Growing up in a Native family, you're taught the traditional ways of your ancestors. So it wasn't unusual when those ways were passed onto my siblings and I. My sisters were not drawn to it like the way I was. I found it interesting and beautiful. My mind was more open to the spiritual beings around me.
Like most young children, I often played with the memegwesi. For those of you who do not know of the memegwesi I will share with you what I know and what I've also seen.
People have told me that the memegwesi are either mischievous or friendly. I was told they were tiny hairy beings with no faces but the ones I have seen were handsome little beings. They did have faces and came in various sizes, like big and small. At times, they would blend into the scenery that they live in. I played alongside with them, but they also scolded me.
But enough of the memegwesi. I am now going to tell you of a dark being that had claimed to be a friend to me. I was young, alone and naive so I trusted it. As I got older I realized that it was not of good intentions. My baba named it Nawus and although it had no gender, I called it a he. To this day I do not know what this being is. He was tall and was covered in hair from head to toe. I was warned to stay away from this being but never understood why..
This is the story of my childhood growing up with these beings.
I often visited my koko as a child. There were many other children there too, but I was the youngest so I played alone most of the time. I was sitting on my kokos bed in her room, having a tea party. I had my glass tea cups and my picnic blanket too. I had invited my sister and brother but they didn't want to play with little me. Nothing out of the ordinary, it was a response I always received but it was getting lonely constantly playing by myself. Suddenly I could feel the little hairs on the back of my neck rise. My ears perked up at the sound of feet scurrying across the room. My heart pounded, but not out of fear. Out of curiosity. I cautiously peeked over the edge of the bed. I gasped as my eyes widened. Two tiny little creatures were on the floor, trying to get onto the bed. I swallowed the lump in my throat, and spoke.
"Hello." I said.
They waved at me and I knew they meant no harm. Helping them onto the bed I gave them each a place at my make shift table and offered them tea and sweets. From that day on I had someone to keep me company when others refused to play with me. When I would visit my koko, there they were, waiting in the room to play with me. Sometimes I'd leave them gifts if I would be gone for long. Such as shiny nickels and dimes, tiny toys and jujubes or jelly beans, they did not care whether it was expensive or fancy, as long as it was either shiny or sweet. I would place gifts on a giant boulder I had found in the bush behind my kokos house.
This reminded me of leaving sundances. My family and I would give offerings to the memegwesi, down the long grassy dirt road that trees surrounded on both sides of our vehicle. Mama and Baba would stop the car on the side of the road so other cars leaving could pass through. Sometimes there would be bright red flowers in the ditch that would always catch my attention but i was always afraid of the possibility that the soft swampy ground would swallow me like quick sand so I did not dare think to climb down to pick those beautiful flowers.
Baba would take my siblings and I to the rock while mama searched the sides of the ditch for weeka. I can still smell the wet leaves and ground surrounding me as i walked on the path towards the memegwesi rock.
As we reached the middle of the forest there was this humongous rock already adorned in offerings similar to the one at my kokos. Behind the rock was a tale of the memegwesi, what they are and how they came to be. Baba would give us each a cigarette and a couple of silvers to place upon the rock. Being young I didn't understand how the memegwesi took the gifts. The memegwesi rock was always covered in gifts, did that mean they only picked certain offerings and left the rest?
"Baba how do they take our offerings?", I asked, my voice curious.
"Well, danis, when we offer any type of gift to the spirits, they wait tell we leave and then take the spirit of the gift we gave them. It's just like when we have a feast" Baba smiled at me, ruffling up my hair, making sure I understood.
After our offerings to the memegwesi, Baba would read the tale of them every time we went and I would listen very intently but this time my attention was directed elsewhere. Behind the tale of the memegwesi was a tiny moss covered stump and a tiny creature peeked up behind it. This creature appeared to look like the stump it hid behind but its moss flowed like hair in the water. As i tried to get closer to it, it ran in the opposite direction of the stump, disappearing into the forest.
