When Mush passed out and Kokum kept herself busy calling everyone she knew on the phone, Tias and I would begin collecting cans like the hermit crabs that cleaned the aquariums in those city pet stores. After we had loaded up two recycle bags’ worth, we’d take them to the vendor and exchange them for forty dollars. After we split the cash, we’d go to Mush’s gas station and load up on all types of candy: gummies, chocolates, peppermints, Eskimo Pie, and everyone’s personal favourite, Nestle Redskins. Usually, if we didn’t have enough for what we wanted, one of us would distract Mush’s cashier and the other would load candy into their coat.
With what little money we had left, we’d buy a few cigarettes from the junior high chumps who stole them from their moms. They actually made decent money by selling cigarettes for a dollar. Then we’d take our goods back home to gorge on the candy as we watched Ren and Stimpy late into the night. High on sugar, we’d then smoke the cigarettes to give ourselves a head rush and walk around the room light-headed and dizzy—it was the closest we could get to being fucked up as ten-year-olds. Sometimes we would take turns puffing on Kokum’s inhaler too, until she caught on and gave us both a damn good slap with her wooden spoon. That’s how we thought it was, that being drunk and high were natural processes to growing up.
There were times, if I looked pitiful enough, like a brown-skin Annie singing “It’s a Hard Knock Life” sad, that my kokum would let Tias stay over on weekends. We would both sleep upstairs in my uncle’s old bedroom, but before we did we’d argue about who got to sleep against the wall, which was always way cooler. To beat the heat, we’d jack the small fan from my kokum’s bedroom and put it in ours, which also helped to drown out the clanging of their bottles downstairs—it disrupted our watching of Boy Meets World. While Tias raved over how beautiful Topanga was, I swooned over Shawn. And the real name of the actor who played him was so erotically charged for me: Rider Strong. I used to whisper it to myself to fall asleep because I liked the way it sounded when I inserted a heavy breath into the spaces between its syllables. I would lay my tongue down on the bottom of my mouth and let the air vibrate and stimulate them: “Riiide,” “der,” “Strawwng.” A good name makes the perfect sex toy.
Sometimes there would be a party downstairs, and we’d sneak down and watch my kokum, Mush, my mother, my aunts and uncles, cousins, the gas station employees, a tribal officer, and a cavalcade of brown-skins dance around to Loretta Lynn. As Loretta wailed about her man not coming home a-drinking, I would tiptoe into the room and say goodnight to everyone. Funny, the people who loved me the most could only tell me so between two and three in the morning. Then, while they professed their love and pride for me, I’d sneak a couple beers into the pockets of my sweatpants. Back upstairs, Tias and I would crack them open and pretend we thought they tasted good.
“Damn good beer, eh?” Tias said on one such night.
“I’ve had better, you know?” I replied.
“No, that’s the name,” he said. “Damn Good Beer, Minhas Creek—wonder where the Damn Good Chips are?”
We buckled with a laugh that ran so deeply through our bodies that our abs hurt afterwards. Then we flipped through the late-night channels, mostly old white women trying to sell patches for varicose veins and Chyna wrestling in the WWF, until we settled on the Showcase Channel and watched a show called KinK. There was a drag queen who was putting on makeup and kaikaiing with another queen. The taller of the two backed the other against the wall, slid her hand up the other’s thigh, and slowly raised her dress, revealing the garters underneath. The shorter one then pulled the other’s hands up against her body and wrapped her legs around her. We were both mesmerized.
Afterwards, while we both tried to sleep, Tias asked me if I thought that scene looked like fun. I giggled and said yeah. He laughed, but then he slid closer to me and I felt his hand on my leg. I rolled onto his chest and spread both of my legs over his torso. We started giggling, our bodies vibrating with each other’s. It felt like we were a guitar and our lungs and esophagus were being strummed like strings. Fitting, I thought, as we made our own music and let our limbs dance their own ballet without ever moving. Downstairs, Loretta howled in the background that the squaw was on the warpath tonight. We fell asleep like buttons in buttonholes.
The next morning, when the sun was rising, my mom came into our room and nudged my shoulder.
“The heck you doing, boy?”
