Glass Beads

by Dawn Dumont

  ©Dawn Dumont, 2017

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.

  Thistledown Press Ltd.

  410 2nd Avenue North

  Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, S7K 2C3

  www.thistledownpress.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Dumont, Dawn, 1978–, author

  Glass beads / Dawn Dumont.

  Short stories.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77187-126-6 (softcover).–ISBN 978-1-77187-127-3 (HTML).–ISBN 978-1-77187-128-0 (PDF)

  I. Title.

  PS8607.U445G53 2017 C813’.6 C2017-901113-8

  C2017-901114-6

  Cover and book design by Jackie Forrie

  Printed and bound in Canada

  The writer would like to gratefully acknowledge the funding of the Canada

  Council for the Arts

  Thistledown Press gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Government of Canada for its publishing program.

  GLASS BEADS

  To Mom and Dad

  CONTENTS

  Kokum’s House

  The Bus Stop (February 1993)

  The House (April 1993)

  Things That Can Be Taken (October 1993)

  Stranger Danger (March 1994)

  Homecoming

  Friends (October 1995)

  New Year’s Eve (1996)

  The Resistance (May 1997)

  Princess (August 1997)

  Two Years Less a Day (January 2000)

  The Great Mystery (June 2001)

  911 (October 2001)

  The Aunts

  The Meeting is Cancelled (May 2004)

  The Election (October 2004)

  The City of Lights (March 2007)

  Sundance (August 2007)

  The Ferris Wheel (September 2007)

  The Baby Shower (November 2007)

  The Stars (February 2008)

  The Fight

  The Curtain (April 2008)

  Kokum’s House

  THEY TOLD HER THAT she was no one’s baby which would have made her sad except that they had told her that a few times and tears don’t come after a while.

  This time they didn’t want her to have one of the video game controllers and one of them tugged on it in her hand while the other pushed her from behind. She was smaller than them but she could fight better. But if she punched one of them, they would scream until their mom came and then she’d be in real trouble. So she dropped it on the floor with a bang and walked out. One of them called out, “Mom!” So she picked up speed, across the linoleum, through the back door. In a flash. So fast, superfast. The door banged behind her.

  She was heading for the treehouse that the girls’ dad had built for them. “Our playhouse,” they said, meaning not hers. But she could hide there.

  “Julie!” Someone yelling behind her. The mom, Doreen. She sounded mad. And Julie didn’t want a lickin’. So she kept moving, past the playhouse, into the woods, until she couldn’t hear voices anymore.

  There were trees everywhere. Because this was the rez. “This is your mother’s Indian reserve,” the social worker told her. But Julie tried to tell her that her mom didn’t live there anymore. She lived in the city and that’s where she would be looking for Julie. “Does she know I’m here?” Julie asked and the woman said, “Do you want some candy?” Which Julie took even though it was some kind of hard candy that tasted like Halls and who gives that to kids?

  Kokum lived on the reserve. Julie went there once with her mom, it was a day trip and she stood near the door of the house refusing to come all the way in because it was so hot and dark. Kokum sat near the wall in the living room, the wall full of so many pictures, you couldn’t even see the paint colour. Kokum kept calling Julie closer. “Come sit on my lap” but Julie didn’t do that anymore. When Julie finally came close, because her mom kept bugging her, her grandma pulled her hand into hers and kept squeezing it over and over. And Julie’s mom said, “Mom, you’re scaring her.” Kokum was scary with that tube in her nose and that oxygen tank. But she was nice.

  “Can we stay there?” Julie asked her mom as her mom’s boyfriend drove them back to the city and her mom said “no, Kokum is sick” and so they were going back to the city. When Julie had bad dreams she would ask her mom again. But the answer was always no.

  And when the social worker drove her out to the reserve, Julie thought she was going to Kokum’s. But instead she drove her straight to Paul and Doreen’s. “They have little girls,” she told her. “And you will have lots of fun.” Julie didn’t ask her about Kokum.

  Kokum lives on Stone Man’s. Julie knew what the house looked like. She probably doesn’t even know I’m here. She looked around. There were trees in every direction. Thin birch, naked because it was October. The ground was wet with leaves and Julie could feel her ankles getting wet. Which way was the right way? Not the way she came. Straight ahead looked too cramped with bushes, so she went right because she was right handed. It was nice there in the bushes, the wind was cold but it smelled fresh and sweet. Her feet made a crunchy sound as they squashed the leaves. She could feel her cheeks turning pink. I am getting my exercise. On TV, they always said kids didn’t get enough exercise.

  She saw the deer before she heard them. Two of them standing in the trees in front of her. They looked at her; she looked at them. They returned to eating, deciding that she was okay. She wanted them to stay with her so she stayed still. She broke a piece of branch off and chewed on it, watching them. When her feet started to get cold, she stamped them softly. But not softly enough. The deer looked up at her and then hopped away. “Don’t go the way I came,” she said. She had seen a deer hanging upside down in Paul’s barn. His girls had laughed at her when she didn’t want to go in. “We’re Indians, stupid,” they told her and pushed her inside. Her eyes flitted around like a hummingbird: blood-stained fur, the insides of the deer hanging out and when you looked down at the head, the deer’s eyes were open.

