Is she for real? My eyes bug out a bit, and I see the spark in Jake’s eyes before he hides it again.
Shana says, “Well, they have salads now at McDonald’s. Would you like to come along?”
I steel myself, but after a long moment Mrs. Saunders gives us the fish-eye and says, “Oh no. This is supposed to be your time.” She smiles a little. “Indian time.”
Jake grinds his toes in the floor. He knows it’s an insult, but he doesn’t know why. Just that he’s ashamed.
“Right on,” I say, too loud. “Indian time.” And I usher the boys into my black Buick, trying not to think about the rust around the wheels or the cracked taillight and the bumper held on with a rigged-up coat hook. I was proud of that coat hook when I thought it up. Auto mechanics will hose you when all you need are elbow grease and quick thinking. But seeing my car through Mrs. Saunders’s eyes, I feel the same thing as Jake. Shame.
“Can we do the drive-through?” Jake asks after I pull up to the McDonald’s parking lot.
Shana and I exchange a look. I thought for sure they’d want to play inside. “Don’t you want to jump on the balls and stuff?”
“Well, yeah, but—” He glances at my braids, and my heart just about stops. He doesn’t want to be seen with the Indian.
Shana puts her hand on mine. “We can do whatever you want,” she says. Jake relaxes in his booster seat and my throat closes against the pain.
“Your hair is almost as long as hers.”
I turn to see Jake trudging behind me. His foot slips, but he catches himself on one knee and glares at me like it’s my fault he’s wearing sneakers on a hike in October. Shana thought fresh air would be better than McD’s this time around.
Jake and I’ve got such a love-hate thing going on. I just stop and say, “Yeah, it’s probably longer than Shana’s.”
“Why?”
Tommy’s easier. I can chase him around and he shows me his big baby belly and I make giant raspberry kisses on it. Shana’s carrying him on her hip right now and he’s looking at the leaves, trying to touch one.
I drag my eyes away from Tommy. “Why not? What’s the big deal about my hair?”
“It looks dumb! You look like a cartoon! You should at least, like, have a Mohawk!”
I sigh. I don’t want to fight with him right now.
Shana catches up to us and sets Tommy on the ground. He toddles over to a puddle and tries to stamp in it.
“Hey, Jake. Did you know your dad does have a Mohawk?”
He scrunches up his face. “He does not!”
“What do you think a Mohawk haircut looks like?”
He rolls his eyes. “Are you gonna tell me it’s a Mohawk because he’s a Mohawk? That’s lame.”
She shakes her head. “For Indians, long hair is sacred. Men and women have long hair because that’s what our Creator gave to us.”
“It looks okay on you.” Always the poison saved for me. “But everyone knows a Mohawk is that punk thing, you know, where you shave the sides and the middle sticks up in spikes.”
Tommy slips and lands in the puddle on his butt. Man. We’re going to have to change him on the trail. I pick him up and spin him around to get him to stop crying before I tackle his change. I can still hear Shana explaining.
“That haircut was like the army haircut. Going to war and taking someone’s life was against everything the Creator, Shonkwaiatison, taught us. So if the people had to take a life, they’d cut off their hair. When they returned from war, they’d let their hair grow back.”
I don’t look at them. I pull a clean diaper and a pair of pants out of the diaper bag, even though Shana is way better at changing Tommy. I don’t want to break the spell.
Then Jake bursts out, “I don’t care! I’d rather have the army haircut!”
Shana laughs, and I do too. Laughing over the hurt. Laughing while I try to pull off Tommy’s play pants with him wiggling like a minnow.
Shana says, “At least you’re thinking about getting an Indian haircut now. So you wanna figure out what a puffball mushroom is? I can see one from here!”
She’s so good with him. Jake’s bouncing around now. He finds this giant puffball. It’s as big as a bear paw, if a bear had a white Ontario Place dome mushroom kind of foot. And she’s explaining how it’s good to eat, but you want to eat the smaller kind because the big ones get yellow and mushy inside.
“You should only get mushrooms with me or your dad, because you could get mixed up with other ones, like the Death Cap or Destroying Angel.”
“Destroying Angel! I want that one! I’d bring it to school!”
“No, you wouldn’t. It would make you throw up and then it would kill you.”
Tommy’s pants aren’t so bad under his play pants. I pull the play pants back up and let him splash in the puddles again.
I touch my hair. I don’t know why I grew my hair after I got out of jail. It just seemed like the most rebellious thing I could do when the rest of me was heading mainstream. I’ve lost jobs because of it. But I never thought it might make me lose my son. I don’t know why things are so hard between us. I don’t know how far I would go to keep him.
While I’m thinking this, Tom yelps. He’s wandered away from me to the edge of the trail and he’s skidding on a fallen branch.
I dive. Yank up on his arm. He screams like I’ve ripped it out of its socket and falls in another mud puddle anyway.
Shana sprints to our side with Jake behind her yelling, “What is it?”
Tom is bawling and trying to fight me off. I’m doing my best, but he is damn strong for a two-year-old and it’s all I can do to hold onto him when he’s muddy and slippery and screaming.
Finally, he calms down and lets me hold him, but he’s not using his left arm. It’s just hanging there.
We take him to the emergency room. Wait there for three hours. Jake gets bored. He keeps asking for stuff, so Shana brings him magazines and candy bars and answers his nonstop questions, everything from “Why is your nose so big?” to “You think there are any of those destroyer mushrooms around here?”
Jake sure talks a lot for an Indian. I didn’t say a word until I was two and neither did my brothers. Maybe that’s his mother’s side coming out. He always talks to Shana, though. It’s like he doesn’t know what to say to me, or maybe his grandma has his head turned too far against me.
I keep holding Tom. He drinks some 7-Up and wanders a bit, touching magazines and toys with his right arm, but he mostly just wants to sit in my lap. I’m okay with that.
When we finally get to see the doctor, a pretty Asian woman in glasses, she talks way too fast and I don’t get most of it. She pulls on Tommy’s arm and twists it at the elbow and he gasps, but then she’s like, “Can you use it, Tommy? Wanna touch my stethoscope?” After a minute, he reaches for Jake’s toy motorcycle with his left arm. She says something about how one of Tom’s arm bones isn’t grown and something about a ligament slipping, but I don’t care what except Tommy’s arm is okay.
He turns to me and says, “Burger?”
When the phone rings and it’s my lawyer, I know it’s a problem. He sighs down the line. “What happened to your son Thomas?”
I explain about the fall and the emergency room and how he was fine and ate two kid’s burgers afterward. But my stomach has more knots than my old golden retriever’s tail.
“You have to tell me about this kind of thing.”
“Why? He was okay.” My heart is pounding even as I say it.
“Because your ex’s mother already has her lawyer organized on charges of physical abuse—”