Five Little Indians

by Michelle Good

  George must have caught the women looking at him and immediately walked over to them. “You must be Lucy.” He leaned over and peered at Kendra. “Beautiful baby there.”

  “Yeah, she’s something else.” Lucy reached down and took off the baby’s knitted hat, and her thick black hair leapt out as though held captive by the little hat.

  The next day, George’s car was parked outside the Frances Street house, loaded up with Clara and Lucy’s stuff. Half a dozen young men and women came and went from the house, hauling garbage out, carrying cleaning supplies in, and looking around the backyard with its rickety fence and overgrown hedge. The yard was littered with the rotting blossoms from the ornamental cherry trees. Looking at them for the first time, Lucy felt more than relief about getting the house. She cuddled Kendra and held her facing slightly outward.

  “Look, Baby-girl. Maybe next year we will be welcoming spring under those trees. You will be such a big girl then.” She wandered around the yard, kicking trash toward a pile she was creating with her feet.

  “Hey, Lucy, come in.” Clara stood on the back porch, waving her in. “We cleaned a spot for Kendra. You can work now too.”

  Lucy laughed and headed into the house. Inside, the crew from the Indian Centre had cleaned a place in the living room under the corner windows, where an aging baby buggy now stood. It was a beautiful moss green with giant wheels, a retractable bonnet and a removable bed. Wide-eyed with surprise, Lucy turned to Clara. “Where did that come from?”

  Clara pointed to George with her chin. “George found it at the Sally Ann yesterday. He brought it over last night.”

  George, clearly pleased with himself, nodded. “Yup. They wanted twenty bucks for it, but I talked ’em down to nothing.”

  Lucy walked over to the buggy, delighted with the little bed already made up with flannelette receiving blankets and a small pink crocheted throw.

  George blushed. “Yeah, they threw that stuff in when I told them about you.”

  Lucy hugged him and gently laid Kendra down in the buggy, hoping she wouldn’t fuss. As though reading her mama’s mind, the baby lay there, her peaceful blue-black eyes following Lucy’s every move.

  Lucy rolled up her sleeves and headed to the kitchen and filled a cleaning bucket with water. Clara was already scrubbing the walls. Lucy caught her eye and together they scrubbed the kitchen spotless. “Indian School skills.”

  Within a week, the little house no longer felt like a stranger’s place. Loose doorknobs were tightened, and the bathroom was so clean you could eat off the floor. The kitchen was even cheery, with Clara’s tiny table and two lawn chairs scooped up from a laneway giveaway. George’s girlfriend, Vera, was handy with a sewing machine and she bought some cheap fabric remnants and fashioned café-style curtains for the living room and the porch window. The curtains were big enough for privacy but used as little fabric as possible. The buggy served as Kendra’s crib. Lucy kept the cot, at Clara’s insistence, and Clara’s room consisted of her mat and a filched Canadian flag hung upside down in the window. The walls were painted with scrounged leftover paint, so no two walls were the same colour. Clara liked the oddness of it. Lucy got used to it.

  Life seemed easy. With welfare paying the rent directly, it even came to feel as though the house belonged to them. They never had to deal with the landlord, who was quite satisfied to never hear from them. With Clara’s here-and-there black market money they bought Kendra a second-hand crib and furnished the living room with well-worn but comfortable furniture. Soon there were even pictures on the walls. As the months passed, they forgot the house had once been an abandoned, falling-apart mess.

  Lucy was head over heels in love with the baby, and with every milestone she was sure Kendra was a genius child, way ahead of the other babies she saw when taking Kendra for walks to the park in the big green buggy. Lucy quickly settled into a comfortable routine with the baby. But she noticed a growing restlessness in her friend, and how she was spending more and more time away from the Frances Street house.

  One morning, almost a year to the day after they’d transformed the little house, Lucy woke, splashed water on her face and scooped Kendra from her crib. She settled her into her high chair, and as she turned to make breakfast, she noticed a folded piece of paper with her name scribbled on it, the pen lying across it. She sat at the kitchen table and slowly unfolded it.

  Dear Bunny, (ha ha) I gotta take off for a couple weeks.

