And Then She Fell, page 22
“Slow. I have no idea how Dad came up with the perfect ways to tell his stories off the top of his head like that.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself. He had a lifetime of practice before we heard him. Who knows how long it took for him to get that good.”
It’s such an obvious observation that I’m almost ashamed I’ve never made it myself. There must have been a time when Dad was self-conscious about his storytelling. He might even have been self-conscious when telling us the stories we thought were so thrilling.
“You’re right. Maybe I’m being too much of a perfectionist. If I keep second-guessing every other word who knows when I’ll even finish.”
“You said you’re working on the Creation Story?”
I try to nod, but she grabs my chin and stops me.
“No moving yet! If you wanna tell our stories you gotta start at the source.” She moves her head back to take in everything, squints her eyes at the effect. “You gonna go the feminist route and have Sky Woman jump through the hole herself?”
“Haven’t decided yet. Do you think I should?”
She shrugs. “I mean, that version got really popular in, what? Like, the seventies? It was important at the time, what with women’s lib and all that. And it’s still important. How many times have you heard the men in our community go on and on about ‘lifting up the voices of our women’ or ‘respecting our women’ while never once passing us the mic? Don’t even get me started on how they treat queer women.”
“Her husband pushing her through the hole could be just as powerful. With missing and murdered Indigenous women and everything.”
“Sure, it could. But Sky Woman doesn’t go missing or die.”
I try to arrange my thoughts into neat rows. “Well, her husband doesn’t know she’s gonna live when he pushes her out of Sky World. As far as he knows, he’s murdered her at worst and disappeared her at best.”
She clicks open a blush palette, picks out the right brush, then starts swirling a pink-leaning coral on my cheekbones.
“True.”
“And after that she ends up in an entirely different place with no one and nothing but her baby.”
“Not no one. The animals helped her. And she didn’t have nothing. She grabbed tobacco plants, strawberries, and the seeds of the Three Sisters on her way down so she still had something from Sky World.”
“I wonder whether she ever got resentful, you know?” I ask. “She became a single mother in a second, then had no one but animals and her baby to talk to. It must have been really lonely. I don’t know. Maybe to her being the first person on a strange planet felt like a punishment.”
She pulls back, tells me to turn my face one way, then another. “Maybe it was a punishment.”
“You really think that?” I ask.
“Close your mouth,” she says, pulling out a nude brown lipstick from her hot pink bag. She pulls out a tiny lip brush, paints it with the lipstick, then starts to carve out lips on my face. “Being the first of anything is always a kind of punishment, because you’re responsible for cutting that new path all by yourself. Whatever happens to you, no matter how bad, is seen as necessary and acceptable in the end so long as it’s making it easier for everyone who comes after you. Okay, open your mouth.” I do, but apparently not enough. “No, bigger. Like a blow-up doll.” She opens her mouth into a big O shape and I mimic her.
“Lohc dis?”
“Yes! Just like that. Steve’s a lucky man, innit?” she teases, then begins to make tiny little strokes around the edges of my mouth until I’m sure they’re thicker than my own natural lips. “Close again. You know, our stories are all about consequences. Bear listens to Fox and tries using his long, luxurious tail to ice fish? He loses his tail. You turn into a cannibal and eat human flesh? You become a Flying Head.”
She moves aside and lets me see the full effect in the mirror. I look beautiful. I look nothing like myself.
“Corn Husk Doll keeps staring at herself after Creator tells her to stop? She loses her face,” I say, turning from my reflection quickly, as though my own face will slide off if I keep looking.
“Exactly,” Tanya says with a smile. Her lips don’t move, but, inexplicably, she still speaks. “Your punishment’s coming, by the way. Don’t think we forgot you left us.”
“What?” I ask, startled. It takes me a second to understand. I should have seen this coming. Of course Tanya wasn’t on my side. I left the rez—left her—for this soulless neighborhood. After all these years laughing at girls like me, girls who swallowed the Pocahontas stereotype and followed their John Smiths away from their communities to assimilation, here I was. I’d become the stereotype. What did Tanya owe me—a traitor, a fool?
