English 102

MATERIALS FOR ASSIGNMENT ONE

Immigrants

wrap their babies in the American flag,

feed them mashed hot dogs and apple pie,

name them Bill and Daisy,

buy them blonde dolls that blink blue eyes or a football and tiny cleats before the baby can even walk, speak to them in thick English,

hallo, babee, hallo.

whisper in Spanish or Polish when the babies sleep,

whisper in a dark parent bed, that dark parent fear,

“Will they like our boy, our girl, our fine American boy,

our fine American girl?”

Perhaps most readers will agree that the poem expresses or dramatizes a desire, attributed to “immigrants,” that their child grow up in an Anglo mode. (Mora is not saying that all immigrants have this desire; she has simply invented one speaker who offers details about immigrants. Reader Jones may say that Mora says all immigrants have this desire, but that is Jones’s interpretation.) For this reason, the parents call their children Bill and Daisy (rather than, say, José and Katarzyna) and give them blonde dolls and a football (rather than dark-haired dolls and a soccer ball). Up to this point, the parents seem a bit silly in their mimicking of Anglo ways. The second part of the poem, however, gives the reader a more interior view of the parents, and brings out the fear, hope, and worried concern that lie behind their behavior: Some unspecified “they” may not “like/ our boy, our girl.” Who are “they”? Most readers will probably agree that “they” refers to native-born citizens, especially the blonde, blue-eyed “all-American” Anglo types that until recently dominated the establishment in the United States. By reviewing the ideas raised by the poem, we are well on our way to creating an interpretation of it. But it is crucial to reread the poem and continue to interpret it, developing a more sophisticated understanding of its ideas.

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 254). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

All in a Day’s Work

I want to be with people who submerge in the task, who go into the fields to harvest and work in a row and pass the bags along, who are not parlor generals and field deserters but move in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is common as mud. Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust. But the thing worth doing well done has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident. Greek amphoras for wine or oil, Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums but you know they were made to be used. The pitcher cries for water to carry and a person for work that is real.

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 1052). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

So Mexicans Are Taking Jobs from Americans

O Yes? Do they come on horses with rifles, and say, Ese gringo,° gimmee your job? And do you, gringo, take off your ring, drop your wallet into a blanket

spread over the ground, and walk away?

I hear Mexicans are taking your jobs away.

Do they sneak into town at night,

and as you’re walking home with a whore,

do they mug you, a knife at your throat, saying, I want your job?

Even on TV, an asthmatic leader crawls turtle heavy,

leaning on an assistant, and from a nest of wrinkles on his face,

a tongue paddles through flashing waves of lightbulbs, of cameramen, rasping

“They’re taking our jobs away.”

Well, I’ve gone about trying to find them,

asking just where the hell are these fighters.

The rifles I hear sound in the night are white farmers shooting blacks and browns whose ribs I see jutting out and starving children,

I see the poor marching for a little work,

I see small white farmers selling out to clean-suited farmers living in New York, who’ve never been on a farm,

don’t know the look of a hoof or the smell of a woman’s body bending all day long in fields.

I see this, and I hear only a few people got all the money in this world,

the rest count their pennies to buy bread and butter.

Below that cool green sea of money, millions and millions of people fight to live, search for pearls in the darkest depths of their dreams,

hold their breath for years trying to cross poverty to just having something.

The children are dead already.

We are killing them, that is what America should be saying;

on TV, in the streets, in offices, should be saying,

“We aren’t giving the children a chance to live.”

Mexicans are taking our jobs, they say instead.

What they really say is, let them die, and the children too.

Refugee Ship

Like wet cornstarch,

I slide past my grandmother’s eyes.

Bible at her side, she removes her glasses.

The pudding thickens.

Mama raised me without language.

I’m orphaned from my Spanish name.

The words are foreign, stumbling on my tongue.

I see in the mirror my reflection: bronzed skin, black hair.

I feel I am a captive aboard the refugee ship.

