“Old Man, please make the people of the world my children,” Fire said.
“I cannot do that, Fire,” Old Man answered. “They will be your grandchildren. I have made you to keep them warm in winter and at night. You will cook their food so they can fill their bellies.”
Wind asked next, but Old Man’s answer was the same. “No, dear friend Wind. But they will be your grandchildren, and you will clean the air for them and keep them healthy and strong.”
“Old Man, might I have the people as my children?” Rainbow asked.
“They cannot be your children,” Old Man explained. “You will always be busy preventing the rains from falling too hard and the floods from rising, and painting the sky for their eyes to enjoy.”
“What about me, Old Man?” Water said.
“No,” Old Man said. “The people of the world can never be your children, Water. But you will clean them and quench their thirst, and let them live long lives on the earth.”
Moon, Sun, Wind, Rainbow, Thunder, Fire, and Water looked at one another in confusion. Then Old Man continued, “You are well made, and I have told you the best way to live to help the people of the world. But you must always remember that these, the children of the human race, they are my children.”
And that, Grandmother told me, was the truth.
Tonight, with Beau, the story makes me feel the same way it did the first time I heard it: freed from a nightmare by a hug from the world.
Beau’s quiet for a long moment when I finish, staring up into the sky thoughtfully before he says, “You are good.”
“At telling stories?” I say.
He nods. “That, and in general.”
“At everything,” I agree.
“Except football.”
“Nah, I’m pretty good. Just not compared to you.”
He tells me about his first game, when he scored on the wrong end zone, and about his job changing tires and replacing brakes, how he much prefers construction work but can’t seem to get enough hours. He’d like to build his own house someday, and I tell him he should build mine too, and that it has to have a porch, and he agrees, because a house isn’t a home without a porch. He tells me how his mother sometimes leaves for months when she thinks she’s met The One, only to turn up a few months later, so devastated she can’t get out of bed for a week, and refuses to say what happened. I tell him about Mom’s ability to turn everything I do or feel into some metaphor about my “adoption journey.”
“Do you think she’s right?” he asks.
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “I sometimes think I wouldn’t feel so lost if she didn’t try so hard to make me feel okay about looking for myself. I mean, I always knew I was different from my family, but I didn’t feel the need to justify it until I started school. Every time my parents dropped me off at a birthday party or took me to school or the neighborhood pool, all my classmates would ask me why I didn’t look like them. And, I mean, my mom had prepared me for that. But then one day, this neighbor kid asked me what my real name was. I had no idea what he was talking about, and he was like, You know, your Indian name. Like, Running Deer. So then I asked my parents if I had an Indian name, and they kind of laughed, but when I told them why I was asking, Mom was super upset, so she started doing all this research, trying to prepare me for any and all potentially offensive inquiries, while also being like, Remember, sweetie, you don’t have to answer anyone’s questions if you don’t want to. It’s no one’s business but yours.”
“Wow,” Beau says. “Didn’t know six-year-olds had business.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Oh, and then she started buying me these early reader books about Native American history and culture. She’d leave them in my room, and then very casually tell me I should be proud of every part of who I was, but I guess that made me feel even more different than I already did. Then, one year, when I was six, I think, I wanted to be Pocahontas for Halloween—the Disney version, of course—and she acted so weird about it, sort of tried to talk me out of it, but I wouldn’t budge, and in the end she ended up making my costume. But then a few years later, she read this article about racist depictions of Native Americans in popular culture and how harmful they are. That somehow led her to an essay that appeared right after some designer was in the news for sending his models out on the runway in Navajo headdresses, about the way modern American culture abuses and appropriates Native culture. Mom felt so bad she came to my room and apologized to me. She was crying, and I didn’t even understand why, but she wasn’t acting like she was my mom. More like I was a complete stranger to her.”
Beau shrugs. “Aren’t you?”