A cold wind touches my cheek, then wraps around my neck, sending chills through my body. I wake up, launched out of a dream that I think I was enjoying but have already forgotten. I see the passenger door open. It’s still night. Is Mom back?
No, it’s my brother. He slings his backpack over the seat, and it lands beside me. He sits down and closes the door. He has headphones on. Big thick ones. He must have gotten a new Walkman because his was stolen last week.
He pulls his headphones off his hat. I hear the beat from the song playing. I recognize it. Mom works out to this song outside the car sometimes in the mornings. It’s called “Push It” by Salt-N-Pepa. Sometimes I join her and do jumping jacks and push-ups while she does all her butt stretches and lunges.
“She out?” he asks.
“She’ll be back soon,” I say.
“Was she Night Owled?” he asks. He’s looking straight ahead, out the window.
“Yeah.”
“Then she won’t be back soon.”
He’s wearing a black bomber jacket, one I’ve never seen before. And a black baseball cap he’s had for years. His shaggy black hair hangs to his shoulders. I can’t tell if it’s dirty or not. His hair always looks cool.
“Where were you?” I ask.
“With friends. It smells like old French fries in here,” he says, and finally turns around to face me.
I see that his lip is busted. There’s a bruise under one eye. “What happened?”
“Was playing ball. Caught an elbow.”
“You hate basketball,” I say, not buying the lie he’s selling.
“I guess it was football, then,” he says, and smiles.
“You got in another fight. Mom is gonna be pissed,” I say.
“She’s not here to be pissed. And someone tried to take my backpack. So I lumped him up and took his jacket. You like it?” he says, and lifts his arm up so I can touch it.
It’s puffy. I bet he wasn’t cold at all out there. “It’s cool. We saved you some food,” I say.
“I already ate. Real food. Not that crap you dug out the trash,” he says.
“It’s not from the trash,” I snap.
“Off some table, seconds before landing in the trash. Same thing,” he says. “Did you guys hit this hotel?”
“Yeah. Got a lot of toilet paper if you need to poop,” I say, and hand him a roll.
He doesn’t take it. Instead: “She give you the key card?”
I pull it out of my pocket and hand it to him. “The lady is probably back, though. So, be careful,” I say.
“I’m not going to the room. These fancy hotels have hot tubs,” he says, and reaches for the door handle.
“Can I come with?” I ask, knowing our mom would feel better if we were together.
“No. Because where there are hot tubs, there are hot girls, and there’s no way I’m going to be seen hanging out with my baby brother,” he says, and exits the car. “Toss me a towel.”
I sit back and ignore him. He reaches in and snatches one of the new folded hotel towels beside me and says, “You know she’s crazy, right?”
“Who?”
“Mom,” he says, and shuts the door.
I watch him walk through the lot toward the hotel’s back entrance. I don’t bother to shout out how wrong he is and how Mom is not crazy, because he didn’t say it to be right. He said it just to be mean. Just to confuse me. Just to make me think about it while he’s in the hot tub having fun and I’m out here, in a parked car, alone, waiting for our mom to come back.
I spend a few minutes silently talking myself into getting out of the car and joining Emjay in the hot tub with the hot girls, but then I spend a few minutes silently talking myself out of it. He doesn’t want me there. He never wants me there. And if I did show up, he’d tease me, and he is funny and witty, so whatever he said would make the girls laugh too. But they’d be laughing at me. My brother’s jokes aren’t the kind where everyone high-fives and hugs afterward. No, Emjay’s jokes are cruel. And sometimes they even go from teasing to physical displays of how he can make beating someone up look hilarious. He doesn’t know when to stop. Mom says he gets that from our dad. But I don’t remember him, so I don’t know.
Ugh. I am officially not interested in joining Emjay. No way. I won’t be a punching bag tonight.
I lean my head against the window and wish Mom would just ditch whatever it is she is doing and come back. Screw the movies. Let’s just sit here and listen to the radio.
Mom left the key in the ignition, so I can flip on the radio. As I reach for the key, I hear something outside. A whimper. A series of whimpers. What is that? I climb into the front seat and sit behind the wheel. I roll down the window and stick my head outside. The lot is half empty. I look down and see a dribble of red drops on the asphalt. Is that blood? The trail leads under the car.
I open the door, lean out, and look under the car. Two eyes stare back at me. It’s an animal. But it’s too dark to see which kind. I hope it’s not a skunk. I reach under with one hand. I hope it’s not an opossum. My hand touches its face. It’s shivering. Either from the cold or out of fear. Maybe both.
I grab ahold of the fur behind its little head and pull. It doesn’t resist. Maybe it’s too tired. Maybe it’s too scared. It’s small, no bigger than a football. And just as light. I scoop it up and onto my lap.
I see it clearly now. It’s a puppy. Or maybe just a really small frail dog. It’s filthy, but under the dirty coat, I can tell the dog is supposed to be golden. Or yellow. But right now, it just looks like a wad of peanut butter covered in Oreo crumbs. It looks up at me in a way nothing has ever looked at me before. Like I’m a rescuer scooping it from beneath an avalanche—a very dirty avalanche.
