Rain Is Not My Indian Name

by Cynthia L. Smith

  The artist had created his mural while I’d slept. Dmitri, I realized. It had to be. For a moment, it felt like my birthday.

  Inside the house, I texted Spence, ducked into my bedroom, and opened my hope chest. Inspired in part by Dmitri, I fetched my photo collection and returned to Fynn’s Domain. It was finally time to face Galen.

  The first photo: our third-grade lemonade stand, shot by Grampa. Galen and I standing in my front yard behind a card table, chins up, hands clasped behind backs. The sign read 50 CENTS OR A BASEBALL CARD.

  The second: Galen chowing down on some of the results of our fifth-grade science project: Which Brand of Popcorn Is the Poppingest? Photo by yours truly. We’d only scored a white participation ribbon at the school fair, but we celebrated by threading our test materials into a garland and stringing it on my Christmas tree.

  The third: Galen last summer, sitting on his front step, holding the wand of a dangling cat toy. Angel leapt for the cluster of feathers flying at the end of its bouncing cord. “Cat fishing,” Galen had called it. Once again, photo by me.

  I scanned in my favorites—a picture of Galen and me sitting with our arms around each other in the bleachers at the powwow (photo by Mrs. Georgia Wilhelm) and one I’d taken of him inhaling turquoise cotton candy on our second-grade adventure at the American Royal Rodeo. To the right of the picture, I keyed in:

  Galen Hannes Owen

  Best Friend, World’s Greatest Athlete, Partner in Crime

  “Weeping may endure for a night,

  but joy cometh in the morning.”

  —Psalms 30:5

  I remembered Galen, spinning in the snowy soccer field with his arms outstretched, protesting the make-believe scores he’d earned at an imaginary swing-jump contest. Leave it to the journalists to write up the everyday facts in obituaries.

  This was my truth about Galen.

  When Spence finally showed up at Fynn’s Domain, I asked, “Did you get it?”

  Spence had both of his hands behind his back. “Queenie will let you use it on one condition,” he said.

  I swiveled from the computer screen and folded my arms, waiting.

  “You help us rebuild our pasta bridge,” he bargained, “and you can use the poem.”

  A generous offer. “Deal,” I answered, pleased with it.

  “We’re going for fifteen pounds,” Spence warned me.

  Ambitious. Maybe I would even look through my photos for a good one to feature on the Indian Camp Web page, if Dmitri didn’t already have drawings ready to go.

  Spence tossed me a folded-up piece of notebook paper, held up a bag from McDonald’s, and announced, “Lunch.”

  As Spence and I finished our fries, I tilted my head to the screen and asked, “What do you think?” I’d set up the pictures diagonally, flush left on top and flush right on the bottom, with the tombstonelike copy next to the powwow photo. I’d left a space next to the rodeo photo for Queenie’s poem. The background was turquoise, like cotton candy.

  “I don’t know,” Spence said, sitting on the crate. “It depends. Are you girls ever going to stop fighting over this dead white guy and give me a shot?”

  It took me thirty seconds to realize he’d actually said that out loud and another thirty to realize I could actually stop myself from telling him off. It had been jealousy talking and maybe just a splash of something more fierce, like between Queenie and me, like between Natalie and Lorelei.

  A second later, I realized Spence might be as interested in me as in anyone else. Maybe more interested. It was time for me to start focusing on what was happening now and what might happen in the future. But Spence seemed too smooth, and I’d caught him sneaking looks at other girls.

  “Marie turned you down?” I asked him.

  “Flat,” he answered.

  “Queenie?” I inquired.

  “Same,” Spence replied.

  I settled back in Fynn’s chair and fired one more question: “That right?”

  “Right as Rain.”

  I preferred the Pez jokes.

  Before I could even begin to untangle my feelings, Spence asked, “You know what’s weird about you?”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “Your eyes are brown today,” he said, “and it’s starting to cloud over. They were gray yesterday, during the storm. Green when it’s sunny, like that day in the park. They change colors with the weather.”

  “Hazel,” I said, just a reflex, and then stopped a minute. No jokes. No teasing. No one had noticed since Mom. Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I suddenly felt embarrassed. Truth was, besides Galen, I didn’t have any real experience with romance.

