In September, we were bussed a few towns away for school. Brown eyes settled upon us as we climbed aboard. My sisters and I were the only whites on the bus, and in the days to come, I would fight almost daily with a dark girl who insisted on making fun of my whiteness. Neither of us wanted to fight, but she had to say things, and I had to defend myself. I was only eight years old, but I knew this. I learned to say just enough to avoid a fight without seeming weak. She did the same. Leaning into me, she said she couldn’t wait for the day to kick my white ass. I made my face stiff and talked about how good it would be to kick her Indian ass once and for all while praying it would never come to that. Despite our talk, however, we always sat near the other, sometimes even slipping into the same wide seat.
Winding its way through broken roads, beyond Indian land, the bus headed west, to the town of Akron. Except for our busload of Senecas, the school was filled with whites, and a place I hoped to escape notice. And for a few minutes anyway, it appeared I would. Until the teacher called my name on the first day of school.
“Please stand when your name is called,” came the voice from the front of the room, and I obeyed, not noticing until I had stood that every other child standing was brown. The teacher walked to her desk and returned with a pile of school supplies, which were passed into open hands. Free supplies, I thought, this can’t be so bad. The colored pencils, in particular, caught my eye. But when the teacher came to me, she squinted. She looked into my blue eyes, scanned my light brown hair, rechecked the names on her list, looked back into my face, then returned to her list. In the end, she decided against my eligibility, asked me to sit back down, while the colored pencils I’d come to think of as my own remained on the corner of her desk.
By Christmas, Billie’s house had become home. Snow grew deep, water became ice. Deer carcasses had long since disappeared from trees. And though my mother warned against wanting too much, I wanted ice skates for Christmas. I wanted them like I wanted bread. Only I got the skates. I opened the gift and it was like magic. Had I hovered above and watched as the red foil paper was torn from the box, I would have been startled by the look of joy on my own face. Like my teacher, I would have blinked, scanned my face, and had to look again. I would have thought I was seeing a hot cocoa commercial or an after-school special about poor kids and Christmas miracles as this joyful imposter of myself removed the lid of the box and lifted out a brand-new pair of skates. Years later I discovered that my brother’s saxophone had been sold to buy presents that year, but at the time I was ignorant of such things, and pushed my feet into the skates without guilt.
After the gifts were opened, all the kids grabbed their skates and headed out to the ice, except for my sisters, who had neither asked for nor received skates. Steph followed the crowd to the frozen pond where I skated in circles, my scarf flapping in the wind as I laughed. It was the best day ever. Cold snapped my face red and, as I began to glide, I still felt something of the hot cocoa commercial. Steph sat at the edge on a pile of snow. Watching. She was my best sister, but I barely even heard as she asked to try out the skates.
“Wait—just another couple minutes, okay?” I said again and again as I whipped round and round the frozen pond.
I couldn’t stop. In plain sight of the dark-haired girl who always finished the soup I couldn’t eat and killed bugs for me and lent her mittens when mine had holes or were lost, I couldn’t stop. Those skates carried me across the pond like the wind pushing a leaf along the road. My cheeks must have been red circles and there was the scent of hot cocoa and it was magnificent, so I managed not to see her.
“Can I try now?”
Day became night, and just before the call for home, as everyone else was getting back into boots, I remembered my frozen sister, removed a skate, and gave it to her. I loved my sister better than anyone, but need must be bigger than love, because even then, I couldn’t bear to give up both skates. Steph quietly settled for one, and the two of us flopped on the ice for a few cold minutes before heading home.