by Melissa Yi
"I've got a lot of cases on the go, Fred, but I'll try and make this a priority. At least get you down to non-professional supervision provider so you don't have to pay for it."
Great. I start squeezing the phone receiver so hard I imagine the plastic splintering in my fist. "How 'bout the fact that I didn't do nothin'!"
More sighing. "I know, Fred."
Sure you will, white man. It's a real "priority" for you. I got to do my own thing.
***
Shana puts up with me for the next week while I try to figure out what to do. I'm not eating, I can't sleep, I'm walking around in the middle of the night and getting up at 6 to work. I even try to split up a tree that fell down two years ago in Shana's back yard. It's a messy job. I break the chain saw. I'm pretty useless with an axe. But I'm not drinking. And I'm not using.
"Sorry," I tell Shana when, for the first time, she wants to have sex and I just want to crash.
"It's okay." She kisses my cheek. "Just do the dishes for the next week and I'll forgive you."
That makes my eyes pop open. But she just laughs and drags the covers over me. The quilt is soft. I sleep. And Saturday morning, when I should be seeing my boys, I know what to do instead. Go see Phil.
White people love to talk about native elders, but they're hard to come by. My parents were so screwed up by the schools where nuns beat them for speaking Mohawk or priests raped them because they felt like it. My grandparents are dead and I don't really know the elders. They probably wouldn't understand my baby Mohawk anyway.
But I know Phil. He's a smart old guy. He used to work for CN Rail before he worked his way up at the paper mill and retired on good money when the mill closed. Now he writes for the local paper. So I drop by the diner. Shana brings us coffee on the house. Phil pushes his paper aside and asks, "What can I do you for?"
In a low voice, under the grill's sizzle and plates clattering and chairs bumping, I tell him what's going on.
He pours two creams and two sugars in his coffee and stirs it around until he finally answers. "She's in a lot of pain."
"Who?" For a second, I think he meant Shana, whose long legs just walked by.
"The grandmother."
"The grandmother! Come on, Phil, you going to side with a white woman instead of me?"
He shakes his head. "Not taking sides. I think she just has a lot of hurt and she's taking it out on you. Probably ever since her daughter died. She had Noelle late, a change of life baby, if I remember right."
I stare at him. What was he, Sigmund friggin' Freud? Who cared how old she was when she had Noelle? "So what do you think I should do?"
"Get rid of that hurt. Then she won't hate you so much."
What a wise guy. I feel like hurling my coffee cup at him. I only put it down gently because it's Shana's place. "Thanks a lot." I sling a ten on the table.
"You've got to solve this yourself," he calls to my back.
Yeah. I knew that already.
***
DEATH NOTICE
Saunders, Francine (née Ferguson). Suddenly at the Cornwall Community Hospital on November 10, 2007. Survived by her grandsons, Jake and Thomas Redish. Predeceased by her daughter, Noelle, and husband, Jacob.
***
It should be a good Christmas. The best ever, in fact. One of my buddies gave me a tree, said it was a cast-off because of the dead needles. Shana rigged it so you can't even see the brown bits. She and Jake are hanging the balls and Tommy and I are throwing tinsel at it and Mel Tourmé's roasting chestnuts over an open fire and things would be just perfect except for a few things.
I was going to take care of Mrs. Saunders. I really was. I wanted to bash her head in, but in the end, I decided Phil was right. I set up an appointment with one of our mediation counselors. Mrs. Saunders would never set foot in Akwasasne, let alone let an Indian tell her what to do, but all I could do was try.
Until she upped and died. She seemed okay, or at least her normal mean self, sending the boys to bed without any veg stew supper after Jake gave her "too much lip." Then she made them go to church the next morning with a neighbor. Said she wasn't feeling good.
They came home to find her dead in her own puke. The neighbor called 911, but it was too late, even though they took her to the emergency room anyway. We asked for no autopsy and because she almost 70 and had a heart condition, the coroner dropped it.
Sometimes, I wish he hadn't.
