“You and Johnny had the same birthday. You shared a cake once. You weren’t happy about that at all. You cried and cried.
“Tinker fought in Vietnam. It took him a while to get okay with that.
“Eugene and Leonard and Sam were brothers, too, and your dad’s cousins, and they lived in the attic sometimes, until Sam went hitchhiking that one day and disappeared. Leonard moved to New Mexico and went to college for twenty years. Eugene still visited all the time, but I don’t think he ever slept in our house again. Not in that old house and not in the new one either. After Sam disappeared, Eugene never really lived anywhere again. And then he got murdered, remember? Shot in the parking lot of the liquor store. Imagine how Leonard feels with two brothers gone like that.
“Stubby—he was your father’s great-uncle—he slept on that twin bed in the hallway. He was small so he fit. You remember him? He always pinched your face and made you mad. One time, when you were three, you called him a Japanese sniper. You were just trying to get him back for pinching you, but Stubby really did look Japanese.
“Lizzie Bee—your father’s grandmother—she slept on an army cot in the kitchen. She had arthritis bad so she liked to sleep near that woodstove. We didn’t have enough wood to keep the fire going every night, but it would stay warm for a while. She used to give you dollar bills. And you saved them all in an old coffee tin. You hid that tin in the rocks behind the house. Somebody found it, though, and stole your money. It was probably one of the attic boys who stole it. But it could have been your dad, too. He was drinking a lot when we lived in that old house.
“Your big sister, Mary, when she wasn’t living with her father in Montana, or running around with some boy, she would sleep on the couch in the living room.
“Your little sisters, the twins, they shared a crib in the bedroom.
“Your dad and I slept in the bed.
“When Mary was home, you slept on the floor beside our bed. If she was gone, you slept on the couch. Sometimes, though, when you knew Mary was getting ready to leave again, you’d sleep on the floor by the couch. And then you’d cry for days after she was gone.
“Your big brother? He slept in the bedroom closet. He was too big for it. He had to sleep curled up like a dog. He always liked to sleep in places that squeezed him. I don’t know why.
“And, oh, you had those night terrors when you were little. You’d wake up screaming and shake the whole house.
“And, yeah, we didn’t have indoor plumbing until ’seventy-two.
“You remember the outhouse? It wasn’t too bad to use it in daytime or in good weather. But it was pretty rugged if it was winter and three in the morning.
“Do you remember how I caught you peeing out the window one night?
“Yeah, you said your dad had taught you how to pee that way so you didn’t have to go to the outhouse in the dark.
“And then, a few days later, I found a bunch of pee stains in the snow under the window and I asked you about it, and you blamed your sisters. That was so funny.
“You didn’t even know your sisters had different anatomy and couldn’t have balanced on the windowsill and peed that far.
“And then that old house burned down. Do you remember that?
“Yeah, I was sorry about leaving that old house. And I was happy when we moved into the new HUD house. But I loved that old house, too. Remember the pharmacist at the clinic—the white guy? French name, I think? Very handsome?
“He took a photo of the old house burning, but there was this optical illusion that made it look like the new house was burning, too?
“Yeah, two house fires at the same time. That was us.”
Ten days after our mother was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, we learned that she was also afflicted with small-cell lung cancer.
Terminal cancer, the doctor said. She had only weeks to live.
She had not smoked since she’d stopped drinking.
But our father had puffed on cigars for decades.
Can cigar smoke cause small-cell lung cancer?
Yes.
Can secondhand cigar smoke cause small-cell lung cancer?
Yes.
In 1987, while a senior in high school, my future college girlfriend, a white woman, measured radon levels in various reservation houses as part of a science project.
Our HUD house had moderately dangerous levels of radon, a colorless, odorless, tasteless, and radioactive noble gas.
Can radon cause small-cell lung cancer?
Yes.
My reservation is also home to two closed uranium mines and a closed uranium mill. One mine, the Sherwood, operated for only a few years and was shut down and cleaned with award-winning thoroughness. The other mine, Midnite, which operated from 1955 to 1981, was simply abandoned and never made safe on any level.
Can uranium cause cancer?
Yes, especially when inhaled as dust.
Gated, barbed-wired, the 350-acre Midnite Mine is now dotted with massive mounds of radioactive waste rock and ore—over thirty million tons in total—and uncounted barrels of various and mysterious chemicals. For years, huge trucks hauled uranium ore through Wellpinit, passing less than a mile from my childhood home, on their way to the uranium mill located on the east side of the reservation. I remember those trucks shedding small rocks and dust as they rumbled past us Indian kids walking, running, and riding our bicycles. Many driveways and roads on our reservation were paved with those waste rocks.
Located only six miles from my childhood HUD house, the mine also contains massive covered and uncovered pits, some more than five hundred feet deep, that are filled with impossibly green and blue wastewater. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the flora, fauna, and groundwater near the Midnite Mine are unsafe to eat and drink.
