IT STARTED ON THE morning of the last day of the Geshig Labor Day Powwow.
Somehow, Brenda’s current work shift had turned her into a morning person. She never got home before midnight and rarely fell asleep before one a.m., but she always woke up at nine a.m. sharp. Perhaps only by coincidence it was the same time the Red Pine Diner opened its doors, though it didn’t start serving alcohol until eleven.
Brenda knew this as she dismounted her van and walked into the diner, ordering a Denver omelet, hash browns, and black coffee. She figured she would have plenty of time to eat and be on her way before the temptation of the taps opened.
And she did. Her plate was finished by ten o’clock and she spent the next half hour reading the previous day’s Geshig Herald. Absolutely nothing new was happening in town. It was just as cyclic and unchanging as usual, but after many years of not being able to handle the news, she now read it as often as she could.
Right as she finished the crimes report, a woman sat across from her.
“Who’s this dirty ol’ bitch?” she said.
Brenda looked up and saw her cousin Henrietta for the first time in three months. She was wearing a dark blue flannel and jeans, and her once ink-black hair was peppered with silver at the roots. Brenda’s own hair had begun to go this way long ago—either stress or just being forty-seven—but a frequent dyeing routine kept that hidden.
“The bitch that always kicked your ass growing up,” Brenda replied. “How you been?”
“Same as ever. Still at the tables. You still scrubbing toilets?”
Brenda had been working as a housekeeper in the hotel and casino just outside of town. For three years she had managed to keep the job, longer than any of her other jobs at the casino, and she had no plans to break that streak. “Every day. And they’re finally letting us keep the tips guests leave behind.”
“What’s that, like a buck and their leftover pizza?”
“On a good day.”
“I keep telling you to deal. Our tips are like a thousand a night at Magic.”
“Nah, I’m fine where I’m at.”
It was the first time in many years that Brenda could say that sort of thing and mean it. She had a steady job, a cozy house, and her children were not constantly hitting her up for money anymore. Life was comfortable, and Brenda had no desire to change that.
Henrietta led a different kind of life. For the next half hour, she filled Brenda in on the turbulence of the past few months. She and the two children she had custody of had been kicked out of her mother’s house, and the father of her other two children had rescinded her visitation rights. Her children had stolen her wallet and spent the remainder of her paycheck on cigarettes and beer, bought by an older cousin. She spent one night in the drunk tank and barely avoided another by sweet-talking the reservation cop with the as-of-yet unfulfilled promise of a wild night.
Brenda watched her cousin thoughtfully while she prattled, but her ears were barely attentive. It was nothing out of the ordinary for most of her family members, and probably better since Henrietta managed to stay employed through the ordeal. She even had some cash on hand, which she used to buy two bottles of beer.
“Oh no, that’s fine,” Brenda said as the waitress left their table behind. “I’m okay with water.”
“C’mon, you can have just one.”
“It’s not even noon.”
“We’re old bitches now. We don’t need to pretend we care about five o’clock.”
Brenda did not enjoy being called an old bitch, especially by a cousin older than her. Henrietta laughed and prodded more and more. Brought up this party and that one and how the two used to be.
“Remember when we stole a watermelon from Nelson’s? Brought it all the way across town and smashed it on the train tracks.”
“Must have been you. I don’t steal shit.”
“You hid it in your shirt!”
Brenda rolled her eyes, tapped her fingers, and sighed. What was there to be nostalgic about if she could hardly remember those days? Those blackout nights. Sticky hangover mornings. The only clear memories were how sick she could make herself, yet still get up and start over.
“Just for old times, since we’re old-timers now,” Henrietta pleaded one last time.
When the waitress came back with two frosty green bottles, Brenda followed in the footsteps of the many old barflies she had known since childhood and had a drink before noon. She thought about her book of meditations from AA class. All those inspirational quotes that started with Just for today. Does that work both ways? Just for today I can drink.
She had barely had a sip when the doors to the diner opened and a family walked inside. Gerly Pokegama, her daughter, Maya Kelliher, and Maya’s grandmother Kayla, all three beautiful and fine-skinned. The Kellihers married and bred young. Maya’s father, Kayden, even died young thanks to her son, Jared, a thought that made her take another drink. And another until her one drink became two, and Brenda’s old dance began.
The familiars came back, the lightness on her skin like small drafts in winter, the warmth that began in her shoulders and spread in every direction, and finally the laughs. She and Henrietta were soon cackling at everything they said to each other. But her self-consciousness did not disappear with her sobriety. She wasn’t even sure if they saw her, but she wanted to leave the sight of the Kellihers quickly.
