Читать книгу Shabash! - Ann Walsh - Страница 7

I’m not a “stinking Hindu.” I’m not even Hindu, I’m Sikh. They are both religions, but they’re different. What Bill said was like calling someone who’s Jewish a “stinking Catholic.” It makes me mad.

Sure, my parents are from India, but I speak Punjabi, not Hindi. It’s not the word, “Hindu,” but the way people say it; the way Bill spat it out as if it were a swear word. And I don’t stink, and even if I were Hindu, I wouldn’t stink, but people like him will never get close enough to either Sikhs or Hindus to find that out.

Last year my Grade Five teacher did a unit in Social Studies. She called it “Getting to Know Us,” and everyone in the class had to research someone else. Find out all about them; where they were born, where their parents came from, what church they went to and all of that stuff—and then give a report about that person to the rest of the class. When we did the reports I found out that kids in my class went to lots of different churches and that some of their parents and grandparents came from other countries, too. Places like Germany and China and England and Australia. So what’s the big deal about me going to the Sikh temple on Sundays and my parents being from India?

My Grade Five teacher also taught us a new word, one I hadn’t known before. Prejudice. It means that people don’t like other people. Not for any good reason like they’re mean or kill people or hit their kids, but just because they are different.

I’d never heard the word “prejudice” before Grade Five, but I already knew what it meant. I had lived with it all my life. Dad says it’s the same in many small towns in British Columbia, towns where a lot of Sikhs live, and that we get used to living with it. I knew what he meant. You pretend you don’t hear the teasing words, you try to laugh, you choke down anger. You let it roll over you and think that you really don’t care any more, that it doesn’t bother you, that words can’t hurt you. Then something happens that hurts, really hurts.

I was hurting as I walked home after trying to register for minor hockey. What was the big deal? I wondered again. Hundreds, thousands of kids play minor hockey right across Canada. There must be other East Indian kids who play and Chinese kids and Native Indians and lots of others who have different religions and come from other countries. But I guess there had never been an East Indian player in my town’s hockey league. They hadn’t known what to say to me at the registration booth, but they hadn’t wanted me to join, that was clear.

To heck with them. My parents are always telling me that I have a stubborn streak just like my grandfather, and I could feel it coming out. I’d worked hard for the money to join hockey, I was entitled to join and I was going to join!

I’d phone the coach if I got any more static. He had said that it was okay for me to send the forms in, okay for me to play hockey in the league. Now the only problem would be getting my parents to agree.

I walked quickly, angry, thinking how everyone had stared at me as if I were some sort of freak. I’m not. I am Canadian, as Canadian as any other kid in town. More so than some. I was born right here, in Dinway’s hospital, eleven years ago in 1969. I’ve lived here all my life and my English is good. I don’t have an accent when I speak English, although my Mom says that my Punjabi isn’t great, that I speak it with a funny accent. I’m not very good with Punjabi spelling either; the alphabet is hard to learn. But my English spelling is better than most of the kids in my class. I’ve always gotten As in spelling and language and all of that stuff.

Okay, my skin is dark. I look “different.” I’m the darkest one in my family, outside of my grandfather who’s still in India. I’ve never met him, but I’ve seen pictures. Mom says I look like him. It’s funny how the colour can be so different, even in the same family. My little sister, Baljinder, was really light-skinned when she was born. She’s kept that light skin, too, the way she’s kept the nickname my father gave her the moment he first saw her. We call her “Babli” and now it seems more her real name than Baljinder. It’s shorter to say and suits her. She talks. All the time. Babbles even, so Babli fits her.

I know I’m really dark. Even though they call me Ron at school and not Rana—which is my real name—there’s no mistaking me for a white kid. I hadn’t thought it mattered much. Until now.

When we did that research in Grade Five and I learned about prejudice, I had thought that it wasn’t too bad in Dinway. At least it wasn’t too bad at school. There are three East Indian kids in my class this year and we get on all right with the other kids. No one calls us names or refuses to play on the same team as us in gym. The other guys, the whites, leave us pretty much alone at lunch and recess, but we stick together in our own group and don’t bother about them, either. There doesn’t seem to be much prejudice in our school, but I guess I’d just had my first lesson on how much prejudice the adults carry around with them.

