My dad is standing near the doorway holding up a bunch of neutral-colored fabrics with beads and feathers hanging down from them. His face looks serious. Wendy walks inside behind me and lets out a snicker. “What’s all that?” I ask.
“Your outfit for tonight. It’s traditional Ojibwe wear. I call it Ojibwear.”
“I’m not Ojibwearing that. No Ojibway,” I say.
“It is to honor your ancestors. Everyone will be wearing their family’s symbols.”
“You’re in jeans and a LeBron James shirt,” I say, pointing at his clothes.
“I’ve already honored my relations. I can wear whatever I want now. But tonight is your night. Wewiib, get dressed.” He shoves the outfit into my chest. “That means hurry up.”
I grab it. This is going to suck. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll wear this goofy costume and please my sacred ancestors or whatever—”
“Stop talking. Start changing.”
I march to the bathroom and shut the door behind me. I flip on the light switch and lay it out over the sink. There is a long-sleeve tan shirt with orange and yellow beads and painted lightning bolts and thunder cloud symbols on it, a brown leather fringed vest that goes over it, and a pair of beige pants that tie in the front. This looks like what white people wear on Halloween when they dress up as “Indians.”
I remove my clothes and slip into the garments, avoiding the mirror. I don’t want to see this until it’s all put together. Like ripping off the scab in one quick swoop. After I put the shirt on, and the vest, I tie the pants tightly around my waist and stand in front of the mirror.
I look ridiculous. Perfect to play the “Native warrior” in one of those cheap cowboy movies, but in real life, right now, I look like a really bad joke. I sigh, thinking tonight is going to be super embarrassing. Why did I have to get the nice judge?
I open the door, and instead of laughing, my dad massages his nonexistent beard and looks me up and down. “You look good. Very authentic. But it’s still missing something,” he says as Wendy squeezes into the doorway to have a look.
She smiles and scratches at her also-nonexistent beard. “He needs neckwear,” she says.
“Of course!” my dad says, and takes off down the hall. “Neck belts!”
“Don’t give him ideas!” I say to Wendy, who can’t keep a straight face.
“I know you want to, so go ahead and laugh,” I say, and she uncorks her mouth and lets it all out.
“I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing with you.”
“But I’m not laughing.”
“Okay. I’m laughing at you. Oops,” she says in between her snorts.
My dad returns with three necklaces: one made from bone, one from wood, and one from stones and shells … and since he can’t decide which one I should wear, he decides I’ll wear all three. He drapes each one over my head, letting them rest on my chest.
“You like them?” he asks.
“I mean, maybe I should wear just one and not three?” I say.
“Nonsense. Would you rather have three dollars or one?” he says.
“Three, but—”
“Then it’s settled. You wear all of them,” he says, and clasps his hands together with satisfaction.
“He looks great, but not super great yet,” Wendy says.
“Seriously?” I say.
“You’re right … He needs more flair,” my dad says, his eyes wide.
“Yes!” Wendy concurs. “We need everyone to see he means business. Big Bad Business Benny!”
“No! I am not wearing fringe or war paint or anything else,” I protest, but they are already off and running to get more things to pile onto me.
Who refers to necklaces as neck belts? This is absurd. I should have stayed in Duluth. This isn’t boot camp. This is a circus.
They return with globs of paint in their hands.
“Wait. Do I really have to wear this stuff? I mean, is it absolutely necessary?” I ask.
“You’re not on vacation, Benny. You’re here to work. Do chores. This isn’t war paint. This is chore paint. Think of each color as community service,” he says as he delivers the first smear of red paint under my eyes.
“And everyone is going to be all dressed up with painted faces?” I ask.
“Don’t worry. You’ll hardly be noticed,” he assures me, even though that completely contradicts what he just previously said about me letting everyone know I mean business.
Wendy, with the black paint in one hand and the white paint in the other, follows suit. In a matter of seconds, I have twenty paint-covered fingers attacking my face. I close my eyes and take the punishment head-on. Do your worst. Fine. If everyone is going to look as silly as I am, then at least I’ll blend in. They should call wherever I am going humiliation camp, not boot camp.
“Ta-da,” Wendy says like a proud artist displaying her latest masterpiece.
I open my eyes and see them staring at me with huge matching grins on their unpainted faces. “You look … absolutely … ready,” says my dad.
“Absolutely ready? That’s it? Not absolutely kickass? Not ferocious? Not absolutely terrifying?” I say. “What happened to Big Bad Business Benny?”
“I mean, you’re still scrawny, but we got to work with what we got. I bet you could scare a deer, maybe,” he says.
