Pine Ridge

This piece integrates quotes from a recent NY Times article, “Next to Tribe With Alcohol Ban, a Hub of Beer,” which can be found in full online: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/06/us/next-to-tribe-with-alcohol-ban-a-hub-of-beer.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=pine%20ridge&st=cse

As we approach the western border of South Dakota, I know we’re going to be making a detour. The yellow afternoon seeps through the car windows and warms the folds across my lap. I measure with my fingers, spread open in an eyeball approximation of an inch. One inch = ten miles. Ten miles = ten minutes, or less if I’m driving. The whole thing should take less than two hours. And that’s being incredibly generous.

“Pine Ridge is home to the Oglala Sioux Tribe and is one of the poorest places in the country, according to 2010 census data.”

I know this place because I am paid to talk about it ; paid to describe the desolation, the poverty, the lasting impacts of domestic warfare and institutional racism. I am paid to tell you that your ancestors were wrong to go west. That Manifest Destiny was a totally fucked-up idea with no moral basis. I am paid to calmly and articulately deconstruct the myth of the American West. My brown skin and dark eyes will convince you that everything you learned in fourth grade social studies was false, and that you should give me a hug, or at least donate to the historical society. Not all embrace this revisionist history. Some are wary, watching me from the back of the room as I gesture at maps, point out borders and treaty agreements, show paintings and wave towards flags. I can do this for at least a few more hours before it starts to hurt, right below my breast bone, deep inside my ribs. Then I can’t stop my tone from rising like a preacher on the last word of scripture. Like a parent on the final word in a fierce scolding.

“Fetal alcohol syndrome, fatal drunken driving accidents and beer-fueled murders have cast a pall over Pine Ridge for decades.”

I trace the lines on the map with my index finger, trying to keep it from shaking across the page. Truth be told, I am afraid. Every reservation holds a memory of home, but I have not lived my life without warning. I can only rely on my features for so long before some misplaced word, some unconscious gesture, some screaming hint of my ignorance will announce my presence as an outsider. But the open road keeps twisting deeper and deeper into the depths of Pine Ridge. Wounded Knee lies on the far edge of the reservation, less than ten miles from Nebraska. The New York Times article I read last month neglected to mention this particular proximity. Let alone how they might be related.

“Dozens of people in various states of inebriation wandered along the road. Other men and women were passed out in front of abandoned buildings.”

The fields are empty. I’m not used to so much openness. Even back home, fields are seeded with wheat and potatoes. The mountains roll up from the valley floor. But we seem to be the only presence in the giant gap between the brown earth and the blue sky., my pale-skinned boyfriend and I, letting the odometer count up the miles as we drift farther and farther away from the Interstate.

“The tribal police department, which has 38 officers — down from 101 six years ago — lacks jurisdiction.”

I’ve grown up feeling the sting of injustice and discrimination. But my parents were outsiders. They came to the rez with this knowledge, and passed it on to me. You can’t be non-Indian on Indian land and expect your life to be the same. When you pass onto a reservation, your personal history will come to the surface. The color of your skin will matter. I know this. I know I am an outsider even when I am home. Here, I am twice the outsider, and way outside my comfort zone.

“Any sign of alcohol — the smell of beer, walking funny, slurred speech — can get a person arrested in Pine Ridge. “

We’re running out of gas. I’m trying to keep the panic deep down in my belly, trying to suppress it because, after all, this little excursion was my idea. The sun is setting, and each dot on the map could signify a town or just a place where the highways bends to flow on another twenty-five miles without interruption. But we can’t turn back now, and we’re on one of three paved roads in a seventy-mile radius. We almost miss the gas station, our eyes are so intent on finding a giant Conoco or Exxon.

“There!” I practically shout, pointing over his lap to the four pumps lined up outside a wooden mini-mart. I open the car door. My heart is thudding in my chest. I walk across the pavement, my head down, my hair over my features. I am suddenly aware of my tight leggings and lace-up boots. Native girls don’t dress like I am dressed now. But no one looks at me until I stand in front of the register, keeping my face still and easy.

“Bathroom?” I ask. She points at a door in the back, but I can see the “Out of Order” sign from here. She shakes her head.

“Just go ahead and use it.”

When I’m done, I return to the car, and then pump the gas. My boyfriend stays in the car and watches me replace the pump. Upon re-entering the safe little world of our Honda Accord, I am exhilarated. “I did it,” I say, “I passed.”

