by Beth Piatote
We pulled into the IGA and Nan turned to Ada, holding out a five. “Get a gallon of milk and some sparklers for the kids.”
As soon as the glass doors slid shut behind Ada, Nan turned to me. “Duane is not coming.”
“Shit,” I said. “Why?”
Nan pressed her lips tight and looked straight out the windshield.
“You have to tell Ada,” she said.
“I have to tell her? Why?”
“You know her. You brought her. It’s better coming from you.”
Shit, I thought. Shit, shit, shit.
I probably knew that this was going to happen, not that this would make me particularly prescient. I mean, do the math: (Girl – Dad) + 18 years = No Show. There would be no Special either. I wondered if Ada had already suspected. Probably not, I thought. Not much evidence, really. There have been a few times I’d seen a Give Away come together in hours rather than weeks or years, so the fact that there hadn’t been much visible activity on that front wasn’t conclusive. But did they all know that Duane wouldn’t come? These were my thoughts as we drove back to the house, the sun bearing down and the trees motionless for lack of wind. I watched rows of heat waves lift from the surface of red earth and release into the sky.
Rafa had two boys, and thinking of them, while meant to be preventative, fed my hunger instead. At first it worked. It worked way better than thinking about his wife. At first all I could think was how it would hurt them—how I would hurt them—if their father pulled away. What would it mean to break up an Indian family just to have an Indian man? But then, because I had allowed myself to draw out this scenario, I found another way down that path. I began to imagine him with me, and them with me. I would recall that night at their house, eating salmon and talking at the table. I saw how perfect it could be to slip into a ready-made family. Often the boys would come by the office at the end of the school day, after basketball practice, and do their homework. Sometimes Janice would pick them up or drop them off. But I wanted to be very careful with my desire, to hide it.
Culture Night at All Nations became awkward, and the place where I most feared exposure. When Rafa came to Culture Night with his boys, I would keep myself busy in the kitchen.
But one night I saw that Janice brought the boys. The next week, she did it again.
And that was when I saw the pattern. It had been a long time since I saw all four of them together. Janice and Rafa were like two elevators, side by side, and the boys were getting on and off. One day, just before Christmas, I overheard Rafa say he was taking the boys to Klamath for the holidays, and Janice was going to her family. I saw it very clearly then, that there was an opening, and I knew if I waited long enough, and if I let on to him just enough, the doors would slide open for me, and I could go on.
The clock was ticking, and I had to tell Ada. Grand Entry was only hours away. Back at the trailer, she was making cheese sandwiches for the kids in the kitchen.
I called to her from the door. She came out.
We sat together on the steps of the deck. I wasn’t sure what to say. She was wearing mirrored sunglasses and I felt self-conscious of my own reflection as she looked at me. I clutched the St. Christopher medal tight in my fist.
“Ada,” I said. “You made your family happy by coming here. And I think this won’t be the only time you’re here with them.”
She nodded. A dog barked in the distance.
“Dads can be . . . unpredictable,” I said. “I mean, really unpredictable. Or maybe totally predictable. My dad . . . his unpredictability was the most predictable thing about him. You would do something, and there was no way to know what he would do. He drank a lot. Too much. When I left home, I just wanted to get away from him, to get free. And he is . . . um, white. A white man.”
I could see her eyebrows crease behind her glasses.
“Dads can fail you,” I said. “They can hurt you. But it’s about them, and not about you.”
“Okay,” she said. Her face recovered a placid expression.
I breathed out. “Duane isn’t coming.”
“I know,” she said. Her face did not change.
I wondered whether this was true.
We sat there in silence, unmoving. A breeze suddenly stirred the cottonwood trees, and the shudder of leaves reminded me of home.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and placed my hand on her knee.
She allowed my hand to rest there a moment. Then she pushed it away. She stood. She took a few steps toward the kitchen. She stopped, turned her head, and spoke over her shoulder, her words swift and brittle.
