Cody Caetano - Half-Bads in White Regalia: A Memoir

Advance praise for

HALF-BADS IN WHITE REGALIA

Memoirs are a difficult alchemy of testimony and confession, scene-making and character-building. They have to soften the hard things and show the way through at every turnor at least they shouldand thats what Cody Caetano does in Half-Bads in White Regalia. No one gets off easy, but everyone is drawn with unflinching love and respect. Nothing seems wholly remarkable, yet everything is turned to see its beauty. Poetry permeates this prose, poetry and this wholly unique voice and style that somehow made me laugh and cry often, and in the oddest places. Read it. You wont regret it. Telling you.

Katherena Vermette, author of The Strangers

A brilliant and devastating debut. This book hurtles towards difficult understandings about love and violence and family. At times I didnt know whether I should laugh or cry, but Caetano fills each moment with such character and humanity that its impossible not to fall in love.

Jordan Abel, author of NISHGA

Its rare to meet a narrator who, from the very first page, is so clear in voice and personality. Half-Bads in White Regalia charts a remarkable life, filled with a constellation of kin-characters, but its really the outstandingly crafted speaker who makes this book a standout. At times soft and confessional, at times practically hardboiled, Caetano shows us his world but dares us to live up to the challenge of learning his life. Here is a book that sings the craft of memoir and life-telling.

Jenny Heijun Wills, author of Older Sister. Not Necessarily Related.

Cody Caetano spins a tale much like other Ojibway storytellers. Rich in metaphor, plot, and some very serious comedy, he keeps the reader attending to the writing.

Lee Maracle, author of My Conversations with Canadians

Reading Half-Bads in White Regalia feels like one of those rare and transcendent friendships that form in an evening and last for a lifetime, which is to me the mark of an exquisite storyteller. Caetanos winsome, sparkler prose invites into a mind bearing witness to its own precocious development and wild inheritances. It is an absolute interstellar triumph of a debut and a worthy descendent of voices such as Maya Angelou and Mary Karr. I know Ill carry its boyhood wonder and tender resilience with me for many years to come.

Liz Howard, author of Letters in a Bruised Cosmos

hamish hamilton

an imprint of Penguin Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited

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First published 2022

Copyright 2022 by Cody Caetano

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Title: Half-bads in white regalia : a memoir / Cody Caetano.

Names: Caetano, Cody, author.

Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20210310537 | Canadiana (ebook) 20210310588 | ISBN 9780735240858 (softcover) | ISBN 9780735240865 (EPUB)

Subjects: LCSH: Caetano, Cody. | LCSH: Caetano, CodyFamily. | CSH: First Nations authorsManitoba

Biography. | CSH: First NationsManitobaBiography. | LCGFT: Autobiographies.

Classification: LCC PS8605.A393 Z46 2022 | DDC C818/.603dc23

Cover and interior design by Kate Sinclair, adapted for ebook

Cover Images: (texture) LoudRedCreative / Getty Images; (boy) courtesy the author

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For Zion, Milo, Eli, and Osias

Prologue

THE BUCKLE

Ask any half-bad to tell you the story about how their bad half came to be and theyll probably begin with the buckle.

The buckle is a rumble that hijacks the interior faculties to make one think and act without compunction. The buckle attacks the locus of focus and apes the half-bads best intentions, only to play them like a chump chimp. And if left unchecked, the buckle will keep going until the frequencies connecting them to community fizzle out into the ether of rumour and myth.

The buckles kink is myopic stimulus, pitching id toward what one elder warned me against: that big do, little think business. And what little Ive learned in my meagre years of living is that a half-bad story is always concerned with a big do and the amount of blue the half-bad feels for doing it.

Baddies are different: infamous pros who go the distance. Baddies work in tandem with the buckle, will just mutter fuck it to themselves real quick and not lose any hair over it.

Baddies relish in the wanton swelling of the genitals, nervous systems, fists, and lips, no matter if it costs them a best friend or credit score, or if it breaches what sleeps between armpit and sternum. In the stories baddies tell, the buckle is instinct, and they cant help it. Its the buckle and that was yesterday. Just get over it already.

There are many stories about the buckle royally messing something up, a good chunk of which are so gnarly that most people just send the baddie on their way. Toss the bastards on baddie island. Free ticket on the one-way. As they should. Cuz those stories leave many feeling as though theres no way but the one-way, no getting over it, and we come to them hoping theyll teach us the differences between baddies and the rest of us.

But they also leave some half-bads curious and terrified about the rapid onset of their own buckling, wondering if theres something to be done before the big do comes to usher them from half-bad to baddie. Or maybe its better to just think of the buckle as a warning attached to every half-bad story, even if the half-bad never warns as such.

The Eastside of Happyland

Nobody called it Happyland back then. We didnt know Happyland was a thing. But that two-street highway community of ours is most certainly there if you zoom in far enough in Google Maps.

People just called it the house, or Eastside Drive, or Severn (which swallows every highway community within a few kilometres or so). But the internet tells me we lived on the Eastside of Happyland, just across the freeway. And there must be something there if the internet tells you so.

The Eastside of Happyland fits nicely into the plot of Severn, which names a dozen patches of human activity scattered along Highway 11. Not the Queens favourite land, either: mostly feet-burning, unforgiving turf. Summer so humid it hurts. Burger joint, bathroom break, and pit stop just up the road.

Way before it was called Happyland, a few neechies came to this place and named it Gissinausebing, which the townships website translates as cold water, back when the nibi was only clean and cool and life-giving and pristine. Its easy to imagine the nigigwag roaming and the neechies loving it there unconditionally for a long time. Its also easy to imagine butterfly towns popping up like chicken pox across Little Miss Dominion, in clusters gathering along the lake, with baddie thoughts of burger stops and disposition inbound. Cuz both things happened. But so did our time living on the Eastside of Happyland.