Living on the Borderlines

by Melissa Michal

  “Mom, please don’t walk away!” Nala shouted.

  “She never told me what happened there.” Her mother’s voice barely whispered out the words.

  Nala’s hands slid off her hips.

  “I can’t tell you what I don’t know. And just so we’re clear, your grandfather tried to talk to you. By the time you were old enough, you stopped being open.”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “I didn’t want all of the details. He knew that.” She turned the doorknob. “I get a pretty good idea from her bad nights. That’s enough for me.” Her mother left and headed toward the woods again.

  Nala returned to scrubbing the dishes and could almost feel her grandmother doing the same. The circles she made synced up with her grandmother’s patterns. Sorrow overcame Nala in waves. She hunched over and sobbed, tears mixing with soap. She kept scrubbing, though. Then she took out the laundry to hang on the lines.

  A small breeze rustled through the trees and lifted the hair around her face. The clothespins attaching to the clothes and then the line made a consistent clip-clip that intensified as Nala quickened her pace. She stopped at the end of the first line and leaned on the post. What she heard in the leaves and branches sounded much like her time along the lake, except softer. She hadn’t noticed that here before.

  Nala pictured family she’d never known, how her grandmother’s disappearance changed them, too, could even see her great-grandmother searching for years and not coming back to being herself again, either. She saw white people come and take her grandmother from the rez roadway. She saw her grandmother refuse their lies about her parents, kicking the man who held her. She saw dust piled up in clouds behind the car as it drove away, her grandmother’s mother running after her until her breath gave out. And then she saw the dust behind her grandfather’s car, her grandmother at the wheel.

  Nala breathed and took in the vibrations.

  Maybe the breezes would carry away this sadness. She knew the energies came from the bedroom upstairs, and maybe from her own letting go and giving in to the power of her grandmother’s silence.

  Wheels on the cart squealed as Nala pushed the TV stand into her grandmother’s room. Her grandmother’s eyes never left the window. The only things to move were the tassels on her purple shawl, which caught the breeze.

  Nala slowly touched the tip of her grandmother’s shoulder with a finger, then her hand, then the other hand, putting just enough pressure to knead the skin a bit. With a gentle pull, she lifted her grandmother out of the chair and guided her to another one in front of the TV. Nala sat on the bed, her hands splayed for support across a blanket stitched with the Hiawatha Belt. The video started automatically. She tossed the case on the side table.

  Her grandfather had recorded odd shows and movies, almost like a special mixed tape that only Nala and her grandmother knew the secrets to. She fast-forwarded to the second listing: Charlie Hill’s old stand-up. Her grandfather’s scrawled blue handwriting was made tiny on the label to fit each title. The Oneida-Mohawk-Cree comedian had come to their town when she was just a toddler. Opening images and jokes across the screen did nothing to stir her grandmother. They ran over his tongue loose and easy. “We had a little real estate problem.” She heard what he said. It felt like things she had heard before. She didn’t remember his visit but had seen snippets when searching YouTube for other things.

  Then, her grandmother laughed. She laughed and laughed and laughed.

  Arms across her chest, her mother shadowed the door, and Nala nodded at her. Her mother sat down next to her grandmother and put her arm around Nala’s shoulders.

  Her mother leaned closer to Nala. She looked at the video case. “That’s true.” She tapped the young man’s shirt.

  The old video case, a mistaken swap from another she assumed, stopped her. Pulled her.

  It was worn, almost falling apart. Faded in so many places. She knew it was a still from some cult American Indian movie. A skinny Native young man stood with loose, long hair in a bright-blue tee shirt next to two other people.

  She picked the case up again and ran her fingers over the one image.

  “Fry Bread Power,” her grandmother said, seeing the phrase on the tee shirt. She laughed again and turned to her daughter. “Fry Bread Power.” The smile remained.

  When the comedian finished, Nala laughed. His last jokes suddenly hit. “Fry Bread Power,” she said. She nodded at her grandmother. A taking it back.

