L
My mom had planned a combined feast to celebrate both my kokum’s birthday and Roger’s life. Together, my mom and I did each other’s makeup, and I helped pick out her dress. She looked beautiful in her medicine wheel jewellery.
I admired the two of us in the mirror. “Damn, Mom, if we weren’t going to a funeral we’d have all the boys,” I joked. “We’re serving fish!” My mom had given up trying to learn the weird phrases I brought home, so she just nodded in agreement and continued applying her lipstick. We may have been the saddest duo in the world right then and there, but we were radiant in our own ways. I decided that if I was going to feel anything, I’d experience both the pain and the joy—I’d be sullen and sexy, I’d walk into St. Peter’s and own those wooden floorboards, I’d show the kids how it’s done with a strut as mean as Naomi’s and a face as fierce as Ashley Callingbull’s. Serving fish? Hell, I was serving pickerel on a platter.
“Your kokum loved you, y’know that, with all her heart,” my mom said out of the blue.
“I know, Mom.”
“No, she really loved you—I think she loved you more than she ever did me.” She got right stoic. “I always been a rotten kid to her, always yelling at her, running away.” I felt her pain, so I put my head down in her lap and stared up at her.
“How I got pregnant so young, y’know?” I thought about Tias and Jordan, thought about all the babies who had been raised by babies themselves.
“Told her I hated her too much—and that woman would whip my ass, y’know? But I loved her too, heck, we’d sit in the kitchen and make fun of each other for hours, but it was nice. I’d tell her, ‘Heck, ol’ lady, you’re old enough to be first in with the other elders,’ and she’d give me a slap. I’d tell her, ‘Look at yer ol’ tits, they’re lower than your knees.’” I thought of how my kokum used to tell people, “Ah, you’re useless as tits on a bull,” whenever someone annoyed her.
“And she’d tell me, ‘Ah shaddup, I’m still young enough to give you a good lickin’ and cough-laugh like an ol’ raven.” My mom looked down at me, her eyes the colour of rocks. “But boy did she make me laugh, ain’t no one I ever let talk to me like that but your kokum, y’know? The only woman who could ever make your daddy cry.” She slid her hand beneath my body, cupped me under the knees.
“That man, boy I adored that man, he was tough as a bear but turned to a goddamn puddle when he was around your kokum.” She pulled me in, closer, harder, until I was resting against her soft breasts. “He’d buy her hundreds of dollars of groceries, nice things too, y’know? And I always thought, ‘You ain’t ever buy me anything nice like this.’” Before I knew it, she was cradling me in her arms like a babe, the crown of my skull resting on her shoulder.
“He ain’t ever buy me nothing nice like that—why? When she died, I asked her to forgive me. Heck, yeah, I was a bad kid, but I loved that woman so much it came out like hate.” She looked down at me. “How come everyone kept loving her first? She had all the love, and threw me scraps like a rez dog. I always thought you loved her more too, m’boy, I always thought you wanted her as a mom.” She inhaled deeply and then let out every bit of breath that lingered in her lungs. “I always thought you wanted her over me, always thought I wasn’t no good for a boy like you.”
“To love me, Momma, Kokum had to love you, too,” I said as I untangled myself from her.
My mom’s eyes brimmed with tears. “You kill me, m’boy, you absolutely kill me.”
And I thought: we’re both killing each other, Momma—we’re both dying to get it right. I gave her a peck on the lips. She looked me in the eye and all of a sudden let loose a horrendous wail—every bit of breath, stink, and smoke came rushing forth from her belly and spat into the air. When her sobs subsided, she took me into her arms again.
“Every time I left her house she told me, ‘You take care of that boy, y’hear?’ I tried, I really tried,” she said.
“Momma, I’m alive because of you.” In her embrace I felt like a kid again, felt like I had yet to grow into my self.
I was home now, I felt it in my bones.
LI
The day after the service, my mom and I watched The Price is Right as we rolled out slabs of bannock to fry. She also had a pot of hangover soup boiling on the stove and a pan of oil warming up. In the fridge, some jello was setting overtop a layer of graham crackers—and a tub of Cool Whip was ready to be smeared all over it.
