by Tommy Orange
The circle was silent. Harvey cleared his throat.
“Thank you,” Harvey said. He gestured for the next guy to speak.
He was an old guy, Navajo, Jacquie guessed. He took his hat off, like you see some Indian men do when they pray.
“It all changed for me in a meeting,” he said. “Not one of these. These have been what’s made all the difference since. I’d been drinking and drugging for most of my adult life, off and on. Started a few different families up, let them fall by the wayside to my addictions. And then a brother of mine put up a meeting for me. Native American Church.”
Jacquie stopped listening. She thought it would help to say what she said about Harvey in front of him. But looking at him, listening to people’s stories, she figured he’d probably had a hard time. Jacquie remembered the way he’d talked about his dad on the island. How he hadn’t even seen his dad since they got on the island. Then, thinking about the island, Jacquie remembered seeing Harvey the day they left. She’d just gotten on the boat, and she saw him in the water. Hardly anyone ever got in that water. It was freezing. And—everyone had been convinced—shark-infested. Then Jacquie saw Harvey’s little brother, Rocky, running down the hill, yelling Harvey’s name. The boat started up. Everyone had sat down, but Jacquie was standing. Jacquie’s mom put her hand on Jacquie’s shoulder. She must have thought Jacquie was sad, because she let her stay standing for a few minutes. Harvey wasn’t swimming. He seemed to be hiding in the water. And then he was yelling for his brother. Rocky heard him and he jumped in with all his clothes on. The boat started to move.
“Okay, we’re going, sit down now, Jacquie,” Vicky said.
Jacquie sat down, but kept looking. She saw the boys’ dad stumble down the hill. He had something in his hand, a stick or a bat. Everything got smaller and smaller as they made their way slowly across the bay.
“We all been through a lot we don’t understand in a world made to either break us or make us so hard we can’t break even when it’s what we need most to do.” It was Harvey talking.
Jacquie realized she hadn’t been listening.
“Getting fucked up seems like the only thing left to do,” Harvey went on. “It’s not the alcohol. There’s not some special relationship between Indians and alcohol. It’s just what’s cheap, available, legal. It’s what we have to go to when it seems like we have nothing else left. I did it too. For a long time. But I stopped telling the story I’d been telling myself, about how that was the only way, because of how hard I had it, and how hard I was, that story about self-medicating against the disease that was my life, my bad lot, history. When we see that the story is the way we live our lives, only then can we start to change, a day at a time. We try to help people like us, try to make the world around us a little better. It’s then that the story begins. I want to say here that I’m sorry for who I was.” Harvey looked up at Jacquie, who turned away from his gaze. “I get that shame too. The kind that’s made of more years than you know you have left to live. That shame that makes you wanna say fuck it and just go back to drinking as a means to an end. I’m sorry to all the people I hurt all that time I was too fucked up to see what I was doing. There’s no excuse. Apologies don’t even mean as much as just…just acknowledging that you fucked up, hurt people, and that you don’t wanna do that anymore. Not to yourself either. That’s sometimes the hardest part. So let’s close out tonight like we always do, but let’s be sure to listen to the prayer, and say it like we mean it. God, grant me the serenity…”
They were all saying it in unison. Jacquie wasn’t going to at first, but suddenly found that she was saying it with them. “And wisdom to know the difference,” she finished.
The room cleared out. Everyone but the two of them, Jacquie and Harvey.
Jacquie sat with her hands in a pile in her lap. She couldn’t move.
“Long time,” Harvey said.
“Yeah.”
“You know, I’m going back to Oakland this summer. In a couple months, actually, for the powwow, but also—”
“Is this supposed to go like we’re normal, fine, like old friends?”
“Did you not stay to talk?”
“I don’t know why I stayed yet.”
“I know you said what we did, what I did on Alcatraz, how you put her up for adoption. And I’m sorry for all that. I couldn’t have known. I just found out I have a son too. He got ahold of me through Facebook. He lives in—”
“What are you talking about?” Jacquie said, then stood up to leave.
“Can we start over?”
“I don’t give a shit about your son, or your life.”
“Is there any way to find out?”
“Find out what?”
“Our daughter.”
“Don’t call her that.”
“She might want to know.”
“It’ll be better for everyone if she doesn’t.”
“What about your grandsons?”
“Don’t.”
“We don’t have to keep doing this,” Harvey said, and took off his hat. He was bald on top. He stood up and put his hat on his chair.
“What are you gonna say to him?” Jacquie said.
“About what?”
“About where you been.”
“I didn’t know. Listen, Jacquie, I think you should think about coming back with me. To Oakland.”
“We don’t even know each other.”
