Sky went inside his house and grabbed a duffel bag. Sky came back outside and smiled at me--a "What can you do?" sort of smile. Was he insane? Was he literally out of his mind? I felt sick to my stomach. I reached after him and grabbed his hand; but when I saw the nightsticks and the holsters on the cops' waists, the strength let out of my knees. My fingers uncurled from Sky's hand. My hand dropped at my side.
Sky walked away from the reservation, flanked by the taipo'o police. Mrs. Look Over and Mrs. Red Clay lost their auras. The light seeped slowly out of the pine trees. The light left the road under my feet. The light tore down from the sky and curled up in a ragged ball and shrank in on itself, disappearing. The whole reservation went black. I couldn't see the hands on the ends of my arms, the glasses on the bridge of my nose.
"It's my fault," Mrs. Looks Over's voice said, shaky.
"No, it's not," I said into the darkness. My voice sounded steadier than I felt. "It's my fault."
"I will find a way to contest this," Mrs. Red Clay said. I looked left and right, but didn't see her.
"I didn't know," Mrs. Looks Over's voice said. "I didn't know I had to keep him in the state. They never told me--"
My skin burned. My head was exploding with pain. I sank until I was sitting on the ground, or what I thought was the ground. I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know where to go. I couldn't see. Why would they do that? Those taipo'o. Why would they take the light away?
"Rafael?" came Mrs. Looks Over's weak voice.
"Um," I said. "I gotta get home."
I heard Mrs. Looks Over's tiny feet on the walkway. I felt her gnarled hand on my shoulder. I stood up, and she took my hand, linking her arm with mine. It's like she knew I was blind. She walked, and I walked with her, stewing in my own skin and sweat.
After what felt like walking for eternity I heard hot wind rustling on clay, clotheslines creaking, a door squeaking open. A pair of big hands grabbed my shoulders, pulling me onto a smooth floor. I recognized Uncle Gabriel's feelings, familiar, guarded concern.
"Catherine," Uncle Gabriel said. "What's the matter? You look shaken."
"I don't know," Mrs. Looks Over said distantly. "I don't know."
Uncle Gabriel invited Mrs. Looks Over inside for elderberry juice. He closed the door--I heard it--and I bumped into the wall. My useless glasses slid down my nose. I felt my way to the sofa and sank down on it, my arms and legs cold. I didn't feel like a real person just then.
Uncle Gabriel's footsteps fell away in the distance. The couch shifted next to me. Mrs. Looks Over touched the back of my hand, her ancient fingers leathery and afraid.
"I'll get him back for you," I promised. "Okay?"
"I don't--"
The darkness swirled in front of my eyes. The darkness lifted off the couch and the mantelpiece and the windows overlooking the badlands. I squinted. The living room was gray, but at least I could see it. In seconds, I knew why. Mary had come out of the kitchen to stand in front of the fireplace. All the shadows in the room went straight to her hair, her shoulders, and disappeared, sucked into her vacuum aura.
What's wrong?
I heard Mary's voice in my head. I used to be able to talk to Mary without words.
"Foster care took Sky away," I said.
He's sixteen.
Seventeen, almost. If he'd been born a year earlier this might not be happening right now.
Rafael, Mary said.
I looked at her. She was black and white, like one of those old photographs of Bear Hunter, of Wovoka, our beloved ancestors. Maybe she was a shaman like Wovoka. Maybe she was the only constant in the world, the only thing that made sense, even when she didn't make sense herself.
We're gonna talk to Paul, Mary said.
Uncle Gabriel came back and gave Mrs. Looks Over her juice. I stood up and followed Mary out the front door. Gray sunlight blasted me across the eyes, gray soil spilling open under my feet. My hair was gray and my skin was gray. There might as well have been no difference between me and the terrain. I felt at the moment that there were only two things: Sky, and whatever wasn't Sky.
Mary and I stopped outside the Looks Over house. Mary knocked on the front door. Paul came outside within a few minutes, expressionless. I'd never really thought about how gray his eyes were until the environment matched them. I don't think he saw us so much as he looked through us. But then that was always the way with Paul.
"Hey," Mary said. "We'll bring him back. Alright?"