  Julie watched the deer until they blended into the woods. Maybe these deer would make it. They would be smart and hide in the trees and be okay. Julie’s feet were starting to get really cold so she walked faster. The trees were changing, more brush, then a large field of just grain. She walked through that, stopping to break off the grain heads and chew on the stalks, sucking out the nutty marrow. And then there was a house. There was a swing set in the backyard and Julie thought she could take a break.

  What am I going to do with my feet, she wondered as she creaked back and forth on the swing. She could walk forever if it wasn’t for her feet. She scrunched her toes together.

  And then a voice. “Who are you?”

  Julie turned her head. There was a girl standing there, her age. She had on a puffy coat, a hat and mittens, all matching red. She must be rich.

  “I’m Angel.” It was a name Julie had used before, like when she got caught stealing at the store.

  “Nice name.” But the girl said it like I wish that was my name. “I’m Nellie. What are you doing on my swing?”

  “I’m looking for my kokum.”

  The girl looked at the field. “She’s lost?”

  Julie nodded.

  “Where did you last see her?”

  “In her house.”
>
  “Oh.” Nellie was relieved. “So you’re lost.”

  Julie nodded.

  “How old are you?”

  “Eight.”

  “Me too. Do you go to school?”

  “I have to be registered first. And that takes time.”

  “Okay. Do you want some peanut butter sandwiches? I have the crunchy kind.”

  Julie shook her head.

  “My mom can drive you home, she’s inside with the baby. But we have a car.”

  Julie swung her legs out and pumped them. The old swing set rattled and shook.

  “You’re probably going to break that.” But Nellie didn’t seem concerned. “You don’t want to go home?”

  Julie shook her head.

  “How come you don’t have a hat?” Nellie asked. “You have to have a hat to go outside.”

  Julie shrugged.

  “And you don’t have boots.” Nellie pointed at her pink rubber boots. “Where are your boots?”

  Julie looked down at her sneakers. She remembered when her mom bought them. The flowers had been pink then. Now they were covered in mud. She knocked one foot on top of the other and mud fell to the ground.

  “Mom says she will buy boots when her family allowance comes in.”

  “Where’s your mom?”

  Julie had been asked that before. A social worker crouched down, slightly off balance and leaning so close to Julie that she could see pepper in her teeth. “Where is your mom?” And then a lady cop. And then another person. And Julie giving the same answer over and over. “She’s at the store.” That was the answer she was told to give. And, “don’t answer the door.” And she never did answer it, they let themselves in and she told them she had to wait there. But they didn’t listen to her.

  “She’s at the store.”

  “Okay. Then you should stay here until she gets back. Do you like checkers?” Nellie asked.

  Julie had seen kids playing on TV. “I don’t know how.”

  “Oh it’s easy. I can teach you.” Nellie moved towards the house.

  Julie kept her butt on the swing.

  “You have to come inside.” Nellie’s voice was strict, like an adult.

  Julie looked at the woods.

  “I can make hot chocolate.” Her voice was nicer. “My mom taught me how and we can drink it in my room. I have my own room.”

  Julie looked down at her shoes. Why did they have to be so cold?

  “And I have a TV. And a Nintendo and . . . and . . . dolls? Do you like dolls? I don’t like them but if you like them . . . ”

  Julie liked their smiling round faces and their soft hair. She stopped the swing. She looked at the house. It was green and looked exactly like the house she had come from. Except there was a path leading from the swing-set to the backdoor.

  “You’re coming?” And then seeing Julie get up, “You’re coming!” And her eyes went wide like a kid in the toy aisle at the store. Then she was hurrying up the path.

  Julie followed, her eyes on the red coat in front of her.

  The Bus Stop

  February 1993

  NELLIE HAD TO WAIT in the bus stop lobby that was about as much a lobby as this one-horse town was a teeming metropolis. The lobby, if you were determined to call it that, was a short hallway between the front door and the town’s only bar, Rascal’s. There was no place to sit, unless the floor counted. And Nellie wasn’t sitting on that. The carpet was pockmarked where people had thrown down their cigarette butts and ground them into the carpet with their muddy feet.

  She couldn’t go into Rascal’s because even though she’d turned nineteen two weeks before. She’d left her ID back in Saskatoon and her chubby cheeks ensured that she always got ID’d. She could show them her student card and explain that sixty-five percent of first year students towards the end of the second term were nineteen years old. But they could say no and laugh at her and she didn’t feel like looking like an idiot in front of the bar staff and whoever else was in there. From the cacophony she was hearing every time the bar door opened, it appeared to be a lot of people or a particularly merry group of chimpanzees. She pulled out a book and leaned against the wall.

  After another half hour of waiting, Nellie was sorry that she’d only brought textbooks home with her. She’d already read the pre-history of pre-industrial Europe and a chapter on the Russian Revolution on the bus — that was the interesting stuff — and was now left with Keynesian theory and calculus. She picked up her economics text but couldn’t concentrate, not because the book was as dry as month old baked bannock, but because she was pissed.