That radioactive groundwater has, for decades, drained down the hillside into Blue Creek, which then flows into the Spokane River. There is a beach at that place where the radioactive creek merges with the radioactive river.
Over the years, many Spokane Indians collected water and rocks from Blue Creek to use in our sacred sweat lodges. A sweat lodge is made by bending flexible wood branches into a dome shape that is draped with blankets and tarps. That flexible wood was sometimes collected from willows along Blue Creek. Other wood, like ponderosa pine, was sometimes gathered from trees felled near the mine. That wood was used to build campfires. Pots of Blue Creek’s radioactive water were boiled on those campfires. Ladles of that water were poured onto the piles of radioactive rocks placed inside sweat lodges. That steam was meant to purify us. We sang and prayed in the superheated and closed spaces of our radioactive sweat lodges.
During my childhood, Blue Creek Beach was also our family’s favorite place to picnic, play in the sand, and swim. Unlike the rest of our family, my mother and I had always been terribly afraid of water.
She and I had never learned how to swim.
But when I close my eyes, I can see her walking barefoot through that beach sand. I can see her kicking dust into the air. I can see her step into the creek up to her ankles. I can see her wade into the river up to her knees.
I can see her waving hello, hello, hello, and good-bye.
3.
The Call
IN LATE JUNE 2015, my sister called me.
“You better get here,” she said. “The doctor said Mom is near the end.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’m on the way.”
My wife, Diane, and I and our teenage sons drove from Seattle to the reservation and made our way to my childhood home.
As we pulled into the driveway, I saw my sister sitting on the front porch steps.
“Oh, God,” I said to my wife. “Mom must have died already. Arlene wants to tell me before I go inside the house.”
I hurried out of the car and ran to embrace my sister.
“When did she die?” I asked.
“Mom’s not dead yet,” my sister said.
I was confused. I couldn’t recall a
single time when any Indian in my life had formally greeted me at their front door.
“Then why were you waiting for us outside?” I asked.
“I have to warn you,” my sister said.
“What?” I asked. “Is Mom deformed or something?”
I couldn’t imagine how lung cancer, how any cancer other than skin cancer, might dramatically change a person’s appearance.
“No,” my sister said. “It’s just—well, it’s just—”
She hesitated and covered her face with her hands. I thought she was crying. But then I realized she was laughing.
“What?” I asked. “What’s so funny?”
“I wanted to warn you,” she said. “I wanted to prepare you. You see, Mom is being affectionate. She’s, like, hugging people and telling us she loves us. It’s weird.”
My sister and I laughed together.
We hugged again.
And then we walked inside to greet my dying mother.
4.
Good Hair
ON HER DEATHBED, my mother reached up and touched my face. She touched my hair.
“Your hair is so curly,” she said. “You have the curliest hair of any Indian ever.”
“My sons have curlier hair than me,” I said. “Look at them.”
My mother looked at her grandsons and laughed.
“Everybody is curly,” she said.
I said, “When Indians have curly hair, I call it the Geronifro.”
My mother laughed.
“Don’t cut your hair when I die,” she said.
When my father died, I sliced off my long hair and buried it in a secret place.
“I don’t have braids anymore,” I said. “My hair is messy but it’s short.”
“Don’t cut your curls,” my mother said. “And don’t let the boys cut their hair.”
“Okay,” I said.
“You should grow back your braids,” she said. “Honor me by wearing your hair long again.”
“Okay,” I said.
I lied.
5.
Soda Can
NINETEEN SEVENTY-SEVEN. I was ten. My mother and I were arguing. I don’t remember how the fight started. We, the bipolar mother and her bipolar son, fought so often that all of the arguments blended into a terrifying yet predictable ride. My mother and I were roller-coaster cars on parallel tracks.
During that argument in 1977, I remember the hatred I felt for my mother. It didn’t feel like a temporary hatred. And it didn’t feel like an adolescent rage. It felt like something more profound and permanent than youthful angst. My hatred felt as ancient as a cave painting. I didn’t want to physically hurt my mother, but I certainly wanted my words to break her soul’s back over my soul’s knee. But, as I screamed at her and she screamed back, she kept working on the damn quilt in her lap.
“I hate your quilts!” I screamed.
On the surface, those four words don’t seem all that bad, but my mother’s quilting wasn’t a hobby. Quilting was her philosophy.
Fabric square ad infinitum.
“I hate your quilts!” I screamed again.
“Shut up!” she screamed.
And then I called her the worst thing possible. I know what word you think I used—the worst epithet an American man can throw at an American woman. But I’ve never used that particular word during any heated moment and can’t recall ever saying it in even the most ironic sense. Instead, I called her something that had become my greatest personal weapon against her.
“Why don’t you shut up!” I screamed. “You old bag!”
Yes, my mother vehemently hated to be called an old bag. It’s an unpleasant thing to say to anybody, let alone your mother, but it’s a slur that could play on Nickelodeon TV. Why did my mother hate that curse more than any other? I suppose it had to do more with the force of the emotion behind the insult than the insult itself.
