St. Clair (Gives Light Series) (30 page)

hint.

"Okay," Rafael said. "But I left those whatsits

upstairs. Those Iliads."

I pressed my face against his shoulder and

laughed. I laughed so hard, I could feel it in my

stomach, in my chest. It was the most peculiar

feeling in the world: that I was happy, untouchably

happy, no matter the tube sticking out of my gut, no

matter the television vans sitting outside our

doors. Untouchable. That's the word. Nothing

could touch me so long as I was with Rafael.

Nothing but Rafael.

And speaking of the television vans--they sure did

their jobs. Day eight, day nine, day ten, the news

anchors were all over the reservation with their

boom mics and their makeup artists. Goofy kids

stood in the background, waving, and I shook my

head to see it. I didn't have their mettle, I guess,

because the last thing I wanted was my face on

TV. It became a real hassle to dart from tree to

tree and hope no one caught me.

"I know what you mean," Annie agreed, when we

went to the grotto one afternoon with Zeke, Rafael,

and Aubrey. "You can't even hang your clothes out

to dry without someone shoving a camera in your

face."

"You don't know how lucky you are!" Zeke

complained, turning on her. "I keep
trying
to get

my face on TV, but they're not interested!"

"I can't imagine why," Annie said serenely.

"Yeah, me neither! Meredith told them to stay

away from her ranch, though. That's probably got

something to do with it."

I made a mental note of the fact that Zeke still

wasn't living with his father.

Day twelve arrived, the official day of eviction,

and I'm sure I'm not exaggerating when I say that

the whole of the reserve collectively held its

breath. We woke early in the morning and went

out on our porches, each of us watching the

horizon. I sat with Dad and Granny and Racine

and the kids, Jessica sleepily rubbing her eyes.

Nary a steamroller was in sight.

"There's power in numbers," Granny said wisely.

And I guess there really was. The days came and

went. The visitors started dwindling. One by one,

the news vans packed up their kits and drove off

into the sunset. Only a single anchorwoman stayed

behind, no doubt trying to see if she could squeeze

one more story out of the reservation. I guess she

couldn't, though, because she eventually left, too.

"It was amazing," Annie said, when we finally

went back to school. "Wasn't it? All those

strangers showing up to help us. It really makes

you feel...I don't know. Like the world is mostly

good."

Maybe she was onto something there.

I've heard plenty of people complain about how

unbearable their friends can be when they're in

love. How mushy, sappy, and totally stupid they

become when they're talking about the object of

their affections.

My built in defense mechanism is that I can't talk to

begin with. I can't run my mouth off in front of

Annie or Aubrey about how great Rafael is, and

creative, and hilarious, and soft-hearted, and blue-

eyed, and blah-blah-blah. That's probably a good

thing. Same-sex relationships have been a part of

the Shoshone culture for millennia, but talking

about your relationship, same-sex or otherwise, is

a huge no no. In fact, as recent as the 1900s, the

Shoshone would consider their kin mentally ill if

they displayed affection in public. Like kissing.

Back before foreigners colonized America,

Shoshone didn't even kiss with their mouths. They

kissed by rubbing cheeks. I guess the Europeans

taught them the mouth thing, which strikes me as

kind of odd. "Hi, I'm invading your country. Let

me put my tongue in your mouth." You know

what's weirder? When you kiss someone, it has

the same chemical effect on your brain as taking a

hit of cocaine. I'm serious. Not that I've ever

taken cocaine.

Anyway, I think I can understand why people in

love are such a pain in the ass. I'm sure I would

have been a pain in the ass myself had I had the

verbal ability. Because now that everyone was

starting to relax, now that it looked like the

reservation might actually be safe, there was

nothing I wanted to do but be with Rafael.

I still don't know what he found attractive about

me. I think I'll go to my grave maintaining that God

set the bar pretty low when he tossed my body

together. And with that stomach pump sticking out

of my gut, I was more grotesque than usual.

But he never acted as though he were repulsed by

me. He was gentle when he took my shirt off,

when he stroked the flat planes of my chest and the

freckles on my belly; his hand hovered above my

PEG, and he touched it just lightly, and he drew me

close in his arms and buried his face against the

scars on my neck, like he was apologizing for

something that wasn't his fault. When he tugged my

jeans down my waist, agonizingly slow, my pulse

dizzyingly fast with anticipation, it was like he

was savoring every second; when he looked at me,

it was like he saw me in a way no human can ever

see another, in a way I knew I would never be able

to see myself. He made me want him; he made me

love him in ways I didn't know a person could

love; he made me feel safe inside my skin.

I'm sure the people around us must have known, in

some way, what we were up to--like Annie

noticed when we didn't show up at the grotto, or

Mr. Red Clay noticed when we forgot our

homework, or Dad noticed when I spent exorbitant

amounts of time at Rafael's house--but I didn't

particularly care. I was young and stupid and in

love and I just wanted to be in love. And really,

none of us knows for sure when his days are up.