She put her arms under my pits and raised me up. I wrapped my arms and legs around her and breathed her in, the smoke, the booze, the sweat and tears that made up her perfume. She rubbed the wetness from my eyes, which she called sleepies, and kissed my cheek. I opened my eyes wider and saw a patch of blood on her dry lips, and the black mascara streaming down her face. Even in my half-asleep state, I was both afraid and concerned.
“What happened?” I asked.
“M’boy,” she said, pulling my face against her breast and starting to cry. “I’m not the drink, I swear, okay? I’m not the drink.”
She put me back into bed beside Tias, who was still asleep, and covered us with a blanket. She kissed us both on the forehead and said, “My boys, kisâkihitin.”
I could hear Roger calling her from downstairs, his shout sounding more like the pitiful welp of a dog licking its wounds after a fight.
“Mom?” I said. “Can you lay with me until I fall asleep?”
She smiled and crawled in between Tias and me, pulling us tight against her body. Tias was stirring now, and both of us nuzzled our sleepy heads against her, until her heartbeat lulled us back to sleep. When we finally woke up later, we discovered that one of us had pissed the bed.
We never found out who.
XXV
It was midnight and I had just finished with my seventh client of the day. Some guy named TimOTron cheated me out of ten bucks because he wanted Masc4Masc. My body was stinging and my penis sore from the constant friction. Tired as I was, I was also excited that I had made one-fifty in a couple of hours; I really couldn’t complain. If I were eager enough, I could wait a few more hours and get my European clients who were six hours ahead; they’d be finishing their work day soon and coming home horny as hell. But my body was saying I needed a break so I lit a butt and sat against the window ledge in my bathroom. I wanted to talk to the pigeon, have him listen to me, but he was asleep, tucked beneath a heap of garbage. I checked my phone to see if Tias had messaged me. The little box for “Message Sent” was grey, indicating his phone had received the message but he hadn’t read it yet. Typical, I said, and sighed when I saw him posting memes on Facebook. I wondered what he was doing over at his mom’s right then. I wondered, was he watching The Walking Dead? Was he touching himself? Was he thinking of me? Or was he texting her again?
Hungry, I decided to walk the few blocks over to 7-11 to spend a few of my hard-earned dollars and get a Big Bite. The place actually made half decent hot dogs and they were cheap to boot. Once, before I set the rule of never meeting clients in person, I agreed to go out with this guy, corkdub78, who was some thirty-something mechanic at Crappy Tire. He said he was straight but sort of a “tranny chaser”; I told him I was Two-Spirit, not transgender, and that tranny was an out-of-date word. When he looked puzzled, I told him, okay, well, if you popped my hood you’d find that I’m a machine too. He didn’t understand. Score one for The Vacuum.
He took me to a fancy dinner at The Keg where the minimum cost for a meal was fifty dollars. I suggested we split a plate and he looked at me like I was the cheapest fuck he’d ever met. If life were a game of Monopoly, my mother would be the banker. She was as economical as they came; she could turn seven dollars into a meal for eight. A rule of thumb, she told me once, was to never put myself into a position where I would owe someone—“Too much power,” she said. “You’ll pay it over threefold.” So I never let anyone pay for my meals, let alone a date. A slice of overcooked steak and a scoop of mashed potatoes doesn’t buy me. I always split the bill, but if you really wan
ted to be strategic, especially if you liked the guy, you could take control and pay for the entire meal yourself—make them owe you.
I convinced corkdub78 that I wasn’t that hungry and that we should split a main course and then grab a coffee afterwards. He agreed and we shared a sirloin steak and baked potato. I ate slowly and took little bites, thinking I would make it last longer. But to be honest, the steak sucked and the potato was undercooked.
