Fort Collins, Colorado, May 1993.
It is midafternoon, and I’m sitting in our kitchen, skimming through the tribal newspaper, the Charkoosta. I get the paper weekly, but because I live in another state, my news is a week behind everyone else’s. Still, I keep abreast of what is important on the rez, through the articles, the topics of discussion, the debates, the Tribal Court Judgments, and especially the letters to the editor. I look for names, familiar names, names I should know, names that no longer mean anything to me, if they ever did. This newspaper, the only remaining link to my tribe, is a golden gossamer thread. Each year the thread gets thinner, until one day, I believe, it will disappear.
Since the year I vowed not to attempt to return to the reservation or try to make contact with my birth family, I’ve never heard from my birth mom, Victoria. Slowly, she drifted to the edge of my thoughts, or perhaps I pushed her there, not wanting to acknowledge the seeming rejection. My focus was no longer concentrated on the family I sought, but on the family Rick and I had created. I began working at the University of Montana in 1984 as a purchasing technician. I took three months off when our first son, Christopher, was born in a snowstorm in early March 1987. I returned half-time in June. I loved those days of keeping my son near me, holding him in my arms in the middle of the night while rocking in the wicker rocker Rick had bought me prior to Chris’s birth. In the springtime, when the wind blew gentle and caressed his face, I laughed as he caught his breath. His eyes were dark blue. I argued they would stay blue. The physical anthropology professor, whose classes I took whenever I could, said they would turn brown, since that is the dominant gene. But my non-Native birth father must have carried a blue gene. Chris’s eyes eventually became green, the color of prairie grass on a spring day.
As summer came to a close, I was thankful I didn’t have to make a choice of whether to return to work full-time or not; Rick had accepted a job in Fort Collins, Colorado. We moved and bought a house that had more rooms than furniture. One day, when Chris was eighteen months old, I watched as he picked up the black-and-white round cow from his Fisher-Price farm set and brought it over to me, placing it in my hand, his smile broad and trusting. He trusted that I would accept his gift and say a heartfelt thank you. He trusted that love would be given by everyone, and that everyone would return his smile. He trusted that I would feed him when he was hungry, hug him if he got hurt, and hold him when he was tired, rocking him gently to sleep against my chest. In his world there were no worries that we would be separated from each other.
At eighteen months of age I imagine I didn’t worry about separation either, but I doubt I had the same trust that Chris did. That was the age when I was removed under the label of “neglect.” In that thought, that seeming memory, I saw Chris then, as me, small and dependent on people, bigger people, for everything. And I couldn’t imagine that sense of safety not being given to someone so young, so innocent, so trusting.
And that’s when the tears flowed, in a way they hadn’t in a long time. Chris tottered over then, making sure I was okay, and wiped one tear away with his hand, his face pulled into a look of worry. I pulled him onto my lap and hugged him so hard he wiggled, assuring him without words that I was fine. Chris relaxed then, folding himself into my body. He leaned his head on my shoulder, placed his thumb in his mouth, and shut his eyes just for a few moments as I rocked him gently back and forth. Within a moment my concern of caring for him was replaced by a wave of raw anger at Victoria.
How could anyone (she) allow one of their children (me) to be taken away? To not know where they were? To know she might never see them again? The notes scribbled in the margins of the social services records indicated they located her at a bar before the court hearing. How could she not have fought to keep me? To keep us? I looked down at the top of Chris’s golden-haired head and thought about his innocence, his full-hearted awe of the world around him and his interest, deep and exciting, of showing that world to me. And I cried, because I couldn’t understand, couldn’t comprehend, how she could just let us, let me, go?
The same thing happened when our youngest son, Dan, turned a year and a half old, and I wondered, once more, with such heartache, How could she have let us go, never making an attempt to keep us? That’s when I fully realized, I was not her. I couldn’t imagine letting my life get to such a point of chaos where my children were threatened with removal from my home. And I couldn’t imagine not doing whatever I needed to do to keep them.
So today, in early May, I read everything the tribal paper has to offer. I scan the headings, run through the news, scan the letters to the editor. Then one catches my eye. I read a few words, scan a few paragraphs, then I stop. I stop and I reread those words again, those first couple of paragraphs. Suddenly, my heart is pounding, and I can feel my face flush, but this time not out of embarrassment but out of anger.
