Looks Over(Gives Light Series) (31 page)

Incidentally, Saturday was also the day of the Navajo pauwau on the Three Suns Reservation.

I'd been looking forward to the Navajo pauwau for months, mostly for the chance to see Kaya again, but also because I was curious about her home.  Now, though, I felt weird about going.  I knew the truth now--that I wasn't really Native American--and I felt like it would be hypocritical of me, intrusive, even, to show my face.

It's a really haunting feeling, to find out that one of the most basic truths you grew up with--the one that helps define you--is really just a lie.

"You've gotta bring a gift," Rafael said.

We sat together at the picnic table by the nightly bonfire.  It was dinnertime, the wafting scent of roasted quail turning my stomach.

"For the Yeibichai, I mean."

Rafael must have seen the confusion on my face.  "They're holy people," he said.  "You'll know 'em when you see 'em, they walk around wearing weird masks.  The Navajo believe that the Yeibichai were the ones who prepared the Earth for them to live on.  So when you see one, you've gotta give him a gift.  Don't ask me why, that's just the way it is."

He dipped a tin spoon in a bowl of tomato soup.  Unlike me, Rafael was left-handed and experienced none of my earlier clumsiness.

"Here," he said, and lifted the spoon to my mouth.

I hadn't been spoon-fed since I was five.  Consequently, I felt a little ridiculous.  I parted my lips around the spoon and swallowed. 

"Don't be like that," Rafael said disgruntledly.  "You're my pilot whale."

I stared blankly.

"You know.  Pilot whales."  His face took on a sheepish undertone.  He continued hastily.  "Pilot whales travel in pods.  They stay together for life.  When one pilot whale gets sick or injured, and can't move on, the rest of the pod stays with him.  They help each other find the way home.  They're the most loyal animal on Earth."  He shot a cynical look at Balto lying by the bonfire.  "Yeah, more loyal than you, buddy."

First I was a mermaid and now I was a whale.  I grinned slowly.  Rafael sure liked his ocean analogies.

"Shut up," he said, grinning back.  He scooped up a second spoonful of tomato soup.

Pilot whales or not, I didn't think I'd be attending the Navajo pauwau after all.  But I suppose admitting we weren't biologically related hadn't turned off Dad's ability to interpret my silences.  Dad cornered me that night just before I went to bed.

"Don't you have a friend on the Three Suns Reservation?" he asked mildly.

I wasn't in the mood for an argument.  I smiled noncommittally and reached for the doorknob to my bedroom.

"I think you would disappoint your friend if you didn't show up.  The Navajo really care about these things, much more than the rest of us do."

I studied him in the darkness of the hallway, moonlight streaming in through the far window.  His face was a face I'd known all my life.  It didn't look anything like mine.  Somehow, I'd never found that suspicious.

Dad's hands rested on my shoulders.

"It's not blood that makes us who we are," Dad said.  "It's family.  And it's not blood that makes us family.  It's love."

There wasn't anyone I loved more than Dad.

Annie and Rafael came to my house on the eve of the pauwau.  Annie had me help her bake cookies for the road, although I couldn't really do much except crush the prairie bananas and whisk the cream cheese.  Dad and Mr. Little Hawk and Mr. Red Clay set up a folding table in the sitting room and sat playing poker and listening to the radio.  It was a boys' night in for those three.

"Did you prepare a gift for the Yeibichai?" Annie asked me.

I nodded.  I pulled open a kitchen drawer and took out a seal bag filled with arnica leaves.  Arnica's great for cuts and bruises, but it's probably not a good idea to put it in your mouth--which was why I had labeled it "Do Not Eat!!!" in big, loopy letters.

Rafael shoved his head through the kitchen doorway.  "Are you riding with us?" he asked Annie.

"Yes, please.  And do you have room for one more?"

"Nah, we're stuck with Zeke."

"Then I'd better go see if Dr. Stout can take Joseph, too."

Annie finished wrapping the last box of cookies--I lent her my finger and she tied the ribbon--and she bustled out the door, her briar rose shawl flying around her shoulders.

Rafael took a look at me.  "Why aren't you dressed yet?"

