Iona Moon (19 page)

She held up the key.
The one this opens
.

11

Stanley kept finding ways to touch Iona. He brushed up behind her as she stood at the register, rubbed against her butt and made a low sound as if something deep in his body gave him a sudden pain. He squeezed her arm when he told her he had a shipment of soup for her to unpack and stock. He stood so close she could smell the grease he used to slick his hair over his bald crown. Iona wondered if she'd always find a man like Stanley—boys by the tracks, brothers in the barn: it was all the same.
You take yourself with you
. That's what Hannah would say.
No matter how far you run
.

She walked down to the bay. The Space Needle hovered, a flying saucer on a pole. Sailors leaned on rails, waiting. She saw the little girls dressed as women, how they tempted, how they wanted the men and didn't want them—at the same time. Clean in their white uniforms, the men looked safe, and the girls with red lips looked wild—dangerous, Leon would say. Now she knew why. Rainier rose from a ring of clouds, pink at sunset, a volcano cool with snow but ready to explode.

When she climbed the hills, she saw the blue lights of bridges flickering across black water: lakes became holes and Puget Sound was the edge of the world.

Again and again she passed the house of stone lions. Strange firs with limbs like monkeys' tails grew in the yard. One night a Chinese man watered the grass. He moved without seeing, pulling his hose. He did not live here. A big dog with long red hair leaned out a window on the third story. He was king, the man his servant. Inside the house, a woman played the piano, her song drifting in the dark, two hands dancing: bass refrain and sweet soprano answer. Iona squeezed through the hedges to peer in the window. A boy sat on the floor, under the piano; he touched his mother's feet as she played, and Iona saw Hannah's feet—saw herself, washing them. A chubby girl in a white tutu and a rhinestone tiara twirled in front of a mirror. She was too short to be a ballerina, already too heavy; but she was lovely in this moment, in this dream of herself.

On Broadway she passed a wiry little man with bowed legs. His face was gray with stubble. He wore a sailor's cap, cropped kimono, loose white trousers. Iona imagined his body, thin, bonehard, painted with blue tattoos, birds of paradise, and naked ladies, a lizard that crawled when he flexed his bicep, his mother's name, a heart on his thigh for a girl he'd almost forgotten.

If she climbed enough hills, she was worn out when she came to work, calm, so that when Stanley touched her—as he always did—she didn't bite his hand or kick his shin. This was good. She'd lasted a month, and Stanley was going to give her the raise.

Eddie stopped asking for fresh coffee. When it got old, he popped a can of Coke instead. Sooner or later Odette would catch on, but for now she was too busy counting foil wrappers to keep track of anything else. Iona just happened to leave packs of Marlboros on the counter, and Eddie just happened to pick them up. He took her to breakfast once or twice a week. It all worked out. She didn't steal anything for herself until the middle of July. It started with a can of sardines and a loaf of bread. By the end of the month she was swiping tomato sauce and chunks of cheese, party napkins and peaches in heavy syrup. She made a pyramid of soup cans on her dresser. “I don't like somebody thinking I'm stealing when I'm not,” she told Eddie one morning. “Odette's been out to get me from the start.”

“She knows Stanley, figures he's got his hands on you.”

“You'd think she'd be glad for the break.”

“No woman alive's glad for that.”

“He'd hit on anyone.”

“
Anything,
” Eddie said, “anything that squeaked and had a tail.”

“I knew lots of boys like that back home.” Iona's eggs were cold. She thought of Matt Fry drinking them raw, straight from the shell. “Let's get out of here,” she said.

“I'm driving up to Molina,” Eddie told her. “Mama Pearl's been calling.”

“I can walk home.”

“I was wondering if you'd come with me.”

“To meet your mother?”

“She wants to see you,” Eddie said.

“Why?”

“Who knows why that old woman wants anything.”

Molina looked like the outskirts of White Falls: little box houses and dented trailers, vacant lots and dusty roads. Street signs struck by cars tilted or lay flat on the ground. Cows grazed. Two dogs romped in the dirt, their blond fur burning with light. An old man led an earless goat down the middle of the road. Beyond the houses, Iona saw grass and then ocean. The place sea became sky was only a curve in the distance where the green of one gave way to the gray of the other. Eddie said, “It's the wind here that makes you crazy.”