“The time has come,” the writer states, “to submit the following as an inspiration and enlightener from one who reads things for what I perceive as the real picture and is not meant to attack any one faction or person, but more to encourage you to look at things from a different perspective. However, if certain former [Indian Health Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs] and power project employees take offense, so be it.” He rambles on, until he wraps up his argument by writing, “If you don’t like the way your leadership is conducting themselves, run for office and make a positive contribution.”
Okay, though the first portion is a bit aggressive, he has a good point in the last sentence. But the next phrase incites my ire.
“It is better,” he cautions, “to remain away and have people think of you as an idiot than to return home and remove all doubt. . . . If [the tribal council] spent as much time just doing what’s right as our leaders and making the best-informed decisions for us and our best interest, there is no need to give any special recognition or even acknowledge the existence of one or two tribal members who seek to tell us Indians what is best for us, whether we like it or not. Especially when in most cases, these people are the ones who never had to suffer the racial slurs, emotional and physical bruises, or character assassinations those of us of color have had to do.”
What does he mean “those of us of color?” Is he implying that because I’m not living on the reservation I somehow don’t know what it means to be a person of color? But the kicker, the one that hits me in the gut, is what follows next:
“Question: What is the difference between a tribal member and an Indian? Answer: A tribal member is one who claims affiliation with the tribe as long as they can benefit monetarily or personally in the material sense from claiming tribal affiliation, and who could and chose to grow up on the white side and were light enough to do so. Indians are those who, because we are darker and prouder, had to be Indian when Indian wasn’t cool.”
I don’t remember “being Indian” when it was cool. I remember the words squaw, redskins, and savages; I remember eyes following me as I walked through hallways, store aisles, following me until I walked out the door. Not everyone was watched the same way I was. I was aware the people who were white received merely a glance.
When I was in ninth grade, I remember my high school friend Cari and I walking over the fields near a subdivision of expensive homes. We’d walked to a convenience store, purchased a soda, and were returning home. A police car roared up to us, its tires spitting dust. The driver and his partner asked us what we were doing, where we had been, where we were going. Then they focused on me. The driver grabbed a sheet of paper from his console and studied it, then turned his gaze on me, then returned his focus back to the sheet of paper. Three times he did this, asking my name each time. He asked who my parents were, where I lived, and how long I had lived there. The two officers conferred with each other. “Well, we could take her down to the station,” one said. “She matches the description.” They conferred some more, as if I no longer stood there, the object of their conversation.
“What description?” I ask.
The driver pulled down his sunglasses and stared at me. “Of a runaway.”
“Let’s just go,” the other officer said. “I don’t think it’s her.”
Cari and I looked at each other as they drove away. “That was weird,” we said at the same time.
“Runaway?” Mom asked, anger edging her voice. I’d told her about it when I got home. “That’s bullshit. There was no runaway. They stopped you because you were Indian walking by a wealthy subdivision.”
No, I wanted to say to the letter writer, being Indian was never cool for me.
What this man was saying was because I walk in a white world, I was supposed have no knowledge of what it means to “be Indian”? That my experiences are somehow less than his? My hands shake as I realize this man and the words he spews echo the attitudes I’d heard from the Native community, from Native American Student Services and the Kyi-yo students, of not being Indian enough, of being an apple, a wannabe, a pretender. I feel like I can’t breathe.
With trembling hands I sit down and pen a letter in reply, and anger throws the words like blood over the page, black and red and endless. I am taking no prisoners because I am tired of my existence not being good enough, of my experiences being invalid, of the fucking reservation and the hateful people in it! When I’m done, I hand it to Rick. I watch his face metamorphose between wonder and horror. When he reaches the end, his head twists a bit. Then he looks at me and asks, “Who are you going to send this to?”
“The Charkoosta.” I hand him the published letter to the editor and am thankful he doesn’t argue about whether or not I should write a reply. Instead he looks at me and at my letter on the table in front of him and smiles. “How about if I help you write the response?” He adds wryly, “You don’t want to piss everyone off up there.”
I finally agree.
“Dear editor,” I write, “I personally did not grow up in the white culture because of choice. I, like several people of my generation, judging from the letters searching for parents, was given up for adoption. I don’t know whether the tribal members were given a choice to adopt me and my siblings, or not. Regardless, I grew up loved, white and very, very Indian (using your definition of the color of my skin). I never once was mistaken for Swedish. . . . I stand accused of being an ‘apple Indian,’ white on the inside, red on the out. I am, but not by choice. These are things that came to me. I’ve accepted it, why can’t you? You talk of never having to undergo racial slurs? I get it every single day of my life living in white society, and I don’t have the comfort of family to escape to on the reservation, where someone knows how I feel. . . . Regardless of what you like, I’m enrolled, I’m proud to be a member, and I will be very, very angry if you try to take my little bit of heritage away from me.”