Maybe it’s because of the mill. Dinway is a small town and its major industry is lumber. That’s what it says in the tourist guide book that the town makes up every year. We have one big mill in town and a lot of people drive the logging trucks or work in the bush, cutting down the trees so they can be brought into the mill. Almost everyone in Dinway works in the logging industry, and those big trucks loaded with logs roll into town all day long. Dad is a foreman at the mill. He’s the only East Indian to have such an important job, but there are a lot of others from the Sikh community who work there too.

It’s because of the mill, the mill and the jobs, that there are so many East Indians in Dinway. A lot of young men come over from India, looking for work in British Columbia because there is work for them, work they can easily learn to do. And Dad says that when an East Indian gets a job, he works hard to keep it.

Harder than the gorays, the whites. Dad says he can always count on his Sikh workers to take the shifts no one else wants and to help out if he needs someone to work overtime.

He says our people don’t slack off on the job, or try to take extra-long lunch hours and coffee breaks the way some of the other workers do. Many of the men who work here have families back home in India, wives and children that they want to bring to Canada. And the only way they can afford to do that is to hang onto a job and save every penny. So the East Indian men work hard at their jobs and sometimes even share a house with other East Indian workers, putting up with shabby furniture and rooms that need painting, just so they can save more of their salary.

Dad says that things are getting harder, now. The mill had to lay off some workers and when some white guys lost their jobs and some East Indian men didn’t, it got pretty tense. But things are tough all over British Columbia right now, Dad says. It’s the recession, whatever that means. He’s always talking about it and hoping it will end soon.

A few years ago there were lots of jobs and everyone who wanted to work was able to. Now, though, mills in some towns have even closed down and people are out of work everywhere. I guess that sort of feeds the prejudice, makes it grow. When a white worker loses his job, he blames the East Indian who kept his. And when he sits home unemployed, I guess he can think some pretty ugly thoughts, even though it’s the recession’s fault.

Anyway, Dinway was going to have an East Indian player—me—on its minor hockey league, like it or not. Somehow I’d have to convince my parents to sign that form.

As I opened the front door, the warm smells of cooking rushed past me; hot oil and chili peppers and fresh ginger and garlic. “Hi, Mom,” I called. “Something smells good.”

In the kitchen, my mother, her arms streaked with flour, was working with the roti dough. Rotis are sort of a bread-pancake that we eat with almost every meal. We don’t use much bread, except in sandwiches for lunches, so Mom makes roti almost every day.

“You’re late, Rana.” Mom didn’t look up, but kept patting the balls of dough between her palms until they flattened into perfect circles.

“Yes. Sorry.” At home we mostly speak Punjabi, but Babli and I use English once in a while. Mom’s own English is terrible, but she likes to hear Babli and me speak it. When Babli started school, Mom enrolled in a special class to help people learn to speak English, but she didn’t learn much. She kept right on speaking nothing but Punjabi at home and to her friends and never practised her English. After a while she quit going to the classes. But my dad is really fluent. His English is almost as good as mine, which I guess is one of the reasons that he got to be a foreman at the mill.

I watched my mother as she slid the flattened rounds of dough into the hot frying pan, flipping them over after they browned. Then she put them on a rack over one of the stove elements, glowing red hot, and the rotis puffed up like beach balls. When she takes them off the rack, she butters one side lightly and stacks them and they settle down so they’re pancake shaped instead of beach ball shaped. Reaching out, I took a roti from the stack of fresh ones.

“Rana! Wait! Dinner is nearly ready.”

“Ah, Mom…” I grinned at her and bit into the warm roti anyway. “It smells so good I can’t wait.”

She smiled back, pleased. “Flattery, Rana, flattery. Go and call your father and sister, please.”

Dinner was roti and dal, which I guess looks a bit like chili, but is made with beans or lentils and no meat. It also has more spices in it than chili and although they’re both spiced to be hot, they taste really different. I like chili on a hot dog, but for dinner I prefer dal.

I waited until everyone was nearly finished eating before I took a deep breath and brought up the subject of minor hockey.

“Mom, Dad…” I said, tearing off a chunk of roti to scoop up the last of the dal in my bowl. “I…uh…I want to join the minor hockey league.”

There was silence around the table and everyone stared at me. Then my father said, “No Rana, absolutely not.”

“You didn’t even take time to think about it,” I said. “Just listen for a minute. I’ve got the money, saved it from my paper route and my allowance. I’ve got enough for new skates, too. And I’m a pretty good skater. Remember last winter when our school had an outdoor rink? We all had to skate in gym classes and I had to learn. I got those old skates and used to go down to the lake and practice on Saturdays.”

