Living on the Borderlines

by Melissa Michal

  His elbow leaned high above her head against her locker.

  “Yeah,” Nala said. She turned to walk away. Her long black hair floated around her face.

  Snickers from his friends followed her down the hall.

  “Hey, Indian, take me on a nature vision quest or to your powwow.” He began to dance around the lockers, chanting.

  Seriously?

  Her mom experienced similar stuff in high school. Each time she came home with a story about some Native joke, her mom would stroke her hair.

  “You’re better than that. Just ignore them.” Then she kissed her on the forehead and patted her arm.

  Sometimes Nala envied her family members who looked whiter and who didn’t go to powwows or act “Indian.” She would sigh and trudge back to her room.

  She wanted wiser words—some cure-all for the world’s stupidity and ignorance.

  Her grandmother patted the hood of the car. They were looking out over Canandaigua Lake that first time, Nala’s fingers still playing with the window.

  “Sit here, Nala.” Her grandmother leaned back on the hood, splaying her hands behind her. She lifted her head toward the sky and closed her eyes. Wind blew her hair from under her scarf. Her grandmother untied the silk and let her short hair fall away on its own, laying the scarf on her neck.

  “Does Grandpa know you drive?” Nala asked.

  “You know,” said her grandmother, “I come here and drive around the lake because I can feel things here. Past times. That sort of thing.”

  Nala peered at her grandmother and couldn’t make out if she was serious or joking. Feel things? She raised an eyebrow. Her family didn’t outright talk about ancestors or all that stuff. It was like somehow she should just know it automatically; that made Nala uncomfortable.

  “Mom, why can’t you just tell me who we are exactly? What our community means?” Nala had asked a few weeks before her grandmother’s drive. Her arms flew out along her sides and then fell. She shook her head.

  Her mother stared at the floor a moment, then sighed. “I have always told you things.”

  “You code it.”

  With the side of her hand, her mother brushed breakfast crumbs off the table.

  “I listen, but you never say anything.” Nala let out a groan. “What are we, stoic Indians?”

  “You need to go out and experience it. You know, go to the dance group or with your grandfather on his walks.”

  Nala rolled her eyes. “I do that already. Is that the only way to be Indian?”

  “No.” Her mother’s voice turned soft.

  “You don’t go.”

  “I’m here with your grandmother.” Her mother watched the back of Nala disappear. She wanted to explain when Nala was ready. The trouble was that she had learned by just being. She hadn’t had a discussion either. There was no easy lecture on being Seneca. And there was no easy way to be Seneca.

  Her grandmother seemed to be reading her mind because she looked at Nala for a while before moving her eyes back to the lake. “If you sit here and listen, you can hear the vibration from each being,” she said. She never said more than that and rarely moved. It took a few weeks of returning to the lake, sometimes to different spots. But Nala began to understand.

  The first thing she felt was the trees. The feeling did not exist in voices—not like a human kind of speech. The presence wasn’t the trees, though. She recognized they were related to her, the things behind the feelings, and, as her grandmother had said, the vibration. Then she could also feel it from the breezes on the lake and the birds. That vibration flowed through her and stirred what she could only explain as her blood. Maybe it wasn’t her blood stirring with the vibration, maybe it caused the vibration.

  A few more summers moved like that. In the last days at the lake, the brown in her grandmother’s eyes became lighter and she raised her right eyebrow in approval. Nala held a knowing that teenage years and fears would later erase.

  The last time at the lake during that period, the two had snuck back into the house. Her grandfather was still in his chair, reading the paper right where they had left him when they snuck out. Nala caught him winking at her and nodding approval.

  When she returned from the lake that afternoon, laughter drew Nala into the kitchen. It told Nala her grandmother was returning, for now. Her mother and grandmother worked at the stove and counters, chopping peppers and shucking corn. Her grandmother deftly cut off the kernels.

  “They have cans for that,” Nala said.