I was still in jeans and a t-shirt, and with good reason.  I don't know if you've ever seen a men's Plains regalia up close and personal, but it's not the type of outfit you can put on with one hand.  It's not just trousers and moccasins; there's a breechclout, a weighted deerhide overcoat, a draping neckpiece--and if you're a dancer, or you belong to a special society, you've got even more craziness to contend with, like fringe, bells, feathers, legging wraps, beaded belts, iron belts, maybe even a warbonnet.

Rafael opened his mouth.  He faltered.

"You need help?"

I hoped, really hoped, that my face didn't give away my thoughts.  The thought of undressing in front of him was frightening.  I'd done it once before, when we went swimming over the summer; but that had been frightening, too.

Discreetly, I looked around.  Where the heck was Granny?

"Sky?"

I nodded tersely, before I could talk myself out of it.  I slipped out of the kitchen and started up the staircase.  Rafael followed me.

In my bedroom I eased open the closet and rummaged around inside.  My regalia was hanging on a hook between my schoolbag and fleece jacket, moccasins set aside.  I lifted the regalia with my left hand; the soft deerhide slipped through my fingers and fell to the floor.  Wordlessly, Rafael picked it up and laid it across the mattress.

We looked at one another.  It occurred to me, bizarrely, that he was just as frightened as I was.

My fingers felt numb when I slid them underneath the hem of my shirt.  I think Rafael misinterpreted my hesitance as helplessness.  Or maybe he didn't.  Maybe he knew, just as I did, that I didn't need his help undressing.

If he knew it, he feigned otherwise.  He hooked his fingers underneath my shirt.  My pulse leapt.  He tugged my shirt up over my belly.  All I could think to do was raise my arms.  He raised my shirt above my chest, above my shoulders and head.  He balled it up and tossed it aside.

Cold air hit my skin and I almost flinched.  I think I almost flinched for another reason, too.  Rafael had one of the worst poker faces known to mankind.  He didn't bother pretending he wasn't looking at me.

I wasn't built like Rafael.  I was skinny and pale and overall unremarkable.  Actually, I thought I was kind of repulsive.  Whatever had initially attracted Rafael to me--and I didn't know what it was--it couldn't have been my body. 

That was my version of events.  His was different.  Because when his eyes roamed over the flat, unimpressive expanse of my chest and stomach, my stomach swimming in freckles, he looked so much like a boy tentatively unwrapping a present, something he'd really wanted, and for a really long time, that it frightened me all over again.  No one had ever looked at me that way before.

And I liked it.

He was losing track of time.  I touched his shoulder, a reminder, and smiled patiently.  Quickly, distractedly, he nodded.  His tongue darted across his lips--oh, God, that was just about my undoing--and he unbuckled my pants, fumbling nervously.  I laughed a quiet laugh.  I sat on the bed and slithered out of my jeans.  I reached for the deerhide trousers and stepped into them.  That much I could do on my own.

"Here," Rafael muttered.  I stood up and he tied the drawstrings for me.

Rafael picked up the breechclout and leveled it in his hands.  He wrapped it around my waist, his fingertips tickling my bare skin, and tied it shut at my right hip.  He tugged the hanging strips of fabric until they evened themselves out. 

He picked up the overcoat on the side of the bed.  I lifted my arms, trying to help him.

It was with painstaking caution that Rafael took my broken hand in his.  His grasp was light, his touch imperceptible.  Careful, devastatingly gentle, he fitted my hand through the sleeve.  I heard him breathe with audible relief when my hand came through unharmed and tried not to laugh.  He tugged the sleeves down my arms and straightened the dark green seams.  He straightened the brocade across my shoulders.  The overcoat hung open across my chest.

Rafael's fingers trembled when he raised them to the drawstrings.  It struck me so powerfully that I claimed both of his hands in mine and held them still.

His eyes, blue and stormy and vulnerable, met mine.  He wanted something, I realized.  I was pretty sure I wanted it, too.  But I didn't know how to tell him he could have it.

