67.
The Raid
In the thirteen days and twelve hours since
We waked and honored and buried my mother,
I’ve murdered sixty-five carpenter ants—
In my now-invaded home—with spray, traps,
Magazines, books, spoons, and all of my shoes.
I stomp, I stomp, I stomp, I stomp and stomp
On those three-segmented Gods, and see,
With each death, that “retribute” is a verb
That’s terse, lovely, and sadly underused.
68.
Ursine
Driving my son to camp, I saw a black bear
Rise on its hind legs to watch us roll by.
A few hours later, after dropping off my son,
I drove past that same spot and realized
That black bear was a small tree—burned, split,
And twisted by lightning. How had I confused
A tree for a bear? I didn’t need to see a bear.
Minutes later, in a little town, I was bemused
To see my mother strolling on the sidewalk.
She’d been dead for a month. Oh! Hello, ghost!
I waved. She waved back. And then she tripped
And fell hard. Oh, shit! I pulled off the road,
Jumped out of my car, and ran back to help
My mother. But, wait, it wasn’t my mother.
It was a white woman who fell. She smiled
As I helped her to her feet. And I wondered
What other ghosts might appear. “Are you okay?”
I asked. And the woman said, “I mostly fell
On the grass. Yes, I am good.” She thanked me
And strolled away. Another story to tell,
I thought as I walked back to my car, about how
Everything I see and believe is contradicted
By everything else. But I am okay with my lack
Of faith. I don’t feel sacred or afflicted.
I mean—hey, I get why people are desperate
To fit this copious world into one prayer.
But as for me? I’ll be the secular clown
Happy to mistake his late mother for a bear.
69.
Persistence
ON A SATURDAY afternoon, sometime in the mid-1970s, I walked home from my friend’s house to discover my mother, in our kitchen, loading canned food into a cardboard box. My mother often cooked for funerals, but I hadn’t heard of anybody dying. And I wasn’t sure how a few cans of baked beans and evaporated milk would feed dozens of mourners anyway.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m giving food to the O’Neal family,” she said.
“But not the cling peaches,” I said, worried. I loved the cling peaches.
The O’Neals were a poor white family who’d moved to the reservation a few months earlier. It wasn’t unusual for Indians to marry white folks and create biracial families on our reservation. But the O’Neals—a mother, father, and approximately seven sons and daughters—weren’t friends or family with anybody on the rez. They were an entirely white family who had suddenly appeared like a magician’s rabbits. Why would a family choose to live on a strange reservation among Indian strangers? I would guess it had something to do with the O’Neals’ extreme poverty. There were lots of poor Indians on our reservation. I’d say the poverty was almost universal—save for the few dozen people who worked for the tribe or the Bureau of Indian Affairs—but the O’Neals were so poor that it boggled our poor Indian minds. They wore the same gingham dresses and denim overalls to school every day, and their shoes and boots were repaired with generations of tape, string, and pieces of random fabric. I don’t know how much time John Steinbeck had spent on Indian reservations, but he could have written the O’Neals into existence.
At school, a few days after their arrival, the O’Neal kid in my class, Bobby, sat beside me at lunch and attacked the food. He open-mouth-chewed, choked a few times because he was eating so fast, and finished his tray in seconds. I’d been hungry many times in my life. When I was seven years old, I once went thirty-two hours without eating as my parents were out looking for money like subsistence hunters scouting for deer. Thirty-two hours is certainly not a physically dangerous amount of time to go without food, but it was scary. I hadn’t known when I would get to eat again. And as my hunger grew, I’d wondered if I would ever eat again. But I’d experienced only a hint of what it truly means to be hungry. I had never felt as ravenous in my life as Bobby O’Neal appeared to be on that bright afternoon. He must not have eaten for days and days. And I would later learn that the five school lunches that he received were often the only food he’d eat that week.
“Can I have more?” he asked me after he’d licked his tray clean.
“Yes,” I said. “If they have extra.”
“Really?” he said.
I nodded.
He started crying. From gratitude, I guess. He was sitting in the lunchroom of one of the poorest schools in the state and he was sobbing because there was a chance of getting a second helping of Tater Tots and mysterious gravy. If I’d had the literary vocabulary, I would have recognized the situation as a tragic comedy.
He stood and picked up his empty tray.
“You have to wait until they give the signal,” I said. “And then you get in the line again. But be nice, or they won’t serve you.”
Bobby crouched with his tray, as if he were in the starting blocks preparing for the hundred-meter dash. I remember looking at his legs, tensed in anticipation, and marveling at his muscular calves. He was a skinny, malnourished kid, but even at his most hungry, he ran faster than everybody in the school. And, as he ran, Bobby would slap his ass and neigh like he was the jockey and the horse. I wonder now what kind of amazing athlete he might have been if coached and parented and fed properly.