Maybe I'm too suspicious. But I looked up what mushrooms do to you. The real deadly kind. You feel okay for 12 hours and then you start puking and you end up going pretty quick.
"Daddy!" Jake hollers, holding up the box of my mom's old Christmas stuff. "This one stinks! I think it's the candle!"
"Throw it out, then," I say. I'm looking at how he and Shana have their heads close together. Their hair is growing back, but Shana shaved both their heads after Mrs. Saunders died.
"I'll just throw out the candle," Shana says, and I smile at her because I still love her and she's such a good mother to my boys, even though I get goosebumps every time I see her butch hair.
Tommy tugs my pants. He wants me to kneel down. I do. He clambers in my arms and I lift him up to hang tinsel on high. His prickly little hair stands straight up now. He asked Shana to cut it off when she did his brother's.
I'm the only one who kept the crew cut. I don't know why, but I feel really guilty. But when Tommy hugs me and Shana asks me to help Jake with the star, I can't help humming along with old Mel Tourmé. Shana looks cute with short hair, kind of '80s punk rock. And Jake trusts me enough to hold him high while he crowns the tree with a silver and gold star.
Originally published in Indian Country Noir
Blood Diamonds
1.
Karin kept the laboratory room at a cool 16 degrees Centigrade.
She did this for several reasons. The first, although she would never admit it, was vanity. At times her face would blush and shine with sweat, and this tendency was more pronounced in the heat. It wouldn’t do for the doctor, or even the patients, to notice this.
The second reason was to contain the smell. She was quite sensitive to scent. One of her first memories was of her parents allowing the dog to dry itself by the fire, despite the terrible stench of wet fur permeating their house. The laboratory air smelled even worse. Fortunately, Karin had grown into a woman in control of her environment. She unlocked the top drawer of her lab bench and withdrew a tiny glass vial. She unscrewed the lid, drew up 0.1 cc’s of clove oil with a sterilized dropper, and applied two drops of the light brown oil to her upper lip, one under each nostril. This would further dampen any unpleasant odours. Then she replaced the oil in her drawer, locked it, and placed the dropper in the autoclave.
She was ready.
She glanced at the clock, which showed only 6:33 a.m. The doctor was always on time. Karin approved. Punctuality was a sign of civilization and respect. However, the hour would drag on terribly before the doctor was expected in 27 minutes.
She unlocked the filing cabinet below her bench. She refused the turn on the light; she often berated her colleagues, especially Dr. Schreiber, for wasting electricity and hot water, resources that must be conserved for vital research. However, with only the dim dawn light of a single window barely illuminating the small room, she could not properly make out the files shadowed beneath her desk. She pulled the first folder out and realized it was a copy of her thesis, Studies on the physiology of the butterfly wing.
Karin smiled. Her studies at the the university seemed so long ago. She had graduated at the age of 24 with examinations in botany, zoology and geology. She had also studied physics and chemistry. One could argue that, eleven years later, she still studied zoology, but in a much more focused fashion. Before Karin’s work, the research on eye colour was mired in Mendelian genetics, a sort of elementary school equation: two blue-eyed parents equaled one blue-eyed child. Two brown-eyed parents carrying the blue eye allele could yield one blue-eyed child and
three brown-eyed children. And so forth.
Karin was one of the first biologists to raise the question of hormonal influence on eye colour and to demonstrate its importance in affecting the colour of rabbit irises. Still, even as the accolades rolled in, she herself felt dissatisfied. Even if two blue-eyed parents produced blue-eyed children, what about the different shades of blue?
She heard footsteps behind her and turned to see Klaus in the doorway. "Good morning, Dr. Rasmussen," he said.
She greeted him in kind. "Good morning, Dr. Schreiber. Did you sleep well?"
"Better than you, I suspect. Did you sleep at all?" He smiled broadly, revealing his teeth, which seemed too big for his mouth.