As the years past and the older I got, the memegwesi visited me less and less. The world wasn't as innocent as I thought it was. I would only ever catch glimpses of the memegwesi in the corner of my eye. My heart saddened at the mere thought of my little friends not being around anymore. The loss of the memegwesi was short lasted as I wasn't that bothered by being alone. I was now old enough to venture into the bush with my older cousins but of course i could only go so far before i got them in trouble, unintentionally.
It was a chilly day when my cousins had invited me to go over to explore the fort that they had made in the bush. It was mainly used for small bonfires that were allowed by their father, to hang out. It was made out of old wood found in various ditches and side streets but it was strong and sturdy like new. When we were done adventuring in the bush, we decided to go their house. As we arrived I seen my Babas truck parked in the front drive way. My uncles' house always intimidated me. Not because of him, but because of the dark painted walls. We often played in the boys' room. They had a wide variety of games for Nintendo 64. We would mainly play Pokémon and whoever died first had to let the next person play.
Being small and the youngest, I never lasted more than five minutes. My fingers were not fast enough to press the buttons. After dying multiple times I decided I had enough and ventured into the dining room where the adults were conversing in Ojibway. They laughed and shoved at each other, the usual that happened while visiting. The men had gruff loud laughs and the women had high pitched laughs, which was always contagious. Getting bored of hearing the adults laugh non-stop I decided to walk back to my cousins' room. As I walked past my uncles' room I spotted a figure sitting on the edge of his bed. He was slumped over, with no distinct features on him. He spoke to me in whispered tones.
I scrunched my eyes in confusion and shook my head. I ran back to the dining room and told my uncle what I had just seen. The laughter ceased abruptly and I could feel all eyes on me now.
Baba grabbed me by the shoulders and brought me closer to him, as if to protect me. But I don't understand. Is the man in the room bad? He spoke quietly and quickly in our language to the others. The only thing I could make out was that they were talking about the man that I had mentioned. Uncle looked at me, crouching down to my height.
"Are you sure there was someone there?" He asked, pressing on about it. I don't understand why they are making a big deal out of this. But I did not argue and continued to answer their questions.
"Yes uncle, he was there on the bed and told me to come closer because he said couldn't speak too loudly." I said.
"He said he needed to see you for healing, that's why I came back here. Uncle did I do something wrong?" I asked.
I could hear my aunties and Baba looking around the house. Baba came towards me and said there was no one in the room. The night ended in worried farewells and before leaving Uncle told me that if I ever saw that man again to tell him to leave. My eyebrows furrowed in confusion as he told me this. Why would someone looking for healing, come to me? We said our goodbyes one last time and I walked to the door with my Baba. But my eyes remained on the dark man sitting at the table, quietly waving at me. I didn't dare tell anyone that he was there.
After that I was kept away from my uncles house for a few days. Mama and Baba had to travel to the States for a ceremony only this time we weren't allowed to go, so we had to stay at our kokos. Koko usually let us have our way when we visited her but if we ever stepped out of line her strict side would come out.
Next thing I knew we were playing outside my uncles house with our slingshots. I had been collecting stones to keep in my pockets for target practice later. I placed a stone in the leather sling I heard koko yell at the boys to stop shooting her birds. I smiled at them, knowing they would only go to the other side of the house and aim at them from there. Koko loved the birds that frequently came to her house. She sets out slabs of fat for them in the summers and loved watching them peck at it. I watched the boys go behind the house and I was about to follow behind them when a familiar dark figure appeared from around the corner. I almost gasped but quickly covered my mouth.
"Come here." It spoke to me in a low gruff voice. I hesitated at first but felt no malicious intentions from him so I moved closer.
"Who are you? My family said you shouldn't be here." My dark brown eyes darted back and forth, scared that someone might see us. I looked at him and analyzed him. He had no face or clothes, only dark black hair covering him from head to toe.
"But that isn't what you want is it?" He stated and continued to speak to me. "I was told that your friends, the memegwesi, don't come to visit you anymore, so I came to be you're playmate. That is why I am here. To play." He spoke. I smiled at the mere mention of the memegwesi and decided it would be okay to play with him.
"You can call me your friend. I wasn't given a name." He said. "Just like how you're not a boy or a girl, right?" I smiled at him. My friend chuckled and called me a clever kid. Ron, my cousin, called for me from behind the house making me turn in that direction and when I turned back to say my farewells, my friend had already gone.
