You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

  But not in height.

  “The man who raped your mother,” I said. “Your father...”

  “He’s not my father,” my mother said. She was angry. “My father is James Cox, the man who raised me.”

  I was always afraid of her anger. Everybody was afraid of Lillian’s anger. We were always trying to mollify her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “The rapist. Was he tall?”

  My mother immediately understood what I was asking.

  “Yes,” she said. “That’s where you get your height.”

  I didn’t ask my mother anything else. I didn’t have the emotional vocabulary. And I’m not sure she had the emotional vocabulary, either.

  Rape was common on my reservation. But it was rarely discussed. And never prosecuted. Why not? I would guess it has something to do with the strict social rules of a tribe. White folks love to think that Native American culture is liberal. But it is actually repressive. Indians are quick to socially judge one another. And even quicker to publicly condemn and ostracize. I wouldn’t realize it until I read more widely in college, but living on an Indian reservation was like living inside an Edith Wharton novel. Disruption was not tolerated. And I think I know the source of intolerance. For thousands of years, we Spokane had endured and enjoyed subsistence lives. We’d lived communally. Every member of the tribe had a job. And each job was vital. So, inside a subsistence culture, a socially disruptive tribal member would have been mortally dangerous to everybody else.

  But there is a logical problem with that, isn’t there? First of all, we were living in the twentieth century and not the fourteenth or fifteenth.

  And if that were still true—if socially disruptive tribal members were traditionally punished no matter the century—then wouldn’t it make more sense for the tribe to ostracize and even expel rapists? Well, not if the rapist was a culturally significant figure. Not if the rapist, however economically poor, was socially rich and powerful. Not if the rapist could put on an eagle-feather headdress and make a beautiful and powerful entrance into the powwow arena.

  And what would happen inside a small tribe if every minor or major crime, if every small or large transgression, was made public? What if we Natives practiced the same kind of justice inside our own communities as the justice that we demand from white society? Of course, centuries of genocidal acts by white Americans have certainly helped teach us Natives how to commit genocidal acts against one another. But at what point do we Native American victims start demanding more justice and freedom from our Native American oppressors?

  And what happens if those indigenous oppressors happen to be our parents?

  For over three decades, I believed that one of my biological grandfathers was a rapist.

  I thought I was the grandson of rape.

  But in July 2016, just over a year after my mother died, I had a telephone conversation with my sister Arlene. We were discussing our half sister, Mary, and her convoluted parentage. I wanted to get the details correct for this memoir.

  “Mary was the child of a rape,” my sister said.

  “Wait,” I said. “You mean Mom was the child of a rape.”

  “No,” she said. “Mom was the child of an affair.”

  “No,” I said. “Mom told me she was the child of a rape.”

  “She never told me that. Who did she say she was raped by?”

  I gave her the name of the accused rapist.

  “No,” my sister said. “Mom’s mom was having an affair with him and they got pregnant.”

  I laughed. I didn’t mean to laugh. It wasn’t funny. But its awful seriousness is what made it hilarious. Jesus, I’d believed yet another one of my mother’s fabrications. Or wait, maybe my sister had been fooled again by our mother. Or maybe she’d told us two different lies. Would our mother lie about rape?

  “And you know what’s really messed up?” my sister said.

  “What?” I asked, wondering what could possibly be worse than lying about rape.

  “You want to know what our cheating grandma and her cheating boyfriend did?”

  “What?”

  “Well,” my sister said. “Do you know the name of the cheater’s wife?”

  I said her last name.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” my sister said. “But do you know what her first name was?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Guess.”

  “Tell me.”

  “No, guess.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Okay,” my sister said. “Just think about it. What’s the worst thing a husband and his affair snag could name their adultery kid?”

  I thought about it. And then I suddenly understood.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. “They named Mom after the wife.”

  “Yep, Mom is Lillian. That poor wife was also Lillian.”

  I threw my cell phone on the couch. And walked away. I paced. Was this completely fucked-up story just another one of my mother’s grandiose falsehoods?

  But, wait, wait, wait, I kept thinking. What if my mother was telling the truth about some of it. What if it was the partial truth? She’d always been such a damaged person. And that damage had to have been inflicted by somebody. So what if my mother lied about the specific details of her pain but was always emotionally honest about the volume of her suffering?

  If it’s fiction, then it better be true.

  And then I remembered the original topic of my conversation with my sister. So I picked my phone back up and laughed and cursed while my sister laughed and cursed.

  “So who raped Mom?” I asked. “Who raped Lillian the Second and got her pregnant with our sister?”

  My sister then told me an even more awful story.

