Read When My Brother Was an Aztec Online
Authors: Natalie Diaz
When My Brother Was an Aztec (4 page)
On June 26, 1975, two FBI agents drove into the Jumping Bull property on the Sioux Reservation, allegedly in pursuit of Jimmy Eagle, a teen accused of stealing a pair of cowboy boots.
Jimmy Eagle, them FBI boys are just a-throbbin' for you
since you put on them pretty red-handed hot cowboy boots
Better hope your red pickup grows wings and flies fast
'cause Uncle Sam's dreamin' down Injuns in red Dakota grass
The crime's not so much, but they don't belong to you
What's a wild bird like you need with whiteman shoes?
Yep, Jimbo, the feds have a warrant named “you”
Soar Jumping Bull's golden hills, boy, and defend your coup
Jimmy Eagle, the brass is straight-lampin' for you
They're hot and you're red-handed with 'em sharp cowboy boots
The crime's not so much, but they don't belong to you
What's a wild bird like you need with whiteman shoes?
Now, Jimmy, they're callin' in cavalry ghosts of the past
Head for the stockpiled commods and arrows, man, hope that they last
Jimmy, baby, the gov'ments on your tail with a green light to shoot
worked-up 'n' tizzied for some hot goddamn red-handed cowboy boots
The crime's not so much, but they don't belong to you
What's a wild bird like you need with whiteman shoes?
Go 'head, Jimmy, stomp them new shoes, dance up the sand, make 'em flash
'cause they're lookin' to bury bullets in your brown barefoot ass
woven plaque basket with sunflower design, Hopi, Arizona, before 1935
from an American Indian basketry exhibit in
Portsmouth, Virginia
The Arizona highway sailed across the desertâ
a gray battleship drawing a black wake,
halting at the foot of the orange mesa,
unwilling to go around.
Hopi men and womenâbrown, and small, and claylike
âpeered down from their tabletops at yellow tractors, water trucks,
and white men blistered with sunâred as fire antsâtowing
sunscreen-slathered wives in glinting Airstream trailers
in caravans behind them.
Elders knew these BIA roads were bad medicineâknew too
that young men listen less and less, and these young Hopi men
needed work, hence set aside their tools, blocks of cottonwood root
and half-finished Koshari the clown katsinas, then
signed on with the Department of Transportation,
were hired to stab drills deep into the earth's thick red flesh
on First Mesa, drive giant sparking blades across the mesas' faces,
run the drill bits so deep they smoked, bearding all the Hopi men
in whiteâ
Bad spirits,
said the Eldersâ
The blades caught fire, burned outâ
Ma'saw is angry,
the Elders said.
New blades were flown in by helicopter. While Elders dreamed
their arms and legs had been cleaved off and their torsos were flung
over the edge of a dinner table, the young Hopi men went
back to work cutting the land into large chunks of rust.
Nobody noticed at firstânot the white workers,
not the Indian workersâbut in the mounds of dismantled mesa,
among the clods and piles of sand,
lay the small gray bowls of babies' skulls.
Not until they climbed to the bottom did they see
the silvered bones glinting from the freshly sliced dirt-and-rock wallâ
a mausoleum mosaic, a sick tapestry: the tiny remains
roused from death's dusty cradle, cut in half, cracked,
wrapped in time-tattered scraps of blankets.
Let's call it a day,
the white foreman said.
That night, all the Indian workers got sad-drunkâgot sick
âwhile Elders sank to their kivas in prayer. Next morning,
as dawn festered on the horizon, state workers scaled the mesas,
knocked at the doors of pueblos that had them, hollered
into those without them,
demanding the Hopi men come back to workâthen begging themâ
then buying them whiskeyâbegging againâfinally sending their white
wives up the dangerous trail etched into the steep sides
to buy baskets from Hopi wives and grandmothers
as a sign of treaty.
When that didn't work, the state workers called the Indians lazy,
sent their sunhat-wearing wives back up to buy more basketsâ
katsinas tooâthen called the Hopis
good-for-nothings,
before begging them back once more.
We'll try again in the morning,
the foreman said.
But the Indian workers never returnedâ
The BIA's and DOT's calls to work went unanswered,
as the fevered Hopis stayed huddled inside.
The small bones half-buried in the crevices of mesaâ
in the once-holy darkness of silent earth and always-nightâ
smiled or sighed beneath the moonlight, while white women
in Airstream trailers wrote letters home
praising their husbands' patience, describing the lazy savages:
such squalor in their stone and plaster homesâcobs of corn stacked
floor to ceiling against crumbling wallsâtheir devilish ceremonies
and the barbaric way they buried their babies,
oh, and those beautiful, beautiful baskets.
1
Despair has a loose daughter.
I lay with her and read the body's bones
like stories. I can tell you the year-long myth
of her hips, how I numbered stars,
the abacus of her mouth.
2
The sheets are berserk with wind's riddling.
