by Dawn Dumont
“Are your friends the band Poison?”
“Who the fuck is Poison?”
That barbed wire tittie tattoo was the trashiest thing I’d ever seen until the next year when she followed it up with a tat on her arm that read, “Love 69.”
Word of the tattoo spread like wildfire over the phone lines. Celeste saw it first, and then she called Tabitha, who called me. Then I called home, asked my mom about it, who asked my brother David — who didn’t know it existed and just said, “What the fuck?” Then the phone was passed to the Wild One herself who proudly described it to me. “My friends think it’s fucking awesome.”
“Who are your friends, the cast of Debbie Does Dallas?”
“You’re jealous cuz you don’t have the balls.”
She bravely went against any notion of class or elegance and we had no idea why. Like conservative pundits, we blamed rap music, her friends, TV, cigarettes, and pizza pops for her behavior but never blamed ourselves. Although in our case, we were right. Nobody else in the family had turned out like Pam. It was like she had emerged fully formed from a mound of cigarette ashes.
But a witch? That was impossible. It was like we had fallen into a low budget horror flick. Except in that case, Pammy would turn out to be a witch and then would destroy the small reserve of White Pine with her powers. Not a bad movie idea really.
When I told her about the witchcraft charges, Pammy laughed raucously and started packing. As she threw her smokes and tube tops into her backpack, she said, “I can’t want to hear their charges. I’m gonna laugh right in their stupid fuckin’ faces. And then I’m gonna kick the shit outta the bitch who accused me.”
Mom was too scared to let Pammy speak on her own behalf. Give Pammy the floor and she would use it to rant for hours, probably implicating herself in a thousand other real crimes in the process. Also, what if this thing were for real? Real witch trials never had happy endings. We knew enough New England history to know that.
After Mom and I arrived at Tabitha’s house, we spent five hours discussing everything related to the trial. I have no idea why it took that long since my older sister knew nothing. It was the reserve’s first witchcraft proceeding and the particulars had not yet been set down. The trial was scheduled for the next day and over three hundred people planned to be there. “Maybe more, people always turn out for these things,” Tabitha said.
I asked her if by “these things” she meant other “witch-related hearings.”
She was referring to a half dozen inquiries held in the past year into aliens, werewolves and Sasquatch.
“Is this a reserve or an asylum for mental patients?” I asked.
Tabitha glared at me. “You have to take this seriously!”
I shouldn’t have laughed. After all, Mom was a wreck. She sat on my sister’s deck and chain-smoked. I couldn’t put my finger on the source of her worries. I knew she was scared of speaking in public. It was also possible that she was scared of encountering a real witch at the trial as my sister was not the only girl being charged. I blamed Catholicism. If you believed that wine could be turned into blood, it wasn’t so far a leap to believe that a broom could make you fly.
We drove to the White Lake Band hall the next day. It was a low building, hardly impressive enough to serve the needs of such a huge and financially successful band. That’s because it wasn’t, Mom explained. Down the road was the real hall, a huge modern building with a café on the ground floor.
This was the old band hall and had been left standing to serve the needs of the supernatural believers. Mom added that as a leader you were obligated to respect everyone’s beliefs. “When your dad was chief, believe me, I had to deal with a lot of these assholes. In a respectful way, of course.”
When we got out of the car, people stared at us. We didn’t take that personally because people always stared in White Lake. They recognized as non-band members and had to sift through their files of family trees to put us in the right place. We were related to two large families on the reserve so we were tolerated and received a modicum of politeness. Someone handed Mom a coffee and she gratefully slurped it in the cold morning air.
People were tense. I listened as some people tried to drive away their fear by pretending to be rational. “This is silly. These girls aren’t witches. There’s no such thing as witches.” The warble in their voices gave away their true conviction. I tried to empathize. If I believed in witches, then I suppose prosecuting (persecuting?) them would be a rather scary enterprise. Perhaps my hands would also be shaking and I would also feel the frequent need to urinate.
At every sound, people looked around themselves defensively as if they expected one of the teenage witches to fly in on a broom. If only Hollywood were around, they could have organized a group of young girls to march up the street with cats on their shoulders and black make up around their eyes! I looked at the road wistfully; no witches materialized. Instead, a black car pulled up and a priest, an Elder and a rotund Native man stepped out of it. It was either the set up to an old joke or our judges had arrived.
Three other families had been notified of the charges against their daughters. We were the only ones who showed up. Once again we had bucked the trends. I grabbed Mom’s arm. “Let’s just go.” But Mom worried that the real consequences of this fake trial would follow us out of the building and shook off my hand. “We’re gonna see this through,” she murmured.
We sat at a table in front of the witch panel. The panel was made up of respected leaders both political and spiritual. On the far right was a councillor for the band. He was a large, red-faced Native man with stubby facial features. He looked exactly like a bear. Next to him sat a Native Elder, who looked like he would rather be on a horse than sitting on a chair, who introduced himself simply as Eddie. Next to him was a middle-aged white priest who called himself “Father Martin.” They would serve as the judges, jury and if need be, witch-dunkers.
