I imagine the policemen arriving.
I imagine them carrying us to a county shelter with donated cribs and beds.
I imagine four white women holding four sleeping Indian babies and rocking them to sleep.
So, yes, this seems like a plausible version of how we were lost. And it makes me sad and angry as an adult to imagine my mother returning to the hotel to discover that her babies had been officially taken away.
But I cannot imagine how much shame she must have felt.
“You know,” I said to my sister later at the funeral. “I think Mom is telling the truth about losing us. We’re never going to know the exact details. But there’s too much real pain in this story for it to be a lie.”
My sister nodded. She agreed. But what did we agree to? Jesus, we as adults were grateful that our mother had probably told the truth about endangering us as children.
How fucked is that?
32.
Dear Dylan Thomas,
Dear Dr. Extreme,
Dear Rage
Hey, climber, you fell from such a great height.
Does that mean your death was somehow better
Than my mom’s? She was in bed when she died.
Hey, hiker, you fought a courageous fight,
But did not survive that winter weather
And were found frozen at such a great height.
Hey, pilot, on your experimental flight,
You shattered like a ceramic feather.
My mom was wholly in bed when she died.
She never base-jumped or surfed in the night
Or walked across glacier gaps on ladders.
She never touched sea floors or great heights.
She was female, poor, indigenous, bright,
Commodified, hunted, and tape-measured.
She survived one hundred deaths before she died,
But was never thrilled by her endangered life.
So death became her gentle endeavor.
We raised her last bed to a modest height,
Then she sighed, sighed, closed her eyes, and died.
33.
Lasting Rites
I was not
At my mother’s side
When she took
Her last breath.
I was home
in Seattle
Waiting for word
Of her death.
My sister
Texted, “She’s gone.”
I collapsed
With grief,
But to tell
The difficult truth:
I also collapsed
With relief.
I assumed
I’d be freed
From my mother
And her endless
Accusations,
Falsehoods,
Exaggerations,
And deceptions.
But looking
At this book,
I was obviously
Mistaken,
because my mother continues to scare the shit out of me. On a morning soon after her death, my phone rang. The caller ID announced it was “MOM.” For a moment, I believed it was her calling from the afterlife. So I pondered what I would say. And I decided that I’d go with “Hey, Lillian, gotta say I’m impressed with your resurrection, but is it a Jesus thing or a zombie fling?” Of course, it wasn’t my mother. It was my sister calling me from our mother’s house. “Dang,” I said to my sister. “I really thought you were Mom come back to life.” And my sister said, “I know what you mean. This morning, I made her a cup of coffee and set it on the table and wondered why she hadn’t drunk it yet.”
Dear Mother,
My jury,
As you travel
Into the nocturnal,
As you continue
To make me hold
My breath
Even after your death,
Could it be
That you’ve finally
And strangely
Become maternal?
34.
Equine
At my mother’s funeral, I learned the three horses
Who’d escaped their barn years ago have transformed—
Have lightninged and thundered—
Into a wild herd of 400.
O wild horses, O wild horses, as you run,
I hope that my mother has become 401.
35.
Feast
AFTER WE BURIED my mother, we feasted. Dozens of people sat in the tribal longhouse and ate venison stew, salmon, and fry bread. Hot dogs and hamburgers. Kool-Aid and soda pop. Apple and cherry pie.
My cousin the logger said, “Junior, I wish I saw you somewhere except funerals.”
I smiled. He was right. I was a stranger to him.
“Did you kill this deer I’m eating?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Thank you for hunting,” I said.
“Thank the deer,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Bless you. And bless the deer.”
“You should come hunting with us next time.”
I thought he was serious—and tried to imagine hobbling with my bad back through the pine forests in search of a deer or elk—but then my cousin laughed and laughed.
“Little Sherm the Great Indian Hunter!” he proclaimed.
I laughed and laughed with him and ate two more bowls of venison stew.
36.
Utensil
While feasting
On venison stew
After we buried my mother,
I recognized my spoon
And realized my family
Had been using it
For at least forty-two years.
How does one commemorate
The ordinary? I thanked
The spoon for being a spoon
And finished my stew.
How does one get through
A difficult time? How does
A son properly mourn his mother?
It helps to run the errands—
To get shit done. I washed
That spoon, dried it,
And put it back
In the drawer,
But I did it consciously,
Paying attention
To my hands, my wrists,
And the feel of steel
Against my fingertips.
