The Beadworkers

by Beth Piatote

  We had tobacco and gifts and medicine from the Drum. We had cash for expenses and a credit card for emergencies. We had the prayers of mothers, healers, strangers, and kin. But was it enough? Was it enough to deliver us safely there and back?

  Two days before we left, a letter arrived from my mother. I could feel the weight in the padded envelope and opened it carefully. A small pewter disk fell into my hand. In the letter she said that if she had known I was going to leave home those years ago she would have given it to me then. There was no judgment in her words about me leaving. I felt her love and her need to protect me with some power beyond herself.

  I looked carefully at the disk, even though I had seen it all my life. It was her St. Christopher medal, carried by her for so long that the imprint of the saint and his dog were nearly worn away.

  I closed my fist around the disk and prayed. I said the only prayer I knew: the Nú·nim Pist. I wasn’t even sure what the words were in English, but the cadence of Nez Perce made me feel calm and close to my mother. I could hear her voice.

  My mother was Catholic and unbreakable. Like a lot of Indians, she didn’t believe in God but she believed in the saints, and this faith, along with the Nú·nim Pist, was the only part of her religion that she passed on to us. She loved that each saint had special spiritual powers and could help you if you asked. She adored the saints like favorite uncles and aunts, and Kateri she loved the most of all. The saints could get you through anything, she said, because their power came through their trials.

  The saints offered protection, empathy, and aid, but even more than that, they offered something that could really deliver: perspective. The saints suffered. No matter what you may face, they definitely had it worse than you, so you can quit feeling sorry for yourself and buck up. Nothing makes quite the impression as a saint carrying his own severed head in his hands.

  I slid the medal into my pocket. I carried it to Oklahoma and back, and for a long time after that. The first time I kissed Rafa I had that medal in my pocket. It was a long time after our summer in Oklahoma. But I still believed in it, and I carried it with as much faith as I ever had in anything.

  “Ada, I have a confession,” I told her the morning we left for Tulsa, as we strapped in to our plane seats. She leaned closer. “I’ve never been on a plane before.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “I haven’t either.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “No. Are you?”

  “No. People fly all the time.”

  “I’m never scared,” Ada said. “And I never cry either.”

  Coming from someone else, I might not have believed it. But Ada was a foster kid, and then an adopted kid living in a foster home. She’d seen people come and go her whole life, so when she said never I believed it.

  I never felt the air so thick as I did getting off the plane in Tulsa. Ada and I waited at the carousel for her one piece of checked baggage to appear: a Pendleton box wrapped tight with packing tape, carrying the Circle of Life blanket she had bought for her grandparents. It was a blinding ninety-seven degrees and humid, and the last thing I wanted to see, touch, or carry was a wool blanket. But Ada let out a deep breath when she saw the box drop onto the conveyor belt, and her relief made me think she probably was scared sometimes—not scared of a plane crash, but scared to come home without a gift. Afraid that a lifetime away from kin had made her irredeemable. Aside from the blanket, we were traveling light, each of us with a small bag of clothes. We’d boarded the plane on a chilly Oregon morning and were sweltering at midday in our jeans in Oklahoma. Ada wore her hair in two tight braids; I imagined her mom carefully plaiting each side as the light quietly slipped through the kitchen windows of their suburban house. I pulled my hair up in a ponytail, to keep it off my neck in the heat and to better show off the earrings Ada had made for me.

  We had instructions to drive ourselves to the Pawnee IGA parking lot and call Ada’s grandfather from there. Along the highway I was surprised at how lush the grasses grew. The waterways were muddy and brown, but that didn’t seem to bother the hawks and turkey vultures circling overhead. The earth radiated the color of brick.

