by Dawn Dumont
Finally, it was our turn. We’d run to our bedrooms and pull our pillowcases off our pillows. Although we would often beg for the fancy store bought candy bags, our homemade versions were even better. They never ripped and leaked out precious candy, and they could fit thirty pounds of candy with ease.
Costumes were the next concern. They were never more complicated than whatever mask our mom found in the drug store the night before.
“Celeste, didn’t you say you wanted to be a princess?” she would say handing the mask with blonde hair and blue eye shadow to Celeste.
“That was me!” I always wanted to be the Princess. I felt it was my right as the girl with the longest hair in the family.
“Oh Dawn, don’t be such a grouch. Take the ogre mask.”
Sometimes we would attempt to create our own costumes. Since all of us lacked even a shred of artistic talent, this always ended in failure. One year Tabitha tried to make Celeste into a bum. She layered Celeste in oversized clothes and socks, put marker on her face to imitate whiskers and as a finishing touch, exhaled her cigarette smoke over Celeste. Celeste still looked like Celeste at the end of the day, albeit a dirty-faced, smelly version.
Celeste stamped her feet. “I look stupid!”
“Well, I don’t know what else to do,” Tabitha said abandoning her project like it was fifth period Chemistry. She returned to her teenage interests (stealing smokes from Mom and pouting.) Celeste cursed her trust in her big sister’s ability and went to scrub her face in the bathroom mirror.
Jolene and Adelle, our cousins down the road, lacked even our limited funds, yet they outshone us. They never had store-bought costumes, make-up or masks. Still each Halloween they wandered into our house convincingly clad as witches, grannies and yes, even bums.
“Your whiskers look cool,” I said enviously.
“Wet coffee grounds.”
“Where’d you get your pants and shirt?”
“We tore apart Dad’s suit and sewed a patch on the ass.”
“How did you make the smoke stains on your teeth?”
“Oh, those are real.” Adelle and Jolene had been stealing smokes for years.
Every year we watched the Halloween warning films in school: do not walk alone, do not walk down unlit streets, do not wear masks with narrow eyeholes, and do not eat candy before it goes through an x-ray machine. None of these warnings made much sense to me.
I lived on the reserve where there were no sidewalks and the closest house to us belonged to our Great Uncle Ed who handed out candy, money and kittens if you knocked on his door and yelled “trick or treat” — he didn’t really get Halloween. Also, he would hand out those things any old night of the year, so where was the novelty?
Even if you had the energy to walk from house to house, you’d only make it to one or two before it got dark and the coyotes started howling. As for the poisoned candy fears, there was no x-ray machine within forty miles so you had to take your chances. Besides it wasn’t like we got candy every day. This could be it until Christmas time. Let the city kids throw out their unsafe candy. If there were razor blades in our caramel apples, then damn it, we would chew around them.
One year Geraldine came around to pick us up for Halloween. Geraldine or Gerry was a friend of our mom’s. She had two foster children, Dylan and Shane, two boys a little older than me.
Gerry was the same age as our mom but seemed years younger. She wore tight jeans, had short hair, and rode horses. She was energetic and daring; these two qualities were apparent when she volunteered to take us trick or treating with her kids. Mom was shocked. “You want to take ALL the kids? By yourself? Have you been drinking?”
“Sure, what the hell. What’s three more? Just adds to the fun, right?!” Gerry looked at us and we cheered. We weren’t the cheering types but her enthusiasm was contagious.
Hoping to impress Gerry and her kids, I made an effort for Halloween night. I took two hours to get ready. I put on dark eye makeup intending to make myself into Cleopatra. After lining one eye, the eyeliner crumbled in my hands so I abandoned that plan. I used the left over pieces to draw cat whiskers by my nose. Half way through I realized that without cat ears, I’d look like an ugly man wearing eyeliner. I scrapped that plan. Time was ticking and I had no idea what to do.
Celeste entered the bathroom. “What are you?” she asked.