Then my wife drove us back
Home to Seattle, where I wrote
This poem about ordinary
Grief. Thank you, poem,
For being a poem. Thank you,
Paper and ink, for being paper
And ink. Thank you, desk,
For being a desk. Thank you,
Mother, for being my mother.
Thank you for your imperfect love.
It almost worked. It mostly worked.
Or partly worked. It was almost enough.
37.
Sibling Rivalry
Yes, my mother was a better mother
To my sisters and brothers,
But they were better children
Than me, the prodigal who yearned
And spurned and never returned.
38.
Eulogy
My mother was a dictionary.
She was one of the last fluent speakers of our tribal language.
She knew dozens of words that nobody else knew.
When she died, we buried all of those words with her.
My mother was a dictionary.
She knew words that had been spoken for thousands of years.
She knew words that will never be spoken again.
She knew songs that will never be sung again.
She knew stories that will never be told again.
My mother was a dictionary.
My mother was a thesaurus,
My mother was an encyclopedia.
My mother never taught her children the tribal language.
Oh, she taught us how to count to ten.
Oh, she taught us how
to say “I love you.”
Oh, she taught us how to say “Listen to me.”
And, of course, she taught us how to curse.
My mother was a dictionary.
She was one of the last four speakers of the tribal language.
In a few years, the last surviving speakers, all elderly, will also be gone.
There are younger Indians who speak a new version of the tribal language.
But the last old-time speakers will be gone.
My mother was a dictionary.
But she never taught me the tribal language.
And I never demanded to learn.
My mother always said to me, “English will be your best weapon.”
She was right, she was right, she was right.
My mother was a dictionary.
When she died, her children mourned her in English.
My mother knew words that had been spoken for thousands of years.
Sometimes, late at night, she would sing one of the old songs.
She would lullaby us with ancient songs.
We were lullabied by our ancestors.
My mother was a dictionary.
I own a cassette tape, recorded in 1974.
On that cassette, my mother speaks the tribal language.
She’s speaking the tribal language with her mother, Big Mom.
And then they sing an ancient song.
I haven’t listened to that cassette tape in two decades.
I don’t want to risk snapping the tape in some old cassette player.
And I don’t want to risk letting anybody else transfer that tape to digital.
My mother and grandmother’s conversation doesn’t belong in the cloud.
That old song is too sacred for the Internet.
So, as that cassette tape deteriorates, I know that it will soon be dead.
Maybe I will bury it near my mother’s grave.
Maybe I will bury it at the base of the tombstone she shares with my father.
Of course, I’m lying.
I would never bury it where somebody might find it.
Stay away, archaeologists! Begone, begone!
My mother was a dictionary.
She knew words that have been spoken for thousands of years.
She knew words that will never be spoken again.
I wish I could build tombstones for each of those words.
Maybe this poem is a tombstone.
My mother was a dictionary.
She spoke the old language.
But she never taught me how to say those ancient words.
She always said to me, “English will be your best weapon.”
She was right, she was right, she was right.
39.
Drum
AM I DANCING on my mother’s grave?
Well, my mother would have loved to be the subject of a memoir, no matter how laudatory and/or critical. Or rather, if the memoir were equally positive and negative. She would have loved all of the attention. She would have sat beside me in bookstores and signed copies of this book.
And, if she could do it from the afterlife, my mother would schedule a giant powwow on her grave.
“Okay, folks, welcome to the Seventeenth Annual Lillian Alexie Gravesite Powwow. Every song at this powwow will be a Special for Lillian. Every Grand Entry, Owl Dance, Blanket Dance, and Happy Dance will be for Lillian. And, yes, the venerable Prairie Chicken Dance will also be for Lillian. Okay, next drum is the Lillian Alexie Memorial Singers. This song will be an Intertribal. That means everybody gets to dance. Even you white people. Yes, that means all of you white people will also be dancing for Lillian. So, okay, Lillian Alexie Memorial Singers, whenever you’re ready, you can take it away!”
Am I dancing on my mother’s grave?
Of course I am!
Now shut up and listen to the song.
You need to two-step, two-step, two-step, two-step with the drum’s rhythm. But ain’t nobody gonna judge you if you miss a beat.
Ah, listen to the singers drumming and them drummers singing.
Ain’t they celebratory? Ain’t they mournful? Ain’t they angry? Ain’t they sweet?
Listen to the drum, the drum, the drum, the drum, the drum.