“It’s a free ride. We’ll drive all day and then through the night ’til we get there.”
“You got all the answers then?”
“I wanna do something to help. There’s no way to take back what I done to you. But I gotta try.”
“How long you been sober?” Jacquie said.
“Since 1982.”
“Well shit.”
“Those boys need their grandma.”
“I don’t know. And you sure as hell don’t know a goddamned thing about my life.”
“We might be able to find her.”
“No.”
“There are ways of—”
“God, shut the fuck up. Stop acting like you know me, like we even have anything to say to each other, like we wanted to find each other, like we didn’t just—” Jacquie stopped herself, then stood up and walked out of the room.
Harvey caught up with her at the elevator.
“Jacquie, I’m sorry, please,” he said.
“Please what? I’m going now,” she said, and pushed the already lit call button.
“You don’t wanna be sorry about this later,” Harvey said. “You don’t want to keep going that same way you been going.”
“You can’t really think you’re gonna be the one who finally turns it all around for me. I would fucking kill myself if you were the one to finally help. Do you understand that?” The elevator came and Jacquie got on.
“There’s gotta be some reason for all this. That we would meet like this,” Harvey said, holding the elevator by putting his arm across the threshold.
“The reason is we’re both fuckups and the Indian world is small.”
“Don’t come with me then, that’s fine. Don’t even listen to me. But you said it in the circle. You know what you want. You said it. You wanna go back.”
“Okay,” Jacquie said.
“Okay,” Harvey said. “Okay you’ll come back?”
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
Harvey let go of the elevator doors.
* * *
—
Back in her room, Jacquie lay down on the bed. She put a pillow over her face. Then, without even thinking about it, she got up and went to the minifridge. She opened it. It was full of shots, beer, little bottles of wine. At first this made her happy. The idea of feeling good and comfortable, safe, and all the first few, the first six could
do, and then the inevitable home stretch to twelve, sixteen, because the web stuck to you everywhere you reached once you were trapped, once you started. Jacquie closed the fridge, then reached behind it and unplugged it. She slid the fridge out from under the TV, then using all of her strength, she walked the thing to the door. The bottles clanged as if in protest. Slowly, corner to corner, she made her way. She left the minifridge outside in the hallway, then came back in and called the front desk to tell them to come get it. She was sweating. She still wanted a drink. There was still time before they’d be up to get it. She needed to leave. She put on her swimsuit.
* * *
—
Jacquie stepped around the minifridge, walked down the hall, realized she forgot her cigarettes, then turned around and went back for them. When she came back out of her room, the fridge caught her shin.
“Fuck,” she said, looking down at the fridge, “you.” She looked to see if anyone was coming, then opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle. Then another. She rolled six of them into her towel. Then ten. In the elevator she held the bundle of bottles with both arms.
She walked back to the empty pool, climbed in, and stayed under until it hurt. Every time she came up, she checked on the towel bundle. There’s an ache when you keep yourself from breathing. A relief when you come up for air. It was the same when you drank after telling yourself you wouldn’t. Both broke at a point. Both gave and took. Jacquie went under and swam back and forth taking breaths when she needed them. She thought about her grandsons. That picture of them with Opal, Opal’s face, her eyes saying to Jacquie, Come get them.
Jacquie got out of the pool and went to the towel. She heaved the bundle back, then threw it high into the air, into the water. She watched the white towel slowly float down to the water, then lay flat. She watched the bottles sink to the bottom. She turned around, went out the gate and back up to her room.
The text she sent Opal was just this: If i come to oakland can i stay?
Orvil Red Feather
ORVIL STANDS in front of Opal’s bedroom mirror with his regalia on all wrong. It isn’t backward, and actually he doesn’t know what he did wrong, but it’s off. He moves in front of the mirror and his feathers shake. He catches the hesitation, the worry in his eyes, there in the mirror. He worries suddenly that Opal might come into her room, where Orvil is doing…what? There would be too much to explain. He wonders what she would do if she caught him. Ever since they were in her care, Opal had been openly against any of them doing anything Indian. She treated it all like it was something they could decide for themselves when they were old enough. Like drinking or driving or smoking or voting. Indianing.
“Too many risks,” she’d said. “Especially around powwows. Boys like you? No.”
Orvil couldn’t fathom what she meant by risks. He’d found the regalia by accident in her closet many years ago while searching for Christmas presents. He’d asked her why she didn’t teach them anything about being Indian.
“Cheyenne way, we let you learn for yourself, then teach you when you’re ready.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Orvil had said. “If we learn for ourselves, we don’t need to be taught. It’s ’cuz you’re always working.”
