Future Home of the Living God(2)

What was I to do? Until this biological confusion, until my pregnancy, until this great uncertainty that life itself has suddenly become, I’ve hidden the fact that I even opened the letter. I’ve told my Songmaker parents that they raised me, I love them, and that is final. I’ve told them that I want no complications; I want no issues of abandonment and reconciliation; I want no maudlin reunion, no snake tears. But the truth is different. The truth is I am pissed off. Who are the Potts to suddenly decide to be my parents, now, when I don’t need them? Worse, who are they to have destroyed the romantic imaginary Native parents I’ve invented from earliest childhood, the handsome ones with long, both-sided braids, who died in some vague and suitably spiritual Native way—perhaps fasting themselves to death or sundancing to heatstroke or plunging off a cliff for love or being carried off by thunderbirds? Who were the Potts to keep on living their unremarkable lives without me, and to work in a Superpumper?

I wouldn’t have had the slightest thing to do with them if it wasn’t for my baby. Sweets, you’re different! You’re new. Things can start over with you, and things need to start over. You deserve more. You deserve two sets of grandparents. Not to mention genetic info, which may affect who you are even beyond whatever is now occurring. There may be hereditary illnesses. Or unexpected talents—one can always hope, though that seems doubtful, given my birth mother’s letter. Still, I think you need to enter the web of connections that I never really had.

I embraced Catholicism in my crisis-creating year, at first as a form of rebellion, but also in an effort to get those connections. I wanted an extended family—a whole parish of friends. It was no passing phase and I have integrated both my ethnicity and my intellectual leanings into my faith first by analyzing the canonization of the Lily of the Mohawks, Kateri Tekakwitha, and then by editing, writing, illustrating, publishing, and distributing a magazine of Catholic inquiry called Zeal. I obtain funding for my work through private donations, occasional per capita casino payments, and a small contribution from my church. I’ve got enough to keep the magazine going until your due date, December 25, which also means that I’ve got roughly four and a half months to figure out how to give you a coherent family as well as be a mom.

It’s not enough time.

Your father might help, but I’m trying to keep our distance.

All the more reason to find you an extra grandfather, maybe an uncle or two, a cousin—functional, I hope.

*

“Cedar?”

I have been writing to you and ignoring the constant ringing of the telephone. I decide to pick it up this time because I have a feeling that your father was calling and now he has given up. I always know when he has given up.

“Mom.”

“Look, what’s going on out there is making us very nervous, honey, why don’t you come back home?”

As always, her voice is cool and capable. Stress calms her.

“I’ve got to do something first.”

Now is the time to tell her about you—I really have to—but I’m paralyzed by those two words I’m pregnant and so I tell her the other thing. The family thing.

“Remember that letter, Mom? That one you gave me about a year ago, the one from my biological family or whatever? I’m going up there to meet them.”

Silence.

“To the reservation,” I say.

“Now? Why now?”

Her consternation is not about jealousy or disapproval. After all, she gave me the letter and left the whole decision up to me. She even urged me to open the letter. She really is worried about the timing—this is Sera.

“Because I have to.”

“Please, not now.”

Her voice has that decisive I-will-deal-with-this tone I’ve heard just a few times: when I called her and asked her to pick me up from a party where a drunk boy had tried to rape me but instead had puked on me. When I told her I was getting baptized and confirmed as a Catholic.

I know she’s right, and yet nothing out there feels as important as what’s in here. Driving to my house, I saw that the streets were full of the usual number of normal, purposed, smiling, and gregarious Minnesotans, people talking at the bus stops. People carrying their shopping bags and backpacks, walking at an appropriate rate of speed, not looking either shaken or scared.

“I’ve just got to, I can’t explain it. I’ll come right back, Mom, don’t worry. I know things could destabilize.”

“I think they are right now. It’s coming. Here, talk to your dad.”

There is some frantic whispering, shuffling, as she tells him my plan.

“Listen, we’ll go with you. There’s something . . . baby, listen . . .”

Hearing Glen call me baby fills my eyes with tears. He’d do that when I had a rough day at school or had my heart broken or got Bs. I hated getting Bs. Alienating Glen was hard on me, but I had to try. To my relief, I utterly failed to make him go away or even really lose his temper. Once, he said he was exasperated with me. I had to be content with that.

“Oh Dad, I’m sorry. Don’t worry. I’m going to be fine. I just have to do this and it’s only for a day.”

“Cedar, things are taking a more ominous turn, though I don’t think people realize it yet. What we’re hearing on the news is, and there’s talk of, I know this sounds impossible . . .”