I shrugged. “What are you?” Her hair was pulled back and there were freckles drawn all over her face and coffee grounds on her chin. She shrugged. “Dunno.”
We stared into the big mirror and knew we had failed again. I had an idea. “Punk Rockers?” We did not know that punk rock was a movement about rebelling against authority; all we knew was that punk rockers dressed weird.
We applied the remainder of Tabitha’s make up to our faces. David joined us in the bedroom; he had struggled all afternoon to build his costume. He held a round piece of yellow paper between his teeth and wore an orange hat. “I’m a duck,” he said and the yellow paper fell out of his mouth.
Our costumes impressed him. “Cool, zombies. Wish I’d thought of that!”
Quickly Celeste dissuaded him. “You can’t copy us or I’ll hit you!”
We walked into the living room to wait for Gerry.
Mom looked up from her book. “What are you? Clowns?”
“No we’re punk rockers. And he’s a duck that can’t quack.”
“If you say so, Sid Vicious,” she smirked.
“I don’t know who that is.” I slumped on the couch. “All I know is we wouldn’t look stupid if you bought us good costumes.”
Mom denied her part in the Halloween disaster. “Hey, I bought you three perfectly good masks that are just lying on the table. I did my part.”
“Other kids’ moms sew their outfits.”
“They’re idiots. Why put all that work into a costume that you’re gonna wear for one friggin’ day and prolly get chocolate all over it? They may have that kind of time to waste but I don’t,” she said and returned to her book.
Mom had a point. Still it would have been nice for at least one year to have an outfit that went over your whole body and completely changed your identity — like a fishbowl or a table with cutlery and dishes. I’d seen costumes like that in movies and even on some kids at school. Their costumes said, “We’re totally thriving. This child will be a complete success because we know how to plan, sacrifice and sew. This child can do anything, be anything, even a Martian.” Next to those masterpieces, a plastic mask with a piece of string hooked over your ears, looked pathetic. The mask said, “We’re getting by, thank you very much. Now, put the candy in the bag and look away.”
Gerry squeezed the three of us into her black Bronco with her three kids. Then she hit the gas like she had a vendetta against staying still and drove us farther and faster than my mom ever had. “We gotta move kids, if we want to hit all four reserves!”
We lived on Okanese, which was located in a block of four reserves, collectively known as File Hills. The others were Peepeekisis, Starblanket and Little Black Bear. Peepeekisis was the biggest, Starblanket was the smallest and Little Black Bear was the rankest (according to my mom and the local police.) Altogether, about 2000 native people lived on File Hills; if you were willing to put in the work, you could amass a tidy sum of candy.
The idea of hitting all four had never occurred to us before. Mom had a tendency to pack it in as soon as the bottoms of our pillowcases were full. Even when Mom got ambitious, she’d only hit houses on Okanese and her relatives who lived on Peepeekisis.
With Gerry, we went to every single house that we saw. And if there was no one home then we would pile up garbage in front of the front door. Before Gerry came along, I didn’t even know what the “trick” part of Halloween meant.
“I thought trick meant that people could give you candy or do magic tricks for you,” I said to Gerry as we dragged an old car hood onto someone’s porch.
“You poor kids. Didn’t anyone teach
you the true meaning of Halloween? It’s all about getting up in people’s asses and showing them how to have a good time.”
“What if they get mad?”
“Then screw ’em for not being good sports!”
Gerry really got into those tricks. They took more time than the treating. After we had dragged a lawn mower, a doghouse and a bag of soil onto an unfortunate family’s doorsteps, it was already late.
My siblings and I stole a glance at our driver; surely by now her mouth would be forming a frown that would only become deeper as the sun went down. Her voice would become sharper each time one of us didn’t shut the door hard enough. And like our mom, Gerry would start muttering under her breath about how no one understood how tired her legs were.
Gerry showed no signs of slowing down. Her eyes were fiery as she steered the Bronco over ruts. As our heads bounced against the Bronco’s ceiling, we admired Gerry’s energy. What would it be like to have a mom who could go and go and go?
