St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (26 page)

hand and I grinned.

"Anyway," she went on, "listen up, because you

may need to defend your wife one day. I'm

certainly not saying this never happens to women

of other ethnicities. But rapists are three times

more likely to target Indian women than white

women. In fact, 86% of all attacks on Indian

women are perpetrated by white men. Do you

know why that is?"

Was she asking me? I shook my head, bewildered.

"Because they can get away with it, that's why.

There's a disgusting law that says Indians can

never prosecute white people. Oliphant v.

Suquamish. Look it up. If a white man comes onto

this reservation, pulls out a gun, and starts shooting

everyone, we're not allowed to stop him. If one of

us kills him in self-defense,
we
get the punishment.

And you know what's really disgraceful? This

isn't an old law. This law came into action in

1978! This country's supposed to be better than

that by now!"

I reflected humorlessly on Kelo v. New London.

Yeah, I thought, loads better.

"Will you be staying with us tonight, Catherine?"

Aunt Cora asked.

"Of course we'll be staying with you tonight. What

do you think, you fool girl? I can't lie on my back

in one of those tents. I've got a bad hip."

Marilu must have been excited to show us the new

house. I leaned over and nudged her. She looked

at me suddenly, like she hadn't realized I was

there.

She looked miserable.

What was the matter? I wanted desperately to ask

her. In my exhaustion, I hadn't thought to bring my

sticky notes with me.

The pauwau drew to a close around midnight. The

bonfire burned brightly still; the visitors sleeping

in the tents would need its warmth. I saw Kaya

and Mary retreating into one of the tents. Annie

came over to kiss me on the cheek, then ran off

with her family to a camping tent of their own.

Granny and I followed Aunt Cora, Aunt Melissa,

and Marilu back to their house.

Immediately, I was confused.

"I thought you were building a new house," Granny

said to Aunt Melissa.

I stared at the exterior of the drab little cob house.

Aunt Melissa led us into the familiar interior; I

stared at that, too. The linoleum floor was

collapsed, the ceiling brittle. The windows and

the front door rattled with a fierce draft. Aunt

Melissa tried to turn the overhead lights on, but the

circuits resisted. She went around lighting the

backup candles instead.

"I
was
building a new house," Aunt Melissa said.

Aunt Cora hurried to stuff towels in the windows

and the door while I held the door shut for her. I

saw that the lock was broken; we lodged a chair

underneath the doorknob. "But the Department

shot me down."

" 'The Department of Housing and Urban

Development regretfully declines your request for

a property license,' " Marilu recited tonelessly.

Could they really do that? Aunt Melissa must have

seen the outrage on my face. "It's the Dawes Act,"

she said. "Do you know about that? I'm sure you

do. In 1887, Natives got the chance to buy their

land. Most of us didn't sign up, you know. The

law didn't make much sense to us. Why would we

buy the land? It was already ours. So in 1934, the

government decided that any reservation that hadn't

been split up by the Dawes Act didn't really

belong to the Indians living on it. Nope. This isn't

really our land. The government owns it. We can't

do anything to it without their written permission.

They're holding it for us 'in trust.' Nice of them,

isn't it?"

I learned something that night. When the law's

built to restrict you as much as possible, you

become pretty well versed in it.

Marilu went to bed first. Granny and Aunt Cora

and Aunt Melissa sat chatting in the kitchen with

cups of tea. Aunt Melissa gave me a prairie

banana and I crumbled it up and stuffed it into my

stomach pump. I know, sounds really appetizing.

Granny handed me my duffel bag and I went into

the bathroom to change clothes for the night.

I went into Marilu's room and heard her sniffling

against her pillow.

I touched her shoulder.

"It's not fair," Marilu said. She whipped around to

show me her face, angry tears streaking red

patches down her cheeks. She looked like a

different little girl without her glasses. "I want my

house. I want my best friend."

I pulled her against me in a hug. She sobbed on my

shoulder, her tears wetting my shirt.

It was gloomy the following morning when Granny

and I left the Tonnu house. I almost couldn't bear

to look at Marilu, and as it was, she was too

distracted to wave goodbye. I felt clammy and

breathless and my ears were burning, my eyes

sore. Granny and I walked together to the parking

lot, her arm around mine, and I realized I wasn't

sure whether I was supporting her, or she was

supporting me.

"Skylar," Granny said, "you had better do

something about this."

I looked sideways at her.

Granny's profile was strong, proud, but her eyes

were every bit as discontent as Marilu's had been.

"Your generation has opportunities mine didn't,"

she said. "Do something about this. So that the

generation after yours will have opportunities you

don't."

We piled into Gabriel's car, Rosa stifling a sleepy

yawn, and I wondered: Could a mute guy in this

day and age really become a lawyer?