  No I’m just disappointed. Or, I hate this place. Only bad stuff happens here.

  Before she’d left the city, she’d called home to the rez. Her fourteen-year-old sister Winona answered the phone, her voice half filled with laughter at something, until she heard heard Nellie’s voice.

  “What do you want?”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “At bingo with Dad.”

  “Tell them I’m coming on Saturday.”

  “They already know.”

  “They don’t know the time.”

  “The bus comes only twice a day. You don’t need to keep calling.”

  Nellie reminded herself that she was the mature sister, that she was the one with life experience and could handle a conversation with a little twat.

  “Yes but those times are six in the afternoon and midnight. And I’m coming at six in the afternoon and I don’t want to be waiting six hours.”

  “So then you could like call us and we would come get you.”

  “It’s a half hour drive — I don’t want to wait that long. Just tell them that I’ll be there at six. At the bus stop.”

  “They already know.”

  “The time. Tell them the time.”

  “I’m not your maid.”

  Nellie could see that her sister was looking for a fight. “How’s school?”

  “Okay.”

  “You get into that physics class?”

  “Why would I take that?”

  “Because I told you that if you want to do medicine then you need to have all three sciences.”

  “Who said I wanted to be a doctor?”

  You did, you obnoxious bitch. When I told everyone that I was going to be a lawyer.

  “When you’re here, we should go out ’cause Mom and Dad won’t let me take out the car anymore.”

  “I’m not staying long. Only the weekend.”

  “Don’t you have like a whole week off?”

  “Yeah, but I have a lot to do in the city.”

  This was the lie she told everyone. That she went to school, had a job and had loads of friends. Nellie didn’t have a job and she had talked to only one girl since she’d gotten to Saskatoon. A girl from a northern reserve who was even shyer than Nellie if that was possible.

  She had tried to get the “perfect life.” She picked a bar that was the most popular with university students. With its white couches and sparkling lights, Nellie had been intimidated the one night she’d made it inside. She went back in the day time; she stood in the open area with her resumé. The paper shook in the stale air. Great pains had been taken to invent three fake serving jobs. Nellie had never worked as a waitress but she had delivered beers to her dad in the big chair.

  She knew she was making a mistake as soon as she saw a blonde waitress hanging out at the bar; at least four inches taller and twenty pounds thinner than Nellie.

  But was she as smart as Nellie? Not fucking likely. But did intelligence really matter in the end? Even less fucking likely.

  The bartender was talking to another guy. They looked identical. The same blond, cropped, gelled hair. They flirted with the blond Valkyrie. Then a buxom brunette wearing a full face of makeup (and it wasn’t even 3:00 PM!) sidled up to the bar and said hi and their attention turned to her.

  Try not to judge, Nellie chided herself. Walk over to them, go, go. Or not. She waited for them to turn in h
er direction. They didn’t. How could they not see her? She wasn’t exactly tiny (although she would be if she would go on that hot pepper and watercress diet that she’d seen in Glamour — although hot peppers were expensive and she wasn’t sure what watercress was but it sounded like it would be slenderizing). She could feel her hair frizzing out as she stood there. That morning she had curled every single strand trying to emulate Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct — but every second she stood here, her hair went from sexy murderer to electrocuted hedgehog.

  In an effort to awaken their peripheral vision, Nellie waved her resume as if fanning herself. Nobody acknowledged her. Oh c’mon, I’m not judging, so you assholes shouldn’t either.

  Eventually the girls walked away, the two guys kept chatting. Nellie decided then to make her move. She walked in a bouncy way in hopes that would appear to be perky. She knew she didn’t look the way they did but maybe they would overlook that on account of her amazing personality.

  Yeah, right. As if.

  “Hi. I’m looking for a job?” Her voice went up in an unsure way. Like those girls she sneered at in university when a professor called on them and they weren’t ready.

  The guys looked at her without seeing her. She held out her resumé and waved it, a token of desperation rather than of peace.

  One of the bartenders took the resumé in his hand and looked it over. He nodded. She said something about knowing how to use a cash register. She’d researched cash registers the night before. She was ready for any question. He took a breath and said “We’re not hiring right now. But if something changes . . . ” He left that part blank, making Nellie think that sometimes people can’t be bothered to lie.

  Nellie smiled brightly, thinking that if they were trying to go through the motions then she could good-naturedly go through the motions as well. She said thanks with a bright, cold smile that would have made Richard Dawson proud.

  Afterwards, she went straight to Dairy Queen and drowned her sorrows in a Peanut Buster Parfait.

  She glanced at her watch: an hour and fourteen minutes had passed since the bus had dropped her off and she’d lugged her suitcase inside. That wasn’t a long time. Not when you were on your way to pick someone up. But long if you were waiting in a foyer with nothing but an economics book for company. Or punishment. It wasn’t her strongest subject. She was sitting at an annoying B minus. But that wasn’t her fault. The class was taught by this super-old prof who sucked up to the frat boys who sat at the back of the class and stunk up the room with the booze oozing out of their pores.