“Boozhoo!” I say.
Boozhoo means “hello.”
And when it hears my voice, it stretches out and puts two paws on my chest, face up to mine, and licks my chin. I run my hands down its body. It’s so skinny. I feel its ribs. And its fur is matted and bone-dry and coarse. Then I see it. A pawprint on my shirt. It’s red. This pup is bleeding.
I lift it up and examine its paws. I see the shiny cut and press my finger to its wounded paw, and it whimpers in pain. There’s something there, something sharp. The shiny piece of the paw is a shard of glass. I grab it and wiggle it out, fully expecting the pup to cry again. But the puppy’s tail starts wagging, and its tongue goes wild on my hand.
I toss the shard out the window and grab some toilet paper. I wrap it around its paw a few times so it can soak up the remaining bleeding. “There you go, little…” But I don’t finish my sentence because I don’t know if this puppy is a little guy or a little girl. I lift it up to check. No balls. I guess it’s a girl. “Little girl,” I say.
I wonder where she came from. Where’s her mother? No mom in her right mind would leave her baby out here alone in a parking lot at night … Even though my mom did just that. But I’m not an adorable puppy. Something must have happened. And by the looks of her, I can tell she’s been on her own awhile now. I bet she’s hungry.
I reach into the bag atop the center console and dig out the half-eaten burger we were saving for Emjay. Mom was right, he won’t eat it. But this girl will. I hold it up to her face and she licks it.
“You got to bite it,” I say. “Like this.”
I take a small bite. It’s cold now. And a bit stiff. But I’ve had worse, and I’m sure this puppy has too. And as if she understood my demonstration, the little furball bites into the burger.
“That’s it.”
Then another bite. And another. I grab the nearly empty Burger King cup and pour a bit of water into my open palm. “Now wash it down,” I say.
And she does. Every drop. I pet her head as she gulps it down. I wonder if she has a name. There’s no collar around her thin neck. No collar means no owner. No owner means no home. This little girl is homeless.
“You and me both, girl,” I say, and pull her into my chest.
Hugs are natural. I didn’t think anything of it … But the moment I felt her heart beating against mine, I felt something I have never felt before. It was some sort of connection. Like when you’ve worked so long on a thousand-piece puzzle and the library is about to close, but you’re so close to completing it, so you beg your mom to beg the librarian to stay open for just five more minutes, and four and a half minutes later, you place the last piece in the empty spot and jump up to your feet in victory. Yeah. It feels a bit like that—but times a thousand.
“You’re safe now,” I assure her.
Is this how my ancestors felt about wolves? A connection? A love? An urge to protect them? I am a trickle-down of their blood. A descendant. They are inside of me. And dogs are blood trickle-downs of wolves. I believe that wolf blood is in every dog. Even the scrawny ones like this girl.
And as a Native American, it is only right that I follow in my ancestors’ footsteps and make sure this little hand-me-down wolf is protected too. I can’t just kick her out of this warm car to brave the cold streets alone. This world is dangerous. It is now my job to keep her safe. This little girl got lucky when she chose our car. When she chose me. Because I’m one of the good ones. “Our blood remembers,” I tell her. “Even if we don’t. Our blood does.”
I cradle her in my arms and realize that there is one huge hiccup to all of this … I need to convince Mom that we need a dog. I need to convince her that the dog needs us. Yes, the same lady that wouldn’t even let me bring beetles or snails into the car. Not even roly-polies. She says nature belongs outside. And we need to keep the car clean. Always. A messy car is a messy life. Now I need to somehow get her on board with letting a homeless dirty dog with an injured paw live with us in here.
This is not going to be easy.
But Mom’s not here right now, so no point in worrying about that yet. What I can do is get this girl looking presentable before I present her to my family. I dig through one of my mom’s bags and pull out her brush. I know there’s a beautiful coat of fur under all this dirt and knotted-up dreads. I dip the brush into the plastic water cup, which barely has any water left, and drag it over her back. Her fur is so tight and thick and matted together. I push it through harder, and a clump of dirt lifts off her body and clings to the brush. Dirt begins to fall onto my lap. The more I brush her, the more dirt piles onto my pants and the floor.
Mom is not going to like this one bit … I hope this pup is potty trained. The last thing this car needs is puppy poop and pee in it.
Maybe I should do this outside.
But as I reach for the door handle, her body goes limp in my arms. I lift her up to my face and press my ear against her furry ribs to make sure she is still breathing, and she is, but she’s not only breathing … I hear something else. She’s snoring. I was a complete stranger to her moments ago, and now I’m her safe spot. I’m her caretaker. I’m her bed. I set her down in my lap and watch her body curl against my hip. I just stare at her as she dreams. She’s so innocent. She’s so fragile. She’s so beautiful.
Does Mom feel this way when she watches me sleep?