I said, “My mother and I had a difficult relationship. We weren’t always kind to each other. So it’s good to hear how kind she was to some of you. But it hurts, too, to hear that she mothered some of you better than she mothered me. And it was also good to hear how mean she was to some of you, too. I knew the mean Lillian maybe better than all of you, maybe even better than my brothers and sisters. My mother was good to people and she was mean to people. And sometimes, she was good and mean to the same person at the same time. Anyway, that’s all I really have to say. I am not a traditional Indian. You all know that. I don’t sing or dance or do the ceremonies. I don’t pray like other people pray. I just talk. So I am really going to miss talking to my mother. I am really going to miss her voice.”
My mother is buried next to my father. They share a tombstone. My reservation is a very quiet place. You can hear the wind whistling through the pine trees from miles away.
Hush, hush, hush, the wind says to the trees.
Hush, hush, hush, the trees say to the wind.
Yes, there was a three-year span when my mother and I did not speak to each other.
But I cannot remember exactly why we stopped talking to each other.
And I do not remember the moment when we forgave each other and resumed our lifelong conversation.
How could I have forgotten important shit like that? I have no answers for that question. And my mother has no answers, either, because she is dead.
26.
Your Multiverse
or Mine?
AT MY MOTHER’S funeral, my smartest Indian friend—the one who never went to college—corners me to deliver a metaphysical lecture.
He says, “In an alternate universe, exploding next to this one, you are the creator of your mother. You are her mad scientist and she is your monster.
“In another universe, you are the man who gives birth to his own mother. I know that sounds crazy but, speaking outside of biology, it’s possible.
“And in the universe next to that, your mother and you are strangers who ride the same train to work every day and are always unsettled by the sense of having met before. You stare at each other all the time.
“And in that universe after that—well, I just blanked and can’t think of any other universes—but physics teaches us that all kinds of crazy shit is theoretically possible.
“I mean, in another universe, maybe I’m your mother.
“Maybe there are ninety-nine people, totally unknown to you in this universe, who are your mother in other universes. And you spend all your time, in this universe, trying to find the ninety-nine people who retain a bit of that other-universe maternity and can maybe give you the love and attention you ache for.
“Maybe there are ninety-nine women in the world who you could have happily married because they are your mother in other universes.
“Maybe your wife is your mother in another universe.
“Or maybe I’m full of shit. Maybe I’m just trying to assuage your grief. Maybe I’m just trying to find some way to help you believe in a world beyond this one.
“I’m sorry I sound so crazy.
“I just want you to believe in something. If you won’t let religion help ease your pain, Junior, then maybe you’ll let science comfort you.”
I hugged my friend because I love him and because I didn’t know how to respond in that moment and because I wanted him to shut up.
But, now, let me respond to my smart and eccentric friend with a little poem:
Ah, friend, this world—this one universe—
Is already too expansive for me.
When I die, let my mourners know
That I shrugged at the possibility
Of other universes. Hire a choir—
Let them tell the truth
But tell it choral—
Let the assembled voices sing
About my theology:
I’m the fragile and finite mortal
Who wanted no part of immortality.
27.
Clotheshorse
DURING MY MOTHER’S funeral, one of her friends—a man I’ll call Xavier because I grew up vaguely Catholic—walked up to me and said, “Your shirt is wrinkled.”
I felt the urge to punch him. But Xavier is a tiny man. I probably would’ve broken his face and ended up in jail.
I also felt the urge to say, “Xavier, you’ve been a jerk your whole damn life. I have my theories about why you’ve been so angry since puberty. But I ain’t judging you for having those theoretical fears and doubts. I’m judging you because you’ve let your fears and doubts turn you into a judgmental little monster.”
But I didn’t say any of that. I just smiled and said, “I’m always wrinkled.”
The smug bastard walked away. I suppose he thought that he’d burned me with his quick wit. We Spokane Indians are famous for our verbal cruelty. I’d been trained from an early age to fire insults like arrows. Hell, I’ve made a lucrative career out of being a smart-ass who can cuss you out in free verse or in rhyme and meter. But I wasn’t interested in insulting Xavier back.
Well, I didn’t want to dishonor my mother by insulting her friend during the funeral. And maybe I had the slightest bit of compassion for him. After all, he’d been my mother’s friend for years. He was in pain.
But, regardless of that pain, I am perfectly content to give him hell now that the funeral is only a memory.