  When my mother was rapidly becoming a rebellious teen, her parents sent her to Sacramento to live with her older sister and her husband, who’d been relocated to Northern California as part of the Indian Relocation Act of 1956. Relocation was meant to educate Indians, give them new life and job skills, and help them assimilate into mainstream culture. And it accomplished all of that while also damaging and destroying cultural bonds among thousands of Indians and their ancestral homelands and cultures.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Mom told me she was relocated. But she always said she traveled alone to Sacramento, got off the bus downtown, had a bowl of soup, and caught the next bus back home to Spokane.”

  “Nope,” my sister said. “She lived there for a few months with her big sister and big sister’s first husband.”

  I wanted to hang up the phone.

  “So the husband raped Mom,” I said.

  “Yes,” my sister said.

  “So, Mary is the child of a rape.”

  “Yes.”

  “So Mary is our mother’s daughter and her niece?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” my sister said. “But you’re right.”

  “And Mary is our half sister and our half first cousin, too.”

  “Something like that,” my sister said.

  “How come I’ve never heard any of this before?”

  “Come on, Junior,” my sister said. “You haven’t lived on the rez in thirty-six years. So many stories and secrets get told. Time goes by. Time goes by.”

  My sister was telling the truth. I am disconnected from my tribe. By my choice. And, yes, I am disconnected from my immediate family, too. By my choice. I have traveled the world. My sister has lived in the same house for forty-four years.

  “Man,” I said. “Mom was so full of shit. What are we supposed to believe? Where did all that bullshit come from? What are we supposed to do with all this bullshit?”

  “Well,” my sister said. “You got famous on that bullshit.”

  And we laughed.

  126.

  The Widow’s Son’s

  Lament

  My mother and I’d held each other hostage

  For thirty-six years. But then my dad died,

  And Mom and I were too damn exhausted
r />   To be jailers anymore. We untied

  Old knots and unlocked cell doors in tandem

  And walked free in separate directions.

  Neither of us demanded a ransom.

  She remained on the reservation

  And I took refuge in the city. We still

  Phone-gossiped about friends and family.

  I sent her money to pay past-due bills

  From power and satellite companies.

  We met in person a few times a year.

  We laughed too loudly in public places.

  We never mentioned the old pain and fear.

  We somehow achieved homeostasis.

  We didn’t speak of forgiveness.

  We didn’t play that ruse.

  No, we were mother and son

  And we’d declared a truce.

  127.

  Physics

  I want to reverse this earth

  And give birth to my mother

  Because I do not believe

  That she was ever adored.

  I want to mother the mother

  Who often did not mother me.

  I was mothered and adored

  By mothers not my own,

  And learned how to be adoring

  By being adored. So if I adore

  my mother after giving birth

  to this new version of her,

  Will she change history

  And become one

  Who openly and freely adores

  Her daughters and sons?

  I don’t know. I don’t know

  If it’s possible in any potential world.

  But build me a time machine

  And I’ll give this shit a whirl.

  128.

  Spring Cleaning

  If attics are the eggs, then steamer trunks are the yolks.

  Thirteen years after my father died,

  And thirteen months after my mother’s death,

  I open my father’s steamer trunk—his chest-egg—and find

  Toy guns, basketball cards, and cigar smoke.

  Evoke! Evoke!

  My father designed this strange collection with my sons in mind

  (My glorious boys are part egg and part yolk),

  But I think that he meant it as a joke—

  Affectionate and unkind—

  Because he knew that I love basketball, but hate guns and smoke.

  Suddenly choked,

  Blind,

  And broken open like an egg and spilled like a yolk,

  I mourn my mother. I mourn my father. I sometimes wear his coat,

  An outdated big-collar consign

  That, I realize, also smells of toy guns, basketball cards,

  And cigar smoke.

  I want my grief to be baroque,

  But damn it, it’s as simply designed

  As an egg and its yolk,

  And as unrefined

  As a chest heavy with guns (and mothers) and hoops and smoke.

  129.

  Discourse

  MY FRIEND JOHN SIROIS is a Colville Indian singer, drummer, and Dartmouth graduate currently working to protect the upper Columbia and Spokane rivers. An Ivy League Indian and a powwow Indian and a wild salmon restoration champion can easily be the same person.

  Yes, a Native can be highly educated, live in the city, and be the guy you call when you need a beautiful prayer and hand-drum honor song.

  I often get asked, “Sherman, how do the indigenous live in two worlds? How is it possible?”

  And I’m all “Shiiiiiiiiiiit, I code-switch eighteen times before I drink my first cup of coffee.”

