CHAPTER 24

WHERE YOU END UP START

ONE MONTH LATER

My uncle gave us his Bronco. I couldn’t believe it. It’s a few years old, but it’s basically still brand-new. Definitely the newest thing we’ve ever owned. He said ever since the cop shot him, he hasn’t really felt comfortable leaving his apartment. He said he became paranoid and would have panic attacks every time he saw a cop car on the street. He thought maybe buying a metal horse would make him feel better, but it didn’t. He’s terrified of being pulled over. He’s even too scared to go grocery shopping. So why not give his horse to his sister, who really needs it? It’s better than letting it collect dust in a parking spot forever.

His only rule for us to keep it was to leave his bumper sticker on it. It says YOUR HEROES AREN’T OUR HEROES. I’m not exactly sure if it’s a Native American quote or a quote against cops or regarding American history, but I guess it doesn’t matter. It can be all three. Technically America’s heroes are our villains. Columbus committed genocide on an entire tribe of Indigenous people. And he has a holiday named after him. George Washington, Abe Lincoln, and Andrew Jackson all ordered Natives to be killed. And we elected them presidents. We even put their faces on money. The real heroes are the homeland defenders, never the invaders. Even I know that. Mom promised to keep it on the Bronco, even if we get glares and honks for it. But if it gets too bad, Mom said I can put a Ninja Turtles bumper sticker over it.

Mom has been making big moves toward getting us out of the apartment, but she promised her brother that she’s going to stay in contact with him, and maybe even visit him on her days off. He needs it. Two plants aren’t enough company for a grown man. Humans need to be surrounded by life. Humans need more humans. We need cats and dogs and fish to feel complete. We need family and nature because we are family and nature.

Yeah, I said days off. Why? Because Mom got a job. Not just one, but two. The angel named Angel came through with a helping hand again. She and Mom became pretty good friends, and her cousin, Jose, got Mom a job at Anaheim Stadium. During each home game, Mom works the food stand. She serves hot dogs and fries, and pretzels, and nachos. She’s even allowed to bring some home. I don’t eat hot dogs anymore, because they have animals inside them, but Emjay still does. They even gave Mom a uniform that says ANGELS on it. She said she’ll work on getting us free tickets for a home game. How cool would that be? Me, at an Angels game. The thought even made Emjay and me start liking baseball. It’s actually not bad for such a boring sport.

And some nights, to make more money, she cleans the stadium. That side job is under the table, which means she gets paid cash and doesn’t have to fill paperwork out. She works with a really nice Mexican cleaning crew. An all-women crew. Mom can’t believe how messy some people at sports games are. It’s like the seats at a movie theater after the movie, times a hundred. Her job is to sweep the stands. That’s thousands of seats. But they play music on the speakers for her when she’s there, so Mom pretty much enjoys it. She dances all the way from the first row to the nosebleeds.

She’s had both jobs for three weeks now. Which means I haven’t seen her much. But she’s off today, and for good reason too, because we are on our way to see an available apartment in an area called Tustin. Which isn’t too far from her job.

We know not to get our hopes up. We’ve seen three apartments these past couple of weeks, and all three have so far gone to other families. But we are officially on government assistance, and with Mom’s proof of income, we more than qualify now to get an apartment that accepts low-income housing.

My uncle walks us to the Bronco. This isn’t a goodbye. It’s a see you later. At least I hope it is. I like my uncle. And even though Mom was hesitant about staying with him, I can see she likes him too. Their last words spoken to each other aren’t goodbye or see you later; it’s a moment that made them both misty-eyed. He thanks her for showing up and giving him a chance to meet her family. He tells her she’s a good mom. And he apologizes for things that I don’t know about. Childhood stuff. She hugs him and says, “You changed a lot.”

He replies with, “I didn’t change a lot. A lot changed me.”

And that’s all they said. He walks back to his apartment and we drive off.

We leave my uncle’s apartment complex, and as we drive down the block, my eyes catch a glimpse of something. It’s an arrow lodged into a palm tree. It’s my arrow. I missed the telephone pole, but it traveled into the next street and hit a target I wasn’t even aiming for. I laugh to myself. I guess that pretty much sums up my life. What you want isn’t always what you’ll get. Sometimes when you want a telephone pole, you’ll get a palm tree. And sometimes when you want to settle down, you’ll get an adventure that spans the entire state of California. I guess settling is for settlers. We’re Native American, and even though Mom wanted to make Hollywood our home, it appears the buffalo may roam thirty-two miles farther south in a place called Tustin. And we got to follow the herd. It’s in our blood.

For our one-hour drive, we listen to a new CD of my brother’s. It’s a Los Angeles band called Red Hot Chili Peppers. Some pretty white girl gave it to him while he was hitchhiking his way from Modesto to Watts.

A song called “Under the Bridge” comes on. I fall in love with it within minutes. It’s a love song to Los Angeles. Emjay says the singer is Native American, or at least part. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I feel his blood as he sings. And Mom feels it too. We all dance and sing along as we ride our metal horse to our potential home.

We are all nervous. We always are before battle. Even Ani is feeling it.

Tustin looks like a nice town. I mean, way better than Watts, but nowhere near as cool as Hollywood. But we have to start somewhere. And this looks like a good place to begin our new adventure. Mom says there’s a school that’s only two blocks away from this complex. A school called Thorman Middle School, and their mascot is a thunderbird. That’s where I’ll be going if we get this place. I cross my fingers as we pull up. It would be so cool to be a thunderbird.

Mom parks the Bronco, and we step out into the parking lot. The air smells fresher than Watts air. The sign above the entrance says COSMOPOLITAN APARTMENTS. It sounds so fancy.

“Just like the ice cream,” I say.