I'd done a little reading on this topic--you know,

before the whole cancer fiasco. On principle, I

hate reading, so that's a miracle in itself. But that

library Rafael had shown me turned out to be more

useful than I ever would have guessed. Only one

lawyer in the history of the US was mute. His

name was Roger O'Kelly, and he was one of the

first African American attorneys. In his biography,

he said, "No one has accomplished by the oral

system one half of what I have accomplished by

pencil and pad." I thought: I'd like to have half the

guts that guy had. Or talent. Talent's a funny

thing. Do you know Esref Armagan? I only know

about him because of Rafael. "The guy's amazing,"

Rafael told me once. Esref Armagan was born

without eyes. You wouldn't know it by looking at

his paintings. He paints with such accuracy, such

emotion. How the heck is he doing that? How is it

that he can paint the world in all its beauty when

he's never even seen it? Just thinking about it takes

my breath away. I want to be like those two men.

I want even an iota of their resilience. They never

gave up. I have no right to give up.

Rafael squeezed into the SUV next to me. I wound

up squished between him and the righthand door.

Rafael scowled. "Did you see Mary's stupid

girlfriend?" he asked me. "She was the only one in

Navajo regalia. It's like she wants to stand out."

I stared at Rafael. Kaya was the only one in

Navajo regalia because she was the only Navajo.

"I can't stand her. She's all...smug."

I hit his arm lightly.
She's also my friend
, I

wanted to say.

We were on the road within minutes, Mr. Black

Day behind the wheel. The trip to Idaho was going

to be another long one. I heard the crinkling of a

candy wrapper and realized Rafael was opening a

chocolate bar.

"M'starving," he said.

And I'm exhausted, I thought. I unbuckled my

seatbelt and propped my legs against the door. I

laid my head on Rafael's lap and went to sleep.

It was about noon when I woke up again. At first I

was aware of nothing except for denim beneath my

head and a rough, warm hand curved against my

cheek. I sat up, stiff and groggy. Gabriel and Mr.

Black Day were singing a road song.

"Want some?" Rafael asked, offering me a piece of

frybread.

I hadn't eaten, I thought, so I might as well. I took

the frybread from him and lifted my shirt. I felt

him freeze at my side.

"What the hell is that?" he whispered.

Feeling guilty--and I'm not sure why--I uncapped

the PEG. I broke the bread in pieces and pumped

it in. I took a water bottle from my duffel bag to

flush it down.

"Does that hurt?"

I shook my head and smiled. Then--because I

didn't like the pained look on Rafael's face--I stuck

my plains flute in his mouth.

It was afternoon when we arrived in the Cache

Valley. Mr. Black Day parked the car and we

climbed out, one by one, revering our ancestral

grounds. Not my ancestral grounds, I guess; I

wasn't really related to any of these people.

Thinking about that still bothers me. Related or

not, I took the time to drink in the flat and frosty

plains, the rolling green-gray hillside and the

confluence of Bear River and Bear Creek. It was

on this site that the largest massacre in American

history had taken place. I pulled my jacket tight

for warmth. Bear River was one of the coldest

places in America, and I could tell by the clouds

that it was about to start snowing.

Year after year, Plains People gather at Bear River

to remember the bloody ambush that claimed four

hundred and forty-six Shoshone lives. "Never

forget your past," Granny always said. It was the

worst day in Shoshone history, but in a way, what

we really came here for was hope. Hope that the

future looked better for Native Americans. Hope

that Native Americans and whites could live

together without one side trying to extinguish the

other.

Rafael put his arm around my waist. Warmth

spread through my cold bones. We followed our

friends and our families to the stone monument, a

blocky obelisk bearing a bronze plaque. The

plaque wasn't for the Shoshone, but for the men

who had killed them. Apparently killing innocent

people is something you ought to praise. One day,

I promised myself, we were going to tear that

monument out of the ground.

We stopped short. Something was wrong.

That something was two somethings. Two black,

unmarked squad cars.

The doors flew open; men and women climbed

out. Their jackets were a navy blue emblazoned

with gold letters: FBI.

"Excuse me," said the nearest guy, squat and

white-haired, when murmurs of unrest traveled

through the ground. "Excuse me!" he said again,

sounding harrowed. "This is government owned

property. You're going to have to turn back."

I wondered whether I had heard him correctly. I

couldn't believe what I was hearing.

"You've never turned us back in the past," I heard

Mrs. In Winter say.

"We would have if we'd known you were

trespassing."

"
Trespassing
?" Granny flared up.

Oh, no, I thought. I grabbed her by the arm.

Granny was just the sort of person to charge

headfirst into dissent like a raging bull. No

wonder she and Annie got along well.

Out of the corner of my eye I spotted one of the

female FBI agents scaling the crowd with her

eyes. I suppressed a frown. Was she trying to

count how many of us were here? The answer was

well over a thousand, maybe two. It's true that

there were only three hundred Shoshone from

Nettlebush, but that wasn't counting the Shoshone

who lived elsewhere, like Fort Hall and Duck

Valley.

The woman locked eyes with me. I smiled--it was

automatic, I couldn't help it--but a chill traveled

down my spine.

"Look," the squat man went on, irritably. "You can

stand here all day if you want, but I'll only call in a

SWAT team if you do."

That's overkill, I thought, disconcerted. And I half

expected someone to echo my sentiments. But I

looked around, and the most disheartening sight

met my eyes: the Shoshone returning to their cars,