Fifteen minutes and one phone call later, tabs paid, and a scatter of green bottles on the plastic cloth covering the picnic table, Brenda and Henrietta stepped into a reservation transport van. The bingo shuttle. The last vehicle Indians from Geshig would see before the hearse.
Brenda scrambled into the back seat and tried to sit upright but on the first turn, her head became heavy as a ball of dough. She flopped onto the seat and closed her eyes. She laughed silently to herself and thought about her children.
All three, Jared, Natalie, and Tasha, were born to be dancers. The potential in them had shone brightly all through their youth and then slowly tapered away with the onset of puberty. Natalie and Tasha both stopped dancing around their teen years, Jared before ten.
As soon as she began to walk, Natalie did not like to stop moving. Her movements were fast and clumsy, and she would stomp around the house like a yearling in summer. Tasha was a late bloomer when it came to just about everything, and walking took her a lot longer than her older sister. But such patience and shyness gave her an easier, gentler gait.
When the music played, their polarities switched. Natalie’s feet were precise with the beat, and her posture was perfect for the jingle dress. She danced with pride holding up her shoulders and even after the last beat she did not break her statuesque composure. As soon as she was off the circle, she was back to her wild, clumsy self.
Tasha was not a wild child. She did not like to roughhouse with her sister, and she would not set foot near her cousins who were rougher than Natalie ever was. Typical for the youngest child, Brenda’s mother and aunt said. The girl was a gentle shadow behind her mother, until the day in Headstart when she was given an electric-pink shawl with blue butterflies.
Tasha flapped the shawl above her head like a startled chicken and screamed as she twirled in circles on the grass. It was as if the tiny gossamer sheet had freed her. She had no rhyme or reason to her movements and rarely stopped at the end of the song. But that’s okay, Brenda thought, when she saw her youngest child at her first powwow. The Tiny Tot dance was not a place for precision or judgment. It was pure innocence, and seeing her shadow come to life was one of the proudest moments in her life.
Now the bingo shuttle came to a sudden stop and Brenda rolled right off the seat and onto the mossy gray floor dappled with cigarette burns.
“You okay, ho?” Henrietta’s face popped over the seat and stared at the drunken mess she had created.
“I’m fine!” Brenda struggled to pull herself out of the tight space, finally managing to use a broken seat-belt strap as leverage. “I wanna dance!”
“Ain’t that kind of party, niij. Act sober or we’ll get kicked out.” Henrietta opened the van doors and smacked Brenda right on the ass as she jumped out onto the powwow grounds.
The pungency of fried food, tobacco, and campfires hit her. Even without seeing the whirlpool of Indians walking around the outer circle, she could tell it was a powwow with just a whiff. It used to remind her of home. Not her cozy shack, but that opaque sense of love and contentedness that she felt for brief moments when her children were young.
“Wanna get a hot dog?” Henrietta said. “I know you love a mouth full of wiener.”
Brenda draped her arm over her cousin’s shoulder and began to lead her toward one of the many concession stands at the edge of the circle. “We better get a few so you can sit on one in the bleachers.”
The two women laughed their way through the gate and into the circle. The events were usually heavily guarded to prevent this very situation, and this holiday weekend was no different, but being that Grand Entry had just started the guards were less inclined to make a scene or peel their eyes away from the high school girls.
Brenda and Henrietta stopped a few yards away from the inner circle, just behind the opening between two bleachers. For just a few seconds, Brenda could see the eagle staff and American flag in the center. The old men of the honor guard were dancing in place, feet stomping to the beat, and the next group of dancers were mixing in. The regalia shimmered with every color under the sun.
The moment was short lived as Henrietta took control of their conjoined adventure and led her farther around the circle. They passed three frybread stands before Henrietta decided on a rusty blue-and-white stand called Paula’s Perfect Breadstand, written in thick black Sharpie.
Hearing the crackle of the fryers and smelling the thick scent of flour suddenly made Brenda lose her appetite. Any dish that was served with the crustified paste that only rarely resembled real bread would have made her sick. Henrietta ordered an Indian taco loaded with every fixing they had, lettuce, jalapeños, diced tomatoes from a can, olives, sour cream, and Sam’s Club mild taco sauce.
Brenda ordered a bowl of hominy soup and hoped she could keep it down while Henrietta ate her own sloppy pile of grease. She stared at her first spoonful and wondered if it was worse than a taco. The chunk of ham was girthy and pink, with a strip of blackened skin on the end and a gelatinous worm of fat between skin and meat. The white puffs of hominy looked like punched-out toddler’s teeth.
The soup stayed down and Henrietta ate every part of the taco including the sauce on the bottom of the Styrofoam plate.
