Article 6 – Bound Forever

By Hope Richards

Two children, bound together by an unbreakable bond formed in the womb – Twins. They’re twins! Yet they look so different. One is a boy and the other, a girl. Their interests differ amazingly throughout their lives, but they always speak to one another about them. He tells her about the heavy metal band he likes so much. She on the other hand, is obsessed about the K-pop band she loves. Both listen with fascination at the other’s interests. At the age of seven, the boy finds himself obsessed with war things, while the girl is infatuated with ponies. They are significantly different in every way. Most people don’t know that they are twins because the only thing they have in common is their last name – Richens. Kade and Kae Richens, and this is their story.

Kade was a small boy for a majority of his youth. He often found himself in trouble in school, not only academically, but physically as well. He loved to start fights and would more so finish them too. Teachers knew of the Richens family. They had hundreds of kids it seemed. All ranging from their twenties down right to little toddlers. Kade was the seventh child of nine children, the seventh of their mother’s pregnancies. Right after him came his twin sister, Kae, born five minutes later in the delivery room. Kade would go on to tease Kae by saying that he was older by ten minutes instead of five. His apparent but purposeful miscalculation was the result of an incident that occurred shortly after the twins turned nine months old.

Kae’s mother had been busy trying to put the rest of her children to bed. The older ones knew enough than to test mom’s patience with the two nine-month-old infants. Their father worked most nights. He worked late to keep food on the table, working fourteen-hour shifts just to feed their eight children at the time, and other expenses such as bills and clothing. Life then was so hard, with barely enough food for the large family, but they all had each other which made up for the poverty they were experiencing.

Mom had just finished nursing the twins and was finally able to set them in their crib to sleep for the night – hopefully. The twins had two cribs, but they would cry the entire night if they were separated. Their mother always found Kade sleeping with his head on Kae’s tummy like it was a pillow. It seemed to be the only way both babies could sleep. But this night was different. Mother was just about retiring for the night herself when she suddenly heard one of her twins coughing profusely. By the time she made her way to the babies, the coughing had stopped. She decided to check anyway, just to be sure that all was well, then she suddenly made a frightening discovery. Kae, was blue!

Dad was gone for the night as usual. He had taken the worn down old family truck that always held all of the kids in the back as they drove through puddles some distance away from their home. Mom had no time to panic, no time to lose as the little baby in her arms was getting worse by the minute. There was no phone in the house at the time because they couldn’t afford one. She held her small child who was slowly dying in her arms and ran as fast as she could down the dark, moonlit road. When she reached one of her neighbour’s homes, she called out to them to phone for an ambulance.

Kae had lost all consciousness by the time they arrived at the hospital. Her heart had stopped and the doctors who worked on her had pronounced her dead. Mom screamed as she held the lifeless child in her arms, hoping that her voice would reach whatever higher being there was that could bring back her child. It should not have happened! Kae should have died that night because nothing could have revived the heartbeat of a dead child, especially one who had been pronounced dead five minutes ago.

They didn’t know what caused the near-death experience. And to this day, because Kae had died for that short and terrifying five minutes, Kade insisted on never letting his younger sister go without accounting for the five minutes of her absence.

At the age of five, Kae could be seen playing on the stairs that led into their large and worn-down house. Her other siblings played elsewhere around the yard, but she was never allowed to play along with them because she was considered too small and delicate. Throughout the time she was in elementary, Kae was the smallest child in her family. She was not the shortest or smallest pupil in her class though, but compared with the rest of her gigantic siblings, she was short. So, Kae always had to playing alone. Her father would check in on her every now and again to make sure she didn’t feel too lonely. He would use the opportunity to do some yard work, while their mother watched her ninth child.

One sunny day, father asked the oldest child to move the vehicle of the year – an old red van that was on its very last lives. They could not hate the beast because it was their only means of transportation in the deathly hot summer. The ugly old thing sputtered as it started, but Kae paid no mind and continued to ‘bake’ her mud pies in the old containers of butter and cheese.

It was too loud for her to notice her brothers and sisters contesting among themselves about who would move the van. And so, without realizing it, it was her thirteen-year-old sister who won the contest. Sadly, she had no business driving a van. The old beast roared to life! It lurched forward and crashed into the wooden stairs upon which Kae was playing. The mud pies that she had been working on crashed to the gravel floor in loud thuds, their containers cracking and breaking on impact. Kae’s loud and deafening cry began to fill the now-silent yard.

Kade rushed to her side, not looking as he crawled between the wreckage of wooden stairs and nails waiting to impale his flesh. Their father yelled for him to stop, but he crawled into the wooden mess in search of his twin.

