Clare, do you have children?
Two boys. How fortunate. Yes, I know this is not about your life.
Or do you fear me?
I wonder what you would do to save them
From being savages, as they called it, public specimens.
Or judged as mingled seed, as Leviticus said.
Yes, as for my children, they were his gold
In the surround of force:
Where I had a cup of pain,
They had the birthright, they were the gold.
In our world, we had no word for gold.
We only had yellow and more yellow.
In our green, rich valley we had a word for green
and the same word for blue. Okchamahli.
Because we were river people, river and sky,
And knew the colors where one water entered another,
Where sky met earth.
I kept my own ways
And my husband accepted with love
Or I would have been undone
By the others, taken apart
As they tried to teach me what they knew.
It was so little compared to what we knew,
This land and all its ways.
I, just a girl, could read the water
And when and how to travel upon it.
In all this time my stomach grew
And when it was time for my son to enter this world,
I went to the river on my horse,
The one I called My Sister.
And when I walked down the bank
And through the reeds
I walked out into the place where warm water rises
From beneath the world
And among the flowing water, the plants,
My water joined the other.
I cried out only a little
And my handsome son came swimming
To the surface of the river
As if still in the waters of my body.
He was dark like me but with a hint of golden hair.
He smiled as he came up to air.
Even before I fed him my breast,
My heart quickened with love.
I wrapped him in cloth and held him close
There at the water, his heritage.
When I returned, my husband’s mother said,
What an uncivilized birth. In water, too.
And how can you wrap this infant in plain cloth?
They took him from me and wrapped him in shining cloth
And hired a nurse, one of my people, to be with him.
I remained as much as possible,
Together, the three of us laughing and talking
With each other and the child.
At that time my man was gentle at night,
Looking at our son.
Or sometimes we walked under the trees they planted
Where the great, large old ones used to be.
Recaressed my face
And he looked at the baby so softly.
I turned my heart even more toward him.
When my daughter was born
She too was smiling, the girl
Who had eyes of blue.
Coming up, no matter what they thought,
From the same waters into this world smiling,
Not shocked by a sudden life in air
Or hit into breathing.
I was young
But I knew how to bring a child to the world,
Though to them I was an animal,
As they said, Crude and barbaric.
But I never met an animal as barbaric
As a human so civilized as they.
For a time life was good.
Each morning when the sun came up
I offered pollen and tobacco
And I sang and said my prayers.
Owls cried at night,
Songbirds by day.
One evening I received a letter that my father was ill.
I wanted to go to him.
We were having a dinner
And he, the man of gold I married, said,
But we have guests.
Your job is to stay beside me.
After their drinks
So I set out with Sister, my mare.
And both children.
We could ride long distances,
And I crossed the water with the mare.
As we journeyed I thought
How often I had seen my husband’s changed character lately
And everything inside his skin was broken.
Corrupt is the word you would use for it now.
But then, he was a politician married to enrich
His empire before I knew it.
And it seemed we became like two magnets
That placed together fling apart,
He had already begun to stay away,
Sometimes for nights he couldn’t explain
Except by lies.
I went to my father.
My father didn’t even notice I was there at first.
He was crying and talking about the last time he saw his brother
When they took him away to school.
I didn’t want this to be what my father saw
The day before he left this world.
And so I showed him the grandchildren and he named them
Eho and Nakni
And then he was gone
As if his work was done.
In our different world,
My homeland of beauty.
We have a story
For every place on the land,
A world remembered, loved, revered.
I thought how my destiny was to be a bridge
And that then one day it would break
To stop the others from crossing
Over broken treaties.
On the day I returned.
I saw my husband standing with a woman
Who had long hair down her back,
Hair yellow as the first flowers of spring.
She saw my daughter. I heard her say,
Isn’t she charming for being one of them?
I cast a cold eye on them both
And rode the mare, My Sister, right up to them.
They knew they’d been seen.
My son held his arms down to his father.
I lifted him and my husband,
I still call him that, the man of stone
Did not take him at first
Until I told him. There was nothing more to him.
Then I took both the children
And rode away with them.
It has been many years.
I saw my husband kiss the new woman
And still it hurts.
I thought, he loved this young woman more than he loved me.
I felt pain in one chamber of my heart.
He was like a child
He always wanted more.
Her father had more.
And would give him a place in the world he wanted,
The politician, the man who never had to grow food
Or work for any other man.
It happened so quickly
That I was locked out of my life,
My world, my bed.
He sent a messenger
To say I was to go into exile.
At first I took the children to the woods.
The servants, my own people, brought us food
But there was a chill in the air, in everything.
We went to my childhood friends
And lived for a time
In the servant’s quarter.
I hid my weeping while the children played together,
Hidden.
She was a thief, that young woman.
She slept in my bed.
She slept with my husband.
And right away, to secure her life
She was pregnant with her own child.
While we were in exile in our own land.
Her father, a king, sent a message,
Saying it will be a good marriage of gold and money,
For your children and you will be cared for.
He didn’t even know my name
And that now my life counted for nothing in this world.
Rejoice, he said.
Your son may be a king one day.
My marriage became illegal under new rules.
My husband, a man nothing could touch,
Not even our memories,
Married a woman who saw my children
As playthings.
As souvenirs of a people gone,
A people noble and savage at the same time.
When did he last hold one of them?
When did he last speak?
He’d always said
They were such trouble.
You know there is no love deeper
Than mother and child.
He was already taking away my life.
And then one day they came on horseback
And as I had foreseen, they took my children
Even as I fought them
And with my own horse, I chased after them
Through the splashing water,
But they turned on me, to kill me.
She was large with child when I returned
And I hid behind the trees and underbrush
Like an animal to watch.
She dressed my daughter in a golden gown
And placed a crown of flowers on her head.
I stepped out. What are you doing? I asked.
You never dressed her well, she said.
I took the crown of flowers away.
Mother, they smell so sweet, my daughter said.
I took them off her dark hair.
Eho, I said, Let’s go.
My daughter wanted her flowers back.
How little did she know.
It isn’t good for us here, I said.
We have to leave the flowers behind
And we will get more.
You Indian! She said to me. You savage.
I want my flowers back.
My child said that.
She hated what I was
Without knowing she was the same.
And there was hate in her eyes.
Oh my heart.
They had taken her from me
In so many ways.
But not my son. He stood strong.
He said, Mother I will come to you.
I had only the power to weep.