Ancestor Approved

by Cynthia L. Smith

  “Yeah. You think that I don’t have my own issues that I deal with,” Alan said. “Think about what you say and try to be a little understanding. Some of what you say is hurtful.”

  Kevin had to really bite his tongue. If anything, Alan should toughen up! If something hurt his feelings, then tough luck for Alan. Not everything was happy-go-lucky. Kevin took a deep breath and instead said, “Speak up, then. If I say something you think isn’t cool, say something.”

  Alan looked like he was deep in thought. Kevin gave the vendor the money. She, in turn, handed him a piping-hot green chili Navajo cheeseburger. It was now or never.

  Kevin led Alan back to his mom’s booth. The air in his lungs went cold when he saw his mom. He said to Alan, “All right, I just need you to smile and hang out for like—”

  “Hang out? Man, I need to—”

  “Five minutes, max. By that time, she’ll have absorbed most of the shock.”

  “I kind of want to see her freak out on you,” Alan said. A slight smile crossed his face.

  “Shut up, Braids,” Kevin said, chuckling a little. Had the two of them just joked? His mom saw him.

  “Ma, I got something to tell you,” Kevin said. He extended his arms and held out the massive plump fry bread burger.

  “Oh no, this has all the fixings. Must be bad.” She sat upright. “Lay it on me.”

  “You tell her,” Kevin said to Alan.

  “What?”

  “Just tell her,” Kevin said.

  “She’s your mom.”

  “Kevin?” his mom said. “Kevin. Look me in the eye.”

  Slowly, Kevin looked in her eyes. Her expression was sour, her arms folded across her chest.

  He took a big breath. “I sold the squash blossom heart for twenty dollars to this really pretty girl!” Kevin spoke so quickly that he was surprised the words were clear. “She just kept smiling and smiling and I got distracted and she gave me twenty for it. I’ve been trying to get it back! I just need a little more time! I’m sorry. I let you down.”

  She looked mad, then started laughing, something she did when she was super angry in public. “Oh! You’re in trouble, little man. You are in big trouble,” his mom said, through bursts of enraged laughter.

  Alan looked really confused. Kevin whispered to him, “She does this when she’s about to lay the smackdown.”

  “Oh, this is much bigger than a smackdown,” Kevin’s mom said. Her laughter stopped and she got serious. “I’m talking chores all day, every day, twenty-four-seven. I’m talking no friends, no television! Now, first tell me why I punish you.”

  “You punish me because you love me,” Kevin said.

  “Now, get the bracelet back. Seriously. Go,” Kevin’s mom said. She opened her book again.

  Kevin turned to Alan and patted his shoulder. “Man, I owe you one.”

  “Huh, what?” Alan said. “No problem.” He again looked like he was thinking, then said, “Hey, I need to tell my mom something, and I could use some help.”

  “What you gotta tell her?”

  “A few weeks ago, they asked me if I want to—”

  “I don’t need backstory, just tell me what you gotta tell her.”

  “I have to tell her that I want to register with the Seneca tribe and not the Navajo tribe.”

  “What? Hold up. All right, I think I need the backstory on this one.”

  After Alan told him of his enrollment situation, he left for his dance division. Kevin searched through the crowd for jingle dresses by himself. His feet throbbed and ached from all his walking. He went to the outer rim of the main arena to scan the entire crowd. Down on the main floor, he saw Alan dancing with a grace that other dancers didn’t have.

  When Alan danced among the others, he was no longer a loner. The entire group swelled and shrank, rose and fell, paused and continued together. They weren’t individuals, they were all a singular entity. And Alan fit right in.

  The captivated audience members bobbed their heads and waved their feathers in beat with the drum. Kevin wished that he could see this same excitement for the traditional Navajo ceremonies. Often, he was the only youngster surrounded by Elders. He was the loner. Maybe that was why he didn’t like Alan. Because by participating in powwow, Alan wasn’t participating in the traditional Navajo ceremonies. Even if he was going to register with the Seneca Nation, Alan was still Navajo, too. Alan should still honor that part of himself.

  Then again, where were Kevin’s friends at the Ndaa’ ceremonies, at the Ye’ii Bichei? At least Alan was honoring a part of himself.

