6
Iron Rose
Every July, Nettlebush plays host to a roaring, raging monsoon the likes of which Poseidon would envy.
Right before the monsoon you've got a flurry of activity pouring out of every corner of the reservation. The farmers sprint around like headless chickens as they herd their livestock indoors and get the last of their seeds harrowed in the ground. The hunters race out to the badlands and chase after the jackrabbits and the mule deer, both of which go scarce when the rain comes out. The fishermen mostly just hang around each other's homes and weave nets from pawpaw and milkweed. The catfish they're after won't bother coming out until the monsoon has passed.
The monsoon was due a little early this summer. I could tell by the swirling gray clouds, seismic in the sky; the way the pine trees bowed and swayed in the breeze, spilling their needles to the ground; the way the air felt on my face, thick and wet.
And, of course, by the presence of the reservation's shaman, who walked around warning everyone about their upcoming demise.
I don't know about other tribes, but the Shoshone have always looked to their shamans for guidance from the spiritual world. Or they did in the old days. Nowadays we respect our shamans as a remnant from our past, but we don't take them very seriously. The way they conduct themselves doesn't help matters.
Have you ever seen a picture of Einstein? The one where he sticks his tongue out at the camera? His eyes are bulging with insane ingenuity; his hair stands on end like he stuck his hand in an electric socket. Okay, now take that image and superimpose it over a thirty-three-year-old Plains woman. You've got yourself a Shaman Immaculata Quick.
I was taking Mickey to Annie's house when Immaculata came walking up the lane toward us, waving her arms and shouting.
"What's she saying?" Mickey asked, confused.
"Tuupukkan uma! Takkamah!" Immaculata shouted.
"She's just saying hello," I told Mickey.
Mickey stared after Immaculata, baffled, Immaculata's elkskin fringe swinging about her elbows and knees. "If I said hello like that," Mickey told me, "I'd get smacked across the face!"
It was increasingly worrisome whenever Mickey talked about her former foster homes. I led her across the Little Hawks' lawn, my hand on her back.
"You know that's not right," I said quietly. "Don't you?"
She tilted her head back in order to look up at me. "What do you mean?"
"No one is allowed to hit you."
"Tons of people used to hit me."
"That doesn't mean they were allowed."
We crossed the threshold into the farm manor, the ceiling fan spinning lazily in the foyer.
"Who cares?" Mickey said. "Who cares if somebody hits me?"
"I care," I said. "Rafael cares. You know that nice drawing he put in your room? He did it because he cares about you."
Mickey lapsed into a pensive silence, frowning when we made our way to the kitchen.
I'd promised Annie I'd help her cook today. When I found her, though, she was sitting bent over the kitchen table, fanning her face.
"Are you okay?" I asked, and rubbed her back.
"Oh, I'm fine," Annie said, and placed a hand on her pregnant stomach. She flashed a quick smile Mickey's way. "I thought I might get back into the military after this one, but I'm starting to doubt that very much."
"Annie," I said, "what about your isolation tent?"
It's Shoshone tradition for an expectant mother to isolate herself from male company during the last leg of her pregnancy. During that time, she withdraws into a tent just outside her regular home. Only women can come and visit her, and she can't have a man with her during delivery. I don't really know why this custom is the way it is, except that traditionally, women always had the most power in a Shoshone society. Distributing food, spoils, and clothes, deciding the next migration route, sending warriors off to battle, even playing sports--they were all women's endeavors. In fact, one of the oldest known chiefs of the tribe was a woman. Her name was Cunning Eyes.
"I can't very well sleep in a tent when there's a monsoon just around the corner, now can I?" Annie pointed out. "I'll have to make do with the attic. At least Holly and Daisy will be with me."
I didn't bother keeping a straight face. "I'm sure Holly's going to be a lot of help."
"Oh, Skylar."
" 'Go back in, little baby. This world is far too cruel. Crawl back whence you came...' "
"That's a frighteningly accurate impression of her, but enough of that. Get me the pinyon nuts, please."
Mickey and I spent a large portion of the morning flitting back and forth across the kitchen at Annie's behest. At least Annie was off her feet for a while. For the most part we prepared simple dishes for the older folks, many of whom couldn't provide for themselves during the lengthy monsoon.
"Don't worry about delivering them," Annie said. "I'll have Nicholas do it. It's about time he learns how to treat his elders."
