Brotherhood
THEY CALL US TRIBE. Band. Clan. When times were tough, our tribes banded together, no matter what clan. When we needed food and shelter we shared. When they fought us, we fought back. When we needed protection, we protected each other.
Now they call us gangs. But these are not our words.
My father valued brotherhood above all else. When he talked about his navy career, he always swore about the leaders and the organization itself. But not his brothers. “I miss the brotherhood. There was nothing like it,” he’d say once he drank enough beers.
“I want a brother,” I told him.
“Your mother can’t have more babies.”
“Why?”
“Her belly hurts too much. It won’t work.”
“Then can I have a baby? He can be my brother.”
My father’s smile was always lopsided when he was drunk. It wasn’t a happy look. It was a sad, desperate smile that spoke to his longing. “No. You can’t have any babies. You’re gonna stay my little girl forever. My little Gerly.”
He was right. After that, I was always Gerly to him. Even when he called from prison and I refused to talk to him, my mother would tell me that my father was asking for his Gerly.
Two Sisters
MY PARENTS TRIED TO explain to me over and over how the baby in the other woman’s stomach was my brother or sister but I would not understand. My grandmother said it was because my eyes were too “green with envy” that I couldn’t get it. I tried to tell her that she was wrong, that I really wanted a baby brother or sister but she didn’t hear me any more than I heard my parents.
Angela, my Angie, she was born one month after my fifth birthday to a gestational surrogate. She was a plump baby and stayed that way into her child- and adulthood. I proved my grandmother wrong by loving her as soon as she was brought home. I did not fully understand the specifics of her birth until years later, but I never cared.
“She looks like me,” I told my mother over and over when I first held her in my arms.
“That’s because you look like me,” she said, taking her back from me. I was only allowed to hold her for a few moments at a time.
Later when we were alone, my father asked me if I was okay with a little sister instead of a little brother. I told him yes, because she was so cute and looked like me. I don’t think I was disappointed at all. “Good. Because we won’t be able to give you a brother.”
If he hadn’t been secretly disappointed about that, maybe he wouldn’t have missed out on raising his second daughter. Maybe he wouldn’t have sought out that brotherhood that he craved.
Maybe he wouldn’t have robbed a casino with his gang and got caught. You know about that, right?
That was my father. But he’s nothing to me now but a robber. And a murderer.
Defense
I WAS TWELVE YEARS old when I saw big, tough Kayden Kelliher cry.
Back then I was one of the competitive kids in gym class. My favorite was floor hockey but whatever game we played I gave it my all. I think it was because of my name. Before my father went to prison I liked it because I hated my full name. By the time I got to middle school and he was locked up, I despised both. Who wants to be called girlie? No one. Not girls or boys.
Every time I heard it, I was motivated to not be what it implied. I never wore skirts or bright colors. Never fixed my hair. It was basketball shorts and jerseys for me.
The game was close. My team was only one point behind, and because our junior varsity team’s best player was on the other, that was a big deal. I was more determined than ever to win, and we both played hard.
Kayden towered over me and his arms waved out far and wide, but I was faster and more agile. Like he danced shawl and I was the grass dancer. Near the end of the court I dropped the ball and he dove for it. I was close behind him and ready to try to block when I saw his hand reach behind him toward me. Before I could react, his hand was on my chest.
I froze, stared at him, and then ran out of the gym. In the counselor’s office, I told her about what had happened, or what I thought had happened, with tears in my eyes. She listened to every word and wrote up a harassment report on Kayden.
Later there was a meeting between me, the counselor, the principal, and Kayden. He was asked to explain why he had groped me. He broke down crying, saying it was just an accident because we were playing basketball and both of us were trying hard to win. The adults didn’t let me tell my side of it. After he spoke, they asked me if what he said made sense, if I was sure that he did it on purpose, if I wasn’t just imagining something wrong.
I told them yes and accepted his apology. The report was thrown out and no action was taken. Me and Kayden did not talk about it until five years later, on the first night we made love. When we created our little girl together.
Just two months later, my daughter’s father was stolen from us.