  She kept cutting the ears and smiled. “Not as fresh or sun warmed.”

  Nala set the table, one, two, three round plates, all different colors. Her dad had left that weekend for some big powwow in Arizona. The ingredients swept off the boards and simmered in pots, becoming salsa and chili for dinner and appetizers the following week.

  “Your dad will miss my chili,” said her grandmother.

  “He asked you to go with him,” said Nala.

  Her grandmother shrugged. “I’d rather be here.” She motioned for Nala. “I’ll teach you how to make fry bread.”

  She had her mix the ingredients until they became crumbled bits and then, finally, a soft dough. She worked at it with too much force until her grandmother steadied and slowed her movement. She put her hands over Nala’s.

  “You have to want the dough to work with you.” Her grandmother’s hands were warm, and they pushed the dough over and over, a steady movement.

  Nala didn’t really want to make this bread. Not with its history. She was the reason why they never made it together before because she avoided it.

  “Add flour,” said her grandmother. She added even more to the counter after Nala put some down.

  As instructed, Nala rolled the dough until it became a large ball. It felt smooth and chill to the touch.

  Her grandmother broke off a few pieces from the ball. She kneaded one into a smaller ball, sprinkled some flour on it, then flattened it into a small, thick disc and poked a finger sized indent in the middle.

  Nala got handed another ball, an indication to follow her grandmother’s lead. She worked the dough in her hand. Her disc ended up looking ill shaped and uneven. But it still entered the pile ready for frying.

  The pan fizzled as each piece of dough cooked. Browning discs sent rising bread smells into her nostrils, turning her stomach with hunger pangs.

  Nala worked the dough until there was no more and her fingers felt numb. Much of the pile, though, came from her grandmother’s speedier work. The bracelets on her grandmother’s wrists jingled and shone silver in the fading skylight. The frying continued to surround Nala with sound. As breezes wove through their yard, sounds came into the kitchen, almost like crying as the screens and curtains moved.

  Nala paused a moment as the sound of frying entered her ears and pierced her eardrums. She held a disc of fry bread over the pan, but couldn’t drop the final piece in. “Why do we make this?”

  Her grandmother raised an eyebrow.

  “It only carries pain, you know,” said Nala. She couldn’t hold this in any longer, her anger at the silence, at things she spent hours googling on her own, rather than hearing family stories.

  Her grandmother stopped kneading, then started again after a long silence.

  Nala’s mother pulled her into their living room—the dough dropping to the counter. “Do not speak like that to your grandmother.”

  “It’s true. Why can’t we speak?” Nala rolled her eyes. “She won’t break.”

  “It brings back things she must forget to be okay.”

  “This is stupid. We sell that stuff to white people at festivals, powwows. They eat our past. We didn’t have that flour or lard before them or before the long trails.” The people getting government rations along the trail or on reservations took the offered flour because there was nothing else. Their food had all been stolen, or sometimes even burned by raiding military. She tried not to think about her community eating unnaturally, but it pushed thr
ough.

  “I know. She knows. Leave it there.” Her mother dropped her arm and walked back into the kitchen. Her grip left finger marks still imprinted on Nala. Her mother stopped and turned back. “You know, they buy. Yes. But we sell fry bread to push away the sorrow, not take it back in. They’ll swallow that, and then maybe know what we know.”

  With shades pulled down to keep the room cool, the dark of the living room gave way to an empty air Nala felt drop. Her shoulders down, she turned her back and went up the stairs. Her mother’s shoulders gradually sagged as well, and she walked back to her own mother. But she listened for her daughter’s steps, hearing sadness in the slow footfalls.

  At dinner, Nala sat down late. Meat and spice crawled up to her room as a reminder. The two women already eating stopped conversation when she put her napkin in her lap.

  Her grandmother nodded at her. “I was just telling your mother how she snuck out to see your father. We had to put bars on windows after several times.”

  Her mother flushed, and her grandmother laughed.