  The HHS junior varsity cheerleaders picked that moment to cruise my dead-end street, hooting for Fynn. News of his engagement apparently hadn’t reached them. Grateful for the chance to make a joke, I asked Spence, “Why don’t you try your luck with them?”

  “All right,” he said, going to the door, “but I’ll see you at Indian Camp, and after that, we’ll keep in touch.”

  After Spence left, I ran a fingertip along the seed beads on my necklace and opened the folded piece of notebook paper. In proud, curly letters, Queenie’s poem read:

  People Talk

  We say a lot

  to hear ourselves speak

  to make ourselves known

  to reach out to somebody else.

  But what would we say

  if only we knew

  that our next words

  would be our last?

  I had a chance to speak,

  and speak I did

  about secrets and dancing and choices.

  But I never took the chance

  to speak to you

  about life and friendship and love.

  Highly cheesy, in my opinion—not that I was in a position to talk. So why was it affecting me so much? Why did it feel like my throat was closing up?

  No contest. In all the world, for all of his life, Queenie, Mrs. Owen, and I were the three people who’d most loved Galen.

  When he’d died, Queenie stepped right up. She wrote her poem, and she read it out loud in her clear soprano voice to our fellow local teens, the coffee-shop gossips, and the distant cousins who’d come to tell Galen good-bye. Then she let go of her grief enough to move on to her next phase. I don’t know what it was. Ice sculpture? Herbal healing? Maybe mining for gold. Later, she’d heard from her aunt Suzanne about their Native heritage and joined Indian Camp. Queenie had even found a new friend in Marie.

  Not Mrs. Owen. She’d written letters to the editor, collected petition signatures, and run against Tahiti for mayor. But in all those months, Mrs. Owen hadn’t stopped to wonder what kids did come summertime when there was no local pool. She hadn’t taken the time to shake any hands, to pass out surveys, to understand the truck drivers, grocery store clerks, and website designers she hoped to represent. She hadn’t connected with anything but busyness.

  Me? I’d cleaned the house, read sci-fi fan fiction, and binge watched TV. But in all those months, I hadn’t taken the time to find out how Natalie felt about her mother, to realize Fynn fretted over an unplanned baby, or to run the cracked sidewalks with Chewie. When I’d finally picked up my camera again, I’d used it as a wall instead of as a window.

  Since Galen had died, Mrs. Owen and I had been spinning in place. It was a luminous place because his light still glowed within it, but a chilly place because he really wasn’t there. Now I was finally finding my footing again. The dizziness, the nausea, the grief, the guilt, and the self-pity were finally letting go of me.

  After I’d coded Queenie’s poem and uploaded Galen’s memorial onto the server, I received a text. The message read:

  Dear Rainbow,

  I’ve found my pot of gold. That’s right, me and Clementine got hitched last night by a fella dressed up as the King (can’t wait to show Georgia the pictures). I know the relations will spit sparks about me rushing into this. But I’m getting to be an old man, and
it’s high time I did some living. Just wanted you to be the first to know. We’ll tell those other shirttail relations when we’re good and ready.

  Viva Las Vegas!

  XOXO, Grampa

  Children of the Corn

  FROM MY JOURNAL:

  The foulmouthed high-school boys were twice as fast as Galen and I because they were cheating by skipping every few stalks. So I was hurrying even more than usual.

  What with the rows planted so close together, I got turned around, and Galen was too far ahead to hear my shouts for help. The field spanned enormously. Grasshoppers leapt at my eyes, and I ran like something angry with fangs was chasing me. One leaf ripped skin from the tip of my nose. Another cut a bloody line across the bridge of it.

  When I reached the edge of the field, ready to strangle Galen for talking me into taking the job, he choked out, “But you’re an Indian, and Indians . . . like corn.”

  I grabbed his sweaty flannel shirt, pulled his sunburned nose to my bleeding one, and only semicalmly explained in detail exactly how I felt.

  JULY 4

  Sometimes, I need a box of Cracker Jacks. Need it like air or water or a good night’s sleep. I closed out all of my programs, realizing Hein’s Grocery Barn would probably lock up early for the holiday, and left Fynn’s Domain.