  Love, Carey (ha ha)

  P.S. Kiss Honey for me (ha ha)

  8

  Clara

  Lucy settled into motherhood easily. Clara, on the other hand, was becoming a bit of a ghost, staying away for days on end sometimes. She spent her days at the Friendship Centre, keeping up to date with the protests and demonstrations of the American Indian Movement on both sides of the border. There was a tiny black-and-white TV in one corner of the Centre, and one day over lunch, bored, Clara clicked it on and kicked back in the old recliner that someone had donated. The grainy image of a group of Indians in front of a big old white church zoomed into close-up. There stood a slight brown woman, her fist in the air, microphone pressed toward her face. A detached voice rose above the chatter: “Tell us why you’re here, Mae.” She looked straight into the camera, fearless, furious, determined. “Who do these white people think they are? Our people saved their raggedy asses when they got off the boat, freezing and starved. They returned the favour with hatred and murder. There weren’t so many of them and it changed everything. There ain’t so many of us and we will change everything too, and I will lay my life down to take back what’s ours.” Clara was transfixed by this woman. How unafraid she was, how ready to fight for a change they all knew had to come. For weeks she couldn’t get that woman out of her mind and knew she had to go. She worked out a trade with one of the Friendship Centre regulars and became the proud owner of a one-eyed Falcon.

  Clara and John Lennon made it to the border at Osoyoos by dawn. The border guard took one look at her, one look at the broken headlight and one look at John Lennon. Clara knew it would be breakfast before she even made Omak. The guard acted like he’d never seen a ribbon dress before. He tossed the car like it was a jailhouse cell, throwing clothes all over the ground. He ripped open John Lennon’s food and turned to Clara with his bug-eye sunglasses, looking like he just walked out of a scene in a Paul Newman jailhouse movie.

  “You got your Indian Card?”

  Clara gathered up the contents of her purse from the pavement, rooted around in her wallet and handed him her card. “Yeah, I got my Indian Card.” He snapped it from her hand like she wasn’t going to give it to him or something. John Lennon looked so sad, his kibble scattered around. Looking for contraband, Cool Hand had said, digging it out of the bag by the handful, dropping it on the ground.

  “Where did you say you were going?”

  “Portland.”

  “What’s your business in Portland?” “None of your business. That card tells you I can come and go as I please. That’s what the Jay Treaty says.” John Lennon flopped down on the pavement with a huff. Clara clamped her teeth together against a smile. That dog was a fine judge of people.

  Lucy had protested loud and fierce the day Clara brought John Lennon home. Just a gangly pup then, all tongue and feet, Lucy was sure he wasn’t safe for the baby. Maybe if Clara hadn’t been walking through the park at just that time of night, she wouldn’t have seen that woman throwing him out of her car. Clara had chased after her, yelling what the hell was she doing? He’s no good, the woman said. Some mutt got to her purebred. So Clara took him. Lucy gave up complaining about him when she watched the baby fall in love with him.

  “What’s this here?” Cool Hand reached for her carefully wrapped eagle feather with his meaty hands.

  “Hands off. Law says. Native American Church. You can’t touch this.” John Lennon huffed again.

  Cool Hand swaggered to his booth. But Clara saw him looking at the cars backing up behind th
e mess of her stuff, trunk thrown open, clothes and camping gear strewn around like a messy autumn.

  Clara calmed John Lennon. “It’s okay, man. He’s just a pig.” She scratched the broad, tawny expanse of his head, making her hand look so small. The woman who’d dumped him told Clara half of him was a kind of dog for hunting lions. Ridgeback or something like that. Not pure, she said. The Shepherd got to his mama and ruined the batch. What the hell did she know? “John Lennon, you are perfect.”

  Cool Hand walked back from his booth, looking through Clara like she was as pink as Doris Day or something.

  “Clean this up, ma’am, and move on.” He handed her back her Indian Card, dropping it just as she reached to take it. She left it there on the ground until he turned his back to them, then scooped it up and slipped it into her back pocket.