“He’s a good skater,” said Babli. “Not like me. I still fall down a lot.”

“So skate on the lake. Go to the arena. Why must you join a team?” asked my dad.

I didn’t say anything for a while. Why did I want to join the hockey league?

“I don’t know,” I said finally. “Skating’s all right, but I watched some of the guys play hockey at noon hours, on the school rink. It looks like fun. I’d like to try it. Just skating around by yourself is pretty lonely. I mean boring.”

No one said anything for a minute or two.

“So, is it okay?” I asked. “I need you to sign this paper so I can join.” I put it on the table. My mother stared at it.

“Rana, I don’t think it is a good idea.” My father’s voice was solemn. “Hockey is a game for the whites, not for us. There will be trouble if you start pushing in where there are only white boys.”

“Come on, Dad. This is 1980; things have changed. The kids at school don’t mind playing on the same team as me in gym. There won’t be any problems. Really.”

“Things have not changed at the mill, Rana. There are problems there; problems in the lunch room where the others say our food smells and problems when….” He stopped speaking. “Never mind. We have learned to live with it, but we are adults. You are just a child and this hockey is a game for the gorays, not for us. There will be trouble, Rana. Bad trouble.”

“But Dad, you’re being old-fashioned. It’s Canada’s national sport. I’m a Canadian. I want to play hockey and….”

“No, Rana. I forbid it.”

Then my mother spoke for the first time. “Palbinder,” she said to my father. I sat up straighter in my chair and listened hard. I knew she was serious; she never calls my dad by his name unless she’s angry or very upset about something. “Palbinder, I think it would be a good thing.”

“So? But I do not,” said my father. I could see he was surprised by what my mother had said.

“A good thing. Yes. Rana is a Canadian boy and it is right that he should do things that so many Canadian children do. Rana is like a young bird, stretching his wings to see if they are strong enough to take him away from his home, his nest. We must give him room to fly.”

“Bird?” said Babli and giggled.

“Be quiet,” said my mother.

“So we must give our son room to fly? More likely to fall,” said my father.

“Then think of, not flying, but of crossing a bridge,” said my mother. Babli looked as if she was about to giggle again, but I frowned at her and she didn’t.

“Bridge?” asked my father. “What is all of this, Manjeet? First Rana is a bird and now he is a bridge.”

“No, you are not listening to me. Rana is not a bridge; he must cross a bridge. Or maybe build one. It is time the Sikhs tried to mix more with the white community. We adults find it hard; we stay with our own kind, talk to only those who are the same as us. For adults it is difficult; for the children it can be easier. Let Rana join this hockey if he wishes. Let him be part of the larger community of our town.”

“Larger community? Aren’t you happy here, Manjeet? Do we not have a good life here, in Canada? Are not the temple and your friends and your home a large enough community for you?”

“Yes. But we are alone, all of us, all of the East Indians. We have friends, but not white friends. We are alone among the others, the gorays. This hockey, it can be like a bridge for Rana, a bridge to cross to the other world. The white world.”

I stared at my mom. I had never heard her speak this way before. She stayed home, cooked, cleaned, visited with her East Indian friends. I had never thought that she felt alone; isolated from the rest of Dinway. I hadn’t thought she cared, or had even noticed. Now here she was, standing up for me against my father. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Babli was also surprised. She’s smart for a nine year old and she realized that something strange was going on. She just sat there listening, her mouth open, not even thinking of giggling. But Mom didn’t seem to realize that she had astonished us.

“Think about it,” she said to my father. “Rana can do more for us, for our people, by joining this hockey where there are only whites, than you or I could do in our lifetimes. If he is accepted there, then he makes it easier for all East Indians to be accepted in Dinway. I think it would be a good thing for him to begin to play this hockey game.”

“We’ll see,” said my father. “You and I will talk about it later, Manjeet. Birds! Bridges! I think you are speaking nonsense tonight.”

My mother smiled. “Not nonsense. Sense. And yes, you and I will talk about it later.”

They must have talked and mother must have won, because the next morning the consent form which I had left on the kitchen table was signed—by my dad!

I mailed the forms on my way to do my papers that morning, mailed them quickly before I could change my mind. My father’s words, There will be trouble, bad trouble, had echoed through my dreams all last night and left me feeling nervous this morning.

I was no longer sure that I wanted to join minor hockey!