One String Guitar

by Mona de Vessel

  “Where you headed?” He said.

  “Pine Ridge.”

  “I’m headed that way, hop in.”

  The driver was a Brulé Indian named Lenny who’d taken a job as a trucker. Later, I thought about him, traveling the land of our ancestors with “the mighty bull.” That’s what he called his truck and it made me smile thinking of him traveling our lands, watching over the hills.

  “I got two babies on the way,” I told him.

  “Your first?”

  “Yeah, my very first babies.”

  “Ain’t nothing like it,” that’s for sure. The first time you hold that small little body in your great big hand and think I made that. Ain’t nothing like it, I tell ya.”

  I told him about the jail and how the worse thing was not being able to see the sky, to touch the earth with my feet. I’d never been free but I’d always been able to stay connected with mother earth with my feet. But when I was locked up, they took that away from me.

  Lenny didn’t look like an Indian which is how he’d gotten the job in the first place. I knew he was Indian from the moment I met him because of the way he didn’t look me in the eye. I knew ‘cause of his skin tone. He wasn’t white, wasn’t red neither. He had that glow, of the mixed bloods, skin the color of the inside of an almond.

  We drove in silence. I didn’t want to talk much. I liked looking at the road, looking at the sky opening up ahead of us. When you drive in our neck of the woods, you can see the sky forever—one infinite line that opens up, getting lost in the prairie.

  When we got there, it was late afternoon. Light was shifting, sun falling behind the hills. The house looked smaller than I had remembered. There was no car in the driveway. I’d promised Felicia’s father I’d buy him a new truck but I was years from reality. I thanked Matthew and jumped out.

  I stood in front of the house, my heart racing. I could almost hear it in my throat, holding me in one place. The house was unusually quiet. So quiet it reminded me of the song-less swallow at my window in jail.

  I heard her before I came in. Heard her voice wailing into the air. The cry of my baby lifted into the air where everything else was silent around her. When I walked in, Felicia’s mother came to me. Even though I had never spent much time looking at this woman who had nurtured and raised my Felicia, I noticed that her face seemed worn, older, as if she had aged a decade in just three short months. Without touching me, I could sense that she wanted me to wait.

  “Owl, it’s good you’re back. It’s real good you’re back.”

  I heard a baby again. Its single voice, her cries filling the room beyond the entrance.

  “Wait, there is something you need to know,” Felicia’s mom Marie said grabbing a hold of my arm.

  My heart sank. I knew in that moment that something terrible had happened to my Felicia. I pushed past Marie and past the cloth that separated the entrance from the rest of the room. Grandma I was sitting in a rocking chair giving a bottle to the baby. When she saw me, she smiled as tears welled up in her eyes.

  “Where is Felicia?” I could barely get enough air into my lungs.

  Marie had made her way next to Grandma I and the baby.

  “She’s gone, son. Felicia is gone.”

  Time became still the way winds die down before a raging storm. I wanted to crawl into the darkness of the earth and be swallowed whole. I wanted the earth to ingest me so I could disappear into the darkness and never return. Felicia was no longer of this earth. My mind searched and searched in the four corners of itself for the possibility of accepting that my Felicia no longer existed anywhere on this earth. My mind tried to understand that my angel wife was no longer breathing. That I would never set eyes on her face again That I would never hear voice. That I would never place my hand on the nape of her neck or let her lips grace mine. I could feel the weight of my rapid fire thoughts circling onto themselves, entangling me like a buck being taken down at rodeo. I fell to my knees and began to weep.

  “When?” Was all I was able to say in between the cries pushing their way out of me.

  “When did she go?”

  Marie knelt down by my side and wrapped her arms around me. A woman rarely touched a man, unless he was her husband or her son.

  “A month ago, son,” she said. “Our Felicia passed a month ago.”

  “Who did this to her?” The grief gave way to a mounting rage that threatened to push me out into the world in search of destruction.