  Reaching for her underwear strewn among the dog food, Clara whispered to John Lennon, “He’s just tired of us now, boy.” John Lennon smiled. She scooped up all the dog food, double handful after double handful. Goddamn if John Lennon was gonna go hungry over this guy. Clara pulled out slow and smooth, the Washington State trooper parked on the other side of the line in Oroville just waiting to pull over some Indian and her dog. Clara didn’t look at him as he looked at her, all the way by. She instead jacked up Buffy on the cassette deck and put the pedal to the metal, but not too hard.

  Wolf Rider she’s a friend of yours

  You’ve seen her opening doors

  She’s a history turner, she’s a sweetgrass burner

  and a dog soldier

  Ay hey way hey way heya

  Clara sang at the top of her lungs, reaching for the same kind of power as Buffy’s one-of-a-kind voice.

  Lightning Woman, Thunderchild

  Star soldiers one and all oh

  Sisters, Brothers all together

  Aim straight, Stand tall

  Clara thought for sure John Lennon raised his eyebrows, sitting there in the passenger seat, trying to look like he really wasn’t uncomfortable. She pulled over at the first open area to let John Lennon run and stretch his legs while she put everything back in its place. No room for a mess in a ’61 Falcon with a giant dog and pretty much all her worldly possessions. Clara triggered the front passenger seat lever and pushed the seatback down as flat as it would go. Legroom for John Lennon. She laughed to herself thinking about the first time someone heard her calling him. By now she was used to that frozen look people would get on their faces when she’d be callin’ around after him. John Lennon! John Lennon!

  She didn’t have to call him this time. With the car back in order after the border pillaging, Clara walked around toward the driver’s door and that was enough for him to know. He ran to her through the purple flowering weeds, tongue lolling and happy. Weeds. She remembered George telling her once that Indians were like weeds to the white people. Something to be wiped out so their idea of a garden could grow. He told her weeds were indigenous flowers. “Clara, you’re an indigenous flower. Don’t ever think of yourself as a weed.” That’s what he said to her.

  John Lennon knocked his head against her hip, his version of hello, and jumped into the driver’s seat. He sat there for a minute laughing at her and then crawled over to his side so she could get in.

  “You crazy dog.” Clara slid into the driver’s seat and wiped the drool off the steering wheel. She put the car in gear and eased back onto Route 97 toward Omak. Oliver, Osoyoos, Oroville, Omak, O O O O. She wondered what that was all about. She turned the music down and John Lennon curled into sleep. Buffy and her singers were like a willow broom whisking the ugly feeling from the border cop right out of the air around her. She thought of a fried egg sandwich at Omak. Then she thought of that day George pulled the weeds out of her heart, leaving only wild purple flowers.

  It was at the Friendship Centre on Vine Street. Clara was just hanging around there, hoping for a bowl of soup. Harlan had fired her and her friends from their jobs at the Manitou the time Lucy had passed her test. Now she had no food. No money. There were some different Indians there that day. The place was full, and the meeting room was all set up with chairs instead of the usual hodgepodge of tables, some with beading looms, some with papers and half-made posters, some with coffee cups and ashtrays, people hanging around all bright in their ribbon shirts and dresses, bone chokers and long beaded earrings. Clara used to feel nervous when she walked into that room with all that Indian-ness right out in the open. If they’d walked into the Mission School like that, Sister would have had them all black and blue and scrubbing stairs. But anyway, she didn’t know what was going on that day with the crowded meeting room, but was really happy to see that there was a whole feast going on for lunch, too. Fry bread, huckleberries, cookies and two big pots of soup: one was salmon chowder and the other was made with deer dry meat. No chicken backs and necks that day. People were milling around, eating, smiling, talking, a layer of blue smoke rising above the group.

  The big drum was out and some serious-lookin’ Indian men with thick, shiny braids were chewing their bitterroot, getting their voices ready, and laughing with each other as they settled around the drum. The room settled with them. Their voices rose in the AIM song and chills ran up her spine before turning into tears that she didn’t understand, caught still behind her eyes. She had to get out. What if the tears fell? What if someone saw? The side door was jammed open with a brick. She walked outside and sat on the bottom step. AIM talked that day at the Indian Centre and she sat there on the step by herself and listened.