The ship that will never dock. El barco que nunca atraca.°

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 1167). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

MATERIALS FOR ASSIGNMENT TWO

Senior Picture Day

Sometimes I put two different earrings in the same ear. And that’s on a day I’m feeling preppy, not really new wave or anything. One time, during a track meet over at Camarillo High, I discovered way too late that I’d forgot to put on deodorant and that was the worst ’cause everyone knows how snooty those girls at Camarillo can be. Hmmm. Actually the worst thing I’ve ever forgotten to do was take my pill. That happened three mornings in a row and you can bet I was praying for weeks after that. So many things to remember when you’re seventeen years old and your days start at six a.m. and sometimes don’t end until five in the afternoon. But today of all days there’s one thing I have to remember to do and that’s to squeeze my nose. I’ve been doing it since the seventh grade. Every morning with my thumb and forefinger I squeeze the sides of it, firmly pressing my nostrils as close as they possibly can get near the base. Sometimes while I’m waiting for the tortilla to heat up, or just when I’m brushing my teeth, I squeeze. Nobody ever notices. Nobody ever asks. With all the other shit seniors in high school go through, squeezing my nose is nothing. It’s just like some regular early-morning routine, like yawning or wiping the egg from my eyes. Okay, so you might think it’s just a total waste of time, but to tell you the truth, I do see the difference. Just last week I lined up all my class pictures and could definitely see the progress. My nose has actually become smaller, narrower. It looks less Indian. I look less Indian and you can bet that’s the main goal here. Today, when I take my graduation pictures, my nose will look just like Terri’s and then I’ll have the best picture in the year-book. I think about this as Mrs. Milne’s Duster comes honking in the driveway to take me to school. Terri was my best friend in seventh grade. She came from Washington to Rio Del Valle junior high halfway through October. She was the first girl I knew who had contact lenses and four pairs of Chemin de Fers. Can you believe that? She told everyone that her daddy was gonna build ’em a swimming pool for the summer. She told me that I could go over to swim anytime I wanted. But until then, she told me, I could go over and we could play on her dad’s CB.1 “You dad’s really got a CB?” I asked her. “Oh, yeah,” she answered, jiggling her locker door. “You can come over and we can make up handles for ourselves and meet lots of guys. Cute ones.” “Whaddaya mean, handles?” I asked. “Like names, little nicknames. I never use my real name. I’m ‘G.G.’ when I get on. That stands for Golden Girl. Oh, and you gotta make sure you end every sentence with ‘over.’ You’re like a total nerd if you don’t finish with ‘over.’ I never talk to anyone who doesn’t say ‘over.’ They’re the worst.” Nobody’s really into citizen band radios anymore. I now see ’em all lined up in pawnshops over on Oxnard Boulevard. But back in the seventh grade, everyone was getting them. They were way better than using a phone ’cause, first of all, there was no phone bill to bust you for talking to boys who lived past the Grade and second, you didn’t have your stupid sister yelling at you for tying up the phone line. Most people had CBs in their cars, but Terri’s dad had his in the den. When I showed up at Terri’s to check out the CB, her mama was in the front yard planting some purple flowers. “Go on in already.” She waved me in. “She’s in her father’s den.” I found Terri just like her mama said. She was already on the CB, looking flustered and sorta excited. “Hey,” I called out to her, and plopped my tote bag on her dad’s desk. She didn’t answer but rather motioned to me with her hands to hurry up. Her mouth formed an exaggerated, “Oh, my God!” She held out a glass bowl of Pringles and pointed to a glass of Dr Pepper on the desk. It turned out Terri had found a boy on the CB. An older interested one. He was fifteen, a skateboarder, and his handle was Lightning Bolt. “Lightning Bolt,” he bragged to Terri. “Like, you know, powerful and fast. That’s the way I skate. So,” he continued, “where you guys live? Over.” “We live near Malibu.” Terri answered. “Between Malibu and Santa Barbara. Over.” “Oh, excuse me, fan-ceee. Over.” “That’s right.” Terri giggled. “Over.” We actually lived in Oxnard. Really, in El Rio, a flat patch of houses, churches, and schools surrounded by lots of strawberry fields and some new snooty stucco homes surrounded by chainlink. But man, did Terri have this way of making things sound better. I mean, it was the truth, geographically, and besides it sounded way more glamorous.