“Or a porcupine,” Wendy adds. “You’d scare the bejesus out of one of those, for sure.”
“Can we go now? Or do you want to add a dozen feathers to my hair too?” I say, jokingly.
“You haven’t earned your feathers yet, little bird,” my dad replies solemnly.
Wendy pours a huge bag of dog food into three large tin bowls, all three labeled by their names: ROLEX, CASIO, and APPLE. Half of the food spills over onto the floor, but the dogs immediately begin cleanup detail, attacking the tiled floor first.
“Ambe,” my dad says to me, grabbing his coat and tossing me an extra jacket of his. “That means ‘let’s go.’”
“You two have fun,” Wendy says.
“You’re not coming?” I ask.
“No, I’m staying in with George tonight. We might watch a movie if I can convince him to put the controller down.
“George, right. I haven’t met him yet.”
“He’s not in the best of moods today. Maybe tomorrow?” For the first time I see sadness in her eyes.
“He’s your son?”
“Yes. My shining star,” she says, and looks up to the sky, like she can somehow see the stars through the roof.
“I’ll explain some of that to you on the way,” my dad says, and leads me out of the house.
The wind runs up and punches me in the face, then kicks me, then elbows me. I try to dodge its attack, but it’s everywhere. Each strike feels like I was hit by a fistful of ice cubes.
“She’s biting tonight. Get in,” my dad says to me as I struggle with the door handle.
He reaches over and opens it for me. I climb inside and shut the door. “Duluth gets cold, but this is another level. Why do people willingly live here?” I ask.
“Coldness keeps you fresh. Those people in the lower states ain’t as fresh as we are. It’s like we’re food. Minnesota is our fridge. Everybody else is just sitting on the counter, slowly spoiling. But not us,” he says. “Remember that.”
I never thought of it that way, and for good reason too. Because it makes no sense! We’re not food. Minnesota is not a refrigerator, and everyone else is not spoiling. Where does this guy get his logic from? “So, America is just one big kitchen, huh?” I say.
“It’s a house. You got folks in California out on the porch, enjoying the sun. But the sun also ages you if you stay out too long. That’s why they got so much plastic surgery over there. Minnesota wins. You got the people in the South out back, barbecuing and whatnot, but those mosquitoes will eat you alive. And the humidity keeps them upset all the time. Minnesota wins. You got the East Coast city folk in the bedroom always getting dressed up, always working, never sleeping. Those folks are always tired. Minnesota wins again. And then you got the whole center of America, eating fried everything, drinking, fighting, stockpiling all the guns. Now, those folks live in constant fear. Minnesota wins, yet again,” he says.
“Everything you just said was a whole lot of ridiculousness,” I say.
“True. But had you going, didn’t I? I just made all that up on the spot. Impressive, huh?”
“No. Because you left out Florida.”
“Floridians … We keep those folks in the basement,” he says.
I’m laughing, which makes me angry. How weird is that? It feels wrong to be angry because I’m laughing. But I am. I’m angry that HE made me laugh. I’m angry that I let him and Wendy play dress-up with me. The only reason I let them do it was because it slipped my mind that I was supposed to hate them. I forgot. How could I forget such an important thing? Now they’ll think I’m their friend. Well, I’m not. Now they think what they did to me and my mom doesn’t much matter because I’m smiling and laughing and appear to be fine. Well, I’m not. They must think I forgive them. Well, I don’t. I never will.
I wipe the smile off my face and remember all the days and nights that I wished I had a dad. But mine left one day and never came back.
“Give it a try. What about the folks in Hawaii?” he asks.
“No thanks,” I say, and turn my eyes toward the window. I bet he noticed the shift in my voice. I hope so. Let’s just get this boot camp thingy over with so we can go our separate ways again.
“Oh, I see. Still upset, are we? Okay. Be upset. Be a hard, impenetrable wall made of angry steel and furious concrete. But remember, every wall eventually comes down. And not always by sledgehammers and bulldozers, but sometimes by tiny forks of laughter and a spoonful of kindness, chipping away at it, day by day.”
“Was that supposed to be profound? Tiny forks of laughter? Spoonful of … I mean, that was worse than your America-is-a-house thing,” I say.
He reaches over and opens his glove compartment and pulls out a tiny fork. “Your wall will come down, Benjamin. I know this because I will not stop chipping away at it.”
“You keep a tiny fork in your Jeep?” I ask.
“Doesn’t everyone?” he says.
I immediately look away, forcing my eyes to the window again, because a smile almost formed on my face. Not that what he said was funny, but because of a memory that floated back to me. On one of our many drives from Duluth to Grand Portage, when I was small, we’d pack the car full of food because there weren’t many stops on the way back then. In doing so, we’d always have our glove compartment full of spoons, forks, ketchup packets, and napkins.