I signed it “Susan Devan Harness (Vicki Charmain Rowan) Fort Collins, CO.”
Two weeks later, the blue phone on the wall rings three times before I can get to it. “Hello?”
“Is this Vicki Charmain?” There is a female voice on the other end.
“Yes.”
“This is your sister, Roberta. Ronni Marie, your other sister, is here with me. We’ve been looking for you since you turned eighteen.”
I am in free fall.
They haven’t forgotten me!
Fort Collins, Colorado, July 4, 1993.
Roberta had called in the middle of May because she’d seen the letter to the editor. In that call she’d invited my family and me to join a family get-together over the Fourth of July.
“Where do you want to meet?” she’d asked.
“A restaurant she likes,” Rick mouthed. I repeated his suggestion.
“Do you like Chinese food?” Ronni asked.
“I love it!”
“Let’s meet at the Mustard Seed.”
Over the next few minutes we worked out the dates and the details, and as I hung up the phone I could feel my heart pounding with breath-stopping pressure. I turned to Rick and smiled, my eyes filling with tears.
Summer had been well into the nineties in Colorado, so we’d packed sleeveless shirts, T-shirts and shorts, having forgotten we’ve experienced snow on the Fourth of July in Montana. When we hit town, we made a quick stop to Walmart to purchase more appropriate clothing for the fifty-degree weather: heavy sweatshirts and jeans.
Rick and I had frequented the Mustard Seed many times, when they were located downtown. Now the restaurant is in the mall, and as we walked down the broad hallway I wondered what these siblings would look like. I remembered, years before, when the idea of reuniting with my family had been a long-tarnished dream. I had been watching an episode of Maury Povich. His guest had been a Blackfeet girl who’d been adopted into a white family as an infant. Maury had arranged a meeting between her birth family and her for the first time, onstage. I remember thinking her siblings looked absolutely nothing like her; where she was light, they were dark; where she sat almost regal, her siblings slouched and grinned at the camera, their long black hair twining around itself, uncontrolled. I could see by her looks that not only had her father been white; he’d been very white. Her dress, her mannerisms, and her makeup all endorsed the white, upper-class culture she’d grown up in. Over the hour-length program, conversation was awkward and disjointed; everyone on stage looked uncomfortable with her presence there, including her.
Would my meeting be as painful? I wondered as we located the doorway to the restaurant. We spotted the group immediately. I recognized them not for their similarity to me, but for the fact that they looked like they were waiting for someone. I’d expected them to look different; I expected them to look like me, mirrors to one another, like my husband to his brothers and sisters, whose genetics screamed, “same family.” They shared physical characteristics among themselves: their hair black with smooth curls that cupped their face, framed their smiles, their eyes. The same set of dimples graced the gently round cheeks of Roberta and Ronni and Ronni’s two daughters. I saw myself as different: taller and my short, dark hair lay straight and coarse and far away from undimpled cheeks.
But we were related, so we hugged, chatted, and caught up on one another’s lives. I was getting my questions answered, I told myself, as I pinched pieces of beef and broccoli with my chopsticks and listened to their histories, sating my curiosity. I wanted to know what my family looked like, and now I knew. With a sense of disquiet I felt like I was in a quirky episode of Sesame Street’s “One of These Things Is Not Like the Other,” its melody playing in the shadows of my consciousness:
Three of these things belong together
Three of these things are kind of the same
Can you guess which one of these doesn’t belong here?
Now it’s time to play our game.
That was yesterday. Now we are on the Flathead Indian Reservation, in Arlee, Montana. My two sisters (that still sounds so strange to hear myself even think of these labels) and our families are sitting on the hoods of our cars in a parking lot that looks across Highway 93 toward the powwow grounds. In front of us two opposing lines of cars cruise past us at a crawl. It is July 4, the morning of the Fourth of July Powwow; this is the town’s version of a parade.
Some are hot rods; some are old; some are brand new. All are here to be seen and to be a part of something. The red Pontiac Firebird catches our attention, as does its driver, a late teen Native girl, tall and thin. I imagine the car was purchased with the per capita payments she received when she turned eighteen. The temp tags on the back indicate it had been purchased yesterday.