“Rates of diabetes, teenage suicide, crime and unemployment are in some cases exponentially higher than national averages, according to federal and tribal data and officials.”

We get to Wounded Knee as the sun is slipping away. The air is hanging on to a momentary light – dusty pink illuminating the grass flats. There is nothing but a highway sign, front and back in hand-painted letters. Like the gas station, we almost missed it. We walk up the rutted track to the hilltop in the near-darkness. With an empty bladder and a full tank of gas, I feel less scared. In fact, as we enter the tiny cemetery perched on the cusp of the setting sun, I’m not scared at all. I feel a great peace settle over the great uneasiness in my chest. We survey the mass-grave with solemn acknowledgement.

“Daryl Walking, 46, a former Marine who said he has been drinking since he was a boy, said he spends three nights a week in jail for public intoxication and the other four in the cold.”

There’s no way to bottle this sensation and bring it back to the Interstate. No way to convince anyone that a four-hour drive on winding two-lane highways is worth every cent of gas. No way to explain that a non-Native has a responsibility to drive through the reservation with an open mind and an open heart. I guess that’s why we have the New York Times.

North

After the worst summer of our lives comes autumn. The trees explode with color. You call me while I’m washing the dishes, and I pick up the phone with soapy hands, the water dripping down my arms to my elbows.

“Let’s go north,” you say, and I say yes before I can think about saying no.

We drive along highway 35 and reach the shores of Lake Superior as the sun is sinking into the water. The golden rays set the trees on fire.

“Wow,” you say. I nod. It’s the most we’ve spoken since we left the cities.

We drive up to the cabin in the dark, and it’s much colder than I anticipated. The door is stuck fast, and it takes both of us pushing against it before it finally scrapes back against the floorboards. I strike a match, and the room is illuminated for hot second, shadows jumping back against the log walls. The smell of dust and disuse rises out of the darkness. Everything is quiet.

Rather than attempt to make the main room livable, we drag blankets into the sunroom and curl up on the floor.

“Do you think there are rats in here?” I whisper fearfully.

“I’ll protect you.”

Across the lake, a loon calls out, the sound both eerie and comforting.

The morning sun wakes us a little before six. I rise from the floorboards and stretch, achy from sleeping on a hard surface without a pillow. You pull a blanket over your head and roll over, stubbornly resisting the day.

“Come on sleepyhead.” I nudge you with my foot. “Get up.”

We decide to drive into town for coffee. The morning air is chilly and smells like rotting leaves, and I inhale great deep breaths of it through the open window. Main Street is just as we remember, but we drive slowly anyways, pointing out familiar sights and reminiscing while the drivers behind us honk and curse. Finally we pull into the café long-known and well- loved.  The world smells like bacon and coffee and burned toast. I sigh in anticipation.

After breakfast (you, buttermilk pancakes with extra syrup and coffee with cream, me, huevos rancheros and coffee, black) we stock up on groceries and head back to the cabin. I attack the dust and dirt that’s built up since May, and you chop wood, a task you secretly hate but pretend to love. It’s a man thing, I guess, and I feel pleasantly domestic as I sweep out the debris. No mice.

Dusk falls quickly, and we eat by candlelight at the table. Our voices no longer echo but fill the room, and I feel a great peace enter between us – the cabin has become home once more.

That night we make love like we haven’t in months. You slide your fingers through my hair and I allow myself to moan just once, a soft cry into the silence. We sleep wrapped around each other, and when I wake up in the morning, your arm still encircles my waist.

We stay a week, or a little less, and then we pack up the car and bolt the front door.

“Winter will come early this year,” you say as we drive the highway curves back towards civilization. I nod and lean my seat back as far as it will go, closing my eyes and letting part of me stay for just a little bit longer.

I’m washing dishes when you call, and I pick up the phone with soapy hands.

“Hello?” I say, and your voice is weaker than the last time we spoke.

“Let’s go north,” you say softly, and I feel my eyes fill with warm salt.

“I wish,” I said, envisioning driving along the shores of Lake Superior, the smell of the air in the autumn woods, the sound of a loon echoing across the water. “How are you feeling?”

You sigh, your breath a rush of crackly air against my ear. “I’ll be there this afternoon,” I promise. “I’ll bring you something to eat.”

