“Humans have always been superfluous troublemakers,” he says. “But at least we’ve got good songs.”
“Not everybody had good songs,” I say.
Eddy looks thoughtful and then nods.
“You’re right. Custer had no song.”
“Mother—you know that Mother—has no song.”
“People sick for power have no song. But your baby is going to have a song.”
“Really?” I’m so pleased that I give a little jump, and my baby jumps too. “You’re thinking it up?”
“I had a dream about a little baby,” says Eddy. “He said, ‘Where’s my song?’”
“You’re a good grandpa,” I say.
I’m incredibly happy, and sit by the stove stroking my belly, wondering what the song will be like. In public now, Eddy gives speeches and makes pronouncements like he’s always been an extrovert. At home, he hums and sings. When he finishes singing, he sits at the kitchen table with stacks of papers, old land deeds. He plots strategies. Thinks of survival measures, ways to draft our young people into working for a higher purpose. Where to get seeds. Pigs. Cows. Flocks of chickens. He wants to make the reservation one huge, intensively worked, highly productive farm. He’s got gangsters growing seedlings in the grow-lighted aisles of casinos. He’s got them raising free pot for everyone ever since a friendly Kiowa came north via Colorado and picked up the entire spectrum of medicinal varietals. Weed’s our friend, Eddy says. Given to us by the Creator not only for trading to the chimookomaanag, but for medicating all sorts of pain and for soothing the freaked-out brain.
The chimookomaanag are the Big Knives, the white people, and so far they really haven’t bothered us because we seized the National Guard arsenal up at Camp Ripley, which is on our original treaty grounds. Ours. They had an amazing array of snooping equipment, slightly out-of-date U.S. military stuff, which Eddy says we use to spy on the people who are spying on us.
“We’re gonna be self-sufficient, like the old days,” he says.
The gas pumps at the Superpumper are still being resupplied. The oil company could care less who’s in charge. The casino was, of course, rich in cash. They still have reserves they have not touched, as does the tribal bank. Some places still run on cash, old U.S. government currency, because nobody has been organized enough yet to replace it. Eddy is also war chief, with a pack of elite soldiers at his command. As with every tribe, our nation has veterans—lots of veterans—and they are friends with lots of non-Indian veterans, and together they have organized and trained our people.
Our people. My people. Your people. I could never say that before. Eddy has decolonized the uniforms of the militia.
“We’ve got almost two full regiments. One of them is into the flowing hair, Last of the Mohicans. They tan hides, sew their own buckskins, drill with bows and arrows and M16s and . . . you don’t want to know. I never knew I had it in me, Cedar. I’m surprised. I think about seventy percent of my depression was my seventeenth-century warrior trying to get out.”
Eddy’s been working out—he looks tougher. He looks straight on at people now. Sometimes, Eddy eyes me over the cup he puts to his lips, then lowers it without drinking. His stare, when it focuses on a person, is long-seeing. Unnerving. He sets his cup down.
“Just so you know. We are not giving up our pregnant tribal members. Our women are sacred to us. I’m afraid we will eventually get raided, though,” Eddy says. “Whichever military entity comes out on top will probably remember about us. We don’t know what direction it will come from, who will lead it, what they’ll have for power. But you could get picked up anywhere. So you are as safe here as anywhere. I guess. Only—” He whirls around, kills the lights, pulls me through the back door onto the deck. Out there, he relaxes.
Together on the porch we gaze into the bare gray trunks of the thick woods just behind the house. A man and a woman in camouflage and buckskins, holding automatic weapons, lean against Eddy’s car in the driveway to the left of the house. I can smell the rich tobacco smoke of their rolled cigarettes. There’s woodsmoke in the air, too, and a welcome sharp bright cold. Wolves? Coyotes? Dogs? They begin howling just beyond the riffle of woods.
“I’ve never heard wolves before.” I breathe, enchanted.
“Not wolves. That’s us,” says Eddy. “Our new unbreakable code.”