As we cooked, we yelled at the TV, giving the contestants advice on bids for the Showcase Showdown.
My mom put a hand on my upper arm. “Heck, you’re just getting buff, m’boy.” I smiled and shadow-boxed her and she pretended to faint. “Looks like you’re eating well out there in the city,” she said, then giggled softly. “You’ve really grown up, eh?”
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
“You seeing anyone?”
“Not really.”
“I know you ain’t ever gonna bless me with no grandbabies and I’m fine with that. But it ain’t right to be spending all this time by yourself, m’boy. You gotta find yourself a rock, ain’t I tell you?”
“And a whole lotta medicine,” I said, half-laughing.
She smiled. “You’re really something, you know that?”
My mother’s curls fell in front of her face and in the sunlight she looked as young as me.
“You should come visit me sometime in the city,” I said.
“Yeah, I’ll have to. Heck, them city boys probably ain’t ready for me, babe. I’m still a sexy lady, annit?”
“You’re still one hot tamale, Momma bear.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
I tucked a curl behind her ear and she pulled me in for a hug. But it didn’t feel like the others; it was softer, maybe sadder.
“What’s wrong, Momma?” I asked.
“There won’t be many more of these,” she said. “There won’t be many more moments like this, will there?”
We held each other. My beautiful mother, the best person I knew in this world, was crumbling beneath my weight and I couldn’t help her—all I could do was hold onto her, lovingly, steadily.
“We got right now,” I said.
And I thought about now, thought about my mom’s advice: if I want to survive, I’d have to leave. But it’s hard, you know? Each second I’m away from home is time that’s gone forever, driving us that much closer to the end. How much more time do we really have? And by whose measure? Like she said, maybe there aren’t that many more moments to come. But at least there was this one.
“I had this dream about you one night, y’know?” my mom said as she pulled me toward the couch where we sat down. “After your kokum died. That woman, always having her own crazy-ass dreams, but she told me I’d have one about you one day. Told me I had to tell you about it when I did. We’re standing on this riverbed, you and me, and it’s lined with all these big-ass Native men in regalia. They’re spearfishing in this murky river. You and I move closer, but the men won’t let me come with you, tell me it’s a space reserved only for men, and then they stop you too when you move even closer. ‘Only for men,’ they repeat. From where we’re standing, we can see the salmon swimming upstream—all these fish glittering like comets in the water. But none of the men can catch a single damn fish and you and I just start laughing at them. Then one of them comes up, in this heavy war paint, and he says, ‘You think this funny, you try then, it ain’t easy,’ and he hands you this dinky little spear. You pick it up and move to the edge of the bank, cold water splashing on your bare legs, giving you goose bumps on your calves. They all laughing at you, call you girlboy. And I’m telling you to just let it go, that you ain’t gotta prove nothing to no one. But you shake your head and walk deeper into the water and I can see those fish slapping you with their gills and tails. And then you ready your spear like you been doing this a hundred years and jab it into the water; when you pull it up, this big-ass fish is stuck to it. And all those men gas
p and the women cheer because they hungry as all hell.
“Then you turn around to all of us, that fucking smirk of yours, sassy as ever, and I laugh and tell those men, ‘That’s my boy right there, that’s my goddamn boy!’ and you throw that fish on the ground, and the men are all just fucking right out of their minds. You go straight up to them as they gather around that damn fish and say, ‘See, I ain’t only a gatherer, I’m a hunter too!’ and we all laugh this laugh that scares the birds right out the trees. And the men follow you back into the water, but you say, ‘Patience,’ and make them all stand there in the freezing cold, make them wait a goddamn century, until finally you nod and they all start jabbing their spears into the water, until they’ve all caught a fish themselves. And everybody cheers, bellies rumbling like thunder. And I see your kokum there in the middle of all those women, chortling. And she smiles and bobs her head like a little needle. She walks up to me and says, ‘That boy of yours, Karen, he is his own best thing.’ And I’m crying and saying, ‘Momma, I’m so sorry,’ and she says to me, she says, ‘Me too baby, me too, but you’re here, Karen, you’re finally here.’” She wakes from retelling her dream and looks at me. “But you—you my everything, m’boy, all this time you been my rock.”