  Don’t you white folks understand that Indians turn everything we do into something Indian? That’s how we reverse colonialism. By taking back most of the good things that were stolen from us and grabbing some of your good things, too.

  And when like-minded Indians get together? Oh, man, you get some classical drama. I love my friend John Sirois like Pythias loved Damon. Yeah, that’s right, I just claimed two mythical Greek dudes as my own. I compared their love to my love for another Indian man. You call that assimilation? I say maybe John and I will write a powwow song about Pythias and Damon:

  Philia, Philia

  Way ya hi yo

  Philia, Philia

  Way ya hi yo

  This Indian is my brother

  He’s my brother

  And I love him so

  I love him so

  Aho!

  John is also a very handsome dude. When he met my late mother-in-law for the first time, she turned to her daughter, Diane—my wife!—and asked, “How come you didn’t marry John?”

  I met John at the same academic camp for Indian kids where I met Diane. John was mentoring high school kids from his reservation. Diane was running the whole thing. And I was a judge for the essay competition. Yes, John, Diane, and I were born into the Clan of Indigenous Brainiacs. Whatchu gotta say about that?

  John was one of the Indian guys, along with a few high school kids, who gave me the courage to ask Diane for a first date.

  John also knew my mother.

  “I was thinking about the times we’d be at your readings,” John texted, “and your mom was always asking me to keep you from cussing.”

  “Ha Ha Ha!” I texted back.

  I am profane but nearly always for specific reasons. My profanity has an aesthetic. And Indians, in general, have dirty mouths. But those same privately filthy Indians will turn into Warriors of Decorum in public venues, especially when white folks are in the audience. I think many Indians consciously and subconsciously seek the approval of white folks. As a colonized people, we tend to perform our Indianness as a way of asserting our identities. These performances can be full of sovereign pride and codependent groveling at the same time from the same person. I want to get the attention of white folks, too, but I enjoy positive and negative reactions. I am the author of one of the most banned and challenged books in American history, and that makes me giddy with joy. But, all in all, I am most gleeful about inciting the wrath of other Indians.

  “You were bullied as a kid by your own tribe,” my therapist once said. “So it’s not surprising you’d strongly react to bullying, or what you think feels like bullying. It’s not surprising you fight back. That you enjoy fighting back, especially against other Indians.”

  “Being bullied can turn you into a bully,” I said to my therapist.

  “Yes,” she said. “The stuff that you hate in others is often the stuff you hate in yourself. But perhaps you can learn something about yourself when this happens. When you are angry at somebody, what does that say about who you are?”

  Maybe John Sirois and I should write an honor song for my therapist. And ninety-nine more honor songs for my mother.

  “Your mom was so serious,” John texted. “Please say something to Junior about his cussing when he gets onstage, she’d say. He will listen to you, she’d say. And I was, like, uh, sure, I’ll talk to him. LOL!”

  “But I don’t listen to anybody!” I texted.

  “I know. But I didn’t have the heart to tell her otherwise. You know you just got to listen to and respect mothers! She felt better knowing I would talk to you.”

  “Wait, I’m older than you!” I texted. “Why was my mom telling you to be my elder?”

  “What would I have said to you?” John texted. “Without laughing?”

  “I would have started my talk by repeating what Mom had just asked you to say to me.”

  “I know! LOL! Maybe that’s why I never said anything to you!”

  “You know me!”

  “Your mom knew you better than everybody else!”

  Later, as I reread my conversation with John, I thought about the ways in which my mother tried to play good mother/bad mother against me. I thought how she often tried to make me obey the Edith Whartonian social rules of the reservation: Respect your elders even if they’re dumb or lazy or ass-wipes; you can bring crying babies to any and all
events and nobody will mind all that much; don’t talk about the felonies, but you can endlessly gossip about the misdemeanors; make sure you clap for all the powwow dancers and not just your favorite category; even though you know your tribe is the best, that doesn’t mean you’re the best of your tribe; you can tell the truth about Indians in private, but don’t tell the truth if white people are listening.

  My mother often disobeyed those rules and many others.

  I miss her constant rebellion.

  I miss her inconsistent mothering.

  I miss her stern and hypocritical judgment.

  I miss the courtroom inside her heart.

  I miss Lillian Alexie, my most beloved and failed censor.

  130.

  Self-Exam

  Dear audience, please stand if you were raised

  By a terrible mother. Okay, okay,

  Approximately half of you. So I’d say

  That terrible mothers are commonplace.

  Just like terrible fathers. So let’s mourn

  For the children who never knew childhood.

  Our grief is justified. Our anger is good.

  I won’t blame children for childish scorn.

  But there comes a day when a broken child

  Becomes an adult. On that day, you’ll need