I don’t remember much about the other O’Neal kids—one of the girls was shockingly beautiful even in her ragged clothes and kitchen-table haircut—but Bobby was treated like shit by us Indians. I suppose you’d like to believe that I, as a severely bullied kid who grew up into a reflexively compassionate adult, would have befriended Bobby. That was not the case. I wasn’t physically mean. I never slapped, punched, or kicked Bobby, and I don’t recall ever taunting him. But, after talking to him a few times during his first week at school, I learned to flee whenever he approached. I ostracized him as completely as everybody else did.
So, on that day when my mother packed canned goods into a box meant for the O’Neals, I didn’t join in while singing work-camp songs. Instead, I was angry. It’s not like our family enjoyed a surplus of nutrition.
“Why are you giving them the cling peaches?” I said. “Those are my favorites.” To reiterate, I adored the cling peaches.
In response, my mother quoted a Bible verse. I don’t remember which one. Throughout my childhood, we’d all endured our mother’s periodic Evangelical Christian fervors. She’d quoted hundreds of Bible verses at us, so they all blur together in my memory. If I had to guess at what she’d quoted while packing canned food for the O’Neals, I’d go with Matthew 7:12. And now, since I realize those canned goods had probably been given to us as charity, it seems that, on the reservation, the Golden Rule could be translated as “Hey, let’s pass this same unopened can of shitty-ass chipped beef around like it’s contagious.”
After my mother finished packing the food, she made me drive with her to the O’Neals’ house, a dilapidated shack that had been abandoned at least twenty years earlier. Half of the roof had collapsed, so the O’Neals had rigged and roped old plywood boards to act as some kind of semi-roof. It certainly wouldn’t be roof enough when the rain and snow arrived.
“What are they going to do for winter?” I asked my mother.
“The pastor will fix it,” she said.
Pastor Rod, the Assembly of God minister on the reservation, also had some serious carpentry skills. Talk about Jesus-like, right?<
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“Stay in the car,” my mother said.
She carried that box of canned goods to their front door and kick-knocked with her right foot. I was nervous. In those days, I was wary of white people. Hell, I’m still wary of white people. But I have physical strength and money now.
After a few moments, a white man opened the door, Bobby O’Neal’s father, I assume. I wish that I could describe him. But, in my memory of that day, I can see only a pale blur talking to my mother.
I do remember that he yelled and cursed at my mother. I do remember that he pushed the box of food that my mother was holding. He didn’t push violently, but it was enough to make her step back. Then he slammed the door shut and left my mother standing shocked and silent.
She took a deep breath, then walked back to our car. She set the box of canned goods in the backseat, sat behind the steering wheel, and stared into the distance.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“He doesn’t want charity,” she said.
We silently sat for another minute or two. I watched my mother making a decision. I wonder what Bible passages she was quoting to herself. Then she got out of the car, grabbed the food from the backseat, and walked toward the house again.
I was terrified. What would I do if the O’Neal man got even more angry? What if he become more violent? I opened my car door a few inches. On the reservation, I’d been conditioned to throw the first punch, regardless of the enemy’s size and strength. So I was ready to fight to protect my mother. I was, like all of the kids on the reservation, a child warrior.
Holding that box of food, my mother stood at the front door.
In the car, I was almost crying from fear.
My mother lifted her leg as if she were going to kick-knock again.
I opened the car door a little wider to give me more room to quickly exit the vehicle.
Then, without knocking or making a sound, my mother set down that box of food at the O’Neals’ front door and walked back to me.
We didn’t say a word as we drove away. But my mother must have been terrified, too, when she’d approached the O’Neal house for the second time—when she’d decided that she would risk the fact that the white man’s pride and shame might turn into absolute rage.
She tried to find some music on the radio, but reception was even more random in those days than it is now, so we rode in silence for a while.
Then my mother sang.
But she didn’t sing a Christian hymn.
No, she sang her favorite song of the moment, a country ballad by Jessi Colter: “I’m not Lisa / My name is Julie / Lisa left you years ago.”
My mother had a beautiful voice.
I loved it when she sang.
She kept singing all the way home.
And, yes, I am still pissed that she gave away the cling peaches.
70.
Ode in Reverse
This poem is for everyone in my life—
My sons, friends, mother, siblings, and my wife.
It’s a cuff to the head—a self-rebuff.
Dear ones, I have not loved you well enough.
71.
Construction
SHERMAN,” MY WIFE said after reading this memoir for the first time in its entirety. “Your book is constructed in fabric squares like one of your mom’s quilts.”
“I meant it that way,” I said, but that’s a half-truth.
I realized I had constructed a quilt of words only after I’d read my own damn book for the first time in its entirety.
And then I saw the patterns and repetition of patterns. I saw the stitches and knots. I saw that hands had worked in the same way that my mother’s hands had worked.
Fabric square ad infinitum.
My mother, the quilter, will always haunt me.
72.
Freedom
IN FEBRUARY 1979, I came home from the reservation school and told my mother and father that I needed to leave. I wanted to go to college and become a pediatrician. And that would never happen if I stayed in the reservation school system.
