy to walk from house to house, you'd only make it to one or two before it got dark and the coyotes started howling. As for the poisoned candy fears, there was no x-ray machine within forty miles so you had to take your chances. Besides it wasn't like we got candy every day. This could be it until Christmas time. Let the city kids throw out their unsafe candy. If there were razor blades in our caramel apples, then damn it, we would chew around them.

One year Geraldine came around to pick us up for Halloween. Geraldine or Gerry was a friend of our mom's. She had two foster children, Dylan and Shane, two boys a little older than me.

Gerry was the same age as our mom but seemed years younger. She wore tight jeans, had short hair, and rode horses. She was energetic and daring; these two qualities were apparent when she volunteered to take us trick or treating with her kids. Mom was shocked. “You want to take ALL the kids? By yourself? Have you been drinking?”

“Sure, what the hell. What's three more? Just adds to the fun, right?!” Gerry looked at us and we cheered. We weren't the cheering types but her enthusiasm was contagious.

Hoping to impress Gerry and her kids, I made an effort for Halloween night. I took two hours to get ready. I put on dark eye makeup intending to make myself into Cleopatra. After lining one eye, the eyeliner crumbled in my hands so I abandoned that plan. I used the left over pieces to draw cat whiskers by my nose. Half way through I realized that without cat ears, I'd look like an ugly man wearing eyeliner. I scrapped that plan. Time was ticking and I had no idea what to do.

Celeste entered the bathroom. “What are you?” she asked.

I shrugged. “What are you?” Her hair was pulled back and there were freckles drawn all over her face and coffee grounds on her chin. She shrugged. “Dunno.”

We stared into the big mirror and knew we had failed again. I had an idea. “Punk Rockers?” We did not know that punk rock was a movement about rebelling against authority; all we knew was that punk rockers dressed weird.

We applied the remainder of Tabitha's make up to our faces. David joined us in the bedroom; he had struggled all afternoon to build his costume. He held a round piece of yellow paper between his teeth and wore an orange hat. “I'm a duck,” he said and the yellow paper fell out of his mouth.

Our costumes impressed him. “Cool, zombies. Wish I'd thought of that!”

Quickly Celeste dissuaded him. “You can't copy us or I'll hit you!”

We walked into the living room to wait for Gerry.

Mom looked up from her book. “What are you? Clowns?”

“No we're punk rockers. And he's a duck that can't quack.”

“If you say so, Sid Vicious,” she smirked.

“I don't know who that is.” I slumped on the couch. “All I know is we wouldn't look stupid if you bought us good costumes.”

Mom denied her part in the Halloween disaster. “Hey, I bought you three perfectly good masks that are just lying on the table. I did my part.”

“Other kids' moms sew their outfits.”

“They're idiots. Why put all that work into a costume that you're gonna wear for one friggin' day and prolly get chocolate all over it? They may have that kind of time to waste but I don't,” she said and returned to her book.

Mom had a point. Still it would have been nice for at least one year to have an outfit that went over your whole body and completely changed your identity — like a fishbowl or a table with cutlery and dishes. I'd seen costumes like that in movies and even on some kids at school. Their costumes said, “We're totally thriving. This child will be a complete success because we know how to plan, sacrifice and sew. This child can do anything, be anything, even a Martian.” Next to those masterpieces, a plastic mask with a piece of string hooked over your ears, looked pathetic. The mask said, “We're getting by, thank you very much. Now, put the candy in the bag and look away.”

Gerry squeezed the three of us into her black Bronco with her three kids. Then she hit the gas like she had a vendetta against staying still and drove us farther and faster than my mom ever had. “We gotta move kids, if we want to hit all four reserves!”