Chapter 21
On Friday after strawberry picking, where Onatah had not showed up, we returned to the house. NanaAnna told me that after I showered and changed, I would not be cooking lunch because Onatah would be having a swim party barbeque. When she saw me screw up my face at the thought of losing even one day of a fifteen-dollar cooking fee, she added, “You can cook lunch and dinner tomorrow, to make up for the money you’re losing today.” She sounded a little aggravated, but I ignored that and accepted her offer.
• • •
Neither Riot nor NanaAnna got out of the pickup truck when it stopped at Onatah’s place. NanaAnna pointed.
“It’s there. Walk up some and turn into the left. They’re expecting you, Ivory, and Onatah is very excited,” NanaAnna said.
I was standing on the road at the driver’s window looking up to NanaAnna and glancing towards Riot who was sitting behind her.
“You’re still on the reservation,” NanaAnna explained.
“And I’m headed to town,” Riot added as her window eased down. She really didn’t need to tell me when she was going to town. I could tell by her appearance, gestures, and the direction she brushed her hair.
I must’ve looked nervous to them as I stood there, because that’s how I felt.
“I’ll pick you up right here at 8:00 p.m.,” NanaAnna said.
“The sun will still be up, although I know that doesn’t matter to you,” she added.
I looked at Riot. I didn’t want to ask her any questions in front of NanaAnna and end up blowing up her spot. She picked up on my look and told me, “I’m getting dropped at the barber shop. I’ll catch the bus back. See you later.” They pulled off.
As Siri and I walked up the road, I imagined that NanaAnna was watching us through her rearview mirror. She would be watching to be certain that I was safe, I felt sure.
Onatah lived in a palace that stood alone on the farthest corner of the reservation. A palace lit up by the sunlight and not hidden beneath the leaves or trees likes Nana’s. There were no trailers there or short small cheap houses lined up in an overcrowded row. The design of the place was unlike any of the homes that I had seen while walking, bike riding, or being driven around the reservation. I knew there had to be some rich Natives, I thought to myself.
“Wow,” Siri said. “She has a really fly house.”
“Don’t get too excited. Wait till you see mine,” I told her.
Suddenly the door opened before I even got the chance to knock. A not-too-old, not-too-young lady leaned towards me.
“You must be the little one who is called ‘Ivory,’ ” she said.
“Yes,” I answered.
“C’mon in and welcome.” Onatah came racing down some stairs like I was her best friend.
“Who do we have there?” A male voice trumpeted from another room. The lady who opened the door walked me towards the sound of the male voice. Onatah grabbed my other hand, held it, and walked with me.
“Ivory,” the man who just had to be Onatah’s father—from the way he sat, spoke, and felt like someone important who owned a palace or two might sound—said, “Let me take a good look at you.”
I didn’t pose or spin or even really understand his request.
“She does look like . . .” I heard a voice say. When I looked to my right, there were three more heads peeking out. I heard another sound and I looked behind me. There were two big boys who had just walked in.
“Ivory, meet my dad, my three sisters, two of my brothers, and my mom,” Onatah said happily.
“Hello, everyone,” I said softly and shyly unlike myself.
“Let’s go swim.” Onatah pulled my hand.
“We’re not done talking to Ivory,” her father said to her.
“Daddy, please, she is my friend, and I found her,” she said in a baby-like voice like she was five instead of about to be eleven like me. It worked.
Riot had mentioned a waterhole where the teenaged Natives swim. Onatah had a long and wide pool in the ground behind her house. It was filled with crystal-clear clean water.
“Let me see you swim first,” she said, testing me. “Stay on this side,” she told me. These must have been instructions her parents gave her. Besides, her older sisters were all watching. I stayed on the side where the water rope divided the shallow water from the deep. The water felt good. I went under, holding my breath, and stayed squatted below on purpose. Beneath the water I felt lighter weight. It was like underwater I didn’t have any problems. Or maybe I just had less.
