A Big Dose of Lucky

by Marthe Jocelyn

  “Honey,” says Mrs. Munro, “this little girl is from someplace else, just visiting at the hospital for a few days. Isn’t that right?” Her eyes are urging me to agree.

  “Yes sir,” I mumble. She’s scared of something. If they were white, I’d think he suffered from the no-one-trusts-a-Negro thing that seems to affect most of Ontario, but obviously it’s not that.

  “Somebody sick?” says Mr. Munro.

  I scrabble in my head for a lie, not liking this part one bit. But he talks again, so I don’t have to answer.

  “You surprised me, that’s all,” he says. His voice is gentler now, even has a laugh inside it. “One look at you and I’m thinking you must be related to us. My crazy wife musta invited another cousin or some such thing.”

  “Good grief, Dad! Every black person has to be related?” Lucy opens a drawer and takes out forks and knives.

  “Not such a stretch in this town.” Mr. Munro shrugs out of his jacket, and I realize it’s a uniform. He spots me looking at the crest embroidered on the pocket.

  “Watchman,” he says. “Royal Bank of Canada. Watch the man’s money.”

  Lucy rolls her eyes, showing she’s heard that joke a million times. But she’s smiling too, and so is Pete. They seem relieved, like a storm cloud has swept by without pelting rain. Only their mother still looks nervous, as if every day brings calamity and why should this day be any different?

  GRACE

  “Our Dear Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for this food in a world where many walk in hunger. We thank Thee for faith in a world where many walk in fear. We thank Thee for friends in a world where many walk alone. We are blessed when You feed our souls on the bread of life and help us to do our part in kind words and loving deeds. We are blessed by the children You have given us and shall remain ever blessed by their presence in our home and in our hearts.

  “We give you thanks, O Lord.”

  FIRST FAMILY

  I do not look up from my empty plate while Mrs. Munro is saying grace, in case Lucy makes me laugh. The prayer is so long that my stomach starts to rumble like background music. Finally, the macaroni gets served, all creamy and cheesy with a crunchy golden topping of what turns out to be potato chips. I can’t help myself. Mrs. Hazelton would be ashamed of me, I gobble it up so fast. Mrs. Munro spoons out seconds, and I slow down. Here I am, sitting at a table having supper with a whole family of my color!

  “Dad,” says Pete, “pass the salt, please.”

  His dad uses the salt and passes it on.

  “Last day of school next Wednesday,” Pete says.

  “We were wondering…” says Lucy.

  “Hmmm?” Mr. Munro is chewing.

  “We’d like to borrow the canoe,” says Pete.

  Mr. Munro looks up.

  “Remember? Last year?” Lucy has a cajoling voice I recognize from girls at the Home vying for favors.

  “It’s a tradition now,” Pete says.

  “After one year?”

  “Yeah. We’re only going as far as Dead Beaver Island.”

  “We’ll use the life jackets,” says Lucy. “Promise.”

  Mr. Munro looks at his wife, and she looks back. He raises an eyebrow, and she gives a tiny shake of her head. He lifts both eyebrows and twitches his shoulders. She twitches her shoulders too. I’ve never seen parents in action before. Is this how they talk? Like sign language? Crazy, I think.

  “Your mother is worried about you being on the water after dark,” says Mr. Munro.

  “We’ll be back way before,” says Pete. “Jimmy Fox is borrowing a boat from Austin at work. He has to return it too.”

  “Who else is going?” asks their mother.

  “Us three and Jimmy,” says Lucy.

  Us three? Me too?

  They see my surprise.

  “Why not?” says Pete.

  “Jimmy’s idea,” says Lucy. “You should meet the bay.”

  “No hanky-panky,” says Mr. Munro.

  “Dad!” say the twins together.

  BAYSIDE BAIT AND TAKLE

  The sign is hand-painted on a piece of wood with the c left out of tackle. Two beefy white men sit on upturned buckets on a patch of weeds outside a shack not much bigger than the shed behind the Home. They must be brothers—they have matching round, sunburned faces and the same piggy noses.

  “What can we do for you?” one of them says, wiping his hands on his T-shirt and leaving a trail of slime down his chest.