  On the way to the store, Chewie and I peeked in on the Fourth of July Carnival and Barbecue Cook-Off. Like every Independence Day and Bierfest weekend, red-and-white-striped tents dotted the park and an assortment of booths lined the sidewalk along Lincoln Avenue. Elders chatted on the benches. Parents tied floating balloons to baby strollers. The gazebo had become a makeshift stage for a barbershop quartet.

  During setup that morning, Mrs. Owen—reportedly exclaiming “Who needs all this room?”—had donated one side of the merchants’ association tent to Dmitri and Marie. Who knows why Mrs. Owen did it. For votes maybe or to soothe a guilty conscience. Or maybe it was an act of kindness. After all, she is Galen’s mom. I want to think the best of her. But, sure, I’ll continue to keep my distance.

  Dmitri and Marie were selling five-dollar cups of wild-rice soup to raise money for the Great Lakes trip. By the time I arrived that afternoon, the Headbirds had made ninety-five bucks. I was quick to add my five-dollar contribution.

  “Plan B,” Marie said, handing me a cup of soup.

  Although Dmitri had made a point of petting Chewie, he hadn’t said much to me. I wanted to thank him for the chalk mural, but I didn’t want to embarrass him in front of Marie. That conversation would have to wait.

  My first spoonful of light brown rice was nutty, tender, mixed with chicken and broth. Each grain had opened and rounded like a tiny butterfly. As I polished off my soup, I began believing that we might actually make it to the reservation and that it might not be too late for me to connect with the Ojibwe side of my heritage. Even if my family had come from Saginaw, not Leech Lake, it would be a start.

  I was finally about to mention it to Dmitri and Marie, when Spence jogged to the tent and asked, “Everybody recovered from local politics?”

  “The council was fairly respectful,” Marie said. “It’s not like they sat there and made fun of us. Maybe I should’ve said something different, better, to convince them. I was so nervous.”

  Spence popped his gum. “Nah, you were terrific.”

  “Never would’ve made it without your suggestion,” Marie answered. She went on to explain, “Spence told me to pretend they were Pez heads.”

  Chewie barked, like he was laughing, and then I felt myself smile.

  High above, Queenie and Ernie rounded the top of the Ferris wheel. I thought back to the day we’d made her mom feel like a bride and wondered if we might someday become close friends again. Maybe I could sit by her at church next Sunday. For sure, I’d find a moment to apologize and a way to make amends.

  A few minutes later, I stood in front of Lorelei at the checkout counter.

  “How’s your brother?” she asked, ringing up my purchase.

  “Wonderful,” I answered. “Ready for fatherhood.”

  “Oh,” Lorelei replied, tapping register buttons, “they’re planning to have kids.”

  “They’re already pregnant,” I said, taking advantage of Natalie’s green light. If people were going to talk, they could hear it from us first. “Cool, don’t you think?”

  “Definitely,” Lorelei said, tossing my bill into her cash drawer. “You must be thrilled.” She recovered and gave me my change. “Are you celebrating at the fireworks festival?” she asked. “Maybe with a certain retired teacher’s visiting nephew? Or that new boy from the trailer park?”

  I grabbed my three-pack of Cracker Jacks and answered, “I’ve got plans with another male. A wild one. We’re going to run like night creatures and howl at the moon.”

  What Really Happened

  FROM MY JOURNAL:

  Today, the black wrought-iron gate didn’t stop me. I hiked up a manicured hill at the Garden of Roses Cemetery to a simple grave marker set beneath a maple tree. The stone was flat and gray like Galen’s, but it wasn’t him I’d come to see. I thought about Mama, cradled by the earth, about how wonderful and safe that must be.

  On her stone, I placed four peach roses—one each for Dad, Fynn, Natalie, and me. I told Mama about baby Aiyana. I promised to tell the baby stories, so that from them, she’d know the gramma who’d gone by the same name.

  Finally, I left without stopping by Galen’s grave. The wound from losing Mama was deeper, but the one from losing Galen was still too fresh.

  Next time, maybe.

