“No, guess.”
“I have no idea.”
“Okay,” my sister said. “Just think about it. What’s the worst thing a husband and his affair snag could name their adultery kid?”
I thought about it. And then I suddenly understood.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “They named Mom after the wife.”
“Yep, Mom is Lillian. That poor wife was also Lillian.”
I threw my cell phone on the couch. And walked away. I paced. Was this completely fucked-up story just another one of my mother’s grandiose falsehoods?
But, wait, wait, wait, I kept thinking. What if my mother was telling the truth about some of it. What if it was the partial truth? She’d always been such a damaged person. And that damage had to have been inflicted by somebody. So what if my mother lied about the specific details of her pain but was always emotionally honest about the volume of her suffering?
If it’s fiction, then it better be true.
And then I remembered the original topic of my conversation with my sister. So I picked my phone back up and laughed and cursed while my sister laughed and cursed.
“So who raped Mom?” I asked. “Who raped Lillian the Second and got her pregnant with our sister?”
My sister then told me an even more awful story.
When my mother was rapidly becoming a rebellious teen, her parents sent her to Sacramento to live with her older sister and her husband, who’d been relocated to Northern California as part of the Indian Relocation Act of 1956. Relocation was meant to educate Indians, give them new life and job skills, and help them assimilate into mainstream culture. And it accomplished all of that while also damaging and destroying cultural bonds among thousands of Indians and their ancestral homelands and cultures.
“Jesus,” I said. “Mom told me she was relocated. But she always said she traveled alone to Sacramento, got off the bus downtown, had a bowl of soup, and caught the next bus back home to Spokane.”
“Nope,” my sister said. “She lived there for a few months with her big sister and big sister’s first husband.”
I wanted to hang up the phone.
“So the husband raped Mom,” I said.
“Yes,” my sister said.
“So, Mary is the child of a rape.”
“Yes.”
“So Mary is our mother’s daughter and her niece?”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” my sister said. “But you’re right.”
“And Mary is our half sister and our half first cousin, too.”
“Something like that,” my sister said.
“How come I’ve never heard any of this before?”
“Come on, Junior,” my sister said. “You haven’t lived on the rez in thirty-six years. So many stories and secrets get told. Time goes by. Time goes by.”
My sister was telling the truth. I am disconnected from my tribe. By my choice. And, yes, I am disconnected from my immediate family, too. By my choice. I have traveled the world. My sister has lived in the same house for forty-four years.
“Man,” I said. “Mom was so full of shit. What are we supposed to believe? Where did all that bullshit come from? What are we supposed to do with all this bullshit?”
“Well,” my sister said. “You got famous on that bullshit.”
And we laughed.
126.
The Widow’s Son’s
Lament
My mother and I’d held each other hostage For thirty-six years. But then my dad died, And Mom and I were too damn exhausted To be jailers anymore. We untied
Old knots and unlocked cell doors in tandem And walked free in separate directions.
Neither of us demanded a ransom.
She remained on the reservation
And I took refuge in the city. We still Phone-gossiped about friends and family.
I sent her money to pay past-due bills From power and satellite companies.
We met in person a few times a year.
We laughed too loudly in public places.
We never mentioned the old pain and fear.
We somehow achieved homeostasis.
We didn’t speak of forgiveness.
We didn’t play that ruse.
No, we were mother and son
And we’d declared a truce.
127.
Physics
I want to reverse this earth And give birth to my mother Because I do not believe That she was ever adored.
I want to mother the mother Who often did not mother me.
I was mothered and adored By mothers not my own,
And learned how to be adoring By being adored. So if I adore my mother after giving birth to this new version of her,
Will she change history And become one
Who openly and freely adores Her daughters and sons?
I don’t know. I don’t know If it’s possible in any potential world.
But build me a time machine And I’ll give this shit a whirl.
128.
Spring Cleaning
If attics are the eggs, then steamer trunks are the yolks.
Thirteen years after my father died, And thirteen months after my mother’s death,
I open my father’s steamer trunk—his chest-egg—and find Toy guns, basketball cards, and cigar smoke.
Evoke! Evoke!
My father designed this strange collection with my sons in mind (My glorious boys are part egg and part yolk), But I think that he meant it as a joke— Affectionate and unkind—
Because he knew that I love basketball, but hate guns and smoke.
Suddenly choked,
Blind,
And broken open like an egg and spilled like a yolk,
I mourn my mother. I mourn my father. I sometimes wear his coat, An outdated big-collar consign
That, I realize, also smells of toy guns, basketball cards, And cigar smoke.
I want my grief to be baroque,
But damn it, it’s as simply designed As an egg and its yolk,
And as unrefined
As a chest heavy with guns (and mothers) and hoops and smoke.
129.
Discourse
MY FRIEND JOHN SIROIS is a Colville Indian singer, drummer, and Dartmouth graduate currently working to protect the upper Columbia and Spokane rivers. An Ivy League Indian and a powwow Indian and a wild salmon restoration champion can easily be the same person.
Yes, a Native can be highly educated, live in the city, and be the guy you call when you need a beautiful prayer and hand-drum honor song.
I often get asked, “Sherman, how do the indigenous live in two worlds? How is it possible?”
And I’m all “Shiiiiiiiiiiit, I code-switch eighteen times before I drink my first cup of coffee.”
Don’t you white folks understand that Indians turn everything we do into something Indian? That’s how we reverse colonialism. By taking back most of the good things that were stolen from us and grabbing some of your good things, too.
And when like-minded Indians get together? Oh, man, you get some classical drama. I love my friend John Sirois like Pythias loved Damon. Yeah, that’s right, I just claimed two mythical Greek dudes as my own. I compared their love to my love for another Indian man. You call that assimilation? I say maybe John and I will write a powwow song about Pythias and Damon:
Philia, Philia
Way ya hi yo
Philia, Philia
Way ya hi yo
This Indian is my brother
He’s my brother
And I love him so
I love him so
Aho!