Why the Star Stands Still (Gives Light #4)

by Rose Christo

8

  Second Heartbeat

  "Can I have pizza for breakfast?"

  I was grinding blue corn in a wood mortar when Mickey interrupted my scattered thoughts. She sat at the pine table, kicking her spindly legs. I glanced at her, puzzled.

  "I don't think they deliver to reservations, hon."

  "Why not?"

  "Because they don't know where to find us."

  "What are they, stupid?"

  "That's not nice," I chided.

  Mickey shrugged. She bent her head over a copy of Magic by the Lake. I hid a smile. Nice to see she liked Rafael's choice in books.

  "Actually," I said.

  Mickey raised her head.

  "Native Americans invented pizza," I said matter-of-factly.

  She gave me the weirdest of looks. "No you didn't," she said. "The Italians did."

  "If you wanna be technical," Rafael said gruffly, trudging into the kitchen, "Marco Polo brought that stuff back from China. Where are my glasses?" he asked me.

  "Where you left them, I'd imagine."

  He showed me his disgust. He trudged back out of the room.

  "Native Americans did not invent pizza," Mickey challenged.

  "But they did," I said. "Hundreds of years ago, Indians started throwing crushed tomatoes and cheese on top of their frybread. And chili peppers. In Shoshone, we called it tottsaa."

  Mickey's eyebrows drew together. I had no way of knowing what was going on in that adorable little head of hers. She nodded, finally, and closed her book.

  "Make me tottsaa."

  I pursed my lips. I set the blue corn mush aside with defeat.

  "Get the powdered milk," I said.

  We prepared the frybread together, the corn mush forgotten. Neither of us was particularly orderly about this task, but Mickey was the worst offender I'd ever seen: So much flour wound up in her hair that she looked like a ghost. The dough drizzled in the pan; the cheese melted on the burner. I steered Mickey outside the house and filled the wash tub next to the outhouse with water from the water pump. I dipped her head in, lathered my hands with soap, and started to wash her hair.

  "It's so hot out today," she said when we sat beneath a patch of sunlight, her hair drying around her damp shoulders.

  "It always gets worse around August," I said. "That's why Rafael built the cellar in the kitchen."

  "How do you mean?"

  "He sits in the cellar when he gets too hot."

  Mickey giggled. "I wanna see that."

  We returned to the kitchen, Mickey trailing water across the flour-strewn floor. I let her decorate the frybread as she wanted while I stowed the blue corn mush away in the icebox. I took out a separate ear of corn.

  "I don't want that," Mickey said imperiously.

  "You don't want popcorn?"

  She changed her tune. "I can have popcorn for breakfast?"

  "You're having pizza for breakfast. You might as well."

  "Will I get fat?"

  "I hope so."

  We scraped the kernels from the cob and dropped them into the pot on the stove. Mickey shrieked with delight when they popped, crackled, and fluffed. She slammed the lid on the pot after a few stray kernels rocketed across the kitchen.

  "Did Indians invent popcorn, too?" Mickey asked.

  "We did. During the Great Depression, we got the idea that we would start selling it to non-Natives and make a little money. That's when it first became so popular."

  "But was it always blue?"

  "I doubt it."

  "Okay," Rafael said. He trailed back into the room with his pager in his hands, squinting at the digital screen. He still hadn't found his glasses. "I'm gonna--"

  Glasses or not, I guess he had noticed the mess that used to be our kitchen floor. "What the hell?" he asked.

  "Pizza and popcorn," Mickey said.

  Rafael's mouth dropped open. His head turned in my general direction. "Is that even healthy?"

  "Very healthy, actually. Why don't you have some?"

  He collected himself. "Can't," he said. "I've gotta go cut out a kid's tongue."

  "Cool," Mickey said, with genuine appreciation.

  I balked. I strode across the kitchen and took the pager from Rafael's hand. I read the scrolling message quickly--and resisted the urge to plash my forehead.

  "Tonsils, Rafael," I said. "You're taking out a kid's tonsils."