  JULY 4

  Chewie and I watched the fireworks explode over Burnham’s Apple Orchard. They all glittered a moment, lingering, and then faded, one after the other, like the smoky trails of fallen snakes. I was flying, just barely, back and forth on the same swing as last New Year’s Eve. Galen’s ghost soared nearby.

  Aunt Georgia called this morning and mentioned that Queenie’s great-grandfather had been a Seminole, which made Queenie a pretty close cousin after all. I was more interested in the fact that Queenie had volunteered to make Thursday’s spaghetti dinner. Definitely an Italian cooking phase. We planned to meet at my house, and everybody had been invited—families and friends.

  The Flash called, too. Lacking any better ideas last night, he drank too much tequila and wrote an editorial called “Life in the Heartland.” Should be a scream.

  Now that I thought about it, it was hard to imagine Queenie dumping Galen for Ernie and being afraid to tell me so. She was much more up front than I’d ever been.

  I decided that she was telling the truth—that Galen broke up with her on the day of the dance.

  He had asked me about whether I’d date a Black person. A secret part of my heart had wondered, even then, if he’d backed away from Queenie because of her race. And I’d never dared to ask him about it, but there was a time when I wondered if my being Native was the reason he’d never made a first move on me.

  The rest of my heart knew better. Galen had backed out because of his mother. He hadn’t been happy about caving in, being the mama’s boy, or losing Queenie. Even though he’d never spelled out exactly what had happened, I’d taken that to mean he wasn’t the one who’d made the decision. I’d been too jealous to see what was really going on. It had all started with the “no dating” rule meant to protect him. Mrs. Owen had won that round. At least as close as she’d come to winning.

  Maybe Galen had underestimated how I’d react. Maybe he hadn’t realized I’d toss Queenie out of my locker and out of my life. Maybe once I’d lashed out at her, Galen had been afraid to tell me the whole truth. What I knew for sure was that, at some point, he’d led me on about what had happened between them. He’d let me think the worst of Queenie. I blamed him for that. But I let it burn through, and I let it go. Blame wasn’t something I cared to hold on to.

  The memories wouldn’t let go.

  All I could think about was what happened between Galen
and me that last night, last New Year’s Eve. No, I didn’t take my sweater off, and Galen didn’t take my sweater off. I wasn’t even wearing a sweater. I was wearing my black silk shirt, the one Aunt Louise had shipped me for Christmas. The one that made me feel sophisticated.

  FROM MY JOURNAL:

  This is what really happened that night.

  Dragging my high-tops to slow myself, I fiddled with my camera strap. My lips itched, and my heart did a two-step. I rose from my swing. It was happy birthday time.

  I walked to Galen in the confetti snow, and he stopped midspin, swinging his arms, off balance. I wanted to count his tasty-looking freckles and tease my fingers through his nose-long bangs. But I couldn’t risk my courage, and I couldn’t waste another chilled breath.

  He closed his sweeping golden eyelashes, and I closed my stubby dark ones.

  It was only one kiss. It wasn’t a deep kiss, a French kiss, the kind of kiss that redefines a teen life. It was pepperoni, snowflakes, spit, and rodeo dust. Crazy, like dancing and soaring and walking to a new home.

  Sweeter because it didn’t taste like good-bye.

  Author’s Note

  As a very young child—much younger than you—I used to swing as high as I could on the swing set in my backyard. I’d swing high to talk to family Elders who’d passed on, some of them before I was born. It was my way of trying to send a message to heaven. That’s why Rain flies on a swing, remembering her best friend Galen.

  Rain Is Not My Indian Name is set in a fictional small town, and the story mentions a few additional fictional places and publications, too. Likewise, the characters are creations unto themselves, separate from the real-life intertribal Native community and Native youth programs in Kansas. For those folks from the northeast part of the state, I did spend much of my youth in Lenexa and graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Kansas.

  As Native readers know, people of the tribal Nations within the borders of the United States have different preferences when it comes to what we call ourselves. Some folks prefer “American Indian” or “Indian,” and some prefer “Native American” or “Native.” We might also use “First Nations,” especially when talking about tribal Nations located north of the Canada–United States border.