“You ready?” I asked Lewis. We figured that Marie’s ride was the skinny guy in the Old-Man Clothes that she’d brought to the protest, Ben something. Had Maggi gone with them? That was the only conclusion I could draw. The gym was clearing out, and brighter lights had been turned on. Lewis picked up his guitar. I wanted to walk out through the lunchroom atrium, to make sure Albert didn’t need a ride. He’d probably left with my dad, but like Doobie, I wanted to be positive. I also wanted one last look at the vendor signs with no Custard’s Last Stand sign.
“Listen, you kicked some ass tonight,” I said, looking at him directly, in a way I never did unless I was talking him into something. He knew he’d kicked ass, but it was kind of like with Groffini making me speak out loud. I was still willing to say it.
It was the truth.
Marie showed a couple hours later. I’d already slipped the tags back on her things and put them away. Kind of gross, but I didn’t want her knowing I’d borrowed without asking. “Nice show,” she said after she’d crawled in. We had music playing low, the album Jim had given me, Double Fantasy. He’d been right. With every song, I remembered. Some was like I expected. To finally be held by someone, to know I was important and desirable to someone I loved, that I could cause an immediate reaction in him, that he couldn’t bear to be an inch away, that all those things were even more charged than the way you imagined things, watching movies when the people on screen were passionate.
But no Sexy Movie Girl ever gets leg cramps from trying to sit in those gravity-defying magazine poses. She never winds up with the guy’s arm accidentally pulling her hair because he’s got all his weight on his forearms framing her head. She never worries that her socks are sweaty (because the Sexy Movie Girl is NEVER dumb enough to wear socks for an intimate encounter). How did Marie deal with these things?
“Lewis?” Marie said, shaking her head. “What a moron. Does he think Carson would do something like that for him? How’d they break into the school to swap out those stupid turkeys anyway? Do you know? Did your bandmates tell you?” she said, making fun of my loyalty.
“I did it, actually. The whole thing. Even the idea,” I said.
“You lie! Goody Two-Shoes,” she said, laughing. “So listen.” She propped herself up. “Are you really gonna show those weird art projects you’ve been working on at the Bazaar?”
“Of course, unless Dark Deanna goes on a rampage. It’s not going to put us in the black, but I think your trucker caps have us covered this year.” The Bazaar was kind of like what the mall stores called “Black Friday”: a Rez-wide combo Vendor Table roundup, craft demonstrations, food, with a Social at night. It was one of the few times of year people from the Rez stocked up for real on a fair amount of Traditional crafts. I think a lot of them bought stuff for their family members who’d moved away, to remind them of home. We maybe sold the last of the summer stock we had left, got our books balanced, and no one had to even leave the Rez to do that kind of shopping. It worked for everyone.
“Dark Deanna,” my sister laughed. “You better watch out. You know that no one’s buying that freaky thing, but it’s weird enough that people are gonna notice it. They’re gonna start calling you Morbid Maggi. Or Mortuary Maggi.”
“Shut up,” I said, and we both laughed.
“Listen. Pick your best work. I’ll make sure Ma allows it. Even just this one time. Bee talked that reporter into doing a piece on my caps. Maybe he’ll write something about both of us.” Marie had started calling her man “Bee” because it drove her crazy that I made fun of him.
“I can’t pick my best,” I said. “It’s all part of one big piece. I just finished sewing all the pieces together in the right sequence. Besides, it’s not just mine. Marvin made half, and he helped me with a photo part too.”
“I think he was looking to make some cash here,” she said. She knew this wasn’t the kind of thing you cranked out a tote full to sell, like the Boom Town she was having with her caps. Marie was always a little jealous that Marvin and I, as twins, had experiences she was left out of.
“He knows,” I said. “He’s made other things for sale. We both have, or Dark Deanna would come out for sure and slap us back to tradition.” I dug the backdrop of my project out and showed her some Polaroids. Marie studied them on the table between us, like she was reading my tarot.
“So whose camera is this? I know it ain’t yours. If it was yours, your big mouth would be yapping, ‘I’ve got a camera and you don’t have one, I’ve got a camera and you don’t have one.’”
