John is also a very handsome dude. When he met my late motherin-law for the first time, she turned to her daughter, Diane—my wife!—and asked, “How come you didn’t marry John?”
I met John at the same academic camp for Indian kids where I met Diane. John was mentoring high school kids from his reservation. Diane was running the whole thing. And I was a judge for the essay competition. Yes, John, Diane, and I were born into the Clan of Indigenous Brainiacs. Whatchu gotta say about that?
John was one of the Indian guys, along with a few high school kids, who gave me the courage to ask Diane for a first date.
John also knew my mother.
“I was thinking about the times we’d be at your readings,” John texted, “and your mom was always asking me to keep you from cussing.”
“Ha Ha Ha!” I texted back.
I am profane but nearly always for specific reasons. My profanity has an aesthetic. And Indians, in general, have dirty mouths. But those same privately filthy Indians will turn into Warriors of Decorum in public venues, especially when white folks are in the audience. I think many Indians consciously and subconsciously seek the approval of white folks. As a colonized people, we tend to perform our Indianness as a way of asserting our identities. These performances can be full of sovereign pride and codependent groveling at the same time from the same person. I want to get the attention of white folks, too, but I enjoy positive and negative reactions. I am the author of one of the most banned and challenged books in American history, and that makes me giddy with joy. But, all in all, I am most gleeful about inciting the wrath of other Indians.
“You were bullied as a kid by your own tribe,” my therapist once said. “So it’s not surprising you’d strongly react to bullying, or what you think feels like bullying. It’s not surprising you fight back. That you enjoy fighting back, especially against other Indians.”
“Being bullied can turn you into a bully,” I said to my therapist.
“Yes,” she said. “The stuff that you hate in others is often the stuff you hate in yourself. But perhaps you can learn something about yourself when this happens. When you are angry at somebody, what does that say about who you are?”
Maybe John Sirois and I should write an honor song for my therapist. And ninety-nine more honor songs for my mother.
“Your mom was so serious,” John texted. “Please say something to Junior about his cussing when he gets onstage, she’d say. He will listen to you, she’d say. And I was, like, uh, sure, I’ll talk to him. LOL!”
“But I don’t listen to anybody!” I texted.
“I know. But I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise. You know you just got to listen to and respect mothers! She felt better knowing I would talk to you.”
“Wait, I’m older than you!” I texted. “Why was my mom telling you to be my elder?”
“What would I have said to you?” John texted. “Without laughing?”
“I would have started my talk by repeating what Mom had just asked you to say to me.”
“I know! LOL! Maybe that’s why I never said anything to you!”
“You know me!”
“Your mom knew you better than everybody else!”
Later, as I reread my conversation with John, I thought about the ways in which my mother tried to play good mother/bad mother against me. I thought how she often tried to make me obey the Edith Whartonian social rules of the reservation: Respect your elders even if they’re dumb or lazy or ass-wipes; you can bring crying babies to any and all events and nobody will mind all that much; don’t talk about the felonies, but you can endlessly gossip about the misdemeanors; make sure you clap for all the powwow dancers and not just your favorite category; even though you know your tribe is the best, that doesn’t mean you’re the best of your tribe; you can tell the truth about Indians in private, but don’t tell the truth if white people are listening.
My mother often disobeyed those rules and many others.
I miss her constant rebellion.
I miss her inconsistent mothering.
I miss her stern and hypocritical judgment.
I miss the courtroom inside her heart.
I miss Lillian Alexie, my most beloved and failed censor.
130.
Self-Exam
Dear audience, please stand if you were raised By a terrible mother. Okay, okay,
Approximately half of you. So I’d say That terrible mothers are commonplace.
Just like terrible fathers. So let’s mourn For the children who never knew childhood.
Our grief is justified. Our anger is good.
I won’t blame children for childish scorn.
But there comes a day when a broken child Becomes an adult. On that day, you’ll need
To choose between the domestic and wild.
You’ll need to escalate war or declare peace.
I tell you this because I’m the kid, mother-stung, Who became a terrible adult son.
And I’m to blame for that. I made that mess.
Because I am the Amateur of Forgiveness.
131.
The No
So we must forgive all those
Who trespass against us?
Fuck that shit.
I’m not some charitable trust.
There are people I will hate
Even after I’m ashes and dust.
132.
Jungian
Even as I deny the idea of God, The idea of God interrogates me.
Even as I pretend that my love For my mother is conflicted,
It’s my mother who, in my dreams, Emerges from a door marked “adore”
An image so overtly self-subversive That it drops me—laughing
And praying—to the floor.
133.
Side Effects
TEN MONTHS AFTER brain surgery, I realized that my unilateral hearing loss had worsened. While I could still hear normally out of my left ear, my impaired right ear seemed to be slightly more damaged. That made it difficult for me to understand speech in crowded and noisy environments. Even when my wife and sons and I talked during a relatively quiet dinner at home, I often missed or misheard words and phrases. A simple sentence like “Pass the potatoes” could turn into a mysterious and inexplicable stew of disconnected words.
But I also noticed that my brain, rather than accept the blank spots and lines of nonsense, would reach deep into its memory files and pull out a familiar word or phrase as a replacement. My brain was always working hard to make sense out of nonsense.