Growing Up Native American

by Bill Adler

  The April we came in, turned into July with everybody just doing their work and playing too.

  We met Jim and Sara and Crystal, Paul and Grace’s kids. Between them three, they had twelve kids and, sometimes, everybody came over at once and cousins and other people too. Lots of times we cooked outside and sometimes we ate things we growed in the garden. It was just like at our Daddy’s house a long time before, except there weren’t no grandparents because Grace and Paul were the grandmother and grandfather. Their parents was dead.

  We did lots of things together. Paul taught Brother to fish and both of us to swim. When Brother and him went away for fishing, Grace and me did beading. She showed me how to do beads in a circle. We made lots of things to take to pow-wows. I sold one I made, but Grace sold lots. I made two baskets I liked, but I kept them. We went to a pow-wow over to the reservation and one at White Swan and down to Oregon. Everybody in the family went, in all the trucks, lined up on the highways and we all stopped together to eat.

  One day, Paul said to Grace. “Their hair is long enough now. I guess it’s time.”

  Billie Jim looked at me across the table and motioned at me to come with him. He took his short legs up the stairs, as fast as he could, to the bathroom and said, “Hurry up, Jodi.”

  He only left the door barely open enough for me to squeeze after him and slammed and locked it.

  He whisper-yells, “They’re gonna cut our hair, Jodi! Don’t let ’em do it! Please make ’em not do it, Jodi!”

  I asked him, “How come you think they’re going to do that, Billie Jim? This ain’t the orphanage. They won’t cut it off like there. Grace and Paul and everybody, almost, gots long hair.”

  “But Jodi Ann, didn’t you listen when Paul said it was long enough? It means a cutting!”

  I started to say more, but Paul called us to, “Come on downstairs, kids, and meet us outside.”

  We went downstairs and out the door and walked slow to where Grace was standing. She had her hands behind her back. Paul was rolling a big log from the woodpile toward where the chopping block was. Paul set the log up like the block and said, “Okay, kids, we have a surprise for you. Take your seats and face each other.”

  My stomach was sick and I started to think Billie Jim might be right. When we sat down, I looked on Billie Jim and knew how much of a little kid he was and how I was supposed to take care of him, but it felt like the best thing was to just run away.

  Grace stood by me and Paul was by Billie Jim. Paul said, “Okay, Grace, count with me. Ready? One, two, three, now! Surprise!”

  When they yelled surprise, all their arms go up and I jumped and grabbed Billie Jim, pulling him off the log, and we ran backwards.

  Grace said, “Wait, Jodi! Look!”

  In each of their hands were ribbons, streaming out in the breeze.

  Paul said, “It’s time to teach you how to braid your hair. Come on over.”

  We walked over, still holding hands, and Paul said, “Okay, now Jodi, you watch me while I do Billie Jim. Then Billie Jim can watch Grace and you.”

  They slow weaved the ribbons in the shiny black of our hair. In and out go hair and ribbon until the end, when there was just enough to tie the braid tight. We did it to each other until we was real good at it and sometimes Paul and Grace let us braid their hair. We all went to the next family picnic with ribbon braids.

  Paul showed us how to ride and take care of Henry, too. We went lots of places all by ourselves on Henry. He never went too fast, but sometimes he tried to scrape us off on trees. Sometimes he liked to go through the barn door with the top part closed. One time he knocked me off and I didn’t want to ride no more, but Grace said I got to because Henry would think he won something and wouldn’t let me ever ride him again, so we got the box for me to stand on and I got back up.

  I got to spend lots of time with Grace. Many mornings I watched her doing her finger rubs while seeing the morning coming, by peeking around the doorway. We went on walks together all the time. She taught me lots about flowers and birds. Most of the time just her and me went, but sometimes we let Brother come. I let her hold my hand sometimes too because it seemed like the bumps in her fingers felt better. Least she always smiled when I let her. She didn’t squeeze my hand or put it in her tee-tee. She didn’t never put her fingers in mine or play with Billie Jim’s pee-pee. Neither did Paul. Brother and me both like that.

  One day, Billie Jim and me was brushing Henry when Grace yelled, “Oh, Jodi and Billie Jim! Come see what Pickles is doing!”