“That’s Neapolitan. This is cosmopolitan,” she corrects me. Although I am kind of right too. Everyone we see is either dark skinned or light skinned, like chocolate and vanilla. And we are Ojibwe, so if we move in, we’ll be adding the red to this place. We’ll be the strawberry. This would be the Neapolitan Apartments. “But I guess cosmopolitan means the same thing, if you just replace the ice cream with people,” she adds.

“I’m gonna check the place out,” Emjay says, and takes my skateboard and rides off. He doesn’t stick around for the good or bad news. He has done this the last three times. Mom says he cares too much. I think he believes if he’s not there when we hear we didn’t get the apartment, it somehow softens the blow. But a no is a no whether you’re right there or not. It still hurts the same.

And things with Emjay are still rough. He still ran away twice in the last three weeks. He’s still pretty mean to me. He’s still mad … But like Mom says, people don’t change, they only either get better or worse as they get older. And even though things aren’t perfect, I can say he is getting better. Very slowly, but at least he’s moving in the right direction.

As he skates off, I join Mom. I can’t let her go to battle alone. And Ani joins me. She won’t let us go to battle alone. She’s our loyal wolf. Our Ma’iingan. Our Mohican.

We meet the apartment manager in the main office. He is a short Middle Eastern man that has such thin black hair on his head that he looks bald. He has a heavy accent, which is difficult to understand, but lucky for us, he doesn’t want to speak much. He just wants to show us the apartment and get back to work.

The Cosmopolitan complex is like a beehive. Hundreds of apartments, maybe thousands, grouped together in clumps. Each clump is a building that has eight apartments in it. Four on top, four on bottom. He escorts us to a building near the center. Apartment 1230. Upstairs.

Mom takes the lead.

We enter the empty apartment. It’s a one-bedroom, one-bath home with white walls, a kitchen, and a large balcony. I let Mom do the talking and make a beeline toward the balcony, push open the sliding glass doors, and step out. This balcony is twice as big as the porch in Watts. I look out and see a pool. This place has a freaking pool!

I try to spot other things from this second-story view. I see more apartments, I see a laundry area, which Mom will love; I see a group of kids hanging out in the parking lot, and I’m wondering if Emjay has fought them yet.

Then I see that the apartment manager is walking away from this building, back to his office. And from this angle, he looks completely bald. But if he’s done talking with Mom already, that must mean something has been decided. Is it good news or bad news when a meeting lasts only two minutes?

I turn around and see Mom standing in the center of the living room. I slowly walk up to her. Her eyes are on me. I can usually read her expression right away, but her face looks frozen, blank, and far away.

“Mom?” I say as I finally reach her.

She swallows. I see the lump crawl up and down her throat. She’s about to talk. But she doesn’t. “Say something,” I say.

“Something.”

“I’m being serious. What did he say?” I ask again, getting more nervous by the second.

She takes a deep breath and says, “I was thinking…”

“Go on,” I insist.

“That we … should hang your raccoon drawing on this wall,” she says, and points to the wall behind me.

“What? Wait, what?” I ask. “Are you saying … what I think you’re saying?”

She smiles. “We’re home.”

I don’t know how to react. I don’t know what to say or do or think or feel.

And instead of figuring it all out, I run up to the wall. “One,” I say, and run to the next wall. “Two.”

I count all four. Then I run to the bedroom and count those four. Then I open the bathroom door. Rad, there’s a shower that is also a bath. A bower. A shath. Whatever it’s called, I can’t wait to use it. I look at the mirror and step back from how happy my reflection appears. I see the toilet. I’m gonna poop in that thing so many times. How exciting. I count the three walls and rush back to Mom, who hasn’t moved yet.

“We did it, Mom. We beat the game. We defeated the cavalry,” I say.

“But for how long? A month? Two months?” Emjay asks, standing at the front door, halfway in, halfway out.

I turn to see him. Even though he just asked what he just asked, I can see through his questions and see the excitement on his face. He’s trying to hide it under his scowl and downward eyebrows, but the light in his eyes is undeniable.

“We just passed another level, boys. The game plays on. How long we stay is up to us. We just got to stay together,” she says.

“I’m going to be a thunderbird! Can you believe it?” I say.

Mom wraps her arms around me. Her body is shaking. She must be so happy. Even happier than I am. “Get in here,” she says to Emjay, and extends her arm out to him like a mother bird extending her wing to one of her babies.

Emjay takes a few steps toward us, but instead of coming in for a hug, he turns toward the bedroom. “I’m going to figure out where to put my bed … I am getting a bed, right?” he asks.

“You’re getting a bed,” Mom says.

My brother smiles, then disappears into the bedroom.

But I don’t let go of her. In fact, I squeeze tighter.

And as I squeeze, I feel all the fear and rage and hate and exhaustion being squeezed out of me. And in its place comes hope and happiness and excitement. And it fills me. And it fills Mom. And it even fills Ani.

And at this moment, I realize something. I can’t dislike the number four anymore. Home has four letters. And now we have a home. With Mom, Emjay, me, and Ani living here, we are a family of four. And yeah, we’re still poor, which has four letters, but we’ll be okay, which also has four letters. I can love four now. Even love has four letters. So do hate and fear and hope and life and easy and hard and gain and loss, but what I realize about it all now is, all that matters is which words you focus on. Mom focused on us. She did everything for Emjay and me. She took on the world to give us a better life, and the battles were hard, and many times seemed unwinnable, but she never gave up. And as I hug my mom, she begins to hum a tune that we all love. It’s “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley. The song that sings “Don’t worry about a thing, ’cause every little thing is gonna be all right.”

And for the first time in a very long time, I believe it will be.

Thanks, Bob.

Those three little birds, and their little dog, now have a nest.

A place to call home.

THIS IS THE END JUST THE BEGINNING.