Paul rubbed his mouth with his hand, reminding me briefly of my uncle. Paul looked away, thinking.
"Did they say where they were taking him?" Mary asked. "Hey. Look at me."
"No," Paul said quietly, looking at her. "They didn't tell Mother."
Paul couldn't go looking for Sky himself. The minute he left the reservation the Major Crimes Act stopped protecting him.
"We'll figure it out," Mary said. "Social Services has to know."
"You know why they're doing this," Paul said faintly. "Don't you?"
I didn't understand.
" 'Course I know," Mary said. "They can't get you, so they get your kid."
"I can't talk right now," Paul said.
He went inside his house, a bear retreating into its den. When he was gone I felt more afraid than I had minutes earlier.
"Put this out of your head," Mary told me.
I surveyed her through sad gray light. "How'm I supposed to do that?"
"By trusting me," Mary said. "I've got this under control."
That was the thing about Mary. She was positively crazy, but when she told you you could trust her, you trusted her, against all odds. It must've been a secret superpower. Probably she could've talked a cobra out of biting her.
"You're gonna get Sky back?" I asked, my voice catching in my throat.
"For you," Mary said. "So you can stop looking like a wounded gazelle. I hate that look. Makes me wanna throw up."
She led me home again by the hand. Sometimes I thought that God gave us sisters just to hold our hands when we felt small.
I didn't sleep that night; and when I think about it, I don't remember eating, either. All I remember is the darkness settling around me when I lay down in my room, the fear tightening in my chest. I grabbed a blanket and a flashlight and went outside the house to sleep against the trunk of the southern oak. Even that didn't work. I stared at the gray stars on the gray sky; I listened to the gray crickets singing gray songs. Sky wasn't sleeping in his own house tonight. It felt so fake. It felt kind of evil. Who takes a kid away from his home and his friends just because they're mad at his dad? The more I thought about it, the thinner my breath got. My eyes stung with dryness. I didn't know where Sky was. I couldn't climb the side of his house and tap on his window when I wanted a late night talk. I couldn't hold his hand under the table at school while we worked on our assignments, because he was right-handed, and I was left-handed, and it felt like we'd been made that way on purpose. If anybody gave him shit for being mute I couldn't punch them. Not that I would have. I'd promised him I'd stop doing that. It was important that I keep my promise. Even if I didn't want to.
I stayed outside the house until the sun rose. I dragged myself indoors long enough to wash my face and change my clothes. When I went to school that morning the seat at my side was empty. I slouched miserably, Autumn Rose In Winter turning around to stare at me.
"Rafael," Annie whispered noisily, taking the empty seat. "Do you have any idea where--"
"No," I mumbled.
"How could they do this?" Annie asked.
"I don't know."
Zeke sat on Annie's other side, a large gray bruise swallowing half of his face. He bent his head over his notebook and yawned.
"What are we going to do?" Annie said.
"I don't know," I said wildly. Mary knew everything. "I don't know."
Mr. Red Clay came into the schoolhouse, commanding everyone's attention. He etched all twelve grades' assignments on the chalkboard from memory
. Aubrey opened his math book to the right of me, but I couldn't concentrate. The room dimmed around me, my head tight with pain. For the next few hours I stared blankly at my notebook, my eyes watering. Mr. Red Clay noticed, too: When school let out at noon he grabbed my shoulder just as I was heading out the door.
"Next time," Mr. Red Clay said, "don't come to school if you're too tired to pay attention."
I burned with humiliation. But I could feel the concern in his hand. It was a thoughtful kind of concern. It told me he'd noticed Sky's absence just as much as his students had.
"Rafael," Mr. Red Clay said. "You got a D on your winter exam."
My heart sank. This wasn't what I wanted to talk about right now.
"I'm aware you've been tested for learning disabilities," Mr. Red Clay said. "I was wondering whether you've seen a psychiatrist? Sometimes poor performance in school is linked to--"
"I'm not going to a psychiatrist," I said, bewildered. I wasn't. I couldn't. I couldn't be ill like my dad.
"I know what's happened to Skylar," Mr. Red Clay said. "So I'm not going to push this on you. Not right now. I'll offer you an extra credit essay. 'What It Means to be Native American.' Can you do that?"