Karin was careful not to show her disgust. Klaus was nearly twenty years her senior, but had completed very good work on genetics, in his time. She shook her head. "I slept very well," she lied. In fact, even though she had left the lab at 11 p.m., she had stayed up until 3 a.m. and barely caught two hours of restless sleep. As usual, she’d risen before the sun.
"Did you have time to put on those earrings I gave you?"
Karin made sure her voice remained steady and that her face did not betray her. "I did not find them suitable for the laboratory, Dr. Schreiber."
"So modest. You are a credit to the fair sex, Dr. Rasmussen. The spring of life, indeed!"
Karin’s hands quivered, this time in anger. She felt her face flush, despite the coolness of the room. Karl’s phrase was a crude pun about the homes where pregnant unmarried women could give up their babies. Although Karin was not past childbearing age, she was no longer in her prime, and it was cruel to remind her of that, even though she had never longed for marriage or children. She had always preferred science. She was extremely lucky to come of age at a time when her skills were needed for the war effort. Her "duty year" as a teacher had turned into a full-time position before she won a research scholarship four years later.
"When are diamonds ever improper? Ah, well. As Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, ‘The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.’"
Karin turned her back to Karl and removed a handkerchief from her lab coat pocket. She blotted her nose and forehead, the areas most likely to shine. Klaus had moved to his own lab bench near the door and was setting up equipment, but continued to ramble about Nietzsche.
Composed now, Karin glanced at the clock. It was 6:54. The doctor should arrive in six minutes. She picked up a glass pipette and held up in the dim dawn light. It was spotless, as usual. She turned her head to the hallway, hoping to hear footsteps, but all she detected was the everyday noise of soldiers yelling orders and the annoying hum of a mosquito in the distance.
Suddenly, Karl fell silent. Karin lifted her head. If Dr. Schreiber had heard something…
Sure enough, a door creaked open downstairs and at least two pairs of well-heeled shoes hammered down the hallway. Karin stood by the bench, arms by her sides, hoping that her face would not betray her excitement this time.
The doctor appeared in the doorway in his immaculate white coat. "Good morning, Drs. Schreiber and Rasmussen."
"Good morning," murmured Karin.
The doctor spread his arms wide, nearly striking the Jewish pathologist who flanked him. The pathologist hurriedly stepped back out of range, clinging to a white box. The doctor barely glanced at him, shooting his gaze at Karin instead. "I have a special present for you today, Dr. Rasmussen."
Karin’s heart skipped a beat. She pressed her hands together, willing her face not to sweat.
"You asked me for heterochromic samples of fresh tissue. Yesterday, when I walked the lines, I discovered an entire family with heterochromic eyes. Two parents and two one-year-old twin boys."
"Twin boys," repeated Karin. The doctor’s passion for twins could not be underestimated.
"Yes." The doctor’s lips split into a smile, revealing the gaps between his two front teeth. "Their cousins are due to arrive today."
Karin’s face flushed in joy. This was more than she’d ever dreamed of. "Do you mean—"
The doctor held up one finger. "I would like to study this family myself first, obtain all the members, document their genetics, and so forth."
"Of course," said Karin.
"However, given the circumstances, I no longer required the fraternal twins I already had in service. Thus, I harvested their tissue for you this morning." The doctor nodded at Dr. Schreiber. "They may come to you later today, or tomorrow, Doctor. It depends how long they survive. They are quite tall, five foot eleven and six feet, so you may want to extract their growth hormone."
"Thank you," said Karl, but Karin was no longer listening. The doctor had gestured to the Jewish pathologist, who flipped open the lid of the white box, letting the smell of blood and formaldehyde waft into the air.
Nestled on a bed of ice, four freshly harvested eyeballs stared up at her: two hazel, one green and one blue. The two hazel corneas were severely ulcerated from previous experiments, but the retinas would probably be untouched. The crown jewels, the heterochromic blue and green irises, with almost pristine white sclerae, seemed almost perfectly alive.
Karin clasped her hands together, barely able to breathe at the sight of the most beautiful gift she’d ever received. "Oh, thank you. Thank you. Ein herzliches Dankeschön, Doktor Mengele."
2.