As we took our seats, everyone’s attention turned to us. I could hear the excitement rise in the room. Everyone now had a witch to focus on. I met all their eyes disdainfully, as I imagined a witch might, and thought about the spells I would cast.
Councillor Bear opened the proceedings with a speech about the nature of evil, which I think was basically an excuse to re-tell the entire Exorcist movie. Then he explained that the chief could not attend because of his daughter’s birthday party. At the mention of the chief’s name, everyone started clapping. By the time the applause stopped, Councillor Bear looked annoyed.
Councilor Bear asked us our names and we told him. Mom’s voice shook as she spoke out loud. I stated my name, loud enough for the people at the back to hear. I am not my sister, is what my tone said, and I am not ashamed of her, my stiff posture added.
The latter was kind of true. When I first heard about my sister’s tattoos, I immediately thought of trailer trash or rezzed out chicks. Because we were poor, all of my siblings had tried to be better than that. When I left the reserve, I stopped saying, “Aaaahhh” and “ch.” I stopped wearing sneakers with my jeans and hardly ever wore my AC/DC T-shirt out of the house. When the muffler on my car fell off, I replaced it. I wanted to be known as a person of status, not a status Indian.
Pam had no such desire. She immersed herself in rez culture: the accent, the clothes, the obsession with American rap and hip-hop. And she did so without one iota of shame. Because I had tried to hide everything that connected me to the reserve, I was in awe of her choice to do the opposite.
“We are entering a plea of Not Guilty,” I pronounced. These superstitious yokels were no match for me, I was going to beat this rap and then I was going to counter-sue. I would bankrupt the band to punish them for attacking my sister. They would rue the day they ever messed with my family; oh yes, they would be up to their eyeballs in rue.
Now, being only a second year law student, I hadn’t participated in a real court yet. But I had watched many episodes of Law and Order with my mom, so I felt confide
nt.
Councillor Bear looked at me as if I were a dime that he found on the floor of a casino, pathetic but somewhat useful. When he spoke, Councillor Bear stared at a point above my head as he spoke. “This is not a trial. This is an investigation into the accusations made against your sister.”
He then launched into a description of those accusations. He read from a page of lined paper:
Pam had been seen setting fires in the woods, then dancing around those fires while singing songs about the devil.
Pam had threatened other girls with curses.
Pam had made them have nightmares.
The Councillor called a young girl as a witness. The girl was skinny with heavily eye-lined eyes and purple streaks of dye in her hair. She refused to leave her mother’s side no matter how much her beefy mom pushed her. “Go on!”
“No!”
“Get up there.”
“No!”
“Go!”
“Nooooo!”
The investigation stalled there. Not one to give up easily, the Councillor decided to give evidence himself. Not about my sister, but about witches in general.
He launched into a thirty-minute speech about his twelve-year-old foster child who had turned out to be a witch. With her knowledge of the dark arts, she had almost ruined his life. Because of her spells, he had trouble at work, gained sixty pounds and his marriage was threatened. Everything returned to normal after he got rid of the foster child.
“Got rid of?” asked Eddie the Elder, looking a trifle worried.
“Sent her back, y’know. To the orphanage-thingie.” Recognizing that he was losing his sympathy vote, the Councillor yelled, “She was a Satan-worshiper!”
Father Martin looked up as if someone had just called his name. “Satan?”
“Yes. She was a bride of Beelzebub!” The Councillor then explained that devil worshipers and witches were one and the same because in order to get their power, the witches had to marry Satan. This marriage could only take place after their menses had begun. His explanation sounded a lot like the plot for the movie The Craft.
Even though Councillor Bear was doing his best to entertain, his audience was beginning to get restless. Mercifully, he called for a coffee break.
“Can we leave now?” I asked Mom.
“No, I want to see what will happen.” Mom smiled politely at everyone who passed as if to say, “See, I’m nice. I’m not the mother of a witch.”
Once we got outside, she pulled a smoke out of her pack. I noticed that her hands were shaking. “What’s wrong?”
Mom took a drag of her smoke and then exhaled. “What if it’s true, what if she is a witch?”
I laughed. “C’mon, Pam?” I knew my sister. She didn’t have the energy to be a witch. Being evil takes motivation; some get up and go. You can’t be a witch and be good at video games. You can’t spend twelve hours a day watching TV and be an honest to goodness bride of the devil.
Witch life was an active life. Witches went out into the wood and collected bat wings and goat’s blood — that took effort. Pam thought microwaving pizza pops was too labour intensive and ate them straight out of the box.
She was not the type to talk around with powerful spiritual beings even if she did have a talent for chatting with her friends for hours. I doubted that spirits wanted to talk about kicking the shit out of the girl who kept stealing other girls’ boyfriends. I didn’t know any spirits personally but I hoped their interests were a little less prosaic.
But the idea had been planted in Mom’s head and she wasn’t ready to let it go. “What about that tattoo on her arm? That Love 69, isn’t that the devil’s number?’
I stared into her eyes and saw real fear there. Her question told me that I had underestimated her fear of the supernatural . . . and also that she had never watched a porno.
“That’s not the devil’s number,” I said carefully. “The devil’s number is 666. Remember when we watched The Omen?”