How could I do anything when I didn't know where Sky was, or whether he was safe? I felt like I was wading through a trance.
"Mr. Red Clay," I said. "What do you think we should do when we have criminals on the rez?"
"I'm sorry?" Mr. Red Clay said.
In Indian Country you find that even the full-blooded families have a non-Indian ancestor if you go back far enough. Record keeping and blood quantum weren't very strict in the 19th century. But Mr. Red Clay looked all Indian, his features so sharp, so statuesque you wanted to ask him how many buffalo he'd killed today. I glanced at him and felt like hiding.
"Blood law," I said. "Do you think it works?"
"I don't believe we practice blood law anymore," Mr. Red Clay said seamlessly.
Liar.
"Why?" Mr. Red Clay asked.
"Because it doesn't work," I said. My forehead tightened; my eyes itched. "An eye for an eye. Just leaves more pain."
Mr. Red Clay surveyed me. We were the last two left in the schoolhouse, the smaller kids laughing out back as they played on the swings. I wished I were one of those kids just then.
"How would you propose ending it?" Mr. Red Clay asked. "Assuming we still practiced it."
"I dunno," I said. The grayness of his face felt like an assault.
"A society must constantly better itself," Mr. Red Clay said. "To evolve at all times should be the goal of any community. 'In a dream I saw a city invincible.' "
He really seemed to believe what he was saying.
"I dunno," I said again. "I don't know anything right now."
Mr. Red Clay touched my shoulder. I couldn't remember what color his aura was. "Go to bed, Rafael."
When I went out onto the dirt road I saw that Annie, Aubrey, and Zeke were all waiting for me. I was so touched that they'd stayed behind, the air caught in my throat. Annie took my arm in hers when we walked back to my house. I didn't know what I would have done just then if I couldn't have leaned against her.
"Perhaps if we used the radio station?" Annie asked. "If we made broadcasts to Skylar."
"Do we know that he would hear it?" Aubrey asked, anxious. "Most of Arizona does, but--could they have taken him out of state?"
"Or deprived him of a radio," Zeke said. That bruise of his was starting to scare me; it covered his eyebrow and the corner of his mouth. "Like--uh--like prisoner tactics."
"He's not a prisoner," I yelped, panicked.
"Yeah, but--I'm just saying!"
I didn't wanna go to sleep; but the gray reservation around me was starting to prickle with black spots. Annie and Aubrey and Zeke wrestled me into the house, into my bedroom. Annie pulled the covers down on my bed. If I were less lethargic I could'a taken all three of them at once. Maybe not Aubrey; the guy was a beast on the shinny field.
"Sleep," Annie hissed. "I'll make you something to eat when you've woken up."
"I think I love you," I mumbled. I passed out soon as I hit my pillow.
When I woke up again it was dark in my bedroom. The whale lamp on the writing table glowed with half strength, washing over Zeke and Aubrey's faces. The pair of 'em had fallen asleep sitting against the wall, Zeke drooling on Aubrey's shoulder. Annie had taken a kitchen chair and propped it beside my bed. She sat wide awake, knitting a sweater with a pair of fine, pearly gray needles.
"What time is it?" I said groggily.
"About ten, I should think," Annie said, without looking up. Her voice was low and soft.
"Crap," I groaned. I sat up. I was gonna be just as tired tomorrow as I was today. "What're you still doing here?"
"Granddad said it was alright. You didn't really think we'd leave you alone, did you?"
I wanted to cry. 'Course, I didn't.
"Let's go outside," Annie said. "You should eat something."
She got up. I stood with her. She took my arm and we snaked down the dark hallway, into the sitting room. The hearth was lit, Caleb working the electrical wires back into the walls. Dumbass should't've ripped 'em out to begin with. I didn't see Uncle Gabriel or Rosa or Mary.
Annie took me into the kitchen and warmed wild rice flatbread with chives. She brewed me a glass of cold rose tea. She sat across from me with her skinny elbows on the island, her eyes distracted. Her hair had grown so long.
"Eat something," I mumbled.
Anne smiled fleetingly. "No, thank you."
I tore into the flatbread with angry fingers. I hoped she knew I wasn't angry with her.