“Okay.”

I hang up the phone and finish the dishes. Dry my hands. Fold the banana bread in foil and drive out to the hospital. Hold your hand while you cough and spit mucus into a plastic dish.

“Tell me a story,” you say, leaning back against a stack of pillows. “About us.”

So I do.

Freedom.

Here is a story I’ve told no one else.

My little brother drank himself to death.

He was eleven.

There is a field behind my house.

He and his friend P.J. stole two bottles of vodka from P.J.’s uncle.

By the time they found them, the bodies were cold.

I don’t tell anyone, ever.

Instead, I tell them about the trailer with the broken steps and peeling paint.

I tell them about working at Burger King every night until midnight so my mom could pay rent. She works too.

I tell them about my older sister who married my ex-stepfather the day she turned eighteen.

I am no longer ashamed of where I am from, because I am long gone.

One morning, I woke up and realized my roommate had vomited all over the floor.

I stepped around the puddles of rancid stomach acid and went to class.

This is my life now.

I eat salads for lunch.

I run on the treadmill. Five miles. Every day. I’m getting faster.

I have a boyfriend. He doesn’t hit me.

I get good  grades. I have always gotten good grades, but no one makes fun of me for them anymore. Instead, my adviser told me I had talent. I can be proud of myself. I am proud of myself.

I don’t go home for Christmas anymore. I spent last Christmas at my boyfriend’s house. On Christmas morning, I called home, but the phone number was no longer in service.

Now.

I can be somebody.

 

Flume

For my best friend:

August heat. Crickets drone in the far-off fields. The sun is a dusty circle in the sky. The stereo plays a mix For You, songs we shared in middle school that assault our ears with nostalgia and shared embarrassment, rolling out the windows to greet the cows standing inert in the afternoon.  We are the only streak of motion in this pastoral summer scene, following the dark current of the canal to the flume.

When we park the car, the back wheels hang over the dirt edge. “Grab these,” Annabelle says and hands me two worn chunks of Styrofoam. I tuck them under one arm and follow her down the  gravel path to the rushing water. We trace the path down to where the canal rushes and roars through a cement chute before flowing peacefully out to the reservoir.

“Jesus,” I say. The water is a crisp white and cold spray collides with the hot air. Fear crawls up the backs of my knees, claws at the small of my back.

“Take my hand,” Annabelle shouts into my ear. I grasp it and we creep along the cement shore to the very top of the flume.

Water blasts past us to the bottom of the narrow cement gully. I’m holding my breath in my throat, but her face is serene as an sculpted angel. I tip forward suddenly and let out a scream. The sound shoots off the far wall and is quickly swallowed by the white foam. “Fuck.” I regain my balance at the last second by grabbing hold of one of the long thin branches stretched over the canal. Thorns cut my palm, but I let out my bottled breath in a sigh of relief.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” We pause for a minute before continuing our slow steps towards the top of the flume.

Finally we reach the top. The canal is peaceful here,  flowing along smoothly without warning of the sudden drop ahead. We clamber down the sloped bank, loosening chunks of dirt and rock.

We each hold a piece of styrofoam and wade out into the knee-deep water. The current washes the fear from behind my knees, clear and encouraging. Come forward, the water laughs. Ride of your life.

“You’re crazy,” I say aloud, to the water. To Annabelle and myself. To the warm afternoon saddling my shoulders.

Annabelle turns towards me. “I love you too,” she says. “We’re not going to die.”

I nod and grin and sit with a splash on styrofoam, feet braced against the hard bottom of the canal. Annabelle lets go first. I hear her voice echo down the chute, a mixture of fear and glee and exhilaration. Next.

Unthinking, I lift my feet. Whoa. The current shoves me forward, the styrofoam brushes the slippery algae along the bottom and as the canal sweeps forward and steepens, the world becomes a tunnel of dirty concrete and clean blue sky. I’m screaming, laughing, forgetting and yet still forming words with trembling lips. In front of me lies a green abyss, the final slow meander of the canal before it flows into the reservoir.

“Watch out!” Annabelle screams, and panic hops onto my swiftly careening craft.

“For what?” I ask, but my question disappears without reaching her ears. I plunge down and outwards, floating into the green pool of water. The pool is deep, but the current pushes me farther towards the open water. I spot Annabelle’s warning, a jagged triangle of concrete lurking under the surface inches from where I was spat from the flume. My silent prayers reach up into the hot sky.