“All I said was, ‘Exactly.’ ” She shrugs and looks down as she begins to put all her brushes and makeup away. I stand up abruptly, unsure if she’s telling the truth. “Anyway, it’s nothing you don’t already know. Your dad tried to warn you about academics and your ma tried to warn you about white boys. You wouldn’t listen. You never listen. And then you killed her and thought we wouldn’t notice. You didn’t care what happened to her, so long as you got your white boy and his big house. You were already turning into a colonizer even then. Now the process is just about done and guess what? We won’t let you come back.”
My chest feels heavy, and my breathing gets fast as I back up. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to defend myself. My biggest secret finally brought to light.
The day Ma asked me to find her oxy will always be seared into my mind. She’d asked me to come to her appointment with her that day, convinced the doctor would listen if I was there to back her up. She told him her pain was getting too bad to get out of bed, that she was scared she’d lose her job as a result. The doctor interrupted and, shaking his head, said he’d already told her he wouldn’t prescribe her painkillers. Her “theatrics” would not change his mind. It all happened so fast. As we sat in the parking lot in her car afterward, she finally turned to me and asked if I had any other way to get her oxycodone. I understood her meaning.
“I can’t work without something, Alice. I can’t garden. I’m always in pain.” Her voice cracked as we both stared at the floor. “You must know someone. Please.” She was begging then, tears in her eyes. “This is no life.”
She needed me to do all the things she couldn’t do alone: run errands, get groceries, carry the heavy water jugs inside, pay the bills when she was between jobs, take her to community events and hold her steady as she walked inside. But since I’d just agreed to marry Steve, I knew I wouldn’t be there soon enough, and I had to help her somehow.
“Fine. I’ll do it,” I said. “I’ll find it.”
And that was the beginning of the end.
We never spoke about it directly after that. I’d just replace the money she left on the kitchen table with a pill bottle. The time between each bottle shortened.
I could have lied to Ma. Said that I couldn’t find them. Anyone could have seen the path I was pushing her down. Anyone but me. Why did I do that? What was wrong with me? Could it really have been the influence of some evil spirit? Maybe our family was cursed—bad medicine passed down from my grandmother to my mother to me to Dawn.
Murderer.
“How many people know?” I whisper, but Tanya’s already turned up a Carly Rae Jepsen song on her phone. Even if she could hear me, she doesn’t care what I have to say.
They’re in league with the houses, too, but for different reasons. They don’t care what this neighborhood does to you as long as you never come back to Six Nations, the angry voice confirms. The transformation will conclude, and you won’t be able to go home anymore, and you won’t be able to stay here. Nowhere is your home now. You’ll be on the streets with the man who sold you the dreamcatcher. You belong there much more than he does. He has beautiful art to offer the world. All you have are a few pages worth nothing to no one.
My breathing stops, and it’s as if I’m underwater, unable to pull in the oxygen I need. The edges of my vision get blurry, then turn to little ones and zeros, like some computer code I can’t understand. The code starts to filter farther and farther into the center of what I see. Seemingly solid things—the bed, the vanity, Tanya—melt into code. What does this mean? Am I in a simulation? Is all of this some sort of program or game I can’t understand?
It’s a punishment. The consequences of your actions. Stop fighting it. You couldn’t even keep your mother alive. What makes you think you can keep your baby alive? Why do you think you deserve the chance to try?
A hand lands on my shoulder from behind and a voice falls into my ear.
“You ready?”
I turn and, like a pair of prescription glasses falling over my eyes, everything comes back into focus. Steve is in front of me. I watch as his expression transforms from excitement to disappointment.
“Oh. I thought you’d go for a more natural look tonight.”
That old feeling of nausea stirs deep in my belly, the same one I felt when Ma criticized my clothes and makeup, pointing out that Steve hadn’t introduced me to any of his friends.