  Her grandmother’s shawl moved again in the breeze. And Nala laughed again, full and deep. Her mother joined her, her eyes lit with brown flecks.

  A Song Returning

  She stood next to the bed. A green-and-yellow quilt covered the white sheets. The design was the plainest one she had seen her mother make. Mia didn’t know how or where her mother picked up the craft. But suddenly one year when she was twelve, there they were on their beds for each birthday. The only present. Her two brothers just cast the quilts aside, Jeremy’s blue and Nathan’s baby blue. Delilah, who preferred Dee, got a red one. Even though she kept hers, Mia understood her expression. One of disappointment and sadness. The two had shared the same bed, one that pulled out from the wall in the living room. Her dad made the bed before he stopped visiting them. Dee kicked her almost every night. Now Mia’s husband did the same.

  What her sister’s eyes said, Mia knew deeply. Her quilt had been the colors of midnight and silvery gray with intricate stars and hills. The hills stood deep in the apparent night, steady over everything. That quilt had made her feel safe, still did. But her husband preferred softer blankets. The quilt lay across the trunk at the end of the bed, a place where she stubbed her pinky toe often.

  She grasped her mother’s quilt, leaving the bed dressed in white. Someone else would be renting the space. Under strict orders from her mother, they were not to sell the land.

  That space was their right and heritage, she would tell them.

  Mia wouldn’t ever stay on the reservation again. She couldn’t raise a family in tiny HUD housing. She and Charley didn’t have children yet. There were plans, of course. But the Creator seemed to have other ideas.

  “Mia?” Her brother Jeremy stood in the doorway. “We’ve got to go. I think we found everything personal.”

  “This whole place is personal, Jere.”

  “I know,” he said. He put his hand on her elbow for a hug. She stood her ground and he let go.

  “She was happy here.” She pushed her cropped hair behind her ear. The strands would get away again soon enough.

  He picked up a medium-sized box marked Bedroom Clothes, Hair, and Trinkets.

  “How?” But her words echoed to no one. He had already left. The trailer felt empty. Not simply lacking people. But energy. Her energy had gone. Even her perfume no longer hung in the air—vanilla, berries, sandalwood, caramel, jasmine. Her mother had this fire, a small one, but determined. She laughed so loudly. Every time she laughed, she could barely contain her body. It was contagious; people near her, too, would laugh for no reason. She even stirred food with vigor, rubbed Vicks VapoRub with the same force. Mia couldn’t have helped but cough and cringe, her chest red.

  A tear left her eyes. She wiped it away and took a deep breath, willing the tears to stop, to not come at all.

  Mia latched the door and didn’t look back. The sun falling behind the trees brightened everything with yellow, just before the globe fell away into the horizon. Summer was leaving, but ever so slowly that year. The trees were still quite green and the air humid.

  “We can come back, even with renters, you know. Walk the land like she used to.” He shifted the car into drive. “She checked on things that way.”

  “I’m probably not coming back.”

  Jeremy watched his sister. He switched from the road to his sister. She sat, her back slightly hunched. Shadows played there. Mia had looked out for all of them, the next oldest under Nathan. He curved the truck, bumping over holes or rocks. The shocks bit right
through him. He’d have to get that fixed.

  No matter how happy her life was, his mom had been too young to go. She should see her grandkids born and watch her kids be happy. He never figured her for dying. There was no reason, they had said. Simply age. He ran his hand through his hair. Maybe her life had been too crazy with all of them in that tiny space wearing her down. That does something to you.

  His eyes blurred with tears, which he of course held back. Driving kept his focus and the road merged with the darkness.

  Once back in Bloomfield, Jeremy put the boxes in the guest room. Mia had already gone up to bed, saying nothing—the quieter one. Probably the closest to their mom, she rarely spoke up about herself. Mia and their mom had fought hard when she was a teenager, but after college, the two spoke every day on the phone. Mia visited when their mom couldn’t get out her way any longer, later leaving her work as a nurse. He loved his sister for these things, her true traits. Then she brought her mom to this room. The bed and dresser in order, waiting for their mom’s return. He thought he smelled her perfume. Mom?