“I’m gonna get another,” Henrietta said.
“No!” Brenda latched herself on to her cousin once again and pulled her away from the concession stands. “Too much grease. You’ll get zits all over your nasty ass.”
“You can pop them for me like you used to.”
They began to walk the circle again, and when she looked to the center all the dancers were just now mixing in. Had so little time passed? Brenda felt like she had walked onto the grounds and eaten hours ago.
The children were the final group of dancers to blend into the crowd. Even through her drunken haze she could feel the song was coming to an end. All dancers except the children stopped in unison and silence followed the echo of the last beat.
The powwow emcee’s voice blared over the speakers. “Ah-hoka! Look at that beautiful Grand Entry! If you look up you can see two bald eagles soaring high!”
Brenda craned her neck and saw the black lines circling above. They always showed up at the gatherings. Because of the spiritual connection. Or because they were scavengers and they knew there would be scraps of food when everyone left. She was not a fan of eagles. Or eagle tattoos, like all three of her children’s fathers had. Chris on his shoulder, and Zhaawanong across his back. Dominic also had ink, but of images rare this far north: Guadalupe, a rosary, and a golden eagle on a cactus.
“Always, in recognition of our veterans, it’s time to honor the ogichidaag in our community with the flag song. Holding the veterans’ flag for the Geshig Honor Guard is Vinny Kelliher,” the emcee said.
Brenda stopped walking and stared into the center of the circle. Vincent was an old man. Short and stout with skin like wet peanut shells. Though he wasn’t speaking now, he could have been heard over the crowd and the speakers. He was a man who spoke as if he had never retired from his drill-sergeant days. He had served in three wars and lived to tell the tale.
But his grandson Kayden couldn’t even survive the reservation into adulthood. When Brenda saw Vinny—or any of the Kellihers—it was as if her son’s trial had started all over and she could do nothing to save him again.
“Let’s go,” Brenda said, tugging on Henrietta’s arm. “I need a drink.”
Her cousin had no objections. “We can’t ride the shuttle again. You know anyone here with a car?”
“Let’s just walk to the Classic Shack.”
Half a mile from the powwow grounds was a local watering hole, strategically placed by the non-Indian owners to make money during the summer. Most of the drunks kicked out of the grounds were either coming from or going to the Classic.
At the bar, Henrietta tried to order them another round of the disgusting beer she had given them earlier in the day.
“No,” Brenda insisted. “I remember what I’m doing.” She slammed one of her last three twenty-dollar bills on the counter. “Patron. No chaser.”
“Just one?” the bartender asked.
“Nope.”
She and her cousin clinked their glasses, took the shots, and wandered over to the gaming area. The last things Brenda remembered about her time at the Classic Shack were losing at cricket, which gave her another pint of Bud Light each time, and shutting off her cell phone at four p.m. when she was marked late for the first time in three years, and then eventually, as a no-show.
THE FIRST THINGS SHE saw when she came to were water and porcelain as hunks of whole hominy and chalky pink slime covered her toilet bowl. As her mind slowly came into focus, she remembered every awful thing and person that had led her to this place. Not just her cousin Henrietta or Kayden Kelliher’s daughter.
Who she remembered first was Eunice Lafournier. The woman her parents abandoned her with for a few months. Her Good Mother. Good in the way her own mother should have been: loving, gentle, warm.
Brenda did not hate Eunice for not fighting her birth parents when they came back and took her away, but she had a hard time remembering the love she used to feel for the Lafourniers. She knew it was there, a first memory of laughs and just enough food to not go hungry, a cabin made of faded red pine. Eunice was a mother and Hazel a sister. Now Eunice was a memory underneath reservation soil and Hazel just another cousin who never bothered to check in.
The sharp taste of the mouthwash hit her tongue and almost made her spew again, but instead she began to laugh. The mouthwash was not as sharp as it could have been since she had switched to the alcohol-free variety years ago. It was her first step toward sobriety after realizing how low and desperate she had sunk, buying Listerine at the Geshig convenience because the liquor store was closed.
Just like now, she had ended up painting the toilet, only then with a minty-fresh twist. At her first AA meeting, her group leader told her she was lucky she had expelled it because she could have died.
“What if I want to?” was her response, one she recalled in shame now, even though she felt like roadkill just standing in her bathroom.
“Is that what you really feel, Brenda?” the leader said. “Tell us about it.”
Quickly she had apologized but refused to elaborate on what made her say that.
Brenda stumbled from room to room in her house, switching on every light and looking for any clues. If she had found Henrietta or some other cousin on her couch—or god forbid some barfly in her bed like she might have done years ago—things might have cleared up. How she got home. When she left the Classic Shack. Where her cell phone was.
