I don’t think you know how poor that made me feel, a squaw child.
I kill ladybugs whenever I see them. I know that the women you’ve loved wouldn’t do that. They consider the things lucky. So much of the world shames me.
I never get to say the full thing with you. Like the ladybugs. I don’t think you know how I feel. That having the baby didn’t make things better.
Before I went to the hospital, I drove to your home—at night. It was December in Mesilla. My moist hand stuck to your door.
You pulled me in, and we stumbled to your couch. We sat for minutes in silence, beyond polite conversation, in the dark.
I felt like a voyeur, staring at everything you owned. I wanted things to be mine too. You wouldn’t keep someone like me. I think you wanted the other women you were seeing—whole beings.
My thighs were sweaty, and your heater was buzzing. The skin on my neck parted away from itself like arid soil.
Your hands were holding themselves in your lap. You wore old clothes that stayed too long in the corners of your floor. You were dusty, and I liked that.
You’ve said before that I’m mercurial. I don’t know.
Pain feels faster than light. I react to pain, and there’s too much of it.
In my first marriage, I was a teenager. I got married to leave my mother’s house because foster care didn’t work. I had aged out. I left to prove I could leave, and then I had Vito’s baby. And then my mother died. I flew home to be in the room when they pulled the plug. He came with me, and we brought our son Isadore.
After her funeral, we stayed in my mother’s duplex and packed her boxes. She had left the house I grew up in because it was infested with mold. During renovations, reckless kids broke in and, in some drunken dialogue, burned the house down.
My ex-husband and I pushed each other—yelled at each other. And Isadore just rattled the gate at the stairway and sat in corners waiting for me. He was born gifted and moved silently throughout my world—unsure if he could trust me. He was a little ghost like I was to my mother. Little ghosts don’t carry little wounds. I think our pain expands the longer we’re neglected.
I got pregnant again by Vito. People have a right to think things will change. I allowed myself that much.
The tips of your fingers felt like wet grapes. I wanted to bite every one. I told you that I needed help, and you asked me to leave. A friend of yours had just taken his own life. It seemed unforgivable that I would be suicidal or wild when you needed me. I know at my worst I appear disposable, or that I make myself that way.
My first husband kept me awake at night, knowing I had to work the next day. I argued until I fell asleep in bed, and he appeared above me with a knife. My blinds were open, and, in the dark, I saw the moonlight catch his blade. He didn’t speak to me. When I started to move he left the room.
The next day I told him to leave, and then I begged him, and then I hit him hard enough to compel him to run.
I committed myself after you asked me to leave. The nurses gave me a composition book and a ballpoint pen: the least I was ever given to write with, and I produced so much work. Every letter was to you. I don’t think you know what your word meant to me. I found hundreds of ways to ask you if I was wrong. I tried to ask you, without your pride, was our problem your fault at all? Were you really cold, or do I just imagine people don’t care about me?
When I got out, I could read the dark. I turned the lights off in my kitchen and walked across the tiles. I had cleaned the room several times, and it became lonelier, as each speck was wiped clean. I felt absent without you or the dirt. Even my ghosts left me.
I wondered if your hands were still cold. You reminded me of a broken spring–rocking horse, and I was all weight.
Vito called the police after I hit him. I called my sister. When the cops came, they asked what I did to my husband. I wasn’t sure. Isadore sat in my sister’s lap. The officers asked me to show them my wrists.
They reassured me that Vito had no marks where I had hit him—and that he would be fine.
I pulled back my sleeves and there were small, thin, red lines across my wrists. My sister cried and held her mouth. She had seen worse, and I expected more from her. I knew that cutting myself was wrong. I was pregnant and a mother.
I reappeared in your life, and you were still seeing other women. I feel sick of myself when I consider my agency with you.
A woman you liked played the banjo, the one with the gluten-free dog.
When I feel like a squaw, I wash my face with alcohol—toner. There’s never enough dirt to constitute the compulsion to clean myself or think I’m dirty.
My ex-husband’s family had an endless bankroll for lawyers and detectives, and I spent most of my pregnancy in court, trying to retain custody of Isadore.
“You were in foster care?” my lawyer asked.
“Yes. Can they use that against me?” I asked.
“Everything is fair game.”
In moments like that, I remembered the ladybugs and mold. I remembered sour meat in the fridge and needing Mom to come home. I remembered what it was like to be nothing.
She came home after three weeks once. I screamed at her for leaving my brother and me. I told her that I would take off with my boyfriend if she didn’t change. She unplugged the landline phone, so I couldn’t call anyone, and locked it in her bedroom with her padlock.
I remember, when she left, kicking down the door. I called a social worker who had been sniffing around. I was glad to bring the shame to our home. I was glad to expose her.
What they didn’t tell me was that I wouldn’t see my brothers if I stayed in care. Maybe visits, my social worker told me when I asked. Before I turned eighteen, child protective services let me go home, after four different types of foster families. After I realized dysfunction was too well ingrained, I couldn’t stand each family’s specific type of awful or safe.