I kissed the top of her head before Mickey and I left for the day.
"Why does anyone have babies?" Mickey said. "They cry all the time, and they make you fat."
"Only for a little while," I assured her. "And Shoshone babies don't cry."
"Sure they don't," Mickey dismissed. "I'll believe that one...never."
We followed the easternmost path out to the lake. We were on our way to visit Dad and Racine.
"You know," I said.
"I know what?"
I smiled and showed her my tongue. "Never mind."
It just struck me that Mr. Red Clay was right about her. In more than a few ways, her crabby demeanor was akin to Rafael's.
I could easily love her for it.
Racine answered her door when I knocked. I couldn't help but notice how exhausted she looked.
"Is everything okay?" I asked, alarmed.
Racine looked left and right like a fox on the run. She hurried outside the house and snapped the door shut behind her.
"Your father's been having nightmares," she said to me.
I could feel myself frowning before I was aware of it. "Do you want me to talk to him?"
"I don't know," Racine said. She rubbed her face with her hands. "I tried that. I don't know what to do. That dad of yours just doesn't like talking, does he?"
"No," I said, with a remorseful smile. "He never did."
I met up with Dad at dinner that night, but for all intents and purposes, he was the same affable, melancholy Dad as ever. If his fingers shook when he picked up a plate of cornbread, or if he flinched whenever Cyrus At Dawn pat him on the back...well, nobody brought it to his attention. If you're Shoshone, and you see something unpleasant, you look the other way.
He decided to retire early, the bonfire still billowing brightly. I put my hand on his shoulder--slowly; I didn't want to startle him.
"Shinny," I said. "Want to teach Michaela after the monsoon?"
"Yes," he said, with one of his fleeting, distant smiles. "I'd like that."
The monsoon, once it hit, was debilitating. The winds whistled and roared and pushed so hard on the trees, they threatened to topple over. Rain rolled over Nettlebush in cold, howling, blasting sheets of ice water. The sky was dark, pitch black--so black that I wondered, momentarily, whether the moon had eclipsed the sun. It hadn't. The clouds had.
It rains so much during the monsoon that for a week or two, everyone in Nettlebush is trapped indoors. Tent rocks out in the badlands come crashing to the ground; the coyotes who sleep beneath them have to find a new home. Rainwater floods through the reservation like rapids through a broken dam. We get the last laugh, though. Our houses are built on raised, weighted porches. Even if the rainwater pushes and pulls at the foundation of the house, it's not going to make it into our home.
A few days into the monsoon and Mickey sat on her knees in front of the tall sitting room window, her hands pressed to the glass. Even with the oil lamps lit, it was too dark to see v
ery far outside, save for the raindrops pounding like bullets on the windows and plashing in the brook like rising butterflies. Have you ever noticed that? How raindrops look like butterflies when they hit the ground? Watch the rain sometime, and you'll see what I mean. It's seriously cool.
"It can't hurt us," Mickey said slowly. "Right?"
"Nope," Rafael said. "The house is tough. It's been through eight monsoons already."
He sat nonchalantly on the sofa, his hair tucked behind his ear, a book open on his lap. Rafael loves his imaginary world. When he's not drawing, he's reading.
Mickey climbed onto the sofa on her knees. She jostled his shoulder with both of her hands.
"What?" he asked starkly.
"Your ear's pierced. Can I get mine pierced?"
I could practically envision the cogs turning in his head. "Rafael..." I warned.
"What?" he tossed at me. "Zeke didn't say we couldn't pierce her ears."
"He also didn't say we can't cover her in tattoos, but I'm not very eager to try it out, are you?"
"Don't be a smartass, smartass. Anyway, kids outside the rez get their ears pierced all the time, and nobody says jack to them."
"Jack."
"Jack who?"
Forget it, I thought glumly. I was outnumbered two to one.
Rafael closed his book and raced up the stairs. I could trace his route very clearly in my mind; he kept inks and needles and any variety of unpleasant things under our bed. Sure enough, he descended the staircase minutes later with an old-fashioned wood needle, a carved jewelry box, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol.
"Open," he said, and tossed the jewelry box on the sofa next to Mickey.