“I guess I should tell you about George now,” he says, sensing that I’m no longer willing to be in a happy-laughy mood.
“I don’t really care one way or the other,” I say, keeping my wall strong and intact.
“Wendy had a husband named Michael. Michael and Wendy have a son, George. He’s twelve now. A year younger than you. When he was nine, his father took him camping. They’d go every summer, just the two of them. And one night, on their way home, they were hit by a drunk driver. Michael was killed instantly. George was injured and recovered after a few months of physical therapy. But mentally, he’s still in bad shape. He hasn’t left the house since. Won’t go outside at all. Hardly ever leaves his room.”
“Does he remember the crash?”
“He won’t talk about it. He and his dad were very close. Now the poor kid’s terrified of everything. And angry,” my dad says.
I can’t imagine what life would be like not being able to go outside. Being afraid of everything. He probably relives the crash every night. I’ve seen enough movies to know that car accident victims are constantly haunted by the collisions. The grinding of steel on steel, mangled metal, shattered glass, the stuff of nightmares. No wonder he plays video games all day. That’s all he really can do. That’s probably the only time he sees daylight … through a blue-pixeled sky and a yellow digital sun.
“That sucks.” I don’t really know what else to say.
“As you can imagine, George is not a very happy kid anymore. It’s been extremely tough with him, but it is slowly getting better. Day by day.”
“Wendy seems okay, though. I mean, at least she seems happy,” I say.
“Like anyone would, she too took it really hard. She lost her husband and her son’s happiness. She was extremely depressed. She needed help. Around the same time, I was receiving help for my problems. That’s where we met. And we’ve been each other’s solid rocks ever since.”
“You guys met at some rehab for damaged people?” I ask.
“What helped us is exactly what is going to help you,” he says.
“The Native boot camp?” I ask.
“You can call it that if you like.”
“It can’t be too Native. I mean, if they let a…” I trail off.
“A white woman in? Do you believe a person who helps injured crows would refuse to help an injured pigeon? We were broken birds who needed help. Skin and feathers don’t really matter much when the pain is the same.”
I stare straight ahead at the road. “I’ve seen Karate Kid. Wax on, wax off. I don’t need some old guy spilling all his wisdom onto me while I wash his car and walk his dog. I know stealing is technically wrong. Fighting is bad. Blah blah blah. I just do it because … I don’t know. It’s fun,” I say.
“Fun. Well, look where all that fun landed you. Almost in juvenile hall. That sound fun?” he asks.
“No. But I’ll be more careful next time.”
“Sooner or later, you’ll end up spending the rest of your life regretting there ever was a next time.”
“What do you know about regret? You being a deadbeat worked out just fine for you. I mean, look, now you have a Wendy and a house and this Jeep, and you’re, like, an artist now,” I say, and don’t even care that my tone has venom behind it.
“I regret what I put you and your mother through every single day of my life. But we can’t change the past. All we can do is try to design our future and make sure we are better people than we were the day before.”
“So that’s why the whole house is designed to be some walk-in vacation spot, right? George can’t go to any of these places, so you bring those places to him?” I ask.
“Wendy and I try to encourage him by showing him what’s out there awaiting him. The entire world.”
“Well, from what I can see, it doesn’t look like it’s working.”
“Nothing great happens overnight. These things take time.”
“Why doesn’t George just do the boot camp thingy?”
“George has to ask for help. That’s how it works.”
“I’m here and I didn’t ask for help.”
“Your mother asked for you.”
“So, can’t Wendy ask for George?”
“We’ve tried. George is still too angry. He needs to want the help. And before you say you don’t want the help, ask yourself whether that’s true,” he says.
“I don’t want the help, but I have to do it. It’s court ordered, remember? So, I’ll give the boot camp a try, but if someone tries to hypnotize me, I’m leaving. And they’re not reading my palm, using tarot cards, or telling me stuff about my astrological sign,” I say, setting my boundaries. “And no hippie meditation yoga either.”
“We’re here.”
I imagined we’d be out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded completely by forest for some sacred tribal meeting. But nope, we have entered the parking lot of a large wooden building where a dozen other cars are parked, filling up over half the lot.
“Are we still in Grand Portage?” I ask.
“We are in Grand Marais now. I took you here once when you were five.”
I don’t remember this place at all. My dad parks the Jeep, and we step outside. It’s still cold, but it’s not beating me down the way it did earlier. Just the occasional slap in the face. As we get closer to the building, there is one thing that feels very Native American to this place. The music. The drums.