Shutter(34)
“I don’t know.” I gave Declan back the mugshot. “I’m sorry.”
“Well, if you see him or see anything that doesn’t look right, can you please contact me at Internal Affairs?” He handed me his card.
“I have your number already.” I pushed a few crumbs off my shirt and drank my cup of coffee in one full gulp. “Thank you for the lunch, by the way. I was starving.”
“I can see that.” He smiled, projecting the shadow of a dimple on the right side of his cheek. He stood and pulled my chair out for me. “Thank you for coming down here, again.”
“No problem. I’ll let you know if I hear or see anything. Or if I get really hungry.” I returned the smile.
“Please do,” he replied.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Kodak Instamatic 77X
MY FIRST YEAR in the city with my mother, as summer moved into fall, the air was cool, especially at night when you could expect a gentle rain or a downpour with equal anticipation. I missed Grandma and Tohatchi, but I had become accustomed to the convenience of the city. I was anonymous.
I attended Our Lady of Guadalupe Elementary, since my mom and grandma agreed that a good Catholic upbringing might have some sort of effect on my “visions,” as Grandma called them. I thought the school was spooky. Gigantic crucifixes stood ominous and stiff in the front doorways. The shiny linoleum floor was a checkerboard of red and an aged-guacamole green.
“Students, we have a new classmate.” My teacher seemed as uncomfortable as I did. I looked at the floor. “Do you want to get up and introduce yourself?”
I stood in front of all of them in inescapable silence, my throat dry, my tongue a pink log of steel. “My name is Rita.”
“Rita is from the Navajo reservation. Right, Rita?”
I nodded.
“Class. Remember when we talked about the Navajo in our history lesson?” There was silence. “Well, you can go ahead and sit down, Rita. Thank you.”
I watched the girls point, cupping their hands around their faces and cackling at me. My voice was still steeped in the language of the reservation—my heavy Navajo accent digging in deep and hanging on my words.
Celina, the blonde who headed up most of the cackling, described it best. “You talk like a caveman,” she yelled during lunch. The laughter spread like an infection, with each young throat coated in hate. My new classmates glowed with the excitement of knowing I was different. The dirty Indian, now sitting among all the white and Spanish faces, all who disliked me more than any reservation schoolyard bully ever could. I knew then I would hear the echoes of their laughter for the rest of my life. So I stood at the back of the class and took their picture with my 77x Instamatic. All their little faces were surprised and bitterly white from the flash. I got those angry little bastards. Their souls were in my box. The teacher took it away, seizing my arm with her pinching fingers.
“You can have this back at the end of the day, young lady.” Her white face and red lips were tight with impatience. I know she thought I was a dirty Indian too.
Then a small brown face emerged from the back of the class with a smile as big as a slice of grapefruit. Her name was Shanice, and she was an Indian too. She came from a pueblo only thirty minutes away from the city. We quickly became friends. We found that the two of us were a force that kept the creepy kids and nuns away. We might not have been from the same area, but we didn’t care. We were brown, uncomfortable, and out of place, being forced to learn about Jesus and how to throw the perfect punch when we were cornered. After a while, most of the kids and nuns knew to just leave us alone—the untamable, wild, and godless heathens at the back of the class. We were inseparable.
Shanice had irresponsible parents who rarely came home, and my mother was working. We pretty much wandered the city by ourselves, me taking pictures and Shanice posing in most of them. We roamed around the plaza, getting free food from some of the street vendors when we picked up trash and brought them customers. We were a couple of cute little Indian girls and sometimes earned money by letting tourists take our pictures. I’m sure we were a novelty in our Catholic school uniforms, our cheeks shiny with dry skin and our hair in coils of wild black. We would smile and take their money—a dollar here and there. No one asked questions.
We grew into our strange, new, and awkward bodies together as we explored the people and the places in our town. We were happy. No one bothered us. I slowly surrendered to the cosmic easiness of the city, its movie screens and video games. Its quadrants of stale and empty banality became my home.
During junior high school, Shanice’s mother took to coming home more often, mostly because the state told her they would take Shanice away if she didn’t. It was good there was someone else at home, though, because Shanice’s grandma barely spoke English and coughed all the time. I was surprised she had lived as long as she had. When Shanice’s grandma died, her mom decided to move after the summer was over. I was sad for days. Shanice and I decided to spend every day of the summer together, earning as much money as we could so that we could visit each other.
About a month after Shanice’s grandmother died, we sat in her room, surrounded by boxes with the radio on, looking through trashy magazines and counting our change for the weekend. On the chair by the window, Shanice’s grandma sat smiling and watching us like she used to when she was alive, except she wasn’t coughing. I couldn’t help but stare.