We float on our backs, our hair streaming through the murky water. The world is upside down; the mountains point downwards in the distance. “Let’s go again.” Annabelle lifts her head. Her mascara is running in hurried streaks down her cheeks. Just the idea brings the tingles back to my limp body and fills me with a fearful energy.

“Sure.” Why else would we be here?

It Begins With a Dangerous Dream

Those first few moments of the day are the best. The seconds where you slip out of sleep and into your conscious life, but before you are quite aware of it; nothing makes sense. Dreams fade behind you and the day slides into focus. Today is Friday. It is February. I have work at 9 a.m. Eric has already left for work; his pillow is on the floor. I need to shower. Eggs for breakfast. I can hear rain.

I’m out of the shower and drying my legs before I remember my dreams, and then I close my eyes tight and try to remember more. Because I can feel something, a shadow on my heart, a pull in my belly, a deep emotion that has no name but that I want to experience more fully. We were in the library. Maybe I was working, or maybe not. But he was there. The man who I’ve only  begun to acknowledge and say yes, I know you, and I want to know you better.

He is not my husband. I met him a few weeks ago when he came into the library looking for a book of poems. As soon as his request dropped from his lips, I took a second look at him, his hair dripping, his eyes wild and bright and unnaturally blue. I’ve never been attracted to a man with blue eyes before. But I was attracted to this one. I found him the book and he smiled, said thank you, but it was the eyes that stayed with me. And when he came back, a few days later, we talked about those poems, and I could feel an unusual tightness in my stomach, my face flushing and my words tripping over themselves in an effort to reach his ears.

“I’ve never seen you here before,” he said. “I was in Nicaragua last year,” I say. I swallow the words, “With my husband.” Then he’s gone, and I have my first crush in years. I wait for him every few days, and we exchange a few words, and I feel like I’m seventeen again, wearing mascara and blow-drying my hair on days I feel are likely to be poetic. I tell my (loving) husband about my day, but I leave him out, naturally.

In a way, it feels good to keep something from him.

Who knows where dreams come from? Maybe they come from the same place as the love you never asked to feel, never imagined you’d receive. You wake up one day and there you are, trapped by your own subconscious desires, trying hopelessly to  make sense out of them in the daylight. Danger is suddenly lurking in every corner of my day; I am waiting for that shadow and deep emotion to leak into my life and ruin everything. For this reason, I avoid my husband. Even in my dream I could feel his anger.

But I could also feel the thrill of breaking away and doing something out of pure want. I don’t feel guilty; I feel empowered.

The Dance Teacher

I taught those blackberries to dance

Put on some music and said

Show me what you’ve got

Like there is No Tomorrow and

You can sleep every night

For the rest of your life.

 

We are snowflakes!

Move your hips slow, easy

Every one of us is unique

And we can wish upon each other

Like new stars in the sky

 

Don’t shake your head like that!

Makes my neck hurt to look at you

Watch the others, darling

You have bells on your toes

Posters

Today is a horrible day! I texted him at 4:45, on my way home. All I wanted was to lie in a warm place with good smells and maybe fall asleep. Maybe cry a little, but mostly just wait for the pain in my head to go away. Some days are just like that.

Slowdown, he said. I will come over soon. I turned the music up loud enough to drown out the sound of waiting and waited. Wrote some poems. Facebook chatted Mina, which only made me want to write more poems. He came in without knocking, which surprised and pleased me, and sat down at the kitchen table, questioning my music choice. I love this music, I said, and he refused to say anything more. He ate some food, drank some water, and then I pretended I needed a book from the other side of the dining room.

Can I kiss you, I said, standing over him, my hands twisted in front of me. I don’t want anything else. For months I was absorbed in my own sickness and always I knew that I was craving mouths, ,our mouths, yes together. Makes everything better. Or at least, not really matter.

And then I said, come look at my posters, which is quickly becoming code for, shall we go upstairs? Shall we take off our clothes? Shall we distract ourselves, for say, 10-20 minutes and not think about anything but each other, ourselves? It was dark and shadowy and his breath smelled or tasted of decomposing plant matter, which sounds absolutely disgusting when I remember, but in the moment was only intriguing. Anyway we were kissing and I felt like I was fifteen except that when I was fifteen, I was playing legos cross-legged on the floor. Not on top of a shirtless boy.