But before I knew it my fat fuck companion had scarfed down every bit left on the plate. All I had eaten was a few slices of meat and a few bites of potato. To hell with this, I thought, so I grabbed my coat and excused myself for the bathroom. The guy wasn’t all that bright, christ, he didn’t even ask why I needed my coat to take a leak. I slipped out the patio door and dine-and-dashed his ass so hard. Afterwards, I hit up McDonald’s and devoured two Junior Chickens. That’s the problem with white guys, they think they can impress you with fancy meals and expense accounts if you let them. I really don’t give a shit about how much money you make or how many bathrooms your condo has. If you want to impress a neechi, you need to take them out to an Applebee’s or Montana’s or even Foody Goody’s Chinese Buffet and let them enjoy a smorgasbord of food for $12.99. And if you really want to impress them you could swing by a Co-Op and split a carton of white mini-donuts. No Cree boy gives a rat’s ass for escargot or lobster tails. Shit’s nasty.
Back at the 7-11, I bought two Big Bites, a chocolate milk, and a pack of cigarettes, and sat on the curb outside eating. The streets of Portage were lively with noise: cars thumping in potholes, snippets of hip-hop from a balcony across the street, the clang of bells from the Asian Food Market, the low thrum of a motorbike, a bottle smashing in the distance.
“Can’t you read?” a voice shouted from behind me. “No loitering!”
I brushed the man off with my hand and felt him shove a corn broom against my back.
“Goddamn Natives, always sitting around here. Hurry up and leave before I call the cops.” The store manager hit me with his broom again and held it there; the bristles dug into my back. It felt kind of exciting. I pushed back against the bristles. It felt good to be hurt like that. He pushed harder and knocked me off the curb. My milk slipped out of my hand and spilled down my shirt, pooling between my legs and seeping beneath the curb. I wondered how many bugs would drown and die down there.
“That’s it, I’m calling the cops,” he said. “Damn drunken kids.”
I lay down on the sidewalk and spread my arms and legs like a starfish. I wondered if some alien up above was looking down at me thinking I was a constellation.
“Final warning,” he said.
I lit a cigarette and puffed on it without any hands. Smoke slithered out of my nostrils. I winked at him. “You know,” I stated between puffs, “this is my land, you ingrate.”
“Your land?” he said. “Who the hell do you think you are, you punk? I pay the fucking tax here, the tax that pays for your welfare, you good-for-nothing—” He stormed off back into Sev as the ashes from my cigarette began to drop on me. They burned a little, singeing what little hair I had on my face—“Muskrat hair,” Tias always said. “The blessing of being a Nate is that we only need to buy one razor per year.”
I sat up and saw the manager talking animatedly on his landline, staring in my direction. I got up and threw my hood on. Good luck finding me, there are a million loitering NDNs in Winnipeg tonight.
There’s something quintessential about being me and walking at night. Finishing a seven-hour wank session, feeling exhausted, overworked, burnt out, underpaid, sad, hungry, lonely, nostalgic, and strangely beautiful during a one a.m. Sev-run. I calculated that it took me two hundred steps to walk the block back to my apartment. On the front steps of my building, I lit another cigarette. I thought, if it takes two hundred steps to walk a block, then there are two thousand steps in a mile. I wondered, if I walked 600,000 steps, if they’d call me Navajo and let me be a real NDN?
An elderly woman shouted out her window that if I didn’t get up and go, she’d call the cops. Cops, I thought, everyone’s always threatening me with cops. I waved my keycard at her and rolled my eyes. She huffed and closed her window. I could still feel her eyes watching me from behind the blinds. I wondered who she thought I was. Do people think I’m another ghost on the boulevard? Am I a vanishing NDN? If I disappeared, would they look for me like they did that woman, Thelma Krull? Would they rally behind my death like they did for that dead lion, Cecil? Nah, I thought. I’d become another name on the registry. My head felt light but my chest felt heavy.
I wished Tias would come over.
XXVI
When I got back to my apartment, I threw myself onto the couch. It was one of those brown micro-suede plush couches with maroon-coloured roses blooming on the fabric. It was my kokum’s old couch and still smelled of her: flour, cigarettes, and makeup. I used to love watching her put on her makeup. I’d sit beside her and gawk into the handheld mirror she used to apply her eyeshadow. My kokum only got dolled up on rare occasions, which were mostly bingo nights and funerals. I always find it mesmerizing to watch a woman put on her face: the soft stroke of the brush that sends translucent powder flying into the air; the steady hand necessary to blend shadows and wing an eye.