  Someone tapped his shoulder. Surprised, Kevin spun around. It was her! The pretty jingle dress dancer! She smiled and he lost all his senses again.

  Her expression changed, like she was awaiting a response.

  Kevin shook his head. “What?”

  “You’re looking for me, right?” she said. Her voice was lyrical and airy. “Jordan told me you’re looking for me.”

  “Who? Never mind. I actually need the bracelet back.”

  “Oh.” Her expression went from happy to sad. “I thought it was too good a deal. I actually left it back in my car.”

  “I just realized I used your twenty for a Navajo burger.” Kevin rubbed the back of his neck, smiled shyly. She blushed. Before his senses could go soft again, he said, “Hey, would you wanna meet up later? I can get money and we’ll switch?”

  “I don’t know. I did buy it fair and square,” she said in a playful tone.

  “I’m sorry.” Heat spread across his forehead and his cheeks tingled from smiling.

  “Well, this sucks. It was going to be a gift for Elisi.”

  “I can ask my mom to make another one. One specifically for Alice-y.”

  She laughed. “Elisi. My grandma. Her birthday is in a week.”

  “Oh, yeah, it’s gonna take more than a week.”

  “All right. My section is coming up next. Here, text your number with my phone,” she said, handing her phone to him.

  Kevin wrote his name and number in her phone and texted himself. He felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

  “Kevin,” she said.

  “Yup, that’s me.”

  “I’m Joyce.” She twirled and walked away. With every step, the glimmering jingles on her dress chimed and twinkled.

  The week after the powwow, Kevin’s mom had him doing chores every day and prohibited him from hanging out with his friends. Thankfully, she didn’t take away his cell phone and he was able to chat with Joyce, who had returned to Oklahoma City.

  Today, he had cleaned so well that his mom relaxed enough on his punishment to allow him to play basketball. She also wanted some space and silence while she made a new bracelet for an upcoming powwow. He was practicing his three-point shot when Alan approached the court. He stopped and watched Alan.

  “How did the talk go?” Kevin asked.

  “Better than I thought,” Alan said.

  “Nice.” Kevin dribbled and shot again.

  Alan stood on one foot and did ankle circles, warming up.

  “Do you want this side of the court? Fewer pebbles.”

  “If you don’t mind.”

  “No, I don’t mind.” Kevin dribbled the ball and moved to the other side of the court and shot again.

  Alan put in his earphones and found his footing and rhythm. Every so often, the ball would rebound off the backboard and bounce to Alan. Alan would grab the ball and pass it back to Kevin.

  Joey Reads the Sky

  Dawn Quigley

  “Joey, pay attention to what you’re doing!” some people say.

  “Joey, stop staring out the window!” still others say.

  Every day . . . well, most days, I hear people yelling things like this to me. At school, at home, and even at my mom’s World’s Best Fry Bread stand.

  Why would the fry bread stand be any different?

  Chop, chop, chop. That’s my job at the fry bread stand. I don’t get to make the dough or fry it. I don�
��t get to take the customer orders. Don’t even think I get to handle the money. I chop the fry bread toppings: lettuce and tomatoes. Sometimes, I even get to grate the cheese. Yep, you could say I have the most important job. But then you’d be lying.

  Most weekends it costs my mom a couple hundred dollars to rent the vendor space on the powwow trail for our table, but, like I said, we’re the World’s Best Fry Bread, so we usually make that back within the first two hours.

  “Joey, pay attention to what you’re doing!”

  “Joey, stop staring out the window!”

  My big brothers are always yelling at me. But I sort of lose track of time a lot. Like when I’m looking out the windows at the sky instead of working. Which is why my brothers are yelling at me to get chopping again.

  They’re not all bad, my brothers. Listin, the oldest, will cuff Makwa when he gets too rough with me. Makwa’s only two years older than me, but at school he’s always looking out for me. So, they’re okay. Just annoying most of the time. And usually I annoy Listin. And Makwa.

