“What do you think those white people can teach you, anyway?” the third uncle asked.
She wanted to say, “Everything.” She wanted to scream it. But she knew she’d be punished for her disrespect of her elders. Because she was Indian, she’d been taught to fear and hate white people. Sure, she hated all sorts of white people — the arrogant white businessmen in their wool suits, the illiterate white cheerleaders in their convertibles, the thousands of flannel-shirted rednecks who roamed the streets of Spokane — but she knew they represented the worst of whiteness. It was easy to hate white vanity and white rage and white ignorance, but what about white compassion and white genius and white poetry? Maybe it wasn’t about whiteness or redness or any other color. Corliss wasn’t naive. She knew racism, tribalism, and nationalism were encoded in human DNA, and we’d all save our own child from a burning building even if it meant a thousand strangers would die, and we’d all kill in defense of our wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, parents, and children. However, she also wanted to believe in human goodness and mortal grace. She was contradictory and young and confused and smart and unformed and ambitious. How could she tell her father and uncles she read Hopkins precisely because he was a white man and precisely because he was a Jesuit priest? Maybe Hopkins had been an Indian killer, or a supporter of Indian killers, but he’d also been a sad and lonely and lovely man who screamed to God for comfort, answers, sleep, and peace. Since Corliss rarely found comfort from her family and friends, and never found it in God, but continued to want it and never stopped asking for it, then maybe she was also a Jesuit priest who found it in poetry. How could she tell her family that she didn’t belong with them, that she was destined for something larger, that she believed she was supposed to be eccentric and powerful and great and all alone in the world? How could she tell her Indian family she sometimes felt like a white Jesuit priest? Who would ever believe such a thing? Who would ever understand how a nineteen-year-old Indian woman looked in the mirror and sometimes saw an old white man in a white collar and black robe?
“I’ve got to go,” Corliss said. “I’ve got homework.”
“Give me that book,” the second uncle said. He took the book from her, opened it at random, and read, “‘Glory be to God for dappled things— / For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow.’”
All of the men laughed.
“What the hell does that mean?” the third uncle asked.
“It’s a poem about a cow,” her father said. “She’s always reading poems about cows.”
“You can’t write a poem about a cow, can you?” the first uncle asked. “They’re ugly and stupid. I thought poems were supposed to be pretty and smart.”
“Yeah, Corliss,” the second uncle said. “You’re pretty and smart, why are you wasting your time with poems? You should be studying science and math and law and politics. You’re going to be rich and famous. You’re going to be the toughest Indian woman around.”
How could these men hate poetry so much and respect her intelligence? Sure, they were men raised in a matriarchal culture, but they lived in a patriarchal country. Therefore, they were kind and decent and sensitive and stupid and sexist and unpredictable. These husbands were happily married to wives who earned more money than they did. These men bragged about their spouses’ accomplishments: Ha, my woman just got a raise! My honey makes more money than your honey! My wife manages the whole dang Kmart, and then she comes home and manages us! She’s a twenty-first-century woman! Nah, I ain’t threatened by her! I’m challenged! Who were these Indian men? What kind of warriors were they? Were Crazy Horse and Geronimo supportive of their wives? Did Sitting Bull sit with his wife for weekly chats about the state of their relationship? Did Red Cloud proudly send his daughter out to fight the enemy? Corliss looked at her father and saw a stranger, a loving stranger, but a stranger nonetheless.
“And I’ll tell you what,” her father said. “After Corliss graduates from college and gets her law degree, she’s going to move back to the reservation and fix what’s wrong. We men have had our chances, I’ll tell you what. We’ll send all the tribal councilmen to the golf courses and let the smart women run the show. I’ll tell you what. My daughter is going to save our tribe.”
Yes, her family loved and supported her, so how could she resent them for being clueless about her real dreams and ambitions? Her mother and father and all of her uncles and aunts sent her money to help her through college. How many times had she opened an envelope and discovered a miraculous twenty-dollar bill? The family and the tribe were helping her, so maybe she was a selfish bitch for questioning the usefulness of tribalism. Here she was sitting in a corner of her tiny apartment, pretending to be alone in the world, the one poetic Spokane, and she was reading a book of poems, of sonnets, by another Spokane. How could she ever be alone if Harlan Atwater was somewhere out there in the world? Okay, his poems weren’t great. Some of them were amateurish and trite, and others were comedic throwaways, but there were a few poems and a few lines that contained small bits of power and magic:
The Little Spokane
My river is not the same size as your river.
My river is smaller and colder.
My river begins in the north
And rushes to find me.
My river calls to me.
I swim it because it is water.
Water doesn’t care about anybody
But this water cares about me.
Or maybe it doesn’t care about me.
Maybe the river thinks I’m driftwood
Or a rubber tire or a bird or a dead dog.
Maybe the river is not a river.
Maybe the river is my father.
Maybe he’s smaller and colder than your father.
Corliss had swum the Little Spokane River. She’d floated down the river in a makeshift raft. She’d drifted beneath bridges and the limbs of trees. She’d been in the physical and emotional places described in the poem. She’d been in the same places where Harlan Atwater had been, and that made her sad and happy. She felt connected to him and wanted to know more about him. She picked up the telephone and called her mother.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Corliss, hey, sweetie, it’s so good to hear your voice. I miss you.”
Her mother was a loan officer for Farmers’ Bank. Twenty years earlier, she’d started as a bank teller and had swum her way up the corporate fish ladder.
“I miss you, too, Mom. How is everybody?”
“We’re still Indian. How’s school going?”
“Good.”
All of their conversations began the same way. The mother-daughter telephone ceremony. Corliss knew her mother would soon become emotional and tell her how proud the family was of her accomplishments.
“I don’t know if we tell you this enough,” her mother said. “But we’re so proud of you.”
“You tell me every time we talk.”
“Oh, well, you know, I’m a mother. I’m supposed to talk that way. It’s just, well, you’re the first person from our family to ever go to college.”
“I know, Mom, you don’t need to tell me my résumé.”
“You don’t need to get smart.”
Corliss couldn’t help herself. She loved her mother, but her mother was a bipolar storyteller who told lies during her manic phases and heavily exaggerated during her depressed times. Those lies and exaggerations were often flattering to Corliss, so it was hard to completely resent them. According to the stories, Corliss had already been accepted to Harvard Medical School but had declined because she didn’t feel Harvard would respect her indigenous healing methods. You couldn’t hate a mother full of such tender and flattering garbage, but you could certainly view her with a large measure of contempt.