Long ago, when the world was much younger and much less complicated, the elders told stories about the first dancers. According to legend, the animals were the first dancers. It was the buffalo that swayed in their herds and the deer that leaped through the forest that showed our people how to dance.
I looked up as a couple of boys, laughing and shoving each other, walked past me and into the room where the dance group was meeting. I glanced at my watch. The class was about to start. I took a deep breath and followed them in.
As soon as I walked into the room, I felt the eyes of every single person there on me. It wasn’t like the room full of little girls—these guys were my age. And, unlike me, they all looked like they belonged. I was well aware that I stood out like a sore thumb. I self-consciously put my bag on the floor and started stretching.
“Hey!” Sam walked over and held out a hand to me. “Nice to see you again! John, right?”
I nodded.
“I’m glad you came.”
“Thanks.” I took his hand and looked around at all the other boys, whispering and staring at me. “So you’re the teacher?” I asked. I mean, clearly he was. But I literally couldn’t think of one intelligent thing to say with all those kids staring at me.
He smiled kindly. “I just lead the group. Everyone is encouraged to go at their own pace and interpret the music in their own way. There aren’t any tests or levels here. We’re just here to dance and have fun. Find a spot and we’ll get started.”
I nodded and tried to calm the beating of my heart, which was so loud I was positive everyone in the room could hear it. I walked toward the back of the room and tried to look cool, nodding at the guy beside me as I took my place.
“Who the hell let the white kid in here?” I heard one of the boys say loudly enough for everyone but Sam to hear. My face colored.
“Dude, his face is as red as his hair.”
If possible, I got even more flushed. The first guy who had spoken walked over to me. I looked desperately for Sam, but he’d stepped into the hall and was speaking on his phone.
I sighed. I was on my own with these jackals.
“Yep. I’ve got red hair. I know. Crazy, right?” I figured if I was in on the joke, they’d get tired of making fun of the new kid.
“What’s wrong? Did you get tired of appropriating our culture for Halloween costumes and sports mascots?” he asked. “You figure you’ll come in and take over our Pow Wows too?”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “I’m not appropriating anything. I’m Aboriginal too.” I waited for the skeptical response.
“Oh, right.” He laughed, leaning heavily on the kid beside him, who was doubled over. “Let me guess. You’re one-sixteenth Cherokee, right?”
“No. My mom…”
Sam walked in before I could finish, but frankly, it probably didn’t matter. These guys already considered me the token white guy. You know…the white guy who wants to be Indigenous and hangs out at Pow Wows and wears beaded necklaces and a medicine pouch and stuff. Yep. Apparently, that was now me. Fantastic.
“Okay, everyone. Sorry for the delay. I hope you introduced yourself to our new friend, John.” He turned to the men seated around the drum in the corner and nodded for them to start. Yeah. Did I mention they had live music?
The boys started dancing forward in a circle. I was immediately shut out of it as they closed rank.
“Jump in anywhere, John,” Sam called out.
I nodded and pushed into the circle. One of the boys nudged me as I narrowly avoided stepping on his foot. “Sorry,” I muttered. I stepped along in time to the music and was just getting into it when they stopped, causing me to slam into the kid in front of me.
“Watch it!” He scowled. “Jeez. White kids cannot dance! Imagine seeing him tripping his way through the Grand Entry?” he said with a snort to the boy beside him.
I shook my head, trying to shrug him off. I turned toward the center and watched as one of the boys smoothly moved into it and began dancing by himself as the other boys looked on and waited for their own turns. The boy who had asked if I was one-sixteenth Cherokee was dancing fiercely, head bobbing and his feet tapping in time to the drum. He dropped to his knees and then flew back to his feet. I had no idea if any of these steps had actual names or if he was making it up as he went, but as I watched him spinning on one foot, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that there was absolutely no way I was going to dance in front of these guys.
Twelve
My life was basically an endless cycle of soccer practice, weight and cardio training with the team, school, a huge amount of homework, weekly dance classes and practicing on my own or with Santee whenever I could. I managed to grab something to eat once in a while and sleep for a few hours, but there were far too many nights when I fell asleep with my head resting on top of my schoolbooks. I knew I still wanted to dance, but being mocked in a Pow Wow group wasn’t really in the plan. I had been going back and forth for days, wondering if I should bother returning to the Cultural Center or not.
As I laced up my cleats for soccer practice, I tried to leave all the stress behind and join in the usual banter with my teammates.
Aiden nudged me. “You okay?” he asked.
“What? Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. Ready to go!” I was a little overly enthusiastic, and I had to make a concerted effort to tone down a bit.
“McCaffrey!” The coach was yelling my name before he even turned the corner into the locker room. “You better be ready to run!” He stalked off to shout at someone else.
“Jeez. We haven’t even started yet,” I grumbled.
“Yeah, well…you’ve been a little distracted lately.” Aiden held his hands up. “Sorry.”
I nodded. I knew I hadn’t been as focused as usual.
The coach stomped back into the room. “Are you going to sit around and chat all day? Or are you going to get up and run?”
