by Multiple
I grew up on our reservation, three hours away from anything one would recognize as a city, and a five hours drive from an airport where anything bigger than a crop-duster would take off. At night, the smell of juniper pervades the air. Perhaps the geographic isolation has allowed us to keep our old ways more pristine, but I suspect our attitude is a far better barrier than the simplicity of miles.
Jokiyah would be the one to take Aries, Pisces, and Taurus out to bathe in the river and the first rays of dawn, the scent of cedar strong and sharp—we would obediently file into the water, often having to break the ice on its surface to dip our heads under, turning in the four directions. Sometimes ice would form on my braids as I would walk back to the rocky shore. I have such vivid memories of how the water would turn to steam from our body heat in the bitter cold, and bathe us a second time in the whitest of vapors that would lift up to join the clouds. Jokiyah was never permitted to offer us towels to dry off—it was all a ritual (as all is a ritual) to toughen us with skin of stone and to prevent our getting sick. Today I don’t get sick, but I suspect it is my heart that has petrified, while my skin, according to my lovers, is frighteningly soft and smooth as stone…
My hair is touched with blue highlights, like the rest of my family, except for Libra, whose hair is an odd brown, rather than a true black, and whose eyes are coyote like, rather than the dark discs of midnight, torn from a starless sky that the rest of us have—pupils impossible to see.
My hair brushes against the top of my belt, and I use it as a whip against the bone white skin of my lovers, tracing its inkiness slowly, outlining their bumps and curves and traces of bone underneath, until I begin to excite them and my hair begins to strike at them.
When I brought the first of my white lovers home, Jokiyah was by then an old man. He looked at the blond man behind me and began to cry. I had never seen him weep before, even at the inevitable funerals.
“What?” I hissed.
He whispered, “When the axe came to the woods, the trees said, ‘Look, the handle is one of us.’”
Chapter Two
When I was fourteen, our family went to New Orleans, officially on vacation but to also visit an uncle who for some reason, had moved to this city of unusual smells (or at least that was my first impression—smells have always been what I notice first, and what I always remember). We went on a bus tour that took us to see the “cities of the dead” in the St. Louis cemetery. The dead are placed in crypts and elaborate mausoleums because the ground soaks so with water, buried bodies would bob up again like apples. An interesting place, but one that required our family to undergo a purification ritual, since our people have a death taboo against touching the dead or the things of the dead (oh, of course, except for my Aunt Pork and Scorpio, the sibling who is being apprenticed to take over the role of One Who Buries). “Do you feel it?” Scorpio asked me, his eyes unfocused.
“I’m trying to sort through the smells. It’s not so much the smell of death but the smell of decay. The scent of mold is everywhere. There’s a dampness that doesn’t seem to ebb but overflows from the crypts.” I waved my hand in front of his eyes but he didn’t seem to notice. “What are you feeling?”
“There’s a brief time after a true death,” he said, his voice now flat. Crap, I hoped he wouldn’t start channeling a dead person. Not many things creeped me out, but that was one of them. Aunt Dizzy would sometimes do that. “The spirit body is not completely separated from the soul body. The decision needed to be made as to what eventually happens to a person isn’t yet finalized. I feel a lot of that here. I feel—layers of that.” There was a reason at school he was called “Spooky” behind his back. It was also telling that no one had ever tried picking on him. Most people had a inherent fear of my brother.
He suddenly turned to the left and walked quickly forward without hesitation. We neared a tomb that had crude dark “X’s” scrawled across it in a sort of mono-graffiti. It was a small and narrow place, a fraction of the size of the storage unit our family locked our heirlooms and valuables in after methheads on the rez started breaking into people’s homes. A metal plate screwed to the door identified it as the resting place of someone named Marie Laveau. I had never heard of her. I was bored and wished we were out of this place. Let Scorpio have the cities of the dead. I was destined for the cities of the wicked.
“There are so many little burial places like this,” I said, looking around. “How many coffins can they put away in these?” Our bodies were buried in plain pine boxes that were designed to return our unpreserved bodies to Mother Earth to feed Her hunger. These “cities of the dead” went against all of our beliefs.
Scorpio seemed to be looking for something. “In the heat, these mausoleums act like ovens, and bake the bones into dust. After a year, family members come and break the bones and push them into the lower parts of the tomb. Just so, a burial place like this one can hold many individuals.”
“Is that what you meant by saying ‘layers’ of stuff?” By this time he was at the rear of the tomb and bent down to pick up a dark chalky stone. He rapped his knuckles four times on the east wall of the burial place and quickly drew four symbols, but they were symmetrical crosses, rather than the many “X’s” already scattered on the walls of the tomb. To our eyes he had drawn a medicine wheel four times, designed to represent the four directions. It always felt incomplete to see three used as a sacred number by itself. We would always use three in combination with four. It added the directions up, center, and down to the cardinal directions, so it provided your precise location in the physical world. It is one of the reasons we call our place of worship the “Longhouse of the Seven Drums.”
He looked at his contribution and took a quarter out of his pocket and put it beneath the stone he had just used and returned it to where he had picked it up. “That feels better,” he said, sounding normal again. “Now, wish for something.”
