The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (21 page)

in just a few months. Who ever recovers from a thing like that? Who ever gets better? I knew that my mother was now broken and that she'd always be broken.

"Don't you ever drink," my mother said to me. She slapped me. Once, twice, three times.

She slapped me HARD. "Promise me you'll never drink."

"Okay, okay, I promise," I said. I couldn't believe it. My sister killed herself with booze and I was the one getting slapped.

Where was Leo Tolstoy when I needed him? I kept wishing he'd show up so my mother

could slap him instead.

Well, my mother quit slapping me, thank God, but she held on to me for hours. Held on

to me like I was a baby. And she kept crying. So many tears. My clothes and hair were soaked with her tears.

It was, like, my mother had given me a grief shower, you know?

Like she'd baptized me with her pain.

Of course, it was way too weird to watch. So all of my cousins left. My dad went in his bedroom.

It was just my mother and me. Just her tears and me.

But I didn't cry. I just hugged my mother back and wanted all of it to be over. I wanted to fall asleep again and dream about killer wasps. Yeah, I figured any nightmare would be better than my reality.

And then it was over.

My mother fell asleep and let me go.

I stood and walked into the kitchen. I was way hungry but my cousins had eaten most of

our food. So all I had for dinner were saltine crackers and water.

Like I was in jail.

Man.

Two days later, we buried my sister in the Catholic graveyard down near the powwow

ground.

I barely remember the wake. I barely remember the funeral service. I barely remember

the burial.

I was in this weird fog.

No.

It was more like I was in this small room, the smallest room in the world. I could reach out and touch the walls, which were made out of greasy glass. I could see shadows but I couldn't see details, you know?

And I was cold.

Just freezing.

Like there was a snowstorm blowing inside of my chest.

But all of that fog and greasy glass and snow disappeared when they lowered my sister's coffin into the grave. And let me tell you, it had taken them forever to dig that grave in the frozen ground. As the coffin settled into the dirt, it made this noise, almost like a breath, you know?

Like a sigh.

Like the coffin was settling down for a long, long nap, for a forever nap.

That was it.

I had to get out of there.

I turned and ran out of the graveyard and into the woods across the road. I planned on

running deep into the woods. So deep that I'd never be found.

But guess what?

I ran full-speed into Rowdy and sent us both sprawling.

Yep, Rowdy had been hiding in the woods while he watched the burial.

Wow.

Rowdy sat up. I sat up, too.

We sat there together.

Rowdy was crying. His face was shiny with tears.

"Rowdy," I said. "You're crying."

"I ain't crying," he said. "You're crying."

I touched my face. It was dry. No tears yet.

"I can't remember how to cry," I said.

That made Rowdy sort of choke. He gasped a little. And more tears rolled down his face.

"You're crying," I said.

"No, I'm not."

"It's okay; I miss my sister, too. I love her."

"I said I'm not crying."

"It's okay."

I reached out and touched Rowdy's shoulder. Big mistake. He punched me. Well, he

almost punched me. He threw a punch but he MISSED!

ROWDY MISSED A PUNCH!

His fist went sailing over my head.

"Wow," I said. "You missed."

"I missed on purpose."

"No, you didn't. You missed because your eyes are FILLED WITH TEARS!"

That made me laugh.

Yep, I started laughing like a crazy man again.

I rolled around on the cold, frozen ground and laughed and laughed and laughed.

I didn't want to laugh. I wanted to stop laughing. I wanted to grab Rowdy and hang on to him.

He was my best friend and I needed him.

But I couldn't stop laughing.

I looked at Rowdy and he was crying hard now.

He thought I was laughing at him.

Normally, Rowdy would have absolutely murdered anybody who dared to laugh at him.

But this was not a normal day.

"It's all your fault," he said.

"What's my fault?" I asked.

"Your sister is dead because you left us. You killed her."

That made me stop laughing. I suddenly felt like I might never laugh again.

Rowdy was right.

I had killed my sister.

Well, I didn't kill her.

But she only got married so quickly and left the rez because I had left the rez first. She was only living in Montana in a cheap trailer house because I had gone to school in Reardan. She had burned to death because I had decided that I wanted to spend my life with white people.

It was all my fault.

"I hate you!" Rowdy screamed. "I hate you! I hate you!"

And then he jumped up and ran away.

Rowdy ran!

He'd never run away from anything or anybody. But now he was running.

I watched him disappear into the woods.

I wondered if I'd ever see him again.