We watch as the girl drives slowly up the street, making a U-turn and coming back the other direction. A block away she cuts another U-turn and repeats the process. On the fourth cycle she decides to turn left, across traffic, onto Powwow Road. Except there’s already someone almost there, a new Jeep Cherokee driven by an older couple, just passing through. Even though everyone was going relatively slowly, we watch in fascination as their Jeep slams into her brand-new Pontiac Firebird, the beautiful red metal on her passenger-side door crumpling and creasing from the impact, which results in a metallic screech and thud. We see her get out of her car, her tank top loose over a pair of tight-fitting jeans, and run to the passenger side to survey the damage. She’s horrified. She’s angry. Because of the noise of the other motorists, I don’t know exactly what she’s saying, but I’m pretty sure it’s a string of expletives.
Rick leans over to me and says in a quiet voice, for my ears only, “That’s how rez cars are made.”
The family gathering we have been invited to coincides with the powwow. Rick and the boys, and Ronni and I, walk the powwow grounds. I look through the wares in the vendors’ stalls, some of which have canopies overhead to keep the sun—but more likely today the rain—at bay. There are star quilts and dance regalia. There are beadwork and quillwork in the form of earrings, necklaces, bracelets, chokers, and hatbands. The smell of frybread drifts over the grounds, and my mouth waters as I think of the golden, brown delicacy sprinkled with powdered sugar and drizzled with honey. One table has southwestern jewelry displayed on black velvet, distinctive styles that I identify as Hopi, Navajo, and Zuni. I am a fan of earrings, so I look at the choices carefully. Although I am drawn to the silver overlay of the Hopi jewelry, my eye is caught by a set of small Zuni-inlay Sun Face posts. I touch them, gently, admiring their work, the minuteness of the detail between the turquois, coral, onyx, and silverwork that melds all together. When I look behind me to talk with Ronni about them, I see she has fallen behind.
The boys, now ages six and three, want to go with Ronni, who agrees, leaving Rick and me to walk the powwow grounds together. On the far end three young men walk near us. One of them, in his early twenties, weaves and stumbles, three or four steps behind his friends. He recovers his footing, then turns and looks at me. He might have been handsome at one point, but today his dark-gold hair is greasy, and the alcohol has pulled his face into a lopsided grin. “Hi, Cousin!” He raises his hand in greeting.
“Hi.” My answer is wary. I am wary, of his drunkenness, his familiarity, although we don’t know each other. But mostly I’m wary of the look he throws Rick out of the corner of his eye.
“Who’s your people?” he asks, jutting his chin toward my direction.
“I’m Pend d’Oreille.” His smile becomes even broader. I miss the wicked line his mouth has developed as he continues talking to me while staring at Rick. “See? I told you we are cousins.” He pauses and his eyes narrow; his smile becomes lazy. “That’s something you don’t see every day.” He looks at his three friends. “A white man walking with an Indian girl.” The grin turns malicious, and I can see Rick’s hackles rise. It’s not that uncommon, I think to myself, but I have to agree, the man-boy threw out the bait in front of Rick, and it was well placed. I put my hand on Rick’s arm and say, quietly, just for his ears, “Just keep walking. Ignore him and keep walking.”
Rick is angry. I see it in the way his jaw tenses, his blue eyes glinting dangerously. He has been singled out. But I can’t get as angry as he is. Those slurs are not uncommon in the world I walk in. I want to say, “Don’t like how it feels, do you?” but I don’t. Instead I put an imaginary hand on my arm and tell myself to just keep walking.
A few moments later we meet up with Ronni, who hasn’t wandered far from the vendor’s area. I find the earrings again and sense Ronni standing behind me. My sense is confirmed when I hear her ask, “What are you looking at?”
I point to the earrings. “I love Zuni inlay. I think it is so beautiful.” We move on to the next table, and the next, talking easily about the jewelry we’ve seen and the jewelry we have. I am so at ease with her, so calm. It’s hard to believe that I’ve just met her this morning. I observe her daughters, ages ten and five, who look with open adoration at their mom and openly watch me with curiosity.
Ronni excuses herself, and when she returns she hands me the earrings I’d been looking at. “I can’t,” I say. I feel embarrassed that I’d so openly admired them. Plus, I don’t accept gifts easily. I don’t know how. Maybe I don’t think I’m worthy. Or maybe I think I have to give her something of value, but I have nothing except that I’m here. Both of us, perhaps, are looking for adequate trades of acceptance.
