Heart Berries: A Memoir(19)

The only thing, socioeconomically, practically, or rationally, I can do, is ask if you could abstain from speaking to her again.

The next day, I looked at the wreckage of our home. You forgave me with a resignation I saw in your face.

It had rained, and your chess pieces were already buried in the soil of our backyard.

We drove to Santa Fe, aware of my fragile state. You gave me your phone to look up directions in the middle of our long drive. Instead, I saw messages you sent to your Laura.

She wanted to see you months back. You explained to her that you would stop by after you visited your ex-girlfriend in the hospital, me.

And, to my surprise, you told her that you missed the smell of her on your pillow. The thing you told me the first nights we were together.

The first night you ever cooked for me, probably the way you cooked for her, you told me you loved me. I believed, after seeing how familiar you were with her, that your love was a slimy reproduction.

While I cried—while you drove—I punched you. You didn’t swerve, but you held your eye with one hand. I cried over your reprimands. I cried over your shock, for hours, until we arrived at the hotel.

Because I can function in the external world, I showered and went to my first workshop at school. You drove me, because you feared I would hurt myself. You followed me in, because I asked you.

It was an Indian renaissance. Somehow it was more Indian with you there behind me, with a black eye. Somehow it was more Indian because I was pregnant. There was a medicine wheel in the academic building, so large and proud to be Indian that I knew I was home. There were Indian writers, and we smiled at each other, as if this was a sovereign land and we belonged.

You were a bystander to my joy. You had a black eye, and we covered it with excuses.

It was then I realized I was partly my father. I hurt you because I felt justified. You deserve a body without violation.

At residency, you did harmless things. When I came out of my first workshop, you were talking to a woman: a memoirist, who wrote about being a dominatrix. When I approached you both, you immediately introduced me. She asked you for your full name. She did not ask me for mine.

When we got home, she had already sent you a request to be friends on social media.

“This is what writers do. They network,” you said.

That night my brother told me on the phone that Indian women were crazy, and white men never expect it. He told me I was not my father. We lamented together about the past.

He explained that my father was much worse than punches. Our father didn’t like our brother Guyweeyo: the oldest brother from another father. Our protector. He often punished Guyweeyo by pulling him into a room and locking the door behind them. We all have problems from that time. Problems I forget: We wet the bed as toddlers and children. I couldn’t go to people’s homes because of my accidents. The problem followed me into the third grade. None of us attended school frequently. All of us had substance abuse problems, which are still welcome over the very sober pain of remembering. Ovila told me that he doesn’t know what our father did to Guy.

We lamented about Isadore. When Isadore was taken away, I often held newborn Isaiah, incapable of looking at him.

We managed to piece together a night I took a bottle of aspirin, thinking I could kill myself. I told him that, in my sleep, I reached my arm over to pull Isadore closer to me in bed, and he was not there. I was terrified in the dark, searching with both hands to find my son. It took moments, maybe minutes, for me to realize that he was gone. He had been taken away.

I walked into the living room and Ovi was sitting down, holding a cup of tea. I didn’t want to burden him with my pain. I think I forgot that Isaiah was even in his crib asleep. My pain was selfish.

I went into the bathroom and swallowed a bottle of aspirin. It was funny then, somehow, because Mom had only died several months before: her douche and hair dye and tweezers were still in the bathroom. I had to search through her things to find the bottle.

I told Ovi what I did, and he laughed at me. He said that I should go and barf, because aspirin isn’t fatal. He went to get me water, and, before he could return, I ran to the bathroom and made it to the sink. I threw up slimy, smaller white pills.

I had to hold myself against the walls to return to bed. My stomach hurt so much. My C-section scar ached. I laid down on my back, and he opened my door. He sat down and observed me.

He smiled as I groaned.

“Do you need an aspirin?” he said.

It was the most painful laugh. I remembered my new baby in the crib, who slept every night like clockwork, like a gift.

Ovila nursed me to health, and I nursed my baby. He made barbeque ribs and bought me pastries and served me orange juice. We had never had a relationship where either of us showed affection. He nursed me back into motherhood.

He nursed me back into leaving the house and taking adult education classes. When I realized the reservation was an insufficient place to learn, he let me leave without argument or concern.

I drank your beer in the hotel room in Santa Fe. You literally waited on the other side of the door for me. When I opened it, I had to face that I was part monster. I cried, and you didn’t ask me to apologize, you didn’t direct attention to the broken vessels on your face, the large black eye.

The next day at school I was pale from not sleeping and sick of myself.

After the residency, when we got home, I drove to a parking lot and called an abortion clinic. They immediately allowed me to speak with a doctor. I explained the situation: I am violent, I have hit myself in the face to cope with worthlessness, I hit you, and I wanted to die. I wanted to take pills I still had from before I was pregnant. Also, I want to live.