“Just a friend,” I said. “A generous friend.”
“I bet,” Marie said. “This guy, right?” she asked, tapping one of the Polaroids. I’d had Marvin take pictures of me in various poses, and I’d carefully cut each one out and reshot the picture so Jim and I were in the same shot. He didn’t move, of course, since I only had the one picture of him, but my movements gave the scenes some action. “People been seeing you with this guy. Everyone’s always asking, ‘Who’s that paunchy one with the mustache and the scuzzy cap your sister’s hanging around?’ At least give him a new beaded cap to wear. Jeez.”
I had thought it was a total cartoon cliché, but in fact, my jaw truly did drop at that moment. I only knew because Marie gave me a quick touch to it, clicking it shut. “You’re catching flies,” she said.
“But how did you—”
“You’re living on the Rez, Maggi. Eee-ogg central. You know what Dad says. Out here, you can’t take a whiz—”
“Without splashing on someone else’s shoes,” I finished. “A guy phrase, Dear Sister.”
“Guy phrase or not, a fifteen-year-old girl hanging around with a middle-aged man? People notice. You work with him, isn’t it?” That was when I knew Marvin had not only seen the passenger door of Jim’s Bandit, but figured everything else out too.
“He your boss?” Again I didn’t say anything. Marie pinched her lips together and then swept all the Polaroids together again, like they were a deck of cards. “First thing?” she said, handing them over. “Hide these. Don’t go showing them to anyone. Especially Mom. You think you’ve seen Dark Deanna before, you ain’t seen nothing.”
“I can’t!” I said. I had gone to great lengths to manipulate the images. “They’re a major part of the work. If you leave it out, it’s not the same story.”
“First, there’s no way you’re affording a fancy camera when we’re living in this Shack, so unless you want a way worse rumor going around about you, you gotta change some things. And second, you don’t wanna give anyone photographic evidence of the two of you together. Which leads me to the third thing. You gotta quit that job.”
“Says the girl sleeping with her old German teacher. Fräulein Marie.”
“See? That’s what I mean. I did something. First, Bee and I never did anything while I was in his English class, not German. Anything. We were just … nice to each other. Second, once I was out of his class, we just … stayed in touch. When it looked like our lives might go in a more complicated direction? I did something about it.”
“We moved here so you could sleep with Ben-Yaw-Mean? Man, I hope it was worth it.” I could really punch Marie right now. I mean, I was glad we came back, now, even if I wasn’t at first. But to think that my sister was so driven by the needs of her jeet-nuh, that she’d just throw our whole lives into chaos to satisfy it, made me want to take that fancy red lacy bra of hers out of the drawer and strangle her with it.
“Jerk!” I said, thinking about all the parts of this that were still a drag. “Don’t you miss being able to take a real shower? Use a real bathroom? Was it worth it to give up all those things just so you could be with him? Are you that serious?”
“Are you that serious? With this guy? What’s his name? John?”
“Jim,” I said.
“See, now that’s the kind of mistake that can screw you up. If someone you’d prefer not to know gets something wrong, you let them get it wrong.”
“
So you were just testing me, right?” I said. My Fake-Out Know-It-All Sister.
“Jim Morgan. School District Buildings and Grounds. Started in 1968, which makes him either thirty-one or going on. Most proud that he was all-state football. Was I just testing you?” How long had she known? All this time, I was sure she was so preoccupied with Ben-Yaw-Mean and her new Beaded Caps Popularity that I could just slip out the side door. “Look, I get it. Obviously. Who knows? Maybe you got your taste from me.”
Hardly, I thought. Ben-Yaw-Mean was tall and lanky and tried too hard to be cool. With his cords, clogs, button-up shirts with dickies, and elbow-patch tweed jacket, he was working too hard to look young and old at the same time. He didn’t know who he wanted to be, even down to his stupid European exclusive car and the way he insisted on his name being unpronounceable.
“When did you and Ben … what do you want me to call him? That stupid name he insists on? I feel like an idiot saying it every time. Like I’m purposefully making fun of him.”