"If I called Social Services," Annie said, eyebrows furrowing. "If I told them I wanted to write Skylar a letter--"
"Mary said something similar," I said.
Annie flushed briefly. "Did she?"
I stuffed the flatbread in my mouth so I wouldn't have to talk. Only Annie didn't say anything, either. I swallowed. I gulped down half the tea.
"For heavens' sakes," Annie said. "You're like a polar bear." I knew she didn't mean it unkindly.
"Annie," I said. "I really love him."
Annie's face softened; although in a way, she looked uncomfortable. This wasn't stuff you talked about if you were Shoshone. "I know."
"I feel so stupid," I said. "Like--I don't wanna be one of those useless guys who can't do nothing if he isn't with me--"
"You're not useless, Rafael," Annie said, a touch angry.
"But I can't stop thinking about if people are treating him nice. He's kind, you know? Kind people get taken advantage of. And then he's mute on top of it. And he loves his family so much, and now he doesn't even get to see them--"
"Mary told me she's contacted a city cop. Racine Something?"
How the hell did Mary know any cops? I mean, I'd always figured she'd be on the opposite side of that dealing.
"Eat, Rafael," Annie said.
"What're you, my mom?" I growled.
"If I have to be."
I sucked down the rest of the flatbread. I didn't tell Annie, but it tasted good.
"So you talk to Mary now," I said when I'd finished.
Annie poured herself a glass of rose tea. I knew a distraction when I saw one. "That's not so unusual, is it?"
"Annie," I said.
Annie put her glass down without drinking it.
"Annie," I said. "Are you gay?"
"I--no! Absolutely not!" Annie said, flustered.
"Shh," I said.
Annie's gray blush bloomed all the way up to her ears.
"It's okay if you are," I said. "You know that, right?"
"Of course I know that," Annie said testily. "But I'm not, so..."
I dropped it.
"I mean," Annie went on. "I've liked plenty of boys, so surely--"
"Some people like both," I said. "Maybe you like both."
"Some would say that makes me indecisive," Annie muttered through
her teeth.
"Who the hell would say that?" I wanted to know. "That's stupid. That's like saying a straight guy's indecisive 'cause he's dated more than one girl."
"Do we even have a word for it?" Annie asked. "In our language?"
"What," I said, "a word for bi?"
Annie wouldn't look at me.
"Guess not," I said. If you loved someone the same gender as you, you were Napaka. Our culture liked to look at the effect, not the cause.
"Of course," Annie said hastily. "I'm not--so this is all quite irrelevant, but--"
"Yeah," I said, "but it's keeping my mind off of Sky."
"And I should just suffer that for you, then?"
"Uh-huh."
The funny thing is: She did.
"Please don't tell anyone," Annie said. She sounded humiliated. "I don't...I don't understand all of this myself."
"Just do what feels right," I said. "I won't tell anyone. Anything you tell me, I'm not gonna tell anyone."
I could actually watch the relief spreading across Annie's face.
"But you gotta tell Aubrey," I said. "If you decide you don't wanna be with him. You can't lie to him."
And now she looked miserable. "Oh, I love him, Rafael, I love him so much. I love all of you so much."
"I know you do," I said. "You're a good girl."
We went into my room and shook Aubrey and Zeke awake. Zeke smacked Aubrey in the face by accident when he stretched his arms. I walked my friends home; but their homes were so spread out across the rez, it took almost a full hour. By the time I returned to my own I was wide awake, anxious. The lights were on in the sitting room, brighter than I remembered them ever being.
"Finally fixed yer damn electric," Caleb announced.
I looked at him weirdly. "I didn't know it was broken."
Just as I'd figured, I couldn't sleep that night. I holed myself up in my room and drew sketches instead, but with regular pencils; no point using colored ones if everything was gray. I drew a sea of caltrops, a kind of flower Sky liked, and a staircase of ansomnia, which my mother had loved. I drew wolves and coyotes racing under a macrocosmic snowflake. My pilot whale sketchbook had run out of pages; I ripped out the pages from other notebooks and stuffed them between the thick covers. I put down my pencil and inspected my drawings. Just then I understood why everyone and everything existed. It was the same reason I drew. It was the same reason Sky made music. Imagine reading a book without a cover. Imagine walking into a museum and finding empty walls.