“I want to introduce you to our uncle, Albert,” Ronni says and pulls on the sleeve of my sweatshirt, leading me to the doorway of a metal building. She enters and I stop at the doorway and watch as she approaches a man, leans over, and talks quietly to him. He looks up and glances at me, then nods, says something in response, and returns to his game. When she gets back to me, she explains, “He’ll be out here in a minute.”
We step outside and stand in the little space of sunshine. This is where we are when he joins us. “Sue, I want you meet our uncle Albert and his wife, Delphine.” I reach out to shake his hand, then hers. “This is Vicki Charmain,” she says, turning toward the handsome, forty-something-year-old man. “Roberta and I talked with her a couple of months ago, and now she’s here.”
Delphine looked at me and smiled. “She looks just like Vic did, when she was younger.” Delphine’s voice is low and soft, and I barely overhear this statement that she says to Albert. She is slender, her long, dark-brown hair resting quietly on her shoulders, falling gently down her back. Within moments Delphine and Ronni have left, each to their own interests, and I am standing awkwardly near Albert, this stranger-relative. I watch him quietly for a few moments and note his upright stance, his arms crossed in front of his chest. There’s power in the way he stands, a sureness of who he is, and I find myself thinking that I wished I’d known him forever.
“Ronni says you are Vic’s youngest brother?”
He nods, throwing me a smile and a quick look. “I’m ten years younger than she is. I’m forty-seven.”
I’ve been enamored with the appearance of Asian people for as long as I can remember, which is odd, considering we don’t know anyone Asian. But looking at Albert, I realize why. Those characteristics, the almond-shaped eyes, are markers of our Cree heritage. Albert is handsome, with his smooth face and his kind eyes, whose gaze rarely meets mine. There is always a half smile that seems to rest, unbeckoned, above a strong chin.
“Did you live in Phoenix?” I ask, remembering Dad’s description. But he was a drunk, a no-good bum; Dad’s words enter my consciousness.
Albert shakes his head and then thinks for a while. “No, I never lived in Phoenix,” he says.
“Did anyone in your family live in Phoenix?” I ask.
He considers my question, quietly looking into the distance. Finally, he looks at me, for just a moment, then looks away. “No,” he answers, shaking his head again. “I don’t know of anyone in the family who lived in Arizona. Why?”
“My dad said he thought a relative of mine lived in Phoenix. I just wondered who that might be.”
Albert’s laugh is soft and good-natured. “Well, I don’t know why he’d say that. Unless he knows something I don’t.” His eyes sparkle, and at that moment I’m so happy that I’ve met this man, this uncle, and so angry with my dad and the picture he’d painted for me. I feel a sense of relief that none of it is true.
I look away, unsure how to have this conversation. What is it polite to ask about? What pushes the boundaries? What would seem rude? But if I don’t ask, I won’t know. “Can you tell me anything about my father?” He is hauntingly absent; other than a brief notation about nationality, there was nothing about Ronny Smith in the social worker’s notes.
Albert looks at me then and smiles, a gentle smile. “Ronny had a beautiful singing voice,” he said, then looks off to the distance, as if looking back in time. “I used to love going to the corral in the evening when he was taking care of the horses. I’d just sit there and listen to him sing.”
I now know where I got my love of music and my ability to perform. My parents couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, as Mom liked to say. To have this talent and finally know that it came from one of my birth parents, someone related to me, well, I couldn’t hide the smile that played on my lips.
Albert and I then talk about small things, light things, inconsequential things that really have everything riding on them: where I live, whom I’m married to, the children I have, the life I’ve been given. And I wonder things, like where he had lived and if he had any memories of me. I wonder what he’d been like growing up. All those questions reminded me that I truly missed this man I didn’t know. What would it have been like for me if I hadn’t been adopted?
I don’t realize I have voiced this question aloud.
“Don’t ever ask that,” Albert commands, his voice sober, his face serious. He’s looking directly at me now as he continues. “You left, you escaped this place. Don’t question whether or not it was right. Look around you. How many of these people are accomplishing things in their life? You escaped, and you be glad of it. I don’t ever want to hear those words from you again.”