“Ben’s okay, I guess,” she said, smiling a little embarrassed smile. “Sounds normal, isn’t it? I’m hoping I’ll get him to see how dumb it is at some point once we move in.” Move in???
“Okay, when did you and him—”
“What?”
“You know … jig?” I asked. I’d felt like, if I used this Rez slang, I’d start laughing my head off. But no laugh came. This was serious.
“Have you slept with that guy, Jim?” she said, leaning forward, staring at me. I wondered if people could tell you were different by looking at you. Jim and I didn’t get far in the break room, but we’d done some things that had been mysteries to me. The big things still were. I still had intact the fantasy of what my first full encounter was going to be like.
“Not yet. We’re supposed to meet on Saturday. He’s picking me up after Bazaar.” No one had ever told me what would really happen the first time. Even from what I could feel through Jim’s briefs, I was nervous about the physics. No one ever talked about that. Not even in the super-awkward health class. Those plumbing drawings had no connection to what Jim had asked me to gently squeeze as a preview.
“Are you crazy?” Marie jumped forward, her face inches away from mine, so close I could smell the wax in her lipstick. “You gotta call him and tell him no.”
“I can’t. He’s going to his parents’ place for Thanksgiving. He told me he wasn’t going to be available, so I should just plan to be ready for Saturday. He left me a message with Lewis. Told me to bring a bag.”
“Lewis knows?” she asked, alarmed. “Jeez. Why couldn’t you just like him?”
“Right. Lewis is all about you, and you know it. You love that he’s interested, and you can just shoo him away like a fly. Even if Ben-Yaw … Ben wasn’t in your life, you still wouldn’t give Lewis the time of day. You’re still paying him back for calling you Stinkpot, and it wasn’t even him.”
I didn’t want to go there, but I knew where she was going next. That was the one thing about fighting with your sister. When you’ve been doing it for over a dozen years, it was more a dance than a fight (but we’d each learned different steps over the last year and they were interesting—sort of like dancing in a minefield).
“I know you’re gonna suggest Carson as a legit choice,” I added. “Now before you do, remember I know that he is the person who named you Stinkpot. There’s no denying that. You saw the exact same choices, and you made the exact same kinds of decisions. So just back off.”
“I made those decisions after I turned seventeen. No matter what you’re considering, it’s illegal. Out here those laws don’t apply, with that whole sovereignty thing. I mean, sort of? No cops, no enforcers. Besides, they’d have bigger worries than who’s jigging who.” We both laughed at this. “But seriously? This guy lives in New York. If you and him are jigging? His ass is going to jail if you’re under seventeen. If not? If they can’t prove anything? He’d still probably get fired. He’s your boss.”
“But what if we were married?”
“Pfft! This guy told you he’s gonna marry you just to get in your pants?” I knew I was getting ahead of myself. Jim had suggested no such thing. Did he know how serious this was? It didn’t seem likely that I’d go to jail, but still! In a weird way, it was exciting that Jim was willing to risk such a consequence just so we could be together.
“Is that what Ben-Yaw-Mean promised you? If Ma knew about the two of you, her Dark Deanna personality would possess her, permanent.”
Marie dropped her head but kept her eyes on me. I knew that look. She was getting ready to tell me some truth that I really did not want to hear.
“Ma knows,” Marie said so quietly, I almost didn’t hear her. “She’s met Ben. She didn’t want to, but I told her we were probably moving in, soon’s I graduate. I’ll be eighteen. I’d need to wait until then to get married, or get her and Dad to sign the application, but I don’t want to get married right now. Maybe someday. It’ll probably be Ben, but who knows?”
“Ma knows? And you’re still alive? And Ben-Yaw-Mean is still alive?”
“That’s my point. I’m gonna be eighteen soon. And when I move out, you’ll have your own room. I’m gonna share the Vendor Table with Ma. What else am I gonna do? I ain’t going to college.” Why couldn’t she go to college? Who told her that? Was it the leftover bad vibe from being Stinkpot? Sometimes, I wanted to give Carson Mastick a chance, and sometimes I wanted to knock him out with the hardest punch I had. I wonder if things would have been different between him and me if he hadn’t messed up my sister’s life all those years ago.
