Q: Hey, man, you’re an Indian, right?
A: Uh, yeah.
Don’t get me wrong; I like being Indian. I love the way Indian men often wear their hair long, cry too easily, wear florid clothes—all reds and pinks and lavenders and turquoises—and sing and dance most every day of their lives. If you think about it, Indian men are probably the most feminized males on the planet (and I mean that as a compliment), despite how ridiculously macho we pretend to be: “I am an Indian man, with your prior approval, hear me roar!”
Yes, I’m an Indian man trying to hold on to the best of Indian:
The cheerful acceptance of eccentricity
The loving embrace of artistic expression
The communistic sense of community
I’m also an Indian man trying to let go of the worst of Indian:
Low self-esteem
Alcoholism
Misogyny
Lateral violence
So, okay, in the end, maybe I am proud to be an Indian. But I don’t want to wear a T-shirt with my tribal enrollment number printed on the front and a photograph of Sitting Bull ironed on the back. On the long list of things that I am, I’d put Indian at number three, behind “bitterly funny” at number two and “horny bastard” at number one for the last twenty-seven years running.
But oh, my mother’s whole white friends loved how Indian we were, and my mother became more Indian in their presence. My mother’s name became more Indian.
“Oh, Estelle Walks Above,” said Ginger, the militant vegan. “That’s such a beautiful Indian name. What does it mean?”
“Oh, well,” my mother said, “I guess it means I walk above … stuff.”
She didn’t have the guts to tell her that Walks Above wasn’t her real name. Her real last name was Miller, but that wasn’t so romantic.
“Oh, Estelle Miller, that’s such a beautiful Indian name. What does it mean?”
“Oh, well, I guess it means I mill … stuff.”
Growing up on the reservation, my mother was cousin to Indians who had authentic Indian names, like Builds-the-Fire, FallsApart, Morning Owl, and Black Bird. She was jealous of those poetic names and felt shortchanged by her own colonized moniker, so she simply changed her name when she left the reservation. Like many of the other immigrants into the United States (and leaving the rez for Seattle is immigration), my mother reinvented herself when she landed on these democratic shores.
On the rez, she was that smart and strange girl who was always preparing to leave, and was loved by many and respected by most (and hated by a few), but she became a wise woman in the presence of her white friends. They asked her for advice about their love lives, spiritual directions, political positions, and fashion styles. Her white friends wanted to be my mother, so they started to dress and talk like her. Imagine a dozen white women running around Seattle, speaking with singsong reservation accents. How confusing! Homeless Indians had no idea what to make of these blondes who sounded like they’d just gotten off a bus from Crow Agency, Montana.
“Are you Indian?” asked the homeless men.
“No,” said my mother’s disciples. “But we know an amazing Indian woman named Estelle. Do you know her?”
“Where I come from, every Indian woman is named Estelle.”
Ha, ha! How can Indians laugh so much? How can they make so many jokes? I don’t know. Ask my mother!
My mother both loved and resented the attention she received from her white-women friends.
“How can these women become whole if they’re trying so hard to be wholly like me?” she asked me.
“I don’t know, Ma, I’m just a manual laborer.”
All that summer, I worked for my mother in the basements of Unitarian churches:
I folded and unfolded chairs and arranged them in sacred circles.
I brewed and poured coffee.
I lit cigarettes and dumped ashtrays.
I ran to the store for sandwiches and drinks.
I swept and mopped the floors.
I worked for free, but I worked for women who at first tolerated and then loved me. I was the son of their saint! In their lives away from my mother, these women were lawyers, doctors, teachers, parole officers, chefs, and social workers, but they turned into children in her presence. I resented their immaturity; I was supposed to be the immature one; I was the child!
Those women surrounded my mother and pushed me into the corners of the meeting rooms. These women competed with me for my mother’s attention, and they often won.
“What should I do, Estelle, what should I do?”
“I don’t know, Erin, what do you think you should do?”
Like any good shaman, professional baseball player, or politician, my mother always answered questions with questions.
“It makes me sound Zen,” she had said to me on the bus ride home after one of those meetings.
“How do you do it, Ma?” I asked. “These women are killing me. They want you to do everything for them.”
“No, they don’t. They just want somebody to listen.”
“Ma, they think you’re magic.”
“Don’t you think I’m magic?” she asked and laughed. Of course she wasn’t a magician. She was a mess! She failed parenting quizzes! She’d raised a son who would grow up to break the hearts of 67 percent of the women who’d loved him! How could a powerful woman raise a fragile man like that?
Q: How do you find out the true nature and character of a hero?
A: Ask his or her children.
Ask me about my mother’s relationship with her women’s group, and I’ll tell you my version of the truth. I was thirteen and should have been running the streets with other thirteen-year-old boys, not making sure there was one pitcher of ice water for Lucy and one pitcher of lukewarm water for Abigail. I was supposed to be engaged in rough play with a father. He was supposed to grab me by the hands and spin me around the room! He was supposed to be my helicopter, my dump truck, my race car, my dragon and my dragon killer! Where was my father, the bastard, and where was the good man who should have been vainly attempting to take my father’s place in my life? I was always hungry for paternity, but during the summer of 1976, a matriarchal woman starved me. With difficulty, I still loved my mother, but she found blind acceptance from her white friends.
