My mother was a fabulist. Wouldn’t her deathbed have been her greatest stage? Wouldn’t the people at her bedside have been her most captive audience?
Sometimes, my mother was such a gifted liar that she would fool even us children—her most ardent skeptics. But she sometimes lied so obviously that it shocked us, too. After my older son was born with meconium aspiration that collapsed his lungs, he was put on a blood transfer machine for a week. Then he was in neonatal intensive care for another two weeks. He was critically ill. He’d crashed twice—he’d died—and had to be resuscitated. He had a stroke. And even after he’d made it through those difficult early days, he still had major struggles with eating, walking, and talking. He has since grown into a vibrant adult—an actual Eagle Scout—but for the first year of his life, my mother told every Indian she could that my son had been born without a brain.
I usually let her falsehoods go unchallenged—it was too exhausting to police all of them—but I eventually called her on the phone about that particular lie.
“Mom,” I said. “Why are you telling people my son doesn’t have a brain?”
“Isn’t that what’s wrong with him?” she asked.
“You know it’s his lungs,” I said. “You know his brain was oxygen-starved and damaged. But he still has a brain. And a good one, too. He has spoken to you on the phone.”
“Okay,” she said.
I thought the issue had been resolved, but then my mother told people that my son didn’t have lungs.
So, yes, I knew that my mother was capable of slinging bullshit even as she lay dying.
“Mom didn’t give you any details about why they lost custody of us?” I asked my sister.
“She just said they lost us and we were put in a foster home,” my sister said.
I wondered what terrible shit might have happened to four Indian kids in four foster homes.
“She said all of us stayed together,” my sister said. “With that redhead white woman. She became our babysitter later. Remember her?”
I couldn’t remember her name but, yes, I remembered that redhead. I think I remember a photograph of her visiting our house at Christmas.
“Are you sure Mom didn’t give you more details?” I asked my sister again.
“That’s it,” my sister said. “This is all I know.”
I can only imagine how my parents might have lost us.
I imagine we were living in a Spokane hotel and that my father had gone drinking at one of the nearby Indian bars—probably the Buck & Doe—and left my mother and us in the hotel room. And my mother was probably pissed to be left behind with three babies and a toddler. And since she was constantly drinking in those days, she was probably boozing it up in the room. Or maybe she was suffering from a minor case of alcohol withdrawal. Maybe she was beer-thirsty and going crazy in that little room. So I imagine she sang us to sleep. She had a beautiful voice and could always sing us to sleep. And then I bet she left us children sleeping in that hotel room and went to have a few drinks. I can imagine her saying to herself: “Okay, Lillian, you’re going to have three beers and then you’re coming back to the room to your babies.”
So maybe a few swallows became a lot of drinks. And I would imagine that she eventually met up with our father. They probably drank until closing time, and then they probably went to an after-hours party at somebody’s house or apartment. Maybe they even came back to the hotel and partied in a nearby room. Maybe they both passed out somewhere and completely forgot about us.
So I imagine that, sometime during that drunken night, one of us children woke in our dark hotel room and cried. I imagine the first of us to cry woke the second baby and the third and the fourth.
I imagine us as a small chorus. I Imagine us crying so loud and strong that our weeping became a tribal song.
I imagine us waking our hotel neighbors with our syncopated fear.
I imagine hotel staff being summoned.
I imagine the night manager knocking on our door.
I imagine a passkey being used.
I imagine the shock and disgust of discovering four abandoned Indian babies weeping and weeping and weeping and weeping.
I imagine the policemen arriving.
I imagine them carrying us to a county shelter with donated cribs and beds.
I imagine four white women holding four sleeping Indian babies and rocking them to sleep.
So, yes, this seems like a plausible version of how we were lost. And it makes me sad and angry as an adult to imagine my mother returning to the hotel to discover that her babies had been officially taken away.
But I cannot imagine how much shame she must have felt.
“You know,” I said to my sister later at the funeral. “I think Mom is telling the truth about losing us. We’re never going to know the exact details. But there’s too much real pain in this story for it to be a lie.”
My sister nodded. She agreed. But what did we agree to? Jesus, we as adults were grateful that our mother had probably told the truth about endangering us as children.
How fucked is that?
32.
Dear Dylan Thomas,
Dear Dr. Extreme,
Dear Rage
Hey, climber, you fell from such a great height.
Does that mean your death was somehow better Than my mom’s? She was in bed when she died.
Hey, hiker, you fought a courageous fight, But did not survive that winter weather And were found frozen at such a great height.
Hey, pilot, on your experimental flight, You shattered like a ceramic feather.
My mom was wholly in bed when she died.
She never base-jumped or surfed in the night Or walked across glacier gaps on ladders.
She never touched sea floors or great heights.
She was female, poor, indigenous, bright, Commodified, hunted, and tape-measured.
She survived one hundred deaths before she died,
But was never thrilled by her endangered life.
So death became her gentle endeavor.
We raised her last bed to a modest height, Then she sighed, sighed, closed her eyes, and died.
33.
Lasting Rites
I was not
At my mother’s side When she took Her last breath.
I was home
in Seattle
Waiting for word Of her death.
My sister
Texted, “She’s gone.”
I collapsed With grief,
But to tell The difficult truth: I also collapsed With relief.
I assumed
I’d be freed From my mother And her endless
Accusations, Falsehoods, Exaggerations, And deceptions.
But looking At this book, I was obviously Mistaken,