“Why? You did all the work.” Scorpio being generous should always arouse suspicion.
“It’s your birthday month. This saves me getting you a regular present.” Because we were such a large extended family, it was rare someone’s birthday was celebrated on their actual day of birth. A single date was chosen and then everyone who was born that month would celebrate on that day. It would be nearly two more decades before I would have someone provide me a birthday party on my actual day. I was touched. Not much, but I had appreciated the effort and thought. He put his hand on my shoulder and his braids were caught by a stray sunbeam that lit up the blue highlights in his hair. He was a very beautiful young man. Almost as beautiful as I was. But he had a way of looking at you that made you forget how attractive he actually was. There was a reason his future was entwined with the dead. “Wish for anything.”
“Are we praying to this Marie Laveau person?” I used the word in our language that hinted at “to summon” as much as “to pray.” When it comes to spirituality, we are an extremely pragmatic people. “And who was Marie Laveau?”
“Let’s just say she was someone a lot like me.” I could hear the sound track in his head. You knew it was just a matter of time before he would single-handedly bring back Goth. So she must have been a local flavor of One Who Buries. In the wrong hands, that could mean some really nasty business. But here she was in the middle of what most people believed to be “sacred ground,” so she must have been OK. Or hadn’t gotten caught.
“Oh, and by the way, she was never buried here. But so many generations of strangers have come to this place with their beliefs, something has been well fed and continues to grow. Better not to ask for anyone to be hurt—that usually comes back in a way that can hurt you. Best to ask for something of a positive nature.”
“What the hell,” I smiled. I would have preferred a new CD, but this was probably the best I could hope for from him. “I wish for an adventure.” A strong breeze brought a stink to me that made me squint. I looked at the stone Scorpio had replaced and noticed the quarter was gone.
Chapter Three
We walked among the smell of their form of fry bread that was called a bignet—small and greasy and coated with a fine white dusting of powdered sugar. Everywhere were tourists outrageously dressed in mismatched colors. A few streets over was Bourbon Street where many people were sloppy and drunk even though it was still early in the day. They held large plastic glasses that smelled sticky sweet.
Once when I visited the house of a teacher who was leaving for a new job, I noticed an odd plastic object that hung from the eves. She explained it was a hummingbird feeder. It smelled like those glasses. I smiled as we passed a place called Cafe-Lafitte-In-Exile. It had a sign outside, letting us know it was the oldest gay bar in the United States. Much more exciting was a brasher and louder bar nearby called the Bourbon Pub. It was draped in rainbow flags and the open doors pushed out air-conditioned blasts of icy air that smelled of cheap beer and arousal.
I was drawn to it and disappeared within for a moment. The best part of being from a very large family is an individual could vanish for quite a while and no one would notice he or she was gone.
It took a second or two for my eyes to adjust to the darkness contrasting with the bright New Orleans sunlight. It seemed vast to me—a huge chamber of possibilities. It was barely past lunch and it was filled with half naked men—mostly White and pumping away to loud music.
“Pocahontas!” A shirtless and sweaty muscular African-American called to me. He started walking in my direction. He smelled of salt and make-up.
“Poke-a-hot-ass is more like it,” laughed a round bellied White man who turned from the bar to see what was happening.
“What is it, baby?” the brown skinned man asked as he spun me around in his arms. His eager hands caressed the ends of my braids. “You looking for a job? Looking for an opening to fill?” The heavy man at the bar barked with laughter.
He looked at me closely and whispered, “Have you ever done drag, baby? You’d make such a pretty girl.” He put me down and took my hand in the continental way I had seen demonstrated in old movies. He turned it over to expose my open palm and then he looked into my eyes and slowly drew his tongue across it. I found it simultaneously disgusting and exciting.
He kept talking to me as he put his hand on the small of my back and started guiding me to another part of the club. He escorted me into a large room with well-lit mirrors and I saw my reflection, my black hair shining with the same blue highlights I had just seen Scorpio display. The air what thick with the smells of hairspray, make-up, and perfume. There was an old under scent of stale cigarettes and something I didn’t recognize, but I suspected was some sort of drug because I felt a little dizzy. Tucked into the corners of the mirrors were photographs of drag queens.
I thought of a documentary I had seen on professional clowns, where each face design was registered so every clown would be unique. I glanced at the photos and thought of the Westminister Dog Show (the reservation opened up a great deal when satellite television linked us to the larger world—my mom told me “your father has now seen every species mating.”). It was easy to notice how members of the same breed resembled one another, but you could always pick out individual differences.
I saw the man behind me in the main mirror, standing in the same affected pose as the drag queen in the photo in the right hand corner. Lady Chartreuse. “How long have you been Lady Chartreuse?” Except I mispronounced it. Try being a kid from the sticks and getting that word right.
“I have always been Lady Chartreuse.” His voice had shifted to a breathy and slower rhythm that was quite a contrast from the man I had first heard when I walked in. I did not know what that person’s name might be. “But I first walked in the high heels of Lady Chartreuse when I had just turned fifteen.
