“She’s nosey . . .,” Siri said. “Does she want you to write about your real life and feelings so she can read it every night? You’re not her daughter,” Siri reminded me.
“You’re right. I’m not her daughter,” I said.
• • •
In what felt like the middle of the night I woke up. There were piles of clothes on my bed and a few hangers poking my legs when I moved around. When I flipped over, I saw Riot asleep in her bed a few steps away. She wasn’t back when I had first fell into my sleep. It wasn’t the hangers or the weight of the clothes and shoes that woke me. It was the sound of the drums. The driving rhythm was calling me. My body heard it first, my heart and insides, and then my feet next. My toes were tapping. My mind was the last one that caught on. The beat had me going, heart racing. My feet were already moving a short way down the hall and out of the bathroom window, so as not to disturb Riot, NanaAnna, or nobody else. Outside, in the country black dark, I looked up through the trees and saw so many stars glowing. I never seen stars like that before. The moon was full and bright blue and white, lighting the dark sky like a sun. The shining stars and ferocious beat made my chest swell with feelings. I followed the sound of the drums. It wasn’t coming from the direction of the reservation housing, or from the direction of the strawberry fields. It was pulling me on a path I had not explored yet. It was light in the sky but dark on the ground. I was filled with feelings and not thinking. So fear had no space to spread out. The intensity of the drumming sound grew. I imagined that the earth beneath my feet was thumping, a rhythmic earthquake. I liked it.
My running feet paused right before a small clearing that was lit up with three torches. Below the fire sticks sat a Native drumming. His hands were moving like music. It wasn’t a familiar break beat or song he was playing. It wasn’t hip-hop. Still it had deep feeling. Siri’s humming could not compete with the thunder of his drumming. Maybe if there was a volume button somewhere or a fader, I could equalize it like on Momma’s expensive sound system. With my clothes peeled off now, I felt the warm night breeze. Without clothes, nothing was weighing me down. My body began to heat up. It was dancing, moving only on feelings.
“There’s a girl over there sitting on the ground beside him,” Siri tried to say to me. But I let her words drift away. I was moving inside the beat where no one could reach me.
Collapsing on the ground, burning with sweat in the dark wilderness, beneath the trees that looked way larger in the deep night, I wondered if Momma could feel my heart race. I wonder if she had sent a thousand of Poppa Santiaga’s soldiers to search for me, telling them to never return until I was found. I wondered if she had a hole as wide and deep as mine on the inside, an emptiness that could only be filled by her and my true blood family relations.
Chapter 20
“Me, the raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, and bears have an agreement,” NanaAnna said as we weaved through the wilderness towards the strawberry fields once again. She was speaking to me.
“Our agreement is that I live inside the house and they live in the wild. If you leave the bathroom window open, they’ll all think I’ve changed my mind and invited them in!” she said to me. “Especially when they smell your sweet strawberry maple syrup pancakes.”
“Sorry.” I spoke that one painful word. “I didn’t mean to leave the window open. I was getting some air.”
“The front door works.” NanaAnna made her point.
“Let’s get us a dog,” Riot said. “NanaAnna, you could use three or four dogs on your property.”
“Why dogs? I have a treaty with the wolves, two rifles, two shot guns, a pistol, and a hundred knives.” She laughed some, playfully. But, I believed every one of them words.
When we reached the fields, instead of older ladies like the day before, there were bunches of school kids of different ages.
“School’s out,” NanaAnna said. “Yesterday was their last day.”
“School in July?” Riot asked.
“Native school, our cultural place for the youth,” NanaAnna explained.
It was 5:00 a.m. dark, and I was excited to see kids my age, but I had my eyes focused on picking without wasting one second. I was earning my way back to Momma, my going-home money.
On my hands and knees, with my basket at my side, I was crawling. NanaAnna and Riot had not even began yet. A small group of little kids were gathering around her. Meanwhile Riot was introducing herself as “Ebony” to some teenagers.