  “Fighting was part of her growing.”

  Nala and her mother exchanged looks. The chili seemed like something between soup and stew—filled with onions, peppers, tomatoes, ground bear, corn, and beans, but thin in the sauce. The liquid trickled down her throat, burning in the way she liked, filled with her grandmother’s choices.

  Chatter began again, with Nala silent and listening. Her mother and grandmother laughed as they easily returned to the past with their words. She could tell her mother missed these talks with her own mother as she leaned closer to her grandmother. Nala and her mother barely had an affectionate relationship.

  “Nala,” her mother said, “why don’t you check in on Maria Jimerson this week? I’ve got a package for her anyway.”

  Nala sighed. She’s weird. All Maria did was talk. She could be there for hours listening to stories she knew nothing about.

  “Hey,” said her mother, looking sharply at Nala. “She needs people. Besides, you need to keep busy.”

  Her mother referred to her many jobs she quit that year.

  “Mom …”

  “You were always so good at science.”

  Nala’s stomach tightened. Science had come easy, but the answers never gave her a knowing that made her want to be a doctor or nurse. “Okay. But just dropping off the package.”

  Her mother shrugged. Then she and her grandmother turned to laughter again at an old high school tryst her mom had had with a boy before her dad.

  That night they all turned in later than usual. Her grandmother had seemed especially happy and had been the one who kept them up. So, when screams awoke Nala, they shocked her. The sounds weren’t human. She rushed to where they emanated from: her grandmother’s room. Her mother was already there, trying to hold her grandmother down.

  Her grandmother went from quiet to damned—clawing the air to fight or to breathe. She was out of her bed and by the door. Her eyes were black and charged with such hate. She howled and screamed, trying to get out of the room. Nala backed away.

  Her mother’s eyes seemed to say, Help your grandmother.

  Nala ran out of the room and back to hers. Her mother’s voice carried under the doorway, calm and kind until her grandmother stopped the abrasive sounds and cried.

  She heard her own heartbeat through her ears. It took a while for her breathing to slow. The quilt filled with purple hills her grandmother had made for her mother when she was young comforted Nala just enough to fall asleep. But not before her mother sang soft lullabies in the other room in a tongue foreign to Nala, but familiar.

  The following morning, her mother handed her the package for Maria Jimerson—an indication Nala wasn’t to wait all week.

  “How’s Grandma?” Nala asked.

  Her mother picked up Nala’s cereal bowl and glass and dumped them into dishwater. She shook her head. “Go to Maria’s,” she said. “Go.” She waved her hand, shooing her out of the house like she used to do when Nala was little and underfoot.

  She couldn’t look at her daughter.

  The package for Maria was square, wrapped in brown paper, and fairly lightweight. It didn’t seem to contain anything that jostled around. When Nala stepped up to her door, it opened almost immediately as if she had been expected. She had always thought Maria strange. Her mother had known this woman since she was a child. Maria, though, moved off the rez first. According to her mother, Maria had never changed in either attitude or appearance. Her long hair was gray and darker gray, her eyes black in a way which didn’t seem to come from happiness.

  Her mother once told her, “Maria went to the schools, too, just like your grandmother.”

  Nala had asked what the schools were like, but her mother stayed silent each time. Eventually, Nala stopped asking.

  Maria motioned for her to come in. Nala held the package out to her, but Maria didn’t take it. Instead, she motioned again for her to come in.

  Tea enough for two people sat on the table. “Sit,” said Maria. It didn’t seem like no was acceptable.

  The package sat between the two of them.

  “How’s your grandmother?” she asked.

  Nala shrugged. “Okay, I guess.”

  “She still having those nightmares?”

  Nala was surprised; Maria took the silence as yes.

  “Early days were tough,” said Maria.

  “I wouldn’t know.” She looked out the window to Maria’s backyard. She had a clothesline; a small sparrow perched on it for a split second. He flew down to the grass, where other sparrows plucked at tiny blades.

