by Dawn Dumont
Instead, my first time on a university campus was in braces, with an unruly mullet, pimply skin, and my escort was my shy and awkward (yet abnormally loud) family. I told myself that nobody on the campus would remember when I returned in six years, or if they did, then they would say that this was my ugly duckling stage.
We parked in the lot and Mom marvelled at the price of parking. “Five bucks for the day? That’s freakin’ crazy! Do these idiots think we’re made of money?”
“Everyone takes the bus. You have to watch every dime when you’re in university,” Dad replied. “To save money for your booze,” he added with a wink.
Mom glared at him as she always did when he was trying to be cute.
“Hey!” Celeste pointed to the car where Tabitha was still sitting inside with her earphones on.
Dad knocked on the window of the car. “Hey, get out of the car.”
Tabitha ignored him. She was good at ignoring people.
Dad looked at Mom for help. Mom shrugged her shoulders. “She doesn’t want to go.”
“But we made this trip for her.”
“She doesn’t want to go.”
I cupped my hands on the car window and stared in at Tabitha. She was sixteen and university was only a year away. Was she too embarrassed to be seen with us? We were a motley crew, especially David who always had food on his shirt. I considered getting into the car too. But when I weighed the danger of humiliation against unfulfilled curiosity, my nosiness won out. I had been seeing university on TV and in movies for years. I had to see it in real life.
“Well, let’s go then,” Dad said. “Let her overheat in there if she wants.” He marched ahead of us.
Under her breath, Mom murmured, “She can always roll the damn window down, she’s not a puppy.”
Dad walked confidently through the campus. The rest of us followed in a clump with the weak ones in the middle, the stronger ones on the outside . . . in case the university students were prone to attacking families.
I kept separating myself from the pack. My look said, “I am not with them, I am just a particularly short university student. I find them quite odd myself. Why is there a family of Native people walking through these hallways? Who brings a baby to a university?”
My cover was blown when Mom yelled at me to keep up. New situations brought out her bossy nervous self.
I expected the university to be filled with Hollywood stereotypes. The movies I had watched would have prepared me for the characters we would encounter. There would be the well-dressed blondes and their jock boyfriends. The girls would wear their cheerleading outfits to class and we would know the jocks by their huge muscles and their bullying of nerdy guys. The nerds would be wearing thick glasses, pocket protectors and shy smiles. They wouldn’t be much to look at but they would be the best, most loyal friends you could ever have, and, if needed, they could make jet fuel.
But there were no jocks or cheerleaders or even nerds on the campus that day. The only people we saw were Asian students who sat on benches and talked quietly amongst themselves.
There were other things to look at that excited me. There was the huge library that was more difficult to get into than the airport.
My dad had to use all of his charm to get us past a middle-aged librarian lady. “I used to be a student here, a few hundred years ago,” he said smiling roguishly. “And now I’ve brought my future students for a look around. Dawn! Celeste!”
I stepped forward and the librarian’s beady eyes passed over my uncomfortable grimace and settled on Celeste’s confident golden glow. She nodded and allowed all of us to pass through.
The family wandered around the stacks of books and I nearly fainted when my dad said there were three floors. I wanted to see each and every floor, and stick my nose into each book, smelling the knowledge inside.
“That would take a long time. And your brother and sisters have to eat.”
“I’m prepared to sacrifice their health to stay here longer.”
My brother’s whines dragged us in the direction of the food court. Mom wouldn’t let us get more than a cup of free water. The prices were at least twenty per cent more than they would be anywhere else in the city. Apparently, poor university students had to pay for convenience. “Lots of people stay on campus; it’s easier to get to class,” Dad explained. “Plus it’s cheaper and -”
“Every dime counts.” Celeste and I said in unison, Celeste slightly faster than me. She could be very annoying sometimes.
We walked past a concrete student residence as two girls exited. They looked no different from us except that their clothes fit them and their sweaters did not smell like someone else’s cabbage. Still they weren’t spectacular. I could not sense that they were inherently better than me so I decided that living with them in residence would not do. When I went to university, I would get my own apartment and I would decorate it how I wanted it. It would be a cool hang out for both the jocks and the cheerleaders. And I’d even invite the nerds over once in a while to play dungeons and dragons.
As we backtracked through the halls, I noticed that university was a place of opportunity. You could see that from the bulletin boards, which I studied in detail. Take Korean lessons, take karate lessons, buy a late model Hyundai — which would I do first? I had to do them all!
Eventually, my parents dragged me off the campus even as I argued with them. “I don’t understand why I can’t stay at least one night. Here’s someone who’s looking for a roommate.”
The tour ended the way all our tours ended — with a visit to a Chinese buffet. We had a few favourites and we were known at each of them. My dad liked to be known, particularly from his university days. “Hello Mr. Lee,” he would say as he slapped the tiny man on the back.
Mr. Lee fake-smiled and acknowledged their former relationship. “You can sit anywhere with your tribe.”
“How about I pull up a chair at the buffet?”
And he and the Asian man would laugh and laugh. The rest of us would walk way and sit down at a table. Being friendly was important, but ordering your pop and getting to the buffet was more important.