“Your dad’s effed up,” she said, “but mine isn’t.”
She did not cry. And she did not speak. We rode to the powwow grounds in silence, and I felt the river between us widen, like a delta opening to the sea. At the powwow, we fell into familiar rituals of work: setting up the dance arbor, hauling picnic chairs from the cars, fetching ice for the coolers, bringing in gallons of water for the dancers and snacks for the kids. In this way, we circled around our wounds and each other.
That afternoon, Ada danced the fancy shawl at the Fourth of July Homecoming Powwow. I watched from the side, still the interloper in her family’s arbor. I felt a foreigner too, in the world of Oklahoma Indians. Even at Sho-Ban Days I had never seen such a spectacular Grand Entry, with more than a thousand dancers in feathers and beadwork, spiraling and moving in time to the drum. Beads of sweat flew from the cheeks and arms of the fancy dancers, and rolled in steady streaks down the faces of the jingle and grass dancers. Rows of stately older ladies moved as one, managing the sway of their fringed shawls and dresses just so. The air was thick, yet clouds were distant. Our coolers were filled with ice, and we sucked on the cubes and rubbed them across our collarbones and shoulders for relief.
I looked around me and saw only the faces of strangers. I wanted to dissolve into the sound of the drum, the only thing that felt familiar to me in that moment. Ada’s distance gnawed at me. When the Fancy Shawl category was called, I watched her glide out to her spot on the edge of the circle, wrapping herself tight in her blue shawl. Her grandparents watched from their lawn chairs. The crowhop started, and Ada lifted with the beat. I wondered if she felt at home, dancing in this place. I wondered if I had brought her more pain or less.
I thought about her mother, Daisy. A real flower child. Daisy was an outsider, too. I wondered if she had stood in this very spot, in this same dance arbor, feeling the world spiral around her. Did she feel as alone then as I did? I wished that Daisy could see Ada now, could see how things came full circle. I found some comfort in this thought.
We are Salmon People, I said to myself. We always circle back. But at that moment, I was slipping into the ocean.
I felt Ada move away from me. That night, she wanted to stay for the 49, and she made it clear that she would go with her cousins, not me. But I could not leave her there alone. I fell asleep in the parking lot, in the back seat of our rental car, even while the fireworks exploded overhead. Sometime during the night, she got in the car, wearing shorts and beadwork and the smell of smoke and sweat. The next morning the sun glowed orange through the windows, and we lifted our stiff bodies to drive back to the trailer, where we washed our faces in the sink and quietly gathered up our bags. Later she said goodbye and love you and see you soon to her family, and I said thank you to everyone. We flew back to Salem, and we told everyone that we had a wonderful time. For some reason, folks at Culture Night didn’t ask about her dad, and we didn’t volunteer. Ada and I held that secret together.
But we were never close again. Whenever I think of her now, I remember her in that circle, her arms open and her feet light.
Rafa asked me why I didn’t just call her. He made it sound easy and natural, yet neither of those things were true. Almost a year had gone by since I saw her last, that day at the dry cleaner’s. It felt like too much time. But Rafa knew how I missed her, and he wasn’t one to give up. She gave you her number, he reminded me.
She gave up on me, I reminded him.
Sometimes I think love is a trap, sometimes a promise, sometimes a physics problem. Whether faith is gravity or the ability to fly is still an open question. It seems that it should be easier to chart, easier to calculate: how one loss blooms into another, how one moment of connection is a crash and another is deliverance. Desire is its own force, bringing people into our orbit and flinging our hearts far beyond our bodies, so that we have no choice but to follow.
It was true that of all the heartaches I had felt in my life, the strange disintegration of my friendship with Ada was the worst. I longed to talk with her. I missed her company in the All Nations kitchen. The private jokes I wanted to share with her were piling up, unused, like a bag of clothes to be taken to Goodwill. Sometimes I thought I understood what happened: A combination of her need to kill the messenger and the fact that I had been a dismal messenger. Or maybe it was that I witnessed a pain she could not hide. Maybe I reminded her too much of the things that went wrong, and not of the good. Maybe it was me.