  “Look! Pawnee County!” Ada exclaimed as we passed the county line sign. And then, as we came into town, she recited everything she saw with the word Pawnee on it. Pawnee Municipal Swimming Pool! Pawnee High School! Pawnee Video! Pawnee Lake! Her whole life in Oregon she had been alone, saying the word Pawnee to other people, explaining herself: I’m Pawnee; I’m adopted. And suddenly she was here, where that word spoke back to her. All around: Pawnee, Pawnee, Pawnee. And at the end of Sewell, just past Moses Yellowhorse Drive, the Pawnee IGA.

  After she called, we sat with the windows rolled down in the car, inviting the thick breeze to cool our skin and nerves. Waiting. Ada occupied herself by tapping her hand on the dash and singing to herself, an Omaha intertribal that was a favorite of Roy’s drum. She gazed across the parking lot at the bins of watermelon and displays of fireworks that clustered around the doors of the IGA. I felt invisible to her, and to be honest I wanted to disappear, to dissolve into the body of a night heron or a fox, to be a quiet, unseen observer. Perhaps waiting wouldn’t be so hard that way.

  At work each morning I tidy up the waiting room. Often there isn’t much to do, just straighten the rows of magazines, or pick up a stray scrap that the building cleaning crew has missed. I rather like to putter around the waiting room. A large medicine wheel is painted on the wall, and the chairs are upholstered with authentic Pendleton fabric, custom-made at no small expense. Still, as pleasant and culturally affirming as that room was, some folks hate it no matter what you do. Waiting can be unpleasant, not because of duration but intensity. In our case, on that day, we were waiting in the parking lot for Ada’s life to change, for her question to be answered, for her arms and her life to come full circle in the embrace of her long-lost family. Would some part of her recognize them, or would they remain foreign, or something in between?

  Waiting is harder when you know you are doing it. When I first felt Rafa’s hand on my body, I did not know until I felt it that I had been waiting, even longing, for it. His touch was innocent enough, just a light touch, almost accidental. “Roberta,” he said, coming up behind me, touching my elbow with his hand, “can you bring me the X-ray for that impacted bicuspid?”

  No one falls in love with a man for saying impacted bicuspid, which should only make the point that it was his touch that awakened me. For three years I had worked with him, the only Indian dentist or doctor I’d ever known, the only man I’d ever known who owned an actual suit instead of a Western-style sport coat. Like me, Rafa was mixed: his father was Klamath and his mother was Filipina and his wife was white and his children were beautiful. And this is the truth. I knew it was wrong to want him, but one day my heart flew away and I ran after it.

  Ada’s grandfather had bright eyes, a worn, wrinkled face, and a slow, deliberate body. In his seventies, his hair was salt-and-pepper gray, with substantial swaths of coarse black strands. He wore denim overalls and a slate work shirt, and a scuffed pair of Red Wing boots. When he arrived in his blue Ford F-150 at the Pawnee IGA, he killed the engine and slipped out of the cab, smiling. Ada jumped out of the car and ran to him. They hugged each other briefly, stiffly, as I withdrew from the car to join them. We exchanged some greetings, then he told us to follow him home. Without saying a word, Ada bounded to the passenger side of his truck and climbed in, turning back to wave at me, a happy bird.

  The asphalt road that led to their family home deposited us on a dirt driveway in front of a battered double-wide with a large wooden deck built on front. Ada’s grandma was seated there on a fold-up style picnic chair, wearing a floral-print cotton skirt and a bright yellow T-shirt, drinking a Diet Coke. As soon as we arrived, a cluster of grown-up cousins, aunties, and small children emerged from various points: the front and back screen doors, the hood of a 1980s Volvo sedan, the clump of trees that shaded the house. I stood back, w
atching the circle form around Ada, each one smiling, laughing, and embracing her. Ada’s uncle and auntie, Jesse and Max, and their four little children lived in the house with the grandparents. Nan, the older sister of Duane, lived in Oklahoma City with her two teenage daughters. When Nan greeted Ada, she told her that it was really a homecoming, a return home, because Ada’s mom, Daisy, had been there when she was pregnant. This was news to Ada, who had never heard much about her birth mom, except that she was a poor white girl who in 1978, the year Ada was born, believed her baby would have a better life elsewhere.

