by Dawn Dumont
The pasture was more Saskatchewan than Manitoba with its flat land and sparse trees. The sky was full of sleeping sun when my mom set the car into park and turned off the motor.
“Wait till I tell our cousins,” I told my sister Celeste as we ran to another bale to pee before bed. “They will be so jealous.”
Our cousins led sedentary lives compared to us. They went to bed at night and when they woke up, they were in the same place. Their lives were not marked with any extended visits to Manitoba or midnight runs back to Saskatchewan. Mom blamed my dad’s drinking for our travels but her sisters had also married alcoholics.
Mom said the difference between herself and her sisters was that she wouldn’t take a lick’en, definitely not in front of her children. It seemed like we had two dads: the funny guy who loved to spoil us with trips to Chinese buffets and KFC, and the other, a stranger with explosive anger and hooded eyes who showed up after midnight.
We kept going back to him or he kept coming back to us. We would be on our own for a few months and then we’d hear a knock on the door. He’d be standing on the threshold with a sheepish, hopeful look on his face. Mom would invite him in to talk and before we knew it, Dad was back in his place at the head of the table.
Other times their re-attachment had a different pattern. Mom would go out with one of her friends to blow off some steam. Inevitably, they would run into Dad at a party. She would mock him with her independence. Intrigued, he would offer her a drink. She would ignore him and talk with her friends, pretending not to notice when his hand slipped around her waist. The next morning Dad would be home and we would celebrate with a trip to the local KFC where he would regale us with his adventures. This is probably why the smell of fried chicken reminds me of my dad’s laugh . . . and vice versa.
I didn’t mind the leaving or the returning. My only frustration was the lack of good reading material. There was nothing worse than arriving at a relative’s house and finding that their library consisted of heavy metal magazines featuring stories like “The Inspiration Behind Motley Crue’s ‘Smoking in the Boyz Room’’’.
At home we had books everywhere. My mother was a voracious reader and finished a novel every two days. I followed in her wake, picking up her books and sneaking them back into my lair, the bed that I shared with my younger sister, which pissed her off. Celeste was always complaining about the hardcovers left in our bed. “I slept on this stupid book and now my spine is broken!”
I couldn’t stop myself. Reading was my addiction and I read from the moment I woke up until I fell asleep at night. There was that moment before I learned to read when I used to trace my hand under the words, understanding that this symbol meant this thing in the picture above. And then there was that next moment, when the code was broken and everything was clear.
Books inspired me, which was easy since I was impressionable, to an unhealthy degree. After a spending a few minutes around a person with an accent, lisp or other affectation, I began to mimic it.
“Stop that,” Mom said, after we left the grocery store.
“Stop . . . doing . . . wwwhhhat?” (The cashier had had a stutter.)
“Keep it up and I’ll make it permanent.”
Characters in books also inspired me. While reading Anne of Green Gables, my personality underwent a dramatic change. My normally pouty outlook became perky and personable. My natural tendency to stay inside, avoid chores and read while sprawled out on my bed, was replaced by an inclination towards singing made-up songs and improvising dances while I dusted the living room. My family noticed and said nothing; they didn’t want to jinx it.
I read that my red-haired doppelganger gave fantastic names to local sights like the Avenue of Shining Lights. So I took my sister Celeste on a high-energy jaunt through the woods where I named all of our favourite haunts. The garbage pit became the Mountain of Lost Dreams, the local cesspool became the Lake of Smiling Waters, and our playhouse became the Mansion Over-Looking the Smiling Waters. Being Anne was tiring, and inevitably I returned to being myself.
We loved our orange and brown wood paneled station wagon. It wasn’t just a mode of transportation: it was a bedroom, kitchen and playground. As Mom drove down the highway, my siblings and I would hang backwards over the seats until the blood rushed into our heads. From this view the world rushed towards us upside down. Sadly, like most fun things, if you did it too long, you’d end up throwing up.
Mom gossiped with her friend or if no friend was available, Tabitha, in the front seat while we played “Not It,” “Freeze Tag” and “Tickle David until he cries.” The backseat was our country and we had free rein over it as long as no one awakened Mom’s attention. Eventually someone would start crying (usually Celeste or David) because someone had been too mean (usually me). Then Mom’s yell would invade our territory and we’d have to sit up straight and face frontward, seat belts slung over our waists. We could not fasten them; the seat belt claps had broken years before. Safety wasn’t the concern, seat belts were merely indications that we had heard and would behave.
In the summertime we never knew where the station wagon would go. A trip to town might become a glorious two-week journey to northern Manitoba or just a no-thrills ten minute trip back home. We’d never know for sure until we saw which direction the hood ornament pointed. If turning left led back to the reserve, then we would whisper, “right, right, right.” Up front, Mom’s hands would drum on the steering wheel until her internal compass pointed her in the right direction.