The team ran drills and practiced taking shots on the goal, then passed the ball back and forth. I had run these drills so many times over the years that they were second nature by now. My mind wandered to the flyer I had read at the Cultural Center about the history of traditional dance, and I wondered for the millionth time if I should go back to Sam’s dance group.
“Earth to McCaffrey!” the coach shouted.
“Right here, Coach!” I pulled my mind back to the soccer field.
“Dude, stop daydreaming,” Aiden stage-whispered. “Coach is demented today.”
“I know, I know. He’s demented every day,” I muttered under my breath, scowling. I fumbled the ball and tripped over my own feet.
“Oh, for crying out loud!” the coach yelled, blowing his whistle. “That’s it. You can thank McCaffrey for this…thirty laps!” He blew his whistle again and walked away amid the groans of the team. My face burned.
“Thanks a lot, McCaffrey,” Tanner called out as he jogged past me.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I turned to Aiden. “Did I really do anything that bad?” I asked as we started running side by side.
“Honestly? I don’t think he’s punishing you just for today,” Aiden told me, speeding up a bit.
“What do you mean?” I asked, keeping pace.
“We both know that you haven’t been focused for weeks. And the coach is taking it out on the rest of us,” Aiden said.
“I know! But I’m doing my best.” Frankly, I was getting tired of being ragged on all the time. Aiden glanced over at me, his eyebrows raised. We ran the rest of the laps in silence.
The walk back to the locker room after practice was awkward. My teammates were grumbling around me about the extra laps, but most of the talk was good-natured. They had all had the coach’s target on their backs at one time or another.
I was opening my locker when I felt a shoulder hit my back. Hard.
“Hey!” I turned around and met Tanner’s angry gaze.
“Thanks again, McCaffrey. Really. We all appreciate the extra exercise,” he
said. “Maybe next time you can try to keep up with the rest of the team and not get us into trouble.”
I opened my mouth to respond angrily but stopped. I glanced at Aiden, who was avoiding eye contact. I sighed. They couldn’t all be wrong about my lack of focus, and I knew I was spreading myself way too thin.
“Yeah, sorry about that,” I said.
Tanner looked surprised for a second but quickly recovered. “Yeah, you should be. If you don’t want to be part of the team, there’s the door,” he told me.
I nodded. The best way to avoid conflict was to paste a grin on my face and nod. And figure out what the hell I really wanted to do.
Thirteen
I walked into the Native Cultural Center for my second Pow Wow class with my heart beating hard. I was hoping the whole “bust the new guy’s balls” routine had worn off by now, but I was bracing myself just in case.
“Hey,” I said to the guy nearest me when I walked in. I thought his name was Jasper. He nodded at me, and I felt myself relax a little. “Jasper, right?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He started stretching beside me. Not much of a conversationalist apparently. Then he looked over at me. “And you’re John?”
“Yes!” I smiled at him. Well, it was better than being taunted or ignored by all of them. “You’re really good. Have you been dancing long?” I asked.
“Since I was a kid,” he said.
“Jasper!” The guy who had insulted me the week before had just walked in. “Hanging with the white kid?”
“Nah. Just stretching, Matt,” Jasper said, getting up and walking over to the bully and his cohorts.
Great. There goes the one nice guy.
“Dude, I can’t believe you came back,” Matt the bully said. “What’s wrong? Didn’t get enough last time?” He turned to his friends. “Man, I hate when people think they can hijack our culture like this.” His buddies nodded in agreement. He turned to me. “Don’t you have some Caucasian thing you could be doing? Like golf or something?”
His friends laughed. Including Jasper, I couldn’t help but notice.
“Listen, I have just as much right to be here as you do,” I began, but before I could finish, Sam walked in and called everyone to the center of the room.
How did I keep missing my chance to set these guys straight?
The drum started and I followed the other guys around, tapping my feet and trying to dance with my whole body.
“Dude!” Jasper whispered beside me, peering around—probably to see if anyone else heard him. “Grand Entry isn’t about standing out.”
“So what’s it about?” I asked, but before he could answer, Sam had us form a circle where we’d keep tapping our feet lightly and each of us would get a chance to show off some fancy dance skills in the center.
I watched as Jasper danced into the middle of the circle. He was pretty awesome to watch. First he swayed his body as his feet kept up the steps we were all doing, a double tapping step around the circle. Suddenly he spun around in one direction, then switched the twirl the other way, arms outstretched and head bobbing to the drumbeats. His feet crossed over each other so quickly that I wondered how he managed not to trip over himself. I wanted to try that! He raised one knee high and spun around on one foot, then traded feet and spun the other way. The drumbeats stopped suddenly, and Jasper stopped with them, hands raised to the sky. The boys applauded as he left the circle.
“That was amazing,” I told him.
He grinned breathlessly at me. “Thanks.”
“Perfect, Jasper!” Sam called out. “Always remember that if you don’t stop exactly when the drum stops, you’d be disqualified in competition.” Now that I didn’t know. So how were you supposed to know when the drum was going to stop?
“John!”
I looked at Sam.
“Want to give it a try?” he asked.
“Umm…sure,” I called back. I heard Matt snort behind me, but I held my head high. Like I had tried to tell him, I had just as much right to be there as he did. I moved into the center of the circle and listened as the drums began.