  "Oh."

  "Go find your glasses," I said, returning the pager. "I beg you. The whole reservation begs you."

  And he did, eventually; and the whole world rejoiced. Rafael left the both of us with kisses to our forehead; Mickey scrunched her face with disapproval. I took a look around the kitchen and recoiled. I really wasn't in the mood to clean up that debacle.

  "Can I go to Charity's house?" Mickey asked, her mouth full of frybread. "Please?"

  I deliberated. I hadn't at all forgotten about the last time Mickey played with Charity.

  "Grandma Gives Light's gonna be there," Mickey said. "She's gonna show us how to make stuff with beads. Please?"

  I smiled. Grandma Gives Light was the last person I'd expected to take an interest in the kids.

  "Alright," I said. "You've been pretty good lately. I don't see why not."

  "Yes!" Mickey cheered. "Thank you, thank you!"

  "But if I find out you ran into the badlands--or started swinging from the roof eaves--or anything with the potential to harm you--"

  "Sky..."

  "--you'll never have popcorn again."

  "Fine," Mickey grumbled. She must have really liked popcorn.

  I spent the morning in the sitting room while I grappled with my least favorite pastime--reading.

  In the US, if you want to get anything done legally, it's got to go through Congress first. If you don't have Congress on your side, you don't stand a chance.

  I sat on the floor with a High Court case book and three different Senate rejection letters. Yeah. When I said the government doesn't care about Indian reservations, I wasn't joking.

  "Mr. St. Clair?"

  Carole must have let herself in. I hadn't heard the door open. She crept into the sitting room, her hair newly cut at chin-length.

  I'd been living on the reservation so long that my first thought was to ask, What's wrong? Who died? It's still pretty jarring whenever I see short hair.

  I smiled at Carole; I patted a spot on the throw rug. She sat with me, her legs folded, and bit her lip.

  "I got the preliminary review," she said, her voice tiny. "So I knew it was going to look bad..."

  "That's okay," I said. "I kind of expected that."

  "But..."

  "There's no money to make off of reservations. The government is a business at heart. Sad, but true."

  Carole chewed on her lip. "Isn't there any way we could--go over their heads?" she asked.

  "There is. It's called an Article V Convention."

  "Oh, good!" Carole said, brightening, and brought her hands together. "Let's do it!"

  "It's not that simple. The last time anyone held an Article V Convention, the year was 1787."

  Carole wilted. "Oh..." But in the very same instance, she sat up straight, shoulders thrown back. "Well, how do we do one of those conventions, then? Um...an updated one?"

  "We'd have to find lobbyists from thirty-four states willing to sign off on the same bill."

  "But that should be easy, shouldn't it?" Carole said. "Sir? If you explained the problem, I'm sure you would find enough people who care about changing it."

  I regarded her for a moment. In some ways I felt like I was looking at a child. How old was she? Twenty-four?

  My mind wandered. Bad habit of mine. "Carole," I said. "I know the perfect man for you. His name's Jack Nabako. He's a little on the loud side..."

  Carole sputtered. I cackled. I know, I know. I'm not very nice. I should probably do something to fix that.

  Eve
ntually Carole left me to my own devices, promising she would find me thirty-four legislative lawyers. I really appreciated her efforts, but I knew better than to get my hopes up. I read a few more chapters out of my case book--riveting stuff--and come midday, I decided I had better bring Mickey home for lunch.

  I walked the dirt road across the reservation. Man, was it hot outside. My cotton shirt suddenly felt like layers of wool. I noticed the grackles strutting across the dry ground, their purple-black plumage glistening under an unbearable sun. You'd have to be a nutty bird to enjoy this weather.

  Grandma Gives Light was sitting underneath her son's southern oak tree. She narrowed her eyes at me as I drew near.

  "Tokochi'na kuhmachi, dosabitumu, yuhupukkanna..."

  "You know I understand you," I told her, bewildered. "Right?"

  She spread her mouth in a pitiless smile.

  "Where's Michaela?" I asked.