“No, Momma,” I replied, “you’re my rock. I’m just the one who broke you.”
“Maybe,” she said, biting her lip. “But then you also the one who ground me. Ground me up into a medicine.”
LII
I remember the first time Tias told me he loved me, all I could say in response was “Aw, ay-hay”—“thank you.” His sheets had lost their grip from the corners of his mattress and were twisted around our thighs. His back was mucked with sweat and love juice, it felt like the marshlands at Oak Hammock. The bone spur in his shoulder was poking out as he raised himself off me and held my legs against his chest—bone so sharp, it looked as if it might pierce through his flesh. It was when he came that he said, “I love you.” I didn’t—couldn’t—respond. Kokum always said that saying kisâkihitin was a summoning of a living being and Manito knows I ain’t fit to be no mother. Plus what the hell did that even feel like, love? I’m not sure if I will ever feel it. I just know that when Tias leaves to go back to Jordan I will feel that pang in my belly, a pang that just sits there, heavy, hurting, whittling down as slowly as a cigarette. We lay in his bed for a while, me telling him about a new convenience store I found down on Osborne that sells cigarettes dirt cheap. He was listening as he always did, quietly, while I laid my head on his chest, his rib cage about as comfortable as a pile of remotes—Tias, always trying to be the stoic NDN.
My eyes fell on a photo of his sister on a table across from the bed—the sister he lost. “Hey Tee, tell me more about your sister,” I said. “If you’re up to it.”
I could feel his steadiness break right away. He sat up, the sheets sheathed around him like he was some aerial silk dancer. It was a thorny subject; the story of his sister was buried deep within him, beneath a layer of sediment that had hardened into a gallstone, all cholesterol and jagged pain. It was then I decided that love sounded more like a full stop than a semi-colon, and I moved too much like water.
“They took her away that day in that white car,” he said, his body wilted like a deflated balloon. “Took me too, in spirit anyway. You think you know what loneliness feels like, Jon?” I wanted to say, yeah I think so, when I’m feeling alone, sometimes I down a beer and conjure up ghosts to keep me company because they ain’t running up your monthly minutes. “I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I dreamed of her, how many times I could still feel her tiny fist into my hand, my parents used to say they saved me from myself, you know? Like my real family ain’t ever been fit to keep me. It’s just, you ever feel—” His voice was low in his throat, so low that it faded into the air as soon as it came out of his mouth, so that only the dead could hear him speak. “You ever feel—like you ain’t even here anymore?” I lit a cigarette and positioned myself behind him, cradling him with my legs, holding the cigarette in front of his lips so he could take a drag. “Like you’re just shambling through the days, repeating what you’ve already done?” he continued. “Like life is all a blur and a ball of iron?” I placed my ear against his back, fitting into the groove of his spine, his heart pumping adrenaline and memory. His heartbeat was fierce, like a beaver slapping its tail.
“I can feel her, you know, tucked away behind the little pear sac in my stomach, like a goddamn fruit bowl that’s gone moldy. And I’m sure there are bugs that eat from it too, I know, I see them cling to each other in a pile when I throw up after a rager. And when I go out and look at all these people smiling, shopping, holding their goddamn kid’s hands in parks, I wonder if they feel this too. Or did I just inherit this from my dad who drank until his throat rotted and then gave up, said ‘Fuck the air that I breathe, I’m gonna breathe in the dirt’?” Tias could nurse his hurt like it was the most precious baby in the world, but he fed it too much, birthed it into toilets and spewed it into the streets. He was a poet when he was sad, I thought—all those words, sharp like calligraphy.
He got up and went over to the picture of his sister, flecks of ash falling from his burning skin. He picked it up and stared at it. “I feel like I’m a goddamn prisoner sometimes, like I been locked away all my life while she’s out there growing up and living her life without me,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “And I don’t even know if my baby sister is still alive.” There he was, the boy beneath the surface, the one I loved who hid himself beneath sand and ash and all kinds of dead stories. Tias was woven like a spider web, all curious, all tangled, all sticky in corners but dazzling in the centre where the light shone through and coalesced around every cranny. My sad boy, lover, all sullen and defeated, the charm utterly broken, afraid, dead cold and stern as all hell like that old painter we studied, Waterhouse.