But I must also note that a friend, after reading an early draft of this chapter, interpreted “old bag” as meaning “used condom.” I was shocked by his observation. Did my mother think that I was calling her a used condom? I doubt it, but I wonder about her definition of “old bag.” I’d always thought that I was just insulting her age and wrinkled skin—and her existential emptiness.
I wish I could ask my mother why she hated that particular insult so much. It makes me want to buy a Ouija board and ask her about the whole damn situation. Maybe her ghost would be honest with me.
So, yes, I’d insulted my mother’s quilting and called her an old bag. She’d had enough of my disrespect. She reached over toward the end table, grabbed a mostly full can of Pepsi, and threw it at me.
I stood by the back door. She sat on the couch. We were at least fifteen feet apart. My mother did not have good hand-eye coordination. She was not athletic. And yet, as that Pepsi can flew toward me, seemingly in slow motion, I found myself thinking, Shit, that thing is going to hit me in the face.
I could have easily dodged the can. But I didn’t. Instead, I watched it with amazement. I kept marveling that my extremely clumsy mother had thrown it with such force and accuracy. I worry now that I didn’t duck because I wanted to get hit. In any case, I continued to be amazed and/or expectant as that can struck me in the forehead and knocked me unconscious.
Okay, I need to remind you that I was a hydrocephalic kid who had brain surgery at five months and then again at two years, and suffered epileptic seizures until I was seven. I still have four burr hole soft spots in my skull and a Frankenstein mess of head scars. So, yes, along with bipolar disorder, my brain damage might have also made me quick to rage.
But let’s get back to that soda can. It would be dangerous to throw that projectile at anybody’s face, but it was especially threatening to me.
I don’t know how long I was unconscious. When I opened my eyes and looked at the water-stained ceiling, I was in shock. I wasn’t bleeding very much but would have a huge bruise—a black eye of the forehead—for a week. I slowly sat up and saw that my mother was still quilting. I don’t know if she’d even moved from the couch after she’d knocked me out. Maybe she’d thought I was faking it. That’s the only way to justify the fact that she hadn’t sought to help me.
I silently and slowly got to my feet.
I was dizzy, nauseated, and confused. It felt like my arms and legs had switched places and I would have to relearn how to walk again.
There was no concussion protocol in those days.
Carefully, I walked to the basement door, opened it, eased my way downstairs, shuffled to my room, slumped onto my bed, and slept for many dreamless hours.
I suppose I could have died from my head injury—from a clotted vein or subdural hematoma or brain bleed.
But I woke the next morning with a massive headache, slowly walked upstairs, and ate the hash browns and Spam that my mother had left for me on the dining table.
It was a greasy and unspoken apology.
And by eating her food, I guess I had accepted it.
6.
Prayer Animals
When I was ten or twelve, my late mother told me that,
When she was ten or twelve, she grabbed a stray cat
By the front legs while her little niece grabbed
Its rear legs, and they twisted and pulled that damned
And doomed animal until it split into bloody halves.
Would you be shocked to know that I wasn’t shocked
By that story? On the reservation, violence is a clock,
Ordinary and relentless. Even stopped, it doesn’t stop.
But, Jesus, as an adult in the city, I am rocked
By that story’s implications. My mother was not
A sociopath, but animal torture is a common crime
For serial killers in training. So how and why
Did my mother and her niece commit an act so borderline?
Of course, being Native females, they were bull’s-eyes
For every man—known or unknown, indigen
ous or white—
So which men hurt my mother and her niece so terribly
And so often that they would possess the need
To capture, torture, and murder something so weak?
How disconnected was my mother from her body
And her emotions? To survive, she had to be as mean
As those who would do her harm. So I guess I know
Why she was often distant, storm-hearted, and cold.
But my reluctant compassion does nothing to console
Me, as a middle-aged man who remembers, in whole,
The day an older and larger white boy named Mike cajoled
Five of us Indian boys into his trailer “for some fun.”
At first, he let each of us marvel at his new pellet gun
And then he shot Gooch in the neck. There was blood.
It still felt ordinary, though. After all, we were young
And dumb. We laughed at Gooch. We didn’t run.
And then Mike shot Gooch in the ear. He screamed
In pain. So Mike kicked him quiet. Gooch was weak.
But then Mike shot all of us. He shot me.
Terrified, we did not fight. We gave up so easily
As Mike roped us together into one fragile body.
I’d guess I was pellet-shot at least five times.
Punched in the face once, kicked in the balls twice.
Mike struck matches and flicked them at our eyes.
And then he pulled out a huge hunting knife.
And made us beg for our “useless little lives.”
After hours of this, we escaped when I broke
Through a window and ran. Everybody ran without
Rhyme or reason. The five of us fled in five separate
Directions. I ran home and immediately told my mother