  “Who hurt my Felicia?” When I said my Felicia, I felt the grief settle inside me again, battling rage battling grief, like a crazy cadence of demons.

  “Despair did this to her. It wasn’t any one thing that killed her. Sit down son. So we can tell you everything we know.”

  Grandma I stood up with the baby in hand and gently placed her in my arms.

  “Your daughter,” she said as I laid eyes on my Maya for the very first time. My daughter began to cry. I scanned Grandma I’s face for direction. She simply smiled and nodded. Maya’s face creased into a scream, her skin turning beet red.

  “You shake and walk, shake and walk,” Grandma I said smiling again.

  Maya’s eyes reminded me of Felicia’s, perfect almonds. Her cheeks were round like Felicia’s and her nose a tiny version of her mother’s. As I held this tiny bundle in my arms I felt the hope and the pride Felicia had brought me in the short time we were blessed with each other’s love. She was gone now, but I could feel her presence as I held Maya in my arms. I remembered the song Felicia had taught me on the night she had told me about the babies in her belly and I began to sing it to my daughter, calling the spirits to be here among us and hold us true to the legacy of our people.

  Tunkasila

  Wanmayanguye

  Tunkasila

  Wanmayanguyelo

  Ikce wicasa tacannunpe

  Wan yuha hoyelo

  Mitaye ob waniktelo heyaya

  Hoyewayelo

  Maya’s cries stopped and she watched me intently as I rocked her to the rhythm of the song of our ancestors. Grandma I joined me and we sang the song a second time in unison, calling the spirits to be with us.

  Grandfather come and see me

  I send a voice with the people’s pipe,

  So I may live with my relatives.

  The baby became still as a rock. I pulled her to me to see her tiny face resembling a small animal, with its eyes like crevasses and its puffy red cheeks.

  “What happened,” I asked, looking at Marie and Grandma I. I waited for their words feeling like I’d placed my hand on a damn about to break.

  “Babies were born in a storm. Very bad storm. Rain, thunder for days.” I listened to Grandma I talk about the day of the birth and I remembered the storm on the day the wounded swallow had come to see me.

  “Her contractions started at dawn. We took her to the center of the house and made her squat in the way of our women,” Marie described the moment Felicia went into labor.

  “Babies no come. Babies no come. Then sun set. Night outside. Very dark and one baby come.” Grandma I and Marie took turns unraveling the tragedy of Felicia’s last days.

  “It took 35 hours for Felicia to give birth to the first baby,” Marie explained.

  “The first baby?” I gasped. This was the first time the presence of two babies had been confirmed by something outside of Grandman I’s visions.

  “Yes, Felicia gave birth to babies, two girls.” Marie said with tears in her eyes. “But After 35 hours, they were still not coming and Felicia was worried they were dying inside her. We tried to tell her, everything was OK but you know how stubborn Felicia can…could be,” Marie said with a sad smile on her face.

  “Babies OK. I know babies OK. But Felicia cry, Felicia scream.”

  “We waited another two hours waiting for the second baby to come. But Felicia wanted to go to the hospital. Don’t let my baby die, she kept saying, don’t let my baby die. So after another hour we took her to the hospital. “ Marie was wringi
ng her hands as she relieved the pain of her daughter.

  Grandma I became agitated and got up to light the sacred pipe. She raised her hand up in the air. “Wowahtani is here, evil.” She waved the smoke around the room and passed the pipe to me to smoke it. Hesitant, I looked to Marie for guidance, who nodded in agreement. I took the pipe in my hands and took a drag leting the smoke release into the air.

  “At the hospital, they took her away and we stayed in the waiting room for hours and hours.” Marie continued.

  “We wait long time. Long time. They say go away. Go home. Baby not ready yet.” Grandma I added.

  “After another ten hours, a nurse came out and told us to go home. They said Felicia would not be ready for a long time. She said something about complications and how Felicia would need a lot of rest. We refused to leave. We stayed all night and the next day and the next day after that. They still wouldn’t let us see her. But on the third day when morning came, they let us see our Felicia.” Marie looked down and began to cry.