  We ran to the other side of the barn by the door, where hay was stacked. There was a big pile not in a bale, so Billie Jim and me could feed the cows and Henry, and there, in the middle of the pile, was Pickles, the cat. She was laying on Paul’s bathrobe, sort of all crookedy on her side and making funny noises. Rufus the dog was sitting by her and sometimes Pickles hissed at him when he stuck his nose near her. That was funny to see cause they were friends.

  I asked Grace, “What’s the matter with Pickles?”

  Billie Jim said, “She’s sick, you dummy!”

  I wanted to pinch him, but Grace took our hands, pulling us into the straw. She said, “You watch and something amazing is going to happen. Pickles is having babies.”

  We sat forever, but nothing happened except Grace talked real slow and stroked Pickles. Pickles made funny noises and her stomach swelled up and down and moved and she licked her bottom, but that’s all. The screen door banged and Billie Jim jumped up, yelling, “I’m gonna get Paul!”

  When he was gone, Grace asked, “What are you thinking, Jodi?”

  I said, “I don’t see how Pickles can make babies and, besides, it’s boring.”

  Grace pulled me up to her lap and told me about how the babies got inside and growed and I thought it was icky and she said, “It takes a long time and lots of hard work to make something as special as a baby. Someday you might want to do it. Here, you pet Pickles too.”

  It felt good in Grace’s lap and we stuck our arms out at the same time to pet Pickles.

  Just about that time we heard a squishy noise with a grunt from Pickles. Then this icky stuff came squirting out and then Pickles acted like she couldn’t get no air and was panting and then this kitten popped out in a white sack and Pickles bit it open and ate it up and licked the sticky stuff off the kitten. I heard what Grace said, but was thinking on not having no babies if I have to do that.

  Billie Jim came back with Paul and Paul said, “Aa-a-y, that’s where my bathrobe went. I couldn’t find it this morning. You’re doing a nice job, Pickles.”

  He pats her head and she meows to him.

  Grace said, “Paul, you take Billie Jim for a walk and tell him some things.”

  Paul said, “We did that before we came out, Grace.”

  He put his arm on Billie Jim’s shoulder and my brother was smiling like he was full up with something nobody ever knew before.

  Paul said, “Let’s all sit down together here.”

  All of us watched Pickles have two more kittens and then Grace said, “Well, it’s time to give our new momma a rest. Billie Jim, you bring her some water. Jodi, you run get an egg and put it into a bowl. Rufus, you come inside with me before you get your nose scratched.”

  Billie Jim and me went lots of times to see Pickles that night. The kittens were all crawling on Pickles’ tummy and pushing for milk and making soft cries while Pickles was licking their fur all soft clean. Grace was right that they were beautiful.

  In August, everybody in the family came around every day for the harvest. It was real hard work. Brother and me helped too, but mostly the grown-ups did it. Grace and Sara and me cooked lots. Outside the air was all pale green and sort of fuzzy with little pieces of the cutted stuff filling the wind. It smelled real clean and wet even though it was hot days. I liked it except it made me sneeze. Grace said, “It’s best if you stay inside, Jodi, and help with cooking. You can make your biscuits.”

  I made good biscuits. We
all worked really hard.

  One harvest day, it was after a big rain in the night, Billie Jim and me were playing Huckleberry Finn on these boards we made into a raft, in a pond in the bend of the road. All of a sudden, there was this high screaming sound and a long white ambulance coming down our road. It ran fast by us making mud fly all over. We ran after it, up to the house. Jim said, “Stay back kids. Give them room.”

  Some men went into the house and came back with Paul sleeping in this bed they carried. Paul had a thing on his face with a bag going in and out like wind. Grace came behind him and she looked like she was going to throw up. They speeded away. Everybody else got in the green truck and we went to the hospital where we sat in a hall. Then came a medicine man who sang songs with his rattle, but the nurse people made him sit in the hall too. He didn’t care though because he still sang real soft and, whenever there wasn’t no nurse around, he went back in the room. After a long time, a doctor came to say, “Each of you can go in, two at a time.” Then he went away.

