I could tell she was a person who meant well, but I could see how the system might eat her alive. As for helping her, I couldn’t see how it was my job to baby-sit inexperienced social workers. All I really planned on doing was putting in my time until the legal age of eighteen, then finding my place in the Indian world.
She got some papers and folders out of her briefcase and started scrounging through them. Pretty soon after she put out the first cigarette, she lit up again.
“You know those cigarettes are bad for your health,” I said.
“How well I know, please don’t remind me. I’m trying to cut down, and someday I’ll give them up completely.” Then she put on a pair of glasses and said, “Do you remember your parents at all, Floyd?”
“No.” This was going to be the same old questions.
“You never knew your father at all?”
“Not hardly. Maybe my mother didn’t even know.”
“You were living with your mother until you were four years old. But you don’t remember a thing about her?”
“No. I remember a woman and a place. The place was a house with a porch and a big yard. I think there were cars in the yard, up on blocks. I know it was in Missouri, but that’s just because I’ve been told it was; who knows one state from another when they’re only four years old?”
“You’ve been living in a foster home?”
I nodded my head.
“A couple by the name of Gibbs, from down in Peoria.”
“Mrs. Gibbs has diabetes,” I said. “It’s pretty serious. She was too sick to have foster kids anymore.”
“Was that a good placement for you?” Barb asked.
“It was okay, I guess. It was better than a group home.”
“Were you close to Mr. and Mrs. Gibbs?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Mr. Gibbs wasn’t a guy who did a lot of talking. He had a lot of mechanical talent, though; he had a real good workshop.”
“Do you like to do mechanical work?”
“Yeah, I like it.”
Barb was still shuffling papers. “You’ve lived in two other group homes and two other foster homes. You’ve crammed a lot of moving into your fifteen years, haven’t you?”
I didn’t say anything. People in social services have your files, so they read through your case history material and they think they know something about you. Like you could read the ingredients on a cereal box and you’d know what the cereal tastes like. If she really wanted to know something about me, she’d have to understand about my Indian destiny or get a look inside my journal. But I wasn’t about to go into any of that.
Then she asked me what I thought about Gates House.
I just shrugged. “I haven’t been there twenty-four hours yet. It’s a group home, what can I say?”
“Do you like foster homes better than group homes?”
“It depends on the foster home.”
She put out her cigarette and smiled at me. “You keep a tight lid on it, don’t you, Floyd?”
She surprised me a little with that remark. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You don’t? What I mean is, you keep things inside.”
I looked her in the eye. “Maybe that’s true, I never thought about it. Is there something wrong with it?”
“It can’t be good for you. Maybe you should loosen up.”
“You get that way,” I said.
“Maybe. Do you have to stay that way?”
I really didn’t care for her approach at all. I hardly even knew her. I said, “What are we going to do, get psychological here?”
She was still smiling. “I guess we’re not.”
I wondered what the hell she meant by that remark. I didn’t know what was happening here, but all I wanted was to get on with the next thing.
I guess she did, too. “Why don’t we go on over to the high school,” she said, “and get you registered?”
I told her thanks for the Danish and the coffee.
School registration was routine. Most of it was handled by this guy named Mr. Saberhagen, who was an assistant principal but said he preferred to be called dean of students. He was a real crisp kind of a guy, buttoned down personally and when it came to his clothes. He spent a lot of time stretching his neck.
Since we were late, I didn’t go to all my classes, but I went to some. I got a locker for P.E. People stared at me because I was new, but it didn’t bother me; I’ve transferred to new schools enough times to be used to it.
My chemistry teacher was an old man named Mr. Mushrush. He had a hearing aid and seemed a little senile. He didn’t have much control over the class. The students called him Mushy.
It was different in English class. The teacher, Mrs. Bluefish, was real edgy. She did a lot of pacing around and every once in a while she clapped her hands if she thought there was somebody with a wandering mind. But other times, she seemed to do the clapping just for emphasis. She had blue hair, which you sometimes see in ladies her age. Before class was over, she gave us an assignment to write a book report.
After supper, I signed myself out to take another walk, destination Vale Park. Kinderhook begged to come along, so I said okay.
There was a stream in the park with quite a few willow trees along the bank. There were scraps of willow bark on the ground, and some of them were pretty dry; I started picking them up and stuffing them into my pockets.
Kinderhook wanted to know why I was taking the willow bark.
“It’s traditional in Sioux rituals and on solemn occasions. They smoke it in their ceremonial pipes.”
“Is it like a drug or something?”
“It’s got nothing to do with drugs. It’s just a tradition.”
“How come you always talk about the Sioux?” he wanted to know.
“The real name is Dakota,” I told him. “That’s the Indian name. Sioux is a French word, and if you want the truth, it’s not really authentic.”
“Okay, but that’s not what I asked.”
Kinderhook was such a pest. I said to him, “I had a vision last summer. I believe I was a Dakota in a past life. It’s my destiny to become an Indian.”
Maybe it was more than he wanted to deal with; anyway, it shut him up.
On the way back to Gates House, he said he wanted to watch The Wizard.