I thought of Poppa who invited the whole Brooklyn neighborhood and all of his family and friends to Orchard Beach one year. I thought of Momma lying on her back in the sun, her oiled skin glistening. Poppa was so proud, he must’ve rented out a whole section of the beach. Only people with us laid their blankets in our area. Brooklyn had taken over and everyone was popping open their coolers and bringing out baskets of sandwiches and fried chicken and watermelons. I remember, I was six. My cousin and me took turns burying one another in the sand and scaring everybody. We also laughed at four of Poppa’s workers who stood watch in the ninety-five-degree weather, their expensive shoes sinking in the sand. Their suits were really nice looking but completely wrong at the same time. Me and my cousins joked, “If one of us starts drowning, which of those guys will jump in and save us in those hot suits, hard shoes, and sunglasses?”
Onatah pulled me up from the bottom of the shallow side of the pool.
“What are you doing?” she asked, panicked.
“Just holding my breath, getting used to the water,” I told her.
“Swim,” she ordered. She was a little too friendly and too bossy at the same time.
I swam to put them all at ease. Once they saw that I could swim and even float on my back, it turned into a fun time. Onatah’s poppa was working the grill. Onatah was floating on a gigantic plastic frog wearing oversized yellow sunglasses like a movie star.
“So how did you get to become a camper at my aunt’s place? You are so lucky. The other day was the first time I had been there in a year,” she said, still laying back looking into the sky.
“How come it was the first time in so long?” I asked. I was getting good at not answering any questions that I didn’t want to.
“Because of a big reason,” she said. She was good at not answering also. “Besides, my aunt is a busy person. She is very important in our tribe. She is a healer. You know what that means?” she asked me.
“Like a doctor,” I said dryly. I hated doctors.
“No, a healer is way better than any doctor,” Onatah said confidently. “My aunt has cured people who even the best doctors could not cure.”
“How come you didn’t come pick strawberries today?” I asked her, switching the topic a little bit.
“I only came the other day cause I heard that my aunt was there the day before. I thought it would be great to see her and I didn’t believe that the owner of the strawberry fields was picking strawberries,” she giggled.
Ignoring the new information that NanaAnna was the owner of even the strawberry fields, and had a thriving strawberry business, I asked Onatah, “Do you like music?”
“Music is okay. My brothers listen to a lot of it. I like to ride my horse,” she said as though it was nothing unusual. Purposely, I didn’t react, but inside I felt a wave of excitement. I swam off to calm myself. I spun underwater and swam back.
“Is music your favorite thing?” Onatah asked.
“I like to dance,” I confided to her.
“That’s so funny. I like you, but we’re unmatched,” she said sadly. “I can’t dance at all. Our parents and the elders force us to practice a traditional dance at the Native school, for our Autumn Festival, but we don’t want to. It’s not like cool music. It’s like drumming and we are suppose to do this spiritual thing,” she complained.
Spiritual thing, I repeated in my mind. NanaAnna likes the word spirit. She uses it all the time, I thought to myself. I
didn’t know what Onatah had in mind when she said spiritual dance. But I was sure of a couple of things: I could dance to any moving drumbeat. If the drummer was tapping it right, it was cool music to me and my whole body was in love with the beat.
“What’s that?” Onatah asked.
“What?” I asked her.
“Right there! It’s red,” she pointed. I looked down. There was red water where I was standing.
“I don’t know,” I said, genuinely surprised. But, when I walked away through the water, a thin red stream followed me.
Shame had returned. I bought a cheap red swimsuit and now the dye was coming off of it and ruining the water in her pool. We were on the deep end by the stairs that led in and out of the pool. I walked towards the steps.
“Wait a minute!” Onatah pushed in front of me and stepped out first. As I walked up the pool steps she came running back with a towel wrapped the towel and her arms around my waist and held them there.
“Ivory wait, don’t move,” she warned me.