  We got here to Ann Arbor Thursday night and set up our food stand at the powwow. It wasn’t too bad of a drive from Minneapolis, but spending over ten hours in the car with my older brothers, who love to eat nacho cheese chips and drink Mountain Dew, well, let’s just say the gas from them probably helped fuel half the trip. We only hit some snow driving around Chicago, but hey, it’s March in the Midwest. It can be sunny and seventy here, or slippery, snowy, and six below zero. Only the strong make it here. Ayyyyyyyyyy!

  The two things I love about road trips on the powwow trail are getting away from school for a few days (more on that next) and looking out my mom’s old Chevy Equinox sunroof (more on that later). But most times my brothers make me shut the sunroof shade. I want to look out and up. They want it dark to nap. Guess who wins?

  Yeah, getting out of school yesterday was awesome. It’s not that I don’t like school. It’s that I hate it. I’m in the fourth grade at Four Winds Native American Magnet School. It’s where my mom works as the lunch lady. Lunch Lady Lana.

  Yep, that’s my mom. She’s raising me and my two older brothers alone after my dad died last year from cancer. My dad was really quiet, but he was our guiding star. Without him, we lost our way a bit. I think we’ll always miss his way of showing us how to find where to go. And how to get there. I know I will.

  I used to go to another school across town, but ’cause my dad’s gone, my mom wanted us all to be closer to ride to and from school. At first, I was excited to go to a Native school, you know, me being Turtle Mountain Ojibwe and all, but then . . . well, then I got put in a remedial reading class.

  You don’t sign up for the remedial reading class. You’re sentenced to it. Sentenced by the English teacher, the guidance counselor, the principal, or any adult in the school who feels you’re not “achieving.”

  You got a D- in English? Off to the elephant graveyard of the remedial reading class! Hmm, a C- in science? To the far corners of the wasteland of the school for you!

  To fit this class into a student’s schedule, another class has to be dropped: gym, art, music, Native language. You know, the good classes. The only positive thing about the class is that I get to sit next to the window. Perfect spot to sky gaze.

  It isn’t that I can’t read. No, it’s that I can read the wrong things. The things that schools don’t care about. Seems like there’s only one way to read. Why?

  Also, my school is not just a school Native kids go to. Anyone in the city can go to it. So there’s mostly Native kids, but some non-Natives. This goes for teachers, too. Most are Native, but there’s just not enough Indian teachers. Yet.

  I guess I just don’t match everyone’s opinion of what a Native American is supposed to be. Some non-Natives think Indians are braid-wearing, feather-holding, horse-riding types. Of course, I’m . . . well, just Joey. My own self. I don’t have an issue with how I’m being Native, but I don’t think there’s one way to be Native.

  Being the youngest brother, I’m usually the butt of the jokes in my family (of course that’s what my brothers say). And most of the punches, noogies, and pranks, too. I guess it doesn’t help that I have a weird habit sometimes of tilting my head up sideways toward the sky—while squinting one eye. Okay, I do this most days.

  It all sort of started two years ago when I came back from spending the summer with my relatives on the Reservation back in North Dakota and began using Ojibwe words in class and at home. I think I was good with the language. Really good.

  I’d never been really good at anything, until then. The language made sense to me. I could even feel it in the air, and in the sky. Looking at the world through the Ojibwe language, things finally started to make sense.

  But some of the other kids at school, and of course my brothers, didn’t like this new knowledge I had. And they let me know it.

  “Eya, yes, you punched me pretty hard in the gut this time!”

  “Miigwech, thank you, for not throwing all my lunch in the garbage.”

  One of my teachers, Ms. Franken, didn’t like the new Joey saying things she didn’t understand. Yesterday, before we left for powwow, she asked if I’d finished my book report.

  “Gaawiin, no, I didn’t finish my homework.”

  “Humph, do you ever do it, Joey? Can you ever do it? Why are you even learning a foreign language, anyway?” Ms. Franken huffed.

  “Actually,” I answered with a subtle sweet smile, “I’m speaking my foreign language now, English. The land we’re standing on is Indigenous land, so which language is the foreign one?”

  “Well, I, errr, humph!”

  Kind of stinks that a teacher at our Native school acts this way about the language that was spoken on this land long before her people were here.