A woman you liked left tennis balls at your place. I searched through your phone and found pictures of her dog. It was a small terrier with white fur. I don’t know why she didn’t send pictures of herself. I know that you liked that.
How you fucked me then was degrading. I knew that when you were done you were also finished with me. The other women, white women, were treated like good friends. I could have used that.
One morning, I left your house, and you saw me later in public. You didn’t stop to speak to me. You waved.
Maybe I make myself the squaw? Maybe, this whole time, I should have sent you pictures of my hands.
I was not the mother Isadore deserved. I was distant and kept to a routine, so that there were no moments of candid and inexplicable love. I won in provincial court, and supreme, and then we had a date for the Hague Convention.
My lawyer tried to explain what it was. She told me a story about a woman who abducted her child from Ireland to escape her husband. The Hague Convention deported the child back to Ireland.
“What did the mother do?” I asked.
“I think she moved back to Ireland.”
Isaiah didn’t move in the womb. My doctor told me some babies were quiet and lazy.
The things you said to your white women—I wanted that.
I slouched and inhaled shorter breaths to take up less space around you. I understood I had sacred blood, but what would that mean to a white man like you? I know. I know the tenses and the syllables of every rite and had spent hours with women who made medicine. I wasn’t made to be ornamental, but it’s what I wanted. I inherited black eyes and a grand, regal grief that your white women won’t own or carry. I don’t think you know how I felt, and I wondered what my grief looked like to you?
I went into labor alone in the hospital. I gave birth alone. I held Isaiah in my arms. When my lawyer said Isadore would be taken away soon, deported back to the U.S., Isaiah was in my arms.
&nb
sp; “I don’t understand. I have my baby,” I said.
“I told them they would be separating brothers, and about your culture, and no one said you were unfit,” my lawyer said.
“What happened?”
“Isadore was born in America, and Vito said that he was coerced into leaving with you and his son to Canada. The convention is international. That’s a concern.”
“What about this boy?” I asked.
“They don’t seem interested yet,” she said.
I went back to get my earrings from your house and saw you holding your Laura in the doorway. I still knocked.
You told me to come back later.
How many times did I go back before I got pregnant? When did I become enough for you, and what was the distinction? It would help to know what makes me worthwhile, and what doesn’t.
I sent Isadore Hot Wheels cars in the mail. I cradled Isaiah and couldn’t look at him. I wasn’t sure if I had a right to be a mother if I had no right to have Isadore. It didn’t make sense.
My therapist guided me and showed me how to hold Isaiah. She made me look him in the eyes and explained he wasn’t bonded to me. He averted his gaze when I was close, as if I were a monster. I know I am a squaw.
Social workers offered me respite—time away from my baby. I used the time to drink. I didn’t think it was possible to be fortunate enough to be a mother again.
Isaiah cried all night, and I remembered well that I held a hand over his mouth, long enough for me to know I am a horror to my baby. Nobody wanted him for those split seconds, and I wondered why the people who should be punished the most aren’t punished. Because they hurt children who don’t matter.
After those seconds of postpartum depression, or grief, or terror, I took the transgression to healers and social workers and therapists. They absolved me—what else do they expect from someone like me, I thought.
One woman, the director of the Health Department, said I was a tiger cornered in a room. My circumstance was a cage. My marriage was a prodding thing, and my baby was still my cub. I don’t excuse myself, even when the analogies align.
I was lucky to get a ride into town to give birth—and social workers had to drive Isaiah and me home from the hospital. I often looked at him and wondered if we existed. I answered the question by saving my checks and taking night classes. I answered the question by leaving the reservation for any other place. Someone offered to share an apartment in El Paso, in the desert. I went.
I can’t believe my reserve of water—from my nose and eyes. I have dormant fluid in my body, every woman does. I don’t know if I am a cavern or a river.
Once, you said I was a geyser: a hole in the ground—bursting.
Pain is faster than light, and I wish people would not fault me for things I can’t forget or explain.
When I became pregnant, your women fell away. Your fingers were less edible. I had our baby boy, remembering the women and my sons. White women have always made me feel inferior, but I don’t think you know how much. All you see is me killing ladybugs, or crying, or asking you what I did. You can’t know the spite of my feelings.
I sold everything to come to America: my ex-husband’s Beanie Babies (which his mother asked for in the divorce), my wedding ring, my bike, my mother’s broken car, and her winter jackets.
I made the active choice that my son and I were real. I held him while I cooked, and I didn’t clean very often so I could keep him in my arms. He fit well on my hip and learned to keep his small hands inside the neck of my shirt for comfort. He asked for bottles by putting his fingers in my mouth. He became expressive. He laughed at everything. We saw each other more than the world could see.
You and I compare hurt. I only feel dirty every day and some nights. I wash my face three or four times, and, when I told you I wanted to be pore-less, you told me people should have pores.
I feel dormant watching you live fuller than I can. I worry I am a cavern. I’ve inherited my mother’s hollow stomach.
