Scream it at the sky. Scream it for hours. Do you think it will ever sound like a prayer?
Do you remember the photos of other prisoners, naked and handcuffed, hanging upside down from their bunk beds? Do you remember other prisoners crouched and blindfolded with their arms tied and extended at acute angles behind their backs? Do you remember other prisoners being attacked by dogs?
When I first saw those photographs on television, I vomited on our living room carpet. At first, I was confused by my extreme reaction. Any compassionate person would be distressed by such terrible images. But my reaction felt more personal. Frankly speaking, it felt selfish.
And then I heard the news reporter say “stress positions.”
What are stress positions? According to the Collins English Dictionary, they are “an enforced body position, applied especially in the interrogation of detainees, which causes the victim pain by concentrating a large amount of his or her weight on a small number of muscles, joints, etc.” According to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Geneva Conventions, stress positions are a form of torture—illegal, immoral, and inhumane.
I didn’t vomit because I saw photographs of other human beings placed in stress positions. I didn’t vomit because of their pain. I vomited because I finally had a name for my pain, for the torture that my classmates and I endured at the hands of a second-grade teacher on the Spokane Indian Reservation.
To discipline us Indian kids, that teacher would push and pinch us. She’d scream in our face until our ears rang. An ex-nun, white-skinned and red-haired, she called us sinners and threatened us with eternal damnation.
Worse, she would make us stand eagle-armed in front of the classroom with a book in each hand. I don’t remember how long she made us hold those books aloft. But seconds must have felt like minutes; minutes must have felt like hours. Even now, over four decades later, I can feel the pain in my arms—the memory of pain—and the terror.
Don’t you drop those books.
Don’t you drop those books.
Don’t you drop those books.
That was a stress position. That was torture. That was a crime. A felony, don’t you think?
But that wasn’t the most painful thing she did to us.
Sitting at our desks, we were ordered to clasp our hands behind our back, extend them at an acute angle, and lean forward until only the tip of our nose touched the desktop.
She walked among us, screaming at those of us who couldn’t hold our arms high enough or who tried to rest our head on our desk. We cried in pain. Tears and snot dripped onto the desks, pooled, and rolled down off the edge and onto our lap. Some of us peed our pants from pain and fear.
Keep those arms up.
Nose on your desk.
Keep those arms up.
Nose on your desk.
Keep those arms up.
Nose on your desk.
That was a stress position. That was torture. That was a crime. A felony, don’t you think?
Abu Ghraib.
What does it mean to those American torturers?
Abu Ghraib.
What does it mean to those tortured prisoners?
Abu Ghraib.
What does it mean to you and me?
I vomited because I realized that we Indian kids, at seven years of age, had been treated like prisoners of war. We were guilty of the crime of being Indian.
I remember coming home from school one day, weeping, and telling my mother that I was afraid of that teacher. I remember telling my mother what that teacher was doing to us. I remember that my mother demanded a meeting with that teacher.
After the meeting, my mother told me everything was going to be okay.
I told my mother that I was still scared.
My mother promised me that teacher wouldn’t scare me anymore.
I believed my mother.
The next morning, when I walked into class, that teacher called my name.
“Hey, Junior,” she said.
“What?” I asked.
“Boo,” she said with her hands curled into claws.
I recoiled.
“Boo,” she said, and laughed.
I was only seven years old when I first realized that my mother was powerless against white teachers. She was powerless against white schools. She was powerless against white government. She was powerless against whiteness in all of its forms.
My mother and father were so powerless against that teacher that she was able to torture my younger sisters, the twins, and their classmates the next year.
My sister remembers how, on the playground, that teacher grabbed her by the ponytail and pulled her to the ground.
“My neck hurt so bad,” my sister told me. “Hurt for days.”
Whiplash.
“When she got mad at the whole class,” my sister told me, “she made us draw circles on the chalkboard. Then we’d have to put our hands behind our back and lean forward until just our nose touched inside that circle.”
Stress position.
“But that wasn’t even the worst,” my sister said. “After tests, she would walk around the classroom and say out loud the names of the kids who got Ds and Fs. She’d call them the dumbest kids in the class. And say they were just going to be dumb Indians all their lives.”
“Boo,” that white teacher said, wanting to hurt and shame us.
I wanted to cry.
But I did not cry.
I wanted to cry.
But I did not cry.
I wanted to cry.
But I did not cry.
I never cried in front of that teacher again, even when she forced us into stress positions, even when she pulled out scissors and cut the long hair and braids of us Indian boys.
Don’t cry, I told myself.
Don’t cry.
Don’t cry.
Years later, long after that teacher had retired and left the reservation, I heard she’d been bragging about me. She told other folks how proud she was of me, how she had to take a little credit for my literary success.
Okay, Miss Teacher.
Okay, Miss Torturer.
I give you full credit for the pain you caused all of us. I give you full credit for my scars. And I give you full credit for making me realize that my mother could not protect me from the likes of you. I give you full credit for making me wonder why my mother was so powerless.
Dear Mother, were you also tortured as a child?
Dear Mother, were you also a prisoner of war?
Dear Mother, did you also look into the eyes of your mother and see only pain and fear?
Dear Mother, were you broken in the same places where I am broken, too?
42.
God Damn, God Dam
IN JULY 1933, construction began on the Grand Coulee Dam. Still one of the largest concrete structures in the world, that dam submerged ancient villages and falls and eventually killed all of the wild salmon in the upper Columbia and Spokane rivers.
My mother once told me, “When I was just a toddler, before the dam was finished, I walked from one side of the Spokane River to the other on the backs of wild salmon.”
“Hey, wait,” I said. “Big Mom said she did that same walk when she was a little girl.”
“She did it and I did it,” my mother said. “We both did it.”
“You’re lying,” I said.