All the beds of the past cannot dress the ghosts
at my table. Their breasts rest on plates
like broken goblets whose rims I once thirsted at.
Instead of grace, we rattle forks
in our empty bowls.
3
We are the muezzins of the desert
crying out like mockers from memory's
violet towers. We scour the earth
as Isis did. Fall is forever hereâ
women's dresses wrinkle
on the ground, men fall to their knees
in heaps, genitals rotting like spent fruitâ
even our roots fall from the soil.
4
The world has tired of tears.
We weep owls now. They live longer.
They know their way in the dark.
5
Unfasten your cage of teeth and tongue.
The taste of a thousand moths is chalk.
The mottled wings are the words to pain.
6
We have no mazel tov.
We call out for our mothers
with empty wine jugs at our heels.
A.M.
He sat cross-legged, weeping on the steps
when Mom unlocked and opened the front door.
O God,
he said.
O God.
He wants to kill me, Mom.
When Mom unlocked and opened the front door
at 3 a.m., she was in her nightgown, Dad was asleep.
He wants to kill me,
he told her,
looking over his shoulder.
3 a.m. and in her nightgown, Dad asleep,
What's going on?
she asked.
Who wants to kill you?
He looked over his shoulder.
The devil does. Look at him, over there.
She asked,
What are you on? Who wants to kill you?
The sky wasn't black or blue but the green of a dying night.
The devil, look at him, over there.
He pointed to the corner house.
The sky wasn't black or blue but the dying green of night.
Stars had closed their eyes or sheathed their knives.
My brother pointed to the corner house.
His lips flickered with sores.
Stars had closed their eyes or sheathed their knives.
O God, I can see the tail,
he said.
O God, look.
Mom winced at the sores on his lips.
It's sticking out from behind the house.
O God, see the tail,
he said.
Look at the goddamned tail.
He sat cross-legged, weeping on the front steps.
Mom finally saw it, a hellish vision, my brother.
O God, O God,
she said.
My father brought home a zebra from Sinaloa.
This house is a zoo,
my mother wept.
Ay, but this amazing creature is for you, mi vida,
he said.
You only give me beasts,
she sobbed, flinging herself over the bony, swayed back of the zebra. She loosened a new Colorado River of tears, so much water that the zebra's stripes melted and pooled at his ankles like four beaten prisoners.
Ay, you see,
my father howled,
you ruined it. Amor, it is no zebra. It is a burro painted like a zebra. But, don't be sad. The beasts are not beasts. They are our children painted like hyenas.
We knew better. My mother had been weeping for one hundred years, and in all that time, our ghoulish mouths had grown redder, our beady eyes darker, and our wet teeth even longer. Faces she couldn't scrub from our heads. Tails that always grew back.
With one hundred years comes wisdom, and my mother was right. We are a zoo, and we will not spare even our parents the price of admissionâthey will pay to watch us eat
el burro.
My father will fall on his knees like a man who has just lost his zebra. My mother will paint the thin gray bars of a cage over her skin and reach out for us.
If he's wearing knives for eyes,
if he's dressed for a Day of the Dead paradeâ
three-piece skeleton suit, cummerbund of ribsâ
his pelvic girdle will look like a Halloween mask.
The bones, he'll complain, make him itch.
Each ulna
a tingle.
His mandible might tickle.
If he cannot stop scratching, suggest that he change,
but not because he itchesâdo it for the scratching,
do it for the bones.
Okay, okay,
he'll give in,
I'll change.
He'll go back upstairs, and as he climbs away,
his back will be something elseâone shoulder blade
a failed wing, the other a silver shovel.
He hasn't eaten in years. He will never change.
Be some kind of happy he didn't appear dressed
as a greed godâheaddress of green quetzal feathers,
jaguar loincloth littered with bite-shaped rosettesâ
because tonight you are not in the mood
to have your heart ripped out. It gets old,
having your heart ripped out,
being opened up that way.
Your brother will come back down again,
this time dressed as a Judas effigy.
I know, I know,
he'll joke.
It's not Easter. So what?
Be straight with him. Tell him the truth.
Tell him,
Judas had a rope around his neck.
When he asks if an old lamp cord will do, just shrug.
He'll go back upstairs, and you will be there,
close enough to the door to leave, but you won't.
You will wait, unsure of what you are waiting for.
Wait for him in the living room
of your parents' home-turned-misery-museum.
Visit the perpetual exhibits:
Someone Is Tapping
My Phone, Como Deshacer a Tus Padres,
Jesus Told Me To,
and
Mon Frère
â
ten, twenty, forty dismantled phones dissected
on the dining table: glinting snarls of copper,
sheets of numbered buttons, small magnets,
jagged, ruptured shafts of lithium batteries,
empty 2-liters of Diet Coke with dirty tubing snaking
from the necks, shells of Ataris, radios, television sets,
and the Electrolux, all cracked open like dark nuts,
innards heaped across the floor.