An hour in, and some little girl was quick picking from the row of strawberries besides me. When I took a swift glance at her, she would already be staring at me. It seemed like she was trying to keep my same pace and work in my same section nearby. I kept it moving. She ended up being good for me. We were racing one another, actions without words, young rivals. As the sun heated up I wanted water and had some in my side pouch. I worried about how many strawberries I would miss out on if I stopped for even a moment.
A cold splash shocked me and I looked up. The young girl was standing over me, spilling her water onto my face now.
“You have to break for water,” she said.
She was tan and pretty with dark eyes and a bright smile. Her face was dirty and her hair was wrapped. We both wore T-shirts and jeans. I didn’t get red. Her icy water was already warming, then drying on my skin. “Thanks,” was all I said. I went back to picking.
Seconds later, she was one row over and back trying to catch up.
Fifty-eight baskets. I was red with myself. If I hadn’t stopped to look up, to the girl who splashed me, maybe I could’ve made sixty. My tongue was so dry, it felt glued to the top of my mouth.
“Drink water,” Riot insisted. “We’re not moving till you drink all of yours. Do you want to get dehydrated, catch cramps, and collapse?” she reminded me quietly enough not to embarrass me. After I drank, I felt way better. Still I was glad I didn’t break for water before, losing time. Fifty-four dollars plus fifty-eight dollars, my mind kept repeating. I had $112 dollars and only three picking days remaining.
Why were two girls and one boy walking back towards NanaAnna’s place with us?
After peeing and washing up, I returned to the kitchen for lunch. No one was there. The chart was on the wall, taped to the tile loosely with a tiny piece of tape.
15 dollars for each cooking day. Debt $75 for clothing, $3 Per day for summer stay. One dollar per use for bicycle.
I stared at it, thought, and reread it a few times. I penciled in what I thought was missing.
$5 a day for dishwashing and clean up, which is separate from cooking.
I would point that out to NanaAnna. My five-dollar clean-up fee would take the sting out of her three dollars a day summer-stay fee. Now I would be earning two more dollars per day than I originally thought, rather than losing three dollars a day, which was too steep. My swift calculations led me to a total of what my strawberry picking, cooking, and cleaning earnings would be by the fortieth day with all my expenses deducted. It came to $811: nice. And who knows, maybe I’ll pick up some other odd jobs here and there.
A huge pot of water was on the stove beneath a medium-sized flame. On the long wooden eating table was a paper. I went and got it. I read.
Pasta, Pasta sauce, Salad
The instructions were written out neatly in the same handwriting as the day before, which was pancake and bean day.
“Gather you utensils and ingredients first,” NanaAnna had said.
Before I finished setting up, they all came bursting through the door, hands filled with tomatoes, onions, lettuce, and peppers.
“I want peppers in mine,” Riot said, smiling.
“No onions, please,” the teenaged boy said.
“I want everything,” the girl said. She was the same girl, my rival.
NanaAnna reached for an empty basket and collected the vegetables they had picked from her garden.
“Lunch for six,” she said.
Lunch for seven, I said in my mind.
>
She had forgotten about Siri, again.
“Can I help?” the girl asked me. “I’m Onatah, the one you call NanaAnna is my great aunt. You are Ivory: nice to meet you,” she said, introducing me and her without my help.
Big O and Little O, I thought in my mind.
“Did you wash your hands?” I asked her.
“All clean.” She held up her palms, and then flipped them. Her little face wasn’t dirty anymore. “Except for picking tomatoes.” She smiled and walked to the faucet and washed her hands again.
“You chop the tomatoes,” I told her.
“Let her chop the onions; they burn my eyes,” Siri whispered.
“I’ll chop the onions,” I said to Siri.
“Okay,” Onatah said, rinsing the tomatoes and getting started.
I needed the help since I was cooking for seven. As long as not one penny was deducted from my fifteen-dollar cooking fee, I was good. Would NanaAnna pay me less cause I allowed her niece to help and hadn’t prepared the meal on my own?
