For Joshua (6 page)

But most hurtful of all was Lori. I guess all of us remember our first crush. For me it was Lori. She was a hippie, or at least as close to a hippie as her mother allowed
her to be. She had long, curly brown hair that she wore under a variety of hats and she favoured the miniskirts that were popular at the time. She was beautiful—big, blue eyes, long lashes, and a smile that made her seem to radiate. When she invited me to a couple’s skate at the roller rink one Saturday afternoon I almost fell over. All of the guys were after her. When we glided out onto the floor that afternoon I felt a curious mixture of being superior to every guy there and of being inferior to the beautiful and popular girl with whom I was holding hands. I became infatuated very quickly.

Lori was very “into” Indians. She had read many books about Indian people, drawn many pictures, seen many movies and television shows about them and she really wanted to “go with” a Native guy. I was the only Native person she’d ever met and she was determined to be with me. She told me all about this as I walked her home after skating that afternoon. When she asked me questions about my background and heritage I did the only thing I knew how to do: I lied.

Because I hadn’t been given any exposure to my tribal identity at home, I got all my Indian information from the same place everyone else around me got theirs. I watched Westerns on television, read comic books, and went to the movies. From these I gleaned that Indians were bloodthirsty
savages with a religion that was close to voodoo. We all rode horses, wore war paint, and must have been afraid of the dark because wagon trains never got attacked during the night. We were untamed, unruly, and needed the help of white people to survive. That was the extent of my cultural knowledge.

By the time I got to school on Monday the word was already out. Guys who’d never bothered talking to me before were suddenly interested in me. Girls who’d laughed and pointed at me before began looking at me out of curiosity. I felt huge. I felt like I mattered. But no one knew that I had no clue at all about my tribe, my history, language, culture, and ritual. No one knew how afraid I was that, when Lori found out that I wasn’t really an Indian, she would drop me and I would be back to being “very Jerry” in no time at all. So I lied even bigger lies. I invented a language I called Ojibway—a guttural, grunting kind of talk with a lot of extraneous hand motions and gestures. I took great pains to write this new language down and commit it to memory. I gave Lori a name in that fictitious language. I told her about ceremonies I’d been to—the Sun Dance, the Rain Dance, the Ghost Dance. I told her about my grandfather the medicine man and the shamans from other tribes who had given me strong medicine so that I could survive in the city. I talked about life on a reservation and stories about life on the land.
The more I lied the more she clung to me, and the more interest she showed the more esteem I garnered at school. With the respect came a hunger for more, and the bigger and more fantastic the lies became.

I can almost laugh when I recall that performance. Almost. As I gazed upwards at the stars that night in the foothills I remembered the collapse. Lori had kept on reading about Native life while we were together and she began to detect wide variations between what I was telling her and what the books were saying and showing. I was showing her how to do a war dance and explaining the meaning of war drums to her when she’d finally had enough.

“There’s no war drum. There’s just a drum and it’s used for many things—not just war. If you were really Indian you’d know that. But you’re no Indian,” I recall her saying. “You’re nothing but a phoney.”

She dropped me. Word spread just as quickly this time and I remember the shame and embarrassment I felt walking down the hallway to jeers and laughter. “Big Chief Full-of-Shit” was scrawled across my locker and I was alone again. All of the life I’d felt flowing through me when I was with Lori was gone and in its place was bitterness, shame, and an anger I’d never felt before. I was angry that no one, neither the Tacknyks nor the Gilkinsons, had allowed me to learn
anything about who I was. They’d never allowed me to learn about my tribe, my history or culture. I knew then, in the loss of Lori, that I was no one, that all the play-acting I did was just that, that I was a non-entity because I didn’t know who I was. I heard the same familiar words in my head one more time. “There’s something wrong with you. If you were lovable, worthy, wanted, adequate, she’d have kept you. But you’re not, she found out, and now you’re alone.”

Not much changed after that. I lied even more at home, school, and church, and when I was found out in those lies I was punished, banished, or rejected outright. With each reaction I became more determined to be seen, known, recognized. I skipped classes and hung out in pool halls. And I ran away from home. I ran away because even then I thought that geography was a cure. The first time I fled it was just for one night, which I spent huddled in the cab of a parked truck outside of Vineland, Ontario. It was miserable, cramped, and cold, and I actually looked forward to going back to my warm bed.

The second time I ran away, no one even knew. The Gilkinsons were away for the weekend and as soon as they were gone I took off for Toronto. I was there for two days, hanging out on the Yonge Street strip and sleeping on the couch of someone’s “pad.” I mooched enough to get a bus
ticket back home, and was there clean and waiting when my parents arrived.

When I was fifteen I had my longest run yet. I’d been putting money in the bank from a paper route I had, and I had saved more than three hundred dollars when I took off in February. I caught a bus to Miami Beach, where I found myself in the company of three old hippies who smoked dope and hung out on the beach. I loved that. There was a laid-back feeling to that lifestyle and I allowed myself to unwind from all the stress I’d created at home. For a while I worked as a busboy in a cafeteria but was let go when I couldn’t provide a U.S. Social Security Number. The money I earned was squandered on pot for my friends, movies, and lunches on the beach. I thought I would never leave. But when my new-found friends discovered I was only fifteen and a runaway, they contacted the Gilkinsons and I was flown home.