He threaded up my overcoat for me, his fingers unsteady, and fixed the piece that draped across my throat.  He looped my plains flute around my neck.  I sat on the edge of the bed and he knelt beneath my knees to lace up my moccasins.  I watched him with his head bent, his fingers deft, black hair spilling over his shoulders.  Something occurred to me just then.  I thought:  This is how you know somebody loves you.  When you can't tie your own shoes and they don't mind tying them for you.

I put my hand on the crown of his head.  I reveled in the feel of his hair beneath my palm, coarse and fine-spun, and the warmth of him, a warmth that radiated through my skin.

He lifted his head to gaze at me.  He took my hand in his and pressed it to his cheek. 

"You're going to be late!" Mr. Red Clay called from down the stairs.

I was the first to laugh.  Rafael laughed, too, but in a bashful way.  I didn't care what his reason was.  I loved his laugh.  I would have taken any excuse to hear it.

"M'done," Rafael mumbled.  "C'mon."

I got up and followed Rafael down the stairs.  I waved goodbye to Dad and his friends.  "Ask some cultural questions," Mr. Red Clay counseled us.  "I'll quiz you on Monday."

"Great," Rafael said, scowling.

I gathered the wrapped cookies into my arms and went out the door after Rafael and Zeke, Zeke singing a song of his own invention.  Granny was on the porch, tossing a piece of bluegill to Balto below.

"Come," Granny beckoned us sternly.

The four of us went out to the parking lot.  Gabriel towered over the noisy crowd and waved us over to his car.

"Heeeey," said Mary, decked out in a pair of sunglasses.

"You look dumb," Rafael said.

Annie joined us, and we piled into the car.  I was in the back seat between Granny and Rafael.

"We may as well listen to the Navajo station," Gabriel said cheerfully.  He turned on the radio as Rosa pulled the car onto the parkway.

The whole trip was pretty short, maybe two hours tops.  Mary sang along with the radio in a reedy, grandfatherly voice and Annie raised her eyebrows.  Zeke made it worse when he decided to contribute warbling war whoops.  Granny and Gabriel talked back and forth about the plan to buy back Bear River:  Apparently the US had rejected our bid again, something Granny was particularly incensed about.  I guessed I wasn't going to be adopted after all.  Rafael pulled a book out from under his seat--aptly titled
Ten Little Indians
--and sat reading and wouldn't talk to anyone.  I leaned over the back of Mary's seat in an attempt to see outside the window.  "Welcome to New Mexico," read the highway sign.  "The Land of Enchantment."

There's also a Plains song called Land of Enchantment; in fact, I had played it for the ghost dance last summer.  I wondered what the correlation was.  But I could see why New Mexico was called the Land of Enchantment.  Bronze and saffron valleys flanked the black tar highway.  Gargantuan canyons reached for the sky like God's golden hands.  I saw old-fashioned hogans on either side of the road and realized we were already on the reservation.  Just how big was this place? 

My answer:  Very big.  We arrived in a huge lot by starlight, cars and RVs parked side-by-side.  I climbed out of the SUV with Granny, packages in my arms, and looked around in awe.

There were thousands of us gathered together in one place.  I recognized the Pawnee and the Kiowa--Plains tribes, like us--and the Apache and the Hopi.  My familiarity ended there.  I saw women with pastel blankets tied around their shoulders like cloaks; I saw men in dreadlocks and eagle feathers, their faces tattooed.  I spotted a tribe that made me think of Hawaiians, their clothes adorned in sea grasses and seashells.  Children dressed in beaded blue spirals and rose shirts, little old men in warbonnets shaped like solar flares--I'd never seen any of these tribes before.  I turned to Rafael in confusion.

"You see those guys in the kilts?  Those are the Laguna, they're a Pueblo tribe.  Or maybe they're the Zuni, I don't know, they always look the same to me.  ...Hang on...  Yeah, those guys over there, the ones who look Paiute--they're Washoe.  Related to the Paiute, but they were mortal enemies.  Guess blood isn't really thicker than water.  Shut up, I know it's thicker than water, I'm trying to make a joke.  Look over there, that's the Timbisha Shoshone tribe.  They're basically like us, but they stayed in the desert when the rest of us went to the Plains.  And don't let those Chumash guys in the seashells fool you.  They don't have traditional regalia.  They didn't start wearing clothes until, like, fifty years ago."