And your pick for Best of Show:
Why Dad Can't Find the Lightbulbs
â
a hundred glowing bells of gutted lightbulbs,
each rocking in a semicircle on the counter
beneath Mom's hanging philodendron.
Your parents' home will look like an al-Qaeda
yard sale. It will look like a bomb factory,
which might give you hope, if there were
such a thing. You are not so luckyâ
there is no fuse here for you to find.
Not long ago, your brother lived with you.
You called it,
One last shot,
a three-quarter-court
heave, a buzzer-beater to win something of him back.
But who were you kidding? You took him in
with no grand dreams of salvation, but only to ease
the guilt of never having tried.
He spent his nights in your bathroom
with a turquoise BernzOmatic handheld propane torch,
a Merlin mixing magic, then shape-shifting into lions,
and tigers, and bears,
Oh fuck,
pacing your balcony
like Borges's blue tiger, fighting the cavalry in the moon,
conquering night with his blue flame, and plotting to steal
your truck keys, hidden under your pillow.
Finally, you found the nerve to ask him to leave,
so he took his propane torch and left you
with his meth pipe ringing in the dryer.
Now, he's fresh-released from Rancho Cucamongaâ
having traveled the Mojave Trail in chainsâ
living with your parents, and you have come
to take him to dinnerâbecause he is your brother,
because you heard he was cleaning up,
because dinner is a thing with a clear beginning
and end, a measured amount of time,
a ritual everyone knows, even your brother.
Sit down. Eat. Get up. Go home.
Holler upstairs to your brother to hurry.
He won't come right away.
Remember how long it took the Minotaur
to escape the labyrinth.
Your father will be in the living room, too,
sitting in a rocking chair in the dark,
wearing his
luchador
maskâhe is El Santo.
His face is pale. His face is bone-white. His eyes
are hollow teardrops. His mouth a dark,
Oâ
He is still surprised by what his life has become.
Don't dare think about unmasking your father.
His mask is the only fight he has left.
He is bankrupt of
planchas
and
topes.
He has no more
huracanranas
to give.
Leave him to imagine himself jumping
over the top rope, out of the ring,
running off, his silver-masked head
cutting the night like a butcher knife.
When your brother finally appears,
the lamp cord knotted at his neck
should do the trick, so leave to the restaurant.
It will be hard to look at him in the truck,
dressed as a Judas effigy. Don't forget,
a single match could devour him like a neon
tooth, canopying him in a bright tent of painâ
press the truck's lighter into the socket.
Methâhis singing sirens, his jealous jinn
conjuring up sandstorms within him, his Harpy
haremâhas sucked the beauty from his face.
He is a Cheshire cat, a gang of grins.
His new face all jaw, all smile and bite.
Look at your brotherâhe is Borges's bestiary.
He is a zoo of imaginary beings.
Your brother's jaw is a third passenger in the truckâ
it flexes in the wind coming in through the window,
resetting and rehinging, opening and closing
against its will. It will occur to you
your brother is a beat-down, dubbed Bruce Leeâ
his words do not match his mouth, which is moving
faster and faster. You have the fastest
brother alive.
Your brother's lips are ruined.
There is a sore in the right corner of his mouth.
My teeth hurt,
he says. He will ask to go
to the IHS dentist. At a stoplight, you are forced
to look into his mouthâit is Å vankmajer's rabbit holeâ
you have been lost in it for the last ten years.
Pull into the restaurant parking lot.
Your brother will refuse to wear his shoes.
Judas was barefoot,
he will tell you.
Judas wore sandals,
you answer.
No, Jesus wore sandals,
he'll argue.
Maybe one day you will laugh at thisâ
arguing with a meth head dressed
like a Judas effigy about Jesus's sandals.
Your brother will still itch when you are seated
at your table. He will rake his fork against his skin.
Look closerâhis skin is a desert.
Half a red racer is writhing along his forearm.
A migration of tarantulas moves like a shadow
over his sunken cheeks.
Every time the waitress walks by, he licks his lips
at her. He tells you, then her, that he can taste her.
Hope she ignores him. Pretend not to hear
what he says. Also ignore the cock crowing
inside him. But if he notices you noticing,
Don't worry,
he'll assure you,
The dogs will get it.
Which dogs?
You have to ask.
Then he'll point out the window at two dogs humping
in the empty lot across the way.
Go ahead. Tell him.
Those are not dogs,
you'll say.
Those are chupacabras.
Chupacabras are not real,
he'll tell you,
brothers are.
And he'll be right.
The reflection in your empty plate will speak,
Your brother is on drugs again.
You are at a dinner neither of you can eat.
Consider your brother: he is dressed
as a Judas effigy. When the waitress takes your order,
your brother will ask for a beer.
You will pour your thirty pieces of silver
onto the table and ask,
What can I get for this?