You tell me that my pain feels searing and that I’m missing four layers of skin. Your pain is an empty room. I agree.
When I was eleven, I stared in the mirror to see if I had breasts yet. Fred Cardinal, an elder, was in the next room. He called me in and said, “Your name is Little Mountain Woman: Asiniy Wache Iskwewis.” I felt ashamed and undeserving of the name. He wanted me to know that I was good and holy, but I didn’t think that my body was a universe. I didn’t think I would unravel so well either. I drew power from the mountains and chose a home in the desert.
When we got married, the officiant said it would be hard.
In marriage—swollen and postpartum, I stared at our bed, which was held up by books. I wanted to fix it. I stripped the bed more often than you liked. We washed the sheets. I stared at the doorway, where you held another woman once, and I saw myself on the other side—a squaw. I washed my face again and again and considered that, if you knew more about my pain, I might feel less of it.
I think you imagined I was sacred before you used me. My heart has an extra chamber now. I am more fragile than you know, more squaw and ornamental. I can turn my chin and pose like a figurine. I wonder how much you can know about being used? Can you wash me like a saint? From squaw, to mother with a face, and pores, and a body, and my own good history—I want my large heart, but older and safer, and clean. Can’t you wash me? Or hollow me out for good? Wash me in my own regard and pain, and let me dry out. Let me kill every ladybug and laugh when I do. Don’t leave me. I can’t bear to lose my sons, or any more of myself, or you.
8
the leaving deficit
It’s strange that, when I was scared to lose you, I chose to leave you first. I left you and went to Barbara’s.
We exchange gifts before I tell her why I left. I give her a handcrafted silver ring wrapped in a mustard cloth. She presents me with a sweetgrass braid as long as my arm, still wet from the braiding. The gifts are ritual and plenty—yellow roses and basil plants and tobacco and books we like and things for ceremony.
She thinks my husband doesn’t understand how to communicate love, and I think he’s impotent.
“White men,” Barbara says.
“His anger just wells into nothing.”
We give different theories to each other and conclude that maybe he’s not the problem. Maybe there’s no problem, and I can’t deal with that.
Every time I leave, my husband says that he can’t make me stay. Can’t you, I think, every time.
My mother and I found an eagle carcass on our way to the river. With the feathers plucked, we saw its sinewy skin.
“White men,” Mom said.
Feathers are a gift and flexible protein. Mom put down tobacco and ran her fingers over its exposed parts. She told me the salmon run was coming, and this bird would have wanted for nothing.
She wanted me to see the deficit white people leave.
Nobody wants to know why Indian women leave or where they go. Our bodies walk across the highway from the dances of our youth into missing narratives without strobe lights or sweet drinks in our small purses, or the talk of leaving. The truth of our leaving or coming into the world is never told.
While my ancestors’ bones laid proud and dull in the grave, or on display, mine were hot light ready to go.
Larry was my mother’s worst boyfriend. He came into my life when I was sixteen. He started to walk across the halls naked. I thought he was a walking corpse. He played a ghost, looming between my mother and me. He went to the kitchen and never ate. His insides were rot. Drunks can’t eat after a point. He drove me to school holding a beer can, a tangible thing in his unstable hand. My mother didn’t believe me, so it was always an unreal taking. He touched me to help me out of the car.
I searched for irrefutable things to tell my mother. None of it compared to the days they went clamming togethe
r, or collected devil’s club in the valley. My mother never liked the beach until Larry came around with his rake and gloves. They waded in gloomy water as I watched from the truck. They seemed content. It didn’t matter if he groped me. It didn’t matter if he groped my cousin. None of that mattered.
I told my mother that she might have stopped drinking before I was born, but she was still a drunk. She stopped bringing Larry home. Instead, they went to his place in the city. There were only so many places where men like him could live. I took a bus there to find her. I saw my mother differently.
Larry lived on the first floor in what I thought was a drug house. Women, girls like me, sat outside on couches with babies, stood inside the hallway, and made tea in the kitchen. I knocked on his bedroom door. My mother was ashamed, under the covers in his bed. She rummaged through her purse and handed him twenty dollars.
“Here,” he said. “Go back to the rez.”
This is how we go missing.
This is how we decide to leave.
I left on Valentine’s Day after the dance. The hall wasn’t decorated. The girls and I stood in circles in strobe lights and had sweet drinks in our small purses, and we had my talk of leaving.
“Fuck it,” Lucy said. “Don’t come back.”
Lucy was shorter than all the Chehalis girls, but she walked up to them anyway to start shit. We left, drunk, and went out along the highway. The trucks honked at our silhouettes. Nobody wants to know how we leave. I only had one bag to pack, and I didn’t have money. My boyfriend, Vito, let me live with him in his mother’s home. It was better than foster care.
His whole family was large and Republican. I acclimated from my Marxist-Leninist mother to their lifestyle. We ate top sirloin and fried shrimp, and Bush became the president again. They asked me to vote and drove me to the polling station, and I went in and stood there long enough. Every day was like that for me.
Heart Berries Page 8