  After the initial welcome, everyone seemed to forget about us. The kids went back to playing in the yard, Jesse returned to the Volvo, and the grandma resumed her place on the porch, watching over the kids. Over the next few days, we fell somewhat awkwardly into the patterns of the family, eating in shifts, sleeping on the floor, and taking daily excursions into town, picking up pieces of family stories as they appeared before us.

  Nan said that Daisy was perfectly named because she was a real flower child. She had come home with Duane pregnant, then she stayed with his family even after he left. Four months. And then she disappeared. Maybe she went back to her own people, Nan said, and Ada shrugged her shoulders.

  Ada’s grandfather opened his left hand to show Ada a deep scar that ran across his palm, the result of a horse-riding injury as a teenager, when he worked for Pawnee Bill’s Wild West Show. Several of his fingers had been broken, too, and never quite healed right. One day we drove out with Nan and her daughters to Pawnee Bill’s Ranch and toured his mansion. On the grounds Ada was just as surprised to see antelope and buffalo herds as groups of white tourists who stared at us.

  The pace of life in Pawnee reminded me of my own childhood, minus the chores and the livestock. I grew up rural, but not on the Rez, and not anywhere near Colville, geographically speaking. My mom had married a white farmer, and that’s how we ended up in the sticks of Idaho. My dad was constitutionally an angry person, and sharp-witted as hell. As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to see how often those characteristics come packaged together. He was rough, but my mother was calm, and her words were the cool waters that kept us afloat in a town that didn’t much care for her or us. No surprise, but I got out of there the first second I could.

  These days, I suppose a sociologist would call me an urban Indian, but in Salem we were suburban Indians at best. And if I had to be honest about where I came from, I’d have to explain all those years of moving irrigation pipe and bottle-feeding lambs. Basically I’m a farm Indian, a demographic absurdity: half Nez Perce, quarter 4-H, quarter Coors Longneck.

  In Pawnee, we kept busy every day, despite not having a lot to do. Ada dutifully threaded a whole package of needles for her grandma, and delighted in calling her Meemaw, just like her Oklahoma cousins did. We made beaded earrings, went swimming at the local pool, drove to town for groceries, watched game show reruns, and dodged long yellow spirals of fly strips hanging from every room in the trailer. One afternoon, on a quiet asphalt road, I let Ada drive our rental car. I was with her of course, but I’m pretty sure that putting her behind the wheel for the first time was breaking my role as a responsible party.

  Every day Ada would learn more about her Pawnee family. And every day she’d hear the same report about her father: Duane was on the way. He had just called from Standing Rock. Next outpost had him at Dupree.

  Don’t worry, he said. He would be home in time for the Special.

  This is the truth: I tried, at first, to resist my thoughts about Rafa.

  I planted his wife, Janice, in my mind. I thought about their children. I knew I had no right to him, not really. But I couldn’t control my thoughts at night. Other worlds would open and I would dream of him, and rise from my bed feeling that he belonged to me. Alone, I would close my eyes and remember his touch on my elbow. At work, I began to ration small indulgences. I would allow myself to observe him, at first just once a day. I would see him focus on the details of molars and gums, how steadily he would peer into the mouth of a patient. His gaze drew me in.

  As the dentist studies the mouth, so the lover examines the world of his beloved.

  I began to long for his impartial, diagnostic eye for the good, the bad, and the damaged to turn upon me, upon my face, my life, my soul. This is how I longed for Rafa to look upon me, and I on him. At Christmas he gave each of his employees a watch as a gift. The first time I put it on my wrist I recalled the weight of his touch on my skin. I tried not to wonder if Janice had picked out the watch. The weight of the watch was a comfort to me, and I decided that it would be all that I would have of his affection.

  Still, I fed the ache.

  There were times I wanted Rafa’s kiss so much I felt I could push down a wall. But I would do nothing. I would only wish, and wait and wait and wait.