Hey, Xavier, at my mother’s funeral, did you notice that I am at least a foot taller than my sisters, nieces, and female cousins? Did you also notice that all of them were crying? So maybe, if you had noticed those things and put the clues together, Xavier, you could have solved the sartorial crime. My shirt was wrinkled because a few dozen short women had pressed their weepy faces into my chest when they hugged me. Did you also notice that my shirt was damp with tears and makeup?
Dear Xavier, my shirt was wrinkled because of our family’s collective grief.
And, okay, okay, okay, I had also pulled the imperfectly folded shirt from the suitcase that morning, and had briefly considered ironing it, but then thought, Rez funerals are way casual and 90 percent of the Indians will be in T-shirts and jean shorts anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
So, yeah, honestly speaking, my shirt wasn’t exactly crisp when I arrived at my mother’s funeral, but my sisters and cousins had wrinkled it even more with their grief.
So, yeah, honestly speaking, fuck you, Xavier, and the farm-raised salmon you rode in on.
28.
Eulogize Rhymes with Disguise
When I was four and weeping
For my father, gone
On another binge-drinking
Sabbatical, my mother tore
Me from my bed at 4 a.m.
On a December night
And pushed me outside
Onto the porch.
“You can come back in when
You stop crying!” she screamed
And slammed and locked
The door. It wasn’t a freezing night
And the porch was covered
So I wasn’t completely exposed.
And, for more warmth, I crawled
Into the doghouse with our mutts.
Three minutes or three hours later—
I don’t know which—my mother opened
The door and called me back inside.
But I refused. I told her I would sleep
With the dogs. And I did, I did,
Like some prehistoric Indian boy
Learning how to survive
Any weather or wilderness.
At my mother’s funeral,
I heard other tribal members
Remember her as someone better
Than I had ever known—
I briefly wondered if I was at a funeral
For a stranger who only resembled
My mother. Then my cousin,
Wearing a ribbon shirt and moccasins
Made by my mother, said, “Lil
lian was
Our last connection to the ancient
Stories and songs. Lillian was
Also a mean and foulmouthed
Woman who scolded everybody.
Right now, I bet you Lillian just arrived
In Heaven and is scolding Jesus
For playing the wrong welcoming song.”
We all laughed and laughed
Because, yes, my mother was
Exactly the kind of mortal
Who challenged the Gods.
She was the reservation Medea.
She was the indigenous Antigone.
But just imagine how it felt to be
Her fragile child. I never stopped
Being afraid of her. I never left
That dark porch. I am still
Sleeping with those dogs.
Yes, I am always cold and curled
Like a question mark
Among those animal bodies.
As I wait for the glorious
Warmth of the rising sun.
29.
The Undertaking
Five days after our mother’s death,
We bury her next to our father,
And as I stare at their shared
Gravestone, I see our mother’s date
Of birth carved into the granite
And realize belatedly that we’d
Forgotten to hire somebody
To carve her date of death.
I also realize that it was odd—
And equally fatalistic
And romantic—to have carved,
At our mother’s request, her name
Into this gravestone twelve years ago
When we buried our father—her husband.
So, yes, our mother lived for over
A decade with her name etched above
Her grave-to-be. And now, as we lower her
Into the grave-that-is, she doesn’t have
An official date of expiration.
Does this make her potentially immortal?
If we never hire a carver
To finish the gravestone then maybe
We can pretend that this funeral
Is yet another one of her spectacular lies.
Dear Mother, you bipolar necromancer,
I fully expect you to rise like a shawl dancer
Out of your false coffin and cry,
“Surprise, surprise, I am still alive!”
30.
The Urban Indian Boy Sings a Death Song
How does one deliver an honest eulogy?
I mean—shit, shit, shit—I lied when my mother died
And said nothing forceful about her cruelty
Or her kindness. I could have said she was crazy
And dead-salmon cold and pathologically lied,
But who wants such honesty in a eulogy?
I could have celebrated her sobriety
And chastised drunk cousins for their various crimes
Against our tribe or their specific cruelty—
With their fists and cocks—against me and my body.
But I would have been speaking out of angry pride.
My narcissism could have turned my eulogy
Into Law & Order courtroom testimony.
I could’ve said, “I felt safe almost half the time
With Mom. She protected me against cruelty
Three days a week.” And, yes, I know my scrutiny
Is dead-salmon cold and probably misapplied,
But I want this to be an honest eulogy
About how I learned to receive and deliver cruelty.
31.
Downtown
AT MY MOTHER’S funeral, my sister said, “When she was really sick, Mom was talking about the time she lost custody of us.”
“They only lost us once?” I asked.
“She only talked about one time,” my sister said.
I’d heard stories about Social Service visits to our various childhood homes—and knew we’d been taken away once—but I didn’t know the details.
