The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian (4 page)

But my lips and I stopped short when I saw this written on the inside front cover:

THIS BOOK BELONGS TO AGNES ADAMS

Okay, now you're probably asking yourself, "Who is Agnes Adams?"

Weill, let me tell you. Agnes Adams is my mother. MY MOTHER! And Adams is her

maiden
name.

So that means my mother was born an Adams and she was still an Adams when she

wrote her name in that book. And she was thirty when she gave birth to me. Yep, so that means I was staring at a geometry book that was at least thirty years older than I was.

I couldn't believe it.

How horrible is that?

My school and my tribe are so poor and sad that we have to study from the same dang

books our parents studied from. That is absolutely the saddest thing in the world.

And let me tell you, that old, old, old,
decrepit
geometry book hit my heart with the force of a nuclear bomb. My hopes and dreams floated up in a mushroom cloud. What do you do when the world has declared nuclear war on you?

Of course, I was suspended from school after I smashed Mr. P in the face, even though it was a complete accident.

Okay, so it wasn't exactly an accident.

After all, I wanted to hit
something
when I threw that ancient book. But I didn't want to hit
somebody
, and I certainly didn't plan on breaking the nose of a mafioso math teacher.

"That's the first time you've ever hit anything you aimed at," my big sister said.

"We are so disappointed," my mother said.

"We are so disappointed
in you
," my father said.

My grandmother just sat in her rocking chair and cried and cried.

I was ashamed. I'd never really been in trouble before.

A week into my suspension, I was sitting on our front porch, thinking about stuff,

contemplating
, when old Mr. P walked up our driveway. He had a big bandage on his face.

"I'm sorry about your face," I said.

"I'm sorry they suspended you," he said. "I hope you know it wasn't my idea."

After I smashed him in the face, I figured Mr. P wanted to hire a hit man. Well, maybe

that's taking it too far. Mr. P didn't want me dead, but I don't think he would have minded if I'd been the only survivor of a plane that crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

At the very least, I thought they were going to send me to jail.

"Can I sit down with you?" Mr. P asked.

"You bet," I said. I was nervous. Why was he being so friendly? Was he planning a sneak attack on me? Maybe he was going to smash me in the nose with a calculus book.

But the old guy just sat in peaceful silence for a long time. I didn't know what to do or say, so I just sat as quietly as he did. That silence got so big and real that it felt like three people sat on the porch.

"Do you know why you hit me with that book?" Mr. P finally asked.

It was a trick question. I knew I needed to answer correctly or he'd be mad.

"I hit you because I'm stupid."

"You're not stupid."

Wrong answer.

Shoot.

I tried again.

"I didn't mean to hit you," I said. "I was aiming for the wall."

"Were you really aiming for the wall?"

Dang it.

He was, like,
interrogating
me.

I was starting to get
upset
.

"No," I said. "I wasn't aiming for anything really. Well, I was planning on hitting something, you know? Like the wall or a desk or the chalkboard. Something dead, you know, not something alive."

"Alive like me?"

"Or like a plant."

Mr. P had three plants in his classroom. He talked to those green things more often than he talked to us.

"You do know that hitting a plant and hitting me are two different things, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, I know."

He smiled mysteriously. Adults are so good at smiling mysteriously. Do they go to

college for that?

I was getting more and more freaked out. What did he want?

"You know, Mr. P, I don't mean to be rude or anything, but you're, like, freaking me out here. I mean, why are you here, exactly?"

"Well, I want you to know that hitting me with that book was probably the worst thing you've ever done. It doesn't matter what you intended to do. What happens is what you really did.

And you broke an old man's nose. That's almost unforgivable."

He was going to punish me now. He couldn't beat me up with his old man fists, but he

could hurt me with his old man words.

"But I do forgive you," he said. "No matter how much I don't want to. I have to forgive you. It's the only thing that keeps me from smacking you with an ugly stick. When I first started teaching here, that's what we did to the rowdy ones, you know? We beat them. That's how we were taught to teach you. We were supposed to kill the Indian to save the child."

"You
killed
Indians?"