Before I can say anything, though, Tanya clicks her tongue and pipes up: “Her looking hot as hell is not gonna kill your little colleagues or their silly little wives, Steven.” She nudges her way between us, muttering “ ’Scuse me” as she pushes an earring post into my left earlobe, attaches the backing, then does the same to my right earlobe.
What’s happening right now? Why is Tanya defending me? It must all be a big performance for my benefit. Something to make me drop my guard so I won’t suspect what’s coming. Something to make me feel crazy so I do the wrong thing and they get the police to arrest me and take Dawn. I watch in the mirror as their eyes meet. Tan smiles slightly, then Steve smiles, then they both look away. They’re planning something. Together. She must have been the one Steve got the text from last night, not Meghan. They wouldn’t let Meghan be a big player in all of this after the failed phone recording showed I didn’t trust her.
“Anyway, her eye shadow has to match her earrings. It’s basically a Native femme proverb,” Tanya says as she turns me to look in the full-length mirror behind the door. My earrings are long, beaded shoulder-dusters I waited weeks to order online, part of a collection that sold out in under five minutes, like Aunt Rachel had said. The glass beads move from a dark navy up top through to a baby blue in the middle and white at the ends. They stand out from the curtains of long, dark hair surrounding my face. They also clearly code me as Indigenous. Not like the people we’re going to see don’t already know. It’s basically all they know about me.
“Perfect,” Tanya says as she smiles at me in the mirror. A sharp shrill cry pours out of the baby monitor on the side table. “Aaand there’s my cue.” Tanya grabs her makeup kit and hurries out, closing the door softly behind her.
I look at Steve in the mirror. His back is turned to me—the same back I fell in love with—only now it’s stiff with unsaid words. He’s buttoning up his white-collared shirt; he’s carefully pulling on his blazer. Each crease is impeccable. A better wife would have done that ironing for him instead of letting him do it himself. Was that why he was plotting against me with Tanya? Why he initially agreed to spy on me, to betray me? Because all I knew how to do was shove as many clothes as possible into a double or triple loader at the Laundromat, pour in a capful of bright blue discount detergent, and push the coins in? Yet another failure he wouldn’t want passed down to his daughter. What was he going to do to me? What was he planning? It had to have something to do with the party. Something was going to happen. I could tell.
“Why do you want me to come to this party so bad?” I blurt, unable to hold it all in anymore. “What’s going to happen to me?”
Steve turns immediately and looks at me like I have a second head. “What do you mean? Nothing’s going to happen to you. It’s a dinner party, Alice. All you have to do is eat, drink, and be merry. You can pretend on that last one.”
I become incredibly aware of our positions in the room. My eyes fall on a teddy bear, propped up on the dresser. I don’t remember putting it there, but it’s staring at us both, smiling. A camera. A test. If I don’t say the right thing, if I don’t go with Steve, they will see and they will retaliate.
“Sorry. I don’t,” I say, deliberately, placing each word before me like bricks. “I don’t know why I said that.”
Steve’s shoulders slump as he sits down on the bed. “I do.”
My whole body tenses. I stop breathing and wait for him to continue.
“Look, I know I’ve kind of thrown you in the deep end here. You aren’t used to the sort of underhanded, cutthroat politics that make up academia,” he says, reminding me once again he’s never lived on the rez. “I underestimated how disorienting all this would be for you. To go from a place where you know everyone to a place people thrive on superficiality.”
It feels for a second like I’ve stepped too far down the stairs and stumbled. I’m all disoriented. What is Steve trying to do here? Has he changed his mind? Is he going to let me stay home?
“I know these people aren’t exactly nice. I’m sorry. I wish they were. But I wouldn’t be asking you to do this if it weren’t important for the both of us, and for Dawn. There’s only room for one tenured prof in the department, and I’m not sure I have more publications and academic prestige than the other candidates. It ultimately comes down to what the other profs in the department want, so events like this can tip the odds in my favor.”
