“Really,” said Marie. “I’m a Libra.”
Unable to respond, Dr. Mather walked into his office and closed the door in her face. She heard Mather throw the deadbolt and Marie felt a sudden urge to smash the glass, break down the door, pull down the building. She wanted to tear apart the world. Mather would have never treated a white student that badly, nor would he have shut the door in the face of a man. At that moment, she wanted Dr. Mather to disappear. She wanted every white man to disappear. She wanted to burn them all down to ash and feast on their smoke. Hateful, powerful thoughts. She wondered what those hateful, powerful thoughts could create.
She was still fuming when she stepped into the QuickMart convenience store on the Ave. A penniless student, Marie usually had cereal for breakfast and dinner every day, and also for lunch on weekends. She was out of milk and QuickMart had the cheapest quart of nonfat in the University District. She was standing in the cashier’s line when David and Aaron Rogers walked into the store.
“Hey, Marie,” said David, obviously happy to see her. “How you doing?”
Marie was in no mood to talk to David, nor the big hulk with him. Aaron Rogers was a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier than Marie. Aaron was more conventionally handsome than his younger brother, but Aaron’s features seemed temporary, as if his blue eyes, aquiline nose, and strong jawline were simply borrowed from his parents’ faces.
“Hey. What’s your name again?” Marie asked David. She knew his name but wanted to offend him by pretending to forget it.
“It’s David, David Rogers. And this is my brother Aaron.”
With open disdain, Aaron stared down at Marie. She could smell the beer on his breath. She never drank, and absolutely hated its effect on people.
“So,” Aaron said to Marie. “I hear you’ve been a pain in the ass.”
Marie looked to David for an explanation.
“Hey, I never said that,” David said to Marie. “I just said you were tough on the professor.”
“Politically correct bullshit,” said Aaron. “That’s what I think.”
Without a word, Marie turned away from the brothers, paid for her milk, and walked out of the store. She was halfway down the block when David caught up to her.
“Hey, hey,” he said. “I’m sorry about that. Ignore him. He’s kind of a jerk.”
“He’s your brother,” said Marie. “Blood runs thick, enit?”
“Yeah, maybe. Listen, it’s just Aaron, you know? He doesn’t mean it. He just talks tough. He’s really a nice guy. I mean, he’s really good to me. He’s kind of been taking care of me since our mother died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was a long time ago. But Aaron just had to be tougher. He’s not very good at showing his feelings and stuff.”
“David,” asked Marie. “Why are you trying so hard?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, why are you trying so hard to impress me? I’m really sorry your mother died, but it doesn’t mean much to me. And I couldn’t care less about your brother, you know? So, why are you telling me all of this?”
“I don’t know. I guess, well, it’s because I’m really sorry for what happened to Indians. It was a really bad deal.”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
“I just never got the chance to talk to a real Indian before. And you’re real, so I wanted to tell you how I felt.”
Marie looked at David. She knew he was hiding something.
“Listen,” he said. “I heard about this casino up on the Tulalip Indian Reservation. I was wondering if you’d come with me. Kind of be my tour guide. Maybe Mather would give us extra credit. We could work on a paper together. Get the white boy’s and Indian girl’s take on it, you know?”
“David,” Marie said. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not falling for it. Just leave me alone, okay?”
Marie left him standing there. David wanted to tell her about the camas fields back home. She was from the reservation. She must know about camas. He wanted to tell her about the Indian family that had come in the middle of the night to dig roots. Mother, father, four children, the old woman. Maybe Marie knew those Indians. Maybe Marie was one of those Indians. Maybe little Marie was running as David and Buck fired shots above her head. As Aaron shot at the Indian father. David wanted to tell Marie how he’d found one of those Indian root-digging sticks the morning after the shooting, and had buried it where his brother and father would never find it.
11. Cousins
AFTER SHE’D LEFT DAVID Rogers standing in the street outside the convenience store, Marie walked home to her small apartment. As she walked, her anger began to fade. She’d always had a quick temper, was the first to shout obscenities or throw fists, but she was also the first to laugh nervously and apologize. By the time she opened the door of her apartment and saw Reggie Polatkin sitting at the shabby kitchen table, Marie was calm. She’d neither seen nor heard from Reggie in over a year, but she was not surprised to find him waiting for her. Indian relatives had a way of just showing up at the doorstep.
“Hey, cousin,” Reggie said to Marie.
“How’d you get in?” Marie asked as she placed her milk in the refrigerator. Her apartment had one microscopic bedroom, a bathroom with just enough room for toilet, sink, and small shower stall, and a third room that functioned as living room, kitchen, dining room, and study. Dozens of books were piled onto every free space. Books served as furniture by propping up the black-and-white television, by supporting shelves that held yet other books, and by serving as impromptu coffee and end tables. Overpriced, depressingly cold, and battered by generations of student renters, the apartment felt like some tiny box of a reservation in the middle of a city. Marie had tried to brighten the place with flowers and colorful prints, but she still felt miserable whenever she came home.
“I got in by magic,” said Reggie. “And I told the landlord I was your long lost brother.”
“Long lost is right.”
Reggie smiled. He was a very handsome man, with a strong nose, clear brown skin, and startling blue eyes that instantly revealed his half-breed status. In an attempt to look more traditionally Indian, he braided his long black hair into two thick ropes. He was just a few inches over five feet, which was pretty short even for a small people like the Spokanes. Like many short men, Indian and not, Reggie tried to compensate for his stature by growing a mustache. But he had an Indian mustache, meaning that ten or twelve thick black whiskers poked out from the corners of his mouth.
Reggie had grown up in Seattle with his white father, Bird, and his Spokane Indian mother, Martha. Though he’d visited the reservation a few times during his youth, Reggie had always been a stranger to Marie. Reggie was the mysterious urban Indian, the college student, the ambitious half-breed, the star basketball player, the Indian who would make a difference. On the reservation, among Marie’s family, that was how Reggie had always been described, as the one who would make a difference. Reggie carried with him the collective dreams of the family. Marie had always been jealous of that, and when Reggie got himself kicked out of college because of an altercation with Dr. Clarence Mather, she’d felt a strange combination of relief and sadness. She’d felt sadness because she’d come to the University of Washington precisely because Reggie was enrolled there. She’d thought she would feel safer if she was near a relative, no matter how distant and aloof he was. And she’d felt relief because she’d hoped that Reggie’s failure somehow made the possibility of her failure less likely, as if Reggie’s expulsion from college had somehow paid in full her family’s psychic debt.