I tried to think of what Jasper had done and started swaying and moving my feet in time. I dipped my left shoulder down, then my right. So far, so good. I tapped a foot forward, then behind me. I switched legs and did the same before realizing with horror that I was doing the Lindy hop, that old 1920s dance. Oh no! I tried to cover it up by crossing my feet in front of each other and immediately got tangled. I fell. Hard. My elbow slammed against the floor, and I yelped in pain. The boys howled with laughter until Sam reined them in.
“Come on, guys. John hasn’t been dancing as long as the rest of you. You should be helping him along, not making fun of him.” He walked over and reached down to help me up. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, rubbing my elbow, face burning. Did I really do the Lindy? How could I ever have thought this was the place for me? “Thanks,” I told Sam. Then I turned around, picked my bag up off the floor and walked out.
Fourteen
I was quiet at dinner, which was fine because Jen kept up a steady stream of babbling conversation about art class and her friend Lia’s dog, Daisy, who was “just so amazingly cute.” I twirled strands of spaghetti on my fork, picturing myself twirling to the sound of the drum. I was tapping my fingers on the table and chewing when my mother called my name.
“John!”
“What? Sorry. I was thinking about something else.” I smiled sheepishly.
“Yes. I can see that. You’re a million miles away,” my father said. My family was staring at me questioningly. Jen had even stopped talking and was shoving pasta into her mouth to make up for all the time she had lost in conversation. “Something wrong?”
“I don’t know,” I said, sighing. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
I saw my parents exchanging worried glances.
“Anything we can help with, honey?” my mother asked.
“Nah. Just school. And stuff. You know.” I shrugged and tore my bread into chunks, mopping up my tomato sauce with it. I looked at the bread in my hand and then put it down on my plate without eating it, my appetite gone. I looked at my parents. “Have you ever had anyone judge you for how you look?”
My father nodded thoughtfully. “I got made fun of a lot in school because of my red hair. It’s probably not the same now, but back in the day, they laughed at me. Called me Little Orphan Annie or Ronald McDonald. Little Red Riding Head. Even my friends called me Red or Ginger. Kids would chant at me, I’d rather be dead than have red on my head. I hated that one. Or Red, Red, pee your bed, wipe it up with gingerbread.” He looked over at me. “Is that what you mean?”
“Umm. Not exactly. They really said that stuff?” Wow. Kids were mean back in my father’s day.
“That and worse,” he admitted.
What could possibly be worse than that one about wiping your pee up with gingerbread? I wondered. I probably didn’t want to know.
“The kids sometimes make fun of me,” my sister interjected.
I hadn’t even been aware that she was listening. “They do?” I asked.
“Yeah. It doesn’t bother me, mostly. But I don’t like when they call me things.”
“What do they call you?” my mother asked.
“I had a teacher call me ‘that Indian girl’ once,” she admitted, not meeting anyone’s eyes and pulling on the ends of her braids.
“What?” my father asked, his eyes wide.
“Yeah. He was a substitute. And there was a girl before who didn’t like me. She told everyone that I was dirty. She said all Indians were dirty. I told her that was stupid.”
“Someone actually said that to you?” I was astonished. The truth was, I’d never faced anything like this. I might be half Cree, but I didn’t look it at all. Which was, ironically, a bit of a problem for me right now. But my sister’s issue was much more serious. She was only eleven and clearly dealing with racism.
“Did you know abo
ut this?” I asked my parents.
“We knew about the girl,” my father answered, sighing. “But we hadn’t heard about the teacher.”
“Well, I’m sorry you have to deal with that,” I blurted out. I felt like I should have been protecting her somehow.
She shrugged. “It’s okay. Mom and Dad talked to me about it years ago. They told me people might say mean things to me but that I had to be strong and not let them get to me. That we’re better than that.” She beamed at my mom, who patted her hand and looked at my father.
“Why didn’t you have that conversation with me?” I asked.
“We didn’t think you’d have the same thing happen to you,” my father admitted.
“But we should have talked to you too. I’m sorry,” my mother finished. “So what is happening with you?”
How could I possibly complain that the guys at the Pow Wow group didn’t think I was Aboriginal after Jen’s confession?
“Nothing. It was nothing.”
Fifteen
I walked into the class and waited to be noticed. It didn’t take long.
“John!” Taylor screamed, running and jumping on me. I managed to keep my balance. Barely. The other girls turned at her shriek and ran over to hug me. Santee looked at me questioningly, then grinned and walked over.
“What on earth are you doing here?” she asked, hugging me.
“I missed you guys!” I said, trying to untangle myself from the pile of girls crowding around me. “I thought maybe I could come back here and dance with you guys.”
“Yeah!” the girls yelled, jumping up and down.
Santee frowned at me, clearly wanting to ask me more questions, but she called the girls over. “So since our friend John has come to visit, maybe he can show us what he’s learned in his classes at the Native Cultural Center,” she said. The girls cheered, and Santee picked up her remote to turn on the CD player. “So?” she asked me, nodding toward the floor.
He Who Dreams Page 4
