What had just happened. And she did nothing.
“Oh,” she said to me. “Mike was joking. You take
Everything so seriously.” My mother, so traumatized
By her own painful life, could not see the sharp danger
Of anybody else’s knife. I don’t know if the other boys
Were as traumatized as me. They’ve never talked about Mike,
So maybe they are mute with post-traumatic stress.
Maybe they don’t know how to talk about Mike.
I often wonder why I’m the one who remembers
All the pain. Why am I the one who remains obsessed
By the bloody nose, but rarely remembers any joy?
Eight years after our faux kidnapping, I was watching TV
With my girlfriend when Mike’s face appeared on-screen.
He’d been arrested in Spokane for kidnapping, raping,
And murdering two little girls. One of their bodies
Has never been found. And then he’d tried to hide
His crime by piling brush on the other girl’s body
And setting her aflame. After seeing this news,
I turned to my girlfriend and said, “We were practice
For him. We were dress rehearsal for rape
And torture and murder. We were his game.”
Growing up on the rez, I’d often felt like a prey
Animal, like a carnivore’s easiest meal.
But that fear was more metaphor than real,
Except for the time, only a mile from my house,
When a killer played with me like I was his mouse.
I called my mother and asked her if she’d heard
About Mike. About the murders he had committed.
She said she’d forgotten about him, which meant
That she’d forgotten what he had done to me
And the other Indian boys. “Mom,” I said.
“Mike hurt us. Don’t you remember that?”
She denied that it had ever happened.
And that if it had happened, then it could not
Have been that bad. “If Mike had done that
To you for real,” she said, “then he would’ve been
In trouble. He would have gone to jail.”
I laughed. “Mom,” I said. “Nothing happened
Because you didn’t take me seriously.”
“Well,” my mother said. “He’s in jail now.
So what’s done is done.” I was pissed
At my mother’s dismissal. I hung up the phone
And remembered yet again that she, as a child,
Had once tortured, killed, and mutilated a cat.
Who does shit like that? Who can be that cruel?
It was my mother. It was my mother. That’s who.
7.
Benediction
I only spent a few hours with my mother
As she lay dying in her rented hospital bed.
I kissed her, told her I loved her,
And then I fled.
8.
My Sister’s Waltz
OUR MOTHER WAS on her deathbed. Dreaming morphine dreams. Speaking the tribal language in her sleep. And then she was awake. And she was thirsty. So she called out in English to my sister.
“Help me,” she said. “My mouth is dry.”
Using a bendy straw in a plastic cup, my sister tried to give our mother a sip of water.
But my sister wasn’t wearing her glasses, so her depth perception was off. And she was exhausted. So she accidentally spilled the water on Mom.
“Oh, no,” my sister said to our mother. “You’re soaked now.”
Our mother was too high on painkillers to care, but my sober sister was mortified.
For perhaps the tenth time that day, she cried.
“Here, Mom,” my sister said. “Let me help you into your wheelchair and then I can change your sheets first. And then I can change your clothes.”
My sister and our mother had traded maternal responsibilities.
“Lift your arms,” my sister said. “And I’ll lift you.”
My sister carefully pulled our mother to her feet and wrapped her in a hug.
“Okay,” my sister said. “Now two steps forward and then we’ll sit in your chair.”
Ah, the slow-motion choreography of hospice ballet.
“Okay, Mom,” my sister said, “take one step forward.”
Our dying mother took that one step toward her wheelchair, but then she immediately took a step back. Our mother swayed.
“Mom, let me help you,” my sister said.
“It’s okay,” our mother said. “I’m dancing on purpose. I want to dance. Dance with me.”
It was three in the morning but our mother was awake, and she shuffled left and right.
“Oh,” our mother said. “We are dancing. It’s been so long since I danced. And I don’t know why nobody asked me. I was a good dancer.”
My sister laughed. She was alone in the night with our mother. There was no music. But my sister held our mother closely and shuffled with her. They moved in the smallest of circles.
“We only danced for a few seconds,” my sister later said. “But, all the next day, whenever she was awake and had visitors, Mom kept bragging that she’d danced until sunrise.”
O Mother! O Mother! Even in your last moments, you told beautiful lies.
9.
