I have a deep-set belly button that everyone made fun of when I was a kid. I was a chubby boy and whenever we went swimming, I always hesitated to take off my shirt. When I did, my aunties would tell me to run slowly towards them along the rapids. “You’re like on Baywatch,” they’d yell, pointing to the jiggle of my stomach fat. But it was my belly button that entertained them the most. It must have been an inch deep. My uncles would take their flashlights to inspect my belly’s flesh-cavern and yell, “Helllllooooo!” I always wondered, were they looking for a baby in there?
When we had swimming lessons at school, I asked Roger to write me a note to excuse me from P.E. When I told him I was afraid to swim, he sat me on his lap.
“What’s bugging you?”
I told him of the shame I felt when I was naked; how the other boys would whip me with their towels and poke at my fatty rolls. And they were drawn to my freak belly button too—the large, gaping hole that wobbled like a grape inside those gross old jello salads. Roger balled my hand into a fist and raised it to the hollow between his eyes.
“You see this spot right here?” he said. “Whenever someone’s bugging you, well, you hit them right here and they’ll go straight down. And if they don’t, their eyes will be tearing up so much that you can swing another hit or two and finish ’em off.”
Roger had a way of thinking he was the NDN Rocky Balboa—he was always offering brawling techniques to others. I’ve seen him fight a few times; he had a goofy yet terrifying look to him when he was angry. He was known as “Sucker Punch Smiley” by his friends because whenever he was sizing up a would-be opponent, he would smile at them. And it would always catch his enemies off guard—while they were trying to figure out his demeanor, Roger would sucker punch them with an uppercut to the chin. It worked every time. And since Roger had such a large clan of cousins on the rez, no one ever tried to jump in for fear of his family’s retaliation. He was smart in that regard. He may not have been a world-class boxer, but boy, for a scrawny, 150-pound NDN, he had no problems taking down a man twice his size.
Roger lifted up his shirt and pointed to the large ash-coloured scar that ran horizontally across his waist. “See this?” he said. “Here’s where I had my kidney removed a few years back.” And then he pointed to three little scars that formed a triangle on his abdomen: one between his ribcage, one on his right side, and one in his belly button. “See this one? Had my gallbladder removed, too.” There were stories for each of the scars on his body—some from surgeries, some from sicknesses, some from scrapping—stories that I’ve heard him rehash a million times. He had survived cancer, a few overdoses, and had even been stabbed before—but he was still trucking along. At least he was then.
It was the scar inside his belly button that always caught my attention. One time he let me touch the raised ridge of skin. “Does it hurt?” I asked.
“The gallstones? Fuck, yeah. But the wound? Nah. Not anymore.”
Roger always let me explore his body to appease my own anxieties. His was like a graveyard of injuries and ailments, so alive with experiences, while mine was just riddled with shame. Roger knew the fun my aunties liked to make at my body’s expense. And when he sensed that I was worried about my appearance, he’d tell me the story of the belly button that his mother told him before she passed on.
Roger is a Lakota, unlike my mother, who is Cree, so his stories always differed from ours. But I liked what he had to tell us. When he had his gallbladder removed as a kid, his mother told him the importance of his belly button. His people call it the chik’sa and revere it as a sacred body part.
“The chik’sa,” Roger said, “is a very important part of our spirituality. They say that the belly button is where the spirits live. You see, when we’re born, our moms would take our belly button and place it inside of a turtle shell and then wrap both of those in a buckskin satchel. And they’d safeguard it for their baby until they were old enough to have it. Do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“Because the turtle always returns to his birthplace. So, when my mom put my belly button inside of the turtle shell, she was combining us spiritually—you know? It was so that I’d always know how to come home if I ever got lost or left.”
“And did you?”
“Nah—too busy on the warpath,” he said, laughing.
A few years after Roger told me that story, I got a wood tick in my belly button. Heck, I didn’t know it was a wood tick right away and I’m not sure how long it had been in there fattening up with blood, but when I stuck my fingers inside, I felt it squirming around. It didn’t feel rough or patchy like a wood tick usually does; it was slick, cool, and moist to the touch. In fact, if I had to compare it to anything, I’d say it felt like a watermelon seed. And for an entire week I let it live there, cradling my stomach at night thinking that Manito had gifted me with a watermelon baby to carry and care for.
When I was convinced that it was growing, I told my mom and Roger as they were watching contestants on The Price Is Right spin the wheel.
“Guys, I’m having a baby!” I yelled.
They looked perplexed until I lifted up my shirt and showed them the fat, black seed that had filled my belly button. My mother screamed and Roger ran to the kitchen to grab a pair of tweezers. My mom slapped me upside the head and said, “Boy, you’re something, you know? That’s a damned wood tick, for godsakes.”
Roger carefully inserted the tweezers inside and clasped them tightly on the tick. It hurt us both—I could feel the parts of my belly button where my skin had begun to fuse with the tick; my innards felt like a slick, wet olive. Roger then bore down on the tweezers and finally yanked the tick from my belly. I gasped in pain and grasped the couch as blood shot out from the hole, oozed down my navel, and soaked into my underwear. Roger stood over me with the tweezers, the tick still squirming. Afterwards he took that wood tick and held it in his ashtray, then poured salt on it and burned it with his ashes. It died violently, to say the least.
And that’s sometimes the strangest thing about pain, that sites of trauma, when dressed after the gash, can become sites of pleasure. Sometimes when he’s getting me off, Tias will probe that gaping hole with his forefinger, swab it like a Q-Tip, little excavating NDN always wanting inside of me. And when he has me teetering on that blue-balled edge, I ask myself when I’m about to come just where it is that I’m going?