The next morning, I went to school. I didn't know what else to do. I didn't want to sit at home all day and talk to a million cousins. I knew my mother would be cooking food for

everybody and that my father would be hiding out in his bedroom again.

I knew everybody would tell stories about Mary.

And the whole time, I'd be thinking, "Yeah, but have you ever heard the story about how I killed my sister when I left the rez?"

And the whole time, everybody would be drinking booze and getting drunk and stupid

and sad and mean. Yeah, doesn't that make sense? How do we honor the drunken death of a young married couple?

HEY, LET'S GET DRUNK!

Okay, listen, I'm not a cruel bastard, okay? I know that people were very sad. I knew that my sister's death made everybody remember all the deaths in their life. I know that death is never added to death; it multiplies. But still, I couldn't I stay and watch all of those people get drunk. I couldn't do it. If you'd given me a room full of sober Indians, crying and laughing and telling stories about my sister, then I would have gladly stayed and joined them in the ceremony.

But everybody was drunk.

Everybody was unhappy.

And they were drunk and unhappy in the same exact way.

So I fled my house and went to school. I walked through the snow for a few miles until a white BIA worker picked me up and delivered me to the front door.

I walked inside, into the crowded hallways, and all sorts of boys and girls, and teachers, came up and hugged me and slapped my shoulder and gave me little punches in the belly.

They were worried for me. They wanted to help me with my pain.

I was important to them.

I mattered.

Wow.

All of these white kids and teachers, who were so suspicious of me when I first arrived, had learned to care about me. Maybe some of them even loved me. And I'd been so suspicious of them. And now I care about a lot of them. And loved a few of them.

Penelope came up to me last.

She was WEEPING. Snot ran down her face and it was still sort of sexy.

"I'm so sorry about your sister," she said.

I didn't know what to say to her. What do you say to people when they ask you how it

feels to lose everything? When every planet in your solar system has exploded?

Today my mother, father, and I went to the cemetery and cleaned graves.

We took care of Grandmother Spirit, Eugene, and Mary.

Mom had packed a picnic and Dad had brought his saxophone, so we made a whole day

of it.

We Indians know how to celebrate with our dead.

And I felt okay.

My mother and father held hands and kissed each other.

"You can't make out in a graveyard," I said.

"Love and death," my father said. "It's all love and death."

"You're crazy," I said.

"I'm crazy about you," he said.

And he hugged me.

And he hugged my mother.

And she had tears in her eyes.

And she held my face in her hands.

"Junior," she said. "I'm so proud of you."

That was the best thing she could have said.

In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang on to the good and sober

moments tightly.

I was happy. But I still missed my sister, and no amount of love and trust was going to make that better.

I love her. I will always love her.

I mean, she was amazing. It was courageous of her to leave the basement and move to

Montana. She went searching for her dreams, and she didn't find them, but she made the attempt.

And I was making the attempt, too. And maybe it would kill me, too, but I knew that

staying on the rez would have killed me, too.

It all made me cry for my sister. It made me cry for myself.

But I was crying for my tribe, too. I was crying because I knew five or ten or fifteen more Spokanes would die during the next year, and that most of them would die because of booze.

I cried because so many of my fellow tribal members were slowly killing themselves and

I wanted them to live. I wanted them to get strong and get sober and get the hell off the rez.

It's a weird thing.

Reservations were meant to be prisons, you know? Indians were supposed to move onto

reservations and die. We were supposed to disappear.

But somehow or another, Indians have forgotten that reservations were meant to be death camps.

I wept because I was the only one who was brave and crazy enough to leave the rez. I

was the only one with enough arrogance.

I wept and wept and wept because I knew that I was never going to drink and because I

was never going to kill myself and because I was going to have a better life out in the white world.

I realized that I might be a lonely Indian boy, but I was not alone in my loneliness. There were millions of other Americans who had left their birthplaces in search of a dream.

I realized that, sure, I was a Spokane Indian. I belonged to that tribe. But I also belonged to the tribe of American immigrants. And to the tribe of basketball players. And to the tribe of bookworms.

And the tribe of cartoonists.

And the tribe of chronic masturbators.

And the tribe of teenage boys.

And the tribe of small-town kids.

And the tribe of Pacific Northwesterners.

And the tribe of tortilla chips-and-salsa lovers.

And the tribe of poverty.

And the tribe of funeral-goers.

And the tribe of beloved sons.

And the tribe of boys who really missed their best friends.

It was a huge realization.

And that's when I knew that I was going to be okay.

But it also reminded me of the people who were not going to be okay.