Looks Over(Gives Light Series) (4 page)

"It's your first day of school," she said imperially.  "You
will
look decent."

I cringed and grimaced and recoiled as she dragged the comb's sharp teeth through my floppy, unruly curls.  "Stop making those ridiculous faces," she insisted.  I purposely crossed my eyes.  She hit me with the broad side of the comb.

"Mother, that's child abuse," Dad said from behind his coffee mug.

Granny pulled back and observed me.  She sighed through her tight lips.  "It's impossible," she said.  She waved a dismissive hand in my direction and hobbled away to tend to the stove.

I sat down with Dad and he raked his pawlike hand sympathetically over the crown of my head.  Granny gave the both of us stacks of sweet frybread and blueberry wojapi.

"Meredith will want to talk to us eventually," Dad murmured, distracted.

"What on earth for?"

"It's about Cubby."

I sat bolt upright, worried.  Dad glanced at me--no expression--and broke his bread into tiny square pieces.  "It's nothing troubling," he said.  Whether he was speaking to me, or to his dish, I didn't know.  "We've just got to figure out how to make this living arrangement...permanent."

"Of course it's permanent," said Granny, puzzled.  She sat down with a cup of roasted acorn tea.  "I told that Officer Whatsit that I'd be willing to take him in until they found you."

The unspoken understanding was that the police were never going to find Dad.  A loophole in the Constitution meant he couldn't be arrested if he stayed in Nettlebush.  Reservations operated off of their own individual governments--and the crime Dad was wanted for had happened in Wyoming.

"Yes, I know.  But you're his foster parent, not his legal guardian," Dad explained.  "The only way we can guarantee he stays in Nettlebush is if you adopt him."

"Well, then," Granny said, and sipped at her tea.

I waved goodbye to the both of them when I left for school--books in my backpack, springy hair defying Granny's obstinate orders--but I felt kind of nauseous.  I loved Granny more than anything.  I was grateful beyond words that she had given me a home.  I just didn't like the word "adoption."  I was Dad's kid; I had been Dad's kid all my life.  It unnerved me to consider a reality where, at least legally, I wasn't Dad's kid anymore.

The school building was a couple of yards away from the church.  I hadn't paid it much attention over the summer, except for the playground between the red pines out back; I'd taken Annie's brother Joseph to play on the rope swings a couple of times.

Now, coming up on the schoolhouse, I saw that it was only one story, red brick, with an uncommonly flat roof and old windows on its sides.  The double doors stood open, preceded by a small flight of stone steps.

It looked colonial, I thought.  Probably it was the exact same school our ancestors had attended in the 1800s.

I climbed the steps and went through the doors.  I stopped, caught off guard.

The room was big and wide with a low ceiling, a chalkboard at the far end and bookshelves sitting between the windows.  Nothing peculiar, I guess--except that there were about fifty kids in the room at the same time, some of them my age, some of them as young as six.  I saw Joseph Little Hawk sitting in the very front row, Lila several benches behind him.  Lila spun in her seat and blew me a kiss.  I waved back, confused, smiling.

"Move, please," someone said behind me.

I went into the classroom.  Annie, Aubrey, and Rafael were sitting on a bench toward the back.  Aubrey had all his pencils arranged on the long, wooden table in perfect organization.  I had to wonder what one guy needed with so many pencils.  I scrunched my way into a seat between Aubrey and Rafael.  I dropped my schoolbag below the bench and playfully tousled Aubrey's short hair. 

"Ah, Skylar!" Aubrey said.  He caught his Coke bottle glasses before they flew off his face.  "I was just telling Rafael how nice it is that he and I finally match!"

In the vaguest sense of the word, maybe.  No one would have looked at Aubrey, tall and weedy and bright as a lightbulb, and mistaken him for the darker, skulking Rafael.

Rafael scowled.

"You know...the glasses?  Oh, well, anyway..."

Where were you yesterday?
I signed.