He heard them while we were in the kitchen, and dragged me out because he needed to decipher their language.
“What are they saying?”
“Drones earlier, at the casino. We should go inside.”
Once we’re in the house, Eddy opens a padlocked army trunk that is pushed up against the wall. He takes a rifle from the trunk and hands it to me, with a box of bullets.
“I don’t want this.”
“It’s yours,” he says.
I look down at the thing in my hands—the Custer rifle.
“Phil give you this?”
“Yes.”
“So he’s been here.”
My throat shuts. My chest clenches up. I try to give the rifle back to Eddy.
“Where is he?”
“Gone again. I’m sorry.”
Eddy brings me into the garage and shows me how to load the rifle. I’m not an enthusiastic learner, but he says that he will teach me how to shoot.
“At what? Trees? Because I’m not going to shoot a tree.”
“Okay,” says Eddy. “Maybe we should go to the shooting range.”
I carefully set the rifle down on the cement floor.
“Look at me, Eddy. I am filled with new life. I’m not shooting anything or killing anyone. I’ve already done that.”
“Done that? What do you mean?”
Eddy puts his arms around my shoulders. I tell him about the escape, about Tia Jackson, about Orielee, about her death. To tell what happened makes it all so vivid that I hear myself crack, then sob as though I’m broken, which I think is true. Only a broken human could do what I did. Eddy holds me to his chest.
“Don’t cry, my girl,” he says. “It was you and your baby or that nurse, no choice. You did what you had to do.”
“I tell myself that, but it still feels like murder.”
Eddy coughs delicately. “In their eyes, it will be seen as a crime. They might come after you, so we’ll have to make you a new identity. Luckily, I know someone in tribal governance.”
I throw myself at him, hug him, and he hugs me back.
“How would you like to be Mary Potts again?”
“It sounds wonderful.”
“We’ll get right on it,” he says.
I hesitate, but ask anyway.
“Were you ever in a situation like I was in? Where you had to kill someone?”
“No. I’m not a soldier. What you did was combat and most people train for that. I’m out of my league too. I’m trying to be a leader and it doesn’t come naturally. I’m trying to act normal. Is it working?”
“Sometimes.”
“Good enough.”
“So Eddy. How are the sacred women doing? And the babies?”
“Good . . . they’re all fine.”
“Really?”
“Of course.”
“No of course about this, Eddy. Mom says that babies aren’t surviving. Probably mothers too. And from what I saw my friend go through, I believe her.”
“Sweetie will tell you it’s all due to her saint. She says Saint Kateri is watching over women in a special way.”
“You’re lying,” I say.
“I’m keeping hope alive,” says Eddy.
“I am looking for a miracle, so I’m going to find Sweetie. I want a ride to the pilgrimage rock tomorrow, please? That’s where I need to pray.”
Eddy says he’ll drive us there, early in the morning, but I’ve got to cover myself up thoroughly.
“Drones never stay long, but you can’t be careful enough. Bring a blanket.”
Eddy says that he’ll even pray, in his own fashion.
“
In your own fashion? Prayer is just prayer, Eddy. You make it sound fancy.”
“No, I do have a fashion. When I pray, I really get right down there with Mother Earth,” says Eddy. “I prostrate myself.”
Sure enough, the next morning, when we get to the stone and the statue, surrounded by well-watered sod, right out of the truck Eddy throws himself on the ground. Sweetie and I step over him and kneel on the trampled grass before the statue. I keep my blanket around me.
“He says he’s praying, but he just wants to take a nap,” she whispers.
We cross ourselves and raise our eyes to the saint. Kateri is a nicely made statue, expensive bronze, not some cast-resin piece. Her face is mobile, gentle, but not sweet or anemic like most Virgin Marys. Kateri is grounded and shrewd. She fixes us with a critical, assessing look as if she is deciding whether we are worth her intercession. I bow my head and pray. I throw myself into the prayer. As I pray, I feel something lift out of me, as though atoms of dread have an actual weight, as though fear was fine sand in my blood. I don’t get an answer from Kateri, not in so many words. When Eddy helps me up my knees are numb, my heart is drained. For the first time in weeks, I am not afraid.
