The river of blood and salt
The river of semen and sap
The river diverted
The river damned
I release these salmon
I release
I release these salmon
I release
O salmon, I release you
O salmon, I pray
O Father and Mother
O Father and Mother
return to me
return to me
58.
The Spokane Indian Manual of Style
AFTER THE GRAND Coulee Dam murdered our wild salmon, we stopped being Spokane Indians and became a Paraphrase of Spokane Indians.
Our identity has been clarified for us.
We are the Unsalmon People.
We are Unsalmon.
We are Un.
59.
Testimony
TWENTY YEARS AGO, I sat in a room with more than fifty indigenous men from all over North America as they, one by one, stood and testified about being raped by white priests, white teachers, white coaches, and white security guards and soldiers. These rapes happened in residential boarding schools all across the United States and Canada. And they happened from the late nineteenth century into the late twentieth.
I had learned about the epidemic violence in Indian boarding schools, and I’d heard and read the countless stories of sexually abused women, but I had never seen so many male victims gathered together.
One elder, over seventy years old, stood and said, “We were beaten for speaking our tribal languages. We were beaten for dancing and singing in traditional ways. We were beaten for resisting the beatings. Sometimes, we would escape and run away. The white men would catch us and beat us for running away. They’d beat us for wanting to go home. They’d beat us for crying. So, more than anything, we learned not to cry. Our tears were the only thing we could control. So not crying felt like we had won something.”
He said, “Sometimes, white men would take you into private rooms and they would beat you. And you’d be happy to only get slapped and punched. Because, sometimes, those white men would take you into those private rooms and rape you. Sometimes, it was one white man. Sometimes, it was more.”
The elder stopped speaking. He could not continue. He stood, without crying, and trembled.
I watched him.
That Indian man, over seventy years old, trembled like a frightened boy—like the boy he used to be and the boy he remained, trapped in time by his torture.
That trembling man—that trembling boy—stood in silence for many minutes. And we other Indian men sat in silence and waited. We all knew, collectively, that we would silently wait for that man—that boy—to resume speaking or to remain silent or to sing or dance or to cry or to leave the room. We would have waited for hours. Maybe for days. I think some of those Indian men would have let themselves die while waiting in that room.
But that elder—that frozen child—smiled, placed his hand on his chest, and sat so he could listen to other Indian men tell their stories. And those men told their stories for hours.
When people consider the meaning of genocide, they might only think of corpses being pushed into mass graves.
But a person can be genocided—can have every connection to his past severed—and live to be an old man whose rib cage is a haunted house built around his heart.
I know this because I once sat in a room and listened to dozens of Indian men desperately try to speak louder than their howling, howling, howling, howling ghosts.
60.
Pack Behavior
NINETEEN SEVENTY-FIVE. Night on the reservation. Summer. Mosquitoes and moths following heat and light.
In the treehouse, five boy cousins pass three porn magazines from hand to hand, their version of the Internet.
This is the USA. Deny it, if you must, but nearly every American boy has been in a treehouse like that with cousins and magazines like that. There is nothing wrong with it.
Three of the cousins pulled out their penises and masturbated—performed—for the others.
Deny it if you need, but that kind of performance has happened in many an American treehouse.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with it. But, depending on circumstances, there might be something wrong with it.
The other two cousins—who were brothers—did not perform. Instead, they shyly climbed down from the treehouse and walked home.
Why were two brothers, who grew up in a town of only fifteen hundred people, so unlike the three cousins who grew up in that same town?
There are no provable answers. Only psychological guesswork.
Those brothers who went home? One of them has spent time in jail for DUI and unpaid fines, but the other brother has only been in jails to visit his brother.
As for those other cousins, the ones who remained in the treehouse? All three grew up to be rapists. Two of them have spent years in prison for their crimes. The third cousin has never been convicted of any felony, though he has raped more people than the other two combined.
How has that third cousin escaped justice? Because he mimics proper human behavior better than the others. Because he speaks a little bit of the tribal language. Because he genuflects and prays in front of large crowds. Because he wears beads and feathers every day of the year. Because he plays the role of traditional Indian better than most. Because he proclaims himself holy and is superficially believed.
Because his victims have learned, on the reservation and everywhere else, that it is more painful and dangerous to testify than it is to silently grieve.
On the reservation, testifiers are shunned and exiled.
On the reservation, the silent are honored with more silence. In that way, silence becomes sacred. Silence becomes the tribal ceremony that everybody performs.