Dad always encouraged us to try new things. “Don’t just eat chicken balls.”
“I like chicken balls,” I said.
“Try the fried fish. C’mon try it.”
“It looks gross,” I observed.
“You don’t know until you try it.”
Celeste would pipe then up, “I love it, Dad!” which forced me to eat it.
“It IS gross,” I whined through a mouthful of mushy fish.
Dad turned away from me and shook his head sadly in the direction of the velvet dragons hanging on the wall. ‘You’re not daring,” his head shaking said, “you won’t have what it takes to make it the city.” I choked down the fish as if to say, you’re wrong about me. I will do whatever it takes.
The drive home was always a quiet one and gave us a chance to absorb everything we had seen and heard. Next weekend we would spend on the reserve playing in the woods, riding horses at Uncle Frank’s or sitting on the back steps drinking lemonade. That wasn’t real life. That was the waiting time for what was to come.
THE INDIAN SUMMER GAMES
MY ATHLETIC CAREER STARTED WITH A FIT of crying in the backseat of our car. Mr. Broderick, the most athletic teacher ever, had devised a system for improving athletics for all the elementary school students. He was an energetic and tireless person; this was evident in the book-length newsletter he released at the end of my grade six school year. In the newsletter he had assessed the grade point averages and athletic prowess of every single student from grades one through to six. Beside my name were my student average, my team name, “The Trojans”, our intramural scores for the year, and then a short comment that summed up my worth as a person: “Not very athletic.”
After I read the words, there was a stunned silence as my brain temporarily shut itself off. They say shock is a protective mechanism. Sadly it only lasts for a
few minutes. The pain slowly dribbled through my mind’s security doors. I expressed a rain cloud of tears and heaved myself around the back seat of the car. “Why oh why would he write that — for everyone to see!”
My mom had pulled up in front of the reserve’s band hall where all the parents had been invited for an assembly about summer activities for the kids. As I cried in the backseat, she urged my sister and brother out of the car. “Get out. She’s not going to calm down anytime soon.”
David and Celeste stood next to my window and watched the tears stream down my red face as I pounded my head against the back of the seat. It kept their interest for a few minutes before they decided to wander inside.
I continued my crying war against injustice. Because of Mr. Broderick’s cruel comments, I would now bear the dark brand of “not very athletic” . . . for the rest of my life. Everyone in the province was probably sitting around their kitchen table laughing as they read those words; “Look at this Dawn, not very athletic. Funny, I never noticed that before. Now that I think of it, Mr. Broderick is right. She isn’t. In fact she probably never will be! Ha ha ha!”
My eye caught my sister Celeste’s review. “Strong runner. Talented athlete.” Oh great, more proof that my sister was better than me. Like that point hadn’t been hammered home at every family get together. “Oh look how tall Celeste is! That Dawn sure is short!” “Celeste is growing like a weed! Is Dawn getting shorter?” “That Celeste could be a model and, Dawn . . . well, she could be her sister’s agent!”
In order to torture myself further, I read through everyone else’s ratings and no one, not a single student had received a comment as unflattering as mine. Apparently no one was less athletic than me. On our intramural team we had Karen who could not run more than a few steps before bursting into tears. “You can do it!” I’d yell encouragingly as she ran after the soccer ball. She’d only stop, bend at the waist and rub her lower back. Mr. Broderick wrote, “Tries very hard” next to her name.
Next to my brother David’s name he had written. “One awesome guy.” Mr. Broderick had been David’s teacher and, for the first time, a teacher had found a way to engage David in learning; mostly by pretending to turn a machine gun on every student who wasn’t listening. My brother adored Mr. Broderick.
I hated him. It wasn’t fair. I was the captain of my intramural team. True, it wasn’t because of my athletic ability; I had been chosen as captain because I was the oldest person on the team and because I was naturally bossy. I took my duties seriously. I made sure all my athletes attended as many games as possible. It sounds simple but have you ever tried to round up a group of students from ages six to eleven? I found that all grade one students look the same and had more than once dragged the wrong one to our field. My team was also disabled by the fact that we had more asthmatic players than every other team. They tried hard but it was difficult to chase after a ball when you had to take out your puffer every five minutes. How was I supposed to motivate asthmatics? “Run harder Ethan! Okay, stop and get some air. Ready, now? Okay, lie down. Um . . . teacher? Ethan seems to have passed out again.”
We lost every game. My team found this amusing, particularly Roy Nokusis who was the school’s best athlete. He was eleven years old, six feet tall and had muscles that would make a CFL quarterback jealous. For Roy, athletics were as natural as breathing.
Before each game, he laced up his sneakers and smiled knowingly. “Another game, another chance to lose.”
I pointed at him. “This is why we lose: Roy has a bad attitude!” I said to the others.
“Whatever you say, coach,” he’d say, laughing as he jogged onto the field, his long easy steps mocking the staccato bursts of my short legs.
Still my team had heart. They played hard and sucked even harder on their inhalers; there was no reasonable explanation for our losses until Mr. Broderick found one: “Dawn: not very athletic.”