  Grandma Gives Light was spared from answering me when the little angel herself came storming out of Charity's house.

  I couldn't understand it. Just this morning she had been chipper and agreeable. Now she looked like she could drive a nail through someone's head.

  We sat by the brook during lunch and she remained sullen and sour; she refused to say a word. Only when Rafael came home did her mood seem to lessen. She handed him a chokecherry sandwich and he sat down and regaled us with the gory details of his tonsillectomy.

  "Could you rip my tonsils out, too?" Mickey asked.

  "Sure," Rafael said. I gave him a weird look. "Wasn't I gonna teach you how to draw?"

  Her face clouded over with frustration. "Don't bother," she said. "I'll just mess it up. I mess everything up."

  Rafael looked to me with bemusement.

  "What makes you say that?" I asked.

  Mickey hesitated. She reached into her jeans pocket and pulled out a blob of blue beads.

  "What's that?" Rafael asked.

  Mickey grumbled in a roundabout, incoherent way. I could see we weren't going to have any luck getting to the bottom of her mystifying mood.

  It was only later--much later, when I was cooking at Annie's house--that I realized the beaded blob had looked a little like a pilot whale.

  "Skylar? Hello? Please come back to earth now. Your silence is not appreciated."

  I eased out of my daydream and showed Annie a sheepish smile. I crushed the rosemary leaves and stirred them with honey. Baby Elizabeth peeped at me from her cradleboard, perched on her mother's back.

  "They're beautiful, you know," I said, when Celia opened her mouth in a wide and impertinent yawn.

  "Of course they are," Annie said. "They take after me, don't they?"

  Annie sliced the butter while I spooned milk into the pot. Nicholas charged into the kitchen, yelling.

  "Mom, Uncle Isaac won't let me drive the goddamn tractor!"

  "Nicholas!" Annie said.

  Nicholas ran from the room just as hastily as he had entered it. I think Annie was too shocked to call after him. She turned so that she was facing me, slowly.

  "Where is he getting that from?" she asked. "We never curse in front of him. No, it must be Zeke's fault--"

  "It's probably Mickey's," I said. "I'm really sorry."

  "Oh, well, that's fine... I'll just have a talk with him later, I suppose..."

  We rolled the dough into dumplings and dropped them into the pot on the stove. I watched little Leon through the window as he quacked at the ducks resting on the pond's warm waters.

  "You know what?" Annie said. "We haven't been to the grotto in ages."

  There's a rock cave out in the woods--southeast from the main path, not terribly easy to uncover unless you're purposely looking for it. Annie had discovered that grotto when she was about six or seven years old. In our teens, we'd made it into a kind of secret hideout. Annie and I used to spend hours out there with Aubrey, Zeke, and Rafael. I don't think our parents ever figured out what we were up to. And for the longest time, I'd assumed no one else on the reservation even knew about the place.

  I thought about Uncle Julius falling from the willow tree.

  I smiled quickly and slid the lid over the pot. "We should take the kids sometime," I said. "Before school starts up. I'm sure they'd like it."

  "I can't believe it's almost time for school already," Annie remarked. "Never mind that; I can't believe Leon's starting first grade."

  "Poor, poor Mr. Red Clay," I lamented, shaking my head.

  "Skylar!"

  "You were thinking it."

  "That's completely beside the point!"

  We sat together at the picnic table that night. Jessica joined us eventually with Stuart Stout, a member of the tribal council. Good luck ever cracking a smile out of Stuart's face. He always looks tired--and irritated.

  "Hello, Stuart," I said. I felt like he had broken some kind of unspoken pact--a pact between ex-classmates: Never date your classmate's little sister. Especially if she's a decade younger than you, for crying out loud. Still, I felt the need to retain at least some modicum of civility. "How's everything going with Bear River?"

  "More or less the same," Stuart said. His voice was hoarse; his hair was auburn, his eyes pale. "We're exporting water, that's the main thing. The Burnt Hope Reservation's natural reservoirs are completely contaminated; I suppose that's what happens when a uranium factory sets up shop next door. We've set up fifty acres in trust with the Lemhi--"

  "Never mind," I said, and I walked off in search of DeShawn and Autumn Rose. "Sister stealer."