Then something flickers around me, a tiny bird, clicking and whirring. And a transparent oval floats past my clasped fingers.
“Keep your head down.”
Eddy is behind me, folding my blanket around me, leading me back to the car.
“Stay hunched over,” he whispers, “like you’re really old.”
I do as he says and keep the blanket around me as I fall stiffly into the car. I already know what’s happened. I’ve been seen.
November 18
You haven’t dropped into birth position yet. But you are heavy as a little brick, a strong little baby. I could have you now and you could probably make it outside in the world even without a NICU. I prepare for you to tell me you are on your way, but I don’t know exactly what to wait for—which twinge, kick, premonition. Sera says that I will know when I feel labor start. Isn’t that always the way women are supposed to know things, by “knowing” things? She’s always close by, always in the house, so that I feel her presence way too much. We were already on each other’s nerves. It gets worse. The cleaning is almost constant. You’d think after Mom saved me and helped Tia have her baby, she’d get a pass. I try, but one day irritation spills over. Mom is only doing her normal superthorough kitchen job. But I just can’t stand the grating sound she makes scraping bits of charred food off the inside of a pot.
“Could you stop that for a minute?”
“Sure, if you want to eat off dirty plates.”
“You’re scraping a pan, not a plate.”
“Be my guest.”
I get up and start scrubbing away. She stands beside me, guilty.
“That’s okay. You don’t have to.”
“You’re always cleaning. It’s so annoying.”
“What else is there to do?”
“You can go outside, Mom.”
My voice is angrier than I mean it to be.
“As for me, I have to stay inside listening to you scrape your stupid bean pans.”
“I’d love to go outside, but don’t you get it?”
“Get what?”
She takes her pencil and paper out of her back pocket. She maintains that it is the safest way to communicate. I think she uses notes when she wants to halt actual communication. She writes: If they see me here they’ll know you’re here.
After I read the paper, I crush it. The paper crushing infuriates her and she hisses.
“You just take for granted, don’t you, that Glen is putting himself in danger, not to mention me. All for you. But that’s nothing. If Eddy or Sweetie snap their fingers, you’re nice as pie. God, we spoiled you. You’re obnoxious!”
Obnoxious is the word she always used when I was a bad teenager, and she knows I can’t stand it. Ditto spoiled. I always react venomously, but today I go over the top. I force her to answer the question she has avoided all my life.
“Mom, how did you adopt me? Don’t wiggle out of this. Tell me straight. I need to know. This time I don’t want your eye rolls. I want the truth.”
We are standing by the sink. Outside, the November ground is slightly frosted over. The cool of winter. I face my blue-eyed Cinderella-godmother mom, who is biting her lip. Even wringing her hands, like in a bad stage play. But slowly she is cracking. Yes, I can see it—she will tell me. I nod, holding her gaze.
“You’re not adopted,” she blurts out.
What a weird reversal. Impossible to take that in. My mouth doesn’t work. I shake my head to dislodge my tongue. My hair flies out of its loose ponytail.
“You’re not adopted,” she says again. She is still furious and maybe, I don’t know, wants to hurt me. Because she says an unbelievable thing.
“Glen is your biological father.”
My brain does not believe her, but my heart does. My chest hurts. I reel to a chair. Plunk down. There is just no way to absorb this. But I get it—her anxiety over Glen and her anger at me have combined to the point where she’s told the truth. Again, I try for words, but there are no words or even feelings yet. It takes a long time before I start to breathe, and then sadness overwhelms me.
“If that’s true, if you kept that from me, I could have had my real father all my life.”
“But,” says Sera, as if she was waiting for this, “even though I’m not your biological mother, aren’t I your real mom?”
