brilliant trace #8 - Part I

It was almost pitch black and I could barely see your face. I was helping your aunt breakdown the t-shirt booth after a long opening day of a powwow.

All I could make out was your tall figure, curly hair, and dark glasses as I watched you silently stand there while your aunt excitedly fussed over the arrival of you and your little cousin.

It wasn't until we were inside your aunt's office with the smell of cedar filling the air and the moonlight bouncing off of Puget Sound that I clearly saw your face. We caught each others' eyes for a moment while you chatted with your aunt and I helped my friend pack away the t-shirts for the night. When we were done, your aunt suggested you join my friend and I for drinks because it was my first weekend in Seattle.

The three of us laughed for hours sharing our most humiliating stories while drinking pints. I hadn't laughed that hard in a long time, and when my friend drove me home I couldn't help but ask about you. She told me your summer associateship with a law firm was ending in a month, and you'd be headed back to law school soon on the other side of the country. I cursed my luck, and then tried to bury my attraction to you in the knotted lump of butterflies in my stomach.

My attraction didn't stay buried for long when you came up to me the next day with a big smile outside of your aunt's t-shirt booth. You told me you were so amazed at how much you shared the night before, and that you were very impressed by me. I looked down at my feet and tried not to blush. The moment was broken a second later when your aunt came from inside the booth and handed you a fanny pack.

"Put this on. I need you to be in charge of the money today," she said.

You looked at me a bit embarrassed, and then put the fanny pack over your shoulder.

"No, no," your aunt said. "You need to put it on. We can't lose any of the money."

This time you tried not to blush while fastening the fanny pack around your waist. I giggled and told you it was OK because I already knew much more embarrassing things about you. Then, for the first time, you looked into my eyes and smiled.

At the end of a long day in the July sun, you drove me home and we ended up talking until 4 a.m. We both came from a place of feeling like outsiders in the Native community because of our pale skin and light eyes. After talking for hours about our fears of never fully being accepted, I shared a poem with you I had written for my college's literary journal.

I stood in the doorway of my bedroom watching the reactions on your face as you read the poem, nodding and smiling at parts you identified with.

And That's the Way the Story Goes

1

I used to stare at this funny looking monkey head made out of a coconut that hung in the window of my Grandma's sewing room. In the winter at sunset, the window looked like it was tinted blue. One time I wiped the frost off the window, and when I looked outside I could see the stillness of sub-zero weather sitting in the air and the Turtle Mountains standing silent behind my Grandpa's fields.

2

My Grandma makes the best bread. We always joke that our Grandma has the best set of buns a Grandma could have. But better than her buns is the fry bread she would make for us every year at Christmas. We were silly and called it Indian Bread.

3

When I was in the fourth grade, we learned about the first "Indians" and how they were very brave hunters. I could feel the pride growing inside of me, and I knew I would burst if I didn't say something. So I raised my hand and started waving it around in the air.

"Yes?" my teacher asked.

"I'm part Native American," I said.

"You don't look Indian, you're a liar," someone shouted.

I turned red and wished I hadn't raised my hand.

4

My mom's sister married my dad's brother and they had some kids. My sister and brother look like them. They all have dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin. I look like my father's uncle Lucien. He had light hair and blue-green eyes. But my brother and sister always teased me and said that I was adopted.

5

When pictures were taken of the grandchildren at family reunions, I always sat next to my blond cousins, the four kids of my uncle who married a woman with Norwegian blood. I didn't look as white sitting next to them.

6

When one of my blond cousins was in the fourth grade, they sat at the kitchen table on Grandma's lap.

"What are you learning in school?" Grandma asked.

"About the Indians," my cousin said.

"You're part Indian you know," Grandma said.

"No I'm not, I'm blond," my cousin said.

"You're my grandchild and that makes you part Indian," my Grandmother insisted with a smile.

"No I'm not!" my cousin shouted. "Those are dirty people and I'll never be one of them."

My cousin jumped off my Grandma's lap and ran away.

