Heart Berries: A Memoir(24)



I was lucky to get a ride into town to give birth—and social workers had to drive Isaiah and me home from the hospital. I often looked at him and wondered if we existed. I answered the question by saving my checks and taking night classes. I answered the question by leaving the reservation for any other place. Someone offered to share an apartment in El Paso, in the desert. I went.

I can’t believe my reserve of water—from my nose and eyes. I have dormant fluid in my body, every woman does. I don’t know if I am a cavern or a river.

Once, you said I was a geyser: a hole in the ground—bursting.

Pain is faster than light, and I wish people would not fault me for things I can’t forget or explain.

When I became pregnant, your women fell away. Your fingers were less edible. I had our baby boy, remembering the women and my sons. White women have always made me feel inferior, but I don’t think you know how much. All you see is me killing ladybugs, or crying, or asking you what I did. You can’t know the spite of my feelings.

I sold everything to come to America: my ex-husband’s Beanie Babies (which his mother asked for in the divorce), my wedding ring, my bike, my mother’s broken car, and her winter jackets.

I made the active choice that my son and I were real. I held him while I cooked, and I didn’t clean very often so I could keep him in my arms. He fit well on my hip and learned to keep his small hands inside the neck of my shirt for comfort. He asked for bottles by putting his fingers in my mouth. He became expressive. He laughed at everything. We saw each other more than the world could see.

You and I compare hurt. I only feel dirty every day and some nights. I wash my face three or four times, and, when I told you I wanted to be pore-less, you told me people should have pores.

I feel dormant watching you live fuller than I can. I worry I am a cavern. I’ve inherited my mother’s hollow stomach.

You tell me that my pain feels searing and that I’m missing four layers of skin. Your pain is an empty room. I agree.

When I was eleven, I stared in the mirror to see if I had breasts yet. Fred Cardinal, an elder, was in the next room. He called me in and said, “Your name is Little Mountain Woman: Asiniy Wache Iskwewis.” I felt ashamed and undeserving of the name. He wanted me to know that I was good and holy, but I didn’t think that my body was a universe. I didn’t think I would unravel so well either. I drew power from the mountains and chose a home in the desert.

When we got married, the officiant said it would be hard.

In marriage—swollen and postpartum, I stared at our bed, which was held up by books. I wanted to fix it. I stripped the bed more often than you liked. We washed the sheets. I stared at the doorway, where you held another woman once, and I saw myself on the other side—a squaw. I washed my face again and again and considered that, if you knew more about my pain, I might feel less of it.

I think you imagined I was sacred before you used me. My heart has an extra chamber now. I am more fragile than you know, more squaw and ornamental. I can turn my chin and pose like a figurine. I wonder how much you can know about being used? Can you wash me like a saint? From squaw, to mother with a face, and pores, and a body, and my own good history—I want my large heart, but older and safer, and clean. Can’t you wash me? Or hollow me out for good? Wash me in my own regard and pain, and let me dry out. Let me kill every ladybug and laugh when I do. Don’t leave me. I can’t bear to lose my sons, or any more of myself, or you.





8


the leaving deficit



It’s strange that, when I was scared to lose you, I chose to leave you first. I left you and went to Barbara’s.

We exchange gifts before I tell her why I left. I give her a handcrafted silver ring wrapped in a mustard cloth. She presents me with a sweetgrass braid as long as my arm, still wet from the braiding. The gifts are ritual and plenty—yellow roses and basil plants and tobacco and books we like and things for ceremony.

She thinks my husband doesn’t understand how to communicate love, and I think he’s impotent.

“White men,” Barbara says.

“His anger just wells into nothing.”

We give different theories to each other and conclude that maybe he’s not the problem. Maybe there’s no problem, and I can’t deal with that.

Every time I leave, my husband says that he can’t make me stay. Can’t you, I think, every time.

My mother and I found an eagle carcass on our way to the river. With the feathers plucked, we saw its sinewy skin.

“White men,” Mom said.

Feathers are a gift and flexible protein. Mom put down tobacco and ran her fingers over its exposed parts. She told me the salmon run was coming, and this bird would have wanted for nothing.

She wanted me to see the deficit white people leave.

Nobody wants to know why Indian women leave or where they go. Our bodies walk across the highway from the dances of our youth into missing narratives without strobe lights or sweet drinks in our small purses, or the talk of leaving. The truth of our leaving or coming into the world is never told.

While my ancestors’ bones laid proud and dull in the grave, or on display, mine were hot light ready to go.

Larry was my mother’s worst boyfriend. He came into my life when I was sixteen. He started to walk across the halls naked. I thought he was a walking corpse. He played a ghost, looming between my mother and me. He went to the kitchen and never ate. His insides were rot. Drunks can’t eat after a point. He drove me to school holding a beer can, a tangible thing in his unstable hand. My mother didn’t believe me, so it was always an unreal taking. He touched me to help me out of the car.

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