“When did this happen?” I asked.
“Arlene and I were just a few months old,” my sister said. “And you were still just a baby. And Arnold was a toddler.”
“Why’d they lose us?” I asked. “What did they do?”
“Drinking, I’m sure,” my sister said.
“And probably one of the times we were living in Spokane,” I said.
“Probably.”
I have only impressionistic memories of living with my parents in a series of sad-ass residential hotels in downtown Spokane. And I’ve likely created those memories by blending old photographs I’ve seen firsthand with old stories I’ve heard secondhand.
So I remember my father pulling three empty drawers out of a dresser to use as cribs for my two sisters and me.
I remember the smell of cigarette smoke and body odor.
I remember the old black man who worked the manual elevator in one of those places.
I remember ratty area rugs and sticky wood floors.
I remember a lot of Indians, familiar and strange, staring at me.
But I don’t have any memories, impressionistic or not, about becoming wards of the state.
“You think Mom was telling the truth about losing us?” I asked my sister.
“You think she’d lie when she knew she was dying?” my sister asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
My mother was a fabulist. Wouldn’t her deathbed have been her greatest stage? Wouldn’t the people at her bedside have been her most captive audience?
Sometimes, my mother was such a gifted liar that she would fool even us children—her most ardent skeptics. But she sometimes lied so obviously that it shocked us, too. After my older son was born with meconium aspiration that collapsed his lungs, he was put on a blood transfer machine for a week. Then he was in neonatal intensive care for another two weeks. He was critically ill. He’d crashed twice—he’d died—and had to be resuscitated. He had a stroke. And even after he’d made it through those difficult early days, he still had major struggles with eating, walking, and talking. He has since grown into a vibrant adult—an actual Eagle Scout—but for the first year of his life, my mother told every Indian she could that my son had been born without a brain.
I usually let her falsehoods go unchallenged—it was too exhausting to police all of them—but I eventually called her on the phone about that particular lie.
“Mom,” I said. “Why are you telling people my son doesn’t have a brain?”
“Isn’t that what’s wrong with him?” she asked.
“You know it’s his lungs,” I said. “You know his brain was oxygen-starved and damaged. But he still has a brain. And a good one, too. He has spoken to you on the phone.”
“Okay,” she said.
I thought the issue had been resolved, but then my mother told people that my son didn’t have lungs.
So, yes, I knew that my mother was capable of slinging bullshit even as she lay dying.
“Mom didn’t give you any details about why they lost custody of us?” I asked my sister.
“She just said they lost us and we were put in a foster home,” my sister said.
I wondered what terrible shit might have happened to four Indian kids in four foster homes.
“She said all of us stayed together,” my sister said. “With that redhead white woman. She became our babysitter later. Remember her?”
I couldn’t remember her name but, yes, I remembered that redhead. I think I remember a photograph of her visiting our house at Christmas.
“Are you sure Mom didn’t give you more details?” I asked my sister again.
“That’s it,” my sister said. “This is all I know.”
I can only imagine how my parents might have lost us.
I imagine we were living in a Spokane hotel and that my father had gone drinking at one of the nearby Indian bars—probably the Buck & Doe—and left my mother and us in the hot
el room. And my mother was probably pissed to be left behind with three babies and a toddler. And since she was constantly drinking in those days, she was probably boozing it up in the room. Or maybe she was suffering from a minor case of alcohol withdrawal. Maybe she was beer-thirsty and going crazy in that little room. So I imagine she sang us to sleep. She had a beautiful voice and could always sing us to sleep. And then I bet she left us children sleeping in that hotel room and went to have a few drinks. I can imagine her saying to herself: “Okay, Lillian, you’re going to have three beers and then you’re coming back to the room to your babies.”
So maybe a few swallows became a lot of drinks. And I would imagine that she eventually met up with our father. They probably drank until closing time, and then they probably went to an after-hours party at somebody’s house or apartment. Maybe they even came back to the hotel and partied in a nearby room. Maybe they both passed out somewhere and completely forgot about us.
So I imagine that, sometime during that drunken night, one of us children woke in our dark hotel room and cried. I imagine the first of us to cry woke the second baby and the third and the fourth.
I imagine us as a small chorus. I Imagine us crying so loud and strong that our weeping became a tribal song.
I imagine us waking our hotel neighbors with our syncopated fear.
I imagine hotel staff being summoned.
I imagine the night manager knocking on our door.
I imagine a passkey being used.
I imagine the shock and disgust of discovering four abandoned Indian babies weeping and weeping and weeping and weeping.