By this time, all five older brothers had begun to lift and throw the wooden boards with bent nails all over the yard, barely missing each other in the process. Kae’s wails which were more due to fear than pain had stopped. Her older brothers kept going until they finally revealed her. It was strange. They had never ever let her play with them, but they always helped her when she needed their help.

They found Kade holding his twin sister under the rubble. His protective arms wrapped around her neck and her own bloody arms around his belly. Her small body shook from the cries that wracked through her, and from where they stood, they could see him assuring her that she was going to be okay. Despite the blood that cascaded down her arms from the numerous cuts and the pale and teary face that peaked over her twin’s shoulder, she seemed to calm down followng his reassurance. Kade too had cuts over his arms. He didn’t mind the stinging pain because Kae’s cuts were far more deep and bloody.

Both twins, despite being fraternal and nothing alike (hell, it seemed at times that Kade despised his younger twin), sat on the ground as their brothers reached to help them up.

Situations like that often reminded both twins of the common bond they shared. Yes, they were unbelievably different in every way. Kade was male, Kae was female; he loved war, while she loved ponies; he liked wrestling, while she liked to pick flowers. Still, some days, they shared each other’s interests. Kade would help her pick flowers for their mother; Kae on her part would pick up stick to initiate a battle within their yard.

Kade always had trouble in school. Not only with behavior and fighting, he was diagnosed dyslexic. The school which they attended was a federally-funded school with no programs and proper support to assist students who struggle with their health. So, not having such support, Kade fell further and further behind, academically and socially. In kindergarten, the twins ran into the same room on the first day, thinking that they would be allowed be in the same classroom. They were wrong. Kade’s teacher came looking for him and took him to a separate classroom. Kae almost threw a fit because she couldn’t rap her mind around the reason they had to be separated.

Her teacher said, with a look of sympathy that meant nothing to the heartbroken child, “We don’t want him to depend on you.”

That callous statement by the teacher stayed with Kae all her life. However, she never told anyone, not even Kae because she knew that it would hurt his feelings. She knew this because it had hurt her own feelings.

Kae’s twin who had trouble coping at school was an expert in the wild. Kade couldn’t read so well but he could paint a picture with his eyes closed. Her Kade who always tried to play down his own emotions but would hug anyone he saw who was feeling down.

Even as they grew older, their differences grew vaster and yet, they were the closest members of the family. Kade dropped out of school at the age of sixteen, and Kae graduated high school at that same age. At the age of seventeen, she was in her first year of university while he was off partying.

Nights when she was at home writing essays, Kade would sneak into her bedroom and sit with her as he cracked open a beer. She frowned whenever he did that. She would wish so terribly that he would let her help him. Whenever she brought up the topic of him going back to school, he would tell her that she had the brains between them. She knew that was not true. He was smarter than her in many ways. He was creative and had a different way of thinking, which was what held him back in school. He could not think the way that they wanted him to think; the way that those teachers had been taught to teach. Kade was so smart but because he lived on a Reserve that lacked the proper tools to access his intelligence, he was left behind.

The same year that Kae was working to graduate from high school, Kade became mentally ill. Over their teenage years, Kade had developed an eating disorder. In the winter of Kae’s final high school year, Kade was sent off to the city for treatment. It was painful leaving Kade alone in the city. He was not even given a proper room to sleep in. Kae sat with him as he cried about how he was being left there, hours away from home, from the Reserve. He said he didn’t like the loudness of the city. He always told her that. Kae knew that staying there by himself would be torture for not only Kade but herself as well, who would for the first time in her life return to their dingy house without her twin. She didn’t confess to him about how lonely she herself would be without him around because she didn’t want him to be further weakened by her vulnerability. She wanted him to get better as soon as possible and to be home for Christmas.

When they were finally forced to part ways that night at the hospital, Kae left Kade in his room. That damn room where they put families that were waiting. He was a patient, yet he was put in a waiting room hooked to an IV that fed him because he could not hold down food. As soon as she was out of earshot with Kade, downstairs at the massive hospital, she finally broke down. For hours, she cried as she wondered why on earth she had to leave her twin. For the entire seven-hour drive home in the middle of the night, Kae drifted in and out of consciousness, crying whenever she was conscious. It felt like the end of the world for her, and she could only imagine how scared and angry he was feeling being left in a small waiting room.

