by Dawn Dumont
Nellie got through security and on the plane and sat there staring ahead at the seat until it was time to change planes in Toronto. Then an even longer flight, spent leafing through fashion magazines and not thinking about Everett and what a fucking asshole he was and how come he didn’t even come see her at the airport? And then landing and looking out the window, and seeing green jungle on both sides of the airstrip and realizing, “Holy shit, what have I done?”
Green. Nellie had only seen that kind of green on the hills near Lebret though you could live in Lebret a thousand years and it would never get this hot. She spotted a store across the street — there would be beer there. She checked both ways before crossing — was that a donkey driving a cart? What the fuck? Maybe she should have researched Mexico before she flew there. Nellie never did things blindly but then again she’d never broken up with the love of her life before. The last four months were a blur of papers, exams, law school applications and filling out paperwork for the trip.
Julie had tried to talk her out of it a few times, “Next year we can do a spring break trip, Taz said he’ll pay for it.” (Taz had gotten hired at the Assembly of Saskatchewan Chiefs as some kind of policy analyst.) But Nellie didn’t want a trip; she wanted to be away from everything that reminded her of Everett.
The sun beat down on her. She should have chugged water on the plane like her mom suggested. Every step felt like she was walking through a fog of someone’s sweat, but she kept walking until she got inside the store. She expected/hoped to feel a blast of AC. It was hotter in the store. She made eye contact with the man behind the counter — he looked like the guys back home on her rez — and he nodded. She nodded back and walked to the back of the store. She found a beer fridge and leaned her forehead against it. “I can do this.” She whispered. Then she slid the fridge door open and pulled out a beer.
She took her time walking outside to waiting area four. By the time she got there, there was a group of people waiting there. All white, all blonde, all skinny. It was like her worst nightmare had followed her from Saskatchewan.
“Buenos dias,” this from a tall blond guy, his long curly hair twisted into dreads.
“Yeah, thanks.” Nellie sipped her beer and wished that everyone would stop looking at her.
The guy laughed. “I thought you were a local!” He turned to the group behind him, lounging on the bench and their suitcases. “I thought she was a local.”
A couple of blonde girls looked Nellie up and down, and then looked away, bored already.
“Where did you get that?” asked dreadlocks, his eyes on her beer.
Nellie pointed at the convenience store directly across from the tiny airport.
He hesitated. “I wonder if I should . . . ”
“Should what?” Nellie asked. Talk to the locals? Weren’t they here to work with people?
“It’s just that this is a Christian organization and drinking is . . . frowned upon.”
Nellie took another sip. “Didn’t know that,” she said casually even as her heart was sinking. And that is why you read shit thoroughly and don’t jump blindly into situations.
When the bus came, Nellie got on last, careful to stow her empty beer in her bag lest someone get mad at her for destroying the environment by leaving it behind. And late at night I can sniff it and remember what life was like.
When they were all on, the bus driver stood up and addressed them. His name was Marcos and he was short (like everyone Nellie had seen so far) but also handsome with dark eyes, dark skin and black hair. Kind of like a Native guy but different. He asked for everyone’s names and how much Spanish they knew. The blonde girls who looked like twins were Margot and Melanie, they had just met on the plane but looked like they were already best friends — they even wore the same layered tanktops and linen pants. The “M”s, Nellie stored in her head. Dreadlocks was Noah. There was a tall, blonde girl with short hair who looked exactly like the model Linda Evangelista. Her name was Nicole. Then there were two clean-cut looking dudes, like the kind of guys who ran for student government and always won. They were something and something. Nellie had lost focus by them, starting to feel the effects of an early morning flight and the heat. Everyone spoke some Spanish.
“You?” Marcos leaned in so he could see her back there in the shadows.
“Nellie.”
“Neelee.” He hit the “e’s” pretty hard. “What does it mean?”
“I think I was named after my mom’s horse.”
Marcos threw back his head and laughed like a Native person.
“Habla espanol?”
Nellie shook her head. “Just “hola” and “si” and . . . ” she was gonna say cerveza but decided against it.
Marcos smiled, “Sometimes yes is all you need.”
He explained that everyone would be staying with families in the same village. They were expected to meet every morning for work assignments. He was sort of vague about what that would be.
“For the church, right?” Nicole asked.
“I thought it was a school!” Nellie blurted out. That was the picture that had attracted Nellie. She kind of liked the idea of helping poor kids get an education and become rich and powerful — although that hadn’t happened to her yet.
“Kind of both,” Marcos said, and climbed back into the driver’s seat.
The village was named Gutierrez and it was bigger than Nellie had figured. The streets were a mix of dirt and not dirt — she thought she even heard some cobblestone under the van. The buildings were low like thrown together buildings with lots of advertisements on the front and others were old and noble looking. Or at least what she could see, it had gone dark like someone had turned out the light. Fantastic burning sun and then — nothing. She kept yawning at the back of the bus and wondered how the rest of them could be so chatty.
Marcos dropped them off in twos. The “M”s went first. Then Nicole and Noah. Then the two future conservative-party-members. Outside each house a man and woman and a few children would greet the young people and wave to Marcos.