  He locked the back door and slid into his truck. When he looked in the rearview mirror, a bedroom light was on and a shadow by the curtain. Mia was the one who watched for them when they got home late nights when their mom had early work mornings. Mia never did doze off in school after those nights.

  He shook his head and drove back to his own family.

  Mia couldn’t sleep in bed with him right now. Charley didn’t try to force her, and he never would. He fidgeted with his belt loops. He wanted his wife with him, just to comfort her. But sometimes she needed space. This was no exception. He watched her wander the house, as if looking for something she couldn’t find. But nothing was lost.

  The next morning, he scrambled enough eggs for a family, adding water to her approved fluff, hoping she’d eat two bites. Maybe even three. But she pushed them away and sipped on orange juice. Her silence and empty stare out the window nearly made him want to drop in the chair next to her. Instead, he rubbed the shoulders of a flimsy doll. Nothing to knead, not even a tension spot. Her body was just a vessel, empty of her spirit.

  I can’t.

  “I’m going to grab some groceries, need anything?” The keys hung loosely in his hand, and he moved them between his fingers. The noise where metal hit metal sounded unpleasant.

  No answer. Her back molded into the kitchen chair, filling its white lath spindles.

  Charley paused. He waited for his wife to turn, just to see some light enter her eyes. She didn’t. As much as leaving hurt, he shut the door.

  When the door clicked closed, a more careful version of his usual slam, Mia stayed in that chair for another half hour. She knew he was gone. She heard him ask her questions and talk, but she had no desire to interact with the world. The quiet was comforting somehow. When the sun rose higher, brightening the trees, she put the dishes in the sink. Her slippers shuffled and swished. She left the windows shut, so the double panes kept out sound.

  The stairs shifted and creaked as she headed upstairs. She sat on their bed. Her body had somehow weakened over the past seven days. The difficulty moving limbs surprised her. Her desire to remain asleep, to not want to get up, did not. She didn’t like the control she lacked. But she let whatever this was—grief, sadness, anger—take over.

  Wearing a white tee shirt, no bra, and cotton shorts, she trudged back downstairs, planting herself by the TV. At such an angle, she didn’t quite get a straight-on picture. But the position meant she didn’t have windows in her sightline.

  Charley still hadn’t returned after almost two hours. She checked her cell phone, but nothing.

  A dish fell from the dishrack, clanging loudly along the steel sink. She hated that sink for many reasons. One being that noise. The other how easily the metal scratched and how horribly it stained. Mia sighed.

  Her mother’s perfume suddenly filled the air. The scent made her jump. I’m going crazy. Crazy.

  Something made a loud thump.

  For the love of Pete. This house. She changed the channel. But the show was some Lifetime daddy-murderer theme. Nope. Flip and flip again, until some house renovation show.

  Another thump.

  Is there some bird in the house, or animal? It didn’t occur to her that the sound might be a human being until she got halfway down the hall. She took a kickboxing stance and threw a punch. Then opened the office door. Nothing. Only one other room was down there. Her mother’s.

  She flung open the door. The doorknob hit the wall and bounced back halfway.

  Still nothing.

  Mia searched the bed, dressing table, dresser, under the bed. She felt a large hardcover book, so she shimmied it out from under the bed’s crevices. Rumi’s poetry. Her mother had different tastes and knew classic literature. Where she found the time to know them, Mia couldn’t figure out. Even when they were young, her mother was always reading some Jane Austen or Eudora Welty or N. Scott Momaday book.

  She opened to the table of contents, running her finger down the page. Her mother had checkmarked her favorite poems. Double-checked one. Mia turned there.

  An envelope was stuck among the folds.

  A mild yellow or maybe cream, the envelope felt soft, but not delicate. She had seen her mother write on this paper before. She pulled out the unlined pages.