“Aunt said you and Ebony are summer campers,” Onatah said as she was chopping. “How long are you staying for?” she asked.
“Not long,” I answered.
“How many years are you?” she asked me.
“Almost eleven,” I told her.
“I’m almost eleven, too,” she said. “Can you swim?” she asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“Wanna go swimming later?” she asked me.
I paused. NanaAnna had said I had to go to do some learning after lunch. I didn’t know if I could or should agree, but I felt curious.
“I’ll ask Aunt. But do you want to go?” she asked, searching me for feelings. I don’t know what she expected. I had just met her.
“Okay, if it’s okay,” I said.
When the seven of us were seated for lunch, I had a strange feeling. I looked at the faces one by one. Everyone was talking, joking, and seemed happy, even Riot, who sat by the teenaged girl and boy. I felt like a stranger in a nice foreign family. I missed my real family. I needed Poppa. There was no father here. I felt good that I had prepared the pasta, especially the sauce. I liked salad. It would’ve been better if I had cooked this same meal for my real family. Wouldn’t Momma be so impressed? Winter would think I was showing off. The twins . . . I felt choked up. I gathered all of the energy in my body and I pulled back the tears before they could get organized and race to my face and spill from my eyes. I felt a pressure, but I held back. I did not cry. I did not even let water fill my eyes and make them look like I wanted to cry. Dry-eyed, I won the battle against myself, this time.
“What’s wrong?” Onatah asked. “Why are you puffing up your cheeks like this?” She was imitating my face. I exhaled.
“If you don’t have a bathing suit, I can lend you one,” she offered.
“She has one,” NanaAnna jumped in and said. “And she can go swimming with you Friday, not today.”
“Yes, Aunt,” Onatah said softly.
• • •
Back in the room after my learning session with NanaAnna, me and Siri flipped through the magazines I got the other day from Walmart.
“You would look pretty in this,” Siri said, pointing to a real colorful dress designed by Emilio Pucci, a designer I was just finding out about. I knew I couldn’t afford the big designers yet.
“Should I wear a dress or just a nice pair of jeans and a pretty blouse? Should I get kicks or shoes?” I asked. “My first pair of heels?”
“Just get rid of those dirty strawberry picking skips.” Siri laughed.
I looked down at my disgraceful sneakers. I laughed, too.
Yup, those will be the first things I replace, I promised myself.
We cut out clothing we thought would look good on me. We taped them into the back pages of the journal where I already had two days worth of recipes and five pages of leaves and sticks that I learned about earlier today in NanaAnna’s herb class. I was surprised to learn that all of those sticks and leaves were foods; that each created different tastes and brought about different kinds of healing in a person’s body. There were even flowers that could be eaten. NanaAnna taught me to take notes. She said if I was smart and continued cooking and learning classes, I would get to the point where I could use all of those herbs and sticks without even looking at my notes or reading and following printed recipes.
“Am I going to do your hair for your trip home to Momma?” Siri asked.
Where would I get my hair done? Momma always said, “You can’t let just anybody play in your hair.” She also said that “a jealous hairdresser can do all kinds of dirty tricks if you let her.” I was used to Earline’s in Brooklyn and I went to only one other place in Deer Park, Long Island, to get mines done.
“Let’s cut out some fly hairstyles and put ’em in the journal,” I told Siri. “I’ll choose the one I like best in thirty-four days when it’s time to go home.”
“You’re back,” I said when Riot walked in after having been gone too long. “We were supposed to have our business meeting last night, but I didn’t see you,” I reminded her.
“Well, I saw you,” she said. “I pulled you out of the closet, picked you up off of the floor and put you on the bed. What were you doing in there and why did you take all the clothes out and pile ’em up on your bed?”
“Look, I put them all back,” I said, jumping up and sliding the closet door open. I knew I was ignoring her real question. What was I supposed to say? I was in the closet because I’m used to being closed in. So I cleared it out, went inside, closed the door, and dreamed and danced and listened to the music in my mind in a dark empty space. Should I tell her that sometimes I had to exhaust myself to fall asleep? Or that sometimes I sleep only after I pass out? No, I wouldn’t say those things about myself, which were reserved for only me and Siri to know.