“The food is ready!” her father’s voice called out. A big family crowd gathered by the barbeque pit. One of Onatah’s sisters came to see what we were doing. Onatah spoke to her in another language. Her much older sister answered in another language. Instead of going towards the grill where everyone was, we walked towards a really small building, bigger than the dollhouse but smaller than a one-car garage.
In the “pool house” packed up with nets and sticks, pumps and hoses and cleaning supplies, they sat me on a wooden bench with the towel beneath me. Her big sister said something that sent Onatah off running and her and me were alone.
“Would you like to call your mother?” Big Sister asked me.
I was shocked at the question. Yes! Hell yeah! I wanted to call Momma! I thought to myself.
Then I remembered and said out loud, “No thank you.”
“Do you know what is happening with you right now?” Big Sister asked.
“What do you mean? I’m a little cold in here,” I said truthfully.
“Did your mother talk to you about getting your menstruation?” she said, and asked, “Are you dizzy? How are you feeling?” She was asking too many questions back to back.
Onatah came rushing through the pool house door with her hands full.
“Stand up,” Big Sister said. She unwrapped the towel from my waist and showed me my blood.
• • •
“There are reasons why we are best friends,” Onatah said to me. I didn’t say nothing cause it was impossible to me that I could become best friends with someone I had only known for four days. I also didn’t say shit because we were sitting in her stable besides her horse, the most beautifullest thing I ever saw that wasn’t human. I felt guilty. I felt guilty because I wanted her horse, and maybe even her life. I mean, I didn’t want her same life, but I wanted to rewind mine back to my house, erase the police and the raid and the kidnappers and the terror. I wanted to continue from my last request from Poppa: to get me a pony to trot around our property. I wanted the smile on Onatah’s mother’s face on Momma’s face. I wanted the confidence and control from Onatah’s father’s feeling, to be in my poppa the same way it used to be, but even more. I wanted love from my sisters, all three of them, the way that Onatah’s sisters loved her. So I felt guilty for going along with this little rich Native girl’s idea, that she and I could already be best friends, or friends even. Siri wouldn’t allow it. Then there’s Riot and Lina and the rest of the Diamond Needles. Not to mention my Gutter Girls.
What makes a girl a best friend in the first place? I asked myself as Onatah began brushing the beauty.
I think, in order to be somebody’s best friend, you had to be right there with them when shit was happening. You had to be there for the good shit, laughter and all that. You had to be there through the shame. You had to be there through the blame, pain, and guilt. And not just be there like you’re watching a fucking movie. You had to be in it, feeling the same things, pain or pleasure. Could anyone whose life is all good be friends with someone whose life has been tossed and dragged and hurtful? I would say no. Still, I was planning to use Onatah. I felt bad about it, but not bad enough not to do it.
“Reason number 1 is because,” Onatah began, explaining why her and me were best friends. “Reason number 1 is because you know my great-aunt. She’s my favorite even though I’m not allowed to see her often. Reason number 2 is because you look like my great-aunt’s daughter. I never met her, but she died in a car accident with my oldest sister. They died together. Reason number 3 . . .”
“Your sister was in the car?” I asked automatically, interrupting without thinking.
“Yes, my eldest sister was, and my parents loved her so much. Great Aunt’s husband was driving. He was drunk. Everyone in the car was killed.”
“Sorry.” That word slipped out from my tongue. I was sincerely sorry that her sister was killed. When I thought of Winter, and if she were killed, my heart dropped. Maybe she was killed? Maybe she was killed and Momma and Poppa were so heartbroken for Winter, that they couldn’t even remember me? Maybe Winter was killed and that’s why she never wrote me a letter saying how she missed me or how she was on her way to get me from the group home or from the fake foster-care people. Yes, that could be the only reason she never visited me for almost three years at the juvy prison.