This is the real deal, Nellie thought. Marcos kept driving on and Nellie realized that she was the last one on the bus. Seventh is the unluckiest number she thought and wondered for the first time how she was going to survive on her own.
Marcos turned up the hill and drove around a winding drive. It was a lot further than the other places so Nellie walked up to his seat. “Did you forget about me?” she asked.
He said nothing. Which was annoying. But Nellie wasn’t in a position to complain. Besides maybe he was tired of talking. He’d had to answer a lot of questions from the other ones. They must have asked every question under the sun. From favourite foods, to music, to whether people still wove their clothing, and all kinds of other stuff. Although Nellie couldn’t complain about that. Even half-asleep she’d learned a lot.
The bus wound around the hill and Nellie could see the village behind them. Was she about to get raped? This thought was always on the edge of her mind. She looked at Marcos — they were about the same height but his arms were bulging with muscles and she was probably about fifty-five percent body fat thanks to three months of stuffing Reece’s Pieces and potato chips into her mouth under Taz’s disgusted gaze.
“You’re never gonna get a guy eating like that,” he said.
“Good,” she replied, knowing that he was worried that she’d be living with him and Julie forever. As if Nellie would let that happen; she liked Julie but living with a couple was slowly killing her soul.
What if this driver raped and killed her? She would make the perfect victim — it’s not like anyone was going to break the bank looking for her. Her mom would certainly try but the rest of her family weren’t really the foundation-setting-up type. As for the Canadian government, she didn’t think they were into hunting down international criminals who preyed on Native women when they didn’t even do that in their own country. Nellie felt around for the beer bottle in her bag. That would have to do.
Hit him a couple times, run down the hill, find a phone and call her mom. She exhaled; life was always easier when you had a plan, no matter how pathetic.
Marcos stopped the vehicle. Nellie craned her neck to see their destination. All she saw was a large white building stretching up.
“What’s this? The church?”
“My house.”
“Oh. Are you the mayor?”
Marcos laughed. “Come inside and meet my wife.”
The front door was a light-coloured wood and Marcos knocked once before entering. A tiny woman wearing jeans and a T-shirt came around the corner and grinned at Marcos. “You’re late!”
Nellie almost laughed. Marcos’s wife was a babe. Even Julie would have a tough time measuring up to this goddess.
“This is my wife, Nina. And, this is Nellie, she only speaks English.”
“Sorry.”
Nina smiled. “Don’t be. Most of the people around here speak different Indian languages anyway. English is a safe bet.”
Marcos led the way to the dining table where there were large chunks of bread, dishes with chicken and fish; it was a veritable feast to Nellie’s standards. There was wine too, which Nellie had tried once at a university party and spit up a second later. But she took the glass that was offered to her. With each sip, it got less disgusting. Nina was curious about her colouring and Nellie explained that she was Native Indian, Cree to be specific, and that she had grown up on a reserve. Marcos and Nina were interested in that; they plied her with lots of questions about Native people in Canada such as how were they treated and were they self-governing? Nellie answered them between sips of wine, wanting to make it sound better than it was but failing as the night went on.
She was pretty drunk by the time she found herself explaining that she was there because she had realized that the love of her life was a sex-crazed, drug-addicted drunk.
“How old are you?” Nina asked.
“Twenty-two.”
“That’s a good age to make new choices.”
Marcos was bored with all the relationship-talk. “Just have fun, Nee-lee!” He topped up her wine until it nearly overflowed.
Nellie floated to her bedroom. She fell asleep thinking maybe she was the luckiest human being in the world.
Marcos and Nellie headed down to the worksite that morning. They brought coffee for the other workers. Everyone looked bright-eyed and bushytailed, except for Nellie whose lips were still stained with wine.
Noah sniffed the air around her and winked.
Nellie moved self-consciously away from him.
Marcos assigned them their tasks. The boys were to help with framing and the girls were being sent over to the community garden.
Nicole wrinkled her perfect brow, “I’m here to build.”
Marcos looked at her arms: “Can you lift a beam?”
“I can do other things.”
“You’re a guest here — can you respect what I’m asking you to do?”
Nicole looked pissed. The two “M”s didn’t look pleased either. Normally Nellie would have jumped on board with the ladies but she actually liked gardening and she certainly did not have the head this morning to listen to hammering and drills.
At the garden, a smiling grandmotherly type offered them aprons and gardening implements. Nellie went to the far end of the garden and stuck her earphones in. She had an entire Madonna compilation to keep her company.
She was on her sixth playing of “Ray of Light” when she noticed the sweat crawling down her face. She licked around her mouth and sucked part of her sweat back into her. She walked back to where the other girls were working.
“Water?” she said to one of the “M”s who nodded at a pitcher set on a table. Nellie poured a glass of water and drank slowly. Her stomach wasn’t feeling too keen either.
“Where are you from?” Nicole was suddenly beside her, pouring a glass as well.
“I’m from the Saskatoon area.”
“What’s your family’s background?”