“So watch it,” I said. “There’s a TV in the lounge.”
“Slive will never let me,” said Kinderhook. “He doesn’t really care about watching anything else, he just likes to take it out on me.”
I knew who Slive was; his room was at the other end of the hall. I could tell just by looking at him that he was your basic intimidator. I felt a little sorry for Kinderhook, so I said, “Maybe he won’t be there. Maybe you can watch what you want.”
“He’ll be there. He’s always there.”
If Kinderhook wanted me to get involved in his TV hassles, he could kiss that off. If you felt too sorry for a guy like him, you could get sucked in.
When I got back to my room, I spent some time brainstorming out a few notes on the Stone Boy legend, trying to see if I might be able to work it into the English class book report.
After that I went down to the lounge to check out the ten o’clock news. There was no one there, so I switched on channel nine. I was only there about two minutes when Mrs. Grice came in. She had her teeth out and was wearing a faded old housecoat. She parked herself on the couch without saying a word.
She had a big cellophane bag of cheese popcorn. She was trying to eat the popcorn without any teeth. Between the way she smacked her lips all the time, and crackled the cellophane bag, I just couldn’t stand it. I liked to watch the news, but not at this price.
I left the lounge and went to bed.
CHAPTER FOUR
Looking back, it seems like it started getting off the track that Sunday morning we went to church. It was a big Baptist church. There were about eight of us there, along with a house staff member named Marty. His title was a specialis
t; one thing you learn about the system is, everybody who works for it gets a heavy-duty title.
The policy at Gates House was you had to go to church at least two Sundays out of the month. Because of all my background in social services, going to church was nothing new to me. I’ve done quite a bit of reading of religious material, and I would say I have a decent amount of Bible knowledge. Of course my highest interest is in Dakota religion, although I have spent quite a bit of time reading about Pawnee beliefs, as the Pawnee gave a lot of extra attention to the supernatural.
Anyway, on this Sunday morning, the minister, whose name was Reverend Braithwaite, was preaching a sermon on miracles in the Bible. I was pretty interested because the things he was talking about were a lot like certain miraculous stories in Indian religion.
After church, there was the customary socializing out on the steps. For some reason, the reverend seemed to take a lot of interest in those of us from Gates House.
He wanted to know my name, so Marty introduced us. Then he asked me what I thought of his sermon on miracles.
“It reminded me a lot of Indian miracles I’ve read about,” I told him.
“What’s that?”
If he was interested, I was more than happy to tell him.
First, I told him the story of Bull-all-the-time, who was a Crow chief. He was hunting alone one day, when he broke his ankle, and had to rest on this huge rock. All of a sudden he was face-to-face with a rattlesnake, which was coiled and ready to strike. Using total concentration, Chief Bull-all-the-time stared into the eyes of the snake until he hypnotized it and it just fell over.
Well, Reverend Braithwaite did not appreciate this story at all, which came as a surprise to me. In fact, he got uptight. He said, “That’s an amusing story, but I can assure you it has nothing to do with the miraculous powers of the apostles in the New Testament.” He went on to say that the apostles used the direct power of Almighty God to heal the blind and the lame.
At this point I thought it might make him feel better if I talked about some healing, so I told him about this Indian shaman who built a fire and coaxed evil spirits out of sick people and into the fire.
“A shaman is simply a medicine man, young man,” he said to me.
“That’s true,” I said.
“I can assure you these superstitious, heathen stories have nothing to do with the revealed truth found in God’s Word.” He seemed good and pissed.
By this time everyone was getting tense, including me and including the other people who were standing around, as it was obvious that Reverend Braithwaite was highly worked up. All I had wanted to do was swap a few stories, but I could see that it wasn’t going to work, so I made the suggestion that we should just drop the subject. Unfortunately, he wasn’t ready to drop the subject.
He looked at Marty and then back at me. He said, “Does this young man have even basic Christian understanding?” He asked me, “Do you understand that in the person of Jesus Christ, God Almighty Himself has come to dwell among us?”
I really didn’t know what to say, not with the reverend in his worked-up condition. I didn’t want to lie. I looked back and forth between Marty and Reverend Braithwaite, hoping Marty might say it was time to leave, but he looked like he had a little confusion of his own.
I thought maybe I could mellow things out by being polite, so I told Reverend Braithwaite I thought Jesus Christ was very wise. Instead of helping the situation, this just about flipped him out.
“Wise?? Did you say wise?” Reverend Braithwaite had a look on his face like I’d just told him Russia was the best country to live in. “Wise is a word for ordinary mortals. Wisdom is not something the Son of God has need of!”
By this time he was beginning to sputter, with a little bit of drool trickling on his chin. I can’t remember all of what he said, but things just went from bad to worse. He even got on Marty’s case and told him there needed to be better religious training at Gates House.
Somehow, Marty finally got us excused, and we were in the van heading home. I told him I was sorry for what happened, that I hadn’t planned any trouble. He kept his eyes on his driving. He was a guy who tended not to talk much. He said, “People get ultraserious when it comes to their religion; they tend to lose their sense of humor. What can I say?”