Perhaps everybody, indigenous and not, lives on their own kind of reservation.
If those five cousins were transformed into animals—into three wolves and two dogs—then this story might sound more like a parable, like a familiar fable, like an ancient lesson taught around the campfire.
This story would teach us that dogs and wolves are alike. But the story would also teach us that, in most ways, dogs and wolves are nothing alike.
Dogs and wolves might have the same ancestors, but they long ago became members of different tribes.
But how did dogs and wolves become so different from each other?
Dogs are wolves that were loved by humans. Dogs were created by human tenderness.
But wolves have always walked slow circles around humans. Wolves have seen humans only as potential prey and potential predators.
But, wait, you might say, there has never been a recorded instance of a healthy wolf attacking a human.
But, ah, the storyteller replies, did you hear me claim that those wolves, those three cousins, were ever healthy? Did you know that wolves will hunt other wolves? Did you know that wolves will eat their young? Did you know that wolves teach other wolves how to be wolves? Did you know that wolves beget wolves?
Did you know that some wolves will dress up as Indians and dance and sing and dance and hunt and sing and dance and hunt and sing and dance and hunt and hunt and hunt and hunt all night long?
Do you understand how one small dog—afraid of the wolves who had attacked him and those who would attack him anew—might stand on his hind legs, might evolve in a moment, so he could run away and never return?
61.
Prophecy
the salmon have built mansions
at the bottom of every ocean
thousands of rooms
thousands of rooms
the salmon have sent ambassadors
to live among Indians
thousands of salmon
thousands of salmon
those ambassadors are teaching us
how to breathe water
62.
Welcome to the Middle-Aged Orphans Club
One week after we bu
ried my mother,
And four years after we buried hers, my wife and I went
To see Wicked, the musical, for the third time.
But that was the first time that my whole body ached
As the Wicked and Good Witches sang their final duet.
“Why am I hurting like this?” I asked my wife later.
And she said, “Um, your mother, who was wicked
Most of the time and good some of the time—
She just died. And you’ve only begun to reconcile
The two mothers who lived inside your one mother.”
“Oh,” I said, amused at my emotional blindness.
“My mom wasn’t even that sick when I bought
The tickets,” I said. “I wasn’t thinking about her then.”
“We’re always thinking about our mothers,” my wife said,
“Because, when it comes to death, you and I are up next.”
63.
Performance
ONSTAGE, IN BELLINGHAM, Washington, during a fund-raiser for salmon restoration, I pointed out to an audience of eight hundred that salmon go on their epic journey from the ocean into the insane mouths of rivers and up those rivers against the current, over dams, dodging bears and fishermen—and a lot of those fishermen are Indians, by the way—and then through and over and around trees and rocks and pollution and garbage—swimming hundreds, even thousands of miles—in order to fuck.
“Salmon,” I said, “are the most epic fuckers in the animal kingdom.”
The audience, crunchy-assed liberals one and all, laughed but not with the abandon I wanted to hear. Maybe they were socially and politically progressive, but I could feel their sexual repression, too. I could sense that shitloads of them were offended. I was being inappropriate. After all, man, we had gathered to save the salmon, not to talk about sex.
“So, honestly,” I said, unafraid of being even more inappropriate. “When we celebrate salmon, we are celebrating fucking. And I don’t think we celebrate fucking enough. In fact, forget salmon for a minute. Let’s talk about our mothers and fathers. I mean—have any of you ever thanked your parents for fucking and conceiving you? And I don’t mean thank them all cute and poetic like, ‘Oh, I light this ancestral fire in tribute to you for my human creation.’ No, I mean have you ever looked your mother and father in the eye and said, ‘Thank you for fucking me into existence.’”
The audience laughed louder. I knew I’d won over a few more of them. But I wanted to win all of them. So I went stuntman.
“In fact,” I said as I pulled out my cell phone and held it close to the microphone. “My father is dead. But I’m going to call my mother right now.”
I heard gasps in the audience. Some woman shouted, “No!” The moment was hugely uncomfortable, very funny, and comedically dangerous. It was dangerous because I didn’t know if my mother was home to answer the phone.
One ring.
Please be home, Mom.
Two rings.
Please don’t be the machine.
Three rings.
What am I going to do if it’s the machine? If I leave a message, will it be funny?
“Hello,” my mother answered.
Thank God.