I took some Pringles from the bowl and thought we were gonna have this wonderful afternoon of talking and flirting with Lightning Bolt until Terri’s dad happened to come home early and found us gabbing in his den. “What the... !” he yelled as soon as he walked in and saw us hunched over his CB. “What do you think this is? Party Central? Get off that thing!” He grabbed the receiver from Terri’s hand. “This isn’t a toy! It’s a tool. A tool for communication, you don’t use it just to meet boys!” “Damn, Dad,” Terri complained as she slid off her father’s desk. “Don’t have a cow.” She took my hand and led me to her room. “Come on, let’s pick you out a handle.” When we were in her room, I told her I had decided on Cali Girl as my handle. “You mean, like California?” she asked. “Yeah, sorta.” “But you’re Mexican.” “So?” “So, you look like you’re more from Mexico than California.” “What do you mean?” “I mean, California is like, blond girls, you know.” “Yeah, but I am Californian. I mean, real Californian. Even my great-grandma was born here.” “It’s just that you don’t look like you’re from California.” “And you’re not exactly golden,” I snapped. We decided to talk to Lightning Bolt the next day, Friday, right after school. Terri’s dad always came home real late on Fridays, sometimes even early the next Saturday morning. It would be perfect. When I got to her house the garage door was wide open and I went in through the side door. I almost bumped into Terri’s mama. She was spraying the house with Pine Scent and offered me some Hi-C. “Help yourself to a Pudding Pop, too,” she said before heading into the living room through a mist of aerosol. “They’re in the freezer.” Man, Terri’s mama made their whole life like an afternoon commercial. Hi-C, Pringles in a bowl, the whole house smelling like a pine forest. Was Terri lucky or what? I grabbed a Pudding Pop out of the freezer and was about to join her when I picked up on her laugh. She was already talking to Lightning Bolt. Dang, she didn’t waste time! “Well, maybe we don’t ever want to meet you,” I heard Terri flirt with Lightning Bolt. “How do you know we don’t already have boyfriends? Over.” “Well, you both sound like foxes. So, uh, what do you look like? Over.” “I’m about five-four and have green eyes and ginger-colored hair. Over.” Green? Ginger? I always took Terri for having brown eyes and brown hair. “What about your friend? Over.” “What about her? Over.” Oh, this was about me! I had to hear this. Terri knew how to pump up things good. “I mean, what does she look like?” Lightning Bolt asked. “She sounds cute. Over.” “Well.. .” I overheard Terri hesitate. “Well, she’s real skinny and, uh...” “I like skinny girls!” “You didn’t let me finish!” Terri interrupted. “And you didn’t say ‘over.’ Over.” “Sorry,” Lightning Bolt said. “Go ahead and finish. Over.” I tore the wrapper off the Pudding Pop and continued to listen.

“Well,” Terri continued. “She’s also sorta flat-chested, I guess. Over.” What? How could Terri say that? “Flat-chested? Oh yeah? Over.” Lightning Bolt answered. “Yeah. Over.” Terri paused uncomfortably. It was as if she knew what she was saying was wrong and bad and she should’ve stopped but couldn’t. She was saying things about a friend, things a real friend shouldn’t be saying about another friend, but now there was a boy involved and he was interested in that other friend, in me, and her side was losing momentum. She would have to continue to stay ahead. “Yeah, and she also has this, this nose, a nose like... like an Indian. Over.” “An, Indian?” Lightning Bolt asked. “What do ya mean an Indian? Over.” “You know, Indian. Like powwow Indian.” “Really?” Lightning Bolt laughed on the other end. “Like Woo-Woo-Woo Indian?” He clapped his palm over his mouth and wailed. A sound I knew all too well. “Yeah, just like that!” Terri laughed. “In fact, I think she’s gonna pick ‘Li’l Squaw’ as her handle!” I shut the refrigerator door quietly. I touched the ridge of my nose. I felt the bump my mother had promised me would be less noticeable once my face “filled out.” The base of my nose was far from feminine and was broad, like, well, like Uncle Rudy’s nose, Grandpa Rudy’s nose, and yeah, a little bit of Uncle Vincente’s nose, too. Men in my family who looked like Indians and here their Indian noses were lumped together on me, on my face. My nose made me look like I didn’t belong, made me look less Californian than my blond counterparts. After hearing Terri and Lightning Bolt laugh, more than anything I hated the men in my family who had given me such a hideous nose. I grabbed my tote bag and started to leave out through the garage door when Terri’s mama called out from the living room. “You’re leaving already?” she asked. “I know Terri would love to have you for dinner. Her daddy’s working late again.”