NOTICE OF HISTORICAL REVISION: During that particular time period, I probably hated my mother more often than I loved her.
What is it about Indians that turns otherwise intelligent, interesting, and capable people into blithering idiots? I don’t think every white person I meet has the spiritual talents and service commitment of a Jesuit priest, but white folks often think we Indians are shamanic geniuses. Most Indians are only poor folks worried about paying the rent and the light bill, and they usually pray to win the damn lottery.
“White people!” my mother cursed on a daily basis, though her paternal grandfather was half white and her maternal grandmother was mostly white.
My mother went to college on scholarships funded by white people; she was a teaching assistant to a white professor; she borrowed money from white people who didn’t have much money to lend; our white landlord let us pay half rent for a whole year and never asked for the rest; my favorite baby-sitter was a white woman with red hair.
“White people!” My mother should have sung their praises; I should sing their praises! But we didn’t sing for them. Indians are not supposed to sing for white people. Does the antelope sing honor songs for the lion?
My mother the friend, benefactor, and beneficiary of white liberal women said these things about white liberals:
“Your average white liberal would die before she sat down to a raccoon and squirrel dinner with some illiterate shotgun-shack Arkansas white folks who believe the Good Lord is their one and only savior. But that same white liberal will happily eat fried SPAM and white bread with a Lakota Sioux shaman who never graduated high school, and give him a highly transcendent blow job aft
er dinner.”
“White pacifist liberals in favor of gun control will race from their latest antiwar demonstration to rally for the American Indian Movement, a radical Indian organization that accomplished much of its mission through gunfire and threat of gunfire.”
“I’m not scared of the Jerry Falwells and Pat Robertsons of the world. Jerry and Pat aren’t the ones crawling in and out of sweathouses and pontificating about how much they admire Indian culture. I’m scared of the white liberals who love Indians. I figure about 75 percent of white liberals who hang around Indians will eventually start believing they’re Indians, then start telling us Indians how to be Indian.”
“If you put an Indian on the poster, white liberals will flock to the meeting. For instance, I happen to believe that Leonard Peltier is a political prisoner. Leonard is in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. He didn’t shoot and kill those two FBI agents back in Pine Ridge in ’75, but some Indian did. Think about it. Some Indian, or Indians, walked up to two men, two human beings, lying defenseless on the ground, already shot and wounded numerous times during a gunfight they might have started, but still, two human beings lying on the ground, critically wounded, unable to defend themselves. And some Indian who was not Leonard Peltier but was with Leonard Peltier stood over those two FBI men lying on the ground and shot them in their faces. Leonard is in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but I happen to believe his imprisonment is the natural result of picking up a gun in the first place. Those white liberals should change the name of the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee to the Free Leonard by Finding the Indigenous Bastards Who Did It Committee.”
Despite my mother’s sarcasm and racism, most of her friends are liberal white women! And most of my friends are liberal white men! My mother and I are the hostages of colonial contradictions:
“Liberal white man, you can steal my land as long as you plant organic peas and carrots in the kidnapped soil!”
“Liberal white woman, you can practice my religion as long as you teach third grade at the co-op tribal school!”
I was engaged to a liberal white woman named Cynthia when I met and began the affair with the Crow Indian woman who would eventually marry me and mother our twin daughters, Charlotte and Emily (I’m a pretentious Indian who married a pretentious Indian!). How could I cheat on a woman I’d loved for years with another woman I’d fallen in love with during the course of one brief conversation? I don’t know. I made the choice to betray my girlfriend, and it turned out well (all three of us live better lives than we lived before), but I know it could have been otherwise. In our rage and pain, any one or combination of the three of us could have thrown a punch or grabbed a knife or pulled a trigger. Instead, after I’d separately cried to each woman about how much I loved the other, Cynthia and Mary went to lunch together and listened to each other’s stories. Over sandwiches and coffee, the betrayed and betrayer confessed their sins and forgave each other, or perhaps they only promised to try and forgive, and isn’t that the best we can do? But did they forgive me? I don’t know! They never told me! I never asked! How could they, the North and South Korea of my heart, conduct such a delicate negotiation without me? How could two women sign a peace treaty without me, the one-man army? I didn’t even matter; I wasn’t invited. I needed answers, so I ran to my mother.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked her. “I don’t understand how they can do such a thing. How can they eat together?”
“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it?” she said. “You’re my son, and I love you. But those women are much more ambitious than you are. You’ve always been happy with your unhappiness. But those women want their lives to be better. Frankly, I wish they’d fall in love with each other.”