It’s as if he’s slapped me. I wanted him to say he missed me, that he wished I hadn’t left. But he didn’t, and I’m embarrassed. The thing is, I don’t feel like I’ve escaped. The world I’d been raised in has left me bruised and fearful, shaken of confidence. His words make me realize that this world isn’t going to be a safe haven either. Albert has no idea how many times I’ve tried to return, because I haven’t told him. He doesn’t know that I’ve come up here while I was attending college in Missoula, just looking for familiar faces. Or that I’ve tried to find employment here, but jobs weren’t open for me. Or that I’d come up here and spoken the Plant name as my family name, but no one I talked with seemed to know the Plants. He doesn’t know the many ways people on this reservation have sought to keep me out; he doesn’t know the heartache that made me stop trying nine years ago. But his tone tells me he doesn’t want to hear these stories, so I smile, apologetically. And I don’t tell him how much I’ve missed him, even though I don’t remember anything about him.
I see him again later that afternoon, as the family members have gathered in an open, grassy area up the Jocko Valley. I stand near Rick; he is my rock. The boys run around as if they belong here. But of course—they have family, us. Therefore, they belong. We’ve eaten portions of a four-foot submarine sandwich and drunk soda, munched on chips and side dishes people have brought. And now we are standing in a clearing, between the dirt road and the Jocko River, which whispers secrets behind a screen of trees. Overhead the clouds hang heavy, and the air is darkened not just by the clouds but also by the pine trees standing guard around us, enclosing us.
The meeting is difficult to recall in anything more than snapshots. I am overwhelmed by the people here, what they look like, who they are, how they’re related, what they know about me. There is too much information coming to my senses about who I am, where I’m from, who my relatives are. After a while the only cadence I’m aware of is my pulse that pounds in my ears and echoes throughout my body.
Aunts and uncles introduce themselves and begin filling in the blanks of why they are important in the family tree. Uncle Chuck has fair skin and obsidian eyes and a broad smile. “I remember you when you were this big,” he says, stretching his hands about two feet apart. “I bought you a teddy bear the day you were born. Do you still have it?”
I shake my head but am thankful to have someone who remembers me as an infant.
“Yeah,” Chuck says again, his gaze and his smile unwavering, “I remember the day you were born.” Chuck is two years older than Vic.
There is Glenrose and Frank, their gift is a hot-pink dream catcher, which I cradle in my hands. Glenrose is Vic’s senior by six years. There are others who become blurred almost as soon as I meet them, people who shake my hand, who say words of welcome, but these words never make it into my long-term memory. There is too much information, and my brain can only continue to take snapshots. Around me are groups: Vic’s kids and Albert and Delphine. Rick stands behind me, our shoulders touching. Our sons run between us and the river. Aunts and uncles are off to one side, and across the green, on the other side of the fire, stands a group of cousins. I don’t even know whose children they are.
We are ringed by tall trees whose tops sway in the afternoon breeze. Across the clearing, beneath one of these trees, sits a lone woman in the camp chair, her body hunched, her face turned away from me. I know who she is. People have pointed her out. She is Vic, my birth mom. When I see her, when my eyes focus on her small body, everything falls away, except for the sound of crows squawking their irritation at us standing between them and the crumbs we’ve dropped. I slowly become aware of people’s gazes, shifting toward one another, toward me, then away. I’m nervous.
The sandwich I consumed a half hour ago sits somewhere above my stomach and beneath my throat. And as I watch this woman, look at her, think about how long I’d wanted to meet her, I realize I don’t know if I can carry this meeting out. How do you begin to have a conversation with someone who birthed you but whom you never met? With someone who didn’t fight to keep you, when that’s what you’d do for your kids? With someone who was supposedly found at the bar down the street when they were given a court date they had to attend if they wanted to keep you? Vic steals a glance in my direction, and for a moment, a brief connection in time, our gazes meet. Then I look away, awkward at being caught with my curiosity around my ankles. I feel the pulse in my neck quicken.
Once I walk across that clearing, I think, I will no longer be able to merely imagine her, to turn her into someone I could dream about, to give her whatever characteristics I want her to have, romanticized characteristics. She will become flesh and blood and all that goes with that. And I don’t know if I want to do that. If I can do that. My anxiety grows; it pounds at my temples. What if we don’t share anything other than blood?
My breath is jagged, and my hands grow cold. I feel eyes watching me; I hear the whispers as they glide from one person to another. I look at Rick, who puts a hand on the small of my back and gives me the merest of pushes. I resist. I dig in my heels and refuse to move. Just for a moment. I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and inhale the aroma of the pines.
I take another deep breath, throw a small prayer to the wind, and begin the long walk across space, across time, across a generation, to the woman who sits in the chair on the far side of the clearing. I touch her shoulder and kneel down, placing my hand on her leg. Very quietly, almost whispering, like the trees around us, I say, “I’m Vicki Charmain. I’ve come home.”