by Dawn Dumont
I wondered whether or not more questions would help or hinder my case. I decided to try again.
“Don’t take this the wrong way but I’m not sure what I did. Or didn’t do.”
She pressed her face closer to mine. Her nicotine-tinged breath warmed my face. “You. Called. Me. A. Bitch.”
There was a collective gasp from the onlookers as well as from myself. Her accusation reminded me of the feeling when I set off shoplifting sensors in the mall — even if I had done nothing, I still felt guilty. I ran through my activities for the past few weeks: had I done it? Had I called her a name and then forgotten?
I wasn’t one to censor myself that was true. My friends depended upon my unedited commentary for entertainment, but calling someone a name, particularly someone far stronger and meaner than myself? That seemed out of character for a cowardly type. I shook my head. “You must be mistaken Crystal, I would never do that.”
“So now I’m a liar?”
I had fallen down the rabbit hole into the nonsensical land of teenage fighting. There was no getting out now. Still I tried. I apologized. She refused to accept it. I stared at her with soft eyes. She glared at me. I backed away. She gave me the finger. We were enemies and there was nothing I could do about it.
My friends Trina and Lucy and I discussed the situation behind the school. Trina was not helpful. “Did she say if she was mad at me?”
“She was too busy hating me.”
“She doesn’t hate me, right?” asked Trina.
“I don’t know.”
“Because I always liked her. Maybe I should pass her a note. Is that Crystal with a C or a K?”
My friend Lucy was no more helpful as she described Crystal’s frightening prowess as a fighter. “I hear she grew her nails extra-long so she could scar the faces of the girls she fights,” Lucy intoned. “They say that none of the girls she’s fought have ever been the same again. One girl nearly lost her eye. Now she has a scar right down the middle of her retina. Eye scars never heal completely. That’s what they say.”
I shuddered. Although I often cursed my greasy, pimpled skin, I also loved its soft plumpness. I stroked my cheeks protectively. “Nobody will ever hurt you,” I promised.
That day we headed downtown for lunch. I had just ordered and paid for the single greatest creation known to man, a peanut buster parfait, when the she-devil strode into the Dairy Queen, smacking her gum and glaring at everyone that stood in her way.
This was one of the moments when Crom separates the girls from the Cimmerians. A true Cimmerian would throw the parfait in her face. Then, while she was blinded by caramel and chocolate sauce, would throw a kick at her abdomen all while uttering the deadliest war cry every known to man.
I chose my plan of action from Column B (B for Bashful). In an attempt to avoid her, I slowed my steps. If this move was done correctly, I could avoid eye contact as well as stop myself from crossing in front of her. My shaking hands betrayed me and instead I dropped the tray in front of her and watched as my parfait scattered across the floor. She smirked and stepped over me.
I had no more money for a new parfait so I sat next to my friends who had witnessed the interaction. They did not mention the incident though neither of them of offered me any of their ice cream.
I had to find a non-violent solution to this problem. I turned to Ghandi. Somehow he brought the British to their knees without even skinning a knuckle. This appealed to me. I dove into his book hoping to find some techniques to use against my violent opponent. After I learned that he had done it mostly through starving himself, I put aside his book. I’d been starving myself since I became a teenager and it hadn’t helped me conquer shit.
Out of desperation I turned to my parents. I knew my mom’s philosophy about fighting, which consisted of running to my aunt’s house in the middle of the night. That technique wasn’t going to solve this problem. So I turned to my dad.
I think I have consulted my dad exactly once in my life. And this was that one time. When I approached, he was watching television in the big chair. I sat next to him on the couch and laid out the problem to him during a commercial break. Dad realized the import of the situation and turned down the TV.
He took a deep restful breath as he leaned back in his chair. “When I was at school there was a bully.” He smiled as he often did whenever he thought about his childhood. “He was a big guy, a boxer.”
My dad had attended a Residential school. He had been raised in it. He had started when he was seven years old and had been accelerated two grades by the time he finished his first year. He graduated at the age of seventeen and went to business college until his grandfather, the chief of the reserve, asked him to come home and manage the band’s affairs. We knew this via my mother who always relayed everything about my dad. If we hadn’t had her, we would know anything about the dark-haired man who ate all the bacon and insisted that we watch hockey on Saturday nights.
My dad continued his story with a glimmer of excitement in his eye. Though most of us would have dismissed his upbringing in the red-brick boarding school as Dickensian, my dad had enjoyed every minute of it. The friends he made there were still his friends and they still had the power to make his laugh echo through the house when they called.
“This guy had been a provincial champ a few years in a row. He got so good no one wanted to go into the ring with him anymore to practice. Then he started picking on the younger students. Every week he would choose a young kid to jump in the boxing ring with him. He’d beat the hell out of them. One day he came up to me in the hallway. He pointed his finger in my face and told me the date and the time. I looked at my friend Irvin. He’d been in the ring the week before and still had a black eye and a cut lip from the lickin’ he got. I knew I had no chance of beating the boxer so I had to be smart about it. When the day came for the fight, I was the first one in the gym.”
“I know how you like to be on time,” I chimed in. My parents’ punctuality was legendary.