Skip the part that’s just for me to know and I’m back at the dining room table and it’s like it never happened. Only girls know. People know. It’s all over you, you know, your eyes are falling shut and your face is flushed and for the next hour you will answer questions with, Huh?

We needed dinner and we were waiting for Daniel, and we talked about some poems and then about Edgar Allan Poe and then Daniel called. We ate burritos. His eyes sparkled. I love the rice at Chipotle and so I asked for extra, but then it was like a rice burrito. Until I got to the end which was just pure guacamole deliciousness. The wind picked up and blew across the melted snow and we shivered back to Daniel’s car. Somehow we all knew all the words and threw our hands up in the air sometimes, singing ay yo (hey oh?) gotta let go. For a few seconds, the world slipped back into clear focus. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t upset, and best of all, my head wasn’t hurting. His hand was cold but it was on my knee and I thought, this is what I want, what I need, to make me happy.

That One Girl, That One Time

We waited almost an hour for our food. My stomach was eating itself by the time our plates arrived, barely enough table to hold them all.

“I’m going to wash my hands,” she said, excusing herself and sliding out of the booth. No one looked up. We all began shoveling food into our mouths like we hadn’t eaten in weeks while she walked out of our lives.

They found her almost a week later down by the river. She had bronchitis, couldn’t stop coughing without a cupful of cough syrup and a heavy dose of sedation. It was the coughing that gave her away to the hundreds combing the riverbanks, the second stage of the search effort.

She showed no signs of abuse, sexual or physical, although her arms were bruised with her own fingerprints.

“I just wanted to get away,” was the only explanation she gave, and that was that. I read about her in the newspaper, gave her friends a few dollars to buy flowers, and never saw her again.

Resistance

Love is all about resistance. Anything can go too far, if you think about it too long, but as far as I can tell, love is the most dangerous. Love will not just drag you down, but it will drag someone else and then you’ll both come crawling out, torn, disgusted with what you’ve seen of human nature, and full of bitterness and hatred. That’s if you’re lucky. If you’re not, well, we know what happens to those who love too strongly or too hard. They disappear sometimes.

I fell in love and it’s all I can do to wake up each morning and remember to brush my teeth. Cook breakfast. And what impels me forward through the slush if not love? For every moment is either spent recalling the last moment we had together, or the next time we might meet. Now the months of waiting are over and in front of me are months and months of sleeping in the same bed, eating the same meals, and catching one another’s eyes as our days fold down in front of us.

I’m not sure I know how to do this anymore. How to not sit for hours in the sunlit chair waiting for him to pass by. How to not beg him, silently or with my lips, to not leave, not yet. How to not clench my teeth when I come. Don’t look at me scornfully or roll your eyes and dismiss a single thing I’ve said. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve never been in love. Never even felt the hopeful  stirrings of fantasy and unmet expectations. In short, you aren’t human, at least, not yet.

But wait! It will be okay. Take a deep breath, distract myself, write the damn paper and look up at the stars in the cold air. Keep the distance and resist every impulse to throw myself at his feet or in front of the next train. Things will be okay.

I don’t want to disappear.

Journey Poem

My mother drove this road first

Long before she became the woman I know

Uncertain on the curves, but hopeful for a destination

Watching the steady grace of the river roll onward

 

I hated this road for making me nauseous

For twisting on through the trees

For the silence of the endless scenery

For the gentle associations of boredom

 

Hot water springs and big-horned rams dotting the sweeping yellow hillsides Paradise just a town with two men in a log cabin, just a name on a map and the train trestle falls down over across the river, straight black and sure–

 

And when I was fifteen I drove this road

The long hours to the Idaho border

With slick palms and my heart lurching

My father’s harsh eye on the speedometer

 

When our lives began to crumble

Like handfuls of dry riverbank clay

The rush and the roar of our tires

Became an echo for the airplanes

 

Swift snow and a mountain pass climbing higher ever higher Spaghetti and lace curtains of the Red-Light District, listen, you can feel the ghosts of the mining days brushing your skin and the river running milky green pulling, always pulling–

 

Once I found an eagle feather

But my mother told I didn’t have the blood

To keep such a treasure and so I left it spearing the sky

My uncle lost his wedding ring in the gravel on the shore