Aubrey was Rafael's polar opposite; he had picked up on two hundred or more hand signals over the course of summer vacation.  This was one of those rare occasions when he didn't understand what I was saying.  He peered at me, polite but bemused.  Annie intervened.

"Mr. Takes Flight had to visit the hospital," she filled in.  "It was all very sudden."

I felt my eyes widen.  Oh, no, I thought.  I was surprised I hadn't run into them when Dad took me for immunizations. 
Is he okay?

"He's always had a bit of a heart condition," Aubrey said uneasily.  "But he'll be fine.  We checked him out the same day and Mom's monitoring him with hawk eyes."

"I just remembered," Annie said, "I brought back a gift for you from Tucson--"

Annie and Aubrey chatted between themselves.  I smiled slightly at Rafael.  He knitted his eyebrows and buried his face in that Charlotte Doyle book.  I guessed he wasn't in the mood to talk.

My attention wandered to the kids sitting on either side of us.  Except for our happy little group, it looked like all the eleventh graders were staunchly determined to divide themselves by gender.  On Annie's left were the boys; on Rafael's right, the girls.  I spotted Zeke Owns Forty, a bony, egotistical guy with a frantic smile, half his hair shaved close to his head, the rest of it long and combed to one side.  He blathered a mile a minute to the kid on his right, a boy I didn't recognize.  I don't think Zeke noticed, but his friend was sound asleep, his wiry, curly-haired head still on the table and tucked between his folded arms.  A lean guy with waist-length, auburn hair--probably one of the Stouts--was sitting as far from Zeke and his buddy as space would allow, teetering disdainfully on the edge of the bench.  The girls weren't much better.  The At Dawn twins sat with their heads bowed in private conversation.  They were identical, those two, from their curved falcon noses to their wavy ringlets, except in demeanor:  Daisy was bubbly and giggling, whispering behind her hand, while Holly looked like she wanted to throw herself into the nearest fire if it meant getting away from her sister.  The two of them were completely excluding poor Immaculata Quick, the shaman's granddaughter--but Immaculata didn't seem aware of it.  Her bushy hair stood unkempt, as though zapped by a livewire; her crazy eyes bulged with interest every time she caught a word of conversation from either of the twins.  Not that she knew what she was listening to.  Immaculata didn't speak English.

"I hate school!" shouted a chubby little boy in Joseph's row.  "I'm bustin' outta here!"

And he might have done it, too--except the doors snapped suddenly closed.  Everybody turned in their seats, me included.

"Really, Mr. Nabako?  You think
you've
got it rough?"

I could hardly believe that this guy was Mrs. Red Clay's son.  Mrs. Red Clay had heavy jowls and a face as impassive as a bas relief.  She wasn't what you would have called a classical beauty.  There was no other word for it; this guy was handsome.  He was middle-aged, about forty or so, but the years had distinguished his looks rather than diminished them.  His cheeks were high and strong, his jaw perfectly angular, his mouth full, his nose sharp.  His sleek black hair was tied in a long, loose ponytail.  He moved from the doorway to the front of the room, calmly, effortlessly.  Rafael glowered at me.  I must have been staring.

Mr. Red Clay took his place before the chalkboard, his hands on the lectern.  He raised a single eyebrow as though daring his pupils to challenge his authority.  A total silence fell tangibly over the room.  Maybe Mr. Red Clay didn't look like his mom; but he had definitely inherited her ability to command a crowd.

"Want to know who really had it rough?" Mr. Red Clay asked--gesturing in sign language with every spoken word.  That had to have taken a lot of concentration.  I guessed it was probably for Joseph's benefit.  "The kids who went to Carlisle Indian School."

Notebooks flew open on my left and right.  I took it as a cue and retrieved a notebook of my own.

"Who can tell me what Carlisle Indian School is?"

Hands shot into the air, younger and older alike.  This lesson was really baffling so far.  How could Mr. Red Clay teach all twelve classes at the same time when we didn't have the same curriculum?

"Miss In Winter?"

"A boarding school?" said a breathless ninth grader.

Mr. Red Clay lifted his eyebrows.  "Is that all?" 