“I’m from a strongly fundamentalist Christian family, and no one was thrilled when they saw who I really am. They first tried to ‘beat the demon’ out of me. When that failed they kicked me out of the house and I’ve been on my own ever since. I was fourteen and from a little town called St. Francisville. My original name was Martin Winter. When I came out, there were suddenly all these rumors I was a bastard child of the Myrtles Plantation. I ended up in the Big City—the Big Easy, and I was adopted by the blessed Mother of the House of Evergreen.” He cocked his head in a dramatic way. He remained shirtless, but he still sparkled of rhinestones and glitter. “And thus was the fierce Lady Chartreuse born.”
I watched both of us in the mirror. He moved behind me and kissed me softly on my neck. “You’d be such a pretty girl, Pocahontas. Killer cheekbones and such fine hair. A change of clothes and you could walk the runway. You could be America’s next top model—as a boy or as a girl—just depends on your makeup.” He pushed me into a chair and in a moment had outlined my eyes with quick professional movements. The women in my family did not wear cosmetics, so there had never been the play I had watched the non-Native children do while wearing their mothers’ or sisters’ nail polish or lipstick.
Lady Chartreuse moved aside and a new face looked at me. Not precisely new—it was still obviously me, but an enhanced me. I had never thought of myself as androgynous before. Cancer had that position in our family. I was just a beautiful young man. With the makeover I could pass as a beautiful young woman. Useful to know.
He put his hands on my shoulders, clearly proud of his accomplishment. It was interesting to feel the sexual interest he had in me when I walked in had completely dissipated in the process of his painting me. He was now relating to me as a sister. Useful to know. I had all the sisters I needed. He tucked my hair into some sort of turban and then slipped an elaborate wig on top of my head. For a moment I would not have recognized me. Then my eyes burned through and I realized I would always be who I am, no matter what I wore.
“I need to go,” I patted his hand. “My family will be wondering where I am. We’re here visiting the city.” He looked puzzled. I smiled. “I’m not you. Our people don’t disown their family members who are different. I have nothing to hide, and no need to be a drag queen. I don’t know what I would really learn from borrowing the eyes of one.” I looked at my reflection one last time. “This is about you—not about me.” I stood up and kissed him on the cheek. “I need this to be about me.” I removed the wig and freed my hair from the turban and left the club.
I was aware of the stares of strangers as I stepped outside and walked in the direction my family had been headed. I was so used to White strangers staring at me I barely noticed. But this was the first time so many of them were sticking their cameras and phones in my face and flashing away. I suspected it would be boring to work as a model. I stopped by a street sign so I wouldn’t be run over by the thickening crowd. I shut my eyes and took a deep breath, seeking out my family. I could feel them a couple of blocks further down and headed in that direction.
“I always figured it would be a dangerous day when one of us was kidnapped by Mary Kay and her minions,” Scorpio grinned. “Looks as if you had an adventure of some sort.” He looked me up and down, circling me. “I felt Libra would benefit the most from a makeover.” That was pretty much the non-reaction everyone else had. Aries was the only one who frowned. They did comment on how many times I was being photographed or asked to stop and have a photo taken with some White person. “I wonder how much a day you could make if you charged for each picture,” Scorpio mused. I suspected he was also counting up his fees as my agent. After I was blinded for a moment by a quick series of camera flashes, I wondered at the magic of makeup. When we stopped in a restaurant I washed everything off in the restroom.
Long ago I ha
d seen a movie about Merlin and I asked my Uncle Sly to explain to me what magic meant in English. “Let me see—if you mean how magic works with others? That’s how most Bushtin (White) people understand it. Magic means helping others to see what it is they desire most to see.” He took a long drag off of his cigarette. “But if it’s about you—then true magic is forcing yourself to see what you have never wanted to see.”
Chapter Four
I looked at Scorpio and wondered if I should mention what had happened in the dressing room. But then he looked at me and smirked and I decided he either knew or if he didn’t—he didn’t deserve to know. Then the bus pulled out and took us to the mansion of a famous Jazz musician, (where the house was tiled and smelled of cardamon), and finally we ended up at a place called the KlitKat Klub. The outside was of red brick and smelled of stale beer and old perfume, along with a rotting undertone of the ever present Mississippi River.
The audience looked boring (except for us) which meant I invested my time watching my family. Clearly the most fascinating member was Libra, who didn’t look as if she belonged with the rest of us. Eye color, hair color, skin color—not even a close match. Round face—no cheek bones. From the moment I became more aware of what was going on around me, most people had concluded she was the child of rape, the child of an affair, or adopted. We were judgmental back then. I’m sure I would have been much more sympathetic if it weren’t for the fact I was an obvious member of our family and she wasn’t.
The MC was a transvestite in a glittering green dress and a wig of peroxide, who said she was from California, “…the land of fruits and nuts.” Then a true drag queen lurched out unsteadily (from the smell, I think this was more due to gin than to the high heels) and lip-synched to an ABBA song, while I watched in fascination. I wondered how large the drag community was in New Orleans, since this was not a place for gay men. I glanced around and saw the audience and the performers seemed to be in a different reality than what I had seen on Bourbon Street. There would be no Lady Chartreuse to be found here. No one was “fierce” at the Klitkat Klub.