There There(73)

Tony hears Maxine singing in the kitchen again and then he’s there. He’s there and he’s four years old, the summer before going into kindergarten. He’s in the kitchen with Maxine. He’s not twenty-one-year-old Tony thinking about his four-year-old self—remembering. He’s just there again, all the way back to being four-year-old Tony. He’s on a chair helping her wash dishes. He’s dipping his hand into the sink and blowing bubbles at her out of the palm of his hand. She doesn’t think it’s funny but she doesn’t stop him. She keeps wiping the bubbles on the top of his head. He keeps asking her: What are we? Grandma, what are we? She doesn’t answer.

Tony dips his hand back into the sink of bubbles and dishes and blows them at her again. She has some on the side of her face and she doesn’t wipe them off, just keeps a straight face and keeps on washing. Tony thinks this is the funniest thing he’s ever seen. And he doesn’t know if she knows this is happening, or if they’re really not there. He doesn’t know that he’s not there, because he’s right there, in that moment which he can’t remember as having happened because it’s happening to him now. He’s there with her in the kitchen blowing sink bubbles.

    Finally, after catching his breath and containing his laughter, Tony says, “Grandma, you know. You know they’re there.”

“What’s that?” Maxine says.

“Grandma, you’re playing,” Tony says.

“Playing what?” Maxine says.

“They’re right there, Grandma, I see them with my own eyes.”

“You go play now and let me finish these in peace,” Maxine says, and smiles a smile that tells him she knows about the bubbles.

Tony plays with his Transformers on the floor of his bedroom. He makes them fight in slow motion. He gets lost in the story he works out for them. It’s always the same. There is a battle, then a betrayal, then a sacrifice. The good guys end up winning, but one of them dies, like Optimus Prime had to in Transformers, which Maxine let him watch on that old VHS machine, even though she said she thought he was too young. When they watched it together, at the moment they realized Optimus had died, they looked over to each other and saw they were both crying, which then made them laugh for a few seconds, for just that singular moment, both of them together in the dark of Maxine’s bedroom, laughing and crying at the exact same time.

As Tony has them walk away from the battle, they talk about how they wish it didn’t have to be that way. They wish they could all have made it. Tony has Optimus Prime say, “We’re made of metal, made hard, able to take it. We were made to transform. So if you get a chance to die, to save someone else, you take it. Every time. That’s what Autobots were put here for.”



* * *



—

    Tony is back on the field. Every hole is a burn and a pull. Now he feels as if he might not float up but instead fall inside of something underneath him. There is an anchor, something he’s been rooted to all this time, as if in each hole there is a hook attached to a line pulling him down. A wind from the bay sweeps through the stadium, moves through him. Tony hears a bird. Not outside. From where he’s anchored, to the bottom of the bottom, the middle of the middle of him. The center’s center. There is a bird for every hole in him. Singing. Keeping him up. Keeping him from going. Tony remembers something his grandma said to him when she was teaching him how to dance. “You have to dance like birds sing in the morning,” she’d said, and showed him how light she could be on her feet. She bounced and her toes pointed in just the right way. Dancer’s feet. Dancer’s gravity. Tony needs to be light now. Let the wind sing through the holes in him, listen to the birds singing. Tony isn’t going anywhere. And somewhere in there, inside him, where he is, where he’ll always be, even now it is morning, and the birds, the birds are singing.





Acknowledgments


To my wife, Kateri, my first (best) reader/listener, who believed in me and the book from the very beginning, and to my son, Felix, for all the ways he helps and inspires me to be a better human and writer; to them both, for whom I’d give my own heart’s blood. I couldn’t have done it without them.

There were many people and organizations that helped get this book out into the world. I’d like to thank from the innermost reaches of my heart all of the following: The MacDowell Colony, for supporting my work long before it came to be what it is now. Denise Pate at the Oakland Cultural Arts Fund, for funding a storytelling project that never came to fruition except for in fiction—i.e., in a chapter of this novel. Pam Houston, for all she’s taught me, and for being the first person to believe in this book enough to send it out herself. Jon Davis, for all the ways he’s supported me and the MFA (Institute of American Indian Arts) program I graduated from in 2016, for all the copyediting help, and for believing in me from the get-go. Sherman Alexie, for how he helped this become a better novel, and for all the unbelievable support he’s given me once the book was bought. Terese Mailhot, for the all she’s done to make it so our lives as writers have paralleled each other, and for all the support and encouragement she’s always given me, for being the unbelievably amazing writer she is. The Yaddo Corporation, for the time and space to finish this book before it got sent out. Writing By Writers and the fellowship they gave me in 2016. Claire Vaye Watkins, for hearing me read and believing in the book enough to send it to her agent. Derek Palacio, for helping guide the manuscript, and for all the advice and support he gave me post-graduation. All the many writers and teachers at IAIA, who taught me a tremendous amount. My brother, Mario, and his wife, Jenny, for letting me sleep on their couch whenever I came into town, and for their love and support. My mom and dad for always believing in me no matter what I tried to do. Carrie and Ladonna. Christina. For all that we’ve been through and how we’ve always helped each other along the way. Mamie and Lou, Teresa, Bella, and Sequoia, for helping to make our family what it is. For helping to give me the time I needed to write. For being sweet, caring, and loving to my son during those times when I was away to write. My uncle Tom and aunt Barb, for all the ways they help and love everyone in our family. Soob and Casey. My uncle Jonathan. Martha, Geri, and Jeffrey, for being there for my family when we needed them most. My editor Jordan, for loving and believing in the book, and helping me to make it as good as it could possibly be. My agent Nicole Aragi, for reading the manuscript too late one night, or too early one morning, when it seemed the world was falling apart, for everything she’s done for me and the book since. Everyone at Knopf for all their undying support. The Native community in Oakland. My living Cheyenne relatives, and my ancestors who made it through unimaginable hardship, who prayed hard for us next ones here now, doing our best to pray and work hard for those to come.