“How was your trip to the casino yesterday, and where did you disappear to after lunch today?” I asked Riot.
“Well, you know I didn’t leave the reservation today or I would’ve mentioned it to you first, like we promised each other. I walked with the girl, Monica, back to her place. I was squeezing out as much information as possible, getting familiar,” Riot said.
“What’d you find out?” I asked.
“Regular shit like, the Native youth like to drink, smoke, party. They don’t have too much violence on the reservation except after everybody gets all liquored up. They swim at the waterhole down the way. The boys like to fix cars; drag race and you know . . .” Her voice trailed off. “If I wanted weed, Monica could get it for me,” she added.
“You selling?” I asked.
“Nah, if I wanted to get heavy into that business I wouldn’t fuck with Monica. She’s just offering a joint to puff, or maybe a nickel bag. If I wanted to get into it as a business, I’d talk to NanaAnna even though she ain’t really in that line of work no more. I’m sure she still knows a whole bunch about it.”
“What about when you went to the casino?” I asked.
“Yeah, I went over there, but I didn’t go inside. I didn’t have to. I found out the first time I had gone over there, that there were enough people hanging around outside to get what I want,” she said.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Identity,” she said. “Porsche, you and I are juveniles. We need somebody eighteen, nineteen, with a driver’s license, social security number, all that. Around here we could just tell people our names are Ivory and Ebony but when we take a trip downstate, if we get pulled over, we gotta have someone with ID and all their paperwork in order. Someone who can cover for us.”
There was a long pause.
I felt bad for thinking Riot was out bullshittin’. She was really working on getting me home and I felt that.
“Did you find someone? What about the driver who drove us here?”
“Porsche, anybody who was involved in getting us out will never see my face again.”
“I thought that one bo
y who drove us to the warehouse . . .” Riot cut me off before I could finish.
“He will never see my face again,” she said with no regret and no smile in it. “He doesn’t know where even one Diamond Needle is located today. He doesn’t know where I am or who I’m moving with. He doesn’t know nothing, he never will,” she said from her gut and her heart.
I began thinking about the green-eyed boy who wore the hoodie and black bandanna. One glance and I could see he had more swag than any white boy I ever seen, and more swag than the one who drove us in the doo-doo truck.
“Your brother, Revo,” I said. When I saw Riot’s shocked look I told her, “NanaAnna said you and ‘Revo,’ used to run through her property. So I know that’s your brother’s name.” I was straight-faced. Also, I wanted to be taken seriously. There was a pause.
“His name is Revolution, Revo, for short. He’s my same exact age, so he doesn’t have a license and can’t make a six- or seven-hour driving trip to New York City. It’s too risky,” she said with no room for debate.
“Riot and Revolution, the same age, you have a twin?” I asked.
She didn’t answer so I knew it was true. I understood she wanted to protect and defend him. I understood how close twins are. You could poke one and the other might cry instead. But I never poked my twin sisters.
“NanaAnna,” I said. Riot interrupted me immediately, again.
“NanaAnna has already done more than enough. Even if you or I were ever captured, we will both protect her. We will both say that she didn’t know who we were. She never knew we escaped or were on the run. We will say, we ran onto her property and pretended to be kids from around the way. She was kind to us, so we took advantage of her and stayed a while.”
When Riot’s mind was in overdrive her body seemed to heat up and be surrounded by a heat wave that I could see floating in the air around her.
“I understand,” was all I said. I wanted to dead the conversation for a while. She was in too deep and way too dead serious.
That evening, dressed as boys, we traveled to town with NanaAnna. In a side shop stuffed with ugly country fashions that I would never wear, I chose a cheap red one-piece bathing suit and handed it over to NanaAnna. She paid for it. I added $9.99 onto the debt column on the list that was on the wall in the kitchen. I had my own copy of the list I wrote for myself in my recipe journal.