He saw his grandma’s head turn from the pot she was stirring. He quickly pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Don’t make me say it, Orvil,” she said. “I get so tired of hearing myself say it. You know how much I work. How late I come home. I got my route and the mail doesn’t stop coming just like the bills don’t. Your phones, the internet, electricity, food. There’s rent and clothes and bus and train money. Listen, baby, it makes me happy you want to know, but learning about your heritage is a privilege. A privilege we don’t have. And anyway, anything you hear from me about your heritage does not make you more or less Indian. More or less a real Indian. Don’t ever let anyone tell you what being Indian means. Too many of us died to get just a little bit of us here, right now, right in this kitchen. You, me. Every part of our people that made it is precious. You’re Indian because you’re Indian because you’re Indian,” she said, ending the conversation by turning back around to stir.
“So if we had more money, if you didn’t have to work so much, things would be different?” Orvil said.
“You didn’t hear a thing I said to you, did you,” she said.
Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield. A big old name for a big old lady. She’s not technically their grandma. Indian way she is. That’s what she told them when she explained why she was a Bear Shield and they were Red Feathers. She is actually their great-aunt. Their real grandma, Jacquie Red Feather, lives in New Mexico. Opal is Jacquie’s half sister, but they grew up together, with the same mom. Jacquie’s daughter Jamie is the boys’ mom. But all Jamie ever did was push them out. Didn’t even quit using when they were in her. The three of them had all begun life in withdrawal. Heroin babies. Jamie shot herself between the eyes when Orvil was six, his brothers four and two. Opal officially adopted them after their mom died, but she’d had them plenty before that. Orvil only has a handful of memories of his mom. He’d overheard these details when his grandma was talking to a friend on the kitchen phone late one night.
“Tell us something about her,” Orvil would say whenever he got the chance, moments when Opal was in a good mood and it seemed like she’d answer.
“She’s how you all got those lousy spellings of your names,” Opal told the boys over dinner one night after Lony told them the kids were calling him Lony the Pony at school.
“Nobody says it right,” Lony said.
“She did that?” Orvil said.
“Of course she did. Who else? Not that she was stupid. She knew how to spell. She just wanted you all to be different. I don’t blame her. Our names should look different.”
“She was fucking stupid,” Loother said. “That shit’s weak.” He stood up, pushed his chair back, and walked out of the room. He’d always complained the most about the spelling of his name, even though people still pronounced it right. No one had ever even noticed that Orvil was supposed to be spelled Orville—with that useless extra l and e. As for Lony, it was only because Opal knew their mom, knew how she said it, that anyone anywhere knew it wasn’t supposed to be Lony as in pony.
* * *
—
Orvil manages to get the regalia on and steps in front of the full-length mirror on Opal’s closet door. Mirrors have always been a problem for him. The word stupid often sounds in his head when he looks at himself in the mirror. He doesn’t know why, but it seems important. And true. The regalia is itchy and faded in color. It’s way too small. He doesn’t look the way he hoped he would. He doesn’t know what he expected to find. Being Indian didn’t fit either. And virtually everything Orvil learned about being Indian he’d learned virtually. From watching hours and hours of powwow footage, documentaries on YouTube, by reading all that there was to read on sites like Wikipedia, PowWows.com, and Indian Country Today. Googling stuff like “What does it mean to be a real Indian,” which led him several clicks through some pretty fucked-up, judgmental forums, and finally to an Urbandictionary.com word he’d never heard before: Pretendian.
Orvil knew he wanted to dance the first time he saw a dancer on TV. He was twelve. It was November, so it was easy to find Indians on TV. Everyone else had gone to bed. He was flipping through channels when he found him. There on the screen, in full regalia, the dancer moved like gravity meant something different for him. It was like break dancing in a way, Orvil thought, but both new—even cool—and ancient-seeming. There was so much he’d missed, hadn’t been given. Hadn’t been told. In that moment, in front of the TV, he knew. He was a part of something. Something you could dance to.
And so what Orvil is, according to himself, standing in front of the mirror with his too-small-for-him stolen regalia, is dressed up like an Indian. In hides and ties, ribbons and
feathers, boned breastplate, and hunched shoulders, he stands, weak in the knees, a fake, a copy, a boy playing dress-up. And yet there’s something there, behind that stupid, glazed-over stare, the one he so often gives his brothers, that critical, cruel look, behind that, he can almost see it, which is why he keeps looking, keeps standing in front of the mirror. He’s waiting for something true to appear before him—about him. It’s important that he dress like an Indian, dance like an Indian, even if it is an act, even if he feels like a fraud the whole time, because the only way to be Indian in this world is to look and act like an Indian. To be or not to be Indian depends on it.