  The speaker said his name was George and he was there to talk about what was happening at Wounded Knee. He talked about Alcatraz and how the years of protest there had helped Indians feel like they could be heard. How thousands of Indians had marched on DC on the Trail of Broken Treaties. Clara’s head felt like it would burst. Indians had taken over Alcatraz? Indians marching on Washington demanding fair treatment? She sat there in sunny Kitsilano, hippies smiling by, the smell of pot wafting after them, the sound of the singing fresh in her ears, and she was terrified. Not scared like she wanted to run away or anything, but scared like this moment might not be true. She thought of Indians taking over the Mission School, and walked back into the room.

  John Lennon yawned. Clara pulled off at Omak and headed to the Good Morning Diner, the gravel driveway rumbling under the tires, a signal to John Lennon that he would be able to stretch his legs. Clara walked to his side of the car and opened the window a little.

  “I won’t be long, boy.”

  She walked into the diner and Bobbie, her name tag said so, smiled at her. She’d been here before on her trips south. They always talked about the weather and the traffic while she waited for her fried egg sandwich to go and John Lennon’s raw hamburger patty. “Coffee on yet?” Clara slid onto the diner stool.

  “Just finishing now. Usual?” She was already calling Clara’s order into her surly breakfast-cook husband before Clara could nod her assent. She walked back toward Clara, coffee pot in hand, rolling her eyes toward the kitchen. “I swear that guy should just find another job. You’d think morning would kill him or something. I have to get up just as early. You should see him on the way here.”

  “Yeah.” Clara smiled and took a long draw of the hot coffee. “Needed that.”

  Bobbie laughed and nodded toward the picture window at the front of the café. John Lennon was putting on quite the performance in the parking lot, squeezing his square head through the partially open window, craning his neck to look for Clara.

  “He sure doesn’t like being without you, does he?” Bobbie shook her head.

  “Nope. I feel the same way about him.”

  “Yeah, sometimes I think I would trade Bert in for a good dog.”

  “I heard that!” Bert yelled from the kitchen, slapping the order onto the kitchen pass-through. “Make sure she has a coffee to go, my morning queen.”

  Bobbie smiled, handing off the food and a giant coffee to go. “Men! Can’t live with
’em, can’t shoot ’em. Where you off to this time?”

  “South Dakota.”

  “You sure do have family all over, don’t ya? You drive carefully now, okay?”

  “Sure will. See you next time.”

  She smiled, waving through the window at Clara as she let John Lennon out and tossed him his burger. He wolfed it down as she leaned against the hood, eating her sandwich. Bert made a mean fried egg sandwich. John Lennon headed for the scrub trees that bordered the lot. “Don’t go far, man.” He wagged his tail without a backward glance. Clara sipped her coffee and watched Bert sideways as he made amends with Bobbie, kissing her cheek and pinching her bum, tying on his Never Trust a Skinny Cook apron just to make her laugh. Clara tossed the waxed paper wrapping into the garbage bin and turned to the car.

  “John Lennon! Don’t make me wait!” The dog came running around the corner, his paws the size of pork chops kicking up dust and pebbles. Clara opened his door and he jumped in, grinning his sloppy-tongued grin. “Well mister, you think we can make Billings tonight?”

  The wind picked up, throwing dust devils around the car, and blew them all the way to Montana.

  That day on Vine Street, Clara stood listening as George spoke with a soft fire. She would never forget his words. Some people naively think they can hijack or control or harness the wind driving this movement forward. Any effort to do this will fail, because the energy behind this awakening, this force, is coming from all directions. Don’t just believe me, go outside and, using your own breath, try to blow back the wind in the direction from which it comes. Think of the drum, the heartbeat, the songs, and how all these beautiful sounds roll into an echo carried by that wind from the ancestors through to the lives of our children’s children.

  Listening to George, Clara remembered another sunny day, her heart racing. She remembered walking home from church with her mother. The wind in the birch trees. The singing. Clara’s heart was racing, and she grew light-headed, almost unable to breathe.