Life was horrible after that. During the weeks I’d been gone I’d got a big taste of what the world was like. I’d got a sense of the freedom that was out there, and this knowledge made me eager to escape. I couldn’t tell anyone about the putdowns I endured at high school. The words were suddenly harsher, more explicitly threatening. In the early 1970s, rock and roll was king and the youth was swaying to
the message of teen rebellion in the music. Everyone wanted to be considered aloof, distant, rebellious. I was far from cool and because I was different I was singled out for abuse. I so desperately wanted the abuse to stop, for the rejection to end. With every rejection from girls, every sudden silence in the hallway when I passed, every guffaw behind my back, I became more desperate for acceptance. I remember thinking that if being a rebel is what got someone recognized and appreciated, then I would be a rebel. My experience in Miami Beach had taught me a lot about rebellion.

I was relieved to find a friend and an ally right away. Doug was as much of an outcast as I was. With a face pockmarked and scarred by severe acne, he was called “Pizza Face.” His mother and father were divorced and he and his three sisters lived on his mother’s meagre income. His clothes were culled from thrift stores and fit as badly as mine. He was tall and gangly, with a protruding Adam’s apple that jumped about in his throat when he was nervous. We shared two of the same classes and when we met one day in the smoking area—we were supposed to be in one of those classes—we looked at each other and laughed. The laughter joined us as brothers.

Soon Doug and I were going everywhere together. We’d meet on the way to school in the morning and plan our
escape. As rebellious as we wanted to be, we both knew that there were certain classes that we couldn’t afford to skip. Some teachers were notorious “rats” and any unexplained absence from their classes would generate a phone call to our homes. So we had to plan. Some days our designated “skips” bracketed lunch hour and we could be free for three hours or more. It wasn’t long before we were regulars at the pool hall on Facer Street in the heart of Little Italy. The regulars there got to like us and began to trust us with little “missions.” These errands usually involved dropping off an envelope somewhere, or picking one up and bringing it back. We always got tipped well for our time, and because we never asked any questions and were reliable the guys kept us busy. It meant we always had money for smokes, pop, and treating other rebels to pizza during those lunch hours when we had to hang around the school. I learned that acceptance could be bought for a few smokes, a small loan, and an I-don’t-care attitude. I liked it.

But Doug and I were less than disciplined. It wasn’t long before we were skipping whole days, then weeks. I became expert at forging my mother’s signature. I would type excuse notes for myself during typing class, then scribble her signature on the bottom. By the end of the term, when report cards were due, I’d missed over a hundred classes.

For the Gilkinsons, academic failure and being absent from class were unpardonable sins. I knew I was in the deepest trouble of my life and faced, at best, the complete forfeiture of privileges. There wasn’t anything I could do to change the situation, so I did what I’d learned to do. I ran away forever, carrying my problems like luggage.

It was late. Looking about I could see nothing but deep shadow. Nothing but what seemed like emptiness. I felt very alone. Every sound seemed louder, closer, more threatening. I could hear strange rustles in the grass nearby, movements in the trees and motions in the air that I had never heard before. I was scared. I had only the thin skin of the blanket between me and whatever was out there. If I had had a weapon I might have felt more secure. But I felt helpless. I began to pray. I told Creation that I was afraid, and it helped. And the longer I sat there, the more I began to realize that the living things that roam the nighttime world weren’t interested in me at all. I had nothing they wanted and none of them approached very near. Unlike me, the animals had always known where they belonged, knew who they were and knew how to be themselves.

I envied them for that. I had never known any of that. My teen years were a sad mix of pain, anxiety, fear, and melancholy. I wanted so much to be included, to not feel different, that I’d ceased to care about where “in” might be. Anywhere would have done. Any group of people would have been okay. If I had been allowed to have access to my culture I might have been given teaching stories. Stories that act as guides to our selves. Stories that John told me about the animals and how they had been given the role of becoming our greatest teachers. As I sat there in that thick darkness I thought about the animals of the world and about a long story John had told me shortly after we’d met.

Before the arrival of Man, the Animal People knew each other very well and could speak with One Mind. They could communicate with each other and the Creator and there was balance and harmony upon Mother Earth.

Then, the Creator called a great meeting of the Animal People, and on the appointed day they gathered in a big circle. There had never been a need for a meeting before, and there was much talk about why the Creator would call one. No one had a clue but everyone agreed that it must be very, very important.

When they were all assembled, the Creator began to speak.

“I am sending a strange new creature to live among you,” the Creator said. “This creature will not be like you in any way. In fact, it will be
unlike
you and will actually fear you.”

The Animal People exchanged puzzled glances at this news. Fear was unknown amongst them.

“These strange creatures will walk on two legs, will have no hair on their bodies, will speak a language you won’t understand, and will grow up believing that they must control Mother Earth.”

The Animal People gasped. They knew without question that Mother Earth needed no control. Nature could always take care of itself. This would be a strange creature indeed.