  “When we walked into the room, she was sleeping.”

  “Sleep of darkness,” Grandma I called it.

  “They gave her a lot of drugs,” Marie clarified.

  “Where is the baby? I said to the nurse when we sat down by Felicia. When can we see the baby? You see we were smart and kept Maya with us at home while Felicia was still giving birth to the second baby. The nurse just looked at me and said what baby? She did not give birth to a second child. And she walked out of the room.

  She had been drugged so she could sleep. They asked to see the children but when they said children, the nurse said there was only one child. One child was born they said, not two.

  “They took the baby away.” Grandma I looked at me and I saw that she had tears in her eyes.

  “We talked to nurses. We talked to doctors. They all said the same thing. On the third day, they let her go with heavy medication. They gave us papers we didn’t look at until Felicia came back to herself.

  “Felicia told us she remembers giving birth to the second girl in the hospital. A perfect girl, she called her, just like the first one.” Marie explained to me. “And then after they took the baby to clean her, Felicia never saw her again. They gave her heavy medications that kept her sleeping like a rock.” Marie added.

  Even after she came home from the hospital, it took days for the drugs to wear off completely and let Felicia think straight again here at home.

  “When the drugs wore off, Felicia lost her mind with sadnesss,” Marie said holding back the tears. “She read the papers they gave her at the hospital.”

  They say the largest mountain can split under the force of a single drop of water. Centuries of rain falling on the rock and then one day a single drop will split it open. This is what happened to my wife.

  “Sterilization—removal of ovaries were the words she read on the paper,” Marie finally said.

  I wanted to scream. I wanted to fly to the hospital and grab hold of the doctor who had butchered my wife’s body and taken her last chance to create life ever again. I wanted to destroy the person who had lied to our family and stolen our child. I was beginning to understand what had killed Felicia.

  “After days of silence, Felicia began to speak again. She held Maya every day and nursed her and she kept repeating the same thing over and over again they took my baby away.

  “Felicia knew she’d birthed two babies. A woman knows who she brings into the world.” Marie said.

  A knot formed in my throat. I should have been there to protect my family. I hadn’t been there to protect Felicia and the babies. I hadn’t been there and they had opened her up and butchered her like an animal for slaughter so that she couldn’t give life no more.

  “Every day she was weaker and weaker,” Marie told me. And then she got sick. I think she wanted to leave this earth because she stopped fighting. The doctor said it was an infection. But she woudn’t even drink water to stay alive.”

  “The doctors, they kill her soul,” Grandma I said strenly.

  That night, Felicia’s parents made their cot in the other room leaving me to sleep with the baby. I woke up every few hours and gave her a bottle Marie and Grandma I had prepared for us in the evening. Maya was a strong baby, she was a baby who could feel the heart beat of the world. And when her mama died, she became sad even before she could speak a word.

  Marie told me that Felicia named our baby Maya for the way she held herself, like a Mayan queen. I remembered how Felicia and I had talked about the unity of all indigenous people, after meeting Carlos on the res. We had both understood that the Mayans and the Aztecs, the Brulés, and the Oglalas, we were all one.

  I didn’t need to know the facts to understand that Felicia had been broken. In all my years on the res, I’d seen and heard about people breaking. I’d seen the wino in the corner of the village, coming back from the bars off the res, his teeth missing, his skin dried up by booze, making ‘im look like ancient elders when he was still in his 40s. I’d seen girls going off into the city to sell themselves so they could make money for their children. I’d seen young boys go mad circling round and round on the res, I’d seen girls forget their beauty and wither before they had a chance to bloom. But all these years, I’d never known anyone I loved slip away from me like Felicia had.

  For a long time, I tried to find out about the other baby. If I couldn’t be there to save Felicia, I wanted to find our child and bring our family back together. I returned to the hospital several times only to be threatened with arrest. We had no proof and no money to hire a lawyer and as the years went by, we drifted into settled grief.