“Hey, Mom,” I said. “I’m onstage in front of about eight hundred people in Bellingham, and we’re trying to save the salmon, and I just wanted to thank you for fucking Dad and conceiving me.”
The audience laughed.
My mother laughed.
“So what do you think about that?” I asked her.
She said, “I think you sound like you’re drunk. Have you been going to your AA meetings?”
The audience laughed and laughed. I held the cell phone in the air as they laughed. That laughter was a celebration of my mother. She had won everybody in the room.
64.
Electrolux
FOUR IN THE morning and our mother was vacuuming. That was one of her ceremonies. She often stayed awake all night to make quilts or to bead powwow regalia or just to watch TV. On those sleepless nights, she was usually content to be alone. To keep the peace. But on other nights, she needed to disturb all of us. So she’d plug in that old wheezing vacuum and slam and clunk around the living room. We lived in a small house, so there was no escape from the goddamn racket of her loneliness.
Whir, whir, whir, whir.
Fuck you, vacuum.
Whir, whir, whir, whir.
Fuck you, Mom.
She knew my siblings and our father would stay in bed and pretend to be asleep. Maybe they’d even learned how to sleep through all of the forms of our mother’s mania. Most of the time they passively accepted our mother’s contempt. They rarely confronted her about any of her bullshit. But she knew that I would stand up to her. She knew that I would storm up the stairs to curse at her. Once, I unplugged the vacuum, opened the door, and threw it as far as I could into the dark. It smashed to the ground. I hoped I’d broken it. But I’d only knocked loose a rib or something structural because the vacuum kept working but thereafter rattled like a snake made out of tin cans.
Whir, whir, whir, whir.
Don’t take the fucking bait.
Whir, whir, whir, whir.
She wins if you engage with her madness.
How many times had she woken us that way? Thirty or forty times over twenty years? Not nearly enough for it to be predictable. No, she always surprised us with that shit. And I would furiously react.
But, one night, I didn’t react. I covered my head with my pillows and tried to fall back asleep. She kept vacuuming. I refused to fight; she refused to turn off the vacuum. A stalemate that lasted until dawn.
Later that morning, as we all ate breakfast, dark-eyed from lack of sleep, we all joked around as if it were another normal day in the Alexie household. But we didn’t make jokes about our mother’s vacuuming. We didn’t address that at all.
Whir, whir, whir, whir.
Don’t talk about the shit that is troubling you.
Whir, whir, whir, whir.
Swallow every indignity, small and large, without editorial comment.
I don’t know what happened to that vacuum. I imagine it finally broke for good. It’s probably buried deep in the reservation landfill. Maybe some twenty-seventh-century archaeologists will find it. They’ll think it was just a primitive cleaning device. They won’t know it was a nonlethal weapon in a domestic war.
65.
Love Parade
My mother married a war
Orphan. For the ceremony,
He sported a three-piece
Grief. She was lovely
In a white dress—a former child
Bride now marrying again
As a woman. They wed
On impulse in City Hall
After being witnesses
To their friends’ equally
Impulsive marriage
That only lasted months.
But my mother and her war
Orphan were married
For nearly four decades,
Conceived four children
Together, raised another
Only biologically hers,
Sheltered a dozen cousins
For days and weeks
And sometimes years,
And officially adopted
One cousin and raised him
As their son. All of us—
We brothers and sisters
And cousins—were parented,
Well and not well,
By my mother
And her war orphan.
We were raised by two kinds
Of loneliness: One was silent
And solitary and depressed
While the other rehearsed lines,
Sought out the crowd,
And confessed to everything.
So, yes, I am the child
Of those two opposing forces.
I am the one
Who is half monk
And half clown.
Look at me pray!
Look at me pratfall!
I will beg, I will beg
For your devotion
Then do my best
To lead you astray.
66.
The Urban Indian Boy Enjoys Good Health
Insurance
Though I drove to the rez and back, and sat in bad chairs
For three days straight, my chronically injured back
Somehow didn’t collapse, so I made it through
My mother’s funeral and wake. But, eleven days later,
My back spasms when I open our front door in Seattle
And I have to lower myself to the floor. Hello,
Mr. Grief, I was wondering when you would find
Where I am weakest. Look at me push myself
Across the floor with one leg extended like
An eccentric baby. At first, I crawl for the pain
Pills, then remember that I’m the recovering
Drunk who threw them away, so I force myself
To my feet and slowly pace the breadth and length
Of the hallway because using my re-torn muscles
Is the best way to regain their strength.