More Than Good Enough(41)

When I first moved onto the Rez, I thought I’d have total freedom. Instead, I got roped into Dad’s sick version of reality. The knots were yanked so tight, there was nothing I could do to pull myself loose.

Nothing except chew my way out.





fourteen



The room was spinning.

I was tangled in sheets. My mouth tasted gritty, like I’d swallowed a handful of sand. Even the inside of my nose felt dry. I tried to focus on the ceiling fan, but it kept shifting and the bed wouldn’t stay still.

In other words, I was seriously f*cked.

The solution?

Close my eyes and drift back to Dreamland.

As I rolled over, the blanket snapped out of my grip. I figured it had slid on the floor. I reached for it, stretching my entire arm off the edge (definitely not the smartest move; everybody knows the bed demons have a weakness for dangling limbs).

“Wake up, Trenton.”

The bed demons had learned how to talk. They were calling my name. And they didn’t sound happy.

“Did you hear me?”

Yeah, I heard you the first time. Loud and clear. Extra loud, as if the world’s volume had cranked up.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

School? Why start now?

“It’s time to get out of bed.”

Time is a human invention. When nothing happens, it doesn’t exist.

Actually, something was happening.

The woman I’d met last night (not that I’d call it an “introduction”) was standing over me. In her arms, she held my jeans, neatly creased on top of my Native Pride T-shirt.

It could only mean one thing. I was half-naked, in nothing but my boxers. This was only slightly embarrassing for one reason: I wasn’t sober enough to give a shit. Yeah, it was already morning and I was still drunk. How twisted is that?

“Do you remember where you are?” she asked.

To be honest, I didn’t know. I remembered the blood on the bathroom floor. All the beers I’d pounded. Me and Pippa in the car. Her body sinking on top of mine.

“I’m not at my dad’s place,” I said. A brilliant observation.

“Correct,” she said.

“Whose place am I at?”

“Mine.”

Now I was totally confused.

“Not Uncle Seth’s?”

“My son-in-law lives here, yes. But this house belongs to me.”

The headache behind my eyes had moved toward my brain. “His wife was your daughter?”

“Granddaughter, as a matter of fact,” she said, folding my clothes on the dresser. “Call me Cookie. Everybody does.”

I was still trying to register the news. The only grandmother I knew was my Nana in Fort Myers, the one who loved dogs more than people.

Cookie wasn’t like any grandmother I’d ever seen. Her hair was coiled in a long braid, slung over a Harley Davidson muscle tank, and her throat was speckled like a conch shell. So were her knuckles, the same as most old people. But she didn’t look old. That’s for sure.

“Me and your dad ain’t exactly on speaking terms,” Cookie told me. “But he finally got you dragged back to your Indian family. I’ll give him that much.”

“Where’s Dad now?” I asked.

“In my sewing studio. Same as he’s been for the past month. Wasting time on the wrong things.”

“Wait. The Little Blue House is your sewing studio?”

“Until Jimi moved in. Now I’ve got to make do with the shed. All my beads are still packed away. It’s an absolute wreck.” She sighed. “If you’re not going to school, might as well make yourself useful. Help me move those damn boxes into the house.”

I sat up straight. “Is Dad going to be okay?”

“That’s his decision,” she said and closed the door.

Maybe if I hadn’t been so wasted, I could’ve moved that stuff like a boss. Cookie had no problem lifting all those boxes into a wheelbarrow. She made me push it across the yard in the broiling sun.

On the porch of the house was a Styrofoam cooler. I thought about Fantasy Factory, that episode where they’re riding a cooler on wheels. I peeked inside. It was stuffed with bones. I lifted a gator skull, surprisingly light and grooved with pits. A tooth skittered across the porch. For some reason, I put it in my pocket.

As I grunted and lurched my way through the garden, Cookie stopped and pointed to the chickee hut. “Your dad built it for me. Took him three days just to clean the bark off the cypress.”

“For real?” It was one of the biggest on the Rez.

“Got one of them draw knives over there, if you want it.”

Dad’s initials were carved into the blade. I tried to picture him scraping the logs into those smooth pillars, so tall and wide I couldn’t wrap my arms around them.

“When did he build that thing?” I asked.

Cookie lowered her hand toward the ground. “You were this high. Just big enough to get into trouble. You’re how old now?”

“Seventeen.”

“I don’t tell my age to nobody,” she said, squinting up at the chickee, where some of the palmetto had thinned out. “Looks like the roof needs fixing.”

“Can you show me how?”