  One night, the night before he was to arrive, Ada and I were lying on the floor of the living room, unable to sleep. The heat lay down with us, the flies buzzed loudly and smacked against the strips, and the crickets and katydids droned around us. We had no pillows, no blankets. We just lay on the floor in our clothes every night, propping up our heads with extra folded T-shirts. So we were there, staring at the ceiling, and I asked Ada if she wanted to hear a story that my auntie from Lapwai told me. She did. Well, I said. It goes like this.

  A woman, a man, and her mother were traveling. They stopped to camp one night, and the wife said to her husband, “No matter what you do, do not talk about the katydids.”

  They set up their camp, and they made dinner. The katydids sang around them, but the husband said nothing. They ate. And then, as they were getting ready for bed, the husband said, “The katydids are very loud tonight.”

  And his mother-in-law heard him. She jumped up from where she was and threw a blanket around her shoulders like a cape. She began to run in circles and to sing. She wanted to join the katydids. No matter what the wife said, the mother could not hear her. She only sang louder.

  The wife was upset. “Look what you’ve done!” she said to her husband. “I told you not to mention the katydids. My mother is a katydid, and now she wants to fly away with them.”

  The mother sang and sang and sang. There was nothing the husband and wife could do. The woman longed to return to the katydids, and she couldn’t stop singing; she sang and sang and sang until she sang herself to death.

  That’s all.

  “That’s a good story,” Ada said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But it’s too short for a long night.”

  One night, a few months after I first kissed Rafa, I asked him to tell me the story of his name.

  “My mother named me,” he said. “Rafael. For the angel.” He smiled slightly, then his brow furrowed a bit. We were lying close in bed, my bed, as always. “You know the archangels? Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael.” He said their names carefully. Then he lifted his hand to my cheek and kissed me. Rafa has full lips and a gentle kiss, and I pressed my body against his. I said I did not know the angels. I wrapped my leg around his, wanting to claim him.

  “No?” he said. “Michael and Gabriel are messengers. Uriel is the protector.” He touched my shoulder, then pulled his hand away. He rested it on the bed, in the space between us. “Raphael is the healer.”

  “You had to be a doctor then,” I said, and placed my hand on his.

  “I don’t think that was it,” he said, leaning a bit away from me. “I think it was her two miscarriages before me. Ay, Dios. So many times she told us. Besides,” he said, “People don’t think of us as healers.” He kissed me again. “Dentists are more like maintenance workers. Mechanics.”

  “Dentists are priests,” I said. “People come to confess. They cannot hide their sins; they don’t want to. Forgive me, Father, for I have not flossed.” I placed both hands on my heart for dramatic effect. I wasn’t sure how people confessed, but I continued anyway. “It has been more than six months since my last cleaning. Have mercy on me,” I said. “Remove f
rom me this burden of plaque.” I paused, realizing that I could be insulting Rafa’s religion, his mother, his profession, or all three at once, but Rafa’s eyes were playful.

  “Save me,” I said.

  Rafa placed his hand on my head. “My child, you are forgiven. Go,” he said, “And sin no more. Also: don’t forget to floss.”

  “Rafael,” I said. He looked at me, his face curious, waiting for me to continue. But I had nothing to say, nothing to ask.

  We woke up groggy and tired on the morning of the Fourth of July. “My dad is coming today,” Ada said, as though I had forgotten the purpose of our visit. I gave her a quick one-armed hug. We stumbled to the kitchen and poured ourselves some cereal. We were sitting on the porch in our sunglasses and shorts, drinking weak coffee, when Nan’s car rumbled up the dirt road. She asked us to come to town with her. Ada jumped up to go, and I said I’d like to stay behind.

  “Both of you,” Nan said, and I heard the edge in her voice. We made small talk on the way. Grand Entry for the powwow was at 1:00 p.m. The IGA was closing early today. Jesse and Max were up all night finishing a pair of moccasins for their youngest daughter.