Perhaps I protected my heart, or at least I tried to, when I thought about calling her, which was every day.
Still, I had to do something. I arranged a small altar beside my bed: abalone shell, sage and sweetgrass. An eagle feather from my auntie. A Kateri medal on a silver chain. Ada’s phone number. St. Christopher and his Dog. And from Oklahoma: a bundle of tobacco wrapped in red cloth.
Rafa said it wasn’t enough. It’s not enough to hope and wait.
So I called her one day and left a message.
Nothing.
But not long after that, three things happened all at once: I opened the door for Rafa, I handed him the test stick, and the phone rang. Before I could speak, he drew me tight in his arms, and I let the machine pick up the call. It was Ada.
“Bert,” she said. “Are you there?”
Her voice sounded small.
Rafa pulled back. You should pick up, he said.
I grabbed the receiver and switched off the machine. “Ada? Are you okay?”
I lowered myself to the edge of the sofa, gesturing to Rafa to sit beside me. I wanted him close.
“Yes,” she said. “No.”
“What happened?”
“Meemaw died.”
“Oh, Ada,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s not the worst part,” she said.
My mind raced to think what could be worse.
“They didn’t tell me,” she said, and her words came faster: “It happened a month ago, and they didn’t tell me. I found out because I called them.”
“Oh no,” I said. “I’m so sorry.”
A mix of anger and sadness spread through my chest. If Duane had gone home for the funeral, they would have needed to keep Ada away.
The line was silent. Then I heard her fighting to catch her breath. She was crying.
I didn’t know what to say, and I was afraid of saying the wrong thing.
“She loved you,” I said. This made her cry harder.
You should go, Rafa mouthed to me. I glanced at the white stick that lay on the table, its bright red sign screaming for attention.
“Ada, what can I do?” I asked.
She didn’t answer, but her breath seemed to slow. Rafa began to pantomime I. Drive. You.
We stayed on the line together. I almost did not want to move. Yet I knew that I had to.
Rafa stood up and made more elaborate gestures: You. Go.
“I don’t know,” she said.
I felt her slip away from me.
“You should go,” Rafael said, this time out loud. “I’ll take you.”
“Wait,” I said into the phone. “Wait.”
For a moment there was only the sound of the three of us breathing and the rain pounding the roof. My eyes were locked with Rafa’s, and his gaze was steady.
“Can I come over?” I asked. “Or can you come here?”
“When?” she asked. “Tonight? Or . . . ”
It was pouring out, dark and cold.
“Tonight,” I said, trying not to sound anxious. “We’ll have tea. I really want to see you.”
She was quiet; she had stopped crying. I was afraid she would say no and hang up. My words rushed out then, like they were trying to catch her.
“I want to talk to you,” I said. “There’s something I need to tell you. I’m . . . ”
I couldn’t finish the sentence, but she did.
“You’re pregnant?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “How did you know?”
“I don’t know. That’s just how that sentence usually ends.”
“‘I’m’ usually ends with ‘pregnant’?”
“When you say it like that it does. “
“How did I say it?”
“Like you’re pregnant. Like you had really big news.”
“Yeah,” I said. “It is big.” Rafa smiled at me. We had yet to talk about it. “You’re the first person I’ve told,” I said. “I mean, the second. I just found out.”
“It’s awesome, Bert,” she said. Rafa sat down again beside me. Ada asked when the baby was due and I said I wasn’t sure, that it had only been a month or maybe just a few weeks. She paused upon hearing this. I wondered if we shared the same thought: interesting timing. In this opening I asked her again about getting together. I told her again that I was sorry about her grandma. I offered again to make tea. I asked again if she would come here, or if I could go there. I said I thought we could both use some company. I said I wanted to talk about Meemaw. I said, will you please come?