It's morbid, but having cancer--having a stupid

feeding tube hanging out of my stomach--had taught

me impermanence, if nothing else. Anyone can die

at any given moment. It doesn't matter whether

you're healthy or weak. I think what really matters

is that you had a good time.

I sound like I'm eighty years old.

In any case, nice as it was to spend all that time

with Rafael, it drew to a pretty quick close in

March. March was when my speech therapist

came to the reservation.

His name was Jim Snowy Owl, and he was a

Lakota man from way up north. I don't know how

Dr. Stout managed to get her hands on him. He

was about fifty years old, his hair a grizzled gray

peppered with black. The first day I opened my

door to see him standing on the front porch, I had

the impression he was on the warpath.

He didn't say a word--just grunted at me and let

himself into my house.

When I say that Mr. Snowy Owl was a speech

therapist, I don't mean that he had come to

Nettlebush to teach me how to speak. I didn't even

have vocal cords anymore--it probably would

have been easier for him to teach a dog to speak.

Part of a speech therapist's repertoire, though, is

that he knows everything there is to know about the

inner workings of the human throat. Mr. Snowy

Owl was here to help me learn to swallow again.

The sooner I could swallow on my own, the

sooner I could get rid of that stupid stomach pump.

Mr. Snowy Owl was one eccentric guy. He had

me lie on my back on the floor while he burned

goldenseal root in a ceramic dish. Maybe the

fumes were supposed to help open my throat or

something; I don't know. He never spoke except in

fragmented sentences and grunts. Pretty ironic for

a speech therapist.

Once the goldenseal ritual was over with, he

showed me a bunch of ridiculous-looking

exercises for my jaws and my tongue. Those I was

actually familiar with, in a cursory way; I had gone

to a speech therapist when I was little, back when

my throat was first cut. Granny watched over us

with reproving eyes while she sat behind her

loom. Mr. Snowy Owl had me tilt my head

forward while I lay prone and roll my neck joints

this way and that. He had me feel my Adam's

apple with my fingertips and practice pushing on it

manually until I felt like I was going to gag.

But for all his patience, I still couldn't swallow.

Racine tried to feed me slaw at dinnertime. I had

to spit it back out.

"You're getting there, hon," she said, rubbing my

back.

"Cubby," Dad said, across the picnic table from

us. "Are you thinking about participating in the sun

dance this year?"

I sat up straight and grinned. The annual sun dance

was the Plains way of thanking the planet for its

generosity. I'd missed it last year because of foster

care.

"What's a sun dance?" Racine asked.

"It's for men only," Dad explained, a muted smile

finding its way to his lips.

Racine put her hands on her hips. "Are you telling

me I can't come?"

"I don't know, am I?"

There's nothing more mortifying than watching

your dad flirt. I excused myself quickly from the

table and went to sit with Rosa and her baby, a

crowd of adoring women--and Robert--already

gathered around the pair.

I had wondered for a long time about the sun

dance, and now my wondering drew to a close. A

few days later, and very early in the morning, Dad

crept into my room and shook me awake.

"Put your regalia on," he whispered.

I stumbled out of bed, half asleep, while he went

downstairs. I dressed clumsily, a ten minute

project, and went looking for him.

It was strange how different Dad looked in

regalia. His face was still the same, but to see him

in burnt orange deerhide, the traditional Shoshone

garments, he really looked like he belonged to a

different era. Sometimes it makes me sad that

Carlisle Indian School did such a good job of

forcing Native Americans to look and talk like

everyone else.

Dad seemed to be having second thoughts. He

perused me, worried. "Maybe you're not healthy

enough..."

I waved my hands in protest. The shaman always

oversaw the sun dance to make sure the dancers

didn't get hurt.

"Alright," Dad said dubiously. "But if I think

you're in any physical distress, I'm taking you out

of there myself."

We didn't stick around for breakfast; fasting is a

part of the sun dance protocol. We left the house

together, Dad locking the door. We walked

through the reservation, the houses dark, most of

the community still fast asleep.

We walked the route to the badlands, where men

of different ages started to join us, each in his own

version of the Plains regalia. Some of those men

were very, very old. None were younger than

sixteen. Nobody talked. This was a holy journey,

after all; our attention belonged on the journey at

hand.

Down the gulches we walked, across the dry

gullies, past the crumbling crevices that posed the

threat of landslides. The ground was very

slippery, not ideal for moccasins. Canyons

reached for the starry sky, tallest of all a lone

promontory overlooking a grove of southern oak

trees. That promontory was one of Rafael's

favorite hideouts.

The man at the front of our group--Mr. Knows the

Woods, a member of our tribal council--veered

suddenly left. We followed him. The terrain was

less slippery here, which made me think this was

an oft-traveled trail. Mr. Knows the Woods led us

behind a canyon wall. I realized we were headed

to the shaman's house.

The shaman's house was as antiquated as you can

possibly get. Built into the curve of the

canyonside, preceded by gardens of peat moss and

sand, it was essentially a wickiup: animal hide