Mickey slid the lid open; her eyebrows rose all the way into her hairline. I didn't need to ask why. Rafael's earring collection is seriously impressive, considering all of them are handmade. There's a wolf, a dagger, a rose--I don't even remember all the rest.
"I get to have one?" Mickey asked.
"Whichever one you want," Rafael said. I could see his face fighting the smile threatening his lips.
Mickey rooted around in the jewelry box; for a while there was only the sound of iron clinking on iron to accompany the storm slapping and clattering against our windows.
"What're these?" she said, and pulled out a pair of charms.
Nostalgia hit me out of left field. One of the trinkets was made from painted glass, the other from smooth wood. Both were shaped like pilot whales, both dangling on the ends of willow strings.
"I haven't seen those since we built the house," I said, mystified. I took the charms from Michaela's hand.
"Damn," Rafael said. "I still remember when you made me this. Spring of 2001." He took the glass charm from my hand and wrapped it around his wrist.
"And the summer of 2006," I returned with a rising smile. "Same year you asked me to marry you." I swallowed up the little wooden pilot whale in the palm of my hand. "I've always said you were very good with woodwork."
"But what are they?" Mickey pressed. "They look like fish."
"Bite your tongue," I said, and tweaked her chin.
"Hell no," Rafael said at the same time, insistent. "They're pilot whales. You don't know what a pilot whale is?"
"Would I ask you if I knew?"
I snickered. Rafael threw me a quick look.
"Watch it," he said to me. "They're the most loyal animals on the planet," he said to Mickey. "They create whole communities out of their families, their extended families. If one of them gets sick or hurt on the migratory trail, the rest stick with him, even at the risk of never seeing their home again. They're all about sticking together."
Mickey looked from Rafael to me. She tried very hard to keep the emotion off her face--I could see it--but I could see something else there, too. Something like longing. This little girl, I thought, warmed and saddened at the same time. Eleven homes in three years. A real prize for a mother. It didn't surprise me that Mickey had never known togetherness. She'd never really known a family.
"Okay," Rafael said. "C'mere."
I held Mickey's hair for her while Rafael swabbed her skin and sterilized the needle. It's weird how completely unfazed she seemed. Most kids I know aren't too keen about getting poked with sharp objects.
"You know," I started talking. I wanted to calm her down, but I wasn't at all certain she needed calming down in the first place. "Rafael's good with tattoos, too. Have you seen the ones on his neck?"
"Uh-huh."
"Did you know he gave me a tattoo? I bet you can't guess where it is."
"You? Yeah, right."
She let out a tiny little gasp when the needle slid through her ear. I squeezed her shoulder. Just as quickly, Rafael pulled the needle out and clipped an earring in its place.
"How do I look?" Mickey asked. She turned her head my way.
"You look beautiful," I said. An iron rose hung delicately from her lobe. "Like a wild prairie rose."
Mickey's face lit up with a wide smile. I found it unexpected--and maybe she did, too. She quickly tried to hide it behind her long hair.
The next few days saw no change in the downpour. Lightning flashed across the sky; thunder boomed and rattled through the drab gray forest. I was starting to worry the beech trees would uproot. If they did, I thought, we'd probably be okay; we weren't particularly close to any copses.
Mickey, evidently, was more worried than I was. She sat in the sitting room wrapped up in a pendleton blanket, her eyes darting continually toward the wide windows. She flinched whenever lightning lit up the room.
I didn't want to embarrass her. I sat next to her and handed her a strong cup of yaupon tea. She sat sipping it without a word.
"Hey," I said to her, quietly, and nodded toward Rafael.
He sat slouched in his armchair, busily reading his way through a hardcover book. His eyes roamed like wildfire across the pages.
"Want to play a prank on him?" I whispered.
Her lips tilted slowly in an unkind smile. "How?"
"Rafael?" I said.
He lifted his head.
I smiled, eyebrows dancing. "Could you get us another cup of tea?"
"Sure," he said. He closed his book over and stalked off to the kitchen.
I reached underneath the couch cushion and pulled out a second book.
"What's that?" Mickey asked, and reached for it.
I made sure to keep it from her grasp. "A naughty book," I said. "You can read it when you're older."
"Why are there handcuffs on the cover?"
"Never mind that." I slipped the paper cover off the binding. "Go switch the covers," I said.