After we had reaped our destruction on a few homes, she sped away from our reserve onto the next one. We were eager to see what candy the other reserves had to offer.
“Stop at the Youngs! They’re rich, they have two trucks!” Instinctively we knew which families would hand out quality snacks. “Mrs. Klein will have caramel apples. Look how fat her grandchildren are! She might even have brownies; I always smell chocolate and nuts on their breath!”
Everywhere we wanted to go Geraldine was prepared to go. Never before had our pillowcases seen so much candy. Celeste and I weren’t even tempted to steal from our brother’s. We had eaten so much that our mouths were dry and we had to reach for our caramel apples to wet our pallets.
“Where do you want to go next?” Geraldine asked us. I looked over at our other passengers. Her three kids were unspoiled cowboys in the making with their lean legs and hyperactive personalities. I could tell that sweets did not enthrall them as it did my siblings and me. They didn’t have what it took to be greedy; that was evident from the way they dug into their bags and chewed their gum first. Gum! Such amateurs. Even now they had lost interest in our quest and were trying out wrestling moves on one another in the back seat. They didn’t know lucky they were to have a tireless mom. It was true what the Bible said, “To whom much chocolate was offered, much was neglected.” Or something like that.
It would be up to me to keep this dream going. “Um . . . how about into . . . town?” I pretended to speak hesitantly as if it had just occurred to me. It had always been a fantasy of mine to go trick or treating in town: all those houses, so close together and even, the dream of going door to door inside an apartment building. Imagine it: less effort for a higher volume of candy! Mom never appreciated my elegant breakdown of candy economics, preferring her own logic. “The more crap you eat, the more likely you are to shit your pants.”
I held my breath as I waited for Gerry’s answer. I prepared myself for a “no.” “No” was what I was used to. I understood “no,” I told myself.
Gerry was prepared to take us on a new adventure into the land of “yes.”
“All right then, let’s go into town!” she said and swung the jeep in the direction away from the reserve, away from mediocrity and acceptance of less towards a future of unlimited mini chocolate bars and cavities. I released my breath and sat back revelling in our good fortune.
Celeste elbowed me. “Look it’s almost dark. Mom will wonder where we are.”
“Shhh . . . ” I told her. “There’s street lights in town.” They would light the way to our chocolate dreams.
Celeste looked afraid. This is what our mom had done to us, made us afraid to reach out for the unknown, for the big kahuna, for the giant stash of candy in the sky. I patted her on the leg as it if to say, “Hang with me, kid, and I’ll take you all the way to the top.”
We were nearly off the reserve when Gerry spotted a side road. “Who lives down here?” she wondered aloud, then shrugged and went down the road anyway. As was the fashion all over the reserves, the road twisted around and around with no rhyme or reason until it came onto a clearing. There was a small house with no car in front of it.
“Aww, nobody’s home,” I whined, which was difficult since my mouth was stuffed with fudge.
Then there was a movement behind one of the curtains. It was furtive but this was enough welcome for us.
“Yay!” Another home to plunder!
All six of us paraded up the steps and pounded on the door. David laboured behind on his short legs, his pillowcase nearly as big as him. We pushed him to the front, as his cute face was always a favourite with old ladies and this had to be an old lady house with its squeaky porch and fussy plants.
The rest of us stood behind him, our chocolate smiles fastened in place. They faded a bit when a young woman opened the door. Oh no, not a babysitter!
A babysitter meant that the parents had forgotten about Halloween, gone to bingo and left a young person to dole out the disappointment. Behind her, a baby boy and girl were sucking on their thumbs. They had no costumes, just big smiles at seeing a group of children in their kitchen. They hung onto the young woman’s jeans shyly.
She invited us inside where we screamed our greeting. “TRICK OR TREAT!” It came out as a rowdy soccer hooligan yell.
The little boy held up his hands and begged her to pick him up and protect him from us. He called her Mommy as she slung him onto her hip.