"No, no, it's just a saying. I didn't literally kill Indians. We were supposed to make you give up being Indian. Your songs and stories and language and dancing. Everything. We weren't trying to kill Indian people. We were trying to kill Indian culture."

Man, at that second, I hated Mr. P
hard
. I wished I had a whole dang set of encyclopedias to throw at him.

"I can't apologize to everybody I hurt," Mr. P said. "But I can apologize to you."

It was so backward. I'd broken
his
nose but he was trying to apologize
to me
.

"I hurt a lot of Indian kids when I was a young teacher," he said. "I might have broken a few bones."

All of a sudden, I realized he was
confessing
to me.

"It was a different time," Mr. P said. "A bad time. Very bad. It was wrong. But I was young and stupid and full of ideas. Just like you."

Mr. P smiled. He smiled at me. There was a piece of lettuce stuck between his front teeth.

"You know," he said. "I taught your sister, too."

"I know."

"She was the smartest kid I ever had. She was even smarter than you."

I knew my sister was smart. But I'd never heard a teacher say that about her. And I'd

never heard anybody say that she was smarter than me. I was happy and jealous at the same time.

My sister, the basement mole rat, was smarter than me?

"Well," I said, "My mom and dad are pretty smart, too, so I guess it runs in the family."

"Your sister wanted to be a writer," Mr. P said.

"Really?" I asked.

I was surprised by that. She'd never said anything about that to me. Or to Mom and Dad.

Or to anybody.

"I never heard her say that," I said.

"She was shy about it," Mr. P said. "She always thought people would make fun of her."

"For writing books? People would have thought she was a hero around here. Maybe she could have made movies or something, too. That would have been cool."

"Well, she wasn't shy about the idea of writing books. She was shy about the kind of books she wanted to write."

"What kind of books did she want to write?" I asked.

"You're going to laugh."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

Jeez, we had both turned into seven-year-olds.

"Just tell me," I said.

It was weird that a teacher was telling me things I didn't know about my sister. It made me wonder what else I didn't know about her.

"She wanted to write romance novels."

Of course, I giggled at that idea.

"Hey," Mr. P said. "You weren't supposed to laugh."

"I didn't laugh."

"Yes, you laughed."

"No, I didn't."

"Yes, you did."

"Maybe I laughed a little."

"A little laugh is still a laugh."

And then I laughed for real. A big laugh.

"Romance novels," I said. "Those things are just sort of silly, aren't they?"

"Lots of people—mostly women—love them," Mr. P said. "They buy millions of them.

There are lots of writers who make millions by writing romance novels."

"What kind of romances?" I asked.

"She never really said, but she did like to read the Indian ones. You know the ones I'm talking about?"

Yes, I did know. Those romances always featured a love affair between a virginal white

schoolteacher or preacher's wife and a half-breed Indian warrior. The covers were hilarious:

"You know," I said, "I don't think I ever saw my sister reading one of those things."

"She kept them hidden," Mr. P said.

Well, that is a big difference between my sister and me. I hide the magazines filled with photos of naked women; my later hides her tender romance novels that tell stories about naked women (and men).

I want the pictures; my sister wants the words.

"I don't remember her ever writing anything," I said.

"Oh, she loved to write short stories. Little romantic stories. She wouldn't let anybody read them. But she'd always be scribbling in her notebook."

"Wow," I said.

That was all I could say.

I mean, my sister had become a humanoid underground dweller. There wasn't much

romance in that. Or maybe there was. Maybe my sister read romances all day. Maybe she was trapped in those romances.

"I really thought she was going to be a writer," Mr. P said. "She kept writing in her book.

And she kept working up the courage to show it to somebody. And then she just stopped."

"Why?" I asked.

"I don't know."

"You don't have any idea?"

"No, not really."

Had she been hanging on to her dream of being a writer, but only barely hanging on, and something made her let go?

That had to be it, right? Something bad had happened to her, right? I mean, she lived in the fricking basement. People just don't live and hide in basements if they're happy.

Of course, my sister isn't much different from my dad in that regard.

Whenever my father isn't off on a drinking binge, he spends most of his time in his

bedroom, alone, watching TV.

He mostly watches basketball.