When I first moved to Winnipeg, Tias never shamed me for leaving Peguis, never called me a traitor, an apple, or a fraud for abandoning my people back home. Heck, I think he was even a little proud of me for leaving; my kokum had just died, and the rez didn’t feel like a home anymore. I stayed in bed and slept all day, every day, save for the few times I got up to take a piss or roll a joint. My body was a dead zone. My kokum had always told me that sleep was not a waste of time, that it was a time for healing, so I slept long and hard, waiting for my blood to leech out its memories and for my body to rejuvenate.
In those first few days after I moved to Winnipeg, Tias stuck by me after driving me down there; he took care of me as he helped me settle into my first place in the North End. He set up all my furniture and shooed me away when I tried to help. He wasn’t much of a chef but he did keep me fed. He cooked the only food he knew how to make: perogies. I watched him scurry around in the kitchen from the mattress on my floor. He rolled out the dough, cut it into circles with a plastic cup, peeled and boiled potatoes he got from the food bank down the street, and mashed it all together with cheese strings and onion soup mix. Then he delicately poured a spoonful of filling into each circle of dough, folded it over, and pinched it closed with his fingers. They were odd little perogies, all different sizes, and some burst open in the boil—but they sure tasted good. “I’m not sure how a little Nate like me got good at making perogies,” he said.
We ate those perogies every day during my first few weeks in Winnipeg. They reminded me of home and my dear departed kokum, though I knew my world was about to change.