Clash
THERE WERE NO ADULTS around when Kayden and Jared fought for the first time. It was the fall of our sophomore year and we’d just started dating. I hadn’t even kissed him yet. The most I was willing to do with him was hold his hand as we walked through the hallways.
One morning in school, he seemed agitated during breakfast. He told me he didn’t get enough sleep because he was up late thinking about me. But it wasn’t like him to stay up late, nor was he easily bothered. I didn’t press him on the subject, and when he told me he needed to go “take care of something,” I was immediately suspicious.
I watched him walk toward the D wing of the school. It was a wing with few classrooms or teachers because of budget cuts over the past few years of poor test scores. Somehow this area wasn’t much noticed by the staff.
I didn’t follow Kayden down the wing. It would’ve been too obvious. Instead I walked around the other three wings in a big loop until I found where he and a group of three other boys were. I could hear them around the corner discussing something that sounded serious.
“He doesn’t care who your grandfather is.” It was Jared Haltstorm’s voice I heard. “He wants your family to know they’re marked now.”
“Marked? What’s that supposed to mean?” That was Kayden.
“It means we’re gonna take you all the fuck out, that’s what.”
“Don’t even fucking go there, Jared. Some things you just don’t play around with.”
“Like arson?”
“Arson? Why the fuck are you bringing up arson?”
“Because Levi knows it was your bitch-ass that did it. He knew how much product was in there and you burned that shit up. You killed him. You’re gonna get yours for that.”
“If you wanna keep talking, little boy, keep doing it. Don’t you fuckin’ dare accuse me of shit I didn’t do.”
The sounds went from voices to hard hits and angry grunts. I peered around the corner and saw Kayden and Jared were on the ground, each trying to land punches. I watched for a few moments, not really sure why, but then I ran. The smart thing would have been to run for an adult but instead I went to my locker, grabbed my books, and walked to class.
Later, after his suspension, Kayden told me that a teacher happened to walk by and radioed for the school officer to break it apart. But he wouldn’t tell me who won the fight, or if whatever problems they had were resolved. What he did tell me was that Jared was mad at him because he thought he was trying to steal his girlfriend.
I never told Kayden I knew he had lied right to my face.
Odaanisan (His Daughter)
IN A HOTEL IN Minneapolis, where the whole school was staying for the state championship, Kayden and I planned our future. When the celebration had settled and Kayden had the championship medal around his neck, we made love the first time.
We knew before we started that we wanted a family. It was almost an unspoken decision, but after we finished and for the second time that night he was out of breath, he said, “I want an Ojibwe name.”
“What?”
Then he smiled at me with those big wolfy teeth. “For our son.”
“Nope,” I said. “Our sons. And daughters. All four of them.”
“Why four?”
“Why not?”
My question was answered less than two months later when I held him in my arms as he died.
Gii-shoomiingweni (He Smiled)
JARED WAS ASKED TO join the basketball team by a lot of people. His friends who had joined. Coaches. Even Kayden asked him about it in class, where both of them knew better than to bring up their issues. He would have brought height, something that their lineup usually lacked.
But the lack of Jared did not matter. Our team went all the way to state and won without him. I wonder sometimes if that made him jealous. Seeing a band of brothers unite and reach their goal instead of just lying around town and getting high. Maybe he would not have been a good player. Not every tall Indian has the talent or love for it. But the coaches would have tried to make a good player out of him, and even sitting on the bench throughout the season would have still given him a ribbon. A place. Respect.
At the party I was the only sober one. I knew I was pregnant with Maya, so Kayden would not let me drink. He did not drink for the first few hours either but as the night grew darker and the teammates became wilder, Kayden had no choice but to try to keep up.
Midnight was when his mood fell. I noticed he kept glancing at his phone as the hour passed and tried to ask him what was wrong. He said it was nothing but by then I knew what it sounded like when he was lying to me.
He asked me to go inside and get some swamp tea ready for him. His family drank it a lot and claimed it cured all kinds of things. I nodded and walked inside. Then, instead of walking into the kitchen and preparing his drink, I walked out the back door and hid behind his family’s big white propane tank.