Unfortunately, Mrs. Grice wasn’t quite that calm when she heard about it. Not that you’d expect her to be. She was all over my case; she told me the incident would reflect bad on Gates House.
“We’ve had a relationship with First Baptist for years,” she said. “Reverend Braithwaite has even taught confirmation classes for our residents, on his own time.”
I told her I was sorry, but I didn’t do anything wrong.
She said it looked like I needed religious training, so she’d try and get me signed up for Bible study or confirmation class.
I looked right at her. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.
“Don’t you use a tone with me,” she said. “I’m not going to warn you again.”
I was starting to get pissed. “All I did was tell him a couple of stories about Indian religion.”
“Indian stories?”
“I happen to know a thing or two about Indian religion. I thought he might be interested. He asked me, right?”
“Let me tell you something. Your job is not to tell him anything. When you go to church, your job is to listen.”
I felt myself getting more pissed, but I figured what the hell, what good would it do?
Suppertime started out okay, but then it went downhill quick. Kinderhook got caught putting dinner rolls in his pockets. Mrs. Grice called it stealing food, but how it could be stealing when it was food put on the table for us to eat, I’m not sure.
Anyway, she went charging over to the bulletin board, where she got herself a piece of chalk. Then she used the chalk to mark a big X on the floor, right where the kitchen goes into the lounge. She made Kinderhook stand on the X. He was a little slow getting in gear, so she got him by the ear and hustled his ass over to the spot. He was bigger than she was; it looked like Mrs. Grice was hauling this pile of dough. It would have been funny, except you had to feel sorry for him.
He had to stand on the X while we ate the rest of our supper, which was most of it. He turned his back and faced the lounge, out of embarrassment. His red neck was the only part of him that wasn’t white.
It was my night for kitchen crew, so after supper I was doing cleanup with this guy named Rabe. We could have finished up by six-thirty easily, but with Mrs. Grice, you learned right away not to do your chores too fast. If you finished quick, she just gave you more.
She showed up about seven o’clock and wanted to know why we weren’t done yet. I was sponging out the stove burners; I told her we were going for excellence. It went over her head. She took a glance at Kinderhook on the X, then went back to her room without saying anything.
Slive was watching TV in the lounge. After Mrs. Grice disappeared, he went by and gave Kinderhook a goose. That was when Kinderhook started crying; there wasn’t any sound, but you could see his shoulders shaking up and down.
We were done with the cleanup, so I went up to my room. There was a fire alarm by the exit door; I thought about pulling it so the whole house would have to evacuate. That would get Kinderhook off the X, and maybe it would slip Mrs. Grice’s mind afterward. But I figured I was already in enough trouble for one day.
By the time I went back down, it was eight o’clock. Kinderhook was still there. That was two hours on the X. He kept shifting his weight from one leg to the other, but there was nothing to lean on.
Some guys were watching TV in the lounge, so I sat down on one of the chairs; I didn’t pay too much attention to what program was on.
That was when Marty came in, carrying groceries. He set his bags on the counter and started putting things away in the cupboards and the refrigerator. He took a look at Kinderhook and then he looked at me. For a fraction of a second our eyes met. T
hen he went back to work putting more groceries away.
It was a real moment. He knew and I knew. It wasn’t right to put Kinderhook through this, not over a couple of rolls. Marty knew what a hairbag Mrs. Grice was, but he was just an underling, he wasn’t about to cross her. That’s the system in a nutshell. You’re just a cog that the system needs, or it chews you up and spits you out. There’s no place to be who you are, that part gets worn away.
It was three in the morning when I woke up because of some noise out in the street. It was only a car with a loud muffler, but since I was awake, I got up and snuck down to the kitchen. I was barefoot and didn’t make a sound; the only light was a small fluorescent tube over the sink. It was a decent enough light once my eyes got used to it.
There was a moist sponge in a number-ten can under the sink. I took it over and scrubbed the X off the floor. I scrubbed until there was no sign of it left; I’m not sure why.
Then I went back to bed.
It was a couple days after that when Mrs. Bluefish sent me down to the office of Mr. Saberhagen, the assistant principal. I had no idea what it was all about, but I knew it couldn’t be good. I sat in the office to wait, while these two secretaries answered the phone and did a lot of file work.
One of them finally told me I could see Mr. Saberhagen now. I went in and he said, “Please have a seat, Floyd,” so I sat down next to his desk.
Mr. Saberhagen is a stern, formal guy. I doubt if he ever cracks a joke about anything. He is bald back to the crown of his head, but he lets the back part of his hair grow real long and then combs it all forward. He uses hair spray or something to hold it in place.
“This shouldn’t take too long, Floyd. I just need to have a little chat with you about your footwear.”
I looked down. I was wearing my Dakota moccasins, which come up to about midcalf.
“What do you call those, Floyd?”
“What do I call them? I call them by their name. Moccasins.”
“I’d watch that tone of voice if I were you, Floyd.” He cleared his throat, stretched his neck like he usually does, and went on: “Mrs. Bluefish feels that your moccasins are not appropriate dress for school. I’m afraid I have to agree with her.”
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