“It was more than that. I had to be first in the ring for my plan to work. That day I laced up my gloves as fast as I could. They weren’t even completely laced when I saw that the Boxer had climbed into the ring. His friend was still lacing his when I made my move. I ran across that ring, pulled back my arm and punched him right in the nose.”
My dad sat back in triumph.
I was confused. “When did you beat him up?”
“I didn’t. I threw off my gloves and ran out of the ring. The boxer’s nose was bleeding so badly he had to go to the nurse.” My dad threw back his head and laughed.
I couldn’t help but notice that my dad was no Conan. He wasn’t even Red Sonja. “Uh, Dad . . . wasn’t that a cowardly thing to do?”
My dad looked not a bit embarrassed. “It’s not like I had a chance against him.”
“You cheated.”
“Let me tell you something. It doesn’t matter if you beat a bully, you only have to let them know that you won’t go down easily.”
Now here was something that made sense. Don’t go down easy. That was easier to do than win at all costs. Especially since winning at all costs might scar me for life.
I took my dad’s advice to heart and resigned myself to fighting the bully, though not in a fair fight. I walked around with a loonie tucked in my hand and waited for Crystal to approach me and invite me outside. I decided this was very Cimmerian of me. After all Conan would not force an enemy’s hand but rather would let the enemy come to him. She never did. I suspect that Crystal got her satisfaction from the peanut buster affair and decided, quite rightly, that I wasn’t worth it.
A few years later, my sister and I were outside a bingo hall again when my next battle occurred. We were teenagers and had the teenage ability to walk through the middle of town without supervision, which suited my mom and us just fine. My sister and I had escaped from the front door of the bingo hall as three Native girls were going in. “Excuse me,” I said politely.
�
�Why? Did you fart?” retorted one of the girls. It was an old diss, one that I had even used myself on occasion.
However instead of dismissing it as such, I rose to the bait. “Maybe you’re smelling yourself,” I shot back and kept walking.
My sister and I thought nothing of the encounter as we returned to our conversation, which I am sure was about boys.
We reached our destination, the local arcade. Celeste set up shop in front of a Pac Man game. Celeste was a better than average player and could spend an hour on a single quarter. I stood beside her; my lack of hand-eye coordination had forced me to give up on video games years before. Kimmy, a friend of ours, jogged over when she saw us. “Your mom at bingo?” she asked.
We nodded.
“Yeah, I’ve been here since this afternoon — it’s laundry day.” The laundromat was directly across from the bingo hall.
I made room for Kimmy next to the Pac Man machine. She easily slid between two video games. Like my sister, Kimmy was a long stripe of a girl. When I walked between the two of them, it looked like two giraffes were being taken for a walk by a hobbit. Kimmy and I watched as Celeste decimated the ghost population of the Pac Man game.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and saw a young boy standing there.
“My sister wants to fight you,” he pointed over his shoulder at a group of girls. My eyesight wasn’t the best especially as I refused to wear glasses in an attempt to make my parents get me contact lenses. As a result, the group of girls could have been anywhere from four to twenty depending on their individual size and breadth. All I knew from gazing at their amorphous hateful mass was that they did not like me.
My heart immediately began to pound. It was the age-old fight or flight response kicking in. In my case, it was more flight than fight. I wanted to run out of the arcade back to the bingo hall and cower next to my mom. My pride and the tightness of my jeans prevented that.
I cleared my throat as it had suddenly become thickened with fear. “Tell her I am not afraid to face her on the field of battle; that I will not lie down and allow her bullish stock to rule the world; that here on earth there remain a precious few who will stand up for what is right, what is strong and what is pure.”
He rolled his eyes at the tremor in my voice. “When?”
“Anytime, anyplace.”
“Can you pick one?”
“She’s the one who wants to fight. She can make the arrangements.”
He sighed and returned to his sister’s side. I turned back to the Pac Man game and pretended to be calm.
“What was that about?” Celeste asked.
“Some girl wants to fight me,” I replied casually as if I fought every day, while inside, my colon and spine were melting. Celeste and Kimmy nodded as if they, too, were approached to fight every day of their lives.
My mind began to analyze the situation with military precision. Numbers? Unknown. Fighting arena? Unknown. Fighting strength? Limited. Courage? Too low to gauge. I looked at my two compatriots. “If this girl doesn’t fight fair — and it isn’t likely that she will — then I will need one or both of you to step in.”
Celeste nodded nonchalantly as her Pac Man feasted on another ghost. Kimmy looked slightly less sure.
“I don’t know if my mom would like me to fight.”
I ignored this. “Can each of you handle two girls? I mean I can handle three, I’m bigger than you two.”
Sure, they nodded. Their body language seemed to say that they were almost insulted to be asked that question. However, their eyes shifted back and forth as if they could escape from their heads and therefore from this situation.
I looked around the arcade. It was filled with fifty or so young people and a harried looking middle-aged man. Like me, he surveyed the youth and looked as though he was seriously reconsidering his life choices. Why an arcade? Why not just sell drugs? He shook his head and returned his gaze back to the TV where nubile women danced through music videos. I looked around at the youth, my colleagues and saw my future. Within this group, my future boyfriend, best friend or enemy could be standing in front of an arcade game. These were my peers and in these last few minutes I realized how lucky I was to have them. Fear had made me sentimental.