She sat on the empty couch in the living room, sipped a mug of water, and tried to clear her head. This was nothing new to her, just a few years too late and unwelcome. After a minute or an hour, she could stand up again and pace the room. On the walls were pictures of both her girls. Natalie and Tasha, and their own children.
It was the faces of her three grandchildren that had pushed her into sobriety. Natalie had one gorgeous son, Adrian, ten years old and wild. Tasha had five-year-old twin girls, Mariposa and Memengwaa. Brenda had been to each of their births, but afterward her daughters did not trust her around their children.
“I’m not going to let you do to them what you did to us,” Tasha had said. “What you did to Jared.”
Mother and daughter stared and each waited for the other to say something to take the sting away. In that moment, Brenda wanted to give in to anger, scream, slap her daughter like she was a little girl again, but the twins’ cooing in harmony in the crib stopped her.
None of Jared’s pictures were on the wall anymore. All of them were boxed away. Baby pictures. Grade school. Birthdays. She had considered giving every photo to his father or his sisters but when she had the chance to rid herself of the reminders, she could not remove the box from the house.
The only photo of Jared that mattered anymore was his mug shot.
Whatever was left in her stomach suddenly flooded to her throat and undid the work of the mouthwash. She made it to the kitchen sink before any could land on her floor. None was solid. When the heaving finally stopped and she was ready for sleep, the clock on the oven read four minutes past midnight.
In the first dream she had after passing out, she was at the prison where Jared was rotting. Kayla Kelliher’s words, not her own. He was not a rot. He was her flower. But the guards at the prison would not bring him out. She sat at a gray table in a gray prison and the only color she could see was orange jumpsuits on faceless men and the guards never returned from the doors with Jared. There was nothing particularly gruesome about the dream, only that it felt like hours of waiting.
In the dream she had after waking up with a dry throat, getting a drink of water, and passing out again, she was at the tribal court. Her daughters were middle school aged again, and instead of just jumping a girl in the bathroom for her money, they killed her. The girl’s family was suing Brenda for ten million dollars and the court found her guilty of raising monsters.
She did not sleep much after that, but she could still feel that teetering sway and tight clench of her inner cheeks at the back of her mouth that told her the hangover hadn’t quite passed.
When she finally fell asleep mostly sober, there was no dream but a queasy yet settled peace.
CHUCK BIRSTON WAS KNOWN as a hard-ass manager, and he did not hesitate to fire his “problem children.” The hotel was one of two departments that allowed for workers as young as sixteen, but the majority of his problem children were middle-aged, like Brenda.
It was a shock to her that she was even hired by him after her botched jobs over the years. Especially because Chuck was one of the few white managers. All of the casino’s jobs were Indian preference, which generally meant leniency to fellow Indian employees. A worker could miss two days a week per month and keep their job with the right story and manager.
Brenda had neither.
She walked into the hotel with her slate-gray polo and apron, did not make eye contact with Lily, the front desk lead, clocked in as if nothing was wrong, and began to load her cart with cleaning supplies.
“When does he want to see me?” she asked Lily before she got too far into the day’s work.
“After your first wing is done.”
That was probably a good sign, Brenda thought. If he was planning on firing her he would just do it, but still, the graveness in Lily’s usually chipper voice did not go unnoticed by her.
The rooms on the first floor were a disaster. First Monday after a powwow was always a mess, so maybe it was just her anxiety that made this round shittier than usual.
Two rooms had clogged toilets, and one bathroom had three footprints of excrement from the toilet to the bath. Were they toddler-size feet she might have been less annoyed, but these were gigantic, probably size-14 men’s.
Less than two hours passed and she was done with the round. It was almost time for her break when she saw the shape of her manager appear in the doorway of the room and beckon her. He did not wait to see if she saw him or followed.
She placed a chocolate-mint candy on a pillow, made sure the corners were smoothed out just right, and then marched the cart back to the front desk slow as she could.
Three years of perfect attendance had to count for something. That was rare even among the few departments that didn’t shuffle employees in and out like speed dating. She left the cart outside the front desk counter and walked into Chuck’s office.
“I heard you had a wild time at Classics,” Chuck said. He spoke with his eyes focused on an open file on his desk, as if she was not even there.
“Who did you hear it from?”
“I can’t reveal that.”
“I know. And I’m not going to deny it.”
“So, as I understand it, you were drunk on the powwow grounds, during a powwow weekend, and you missed your shift because you were throwing darts. Is that what you’re not going to deny?”
“Yes. I was drunk. I fucked up. I’m not going to make an excuse for myself.”