  Sara took me in and I see Grace was looking really sad so I look on Paul and knew he was dead. His skin felt all cold and he didn’t have no smile. I couldn’t think on what it meant. I wanted Grace to make it not be, but she just patted my hand. I wanted to hold hers, but she didn’t do nothing but pat me.

  A long time later, we went back to the house with Sara. Grace didn’t come home for three days. When she saw Brother and me, she said, “Come into the living room, children. I need to talk with you.”

  Me and Billie Jean went in and Sara and Jim and Crystal were there too. Everybody was all quiet.

  Grace said, “In a little while the county car will be here to pick you up because you are going back to the orphanage. They say I’m too old to keep you children by myself. I told them we would be just fine together, but they tell me a woman alone isn’t enough. So you have to go.”

  Billie Jim asked, “Didn’t we do enough work?”

  I pinched him and he yelped so Grace took my hand and Billie Jim’s too, then she said, “You’re wonderful children, but they just won’t let you stay. But you be strong an’ make us all proud of you.”

  I wanted to run, but I didn’t know how come.

  Then Grace said, “Let Sara and Crystal help you while I rest here.”

  Nobody said nothing while we packed up. I saw a car coming what had writing on it. It was the kind that most always takes and gets us from foster homes. It stopped and the driver started honking. Billie Jim and me didn’t walk too fast going downstairs, but didn’t no one say we were bad because we were slow. Everybody walked by us to say a goodbye except Grace. She took our hands to go out the back door. She knelt down and said “Ouch.”

  I asked her, “You hurt?”

  She just said, “I knelt on a little rock, but it’s okay. You be good children. Listen to the Creator like Paul told you and you’ll stay strong.”

  Grace took Billie Jim in a hug and kissed him too. He squeezed her neck and I saw he was crying, but he didn’t make no noise. Then she took both my hands. I looked on her big brown knuckles and didn’t want to leave watching her in the sun. She hugged me real hard an’ I hugged her too. We didn’t say nothing and she stood up really slow.

  The county man put us in the back seat and started to drive, right away. We both began to get up on our knees, to see out the back window, but the man yelled to us, “Sit down,” so we did and we couldn’t see nobody until we went over the bridge and turned onto the highway. Then we saw Grace, still standing still by the door, waving. Billie Jim and me held hands to wave too.

  And that’s the way it was.

  UNCLE TONY’S GOAT

  Leslie Marmon Silko

  In the matrilineal society of Laguna Pueblo, young boys are traditionally taught proper conduct, and corrected when they fall short of it, by their mother’s brothers. In the following story, a young, mischievous boy learns some important lessons from his uncle about respect for animals, responsibility, love, and the interconnectedness of all life.

  Best-selling author, poet, and essayist, Leslie Marmon Silko (Laguna) was born in 1948 and grew up at Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico. Of herself she writes, “I am of mixed-blood ancestry, but what I know is Laguna.” Though Silko is perhaps best known for her widely acclaimed novel, Ceremony, she is also the author of Laguna Woman, a collection of poems, and Storyteller, a collection of fiction and poetry. She received a MacArthur Foundation award in 1981. Her most recent novel is Almanac of the Dead.

  WE HAD A HARD TIME FINDING THE RIGHT KIND OF STRING TO USE. We knew we needed gut to string our bows the way the men did, but we were little kids and we didn’t know how to get any. So Kenny went to his house and brought back a ball of white cotton string that his mother used to string red chili with. It was thick and soft and it didn’t make very good bowstring. As soon as we got the bows made we sat down again on the sand bank above the stream and started skinning willow twigs for arrows. It was past noon, and the tall willows behind us made cool shade. There were lots of little minnows that day, flashing in the shallow water, swimming back and forth wildly like they weren’t sure if they really wanted to go up or down the stream; it was a day for minnows that we were always hoping for—we could have filled our rusty coffee cans and old pickle jars full. But this was the first time for making bows and arrows, and the minnows weren’t much different from the sand or the rocks now. The secret is the arrows. The ones we made were crooked, and when we shot them they didn’t go straight—they flew around in arcs and curves; so we crawled through the leaves and branches, deep into the willow groves, looking for the best, the straightest willow branches. But even after we skinned the sticky wet bark from them and whittled the knobs off, they still weren’t straight. Finally we went ahead and made notches at the end of each arrow to hook in the bowstring, and we started practicing, thinking maybe we could learn to shoot the crooked arrows straight.