End of Life
MY MOTHER WAS a tiny woman, just under five feet tall. But her mother, Etta Adams, was over six feet tall. Her matriarchal power matched her physical size, so everybody called her Big Mom. She was born in 1904 in Nespelem, Washington, and she and her parents were close friends with the Nez Perce leader Chief Joseph and his family.
Yes, my grandmother was babysat by the famous Chief Joseph, who in 1877 led his seven hundred followers on an epic eleven-hundred-mile flight from two thousand U.S. Cavalry soldiers. He was eventually captured and delivered his mournful promise that he would “fight no more forever.” He and his followers were exiled to the Colville Indian Reservation, where Joseph died not long after my grandmother was born.
For Indians, loneliness is a natural cause of death.
In 1980, as she lay dying of lung cancer in her reservation home, Big Mom was visited daily by many Indians. She was famous in the Indian world for her spiritual power—for her ancient stories and songs. We still have a dozen photo albums of Big Mom, thin and bald from chemotherapy, posing with all of her indigenous visitors.
My grandmother wanted to say good-bye to everybody.
As she died, she wanted to be celebrated for her life.
She wanted to be remembered.
In 2015, as my mother lay dying of cancer in her reservation home, she asked my sisters to tell only her most trusted friends and relatives.
“I don’t want to see people I don’t want to see,” our mother said.
So, while my grandmother was visited by hundreds of Indians, my mother said her official good-byes to maybe only thirty people. Most folks on the reservation didn’t know she was terminally ill.
My mother was a spy who treated her own death like a top-secret mission.
Or maybe she was like a mad queen who believed only a few of her most loyal subjects deserved to know about her cancer.
Or maybe she was terrified.
Or maybe, as my wife thinks, my mother just wanted to leave this complicated world in the most uncomplicated way possible.
When I visited my mother for the last time, along with my wife and teenage sons, she asked for a photograph.
“Oh,” my sister said. “Do you want to pose with Junior’s family?”
“No,” my mother said. “I just want a picture of Arnold and Junior and my grandsons. All the men. Put them right there.”
She pointed at the plasma television located only three feet from her rented hospital bed.
“Don’t you want to be in the picture with the men?” my sister asked my mother.
“No, no,” she said. “Just them.”
So, yes, there exists a photograph of my big brother, my sons, and I as we stand with our arms around one another in front of my late mother’s big television that happened to be playing the reality show Naked and Afraid.
Death is always incongruous.
In that photo, you can see the foot of my mother’s deathbed. But you don’t see my mother.
She is located outside the frame. She is the unseen witness. She exists in that negative space.
10.
Valediction
After my sisters told me they had to contort
Themselves and my terminally ill mother
As they lifted her from her deathbed
And led her down the hallway
Into the narrow bathroom of my childhood home,
Then bruised her hip when they lost their grip
And dropped her to the floor,
I texted my big brother that he could make
A greater space for everyone to navigate
If he removed the bathroom door.
He quickly did as he was asked,
But I should have done more
Than I did. I should have done
Something more. I’ve kept the score.
I keep on keeping the score.
When it comes to my mother’s
Last days, I should have done more
Than ask my brother to fix that door.
I should have done more. I should
Have done more. I should have bought
My mother a new door. A new house.
I should have bargained with the gods
And given my mother a few more weeks.
A few more days. A few more minutes.
I should have forgiven her for all of her sins
Against me. I should have asked to be
Forgiven for my sins against her.
But I never spoke of forgiveness. I only
Talked about the door. I only asked
My brother to perform the minor work
That I didn’t know how to do. I made it
Easier for my mother to use the restroom.
That’s all I did. That’s all I did. Jesus,
I should have done more than worry
About that goddamn door. I should have
Done more. I should have done more.
But, wait, what exactly should I have done?
How could I have made anything better?
I don’t know, not exactly, but I’m inexactly
Ashamed that I was, until the end, a bitter son.
11.
Some Prophecies
Are More Obvious
than Others
LILLIAN ALEXIE DIED on the night of July 1, 2015.
Like our mother, my siblings and I will eventually get cancer. And some of us—maybe all of us—will be killed by that cancer.
“You will get sick,” my wife often says to me.
My wife is a Hidatsa/Ho-Chunk/Potawatomi Indian. The daughter of a Bureau of Indian Affairs administrator, she lived on five different reservations before her high school and college years in the relatively big city of Riverside, California. Therefore, she is wise and wise-ass.
“I know I will get cancer,” I say to her.
“You have to be vigilant,” she says.