  Darling Ella,

  I think of you today. Your birthday came and went last week. I thought of you then, too. But I think I miss you more on the normal days. The leaves are changing. And the girls have all gone off to college. Everything is a bit emptier now. When Jeremy goes, I’m not sure what I will do each day. He’s such a good young man. The other day, he convinced his sister Dee she should stay in college, do the things she does. She sometimes doesn’t believe she can with her fears of failing. He has a gentle force and he brought out her passion. It’s there, deep inside all my children. I would think, you too.

  Always,

  Mama

  Tears streamed down Mia’s face. Loud sobs escaped. They never talked about Ella. Silence was an accepted family reaction that came automatically. You just don’t talk about the hard stuff. You leave it alone. She learned from aunties who said that very thing when she had hard days at school or a fight with her mother or siblings. If you let the hardships alone, they stayed far in the distance.

  Her face wet, she flipped through each drawer. Opening and closing them quickly. Empty. Charley had cleaned out the drawers a few days before. He would have told her about any letters.

  One of the boxes tipped over. That one held clothes. With the last box, and everything else strewn across the bed, Mia held her breath. But there they were. Tied with rubber bands, or string, and some with large binder clips. How often did she write?

  Charley found Mia, envelopes piled around her, unopened. She sat with her hands behind her, stabilizing her body, and probably her mind. Her eyes weren’t empty any longer. But they weren’t full either.

  “Mia,” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “What is all that?” He kept his voice calm. This worked the rare moments she got distant. Things had to be big for her to pull behind this curtain.

  He took the envelope she handed him. The original one.

  “Oh wow. Mia?” He sat down, his hip touching hers. “She never showed them to you?”

  She mouthed no.

  She had once told him about Gabriella. He somewhat understood the situation. But he couldn’t understand giving up a child. No matter the money or space. But her mother had arranged all of it, quickly too. That was all he knew, and all Mia knew, he presumed.

  “Did you read them?”

  Nothing.

  He rubbed her back and left. He soon came back with a sandwich. She fingered the bread and pulled out the Swiss cheese. Her favorite. He made sure there was extra, with a touch of mustard. She didn’t come up to bed. He thought he heard thumping below around three a.m. But he fell back asleep.

  The next
morning, he stood in the kitchen, scratched his head and his arm, then grabbed eggs. He didn’t see her at the table. Papers spread out, lined up in some order, with their envelopes touching the pages. She held a cup of tea and had a light bathrobe around her.

  “She wrote sometimes once a week, sometimes once a month.” Her voice was scratchy, her eyes darkened underneath. “She couldn’t send them, I guess. We never knew where Gabriella ended up with just a first name.”

  He picked up one letter, Mia’s sixteenth birthday. Another, a planting at Ganondagan. Then dancing. The paper seemed milky smooth. Her handwriting was sometimes easy and flowing. Large loops. And others, closed and small, hard to make out.

  “You need to tell them.”

  “Not now.”

  “Did you read them all?”

  “You know, she used to pull the covers up to Dee’s and my chins. Tuck us in and tell us we were special girls. Each time she said this, I could fall asleep easily. Just a simple phrase.”

  “This matters to them, too.”

  “I don’t know what she said to the boys. They were in the back.”

  “She loved each of you. Even Gabriella.”

  “Maybe her more.”

  Dee’s mouth gaped open. The letters on the table made her want to touch them. But Mia’s organization kept her from that. They were so delicate looking.

  “What do they say?” She couldn’t take her eyes off the table. “Where’s Nathan?”

  “Coming later,” Mia said. “He knows. I told him.”

  Jeremy had read some before Dee came. She couldn’t believe he was so calm. This was huge. Big. She didn’t remember Ella’s birth. She was tiny then. And really, until now, she barely remembered being told she had a sister. How do I feel? she asked herself. Weird. Someone out there was related to her other than their one true aunt. But she might never know her. She wasn’t sure it mattered that she meet Gabriella. What would she even be like?

  “Mom made sure she went somewhere special,” said Mia.