Nellie immediately knew what she was getting at, “What are you?” Because this was a question people — white people — always asked her. She wasn’t dark enough to fit their idea of what a Native was but her skin had enough colour that they knew she didn’t belong to them. She decided to make her work for it.
“Farmers.” Not exactly true — but her mom liked to garden, so . . .
“I mean, like where did you come from?”
“Canada.”
“Originally?”
“Originally? Northern Canada. Like Bering Strait area.”
Nicole’s perfect brow was again disturbed.
Nellie had grown bored of this game. “I’m Native.”
“Oh.” Nicole’s gaze looked her up and down. “I’ve never met a Native person before.”
“Yeah, it’s super-hard to meet a Native person in Canada where nearly a million Aboriginal people live.” Nellie was already missing her solitude.
A group of young kids ran by screaming as a belligerent goat chased after them. Nellie half-smiled. She remembered goats from her uncle’s farm.
“What kind of Native are you?” This from one of the “M”s.
“Cree.”
“What was the reserve like? Was there a lot of poverty?”
Nellie had no idea how to answer that one. “Compared to what?”
“I’m from Edmonton,” this from Nicole, “and one time I drove past Hobbema where they have all that oil money and I couldn’t believe how many of the houses were boarded up or had graffiti all over them — why would people do that? Like just destroy things?”
Nellie’s heart was pounding like that time she had taken on a professor who had said reserves were the cause of all Native social problems — the same place where tiger lilies grew and native kids swam in dug outs — that was the root of their problems? Nellie had wanted to punch him in the ’nads. But these were girls so instead she relied on an icy response: “How the fuck would I know?”
Nobody asked her anymore questions.
Nellie poured herself another glass of water with shaking hands and drank it down. Without making eye contact, she reached into her pocket and turned on her CD player again. She trudged through the dirt making a little dirt cloud behind her.
Their workday ended at a little after two. Marcos came by with some food and water bottles for them. He announced that they were free to go do whatever.
“Like what?” asked Nicole.
“Anything you want,” Marcos said. “The kids play soccer in the courtyard, you might like that. You can explore the village. Don’t go hiking just yet. It’s a bit dangerous in the woods — vipers, spiders and Zapatistas,” he laughed loudly.
Noah laughed as well; everyone else seemed confused.
The only thing Nellie wanted to do was go back to her room in the beautiful white house at the top of the hill but she didn’t think that would be fair to Marcos and Nina.
She hung around at the garden site and chewed on a carrot. Noah was gathering up people for a hike up to the old church at the other end of town. “It was built by the Spanish,” he explained to everyone as if that was some kind of special enticement.
Nellie could feel the cold twinges of loneliness moving in so she nodded at him when he asked her if she “was in.” Everyone else joined in unfortunately but that made sense. They were all strangers in a strange land (even though Nellie actually looked like she was from the area).
The girls were apparently still smarting from her grouchy rebuke and stayed away from her. And the two frat boys were obviously jonesing for a screw and so stayed close to the blondes.
“So how are you liking it?” Noah asked.
“You people ask a lot of questions,” Nellie said and then regretted it. She couldn’t alienate everyone. Could she? No she probably could.
“Prickly.”
“No one wants to talk to me — just ask me questions.”
“That is talking.”
Nellie sighed sharply. “I guess I’m wrong then. I guess it’s not that I’m being treated like a science project because I’m not white.”
Noah was silent for a few steps. “Do you like socc- I mean, I like soccer. I like it a lot.”
Nellie hid a smile behind her hand.
“I like soccer as well,” she said finally. “Are you into all this Christian stuff too?”
“I am a youth pastor — for the United Church. So, yeah, you could definitely say I’m into this Christian stuff.” He was smiling as he said this so Nellie was able to squelch her urge to smack herself in the face.
“Just don’t try to convert me. The Mormons have tried, the Catholics, one time a Wiccan girl. I’m not a joiner.”
“I converted like eighteen people last month. So don’t worry, we don’t need you.”
They didn’t have much time to continue their conversation as kids kept running towards them, firebombing them with questions. “Canadian?” “Polar bear?” “Buffalo?” These were the ones Nellie heard the most.
They reached the church. It was impressive compared to the other buildings. It was three stories high and the belfry had a giant bell in it.
“That is what woke me up this morning,” Noah said.
“I didn’t hear it.”
“Seriously? That thing is loud.”
Nellie pointed at the hill on the other side of the village. “I’m staying with Marcos and his wife.”
“Ah, favouritism.”
“First for me.” Except if you counted lonely librarians and ancient elementary school teachers easily bought off with handmade cards.
One of the frat boys pushed open the church doors and they walked inside. Nellie looked around before entering — trying to make eye contact with the Mexican people watching them — was this okay? Nobody seemed concerned.
The church was what you would expect — pews, altar, artwork depicting the suffering of Jesus. Nellie gravitated towards a giant painting of Mary and an altar filled with flowers and tiny frames with pictures of loved ones. Nellie looked through the pictures, saw some pretty hot guys and wondered how many women in the village were experiencing the same heartbreak as her, how many had cried themselves to sleep too many nights to count, how many slept with their arms wrapped around a pillow missing the feel of him.
