Pickup line that year. “I’m in jail,”
I said. “And only you got the bail
To rescue me.” She smelled like stale
Everything, and though I was frail,
I talked her into chucking the bale
And disobeying her dad, a whale
Who thought everything was for sale,
Especially the sacred. So we sailed,
Her and me, on the powwow trail,
Until my dirty joke splat-failed—
The porno punch line was “Snails.”
White Girl Angry, she dug her nails
Into my skin and said, “Why you males
Have to heave and hove and dog wail
Such awful shit?” She was a gale—
A storm through a trailer park vale—
An F5 on the tornado scale—
And I wanted to push aside her veil
And touch and memorize her pale
Skin like a blind man touches Braille,
And so I did. Virgin-clumsy, I flailed
At her buttons, and that tough rail
Of a girl went all weakness and quail.
I thought I was all rez-prevail,
But then she put on her chain-mail
Armor and golf-ball-sized-hailed
Me with this confessional tale:
“My daddy is a goddamn Whale
Killer,” she said. “Ain’t no scale
To weigh his evil. His devil pail
Is filled to the brim.” She wailed
Tears like anvils and then bailed
On me. She ran back down the trail,
And I ran after her, but I failed
To catch her. Her pain felt like nails.
And though I never saw her pale
Self again, I pray, without fail,
When I think of her stuck in jail,
Or maybe still walking powwow trail—
A white girl, skinny, hard, and frail—
And likely wed to a killer of whales.
After reading an early draft of this chapter, my friend, a white woman, asked me, “Why didn’t those Spokane Indian girls like you?”
“Most of them liked me,” I said. “But only as a goofy geek. I didn’t possess any of those qualities deemed sexually attractive to the women of my reservation. I still don’t have any of those qualities.”
“And what were those qualities?” my friend asked.
“I didn’t dance or sing powwow,” I said. “I didn’t stick-game. I wasn’t a church kid. I didn’t become a good basketball player until I left the rez. I had speech impediments. I was bookish and shy. I cried all the time. I hardly ever left my basement bedroom. I was ugly.”
“You weren’t ugly,” my friend said. “I have known you for thirty years. And I have seen the photos of you when you were a kid. You were always cute. And you wore purple striped shirts.”
“Nobody thought I was cute until I left the rez.”
“The Indian Ugly Duckling syndrome.”
“That sounds so corny,” I said. “But I don’t think it’s inaccurate. There might be some truth to it.”
“You’re trying to write the truth, aren’t you?” my friend asked.
“My highly flawed version of the truth,” I said.
“Then why don’t you call up those Indian women you grew up with? Why don’t you ask them why they never fell in love with you?”
I laughed and laughed.
“Oh, God,” I said. “That feels like the most dangerous thing I could ever do.”
“That makes it sound like it’s something you need to do,” my friend said.
“I am married to an amazing Native woman,” I said. “I know she loves me.”
“Is your wife the first Indian woman who ever loved you?”
“Yes,” I said, and thought about that first moment—whose details I will not share—when I realized that my wife adored me. I remember that her adoration made me tremble. I remember that I felt healed and challenged at the same time, I remember hoping that I would continue to deserve that adoration and that I would always adore her in return.
To be so romantically loved by a Native American woman was a revelation.
My late father loved my wife.
“Is she really as nice as she seems?” he asked me when Diane I were first dating.
“Yes, she is,” I said.
My late mother loved my wife, too.
“She seems tough enough to deal with you,” my mother said when Diane and I were first dating.
“Yes, she is,” I said.
Monosonnet for the Matriarchy, Interrupted
When
A
Woman
Asks
You
To
Owl
Dance
(O, O, O, O, the owl dance, two steps forward, one step back, O, O, O, O, listen to the drummers attack that drum, O, O, O, O, if a woman asks you to owl dance, you have to accept her offer, O, O, O, O, but if you still have the nerve to decline, then you must pay her what she wants, O, O, O, O, give her some money, honey, fill her coffers, O, O, O, O, and then you have to stand in front of the entire powwow and tell everybody exactly why and how you refused her, O, O, O, O, and if you refuse to detail your refusal, you will be named and shamed out of the powwow, O, O, O, O, but, mister, why would you want to say no to your sister, O, O, O, O, but, brother, why would you want to say no to your mother, O, O, O, O, all of these women are your sisters and mothers, O, O, O, O, they’re somebody’s sisters and mothers, so, mister, so, brother, dance with the women, mister, brother, dance with the women, mister, brother, dance with the women, mister, brother, dance with the women, mister, brother, they’re everybody’s sisters and mothers)
You
Should
Always
Honor
The
Chance.
I was joined in my sophomore year at Reardan by my sisters, Kim and Arlene, twins who are a year younger.
I was also shocked to see one of my childhood bullies from the rez. She was one of those beautiful Spokane Indian girls who had called me ugly, who had called me Junior High Honky. And now she was standing in the hallway of Reardan, my school, my school, my school.
She saw me, smiled, and said, “Hello, Sherrrrrrrman,” stretching out my name in a mocking fashion. I’d been known only as Junior on the rez, and now she was already giving me shit for my new name, my new identity.
My sister saw it happen.
“What are you going to do about her?” she asked me.
“She better learn quick,” I said. “This is not Wellpinit.”
I was enormously popular in Reardan, with kids and adults, and I enjoyed the corresponding social power. But I also made a conscious effort to be egalitarian, to be friends with every social group. I was surrounded by kind people—and more than a few small-farm-town racists—and I was scared my bully would ruin all the good stuff.
“If she tries to fuck with me,” I said to my sister, “I will crush her. If she leaves me alone, then I will leave her alone.”