“Oh, I never watch those kinds of movies, those devil-movies.”
“Well, I have and trust me, 666 was the number behind little Damian’s ear.”
“Then what does 69 — ”
“Oh look! Breaks over, we have to go back inside!” My mom was an innocent and I wanted to keep her that way.
For the next part of the hearing, Councillor Bear pushed a podium into the centre of the room and told people to come and give evidence against the witches. Nobody got up. Then he plugged in a microphone and placed it on the podium. Suddenly a line-up formed around the room.
Surprisingly, few people were interested in the topic of witches. Many of them seized their moment in the sun to talk about everything that bothered them. We heard about garbage collection problems and mischievous teens that broke windows indiscriminately; we heard tales of huge potholes that were destroying cars and people who never looked after their animals. An individual would reach the pulpit and speak and speak and speak until they ran out of words. Then they would stop, without wrapping up or explaining how their point related to witchcraft. There would be silence as everyone acknowledged that they had spoken and then another individual take the podium and begin their speech.
The mother of the shy witness and also my sister’s primary accuser, rose unsteadily to her feet. As she waddled to the podium, her head and body shape reminded me of two conjoined potatoes. She introduced herself as “Edna, a single mother.” Edna held a Kleenex to her face to capture the tears already dripping from her eyes. I was immediately impressed; now this was someone who understood drama!
Edna said she understood how kids could get sucked into witchcraft, there was so little to do on the reserve. I nodded in agreement. It was the same on my reserve. However, despite our boredom, we had never considered witchcraft. True, we did tear up a playing card outside the house at night and chanted, “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary” in order to see a ghost. But that wasn’t witchcraft that was a scientific experiment. (We didn’t see a ghost. Probably this was because as soon as we finished chanting, we started screaming and jostling with one another to get back into the safety of the house.)
Edna said that she wished the chief and council would take pity on the poor children and their poor mothers. Then she finished by telling the audience that she loved her children. She closed her show by dissolving into loud wet sobs. It was the highlight of the afternoon.
I fell asleep for a few minutes around three pm. It wasn’t my fault, I have low blood sugar and the early afternoon is the worst time for me. It didn’t help that Councillor Bear had decided to re-tell his story about his evil foster child one more time. In the retelling, the girl had gotten even more evil and had somehow caused him to gain even more weight. I stared at his belly as he told his story. Perhaps it was the rhythmic movements of his belly swaying back and forth, up and down, like a bulbous pendulum that led me to close my eyes.
When I woke up the Priest was talking. Father Martin spoke about the church’s involvement in the community and avoided any reference to supernatural topics. He said nothing about my sister or any of the accused. He had a benign smile that expressed none of his views on witchcraft.
I had been raised Catholic but had left the church when I moved to the city and found that waking early on Sundays clashed with my other religion: partying. I had good memories about being a Catholic. Our reserve parish had been progressive. They were one of the first churches to incorporate Aboriginal spirituality into their services with sweet grass smudging. Our Priest even wore beaded vestments.
The parish’s progressive nature was also apparent in the way they answered our questions about God and religion. Sister Bernadette, the presiding nun and who always seemed to be thirty-five- years-old, taught catechism. She could take scripture, and wring all traces of sexism, racism and supernatural mumbo jumbo out of it, leaving behind only fresh-smelling goodness.
In an effort to appear more intelligent, I had once asked her, “What about where it says that God created the world
in seven days? How does that make sense when our teacher tells us that the world is millions of years old?”
Sister Bernadette smiled and replied that time was much different to God who had lived forever. I accepted her answer because it made sense or because I was too lazy to ask any more questions.
Her answer helped kick-start my legal mind. Suddenly, I knew how to destroy this mockery of a trial. I raised my hand. The panel ignored it although the Priest did speak louder.
I put my hand down self-consciously. Then when Father Martin paused, I raised it again.
“Father,” I said before anyone could interrupt me. “Isn’t it true that the modern Catholic Church recognizes the devil as an idea rather than as a being?”
I had him by the balls. He knew it, I knew it, and the crowd knew it. Hell, even the devil knew it.
The Priest tilted his head and looked me in the eye with his steel grey eyes and replied, “The devil is real and he walks among us.”
A woman in the crowd gave a little shriek, a baby began to cry and Councillor Bear went pale.
I sighed. With a single sentence, the Priest had unraveled my argument. My only effort had achieved nothing, except making my mom and the crowd full of believers more nervous. The protestant and non-Christians were shifting uncomfortably. Father Martin had confirmed their worst nightmares and I anticipated that many of them were going to have difficulty sleeping for many moons.
The only good part was Councillor Bear was speechless. He rose suddenly and quickly walked out of the room. Nobody asked where he was going. I knew. He was hurrying down to the local casino where the slot machines would gently lull his heart rate back to normal.
The Councillor’s departure, ironically, removed all order and sense from the proceedings. The crowd took out their cell phones and called their kids and asked where they were. They made plans for dinner. They drifted in and out of the room. Mom and I gossiped with Janet, one of my cousins. Janet had poked her head into the proceedings, saw us and scurried over midway through the trial.