  “We need some worms,” says Jimmy.

  The man who asked is standing up now, looking us over in a way that makes my skin prickle.

  “You see this, Jeff?” he says. “Four of ’em.”

  “Goddamn powwow,” says the one called Jeff.

  It takes me a second to realize. He thinks we’re all Indians like Jimmy.

  “Can we have worms or not?” Jimmy stays calm as calm. He’s holding a dollar bill.

  “They’re probably going to eat ’em,” says Jeff. “Fry ’em up with grasshoppers.”

  Jimmy sighs and goes to put the dollar back into his pocket.

  “Aw, we’re just joshin’ you,” says the first guy. “Your money’s as good as anybody’s, once we wash the dirt off. You want a buck’s worth?” He scoops a handful of worms out of a pail and puts them in a paper cup.

  “That’s it?” Pete takes the cup. “Over at Shoreline Camp they give you three times that much.”

  “Then I guess you’ll be going there next time,” says Jeff. “Eh, Bender?”

  His brother shakes his head as he stuffs the dollar bill into a tackle box next to his bucket stool. “Nah, we want customers like these right where we can see ’em.”

  “Come on,” Lucy says to us. “Or I might have to hit somebody.”

  She stomps away, fists clenched at her sides.

  “Ooh, baby,” says Bender. “I like ‘em feisty, don’t you?”

  I see his eyes follow Lucy’s bottom inside her shorts, and my stomach turns. Both of them laugh.

  “Chocolate pudding for dessert!” I hear Jeff say, but I’m hurrying to catch up with Lucy, the boys right behind us.

  “Pigs!” spits Lucy. “PIGS!”

  “Just forget it, Luce.” Pete has a hand on her shoulder.

  But Jimmy’s laughing. “She’s just mad ’cause they thought she was an Injun,” he says. “No worse insult, eh?”

  Lucy spins around. “You know that’s not true, Jimmy Fox! Don’t you dare accuse me of that!”

  But then we’re back at the dock, and the boats are waiting.

  I’M THE ONE WITH THE POOFY ORANGE LIFE JACKET

  The attention turns to getting Malou Gillis into a canoe without tipping the boat or drenching the girl.

  I’m in the middle, perched on a narrow strut. Pete’s behind me, and Lucy is up front. They’re the ones with the paddles. I’ve got a lump in my throat the size of a frog we saw on the dock. Jimmy is ahead of us in a kayak borrowed from the assistant manager of the Dominion grocery store.

  “Why is there a rug in a boat?” I tap the carpet under my feet.

  “Deadens the sound,” says Pete.

  “So we don’t spook the fish,” Lucy adds.

  It takes about two minutes for the bay to enchant me. The wide, glowing sky. The pull and swoop of the canoe. The rippling gleam of the water, dotted with islands, some with cabins and docks and towels flapping on lines, others so small they hold only lichen and seagulls. The shoulders of amazing black rock on either side of the channel we’re gliding through. The knobbed cedar trees overlooking all of it.

  I reach over the side to trail my fingers in the water, icy cold as it slides around my hand.

  “Watch out for snakes,” says Lucy. She’s kidding but not kidding, I can tell.

  We come to a little cove that they seem to know. They seem to know everything.

  “Let’s see if these high-priced worms will catch anything,” says Jimmy.

  “We should have taken a couple of Dad’s lures,” says
Pete.

  Lucy announces that I have to stick a worm on a hook or I don’t get to eat a fish. The only fish I ever had was fish fingers on Fridays at the Home, and I didn’t much like those, so I’m tempted to say, Fine, don’t feed me. But then she’ll think I’m a sissy, and I am not a sissy. So I do it. I impale a live, wriggling creature on a splinter of metal, right through the brain. If worms have brains. My aim would have to be amazing to get it through the brain. Anyway, I killed the worm.

  Fishing is more complicated than I would have guessed, not that I ever gave it one minute’s thought before today. Pete and Jimmy start wrangling about whose casting technique is best. Lucy quietly snags two fish before the boys hush up and eventually catch another one each. Now we’ve got supper!

  DEAD BEAVER ISLAND

  “It’s not called that on the map,” says Lucy, “but one time we came here with my dad, when we were what, eight, Pete?”