“Are you okay? Please don’t cry for us. It happened a long time ago but father can’t forgive Great Aunt, and they don’t speak even though they are related. And my sister’s mother never recovered from their loss, and . . .”
Onatah went on and on . . . I wasn’t really listening to her. I had my own thoughts and feelings.
“Don’t you have any friends?” I asked Onatah.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“How come they didn’t come to your barbeque?” I asked.
“Because I wanted to get to know you, the little girl who made Great Aunt want to pick strawberries, and gave me an excuse to visit Great Aunt’s house comfortably. The girlfriend who made my whole family curious and want to see you and caused Great Aunt to call our house and speak to my mother. The same girl who made Great Aunt drive almost all the way to my house, which she never does, and . . .” Onatah took a deep breath. “The girl my same age who had her womanhood in my pool!”
• • •
Later that night I made a decision and a promise. I would crack open the journal that NanaAnna gave me. Bit by bit, I would write the story of my life. I wouldn’t go back into my past. I’d start from this point forward. But I would not write the boring details. I would write, from now on, only the most exciting, confusing, craziest, truest, or scariest best parts.
Why would I write a diary all of a sudden? I got shook thinking for the first time ever that Winter was actually dead. I got possessed by the thought and locked myself in the bedroom closet for four hours.
If Winter is dead how would I ever know what her life was like? If she had a diary or journal like NanaAnna suggested, at least I could read it and find out how she really felt about me, what she really thought. What her real life up to the point of being killed was actually like. I would be flipping through Winter’s diary like crazy looking for love. Did she think I was aggravating? Or did she just treat me that way because big sisters think they’re supposed to do that? Did she secretly see something special in me? Did she think that I was smart or dumb? I hope not dumb. That would make me red and I didn’t want to get red with my sister Winter. And fuck anybody who does.
How can I predict what will happen with me? Riot and I already made a plan to protect NanaAnna, but I failed to make a plan of what to do about my own family if, say, the authorities swooped down and recaptured me, or if I was riding home to Long Island in a car and some drunk bastard slammed into the vehicle and killed me. How would Momma know what my life was from age eight through eleven? How would she know my most personal feelings? She wouldn’t. How would Winter know how I worshipped her and how muc
h I wished she would appear and save me? She wouldn’t. How would the twins know that I wanted more than mostly anything to apologize to them for not protecting them from the kidnappers although I tried really hard? They wouldn’t. So I would write my diary to my family, whichever one of them I felt like talking to at the moment.
I would tell NanaAnna and Riot if anything ever happened to me, give this purple journal to my people.
Chapter 22
THE DIARY OF PORSCHE L. SANTIAGA
Dear Winter,
Riding the bicycle on the trail wasn’t nothing like riding it on the smooth straight road. I hit a rock and flipped over my handlebars. The last thing I saw was treetops and the wheel spinning a few inches from my face. The bike landed on top of me. I saw glimpses of sky and sunlight through the spokes. I blacked out.
Head pain, a little more drastic than a headache, my eyes were opening some, just slits. Again I was in an unfamiliar place, not home, not foster care, not prison, not NanaAnna’s. I must’ve still been on the reservation cause everything was wooden. The Natives seem to like that kind of design better than aluminum siding or any other material. Even I was lying on a slab of polished wood, like someone had laid me on a tabletop.
When I lifted my head a little it hurt. So I laid it back down. I moved my fingers just to check and make sure they were working right. I slid my hand over my thigh and in between. I needed to check if someone had fucked me in my sleep. When I smelled my fingers, I panicked. The smell wasn’t the same.
I heard sounds, heavy breathing and skin rubbing together. I felt terror. Slowly, I turned my head in a way not to make it hurt anymore than it already did. The first thing I saw was three heads without bodies. Not real heads but styrofoam ones made out of that same material they use to make cups. Each head was wearing a pretty black-black wig, long flowing straight hair, the kind ghetto chicks would kill for. I knew the sounds I was hearing were not coming from any of those fake heads.