She always took her time, routinely stopping to puff on a cigarette and flip through the TV channels to find a wrestling match. My kokum had an unparalleled love for Bret “The Hitman” Hart. I adored that about her, the fact that the tiniest woman you’d ever meet would be screaming at the top of her lungs for the Hitman to “finish him off with a Sharpshooter.” She’d stomp her feet when he lost and all of the pictures on her walls would rattle—the various school portraits of her children and grandchildren. Mine was in the top left-hand corner, I’m wearing a wool sweater and my hair is slicked back into two braids. I’m sitting in front of a bookcase, which my family said made me look smart. I wonder, what would they think if I told them I jacked off on cam to pay my rent and talked to pigeons in my spare time? But Kokum loved that photo and put it in her fanciest gold frame. And in front of it she had tucked a tiny Polaroid of the two of us laughing, our faces smudged with lipstick. In the picture we are leaning against each other on the couch; her frizzy hair blends into my shaggy braids and the points of our noses exactly match. There is a large red kiss-print on my forehead. That was the first time I ever wore makeup. She would apply her powders and lotions to my face with such grace and softness that I would fall asleep, smelling of talc and lilac. She would push back my hair with her hand and tickle my widow’s peak with her fingers, applying concealer to the scar there. I like thinking that she is impressed on my forehead even now—that the stories in her body are written on mine.
I was feeling nostalgic, like every other NDN at two a.m., so I called up Tias. He answered, half groggy, half annoyed, whispering a faint “Hello?” into the receiver.
“Hey,” I said, “you still got that Hamburger Helper?”
XXVII
I made my way down to Tias’s house and snuck in through his window. We were both masters at popping out window screens without breaking them. See, if you slide a butter knife in between the screen and the window frame and then wiggle it back and forth, you can pop out the bottom plugs that click it into place; from there on, you can push it in with your thumbs. In fact, NDNs have hacked a million tools out of everyday objects. You can use a coat hanger as a toaster if you bend it into a ‘V’ and place it on top of an element. It makes some damn good NDN toast.
I crawled in through the window and fell on top of Tias on the bed. “You awake?” I jokingly asked and he nudged me in the ribs. His skin was a dusky hue in the pale luminescent light. I saw he was reading some book by Charles Dickens.
“What’s that about?” I asked, rubbing the wrinkled spine of the book.
“You know that Christmas movie about Donald Duck and those three ghosts?”
I nodded.
“It’s that, but you k
now, not Disney. You wouldn’t like it.”
Feeling insulted, I dug around his room as he kept reading. There was a copy of Ariel on the floor, open to a story titled “Daddy.” I wondered if he had a fetish for older men? I turned my attention to his closet; there were crumpled-up jeans, a few shirts, these Redwall books with mice fighting other mice on the cover, and a bundle of fabric tied together with elastics. I untied it and found this old rabbit plush toy wrapped up inside it. It had a brown body with a white belly and blue eyes that were hot-glued onto its head. Its left ear had been torn off and was held in place with a pin.
“I’ve had him pretty much all my life,” Tias said. “Floppy Ears. My grandpa gave him to me when I was a boy, well, I mean, one of my foster grandpas, not my biological. He was this old Polish man, survived the war and everything, a real hard ass.”
“This guy is sure beat up, eh?” I laughed.
“Heck, that ain’t even half of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Throw him here.”
I tossed it over to him and he pulled his neck tight. “See these stitches? He had his head ripped off from one of my first foster placements. I lived on this farm with a Ukrainian family just a few miles outside of the rez. They raised cattle and our neighbour had an ostrich farm. I used to play with them all the time and I’d bring Flop. We’d go up to their pens and feed them seeds. When I teased them they’d ruffle their feathers and start running in circles. Then one time one of those goddamn ostriches stretched his long-ass neck out and plucked Flop straight from my hands. He ran around the pen and all the other birds nipped at him. And I guess these two birds got into a fight over Flop—they ripped his head clean off. My foster mom later went and collected his head, body, and his gutted innards. She stitched him back up for me. I wasn’t allowed near the birds after that.”
I laughed. “That’s crazy. That’s some Looney Toons realness.” Tias sat quietly and cradled his plush.
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