  Part VI

  Chapter 30 – Owl

  Pine Ridge Reservation, SD, 1998

  At the police station, the cops took me down to the morgue so I could identify Maya’s body. The pig with the cropped hair pushed the metallic door opened and let us into a large, cold room that smelled like the hospital where I searched for my baby. Above us, I heard the buzzing of the neon lights up on the ceiling and felt a chill in my back.

  “Number 27,” he said stopping in front of a series of metallic drawers. He pulled the large handle and slid the drawer open. He unzipped the body bag, exposing a purplish face with swollen eyes and a mouth partially opened.

  “This is not my daughter,” I said my heart leaping out of my chest.

  “This is not Maya Owl Feather?”

  “No, this is not my Maya.”

  “Well, it’s got to be somebody’s Maya,” the cop said zipping the bag back up. “I guess, you’re not out of a daughter after all.”

  Maya was not dead! They had tortured me to believe that my last remaining child had been taken away from me but this was not true. They showed me to the door and let me walk home. This a tactic they like to use to remind you who’s boss. Outside, the sky was turning shades of purple and gold, like old bruises or crushed plums, like the wild violets that push their way against all odds, through the earth each spring. I thought about the way the white man had tried to break us through the years. I thought about the virus of the hatred they had tried to pass on to us through the generations. They had tried to destroy us. They had killed our people and stolen our land, they had taken all of our natural resources, they had taken our sovereignty and killed our leaders replacing them with puppets like Washington in the hopes that we would rot at the roots. And when we had no land, no food and no leaders, then they took away our language and our children. Conqueror, I can see you in my mind’s eye now. You can kill us, but you can’t erase our memories of the ancient ways. You can take our children, but you can’t make our love for them fade away. You can strip us of our ability to speak in the tongue of our ancestors, but you can’t stop us from connecting with their spirits. For more than one hundred years now since you massacred our men, our women, and our children on the sacred land of Wounded Knee, you have tried to destroy us.

  I listened to the sound of wood frogs calling out their mates and I remembered that
even if Felicia was dead in body, she was present in spirit. I could hear her in the Buffalo grass rustling in the wind. There isn’t much of it left anywhere on this res, but you can’t erase the memory of the ancient ways as long as we continue to share it with one another. I could feel Felicia and the others in these sounds of spring giving way to light and I felt myself coming back to myself. I thought about the life force that returns each year. The call of the heart. Always returning to what it knows: the earth. Everything comes from the earth and everything returns to it. As I walked alone along this road, I thought about the strength of our people. I thought of the dead as well as the living. And I rejoiced in the fact that I am still here. We Indians are still here and we will always be here, on the land our ancestors.

  Chapter 31 – Elbe

  When they turned onto US Route 18, both Joey and Elbe knew that their road trip was coming to a close. Dawn pulled at them magnetically, drawing them both to all of the mythical places they had each imagined they would release on this trip. For Joey it had been his absolute maleness, the way he had drawn his body in the soft dark corner of his mind. The angled sinews of his muscles, the depth of his voice, the hard push of his body out into the world. But it was also, the letting go of what he had discovered with Jennie Stevens, his mother. The way he knew now that he had to let her go. He could measure the loss he had carried inside all of these years since that fateful morning when the blinking lights of the ambulance had made their way through the trailer windows. He could finally understand the breadth of all that he had lost on that morning. Past the yellow hue of Jennie’s dress when they carried her out of her bed. Past the darkness of the partial morning when the little girl Michelle he had once been cried in the silence of his mother’s absence.

  Elbe also carried around her own myths with her. Soon, they would need to be discarded. How lurid dreams become when they are confronted with reality. How untrue and imperfect, how deformed and terribly wrong little kids’ dreams look in the harshness of daylight. Elbe knew on some level that she would need to learn to dispose of the invisibility of her own image. She would have to learn to redraw herself, from the inside, without anyone’s salvation. No matter what or whom she found in Pine Ridge, she would need to let go of the self she had falsely constructed.