  “In certain ways, you do know, I think.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Nala sipped her tea, scalding her tongue. She blew on it several times.

  “Your grandmother’s ways are a direct result of what they did to us,” said Maria.

  Nala tried to block this woman who seemed to be reading her thoughts. But she could feel Maria’s force. She was stronger than her grandfather had been.

  “No one was allowed to interact with family or friends. We lost our tongue to speak our language. All this, you must know.”

  Nala nodded.

  “Our history doesn’t mean anything without the stories.”

  Nala felt Maria again, this time her eyes, not her thoughts, penetrated.

  “The first thing they did to me was cut my hair. I saw these pointed objects coming at me, and then felt cold run down my back. I still hear those snips. Metal and razors. My hair swung around my ears, and my arms became full of goose bumps. They ushered me into another room where I had to strip to my underthings. A woman inspected those and decided it was not enough, pulling the rest off me. Her eyes threatened even though I had no idea what she was saying. Their clothes were scratchy and smelled funny.

  “I cried for my family and called out. The woman slapped me. Hard. An older girl put her finger to her mouth to quiet me. I learned later we couldn’t speak our language. And I got slapped more times for speaking out. We slept in large rooms with many other girls who weren’t our family. I knew no one. And my first months there, no other girl spoke my language. I was alone. That’s why they had to kidnap some of the kids, like they did with your grandma, and take them far away.”

  A chill moved along Nala’s arms.

  “We are strong with family. We are not without.”

  Nala bowed her head and pulled at a hangnail. She had never asked her grandmother about those stories. Kidnapped?

  “It’s what happens inside a person that is hard to explain. What would you do if you were gone, if who you were disappeared? But yet your body was still here on earth?” Maria paused. “Nala, you have it easy in some ways. And in some ways, you have it harder.”

  “Harder?”

  “You may have harder times accessing the old ways.” Maria stopped to drink her tea. “She may have been beaten or raped, your grandmother.”

  Nala’s heart hit hard against her chest. No one had spoke
n those words around her—and so matter-of-factly. “Did you go to the same school?”

  “No, honey. She was older than me. And she got taken so far away. We don’t know how she snuck back later. That’s spunk right there. But those schools all had the same goal: to change us. Make us like them.”

  “So, are we like them now?”

  “No. Some try, but …” Maria handed Nala a cookie.

  The sugar sprinkled on top tasted sweet in her mouth, and the cookie crunched between her teeth. But the inside was soft, not too sweet. They sat in silence until they finished their tea.

  Maria stood and cleared the table. “Come back again,” she said.

  Nala wondered what was in the package but knew she should go. She sat in the car awhile. When she returned home, she continued to think while cleaning dishes and wiping down the table. She couldn’t get visions of the school out of her head. Visions of the students so young.

  Her mother came into the kitchen from their yard. She must have been walking in the fields along the back. Nala had noticed she was gone and figured she was somewhere nearby. Her cheeks were rosy and pretty, while a small line of sweat beaded around her face. Nala’s mother never went too far from the house if no one else was home with her grandmother.

  Her mother stared at her. Nala glared back. She wanted her mother to know her anger.

  “What’s going on?” her mother asked.

  “You knew. You knew all that terrible stuff about Grandma.” Nala clanged dishes into the dish rack.

  “What are you talking about? I told you about the schools. You knew what they did.”

  “I didn’t know what they did to her.” She faced her mother, hands on her hips. She read her mother’s emotions in the way her eyes fell and her mouth quivered. “Why aren’t you angry? Why don’t you shout it around here so people know?”

  “It’s our family.” Her mother moved toward Nala and touched her cheek. Nala turned away. “Those things don’t need to be spread to the whole town.”

  “That’s like lying, not telling me everything.”

  “I’ve never lied to you.” The tone in her mother’s voice chilled Nala. She moved toward the door.