  “Uh-huh, around eight,” says Pete.

  “And we found a dead beaver, right over there.” She points. “Between those rocks.”

  “Highlight of my life,” says Pete. “Up till then. Still had fur on.”

  “Yeah,” says Lucy. “Not a skeleton. There were a billion flies.” She looks at me and grins. “Don’t worry, it’s not there anymore. But that’s how we named the island.”

  Jimmy has looped the boat rope around a big stone. He shifts the kayak a little farther up onto the beach to make sure it won’t go anywhere. The rock is smooth and nearly flat, streaked sandy pink and gray and mauve like a sunset in stone. Two pine trees grow out of a crevice, bent sideways as if they’re old ladies huddled against a merciless wind.

  We carry the food and gear to the spot where Pete shows us a ring of stones they’ve used before as a fireplace.

  TEAMWORK

  My job is to collect wood for a fire and to steer clear of a plant they show me called poison ivy. I’m very good at both assignments. Seems like I gather enough fallen branches and driftwood to build a small church.

  Jimmy’s job is to cut off the fishes’ heads and tails. Then he slices the knife along their bellies and scoops out the guts. I try not to watch, but I do anyway. After the first two, he offers me the knife.

  “Uh-uh!” I put my hands up. “No way!”

  The fish look way smaller once they’ve had their innards taken out. Luckily, Lucy brought wieners too.

  “You show a sorry lack of faith in my ability as a fisherman,” says Pete.

  “You’d be right about that,” she says. “I seem to remember being very hungry this time last year. Which is why I caught two this time.”

  “Yeah, you’re a fish’s worst nightmare, all right,” says Pete.

  They tease each other back and forth while we eat. My five bites of fish might be the best thing I’ve ever tasted.

  “Oh, poor Pete, gonna miss school, aren’t you? No more ogling Bethany Wilkes as she opens her locker.”

  “Maybe I’ll ask her out over the summer.”

  “Oh sure! You’ve gone blind suddenly? Don’t remember that she’s white? You don’t have a chance in hell.”

  Pete looks like he wants to clonk Lucy on the head with a rock, but she pulls out a bag of something called marshmallows and both boys kneel down, pretending to worship her.

  “You’ve never had a marshmallow?” Lucy shakes her head. None of them can believe the deprivation of my poor orphanage upbringing.

  “No! Don’t eat it raw!” Jimmy rams the white blob on the end of a stick and shows me how to hold it above the glowing embers of the fire, turning it gently until the whole thing is golden brown.

  “That’s good,” he says. But I keep it there another second, and poof, it bursts into flames and turns to black cinder in a flash.

  They all laugh. “Try again!”

  I get it right the next time. The outer layer of toasted sugar slips off, leaving a gooey bit to get roasted again. The sweet mixed with smoke is delicious. We finish the bag.

  “Pete.” Lucy points at the sky. The sun is an orange ball leaking flames across the horizon.

  “Yup,” says Pete. “Only about half an hour till sunset. We better go.”

  We spring into action, packing up the cooking stuff, dousing the fire, tossing the fish bones into the scrub for whatever seagull wants them. We paddle back across water that reflects the sky, flaming like a house on fire.

  TEN

  WE GET BACK TO THE DOCK

  “Oh crap,” says Pete. He’s leaning over his bike. “Someone slashed my tires.”

  Jimmy checks his quickly. “Mine too. My work bike.” Jimmy’s bike carried two of us, as well as the gear. “We’re screwed.”

  “What the hell?” Lucy’s tires are also slashed. “Who would do this?”

  Somebody laughs an ugly laugh, and my neck and arms prickle a warning. We spin around. The horrible pig named Bender is standing at the land end of the dock. His brother comes out from behind a pine tree, rubbing his hands on the seat of his pants.

  “Jeez-us,” says Pete. “What are you losers doing here?”

  “Uh, not the best approach,” says Jimmy, quiet and tense.

  “Get lost,” says Lucy. “I mean it. Take off!”

  Jeff laughs again. “Hear that, Bender? She’s tellin’ us to take off.”

  “Take off what, eh?”