He looked at me. “You think she ever thinks about me, Jon? You think she ever stops and says, ‘I wish my brother were here?’” I nodded, silent. This type of hurt was not mine to know—but then again, it was.
“I do,” I finally replied. “I know it.”
“How you know for sure?”
I pulled him back into the bed, lay his head in my lap. He could talk himself to death, that boy. I pricked my fingers as they grazed the sides of his head where his hair was buzzed, then ran them over to the top where his hair clumped together in dirty curls; I pulled it straight, the loose hairs shaking like a pine tree in a spring windstorm. I thought, This here is how I know we’re still alive, Tee—there’s a whole world growing on top of your old head, but he had fallen asleep by then.
“I know, m’boy, because you’re the best damn person I ever met,” I said, if only to myself.
LIII
Kokum had this wattle that made her look like a rooster decorated with a pearl necklace. When I was a kid, she’d sit me on her knee and let me pick from one of two cookie tins she kept on her table. She was a tricky woman and would fill one with gingersnaps and the other with her sewing materials—she took too much from Bob Barker, thinking all things had to be a damn gamble. On her lap I’d play with her wattle and she’d fill her kitchen with that deep throaty bingo-hall laugh all Cree women seem to have inherited—a sound so bellowing that you wonder how such a little woman could make such loud sounds from deep inside her belly. When she was older, I’d lay in her lap and look up at her dark, prune-like eyes that caught the light in each of their folds.
At her funeral, where I was a pallbearer, I learned her middle name was Maude: Frances Maude Sutherland. It felt like such a foreign language to call her anything but Kokum. All those syllables heavy as all hell on the tongue, but my kokum was as light as air and as fierce as the rapids in her backyard. The church was afloat from the voices of all her kin singing gospels—a harmony of NDN voices orating about an old rugged cross and emblems of suffering and shame and crowns and blood. And it was funny, you know, my kokum, even in a casket made of oak and fi
lled with sweet grass, still felt light even for my femme-boy arms—but even still, my arms shook like leaves.
I never did make it back to the rez to hear that story from Kokum, the story of who I am. She saved it for me after I left, and I never made it back in time. After some of my cousins turned their backs on me out there, said if I ever returned to the rez they’d beat my ass, I really had no desire to return, especially without Jordan and Tias there. I wanted so much to hate Roger who thought like them, and hate my mom for loving him, and hate the home that squeezed the queer right out of its languages. I think about my kokum a lot now, I wonder what she would have told me, if she would’ve brought out that old sewing kit and made me a pair of slippers and said, “Just watch.” What would she have said to me, the boy she raised and whose diapers she changed, the boy she bathed and kissed and taught all about porcupines and other sharp objects—what would she have said if she’d known I got naked on webcams and rubbed myself raw for a few measly ass bucks?
“Moving south,” she hummed when I told her I was leaving, “gonna be cold, take these slippers, m’boy.” She handed me a pair, hand-knitted, green as the spikes of the evergreens mixed with wolf-grey. Those slippers are still in my closet, and I think about all the folds, those colours, the way she’d weave a hole big enough for your feet, all of this, accomplished little by little. I think about what all went into those slippers, all those wishful thoughts, those hands that smelled of bannock and tea, NCI-FM playing Loretta Lynn in between bouts of the entire rez wishing so-and-so a happy birthday during commercial breaks. I think of the skin and dirt and grit that’s stained deep into the grains of that fibre from her nail beds, the scent of her perfume, her tears, blood, saliva, cells, her stories, all of her wrapped up in the weave of her knitting. “You know, they say south is the direction of youth, the time of summer, healing, coming in, direction of the body, m’boy. You gonna be changing, and that’s fine, but you come back when you do, okay? You come back here and you change me, too.” We pinky swore and giggled like children, that smile of hers making me feel alive.
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