“All I have to do is wait out the school year,” Marie said. “And then, gradually, Bee can introduce me to his friends. We’re only like six years apart. After a few years, it won’t matter. He says it’ll be weird, but we’re tough.” Now that I thought about it, Marie had been less careful in her coming and going in that stupid little Trabant. And our parents had seemed like they didn’t care. I’d been so worried about my own situation, I hadn’t even noticed that my sister had beaded herself an escape ladder, and was now almost ready to unravel it and climb neatly away.
Even from the start of the Bazaar, people stood in line to buy Marie’s beaded caps. Their Table was divided up, caps on the right side, sweetgrass baskets, corn-husk dolls, and little carved figures in the middle, and Double-Heart Canoes on the left. Their signature piece. Behind their Table, they’d set up a tall rack to show off this super-freaky giant beadwork and craft thing that Maggi had made. I didn’t know what you’d call it, maybe a kind of tapestry?
The thing wasn’t a quilt. It was its own thing, the size of a single blanket. Weird, but cool. She’d taken things others thought were no good, and made something new. The foundation was a mass of purple velvet. I didn’t think she had a Singer, but her stitches were professional.
Across the whole thing, nine individual scenes developed, three on top of three, on top of three. They had bead borders linking them with little sculptures inside, almost like a giant comic book page come to life. They reminded me of the way our Traditional stories used symbols. The foundation of each panel used a standard technique for beadwork picture-frame windows.
The photos looked like distorted Polaroids. There were people in them, but you couldn’t quite make them out. Mostly, they looked like a sequence of photos starring a guy and a girl at different distances from each other. They looked melted or something, like you’d run a nail across the picture while it was still wet. They were mysteries, but I knew who she meant. The only other guy she really knew out here was Lewis, and he wasn’t exactly the art-inspiring type. In the last one, the guy and the girl were next to each other, in front of a bright light, so all you saw was them in shadow. How would I let her know that I recognized us?
Below each photo, in a pocket pouch, was a messed-up version of the tourist thing her family made for sale: the Double-Heart Canoe. But they were busted, or in a couple looked like pieces wedged together with rawhide. In
side each, the hearts looked lumpy. Behind them were figures, some basswood, soapstone, and some corn husk. You could guess the people’s relationships by size, placement, and way that Marvin had posed them. The pocket edges were scalloped in sweetgrass braids, twisted to look like stormy water, maybe even the rapids above the Falls. In the last panel, the girl basswood doll had left the four corn-husk people in a battered, overcrowded canoe, and had joined the soapstone man in a nicer canoe, with nicer-shaped stuffed beadwork hearts. The sweetgrass waves were calmer in that one. The whole thing was awesome and freaky at the same time. Right next to it was a sign in Maggi’s neat handwriting.
“ ‘Sweet Birds of Paradox: A Heart Play.’ What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked Lewis.
“It’s a reference to two different John and Yoko projects,” he said.
“Oh jeez, you infected her too?” I said. Before he could offer me one of his long-winded Beatles explanations, I zapped him. “Never mind, I don’t wanna know.”
I was surprised their mom allowed the freaky piece to be displayed, but people were buying regular Double-Heart Canoes. They weren’t moving like Marie’s beaded caps, but they were doing okay. The ones moving the best were those with Marvin’s little people sharing room with the hearts. Even with the caps Marie had given out at our Custard’s Last Stand protest, they were still in serious demand. They didn’t have enough stock to last to the Bazaar’s end.
Where had Maggi gotten such a funky idea? Maybe she’d started working with our high school art teacher. He was crazy about Indians, and a lot of Rez kids signed up for his classes knowing they could be serious or blow it off. Depending on your mood, he’d just let you go, as long as you did some kind of Indian art before the school year was up. She definitely didn’t get this idea from her mom and dad. Those Traditional art families didn’t mess around. My mom did some beadwork, but she was more casual. If you were a part of those families, you had to learn to master their patterns. You didn’t do new things. That was a violation.
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