I’d been trying to escape the rez for years. After all, Indian reservations were created by white men to serve as rural concentration camps, and I think that’s still their primary purpose. So, of course, I ran away from home in third grade. I packed a small bag with comic books, peanut butter sandwiches, and my eyeglasses, and made it almost two miles down the road before my mother found me.
After that incident, she often said, “Junior, you were born with a suitcase in your hand.” That might have been a complimentary thing to say to a nomad. But my tribe hadn’t been nomadic in more than a century.
So when I came home that cold winter day in 1979 and asked my parents to let me leave the rez school, I wouldn’t have been shocked if they had denied me. I was only twelve years old and I was asking them to let me abandon the tribe and become an indigenous refugee in the little farm town of Reardan.
“Can I leave?” I asked them.
And my parents, knowing that I was betraying thousands of years of tribal traditions to go live among white people, said, “Yes.”
My parents, as wounded and fragile as they were, had the strength and courage to set me free.
I think they knew I would never return, not in body or spirit, but they loved me too much to make me stay.
73.
Chronology
IN EARLY SEPTEMBER 1980, my father drove my big brother, Arnold, and me from our home on the Spokane Indian Reservation twenty miles south for my first day of eighth grade and my big brother’s first day of eleventh grade in Reardan, Washington. My brother and I became the only Spokane Indians in the Reardan school district, which was 99 percent white. We were brown kids in a sea of white kids inside an ocean of wheat fields. I’d made the decision on my own to leave Wellpinit. But I don’t remember why my big brother had followed my lead. He was a great basketball player, and Reardan had a legendary sports program, so I can only assume he transferred for athletic reasons. He and I were brothers, but I think he’d always been emotionally closer to his reservation Indian friends and cousins than he’d ever been to me, which explains why he dropped out of Reardan before Thanksgiving and returned to the rez school. I love my brother. And I didn’t want to be alone in a white town. I didn’t want to be the only one. So I almost followed him back to the rez. But then I didn’t. Because the thing you learn as a hugely ambitious Indian is that you’re often going to be the only Indian in the room, so you’d better get used to it.
A couple of weeks before school started, my mother’s brother, Leonard Cox, had died of cirrhosis. He was a gregarious alcoholic and gave me one-dollar bills whenever he saw me. At the end, his belly was so distended and black that my mother said, “He looked like an orca.”
So I walked into that new school with multiple griefs. As I lost my uncle, I had also untethered myself from my tribe. I was terrified. And then it got worse.
On October 22, 1980, only a few weeks into school, my mother’s mother, Etta Adams, Big Mom, died of cancer.
Big Mom’s funeral was so crowded with Indian family, friends, and strangers that I was able to sneak out and walk home to mourn alone. Before she’d died, Big Mom had given me a battery-powered wall clock that didn’t work even with batteries. Yes, my dying grandmother had gifted me a hell of a metaphor. But I wasn’t thinking about metaphors on that day. I lay on my bed, held that stopped clock against my chest, and mourned.
Like my mother, I would often turn sleep into a weapon of self-defense. Or, if unable to sleep, I would throw the blankets over my face, turn toward the nearest wall, and pretend to sleep. Like my mother, I would turn my insomnia—my inability to sleep—into a weapon.
After her mother’s funeral, my mother stayed in bed for two days.
Then, early in January 1981, less than three months after Big Mom’s death, we learned that my big sister, Mary McCoy, and her husband, Steve McCoy, had died in a trailer-house fire in St. Ignatius, Montana. The fire
started during a party. My sister and my brother-in-law were drunkenly passed out in the back bedroom and had no chance to escape. Mary was my half sister. We shared our mother, Lillian. Mary was only twenty-seven years old when she died.
In six months, my mother had lost her mother, daughter, and brother. I was not a superstitious kid but I worried that I had jinxed our family when I’d left the rez school. But then I reasoned, “Hey, I still live on the rez. I just go to a different school. There’s no reason for our family to be cursed.”
Today, as a nonsuperstitious adult, I still worry that I’m at fault. It’s a ridiculous narcissistic worry, but real nonetheless.
At my sister’s funeral, my mother tried to climb into her coffin. My mother screamed in the tribal language. She wailed in English.
My mother screamed, “Mother!”
My mother screamed, “Brother!”
My mother screamed, “Daughter!”
My mother collapsed and said my sister’s name.
She said, “Mary. O Mary, Mary, O my daughter, O Mary.”
Of course, it was a prayer. That prayer sounded so powerful that I wondered if my mother might bring my sister back to life.
But she didn’t.
Nobody has that kind of power.
Even God has brought back only a fistful of people.
And my mother was not God.
Then my mother wailed so loudly that I thought she’d snapped her ribs. I think something broke inside her. But not something anatomical. I believe that she broke her capacity to fully love the rest of her children. Or maybe to fully love me. Or maybe to fully love herself. That audible snap I heard—that crack of bone—was maybe her soul snapping in half.