More hands raised.

"Miss Two Eagles?"

"A boarding school run by the white settlers," said a seventh grader.  "They rounded up Native kids and forced them to go to boarding schools.  To learn how to be white."

"Picture this," Mr. Red Clay said.  He leaned across the first graders' table, signing impeccably while he talked.  "You're living peacefully with your tribe.  Your family.  Your brothers and sisters are a pain in the neck, but you love them anyway.  Your elders are your teachers.  You help your father catch game; you help your mother take care of the home.  For most of you, that's true even today.  What if a total stranger showed up on your doorstep tomorrow morning and took you away from all that?  Can you imagine what that would feel like?"

There was silence.

"That is precisely what happened in the 1800s.  A group of white men who called themselves the 'Bureau of Indian Affairs' forced thousands of Native children to leave behind their homes, their families, and their traditions.  The children who attended Carlisle Indian School were not allowed to wear their own clothing.  The teachers forced them to eat lye soap whenever they were caught speaking their Native languages.  If your teachers caught you praying to the Wolf or the Great Spirit, they beat you until you bled.  Many times they beat you for less than that."

I saw Annie clasp her throat, something she only ever did when she wanted to hide her discomfort.

Mr. Red Clay stepped back from the table.  "One by one," he said, "the Native tribes were forced to relinquish their children to these dehumanizing boarding schools, often with no guarantee that their sons and daughters would make it home alive.  Regardless of their desire to resist, all tribes ultimately complied.  They had to.  The BIA weren't above retaliating with brutality in the event that their orders went ignored.  However, despite the greater danger of disobedience, one tribe ignored the BIA's orders.  One tribe clung steadfastly to their children and protected them.  Who can tell me the name of that tribe?"

Aubrey's arm shot into the air, nearly decapitating me in the process.

"Yes?"

"The Shoshone."

"The Shoshone," Mr. Red Clay said.  "We refused to send our children to these boarding schools.  We knew our children were safer with us, where they could express their identities however they wanted, where they could learn at their own pace.  When the BIA finally grew tired of our defiance, they sent armed soldiers to our settlements.  The soldiers literally had to pry the children out of their parents' lifeless hands.  This is where the phrase 'over my dead body' comes from."

I felt a little ill. 

"We lost everything during those days.  Our land, our freedom, even our children.  Our children faced death if they didn't become Christians.  They were even forced to give up their names.  Little boys and girls named White Elk and River Runner and Gives Grain were given brand new 'white' names by their teachers--Charlie, Sarah, Emily.  They were taught to hate everything Native American.  Everything about themselves.  They were destroyed from the inside out.  The children who graduated from Carlisle Indian School suffered from severe psychological trauma.  Many of them committed suicide.

"But," said Mr. Red Clay.  "The spark of defiance was smothered, not extinguished.  In one small, yet very profound way, the defeated Shoshone held onto their heritage.  Charlie and Sarah and Emily all grew up.  They married and had children of their own.  They retained their old names as family names and passed them down to their children.  That's how most of you got your last names."

The whole classroom began applauding.  I'd never experienced that kind of enthusiasm in a school before.  I started to join in when Mr. Red Clay glanced impassively over the student body, cutting short the response.

Mr. Red Clay took a stick of chalk and began writing instructions on the blackboard. 
Grade 11 - History - Pg. 44
, he wrote.  I dug my history book out of my backpack.  He turned around when he had finished writing multiple sets of instructions--I don't know how he managed to recall all those page numbers by memory alone--and wiped the chalk residue from his hands.  "If your grade is on the blackboard," he said, "start reading.  If you're not on the board, talk quietly among your friends.  I'll be with you in a second."

He went over to the first graders' table and bent his head toward them in conversation.  I tried to read his hand signs, but Autumn Rose In Winter's long, bobbing ponytail was blocking my view.

"Well?" Annie said.  "What do you all think?"

I read the question at the top of page 44. 
How successful is forced cultural assimilation?  Explain.
  Oh, boy.  I hated questions like those.