  We left the river, each of us with a handful of damp, yellow arrows and our fresh-skinned willow bows. We walked slowly and shot arrows at bushes, big rocks, and the juniper tree that grows by Pino’s sheep pen. They were working better just like we had figured; they still didn’t fly straight, but now we could compensate for that by the way we aimed them. We were going up to the church to shoot at the cats old Sister Julian kept outside the cloister. We didn’t want to hurt anything, just to have new kinds of things to shoot at.

  But before we got to the church we went past the grassy hill where my uncle Tony’s goats were grazing. A few of them were lying down chewing their cud peacefully, and they didn’t seem to notice us. The billy goat was lying down, but he was watching us closely like he already knew about little kids. He yellow goat eyes didn’t blink, and he stared with a wide, hostile look. The grazing goats made good deer for our bows. We shot all our arrows at the nanny goats and their kids; they skipped away from the careening arrows and never lost the rhythm of their greedy chewing as they continued to nibble the weeds and grass on the hillside. The billy goat was lying there watching us and taking us into his memory. As we ran down the road toward the church and Sister Julian’s cats, I looked back, and my uncle Tony’s billy goat was still watching me.

  My uncle and my father were sitting on the bench outside the house when we walked by. It was September now, and the farming was almost over, except for bringing home the melons and a few pumpkins. They were mending ropes and bridles and feeling the afternoon sun. We held our bows and arrows out in front of us so they could see them. My father smiled and kept braiding the strips of leather in his hands, but my uncle Tony put down the bridle and pieces of scrap leather he was working on and looked at each of us kids slowly. He was old, getting some white hair—he was my mother’s oldest brother, the one that scolded us when we told lies or broke things.

  “You’d better not be shooting at things,” he said, “only at rocks or trees. Something will get hurt. Maybe even one of you.”

  We all nodded in agreement and tried to hold the bows and arrows
less conspicuously down at our sides; when he turned back to his work we hurried away before he took the bows away from us like he did the time we made the slingshot. He caught us shooting rocks at an old wrecked car; its windows were all busted out anyway, but he took the slingshot away. I always wondered what he did with it and with the knives we made ourselves out of tin cans. When I was much older I asked my mother, “What did he ever do with those knives and slingshots he took away from us?” She was kneading bread on the kitchen table at the time and was probably busy thinking about the fire in the oven outside. “I don’t know,” she said; “you ought to ask him yourself.” But I never did. I thought about it lots of times, but I never did. It would have been like getting caught all over again.

  The goats were valuable. We got milk and meat from them. My uncle was careful to see that all the goats were treated properly; the worst scolding my older sister ever got was when my mother caught her and some of her friends chasing the newborn kids. My mother kept saying over and over again, “It’s a good thing I saw you; what if your uncle had seen you?” and even though we kids were very young then, we understood very well what she meant.

  The billy goat never forgot the bows and arrows, even after the bows had cracked and split and the crooked, whittled arrows were all lost. This goat was big and black and important to my uncle Tony because he’d paid a lot to get him and because he wasn’t an ordinary goat. Uncle Tony had bought him from a white man, and then he’d hauled him in the back of the pickup all the way from Quemado. And my uncle was the only person who could touch this goat. If a stranger or one of us kids got too near him, the mane on the billy goat’s neck would stand on end and the goat would rear up on his hind legs and dance forward trying to reach the person with his long, spiral horns. This billy goat smelled bad, and none of us cared if we couldn’t pet him. But my uncle took good care of this goat. The goat would let Uncle Tony brush him with the horse brush and scratch him around the base of his horns. Uncle Tony talked to the billy goat—in the morning when he unpenned the goats and in the evening when he gave them their hay and closed the gate for the night. I never paid too much attention to what he said to the billy goat; usually it was something like “Get up, big goat! You’ve slept long enough,” or “Move over, big goat, and let the others have something to eat.” And I think Uncle Tony was proud of the way the billy goat mounted the nannies, powerful and erect with the great black testicles swinging in rhythm between his hind legs.