Yes, she said, I’m on my way, and I said, see you soon. Then I hung up the phone and threw my arms around Rafael.
We talk for only a short while about the baby. Plans for the future would come later. Rafa offers to leave so that I can have time alone with Ada. Call me when she leaves and I will come back, he says. I tell him that it may be late, and he says it doesn’t matter.
I will come back, he says, and I know that he will.
At the door, he kisses me and we hold each other for a long time. When he goes, I close the door carefully behind him. Now I’m waiting for Ada, listening to the rain, feeling the heartbeat of the world in my body.
I’m putting the kettle on the stove for tea when I hear Ada knock at the door, then her voice call out from the other side.
Do you hear that? I say to myself, to the baby, as I walk toward the door. Your auntie arrives.
netí·telwit / human beings
Antíkoni
CHARACTERS
ANTIKONI
A Nez Perce–Cayuse woman
ISMENE
Her younger sister
CHORUS OF AUNTIES
Elders who counsel Kreon
KREON
Museum Director, maternal uncle of Antíkoni and Ismene
GUARD
A low-ranking employee
HAIMON
The adopted son of Kreon, betrothed to Antíkoni
TAIRASIAS
A blind medicine singer
MESSENGER
An employee of Kreon
DRUM
PROLOGUE / SCENE I
It was the fate of two Cayuse brothers to kill one another, not because they had been cursed by their own cursed father, but because one brother had been taken captive as a child and lived his life among the Crows. The Crow brother, Ataoklas, followed the man he called his father and became a Scout for the So·yá·po, among whom were the Blue Coats, the Cavalry. In those days there was a terrible war. The Blue Coats, with their allies the Crows, pursued without mercy the Cayuse and Nez Perce through their own country. The Cayuse brother, Polynaikas, was riding out ahead of the others. His father was already dead. His mother and his grandmothers and all their kin were starving. The people were running north, following deer trails and old routes and new allies to a land beyond the Blue Coats’ reach. Polynaikas was hardly more than a boy, but he rode as a man, rode his horse toward the Medicin
e Line on a cold autumn day. The Crows saw him and set the Blue Coats upon him. The Blue Coat General Cut Arm himself chased after Polynaikas, but none could catch him. Only his own blood-brother, Ataoklas, was his equal. There in that valley the two brothers found each other, and there they tangled in each other’s shields and cries and blood. They fell together there, shared blood filling the earth, darkening their homeland, the self-shared blood that flowed from their mother when they first left her body. They fell silent there, arm to arm, and colored that valley bed with the dark stain of broken brotherhood.
The sun rose over them; the sun was high and bright when the Blue Coats rode through. The Blue Coats found the brothers and took their horses. A warrior’s horse should follow him to the Shadowland, but they were deprived of this rite; even the Crow brother, for his service to the Blue Coats, was not rewarded with the return of his horse on the other side. The Blue Coats stripped the brothers of their clothes, shields, medicine bundles, and war shirts adorned with beads, shells, and strands of their sisters’ hair. Soon there was nothing, then, to mark one brother as Cayuse and the other brother as Crow. In a common grave the Blue Coats left them. There the brothers lay beside each other, in their homeland, blood and bone united once more, yet no one there to pray for them, no one there to drum and sing them to the Shadowland, no one to journey with them to the other side, no horses to join them there.
Did the brothers remain forever this way, twined in death? No, not long they lay there. Not many years hence the White Coats arrived. The White Coats came, rent open the earth, tore the brothers apart. The White Gloves measured, indexed, catalogued, and arranged the brothers in separate tombs that were metal drawers, gave them numbers and sealed the vaults. Now, as dawn breaks over the grounds of the museum, the sisters ANTIKONI and ISMENE stand in the exhibit hall of the building that holds their Ancestors, the brothers locked in unholy repose, along with the remains of thousands more.