Pearl Birdheart lived at the edge of town in a three-room pink shack: kitchen, bedroom, living room. But the kitchen was really only an alcove with a plastic accordion door. The shades were pulled, and the front room was full of smoke. Mama Pearl sat at a folding table playing poker with four men.

“See what I mean?” Eddie whispered.

Pearl wore a man's plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up to her biceps. Her hair was steely gray, one long braid pulled tight, like Eddie's. This woman split her own wood, Iona thought; if her pipes froze, she'd chop a hole in the ice and haul water from the river. She looked as if she could wrestle a man to the ground and keep him there as long as she wanted. But her face was old, cracked like stone, and her eyes were cloudy.

Pearl introduced three of the men, two bulky, bearded brothers—the Johnstons—and a dark, stubby man she called Blue. They nodded without taking their eyes off the cards or the pile of coins in the center of the table. The fourth was Eddie's brother. He stood to shake Iona's hand. “Joey, my baby,” Mama Pearl said. He was six-five at least, with a paunch and a wide face; his hands were paws, callused and fleshy.

“Just let me finish this game,” Pearl said. “I'm winning. The old boys can't play for shit this morning—too much whiskey last night.”

There was a bottle of whiskey on the table now. “Hair of the dog,” Eddie said to Iona. “They think it will straighten them out, but Mama Pearl whips them every time.”

Eddie leaned against the wall, and Iona sat on the couch. She watched the Johnston brothers, Bud and Moose. They were blond with red cheeks and red hands, barrel chests and big bellies, almost identical except Moose was bigger.

Joey said, “Did Mama tell you she won half a jeep?”

Eddie shook his head.

“Two weeks ago,” Pearl said. “My buddy Bud brought one of his pals to a game. Fish and Game Warden, full of himself.”

“Talk or play,” Bud said.

“See you and raise you ten.” She meant cents.

“Mama lets the warden get confident,” Joey said, “throws him a few hands, not all in a row, but enough to make him think he's hit a streak.”

“We start talkin' real money,” Pearl said. “We tell him we just got our government checks. He's so stupid he thinks that means we've got something. I want to ask him, ‘How much you think they pay us for living on the reservation?' but I keep quiet, wear the mask. Crazy old Indian woman, that's what he sees. I catch him lookin' at my eyes, thinking I'm half blind besides. I let my hands shake. I drink too much.”

“I'm out of this,” Moose said. Bud called, and Pearl scooped up another pile of coins.

“I lose fifteen dollars in fifteen minutes,” Pearl said. “The warden's flying, wants to go higher. He starts betting parts of his jeep—the radio, the CB. I put my check on the table and so does Joey. He looks at them, laughs, says: ‘Is that all?' No matter. He's already bet the radiator and the battery.”

Blue dealt the next hand. Iona realized he hadn't said a word since they'd arrived.

“You should have seen him when I spread my hand—full house—kings and tens. So mad he wouldn't even show us what he had. Ready to play all night, win back his car. I took two tires, the rearview mirror, the steering wheel. I let him have a hand in between, gave him back the radio. I start makin' noises like I'm tired. It's getting light. I'm not the only one. Joey opens the shade, looks at the jeep, says, ‘Looks like we got half of that, Mama.' Well, the warden snaps, sees he's been taken. ‘Goddamn Indian bitch,' he says. Funny how it always comes to that. He doesn't believe we're really gonna take our half. He's pleading with the Johnston boys, saying they should've warned him.”

“And we should have,” Moose said. He laid his cards on the table, face down.

Blue threw a quarter on the pile.

“So he starts tossing credit cards at me,” Pearl said. “I take one, bite it, throw it back at him, say: ‘What am I gonna do with this? Whoever heard of an
Indian bitch
with credit?' We laugh. Me and Joey. Joey gets the wrench, the tire iron, a screwdriver, heads out to the jeep, starts takin' what's ours. The warden's almost crying, I swear, saying we can't, we can't. But we do.”

“Where is it, Mama?” Eddie said.

“Sold it back to him two days later. Five hundred for parts, two hundred for labor.”

“Labor?”