I stare at her. The fact that I’m hesitating throws us both. She now looks horrified at what she has revealed and where this is going. I guess, as the saying goes, the truth will make you miserable and then it will set you free. Am I now free? Is Mom? Remember, I think, she ate a gas-station hot dog for you! I am in that calm stage of shock.
“So what happened? Why isn’t Glen here? Is Sweetie my real birth mom?”
“Yes.”
“So . . . she and Glen had a relationship. Like the Retro Vinyl clerk. That’s why he’s not here?”
“Yes.”
“Quit making me tell the story!”
“Okay.”
“Oh my god. Mom! How did he meet her? What was he doing?”
“He was representing the tribe. A land case.”
I am suddenly overcome with hurt, with fury.
“I never want to see him again. Or talk about him.”
But of course that isn’t true. I always loved my father. I love him now. It all fits—the times people thought he was my real father. Our similar hands, hair, even our walk. I need to tell him how this affects me, because he’ll care. Won’t he? But if he really cared, he would have told me. I want to try and understand what happened, even though it blows my mind. I want the stabilizing effect his presence always had on us. Without him, Sera and I can’t stop fighting. His light nudges, simple jokes, his ability to pry my mother out of her obsessive head-space, all that helped. I’m afraid she’s going to clean herself to death. Oh let her! I hate my mom for keeping this from me, and then I hate her even worse for telling me. At the same time, she is the bravest person I have ever known. I will never forget her showing up at that hospital with a lunch tray. But Glen!
How could Glen have agreed to lie? Was he going to lie to me all of my life?
Suddenly it hits me. Sera’s insecurity. It was Sera. He was protecting Sera so that they would both be equal as parents, so he wouldn’t be the “real” parent and she the possibly lesser “adoptive” parent. He gave up his “realness” for her, but when he did that, he kept his “realness” from me. He kept me wondering all my life. And even Sweetie was in on the deception.
That’s the worst thing—the unnecessary deception. How I always seized on our physical likeness, but pushed it out of my mind. And the weird loneliness I now feel about being tricked all my life. I leave the room, walk down the little hallway to sit by Grandma’s bed. I am just too spent with the force of all that I must absorb to do anything but
stare at the shape of Grandma Virginia, hardly a ripple in the golden covers. Her severe little face is upturned, catching the light. She senses my presence immediately and says, in her thin, breathy voice, “What is it, child?”
“I found out who my real dad is. He’s my real dad!”
What an absurd thing to blurt out.
Grandma’s thin lips part, a tooth glistens.
“Men are tricky. I should know.”
Then she tells me a story.
The Fat Man’s Race
I was in love with a man named Cuthbert who could really eat. He would sit down to the table with a haunch of venison, a whole chicken, two or three gullet breads or a bucket of bangs, half a dozen ears of corn or a bag of raw carrots. He’d eat the whole lot, then go out and work in the field. He was very big, but he was also stone solid, muscle not fat. He would grab me up and set me on his lap and hug me. He would call me his little bird. I was going to marry Cuthbert and had the date of the wedding all picked out, but then his sisters turned him against me. They told him that I was after his money, I wanted his land, and also that I was having sex with the Devil.
Only that last part was true.
Our priest had warned that each one of us has two angels, a guardian angel and an angel of perversion. An angel of right and an angel of wrong. That second angel will attempt to persuade you it is the first, and I suppose I fell for it. I was visited at night in my dreams by a man in blue—a blue suit, a blue shirt, a blue tie, blue shoes, but no hat. He had black hair and black eyes, skin the color of a pale brown egg, very smooth and markless. He would take off all of his blue clothes and lay them at my feet. His instrument of pleasure, don’t laugh at me, was blue also, as though dipped in beautiful ink, midnight at the tip. I would admire him, then I would lie with him all night—you know what I’m telling you. In the morning I’d wake up sick over what I’d done. But next night it would be the same again. I could not resist him. He said the sweetest things to me, like a good angel, but the things he did were darkly inspired.