Nobody Cries at Bingo (22 page)

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 Saskatchewan. 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.”

Dad was currently living across the reserve from us at his friend's house where his life had become one long party. We heard rumors of fistfights, police visits and drunk dogs passing out in the front yard. I sensed that Dad was slightly more daring than Mom.

The tryouts were simple. There were lists of teams and events and it was as easy as putting your name on the list for the File Hills team. Even though our team was made up of four reserves — Okanese, Little Black Bear, Starblanket and Peepeekisis — Charlene Bear, one of the organizers explained, “Everyone has to compete as much as they can because we have a shortage of athletes.”

Charlene came from an athletic family. Her brother, Ricky Junior, was considered one of the best pitchers on File Hills; their dad, Ricky Senior, a tall, thick man coached his son's team as if it was a contender for the World Series. Charlene shared her family's love of sports but she took a gentler approach. She never yelled at anyone and preached respect for other players.

She gathered all the girls from ten to fifteen into a group. “I'll be looking after you gals. I'm proud to see so many athletes made it out!”

I was stunned. It was the first time I heard the word athlete in reference to myself. Sure the word was directed at an amorphous group of over fifty girls, but I was one of them. I was now an athlete and all I'd done was climb into the front seat of our family's minivan. In Charlene's opinion, a person was an athlete just because they showed up and put on a cute warm up jacket with the name File Hills on the back. It was like being innocent until proven guilty. I liked Charlene immediately.

I signed up for the all the long distance running events. I knew I didn't have speed; it had been proven many times that anyone could beat me within sixty metres: chubby kids, kids with limps, once a dog with three legs. Long distance running was also perfect for me because there were so few athletes entered in the races. On any list, there were usually only three names. I liked those odds.

The campgrounds were next to the Gordon's Residential School. The priests and nuns had departed decades before and had left behind the giant red-brick school and some awesome ball diamonds.

We set up camp near the other File Hills students. Ricky Senior greeted us warmly. He and my mom were distant cousins and they had a playful relationship.

“Holee shit, you're late. We got on the road at five am,” Ricky Senior teased.

“Five
AM
? You ought to have your head examined.”

His wife popped her head out of the tent and said hi to my mom as she began her warm up stretches. She wore a tracksuit that matched her husband's.

Mom often bragged about her lack of athleticism. “I played on a ball team once. I was in the outfield and was throwing a ball to the pitcher and the darn thing went backwards. I'm not even sure how I did that.” Her story sent chills down my spine. What if I had inherited her lack of ability?

The day started with picking positions for the softball team. Charlene asked everyone what position they could play. I proudly raised my hand. “Pitcher.” Charlene smiled, “Great! We always need more pitchers. What about catchers?”

Celeste raised her hand. Charlene was ecstatic. “Perfect! A sister-sister combo.”

I had never pitched in my life, nor had I ever seen my sister catch a ball, but I was optimistic. Perhaps this would be one of those miracle moments when my athletic talent would reveal itself.

I grabbed a ball and headed out to the pitcher's mound. The ball felt heavy and big in my hand. “Err . . . do you have a smaller ball?” I asked Charlene.

“That's regulation size. C'mon on now, show everyone what you can do.”

I pulled my arm back and threw the ball. It moved through the air, in a high arc, stopping about five feet in front of home plate. Celeste was still looking up in the air when the ball rolled across the plate and stopped against her foot. She hurriedly gathered it up and threw it back to me. Flawlessly.

“Good throw Celeste!” Charlene said. “Hey, Dawn, maybe you should let your sister try a hand at pitching?”

I pretended not to hear. I threw another pitch and achieved the same results. This time, however, the team laughed.

Wonderful. I'd been on the field for two minutes and proven that a) I could not throw a ball and that b) my sister was better than me.

Charlene came to the mound and put her hand on my shoulder. “You know what, I have the perfect position for you!” She then pointed at the outfield.

Charlene posted the team's positions at the end of the day. I had been relegated to the left field. Kindly, Charlene had also listed me as third-string pitcher. My heart warmed.

Even though meals were served in the school's cafeteria, Mom brought a cooler full of cold cuts, bread and apples.

“Eat before you go,” was the refrain we heard each morning. Dutifully we would wander back and grab an apple and half a sandwich before joining our friends.

“Your mom sure yells a lot,” Ricky Junior commented one day.

“What are you talking about?”

The members of the File Hills athletic team exchanged looks with one another. It said, “You mean she doesn't know?”

Their awareness switched something on inside me and suddenly I could hear my mom as she shouted at my brother to put his sweater on. Not only was she loud, she was louder than everyone else on the field. This meant she was louder than all the mothers from all the reserves in Saskatchewan. Perhaps natural ability wasn't always such a great thing.