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Shabash!. Ann Walsh
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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