She giggled mischievously, the most beautiful little sound I'd ever heard. She swapped the book covers and brought both of them back to me. I dog-eared a page in the naughty book and tossed it on Rafael's seat. Its twin got stuffed beneath the sofa.
"Here," Rafael said when he returned. He handed me a mug of yaupon tea.
"Thank you very much."
Rafael sat down and opened the wrong book. Mickey buried her face in her pendleton blanket. She was laughing, I realized, and couldn't control it. Like a ripple effect, I started to laugh, too.
Rafael was halfway down the page when he slapped the book closed and threw it over his shoulder.
"I'm going to kill you," he swore, flustered, teeth gritted.
"We got you! We got you!" Mickey shrieked.
The days waned. Still no end to the monsoon in sight. One night I was listening to the rain washing over my bedroom window when the door creaked open and Mickey slipped inside.
"Can I sleep downstairs?" she whispered.
Rafael turned on the lamp. "Want a snack?"
The three of us trailed down the stairs and into the kitchen. Rafael lit the lamp next to the doorway. The rain was loud and pattering against the window above the icebox. Mickey drew back, apprehensive.
"Help me
make cookies," I said. I tossed a handful of coals into the box beneath the stove.
Mickey was silent, her tongue poking out of her mouth, when we mixed the butter and the cream cheese. Rafael dug through the cabinets, grumbling, in search of acorn flour.
"You look kind of like the archangel," Mickey said to me.
I smiled quizzically. "What do you mean?"
She rolled her eyes at me. "Didn't you ever see that picture of Michael when he tosses the devil out of Heaven? His hair's curly and long and blond."
"Maybe I'm his long-lost evil twin," I said.
"You look a lot like him. But you're fatter."
I choked on nothing. Rafael grinned mercilessly at me. I swung the goop-covered spoon at his head. Splat went the dough, all over his lank hair.
"I was named after Michael," Mickey said proudly.
"Were you, sweetheart?" I asked. Rafael poured a ewer of water into the wash tub and dunked his head in. I tossed him a dish towel.
"Mom said so. She said she prayed to Michael that she'd miscarry. She didn't have the money for an abortion."
I met Rafael's eyes across the kitchen while he was towel drying his hair. He looked stunned, and a little ill--and I felt more uncomfortable than I could ever remember being. Usually I don't like to judge people; I feel as though none of us can ever fully know what it's like to have the thoughts and the emotions of another human being. But what kind of mother tells her daughter a story like that? Did she ever even consider how badly it would affect her daughter's confidence?
"I'm very glad you're with us, Mickey," I said.
She licked the batter from her thumb. She perused me with distrusting eyes.
"How long?" she asked.
I looked at Rafael again.
"We were kind of hoping you'd stay with us," Rafael mumbled.
"How long?" she repeated.
"As long as you'd like," I said. "It's all up to you."
I ran a wet rag along the messy counter. The cookies had another ten minutes to bake.
"I know what you're doing," Mickey burst out suddenly.
Rafael spun around, a candy bar in his mouth. He looked to me like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
But Mickey wasn't yelling at Rafael. She was yelling at me.
"You're going to make me love you," Mickey said. "Both of you. Then when I really love you, you're going to get tired of me!"
"We'll never get tired of you," I said.
"Everyone gets tired of me!"
Rafael started, "Michaela--"
She turned on him. And then--I hardly knew what she was doing--she pulled her shirt over her head.
"Look!" she yelled at him. "This is where she stabbed me! This is where she tried to kill me!"
I couldn't see what she was referring to. I could only see the freckles on her back, her shoulders hunched in dejection. But Rafael--he saw. His eyes jumped from Mickey to me, then back again--then back to me. His eyes were wide with horror.
I took Mickey's shoulders in my hands. I spun her around.
On her chest were thin, silver scars--three of them in total. The approximate size and shape of a knife blade.
Stab wounds.
I didn't have to wonder anymore why her mother had gone to prison.
Mickey wasn't crying. I think she must have had that instinct drained out of her very long ago. In all other regards, though, her face made for the saddest picture I had ever seen. She looked scared, and lost, and defeated, and no kid should ever look like that.
I hesitated. I dug my fingers underneath the collar of my turtleneck. I pulled it down.
Mickey's eyes jumped from the hardwood floor to the scars on my throat.
"I'm just like you," I said. "See? We're the same."