Kae cried every night for her twin; knowing he was sick ate at her terribly. Without him to pester her to have a drink with him, to forget all her work and have one drink, she fell into a depression. Still focusing on school, she went, did her assignments, but slept for hours and days after she had completed them. Sure, he would call her often whenever he was given the privilege, especially after he reached the set goal of successfully eating something. Speaking to her bony and tired-looking twin through the pixelated screen of her smartphone was not the same. He spoke about how he could go outside tomorrow if he ate his entire bowl of rice. But she smiled as she spoke to him because he loved being outside. At home, he would run into the bushes at the back of their home on the Reserve as leaves fall in autumn, setting traps to catch small animals and setting nets for fish on the river.

Kae had once found this revolting, killing small animals. But Kade had told her, “If we treat it with respect and utilize every part, it’ll be okay. We’ve given our thanks to the creator, Kae. He gifted us with food.” He wasn’t the best academically; he could read, but not too well. Where she loved reading, he loved being outside – true to his nature and to his people.

He didn’t deserve all the things he had to endure. He was too kind, too funny and too caring to be given this life that treated him so terribly. When he grew out his hair as a sign of respect for his Indigenous tradition, people called him a girl. If he got upset because people taunted him with the question, “why can’t you read?” and ended up beating them up, he got suspended. People would pick on him, not caring about who he was on the inside; his crime is that he was an Indigenous boy simply practising his cultural.

Kade was ridiculed, made fun of, made to feel small. He was treated with so much disrespect, all which made him who he was: a beautiful and kind person. “My Kade,” Kae would mutter to herself as she watched him expertly cut open a fish. “My Kae,” he would say back to her with a smile, and then would proceed to flip his long hair in her face just to poke fun at her.

When Kae cut her long hair to a shorter style, people made fun of her. They called her gay as if it were wrong to be one. Sometimes, she was called a boy and a lot of other degrading names. When she found herself walking with Kade, she observed white people pointing at their heads and laughing, as if they’d gotten their roles wrong. Kae wondered if it would be like that if they left the Reserve. If people would make fun of them because of their hair, because of their indigenous identity.

Kae knew of Kade’s anger issues. She knew how overly dramatic and mean he could get when he was mad. But she still found herself getting agitated whenever her other sisters called him a “spaz.”

“You guys don’t know what he has to go through. You don’t know how he cries to me about how unfair people are to him.” Kae wanted to say that. She wanted to tell them that he was emotional about how people treated him, and how they ridiculed him because he was different. But she never did. She wanted them to know that he often revealed these facts to her because he trusted her to keep it between them, “a twin’s secret;” he whispered to her one time through glassy eyes as she held his head in her lap. He was drunk and crying to her after he had just gotten home in the wee hours of the night, crying about the people who picked fights with him because he had long hair and because they knew that he had quit school.

Drunk. That seemed to be the only way that he could tell Kae things. The only way he would let his true emotions and views of the world show. Sober, he was himself happy and loving life. When he was drunk, he talked about real things, his emotions and how he hated the pop music of today. How much he loved their cat and what he loved about the small animal. He would tell Kae, “I know you love BTS. Play it! Play it! It makes you so happy!” because their family hated whenever she played the music with foreign lyrics. They hated it whenever he played his heavy metal, but she would listen to his music and they both would wrongly sing the lyrics together, just trying to enjoy the other’s interests.

They were different but so close. Their bond was unbreakable, and they often found themselves doing different things a lot of the time. They always made time for the other when they needed. When Kae confessed about her depression, he considered it a moment with a thoughtful face, and then said, “do you want some Chinese food?” because he knew it never helped to talk about how she felt until she was absolutely ready to talk. So, they went for the food, shoulders bumping and feet syncing in steps because they were always on equal footing with each other.

They were two children, bound together by some force formed in the womb, never to be broken. Even when the other was so plagued with thoughts, they were always on equal footing. Without the other knowing just how much they meant to each other, they continued to walk together down that dusty road on the corner of the Reserve. God only knows what other travesties and hurt they would have to face, but at least they would face them together.

About the author: Hope Richards grew up on the Opaskwayak Cree Nation Reserve in a family of nine children. Her parents have always enforced and encouraged education and the expression of the artistic and creative side to all their children, whether musically or artistically. Due to this encouragement, Hope finds it easy to balance both her art hobby and her academic work. Hope is currently in the second year of the three-year Bachelor of Arts program at UCN; she hopes to graduate in the year 2020.

Instructor’s Remark: Hope is a gifted artist. However, she has also shown her ability to write. In this touching short story “Bound Forever,” which was originally submitted in the ENG.1002 course, Hope attempts to educate the reader about some of the daily challenges of living on a Reserve. These include: the struggle with accessing general health services, the lack of access to mental health programs in their vicinity, and families living in abject poverty (Joseph Atoyebi PhD).