Chuck closed her file and finally met her gaze. But the manager Chuck Birston was nowhere to be found between the crow’s-feet. Instead, Brenda thought she could see something vaguely resembling concern.
“Are you okay?”
“. . . what?”
“Are you okay? Is something going on?”
Brenda’s words caught in her throat and she stared at him with utter confusion. Those were not the kinds of questions he asked, and it instantly made her uncomfortable.
“I have your attendance records for the past ten years. All the departments you worked in. The other managers really don’t like you.” He laughed. That was closer to his usual manner. “But it looks like you’ve turned things around.”
“I know. I’ve tried really hard. It was—”
“You also attended AA a couple years ago, right?”
“Excuse me? Why the hell do you know that?”
“It’s all here in your file. Information you freely gave to at least one of the managers. I’ll ask again. Are you okay? Something had to have pushed you off that wagon.”
She knew she could never have it in her to bring the words I’m not okay to her lips, her eyes weren’t so tight about it. Two snail-slow tears trailed over her cheeks. “I’ll never see my son again . . .”
“I didn’t know you had a son.”
“Jared. He’s gonna be thirty soon . . . Do you know the Kellihers?”
“If they’re a local family, I don’t really. Truthfully I’m never really on this reservation except for work.”
She laughed and wiped her tears. There was always that one white person at the casino who didn’t know the rez and didn’t care. “Jared killed a boy named Kayden. They were only seventeen. That’s like, still a baby, ain’t it? You remember being seventeen? I don’t remember forty or thirty or even last year as much as I remember being a teenager.”
“I see. So where does your absence come in?”
She rolled her eyes just as the tissue dabbed at the sides. “There’s this little girl. Maya Kelliher . . . I think I know more about her than my own two baby granddaughters . . . She was Kayden’s.”
“He had a child before he died?”
Brenda shook her head and felt the stiffness of the past fifteen years creaking in her bones. “No. He never got to meet her. She was born six months after he died . . . I saw her at the bar. I swear, I wasn’t going to touch the booze. I never do. Ask my daughters, ask the waitresses. I never order beer . . .” She decided to try to force more tears and leave Henrietta out of the story. There was a slim chance Chuck would be lenient, but zero chance if he knew she’d been drinking before the girl walked in. “But I saw Kayden’s daughter. Still a baby. But starting to be a woman. Another little Indian child that doesn’t know their daddy . . . all because of my son . . .”
She held her breath to make the sob that escaped more dramatic.
“Hmm. I see. Well, I’ll have you sign this and ask you to mind your attendance from now on.”
He handed her a three-layer carbon-copy document. It was a notice of a one-day suspension, date to be determined.
“. . . really?”
“Really, what? Call-ins on powwow weekends are automatic suspensions.”
“Thank you, Mr. Birston.”
“Good luck with the rest of the wing. You didn’t hear it from me, but the other housekeepers gave you the worst rooms for ditching them.”
She managed a laugh and stood up.
For the rest of the day, no amount of fecal matter or mysterious bed stains could bring down her sense of relief.
A MONTH AFTER BRENDA’S one-day bender, she brought the photos of Jared out from the basement. They were untouched by dust and in the same condition as when she packed them away. No moisture damage or fading.
Natalie and Tasha took one look at the photos and declined her offer to take them.
“I mean, why?” Tasha said. “Honestly, it’s not like we know him that well.”
“Yeah, Mom. I mean, do you even visit him? Neither of us have in years.”
“Does that mean he’s not your brother?” Brenda asked.
“I’d rather not answer that. You won’t like it.” Tasha still had a razor tongue.
“Okay. If you’re going to be like that, then I can be like that too, right?” Brenda closed her eyes. “I don’t want them right now. I don’t want to get rid of them but I don’t want them here.”
“Are you gonna want them back? We can put them in storage or something,” Natalie suggested.
Outside the children’s voices shouted, some game about the small tree stumps in her yard. “I want them kept safe as possible. Can one of you please keep them?”
“Fine,” Natalie said. “I’ll take them. No idea where I’ll find the room but I’ll keep them.” There was a slight petulance to her tone, the brattiness of earlier years. “Can I have a cigarette?”
She gave both of her daughters a few of her menthols, hugged them, and they left. The grandkids went with. She wanted them to stay the night for the first time in weeks, but her daughters had found out about the relapse. A promise is a promise, they said, and she would need to stay sober longer to win back their trust. Again.
Brenda sat in a mesh lawn chair and stared at her empty yard, where her grandchildren were supposed to be. Instead, there was nothing but a white propane tank, a clothesline, and undisturbed grass. The drink holder on her chair held a diet soda, and in the corner of her eye the silver can occasionally looked like a beer.