Mickey hiccoughed, her eyes round. I wanted to laugh--although I couldn't place why. I wanted to run my hands over her hair and hug her.
"Put your shirt back on," I said. "Let's go have cookies."
We milled out into the sitting room, the three of us, and sat on the rug by the window, the hearth flickering warmly. Mickey wrapped herself up in her pendleton blanket. Rafael scooped a cookie off the ceramic plate and crammed it into his mouth whole. I honestly didn't know which of the two had the stronger sweet tooth. I kind of felt like I was playing host to a family of sharks.
"Who cut you?" Mickey finally asked, wiping her hands on her blanket. I didn't have it in me to rebuke her.
"A bad man," I said. "He liked to hurt women."
"But you're not a woman."
Rafael opened his mouth as though he were about to protest. I jammed another cookie into his mouth in order to deter him. "No," I agreed, with the smallest of smiles. "I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Rafael chewed. He swallowed. He tugged on his damp hair, something he only ever does when he's nervous.
"My dad was the bad guy," Rafael said. "The one who liked to hurt women."
Mickey looked between Rafael and me as though she might uncover whatever dishonesty we were hiding from her. But we weren't.
"Your dad was really bad?" Mickey asked.
"He was a serial killer," Rafael said. "He killed seven women."
He looked away, tugging on his hair again. "He killed Sky's mom."
Mickey looked puzzled. "But Racine..."
"Not my step-mom," I explained. "My mother. The first woman my father was married to."
"The one who listened to pop music."
I can't tell you why that made me smile as it did. "That's the one."
"So..." Mickey said. "Rafael's dad killed your mom, and then he tried to kill you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
I smiled, and the muscles in my face felt tired and strained. "I don't know, honey," I said. "Some people are good and some people are bad. It's impossible to know why. But," I said, "I think it's a good thing that you can never understand it."
"How do you mean?"
"It means you're a wonderful person, of course."
She peered shyly at me from beneath curtains of long, brown hair.
"Michaela," I said.
"Mickey," she said. "I don't like that name. I hate my whore of a mother."
"I hate her, too," Rafael agreed. And he said it so passionately that I didn't doubt him. Then again, Rafael doesn't do anything dispassionately. "But you can't use that word."
"Why not? It's just a word."
"Alright," Rafael conceded gruffly, "you can use it, but only when it's the three of us."
"Awesome! That's more than my last foster mom let me do!"
I smiled at Rafael. "You were conned."
"Shut up, Sky," he said, bashful and disgruntled.
"Mickey," I tried again. "If you want to stay with us--or if you want to leave--that's entirely up to you. I'd like to think you're in charge of this. But I'd also like to think you can consider us your friends. When something's bothering you, or something's making you sad, you can tell us about it, you know."
Mickey fell silent, her eyes tracing the pattern of the blue rug.
"My mom always hated me," she said. "She said it was my fault my dad left her. I don't know my dad, never met him... He left when she was pregnant with me. He didn't want me, either."
I wanted more than ever to take her into my arms. I just didn't know how she'd react.
"We want you," Rafael said.
Mickey looked sideways at him.
"I've wanted you for a long time," Rafael said. "I was waiting for you."
"He was," I told her, smiling mutedly. "Every day you didn't come, he got even crabbier, if you can believe it."
"That must have been scary," Mickey said. I couldn't help but noticed she sounded pleased.
I carried the empty ceramic plate to the kitchen. Maybe tomorrow I'd remembered to wash it. When I returned to the sitting room, I found that the lamp was turned off. Firelight danced across
Rafael and Mickey's faces. Mickey was bundled up in her pendleton blanket, a quilt underneath her. Rafael must have made a trip upstairs without my noticing.
"C'mere," Rafael said, and gestured to me.
Warmed from the inside out, I lay on the quilt with the two of them. Rafael tossed his arm around me. Mickey wriggled her way between us.
"Show me your tattoo," she demanded of me.
I rolled up my left sleeve. A tawny atlas moth rested beneath my shoulder, wings ragged, worn with age.
Mickey prodded the atlas moth with her cold, sticky fingers, like she might tempt it into beating its wings. She followed the freckles down my arms and prodded those, too.
"You've got freckles," she said. "Just like me."
I can't begin to explain how ridiculously happy I felt.
"That's right," I said. "Just like you."