I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid for so long. He knew these people were awful to me. He just accepted that my pain and discomfort were the price of admission. Even worse: he tried to convince me I was crazy to think those people were anything other than harmless and well-intentioned. I’m so furious I can’t focus. And then it occurs to me: he wants me to think I’m crazy. I want to hurt him so bad in this moment. I want to hurt him like he’s hurt me so many times.
“Isn’t that what the Mohawk classes are for? To tip the odds back in your favor? Isn’t that what Dawn and I are for?”
Steve winces. “I wasn’t aware the classes were a problem for you,” he says stiffly. He doesn’t bother addressing the rest.
Then an image falls into my mind: me at Ma’s crowded trailer holding a screaming Dawn in my arms as knocks pummel the aluminum door, and there, on the wooden porch, is a social worker ready to take Dawn from me because I’m too poor, too unhealthy, too Native. Steve stands behind her shoulder, eager to enter and take what’s his. It feels like a premonition. I remember the bear on the dresser. Someone’s watching.
It’s all burning.
No, it’s not. And it doesn’t have to be.
I know what Steve wants of me at this moment. He wants me to be a silly little wife the other silly little wives like. Be an ornament—the female version of a cigar store Indian, standing outside the door while my white husband enters anyplace he desires. I think of my dream last night. The performance, the pain, the humiliation. This dinner will also be a painful and humiliating performance, but no more so than any of my prior encounters with these people. The difference is, this time I know the dinner is a test I need to pass. It’s how I keep Dawn, protect the portal, finish writing. Because those are the three things I need to do, I’m sure of it. These people clearly don’t know how much I know quite yet. If they did, I’d already be locked up or locked out. And so I need to play their games—but only for now.
I let out a long, exaggerated sigh. “The classes aren’t a problem. I’m just pissy cuz you don’t like my makeup.”
“Oh, Al. You look beautiful. You really do. I’m taking my nerves out on you. It’s not fair, and I’m sorry.”
“We can talk about all that after the dinner,” I say, waving my hand. “I’ll play nice tonight. I promise.”
“Thank you,” Steve says, relief flooding his face as he jumps up to hug me.
Before we get in the Uber to head over to his department head’s house, I fill the flask with the medicine tea and put it and the weed pen in my purse. I don’t have much, but I do have these. Then I rush over to Dawn to say goodbye. I hold her close, kiss the top of her head, then her nose, then each chubby cheek.
I’m going to save you. Trust me, I try to psychically communicate to her. And when her eyes meet mine, bright and happy, I know she hears and understands.
“Thank you,” Steve repeats, squeezing my hand as we’re whisked into the fading light, toward whatever awaits us.
CHAPTER 22
She Can Pronounce “Hors d’Oeuvres” but Not “Haudenosaunee”?
And Alice!” Sheila practically squeals once she finally turns to me after a solid minute of going over inside jokes and “shop talk” with Steve, leaving me to stare at her eerily creaseless face. One time I asked Steve whether he thought she and the other wives got Botox. I’d noticed the way their skin stretched tight over the bones of their face—so unlike the women in my community, whose skin started to loosen and fold like those worn-in fleece blankets every Native aunty buys from a pow-wow and immediately throws on their couch. He seemed offended that I’d lumped Sheila in with the other women. She was a tenured professor in the English department at the same university he was. This ensured she was set apart from the other wives as someone to be taken seriously, and therefore, according to Steve’s estimation of such women, she did not do superficial, vain things like get Botox.
“Look at you! Ready for a night on the town!” Sheila says, eyes raking me from tip to toe. “You’d never even be able to tell you just had a baby.” It feels like an insult, like most things she says to me. She slides her hand too intimately on top of my arm as Steve mouths, “Be good.” It scares me, his saying that. What will happen to me if I’m not? What does this woman know that I don’t? What’s coming for me?