  They’ve got us trapped on the dock, moving close enough that I can smell unwashed shirts and cigarettes and some kind of alcohol.

  “Take off her little shorts and see her little black muff,” says Jeff. He lunges for Lucy.

  She squeals and tries to dodge, but she crashes into Pete, who has stepped in to protect her. With a quick, hard shove, Jeff topples Pete right off the side of the dock. He lands with a splash, luckily not hitting a boat or anything on the way down. He slaps the water and comes up bellowing. But we’re not watching, because we’re suddenly in the middle of crazy-time.

  The men grunt and grab, calling us that worst name, the one that starts with N. After a minute of pushing and shouting, Jimmy and Lucy together do to Jeff what he did to Pete. Wham! Overboard. But Bender has my arms pinned, one hand covering my face, making me taste worm slime and cigarette butts. I squirm, and stomp on his feet, and finally yank away to one side and jam my knee into his place as hard as I can, feeling a surge of triumph when he howls. Pete has sloshed his way out of the bay, and now we’re running, all of us, faster than ever before in our lives.

  POLICE

  “What are you, nuts? We’re not calling the cops, and we’re not telling anyone else either.” Pete is fiercer than I’ve ever seen him. “We got the bikes. What more do you want?”

  We’d run and run, but then circled back in the nasty pitch darkness and retrieved our stuff when the Brothers Grim were gone.

  “But isn’t that what the police are for? To protect, you know, citizens?” I say.

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately?” says Jimmy.

  “What?”

  “You do not have blond hair and blue eyes,” he says. “In case those details escaped you.”

  Wow, Jimmy has never been mean like this either.

  “Let me explain,” says Lucy. “Remember that moment when you so awesomely rammed your knee into that guy’s crotch?”

  I nod, even though…sheesh. She said crotch in front of the boys.

  “That is the moment of triumph,” she says. “That is the only justice you are ever going to see for those idiot snortdicks jumping us. If we reported the ‘incident’ to the cops? Jeff and Bender would somehow make it like we attacked them. The cops would take one look at our four brown faces and assume we’re the bad guys. Pete and Jimmy especially, being boys, would be in deep shit. So hold on to that one special moment when your knee met the target, ’cause that’s it.”

  They tell me fifteen stories, or maybe a hundred and fifteen, about times when the cops have ignored or bullied or dismissed or harassed them—or any one of the Indians on the reservation nearby, or even the oc
casional colored tourist passing through town.

  We don’t call the police. We go home and act like it never happened.

  THE NEXT TIME I SEE LUCY

  “So,” she says. “About your hair…”

  Part of me winces, because her saying that means she’s been thinking how awful I look. But most of me wants to hug her, because she, and only she in all my life, knows how I feel about my hair.

  “What should I do?” I lay a hand on my head, pressing down on the dense mat.

  “I get the feeling you haven’t had much help in the styling department,” she says.

  We start to laugh. I am the most unstyled person in Canada.

  We go to the store and I spend two dollars and twenty-five cents on a “Complete Home Kit” of something called Perma-Strate Cream Hair Straightener. The package promises that the product will recondition hair as it softly straightens and keep it perfectly relaxed for three months or more.

  We’ll see about that.

  “They only carry this stuff because my mother phoned them up and promised we’d be really good customers if they carried the right products. I’m pretty sure we’re the only ones who buy it.”

  We also got me a new hair pick, which is maybe even more exciting.

  In the bathroom at Lucy’s house, I sit on the rim of the tub. Lucy admits that it’s her mom who does her hair, and she’s not exactly for sure certain how to do this. But she knows more than I do, so I let her take charge. She carefully rubs Vaseline around the edges of my hairline and tries to get some on my scalp too.

  “The box says creamy and easy,” she says. “But it still stings, I’m warning you.”

  She works in the cream relaxer starting at the roots and, bit by bit, all the way through to the ends. She tells me about the first time her mother did hers—and burnt her head so badly that she cried. Lucy checks her watch and says we have to leave the muck on for fifteen minutes. She’s wearing rubber gloves, as if she’s a hospital cleaner handling vomit, which makes me wonder what the stuff might be doing to my brain.