Now everyone knew. Now everyone would laugh at me. And I couldn’t even shake off their laughter because secretly I believed it too. I had a younger phenom sister. She had been winning athletic awards since grade one. There weren’t even athletic awards in grade one — they made one up just for her! Now her Top Grade One Athlete trophy sat on top of our TV and mocked me whenever I watched cartoons. My mom had thoughtfully hung my pink participation ribbons on it. They failed to console me.
Then too, every day my younger brother lost more of his baby fat and it looked like he would soon be as athletic as Celeste. Damn the genetic lottery.
I researched athletes every chance I got. Biographies about the athletically gifted were my favourites: Nadia Comaneci, Olga Korbut, and Pele. Their biographers wrote that everyone knew that these athletes were born to win; their excellence apparently showed a few minutes after birth as they held their bottle with fully developed bicep muscles or began crawling en pointe.
I dreamt of the day when my excellence would show up. It would be a special day, probably a Sunday, when I would put my running shoes on and suddenly I would be able to outrun everyone.
From my past performance up until now, it seemed that I was born to be mediocre and nobody ever wrote books about my tribe, the average people. “For her whole life, she struggled to be an athlete. She never succeeded but she was happy anyway and everyone loved her and everyone wanted to be her.” Where was that book?
I cried for at least an hour. Finally, though, I was too tired even to sob and I slumped onto the seat.
I don’t know how long it took me to find the silver lining but I did. Mr. Broderick’s comment meant that expectations of me were as low as they could be. This meant when I showed them how athletic I really was, everyone would be surprised, oh yes, they would be very surprised. I would show that Mr. Broderick and his tight, spandex running shorts. Someday he’d be placing a gold medal around my neck as he remarked, “I can’t believe I ever wrote that about you . . . ”
No, strike that. Mr. Broderick wouldn’t even remember writing the horrible comment. I would remind him innocently, and he would react with surprise. “No way, I didn’t write that. I could never be so stupid.” And then he would flagellate himself with my gold medal; twenty lashes ought to do it.
I drew up a plan for my future athletic success in the back seat of the car. I would run every day from now until school started again. No, strike that. I would run every day until I went to the Olympics and the biographers would comment that people had thought — mistakenly — of course — that I wasn’t very athletic. They had no idea that my bones were still growing and my potential had not yet been seen. In fact, only a clever coach would see it in me and would . . .
“Hey, Dawn, guess what? The Indian summer games are in Gordon’s this year.” Celeste spoke through the car window as I had all the doors locked. She was licking a Popsicle.
“Where did you get that?” I asked as I rolled down the window. “And, what are the summer games?”
She handed me a melting Popsicle with her other hand. I hurriedly unwrapped it.
“It’s a track and field meet for all the Indian kids in Saskatchewan with other sports and a pow-wow.” She grinned. “I hope we make it on the team.”
As Celeste was already known as a great athlete throughout the four reserves, I had no doubt that she would make it. Such an outcome was less likely for myself, no thanks to Mr. Broderick.
No, I couldn’t let him hold me back. “This is good, this will give me more motivation to get into great shape,” I said as I took a chomp out of my Popsicle.
The try-outs for the summer games were held on the Gordon’s First Nation. Gordon’s was less than an hour from our reserve. We knew it well; we’d driven through it many times while taking the back roads to the Candiac horse sales with our uncles who had been proudly refusing to get driving licenses for the past twenty years.
Gordon’s was located on flat brown land with plenty of meager trees and modest bungalows like our own. In fact you could find the same type of bungalow all over Saska
tchewan. No matter which reserve you went to, or whose home, you always knew where to find the bathroom.
All the File Hills athletes were travelling to Gordon’s in a big yellow school bus, except us. Mom had signed up to be a chaperone for the games and decided she would drive us up herself.
“Not in the school bus!” I pleaded. Mom drove the school bus for our reserve. And when our other vehicle wasn’t working or if she felt she needed additional seating, or if she felt like making us into social lepers, Mom would use the bus as our primary means of transportation.
“I didn’t think of that. That’s a good idea. Some of you can sleep in the bus if you want,” Mom replied.
In the end, she decided against taking the bus. We were the only kids coming from Okanese so the band had refused to pay her gas costs.
I sighed with relief. For once, we would look like normal kids travelling in a normal.
It was great being part of a reserve and having lots of kids to play with. But meetings with other kids from other reserves were always uneasy. Trust is not big in our communities, particularly among the pre-teens. Wherever we went in Native country, no one ever greeted us with a smile and a “hi, how are ya?” No, we were the enemy until proven otherwise.
As we pulled up to the red-brick school on the Gordon’s Reserve, a group of brown-skinned kids lounged on its steps. They surveyed our vehicle with little interest. The girls looked at us sideways from beneath their feathered bangs and the boys pretended not to notice us at all.
From inside our minivan, we pretended not to notice them back. “These kids sure look dangerous. Maybe we should go home,” I said.
“Oh go on,” said Mom. “You’re such a chickenshit, I don’t know where you get that from. Must be from your dad.”