  A Native school is usually a place to really be ourselves—to not have to explain every little thing about our history, language, and culture. Like, having to explain what “init?” means makes it lose its purpose. And that’s bad. Init?

  At my last school, well, I hated it. Not only was my dad sick, but I missed a lot of school so we could all be with him. But one prank still gets to me—when the biggest jock in the school spray-painted all over my locker: CHIEF.

  And I read it (Joey-style), turned to him, smiled, and said, “Hey, how did you know I might want to cook when I grow up?”

  That was what pretty much did me in. Everyone knew it right then. I couldn’t read.

  Of course my brothers heard about it, and . . . “Chief” is my new nickname. A Native chief is a leader of a tribe or band, someone to look up to. My brothers love me (or at least our mom says they have to), so I get that they’re not being disrespectful to our leaders. But man! Being the youngest brother is tough sometimes.

  Yet what they didn’t know, what no one really knows, is that I can read. Just not the usual way.

  We always stay at my uncle Mike’s house in Ann Arbor. He’s my mom’s brother. Uncle Mike is the head custodian at Skyline High School, where the powwow is being held.

  When we got there Thursday night, my mom and her brother stayed up all night laughing and talking. Pretty sure I heard my mom cry, too. My uncle came and lived with us after my dad died. He helped us all.

  Back then, Uncle Mike taught me and my brothers how to shave. Of course, I don’t even have peach fuzz on my chin, but I know how to shave now. He also taught our ma how to use the snowblower and clear our driveway. Ma now calls our snowblower “The Indian Vomiter.” But my uncle reminded us that as Native people, we need to stay in community. Because some pain, like my dad dying, can slowly kill the living if we don’t keep connected.

  Not that we’ll ever get over it, but it’s good to have another person who remembers my dad and all the funny things he and Uncle Mike would do. If no one remembers a relative who passed, then it’s too easy to forget the good times. Or that they even lived.

  Uncle Mike is one of the only adults who doesn’t care if I can read or not. Every
time we visit him, he lets me tag along with him while he does custodian work. Uncle Mike is cool because he knows that there’s more to reading than letters. More to life than test scores and grades.

  On Friday morning, just as Uncle Mike was about to get another cup of coffee, I turned and held out something that was in my back pocket. Sometimes I get a feeling after looking at the sky. About what might happen in the future.

  “Hey, Uncle Mike. Here, take this. And, well, just hold on to it for today, okay?”

  He looked down at what I had placed in his hand, then looked back to me, confused.

  “Just keep it, all right?” I asked.

  Uncle Mike answered, “Sure, Joe. Not sure what this is, but I trust you.” And my uncle slipped the metal object into the front pocket of his uniform.

  Everyone moved to the kitchen to get things ready for our fry bread stand. I chopped the lettuce and tomatoes, and when I swung around too quickly, I collided into Listin.

  “Joe, look out. You totally bumped into me.”

  “Hmm, pretty sure I didn’t,” I lied.

  “Yeah? You want to knock it off?” Listin yelled.

  “Nope, nothing wrong here. I didn’t touch you.” I knew where this was going. He gets kind of crabby when our mom makes him work on prepping the stand. He’d rather be playing basketball out back.

  “Just watch it!” Listin pointed at me.

  Ma said, “Both of you, just get back to work. Listin, you’ve gotta go run and get more ice down at the gas station for our sodas. Please, my boy.”

  Remembering what I read out the window earlier, I slipped something into Listin’s jean jacket pocket while he bent down to grab the cooler to carry the ice bags in.

  He didn’t notice, but he would later. I knew it.

  Early Friday afternoon we all drove to the school to set up our stand. Everyone else was getting the school ready for the upcoming powwow. I carried our supplies from the car to the school. I saw the sky turn from a clear blue to an ominous gray-green. And the sky rumbled loudly. Almost as if it were protesting my brothers’ treatment of me.

  I told you, this was the Midwest in the spring—never predictable. Out of the gray clouds came sleet with pelting ice shards, which covered the cars and buses in the parking lot. All of us ran for cover inside, but Listin ran back to the car for his cell phone. By then, everything was coated with a frosty glaze.