My mother, my wife, and my former girlfriend have always searched for something better. Good for them, good for them! Estelle left her reservation because she wanted to live near a great library; Mary left Montana because she wanted to work for Ralph Nader; Cynthia left me because she wanted a tacit life. A defense attorney for the city, she met and married a carpenter who doesn’t believe in metaphors. They moved to “the country,” whatever that is, and they send us Christmas cards. So maybe all is forgiven, or maybe Cynthia wants to teach me something; she was always teaching me something.
“All those books in your house, and all those books in your head,” Cynthia had said to me when she left me for good. “And you don’t know a damn thing about a damn thing!”
Oh, she was right then, and she’s right now. Smart women surround me and lovingly tolerate my stupidity. My wife and daughters believe me to be a Holy Fool, a builder of nothing and a fixer of less. But damn, I make them laugh, and I do my share of the household chores!
“Son,” my mother said to me on the night of my high school graduation, “if you want your future wife to lust after you for the rest of your days, then all you have to do is complete this to-do list:
“Wash the dishes on a regular basis.”
“If you’re feeling lonely and you want her to suck on your toes or any of your other projectiles, do the laundry.”
“Do you want to keep love alive? All you have to do is vacuum. Oh, my son, vacuum in the middle of the night, and your future wife will rise naked from her bed and make love with you at three in the morning!”
“Reverse the stereotypical gender roles, my dear, dear boy, and you shall be redeemed!”
But it was my mother who first gave up on love, who, since my childhood, has lived what I assume to be a chaste life. She could not love a man who did not respect her; she could not sleep with a man who made her feel dirty. So as far as I can tell, and I believe she would tell me otherwise, she has simply gone without. She is a secular nun! My crazy aunt Bettina thinks all that whole-woman talk turned my mother into a lesbian (and what better way for a woman to show her love for women than by romantically loving women?), but I think my mother has decided that she’d rather spend more time with open books than with closed men. My mother refuses to lower her standards! She’ll read any book once but will toss it aside if it doesn’t hold up to a second reading. As for me, as crazy as it sounds, I want to become the kind of man my mother would sleep with. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I don’t want to sleep with my mother, but I want to sleep with women my mother loves. Ha, ha, ha, ha! I don’t want to be cherished by my mother (and I am beloved) as much as I want to be respected by her.
Estelle and I both grew up to be white-collar community-college teachers. At North Seattle Community College, I teach three classes of American history (imagine that: An Indian teaches white kids about Benjamin Franklin and Susan B. Anthony, isn’t that joyous!), while Estelle teaches two art-appreciation classes and one in women’s studies at Seattle Central Community College. My mother has become a respected and well-loved academic bureaucrat (Teacher of the Year for seven years running!), but that’s hardly the stuff of New Age fantasies. This is what my mother teaches now:
A thousand years from now, the Egyptian pyramids and middle-class white American all-you-can-buffet restaurants will be viewed with equivalent awe at their majesty and disgust at their excess.
President William Jefferson Clinton is the epitome, perhaps the evolutionary apex, of white male behavior, and that’s why most white people, liberal and conservative, hate him so vehemently.
Twenty-seven-year-old white men look exactly the same as three-month-old white babies of either gender.
White men are endlessly creative because they’re so damn bored. Shakespeare and golf were invented for the same reason. Hitler and Pee-wee Herman were motivated by the same existential dread and masculine insecurity. Hugh Hefner and Napoleon should be flavors of ice cream. World domination and the complete line of Sears power tools are equally important goals.
White men are terrified of being better and kinder and more intelligent men than their fathers; therefore, they invented nostalgia and have canonized slave owners like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
The average white m
ale working the graveyard shift at a 7-Eleven in the year 2003 is a more educated and advanced and decent human being than the average white male attending an opera in New York City in 1876.
If you want to make a white man cry, despite the amount of time it’s been since he last wept aloud, then all you have to do is employ “baseball” and “father” in three consecutive sentences.
My mother is no longer on a wholehearted journey to claim her female wholeness. I don’t ask her about it, but I’m sure she loves her life and considers it complete, as filled as it is with her students, colleagues, books, grandchildren, and the mountains that surround Seattle on all sides. Call her answering machine (she rarely picks up the phone even when she’s home), and you’ll hear: “Hi, this is Estelle, and I’m not here, so I’m probably climbing a dormant volcano. Leave me a message, and I’ll give you a call when I come back down.”
I don’t know if my mother keeps in contact with those needy white women from the summer of 1976. I read about them in the newspapers; I see them on television. Some of them have become locally famous, and one is famous everywhere. A former lawyer, she recently won an Emmy for her role as a lawyer in a TV movie.
My mother invited me over to watch the movie with her. It was bad.
“I remember when she couldn’t orgasm,” my mother said of the woman. “I wonder if she can orgasm now.”
I learned about female orgasms at a very young age. I never once in my life believed in the vaginal orgasm. I learned I’d find Jimmy Hoffa and Amelia Earhart before I found a vaginal orgasm.
My mother made me read the feminist bible titled Our Bodies, Ourselves. I read it once and gave it back to my mother and never said another word about it. But I came home early from school one afternoon and found my mother and twelve white women studying their vaginas with handheld mirrors.