During the school months, road trips weren’t eliminated but they were shorter and tended to be inspired more by necessity than lark. Most of these trips were of the midnight run variety and as I got older they became more complicated. It’s tough to explain to your teacher why your homework isn’t done, tougher still to explain why you left all your books at home and that you don’t know when you’ll be going home to get them. Extra points if you can explain all this without referencing your dad’s alcoholism.
One night our trusty station wagon stalled on us. We were at the t-stop where the reserve ended and the highway began.
It was November in Saskatchewan, which is a recipe for frostbite. Mom reluctantly opened the door to investigate under the hood. Tabitha slid over into the driver’s seat and all of us in the backseat envied her.
We watched Mom by the light of the car’s beams, jiggling the battery cables with a pair of pliers she kept stashed in the glove compartment for such emergencies. Then she asked Tabitha to start the car.
Tabitha turned the ignition. No comforting roar, no encouraging grunts. Even the inhabitants of the backseat knew that was bad.
Mom moved the cables around some more. “Try again,” she yelled, her voice sounding lonesome in the cold wind.
Nothing.
Her knowledge of cars fully spent, Mom slid into the passenger’s seat and blew into her hands. “It’s cold out there,” she shivered. “Colder than the tits on a witch.”
We giggled in the back seat.
As she formulated a plan, Mom lit a smoke. “Well, no big deal. We’ll just wait for someone to give us a boost.” Once again, nicotine had failed to quicken her synapses.
Tabitha looked out the driver side window at a light far into the distance. “Is that a train coming?”
Five heads turned in unison. David, Celeste and I got on our knees and looked out the windows. The light was huge and coming closer. It shone like a flashlight, except several hundred times brighter and scarier.
I looked at Mom. “We crossed over the tracks, right?”
Mom nodded her head. “Of course.” Then she got out of the car and checked. She jumped back in. “Lots of room.” Nobody sighed in relief. We were all too busy reviewing everything we knew about trains in our heads.
For years Mom had been telling us that trains could suck you under. According to her, it wasn’t even safe to stand ten feet away and throw rocks at the train. To back up her point, she would tell the grisly story of her un
cle who had graduated from the seminary and was travelling home in his long priest robes. A breeze had blown his dress too close to the wheels and the train had sucked him under. “They had to close the coffin for his funeral,” she’d finish. Everyone would shudder at this part, silently imagining what the closed coffin held.
The moral of the story was that trains were dangerous, even to the very good and holy. For years I thought it was a warning not to become a priest or a nun — those long dresses were a menace.
The train roared again. I could almost feel the engineer’s annoyance at our car. I’m sure he was thinking, “What kind of idiot parks that close to the tracks?” But he did not stop and soon the train was practically on top of us.
Trains sound loud from miles away and when they are fifty metres away, you have to cover your ears. David lunged over the front seat and perched himself on Mom’s lap.
Ignoring our mom’s admonitions to stay still and put on our seat belts, Celeste and I jumped over the back seat and got into the back-back. (Well, Celeste did it first and being the older sister, I felt obligated to do the same. At times like these it really sucks to have a brave younger sister.)
There we lay on our tummies, our faces in our hands watching the train lumber past us. Unlike celebrities, sports heroes and priests who shrink with proximity, trains get a lot bigger up close.
Celeste counted every car. I silently observed our position on the road and watched to see if the train was pulling us closer. When the car remained stationary, I was pleased to conclude that trains had no magnetic or gravitational pull, at least not where station wagons were concerned.
“How long is this damn train?” Mom wondered from the front seat.
When the caboose finally sailed past, David cheered happily from the safety of our mom’s chest.
Mom celebrated with a deep drag on her smoke.
It was hard to decide which was more exciting, almost getting run over by a train or getting to see a train up close. Probably the latter because we all hoped that another train would come by soon.
“Our cousins are going to be so jealous.”
“I know, we are the luckiest!”
“Are we going to sleep here, Mom?”
This road was busy as it was only one of four main roads leading into the reserve. In no time at all someone, probably a relative, would pull up beside us and offer their aid. This time, however, help came from an unexpected quarter.
On the edge of the reserve lived a family of Mormons. The land they squatted on belonged to the local town and was dirt-cheap for the simple reason that it was near the Indian reserve. However that suited the purposes of the Mormons for they saw the reserve as an infinite wellspring of converts.
They were often seen driving from house to house, fighting off rez dogs and having tea with the house’s inhabitants. The Native population tolerated them well. It was nice to be visited by a white person who smiled a lot and treated you as their equal. Their church also had the best picnics — or so I heard. We could never go because Mom was fiercely loyal to the Catholic Church that her parents had raised her in. Her brother, our Uncle Larry, felt no such loyalty and belonged to the Mormon, Catholic and United Churches. His kids loved picnics.
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 wo
uld 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 SPOOKY HALLOWEEN
IN SASKATCHEWAN, HALLOWEEN 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.