So I was sitting in the hard chair beside the farkakteh hospital bed, wishing that I could knit, but the light wasn’t so good for my eyes any more, and they make you keep the curtains closed now. I guess they worry about all those MRSA bacteria and viruses nowadays, spreading from cubicle to cubicle, but what good is a curtain going to do about it?
It’s no good for my back, those hard beds, and those nasty hospital chairs don’t have much cover for the tukhes, you know what I mean? So I’m sitting, and I’m wishing I could knit, or call my granddaughter on the phone, but you know how they can be funny about phones in the hospitals nowadays, so I’m just sitting. And maybe dozing off, because my stomach hurts so bad, I couldn’t sleep last night. That’s why I’m here. My stomach.
I can see feet running back and forth from underneath the curtain, attached to legs wearing those funny blue hospital pants. Scrubs, I think they call them. Yes, like that TV show my granddaughter used to like. Oh, she would laugh. Me, I didn’t find it so funny, but you know young people nowadays.
Finally, some of the feet stop in front of my curtain. It’s a woman in black leather shoes with the toes all scuffed. In my time, you had to shine your shoes, but I guess she’s a nurse or a doctor, she doesn’t have time. In my day, you took care of things, that’s all I’m saying.
Her hand rips my curtain open, and it’s a young, Oriental girl wearing glasses and a lab coat. Maybe she’s a doctor, maybe she’s a nurse, maybe she’s an axe murderer, I don’t know. They don’t tell you anything these days, that’s what I’m saying. She’s wearing a tag, but it’s flipped the wrong way. I’m telling you. Scuffed shoes and backwards tags. What is this world coming to?
She starts talking, but so fast, I can’t understand a word of it. I grab her hand, and she jumps a little. I can tell she’s not used to patients touching her, but that’s one of the best ways to slow down a motor mouth. My Aunt Bedele taught me that one. When me or my sisters were talking, she’d just grab our hands and tell us to slow down.
Finally, I get this doctor to say her name three times and flip her tag over. She is a doctor, but one of those student ones. A resident, she says. Dr. Hope Sze. Like the letter C.
Well, what difference does it make. I’m old now. Waiting another hour for the real doctor, I can do that. If I die waiting, I die waiting. So I sigh and tell her about my stomach. See how big it is? That’s not normal. I look like I’m carrying my son again. Hurts all the time, yes, maybe a little more at night, that’s why I came first thing in the morning. I couldn’t wait any more. My family doctor ordered these tests, but he can’t see me
for another two weeks. My Mordechai couldn’t come with me today. He’s got his own appointment with his urologist.
This doctor’s interested in the tests and scans. Wants to know what kind and when. I want to tell her to look it up on that fancy computer of hers, but it turns out, that’s what she wants to do. She pulls out one of those tablets that my great-grandsons like so much, and she starts typing in my hospital number. She double-checks the name and number on my paper wristband, and when she looks up, she sees the other numbers tattooed on the inside of my elbow, and her face falls.
That was a long time ago, I tell her. I was just a little girl at the time.
I’m sorry, she says, and I can see that she means it. She’s a good girl, even though she doesn’t take care of her shoes.
So I tell her not to worry. And then I look at her name tag again, which is flipped around already, but I remember it. Hope Sze. She’s not just any doctor. She’s the doctor who solved that strange case of the escape artist who dressed up like Elvis and nearly drowned in a coffin! I should have remembered before, but my memory’s not what it used to be. What’s she doing at the Jewish Hospital, hmm?
She tells me something about rotating hospitals, and she wants to do emergency medicine, so she wanted to come here because it’s busier than St. Joseph’s, and they have hospital tablets and electronic records and all sorts of stuff they don’t have at St. Joe’s.
Well, I knew that! Don’t we donate our money so that the Samuel G. Wasserman Jewish Hospital can be better than the other ones?
I guess, working at St. Joseph’s, she doesn’t see too many survivors. Her eyes are back on my tattoo, so I tell her, go on, touch it. It doesn’t hurt.