“I know, I know,” I say.
But how do I kill the cancer cells that probably infiltrated my body decades ago? Aren’t those microscopic and domestic terrorists just waiting to strike? How do I stop the process that probably started when I took my first breath on the Spokane Indian Reservation?
I cannot defeat cancer. Nobody defeats cancer. There is no winning or losing. There is no surviving or not surviving.
There are only coin flips: heads or tails; benign or malignant; weight loss or bloating; morphine or oxycodone; extreme rescue efforts or Do Not Resuscitate; live or die.
12.
Terminal Velocity
Fuck you, Small-Cell Cancer. Fuck you, Fission,
For splitting cells, for birthing the tumors
That killed my mother. Diagnosed and dead
In a few weeks, my mother was evacuated
From this world like it was on fire.
Fuck you, Small-Cell Cancer, for invading
My mother’s lungs. She was not a smoker!
I want to choke you to death, Small-Cell Cancer,
And suffocate you, suffocate you, suffocate you
Like you suffocated my mother. Fuck you,
Small-Cell Cancer, I want to shoot you in the heart
And mount you on the hood of my truck.
I want to trophy you like you trophied my mother.
Fuck you, Cancer, fuck you, Cemetery Dancer,
I’m going to learn or invent a war anthem—
A song that will obliterate you when you attack.
Note by note, my song will kill you, atom by atom.
My song will protect cousins, nieces, nephews, sisters
And brothers. My song will protect everybody’s fathers
And mothers. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, Cancer,
For making me wish that I could write a song
Powerful enough to banish you. Fuck you, God
Of Cancer, for killing my mother, for splitting her
Into many halves, for turning her blood and body
Into host. Fuck you, Small-Cell Cancer. Fuck you,
Mr. Death, for making me so grateful to be alive—
For making me count and write odes to each breath.
Fuck you, Cancer, for being as constant as gravity—
For being as necessary as food, shelter, and warmth.
Fuck you, fuck you, Cancer, fuck you for your immortality.
13.
Who Died on the First of July?
Great American actor turned recluse
Marlon Brando died of respiratory
failure. After twenty years in exile,
Juan Perón died of a heart attack
One year into his return to power.
Wilhelm Bach, composer and eldest son
Of Johann Sebastian Bach, never
Lived up to his father’s fame and genius
And died in poverty. Wolfman Jack,
Disc jockey and rock ’n’ roll pioneer,
Died only moments after he returned
Home from work and kissed his wife.
Oliver Plunkett, Irish saint, was hanged,
Drawn and quartered because of his faith.
Harriet Beecher Stowe, abolitionist
And author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,
The novel that, according to some,
Was the first shot fired in the Civil War,
Died of natural causes. Nostradamus,
A doctor who believed that he could see
The future. Though I don’t know if he predicted
His own death. Luther Vandross, the Tenor
Of the Gods, was only fifty-four years old
When he died of diabetes and heart failure.
Lillian Alexie, my mother, died
Of small-cell cancer in a hospital bed
At her reservation home. She’d wanted
To die on the living room couch where she’d slept
For nearly forty years. It wasn’t the same couch
All that time. Five previous couches died
Before my mother did. She is survived
By the living and the ghosts of her tribe.
To honor her legacy, light a fire
So that you smell like powwow campground smoke.
In lieu of flowers, please donate your time
To quilt work, basketball, and dirty jokes.
14.
Drive, She Said
Traveling 296 miles to my mother’s wake and funeral,
My wife and sons and I drive past
Five roadkill deer, two squashed coyotes, and a porcupine
Roughly ripped in half. In another
time,
If my mother had been a passenger, she’d have insisted
That we pull over the car and park
So she could carefully collect that porcupine
And take it home to harvest the sharp quills
For war-dance regalia. But my mother is dead,
And my wife and sons and I don’t war-dance,
So we drive past that dead porcupine
And abandon its ceremonial possibilities.
But I know, for the rest of my life,
I will think of my mother and her knife
And the dozens of times
She gave extraordinary meaning
To ordinary porcupines and their quills.
Ah, listen closely
When you drive along a two-lane highway
Between the pines
And you’ll hear a hundred war-dancers
Rattling their now-human quills
And thanking my mother, thanking
My mother, thanking my mother
For her beauty and will.
15.
The Viewing
As the story goes, my beautiful cousin was born