“You think I'd put all that stuff back in for free?” Joey said.

Pearl won two more hands before the Johnston brothers left. She counted her coins—$18.25, a decent day. She said she liked taking money from white boys, especially those two. “Bud and Moose run the bar,” she told Iona, “take our money all the time. But they don't own the land,” she said. “Lease it from the tribe.”

The mute man spoke at last. “White folks don't own nothing here,” he said.

“Except our souls,” Eddie muttered.

Joey opened the accordion door to get a beer, and Iona saw the sink heaped with blackened pots and smudged glasses, plates crusted with dried food.

Pearl asked if they wanted breakfast. “What kind of offer is that?” Joey said. “All we have is beer and refried beans.”

“We ate,” Eddie said.

“Why do you always eat before you get here?” Pearl said.

Joey guzzled his beer. “He comes with a full stomach because you never have any food, Mama.”

“I'd keep food in the cupboard if he'd stay.”

“See, Eddie, it's your fault.” Joey patted his swollen gut.

“Might end up like you if I hung around here,” Eddie said.

Joey crushed the can and dropped it on the floor. “Yeah, our bad habits might rub off. You might turn into an Indian after all.”

Eddie didn't talk to Iona for almost an hour as they drove south. Iona stared out the window. Madrona trees clung to the cliffs, and she wondered how they did it, why the rain didn't wash the sand from the roots, why they didn't fall into the ocean. Bark peeled, leaving new flesh exposed, slick, rust-colored. High, tangled limbs were leafless, wiry as an old woman's hair. Eddie said, “I've been running from them my whole life—and look at me.”

Iona did look—at his hands on the wheel, at his red shirt, dark as blood, at his stiff right leg pressed close to the seat.

“My pitiful people,” he whispered.

“Mine are no better,” Iona said.

“Married a white woman and thought she'd save me. Thought I could be Eddie Rogers for the rest of my life. Alice and Eddie, wouldn't it be sweet? If I dressed right, I could pass. But I have a bird's heart. It beats too fast. It makes me afraid. I hear voices coming from the telephone. I answer them.”

“There
are
voices on the phone.”

“But I don't pick it up,” Eddie said. “I hear other voices. I hear Joey. I hear my sisters, Ruth and Marie. They tell me to come home. They say Mama's sick. I drive up to Molina. I find her at the table, drinking whiskey, stealing money from the white boys and the old man—just like today. She grins. She's missing half her teeth. That's why she eats those damn beans. Do you see, Iona? I'm this close.” He held his hand less than an inch from his face. “This close to falling all the way.

“Every time I think:
I
won't go
. But I do. I saw her nearly die one time because my father wouldn't let the healer in his house, and Mama wouldn't take the white man's medicine. My sisters came with their beads and their Bibles. Nothing worse than a pair of converted Indian women. They prayed; they said Mama Pearl was being punished for her evil ways, drinking and smoking, playing poker half the night, sleeping till noon. They said me and Joey were being punished too, little heathens. Joey was six. I was ten. The girls were older, from one of Mama Pearl's other lives.”

Iona wondered how many lives a woman could have, if the joys of one eased the sorrows of another, or if grief piled on grief until you wished to be cut free.

“She burned. Ruth said the fever in her now was nothing compared with the fires of hell. She made me and Joey touch Mama's body so we'd know how bad it could be.

“My sisters washed us. They said we had to have clean bodies to have clean souls. They ran the water hot as we could stand it—hotter. They scrubbed our heads and our ears, our dirty necks; they scrubbed up the cracks of our behinds. They wiped our penises—hard. They said we were whiter than we thought, once we were clean. Their father was an Indian, their skin dark compared with ours. They told us Mama Pearl might be saved if we asked Jesus into our hearts.”

Iona thought of Hannah, how no one pretended she could be saved, so there were no bargains, no wild hopes, only the days of winter, one following another.

“I wanted her to live, more than I'd wanted anything in my whole life. But I couldn't think good thoughts. My butt was raw from all that scraping. I hated my sisters. My heart was so full of hate there was no room for Jesus. Joey cried. He was sore. He kept rubbing his penis through his pants. Ruth slapped his palms every time he touched himself. Finally she tied his hands to the chair to make him stop.