Kayden did not want tea. He wanted me distracted.
I watched him leave the fire and walk toward a thicket of woods behind his house. After there was a good distance between us, I followed him. I took off my shoes to quiet my steps. I held my hands over my stomach, over Maya, when I first heard Kayden’s voice shout.
“Levi! Where the fuck are you? We’re gonna finish this.”
His first scream was worst. It was pain and shock. Jared later said he had caught Kayden by surprise and slashed him across the back. The rest of his screams came quieter until finally it sounded like he was throwing up. By the time I reached him, he was flat on the ground and Jared was running into the darkness. Just like me, Kayden was holding his stomach, convulsing, trying to breathe.
I remember that the sky was dark. There was no moon and the stars did not give much light. But still, I could see his face when I knelt to him. His eyes were scared but when he saw me, he smiled his wolf grin and grabbed my hand.
The Arsonist
I CALLED THE COPS with Kayden’s cell phone. And then I hid it in my shirt. If you read the reports, you won’t see it listed at the crime scene. It was found later in his bedroom, where I hid it after reading through and deleting his messages.
When I knew he was dead, I lost all control of my thoughts. I was screaming and crying and yet somehow I had managed to find his cell phone in his sweater, make the call, and then hide it.
I had had my suspicions about him for a while. Ever since the fight between him and Jared, I knew there were parts of his life that he did not tell me about but that was easy to ignore when he was holding my hand and treating me like a princess.
I don’t know how I ended up at my grandmother’s house but I woke up the next morning aching all over. My eyes, my head, my chest. My stomach. I held my stomach and prayed for hours. I was so scared that I was going to lose Maya that my body was shaking. I just knew it was going to happen any moment.
Kayden wanted children so badly. He had wanted to be a father for so long and he wasn’t going to be. I called out his name over and over. When my voice was gone and my tears were dried, it was then I noticed that my stomach no longer hurt. I stopped worrying. I kept grieving but I stopped worrying.
When I could pull myself out of bed I took a shower and then finally opened the cell phone. Kayden wasn’t stupid. Most of the gang members weren’t but there was one who stupidly made his text signature ~NDN BLOODZ 4 LIFE!~. Even if it hadn’t been there, I could read between the lines of the texts and see that Kayden was in the gang. The very last text he got was a warning from an unknown number that Levi Dotson was on his way to kick your ass for burning Lonnie’s house. I could barely hold the phone.
That’s what Kayden died for. Lonnie Barclay’s meth house.
Did he burn it down? I don’t know. I’ll never know and I don’t care, but regardless of if he did, it doesn’t mean he deserved what happened. I struggled with that for a long time, Marion. Wondering how I could grieve for a man I loved who did things I despised. Things that took my father away from me. Kayden knew that, and he joined the gang anyway and hid it from me.
You know the rumors about the tribal council, right? Well, I can’t confirm any of those, but I know two things happened in the year after Kayden’s death. My mother, still married to my father, got an approval for a new house to be built. She’d only meant to request some funds for repairs, but the offices urged her to apply and they expedited it.
Then later that year, another woman got a house too. Brenda Haltstorm. She still lives there. I don’t know her well, but Kayden’s mom says she’s doing better. Anyway, she lived in a bad trailer on the edge of town and also found herself approved for a building project. The tribal college kids built it, so the council basically paid themselves.
Odd, isn’t it? The wife of a prisoner, a known gang leader, gets a free house, same as the mother of a murderer, a murderer who was in the same gang.
Now, I’ve got no proof of this or I would’ve come forward long ago. But I never visited my father after that. Maybe I will, but I ain’t in a hurry for it. I know the day I do, the only thing I’m going to ask him is why, and no matter what he says, I’m gonna walk away no worse for wear. Because I’ve already been through the worst.
No, I don’t grieve for Kayden every day. I don’t grieve for him in the way I used to. I will miss Kayden every day of my life, and I see his face every time I look at Maya, but sometimes I can’t even remember that part of my life easily. I only remember being pregnant and crying over a man who betrayed me by joining a gang, but who I loved with every part of my being, my spirit.