The boy returned. “She said she’ll meet you outside in ten minutes.”
“Whatever,” I answered, as my heart rate went from zero to sixty. I looked at my back up.
Kimmy’s eyes flashed towards the exit sign. “Maybe we need another person.”
“There’s no time,” I replied. If it were possible to hold onto her sleeve and hold her in place, I would have done so. But experience had taught me that you could not restrain people into being your friends.
“My cousin might be at the laundromat.” Then before I could stop her, Kimmy slid away from us and scurried out of the arcade.
My sister dragged her gaze away from the Pac Man game. Our shared glance communicated everything: we were fucked.
It was two against six or seven or even eight. I’d been in one other fight and Celeste had never fought anyone except for our younger brother and me. My hair pulling techniques were effective against my sister but how effective would they be against someone who didn’t know the rule about not hitting in the face?
Celeste and I had no way of knowing how this battle might escalate. I knew that even if it was tough we could handle it. Now if only my hands would stop shaking and my bowels would stop gurgling.
Pregnant woman have told me that the anticipation of pain is always the worst part. I mentally played out scenes from the Savage Sword of Conan. Conan fought men bigger than him all the time and he was never afraid. He jumped in with both feet and his meaty fists raised. I clenched my own fist. It was not meaty. In fact, I could see the blood vessels below the skin, the outline of my slender bones, and covering it all, my smooth, unscarred skin. Such beautiful skin.
My sister continued playing her game. Her self-possession was to be admired. I stood beside her wracking my brain for some way to fix this problem. I was a nerd in school; surely I could make my brain find a non-violent solution to this problem? My brain seemed to disagree.
Perhaps I could walk outside and juggle a few rocks. This would show them that not only was I talented, I was also funny. If only I’d learned to juggle!
Perhaps I could put my oration skills to the test: “Must we fight, my Native sister, when the world has been fighting us for so long?! I say, let us unite against the world.” Somehow I knew that would invite a more vicious beating.
Perhaps I could pretend that I was a felon with dangerous fists. “I can’t fight you. If I do, the police will lock me up and throw away the key. I’ll kill you and not even notice. My fist is registered as a dangerous weapon on six different reserves. I can’t tell you which, otherwise I’d have to kill you.”
Ten minutes later, my sister and I looked at each other and walked towards the exit. Let it never be said that the Dumont girls were ever late for a fight. Our residential school grad parents had ingrained punctuality into us. Though they might fight over everything else, my parents were never late for anything.
Celeste and I stood on the sidewalk. My fists were already clenched in anticipation of the brawl. A group of girls stood twenty metres in front of us. I had trouble making out their features in the light cast by the dim neon lights of the arcade.
“How many girls are there? Six?” I asked Celeste, under my breath.
“There’s eight,” she replied.
“Eight!” my voice squeaked out.
Then one girl stepped out in front of the group. She was little more than a blur to me; I got the sense of long dark hair and square shoulders.
“You ready to fight?” my enemy drawled. Her voice came out loud and brash.
“I’m ready.” My voice sounded thin and shaky, like it had been drawn through a hose.
The girl and her friends laughed. “You sound scared. You wanna call this off?”
This
was my chance. I could back down now, make a silly joke and walk away as if nothing had ever happened. Yes, people would mock me but who cared what every teenager within a hundred kilometres of my house thought of me. It’s not like I was Miss Popular. I could stay inside for the remainder of my teen years and then move to New York City when I turned eighteen where nobody knew that I had cowardly backed down from a fight.
But I couldn’t walk away. I had ten years of Conan flowing through my veins. Each comic book, each violent storyline, each panel had laid out my future. I was a fighter and fighters fight.
“I want to fight,” I said firmly. My voice was still high and reedy but at least my eyes were not tearing up.
The girl and her back up fighters approached Celeste and me. “Remember,” I whispered to Celeste, “you have to let them hit you first otherwise you can be charged with assault.” This was an urban legend currently circulating among teenagers.
“Fuck that. I’m kicking them as soon as they get close.”
Celeste and I held our ground. If we were American history students, one of us would have whispered, “Not until we see the whites of their eyes.” For myself, I was going to wait until the girl was within hair-pulling distance. Hopefully, this one would not know how to kick.
As the girls got closer, my heart rate began to slow as if readying itself for the battle that was ahead of us. It was almost as if my body knew what to do. I can do this, I thought to myself just as a deep voice rang through the air.
“Hey!”
Every eye turned towards the right. In the doorway of the laundromat there stood a tall, dark-haired woman. Her long black hair outlined a tough masculine face — it was as though a Cimmerian woman had been transported through space and time to the streets of this Saskatchewan valley-town.
“You girls want trouble?” She crossed the distance from the laundromat in two steps with her tree trunk legs. I had no idea which side she was on until she came to stand in front of my sister and me. She stared into the face of my enemy. My enemy stared back with widening eyes.