Shana doesn’t get rattled. Like I said, she’s a waitress. “I feel honored.” She doesn’t sound funny when she uses big words. She’s saving up to go to college.
“Well, these courts think it’s quite fashionable to give visitation rights, no matter what kind of parent it is. Jake! Thomas!” Her voice is like a rawhide whip and I’m not surprised when my boys’ feet thunder up behind her. “My goodness. You sound like a herd of elephants! Let’s try that again.”
While she pushes them back, I squat down on the step with my arms out. I don’t care what I look like. I haven’t seen my guys in two years and I’m not about to let a stupid thing like pride trip me up. I’ve always been a big target for the world, but I’m not going to hide from my only two fans.
I call out, “They’re just happy to see me, aren’t you? Thing One and Thing Two?” That’s what Noelle and I used to call them. It was a joke. But a bad one. I can see Mrs. Saunders filing it away to tell the lawyer. “It’s from The Cat in the Hat,” I tell her. Just then, I finally catch a glimpse of my boys’ faces. They’re both staring at me like they have no idea who I am.
Jake, my older guy, is five now. Way taller than I remember, and so serious, so skinny. Where’d his baby fat go? No smile either. Just arms dangling in a white dress shirt. Khaki dress pants and shiny shoes. They’re wearing shoes inside? No wonder they sound like elephants. Kids should be playing, skidding around in bare feet or socks. They should be hugging their dads. They should be something.
Tommy. Tom Thumb. Two and a half, always our little smiley baby — at least that’s how I remember him. But same as his brother, hair combed back like a ’50s throwback, same white shirt and khaki pants and black leather lace-up shoes. He starts to put his thumb in his mouth and I smile cause at least that’s the same, it’s even his left thumb, I remember—
“Thomas!” Whip voice again. “What did I tell you?”
Tom’s face crumples up. Jake stands a bit in front of him. Tom drops his eyes and says, “Sowwy.”
Still can’t say his Rs. At least I haven’t missed that.
“Pardon me?” from the Ice Queen.
“Pa-don me,” Tom parrots, and it just breaks my heart.
I’m not a big fighter. Hell, most addicts would rather hurt themselves than anyone else. But I’m willing to beat up this old lady who’s been sucking the life out of my boys. I take a step forward and something must show in my face, because Mrs. Saunders squares her shoulders, plants both feet, and smiles a little. A knowing smile. An I-knew-this-was-coming smile.
“She: kon skennen kowa ken?” Shana’s cool voice drifts in between us.
I stop right there.
“Shay-cone?” repeats Mrs. Saunders, as if Shana has just sworn in Martian. Of course she doesn’t know this most basic Mohawk greeting, but I’m too busy checking Jake’s face to see if he remembers. I was no hell at Mohawk, but I did say a few nursery rhymes to him and stuff. Even for Tom, I sang lullabies before I got locked up.
Jake looks blank. Tom’s staring at the ground. My throat chokes up, but Shana’s already explaining. She squats right down on the porch too. She doesn’t care if the white woman doesn’t ever let us into her house. She gets down on their level so she can look them in the eye and she says to them, “It’s our language. We say that instead of ‘Hello, how are you doing?’ A lot of people just say ‘She: kon,’ like your grandma just did, but that’s like saying ‘Hey’ instead of the whole greeting. And I wanted to say the whole thing the first time I met you two very important people.”
Jake stares at her like he can make some sense of it through the steadiness in her eyes. Tom hovers closer to her, like he doesn’t get it but he likes her open face and lightly balanced feet.
With Shana by my side, I feel my anger start to drain and I can talk to my boys again. “Skennen means peace. And she: kon means still. So it means ‘Do you still have the Great Peace?’ Are you all right? Are we still friends?” It means more than that. It’s asking if they’re still part of the tribe, if they’re okay not just in their bodies, but in their minds and spirits, but I’m trying to keep it simple. Shana’s right. It’s the perfect way to greet my boys, instead of calling them Thing One and Thing Two and beating up their grandmother. Thank God Shana’s here.
Something flickers in Jake’s eyes before he says, “We don’t do any of that Indian stuff.” He looks to his grandmother for approval.
Somehow, it hurts even more that I thought I was getting through to him. It’s like a meat hook in my chest.
Tom stares from me to his brother to his grandmother. He doesn’t know what to do.
Mrs. Saunders does. “That’s right, Jake. You know that if your mother hadn’t gotten mixed up with any of that stuff, she’d be alive and taking care of you today.”
That stuff. That Indian stuff is me. Their father.
So that’s what she’s been doing. Poisoning them against me and making them hate themselves and their weak, dead mother.
I know this. I know this like I know which way is east even when I wake up after a bender. I’m a sorry excuse for an Indian and maybe even for a human being, but I know people. I know evil.
“ Tohsa sasa’nikon: hren,” says Shana. Don’t forget, she is saying. And I know what she means. Don’t forget yourself. Don’t forget you are on probation. Don’t let the woman rile you up even as she’s stealing your children away.
But I am riled. I’ve spent most of my twenty-five years hating myself and I don’t want my boys sucked into the same rigged game. I stand up straight. I keep my gaze on Jake and Tom. “I’m Indian. You guys are Indian too.” Mrs. Saunders makes a noise, but I talk over her. “You may not think that’s a good thing, and maybe it’s not. People either think you want a handout or they want you to teach them some great big secret New Age woo-woo bull—” I catch myself just in time “—pucky, and they think you get everything for free. But we founded this place and we’re not going anywhere. We’re Mohawks.” This time Shana makes a noise. She calls us Kanien-kehaka, which means People of the Flint, cause Mohawk means “man-eater,” but I don’t have time to explain that to the boys. “We’re tough. Some people say we’re the most stubborn tribe around.”
Tom’s got his forehead puckered like he can’t figure out what I’m saying, but he wants to. And I feel a flicker of interest, or at least not hostility, from Jake, my big boy. I smile at him until he says, “Is that why you’ve got hair like Anne of Green Gables?”
Mrs. Saunders smothers a laugh, but this time I’m ready for it. I may not be the sharpest tool in the box, but you can’t hit me the same way twice. Not even if you’re my son. “Yeah, pretty much, only mine’s nicer. I use better conditioner.”
The corners of Jake’s mouth twitch. “Do you really use conditioner?”
“Only the best.” I toss my braids and make a serious face, my Indian chief statue pose. Shana giggles and Jake starts laughing. Even Mrs. Saunders defrosts a bit. She can let me have this role, the Indian clown part. That’s the part I used to play with Noelle too.
Tom titters. He’s checking his brother and grandmother, but he wants to join in the fun. I ache to scoop him up and kiss his chubby little cheeks. But I keep smiling through my pain. “Now. Why don’t you all come out with me and Shana? Tell me what you want to do. You want burgers?”
“Yeah!” Jake slaps his hands together before he remembers to look at the killjoy.
“I don’t allow the boys processed meat. We have organic beef or chicken once in a while, but we try to eat legumes and tofu instead.”