Hey, grave-dancers, I’m calling all of you grave-dancers, come and grave-dance with me.
40.
Rebel Without a Clause
I AM Sherman Joseph Alexie, Jr., and I have always struggled with being the second of my name. Everybody on the reservation called me Junior. Most of my family and childhood friends still call me Junior. During my youth, there were at least five or six other men and boys who were also called Junior. A couple of guys, named John and Joseph after their father, went by John-John and JoJo, which makes me wonder if things like this have ever been said:
“Hey, my name is Joseph, and this is my son, JoJo, and that’s my grandson, JoJoJo, and his best friend, John-John-Johnny.”
There are a lot of Juniors in the Indian world. That might seem like a product of patriarchal European colonial culture, and maybe it is, but we Indians have also created patriarchal systems of our own. My tribe has elected only two women to Tribal Council in 122 years. Even Crazy Horse, the famous Oglala warrior, was named for his father. But nobody called him Junior, for rather logical reasons.
“Look! There’s the most feared and mysterious Indian of all time! Behold! It is Junior!”
So, yeah, as a name, Junior lacks a certain gravitas. And Crazy Horse, Jr., isn’t all that much better. It seems oddly formal and carnivalesque at the same time:
“Hello, my name is Crazy Horse, Jr., attorney at law, and I am here to fight for your tribal rights!”
I never hated my father, but I didn’t want to share his moniker. This personal struggle is the reason I wrote a picture book, Thunder Boy Jr., about a Native boy’s rather innocent and ultimately successful quest for a new name.
My quest wasn’t as innocent and it wasn’t all that successful either.
At age three, when I was first taught how to spell my name—my nickname—I immediately added a u and wrote “Juniour.”
“That’s wrong,” the preschool teacher said. He was an eccentric white man who did double duty as my speech therapist. He was also an ex-Catholic priest and would later be the publisher, editor, writer, and photographer for an alternative rag that directly competed with the tribe’s official newspaper. So, yes, that white man was the Village Voice of the Spokane Indian Reservation. He was the White Fallen Holy Man with a Mimeograph Machine. Years later, he would take my first official author photo. But in 1969, he was just trying to teach a rez boy how to spell his own damn name.
“There is only one u in Junior,” he said.
“I know it’s wrong,” I said. “But that’s how I’m going to spell it. That’s my name.”
Many of you doubt that a three-year-old could speak like that. Some of you are probably worried that your doubt is racist and classist. After all, how could a poor reservation Indian kid be that self-possessed and radical? Well, that was me. I was the UnChild.
I said, “I will spell my name the way I want to spell my name.”
I vividly remember the expression on the ex–holy man’s face. I have seen that expression on many faces. I have often caused that expression. That expression means “I might win this one fight with Junior, a.k.a. Sherman Two, the son of Lillian the Cruel, but he will immediately start another fight. And another. And another.”
For the next three years, in my own handwriting and in official school reports, I was Juniour, pronounced the same as Junior, yes, but it carried a whole different meaning.
I think the u in Juniour was short for “Fuck you and you and you and you and especially you. Yeah, you, the one who still thinks I am going to obey you.”
41.
Unsaved
ABU GHRAIB.
Abu Ghraib.
Abu Ghraib.
Do you remember Abu Ghraib?
Do you
remember that American soldiers tortured detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraq War?
Has Abu Ghraib already become a historical footnote? Is it mentioned in the history textbooks? Do the tortured prisoners have names? I didn’t remember any of their names until I Googled them. I don’t remember if I had ever heard any of their names. But I certainly remember some of the names of the American torturers. I don’t want to use their names here. Naming them gives them more respect than they deserve. They were convicted of relatively minor crimes. They were sentenced to short prison terms. They are free back here in the United States. Two of the torturers—a man and woman—married each other. I don’t know if they are still married. I don’t know if they have children. I don’t want to know. Or maybe I’m lying. I imagine that moment when their children go online and find those images of torture, when they see their mother and father posing—smiling—with naked, humiliated, wounded, and helpless prisoners. And when I imagine that moment, I feel like it might be a form of justice. I feel a slight sense of satisfaction. Or maybe it just feels like revenge for a crime that wasn’t even committed against me. Maybe this just reveals my own cruelty. But I feel something mostly grim and partly good when I imagine that painful conversation between those torturer parents and their children. I realize those parents—if they have any sense of decency—would be forced to reveal their crimes to their children before they discovered them themselves.