My Grandma tried to laugh, but a tear came out instead.

7

In my Grandma's memoirs, she wrote that one of her proudest moments was when a white man wasn't ashamed to ask for her hand in marriage. That was my grandpa.

8

"Do we call ourselves Native American, American Indian, or French Indian?" I asked my sister.

"None of them. I'm just American," she said.

9

Driving down the gravel road with my mom behind the wheel, I could hear the rocks popping like ice beneath the tires. Leaving my grandparents' farm I could always see the road ahead disappear up a hill.

"Can we see the reservation today?" I asked.

"No. You don't want to." That's all she ever said while turning onto the paved highway leading into town.

10

There's a bar along the railroad tracks in the town where I grew up called the Trading Post. It used to have a figurine of an "Indian" wearing a headdress standing out front.

11

The neighbor boys who moved in from Montana always wanted to play cowboys and Indians.

"Bang bang, you're dead," one said as he shot me with his finger made gun.

"How come I have to die?" I asked.

"Because you're they Indian, and the Indian always dies," he said.

"I'm not just any Indian, I'm a warrior princess and I refuse to die," I replied.

We kept playing cowboys and Indians and no one ever died.

12

Across the street from our house used to be a bunch of Lakota burial mounds. We liked to play king of the hill on them. Now those Lakota are buried under fancy new houses with even fancier cars parked out front.

13

I was talking to my best friend on the telephone one time when she was still going to the University of North Dakota and I was living in New York. She kept complaining about how annoying her Native American professor was in her Indian Studies class because she kept talking about how hard it is to be Native American today.

"Well, that's just crazy. I mean, they even created fifteen extra slots just for Indians in the premed program here. How hard can it be to get drunk all the time and still get into a great program? Not to mention the government pays for their tuition," she said.

A lot of my cousins go to UND, and the government pays for their tuition.

"Oh yeah. I'm sorry. I keep forgetting you have some of that blood in you," she said.

I didn't say anything, because she was my best friend.

14

If a person is lucky they'll get to see the Northern Lights at least once in their life. I'm especially lucky because I grew up seeing them twice a year. 

One year a friend of mine who had moved to Turtle Mountain to live with her mom came back to visit. As we stood catching up on old times, the lights came alive in the sky. So we lay on our backs in the snow looking at how beautiful they were. 

She started singing in an even more beautiful language, one that I had never heard. She was singing in Ojibwe, and at that moment we felt closer and further apart than before she had moved back to the reservation.

15

Last summer I carried myself packed with a broken spirit and a broken heart on a plane back to North Dakota. Later I brought myself back to New York carrying a letter from my father promising me everything would be all right because the stars told him it would be.

16

I lost the turquoise ring my Grandmother gave me as a little girl when I was working at a restaurant in New York. I told my boss about the ring hoping someone had found it.

"What? Are you Indian or something?" she asked.

"Yeah," I replied.

"Well, what tribe are you from then?"

"Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa," I said.

It felt strange to be asked what tribe I was from, but it felt empowering to answer.

"Huh. And I thought you were Jewish," was all she said.

I never did find the ring.

When you were done reading the poem, you looked up and asked if you could keep it. I, of course, said yes.

The next day at the powwow you informed me that our late night talk had caused quite the stir of discussion with your family that morning, and your mom was asking your aunt all kinds of questions about me. I was completely nervous the whole day until I overheard your aunt say to my friend, "I really like that Vanessa. She's so sweet."

My friend looked at me and burst into laughter, "It's a good thing you didn't say she was a complete bitch."

Your aunt had no idea I was sitting within earshot, and then we all had a good laugh.

After packing up the t-shirt booth for the last time, we all took a celebratory picture and then went out for beers and food. At the end of the night, you drove me to my car. We sat in the dark and exchanged phone numbers. I didn't think you would actually call because you were leaving in four weeks.

Imagine my surprise when you showed up on my doorstep the next evening.

brilliant trace #8 - Part II >