“Mommy?” I mouthed to Celeste. The girl couldn’t have been much older than Tabitha who was sixteen.
The young woman feigned fear at our costumes. “Oh you little monsters! What am I going to do!” She asked our names. We gave them loudly.
I looked around the kitchen, a little confused. Where was the bowl of candy? Had she given all of it away? I searched the kitchen and noticed how bare it looked. There was no loaf of bread on the counter, half open, half closed with peanut butter and jelly confetti strewn in front of it. There was no bag of cookies with the cookie tray half in and half out where the last person had violently searched through it looking for the chocolate chippiest cookie. There was nothing on those counters that would tempt the skinniest mouse. The little girl smiled up at me. She didn’t have a big belly or chubby cheeks like the babies in my family. Realization hit my brain like an ice cream freeze on a warm day: we had gone one house too many. This was one of the houses that Mom was talking about when she told us not to waste food. Mom wasn’t full of shit.
I stepped away from the front wanting to slink out the door and slide back into the Bronco. It wasn’t right to be here, taking from this house. Surely the young woman’s fresh smile would transform into a pursed mouth as she shook her head side to side. “No candy here, sorry.”
She didn’t do that. With more grace than hostesses twice her age, she complimented our costumes and gently pinched David’s full cheeks (everyone had to do this, they were that plush and tempting.) Then she opened her fridge, which I knew even before she opened it would be as barren as a wintry grainfield. Somehow she produced two oranges. She sliced each orange into three pieces and wrapped each piece in plastic wrap. Then she dropped the small packages into our bags. We said ‘thank you’ reverently — even my little brother whose lisp made it come out, “fank you.”
Into the Bronco we went, one little monster at a time. Gerry could tell something was wrong. She’d sent a bunch of marauders into the house and five sad zombies had emerged.
Dylan, Gerry’s eldest, showed her his orange pieces. Gerry examined them. We sat silently in the driveway as she decided what to do.
Finally, she put the jeep in gear and we sped down the windy road away from the young girl and the two small children. I knew that the Bronco would not be turning towards town — I was disappointed — but less than I normally would have been.
By the time we made it home, it was already dark. My mom stood on the front steps puffing on a smoke and watched us drive up the approach. Her face had a worried frown. Even though Mom knew Gerry
was energetic, I don’t think she ever expected to see anyone keep her kids out later than sundown.
Though Mom smiled as she thanked Gerry, her eyes were on our baby brother sleeping in the back seat with his head at an odd angle. “Wow, looks like you really wore them out.”
“Lots of kids come by?” Gerry asked.
Mom shook her head. “Not for the last hour. Most people pack it in pretty early.”
“Lazy. Never understand that myself.” Geraldine helped Mom slide the Bronco seat open.
Mom pursed her lips. She gathered Dave into her arms and waved goodbye to Gerry with her free hand. My sister and I carried his bag of candy in for him as the little Bronco roared out of the yard. Most of his candy made it into the house.
Mom immediately sent Celeste and I to bed. We sat on our beds and ate our candy in the dark, quickly and methodically. When I reached the slice of orange they young woman had given us, I unwrapped it gently and popped it into my mouth. I imagined that it would taste sweeter than all the chocolate in the world. It was quite dry. I ate it anyway.
NOBODY CRIES AT BINGO
BINGO TIME WAS AN UNDERSTOOD RULE IN our family. Just as we knew that if there was a band meeting held on a Friday then Dad wasn’t getting home until Sunday, or that my brother David would bounce his head rhythmically until he fell sleep each night, or that if my sister Celeste and I did not get exactly the same doll, toy or T-shirt then we would fight until we did, so too we understood that bingo was something that Mom had to do — every night. (Mom vehemently denies that she played every night. My siblings’ eyewitness accounts contradict her statements.)
Bingo was held everywhere. In the city, in small towns, on the reserve — as long as you had four walls and some balls then you had a bingo, my friend. There was a bingo every night of the week if you looked for it. And many did.