  DeShawn and Dad were sitting beneath a pinyon pine with Autumn Rose In Winter, a very excitable young woman who squeaked and waved when she saw me approaching. Dad nodded almost imperceptibly, his back against the tree trunk.

  "Skylar, we were just talking about the upcoming ghost dance," DeShawn said, adjusting his eyeglasses. "What do you think about using the tribal fund to bring some of the Paiute down here? After all, they're the ones who started the dance."

  "I think that's a great idea," I said. I thought about our cousin Marilu, a Paiute woman. I hadn't seen her since winter. "What do you think, Dad?"

  He didn't hear me. His eyes were fixed on the firepit, flames climbing and tumbling atop the piles of stone.

  Shoshone used to practice self-immolation. Usually it was a scare tactic the warriors used when the Europeans started terrorizing Native families. The Shoshone were always a peace-loving, noncombatant tribe; that we came up with counting coup pretty much proves my point. So maybe you can see why we preferred killing ourselves to killing our enemies.

  I can't tell you what was going through my mind when I looked between Dad and the burning firepit. I can't tell you how I made the connection. All I know is that my heart suddenly seized, and my blood froze over in my veins; and I excused myself politely while I went looking for Racine.

  I found her sitting with Rosa on a couple of folding chairs while they listened to baseball scores on a portable radio.

  "You need to keep an eye on Dad," I said, before I could stop myself; before I could apologize.

  Racine looked up at me, her empathetic brown eyes unusually guarded. I knew, suddenly, that she was already aware of the problem.

  I was in a bad way after dinner, and I think Rafael noticed. I was quiet on the walk home--although really, quiet was familiar; quiet was comforting--and when Mickey went upstairs to bed, I almost forgot to say good night.

  I sat on the sofa in the sitting room. Rafael lit the hearth and sat next to me.

  He put his arm around me. He drew me close to him, his hand stroking idle patterns against my hip. I love that about him. I love everything about him--but I love that we don't need to talk to know what the other is thinking.

  I laughed, mentally exhausted. I remembered a time when my laughs were soundless. "When did we grow up, Rafael?"

  "We grew up?" Rafael murmured.

  "Apparently."

 
"I don't remember that."

  "I know. It's bizarre."

  I rested my head on his shoulder and he carded his fingers through my hair. I wish I could put into words how good that felt. Sometimes I just wanted to meld into him and forget about the part of me that wasn't a part of him. God, it felt good to be a part of him. It felt like everything made sense for a moment, even the harshness of life, even the insanity. It felt like my heart had found its second heartbeat. Everyone has a second heartbeat, you know. Ask any Shoshone. They say that the living earth has a pulse of its own, and if you listen very closely, you can hear it echoing in your heart. But I say: Well, I have no room for the earth's pulse. I'd rather have Rafael's.

  I pulled back. I tugged on one of Rafael's braids.

  "What?" he asked.

  "When's the last time I thanked you?"

  His eyebrows furrowed. "You don't have to thank me for anything."

  "No, I mean...when's the last time I thanked you?"

  "Oh," he said. I saw the dawning in his eyes. "Oh," he said again. He looked over his shoulder toward the staircase. Was Mickey asleep yet? Was it likely she was going to need us in the middle of the night? I knew exactly what was going through his head. I'd had a great many years to acquaint myself with that beautiful repository of nonsense. He looked at me once more--but his mind was already made up for him. He's long since accepted that I do the thinking for the both of us. "I don't remember," he said. "You should thank me now."

  "Upstairs," I said. "I'll thank you upstairs."

  "Yeah. Bad etiquette to go around thanking people in the living room..."

  "You ought to know. Do you remember that time Racine was staying over, and she walked in on you thanking me in the kitchen?"

  "Remember it? You're kidding, right? I still can't look her in the eye..."