The only times my friend would come out was when I was alone. Sometimes I would see him in the background of the room sitting in a chair watching what I was doing. My family noticed I had started to play by myself more and more often. They started watching me closely to see what I was up to. But my friend would always warn me when someone was watching us play, so that he was not discovered. What a good friend. Those were my thoughts as a child, but now, all I can think about is how he was always watching my movements, every move I made, he knew because he was watching.
We would often play hide and seek together in the bush besides the swamp. He would easily let me find him but I knew that he could hide better than anyone I had ever met. I asked him if he could show me sometime. He shook his head and laughed at the idea.
As we were walking down the path to the sand pits he stopped dead in his tracks. I bumped into him and fell back. He turned around helping me.
"Friend, do you want to see how well I can hide? All you have to do is get your cousin Elijah to play with us so we can hide."
My chest tingled with excitement at the idea. I ran as fast as my little legs could take me in the direction of my cousins, my smile never fading.
"Elijah, Elijah! Come play hide and seek with me." I yelled out for him, not bothering to wait as I got in the house. But I know he heard me. Just as I entered, Uncle Owen was speaking to him but in a muffled tone, causing him to raise his brows. Whatever he told Elijah made the color drain from his face as he turned around to me. He put his runners on and we went back out.
"Dad said we have to play around the house, okay?" Elijah said, his tone gave off feelings of sadness. He knew there was barely any place to hide around the house. My tiny lips pursed together, helping me to think of where to hide. My friend placed his hand on my shoulders reassuringly.
"Lemme get a sweater first, I suddenly have the goosebumps." Elijah mumbled.
We had been playing hide and seek for a while now but my friend had yet to show me his great hiding skill. At around the ending of the game my friend told me that he would now show me how good he was at hiding. We started a new round of hide and seek and as Elijah began counting to twenty my friend started leading me towards a log pile. We didn't need a lot of logs because it was a hot summer and didn't have much use for the wood stove either. There were only three small logs in the pile and he motioned for me to crouch down with him. My eyes had rolled back involuntarily at his choice of hiding spots. Elijah would find us straight away; this pile is much too small to hide behind. Elijah had started to look in the opposite direction from where we were hiding. I watch him circle back to the front of the house scratching his head, confused.
"Beau! where are you? Beau!" Elijah yelled as he stood a few feet away from me and my friend.
"Beau! Come on, I give up come out." I grinned at my friend and asked him if he really couldn't see us.
"He can't. Call out to him, he will hear you but won't see you." My eyes got bigger at the thought and so I hollered for Elijah. He turned around following my voice. He looked under the truck and behind us but he still couldn't see me. A giggle escaped my mouth as Elijah walked past us several times. My friend had been keeping his arm on my back. He said that if he didn't hold onto me, the trick wouldn't work.
"Beau this isn't funny! I'm going to get dad if you don't come out right now!" Elijah's tone seemed upset and the look on his face was frantic from not being able to spot us. I felt bad and sighed. The fun is over.
"I have to go back now friend, I might get in trouble if we hide any longer." He was trying to speak to me but I had already jumped up from behind the log.
"Here I am!" I yelled at Elijah, laughing.
Elijah ran towards me and held me tightly in his arms. I felt like I was going to be crushed into nothing. He was sobbing and saying incoherent words.
"Elijah, it's okay." I said. I called Uncle Owen and he brought us inside. I was confused, why was my cousin crying? After Elijah calmed down enough, he told his dad that he looked everywhere for me. I had been gone for almost an hour and he almost lost hope. I sat stunned. I didn't realize that I was gone for such a long period of time. It felt like a mere twenty minutes. After that night Uncle Owen and my koko had a big ceremony outside with me present. They instructed me to put out food for a feast and cloth for the grandfathers and grandmothers to always watch over me and to keep me away from danger. That was the last time I ever saw my friend again. He wasn't in the backgrounds anymore, I didn't see him anywhere. Even when I was by myself he never appeared but now the memegwesi had come back.