I didn’t answer and I didn’t turn around. I just walked out and went home. And so that’s how the squeezing began. I eventually stopped hanging out with Terri and never got a chance to use my handle on her dad’s CB. I know it’s been almost four years since she said all that stuff about me, about my nose, but man, it still stings. During freshman year I heard that Terri’s dad met some lady on the CB and left her mama for this other woman. Can you believe that? Who’d wanna leave a house that smelled like a pine forest and always had Pudding Pops in the freezer? As Mrs. Milne honks from the driveway impatiently, I grab my books and run down the driveway, squeezing my nose just a little bit more. I do it because today is Senior Picture Day and because I do notice the difference. I might be too skinny. My chest might be too flat. But God forbid I look too Indian.

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 54). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

It’s Hard Enough Being Me

When I entered college, I discovered I was Latina. Until then, I had never questioned who I was or where I was from: My father is a second-generation Mexican-American, born and raised in Los Angeles, and my mother was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Compton, Calif. My home is El Sereno, a predominantly Mexican neighborhood in L.A. Every close friend I have back home is Mexican. So I was always just Mexican. Though sometimes I was just Puerto Rican–like when we would visit Mamo (my grandma) or hang out with my Aunt Titi. Upon arriving in New York as a first-year student, 3000 miles from home, I not only experienced extreme culture shock, but for the first time I had to define myself according to the broad term “Latina.” Although culture shock and identity crisis are common for the newly minted collegian who goes away to school, my experience as a newly minted Latina was, and still is, even more complicating. In El Sereno, I felt like I was part of a majority, whereas at the College I am a minority. I’ve discovered that many Latinos like myself have undergone similar experiences. We face discrimination for being a minority in this country while also facing criticism for being “whitewashed” or “sellouts” in the countries of our heritage. But as an ethnic group in college, we are forced to define ourselves according to some vague, generalized Latino experience. This requires us to know our history, our language, our music, and our religion. I can’t even be a content “Puerto Mexican” because I have to be a politically-and-socially-aware-Latina-with-a-chip-on-myshoulder-because-of-how-repressed-I-am-in-this-country. I am none of the above. I am the quintessential imperfect Latina. I can’t dance salsa to save my life, I learned about Montezuma and the Aztecs in sixth grade, and I haven’t prayed to the Virgen de Guadalupe in years. Apparently I don’t even look Latina. I can’t count how many times people have just assumed that I’m white or asked me if I’m Asian. True, my friends back home call me güera (“whitey”) because I have green eyes and pale skin, but that was as bad as it got. I never thought I would wish my skin were a darker shade or my hair a curlier texture, but since I’ve been in college, I have—many times. Another thing: My Spanish is terrible. Every time I call home, I berate my mama for not teaching me Spanish when I was a child. In fact, not knowing how to speak the language of my home countries is the biggest problem that I have encountered, as have many Latinos. In Mexico there is a term, pocha, which is used by native Mexicans to ridicule Mexican-Americans. It expresses a deep-rooted antagonism and dislike for those of us who were raised on the other side of the border. Our failed attempts to speak pure, Mexican Spanish are largely responsible for the dislike. Other Latin American natives have this same attitude. No matter how well a Latino speaks Spanish, it can never be good enough. Yet Latinos can’t even speak Spanish in the U.S. without running the risk of being called “spic” or “wetback.” That is precisely why my mother refused to teach me Spanish when I was a child. The fact that she spoke Spanish was constantly used against her: It prevented her from getting good jobs, and it would have placed me in bilingual education—a construct of the Los Angeles public school system that has proved to be more of a hindrance to intellectual development than a help. To be fully Latina in college, however, I must know Spanish. I must satisfy the equation: Latina [equals] Spanish-speaking. So I’m stuck in this black hole of an identity crisis, and college isn’t making my life any easier, as I thought it would. In high school, I was being prepared for an adulthood in which I would be an individual, in which I wouldn’t have to wear a Catholic school uniform anymore. But though I led an anonymous adolescence, I knew who I was. I knew I was different from white, black, or Asian people. I knew there was a language other than English that I could call my own if I only knew how to speak it better. I knew there were historical reasons why I was in this country, distinct reasons that make my existence here easier or more difficult than other people’s existence. Ultimately, I was content. Now I feel pushed into a corner, always defining, defending, and proving myself to classmates, professors, or employers. Trying to understand who and why I am, while understanding Plato or Homer, is a lot to ask of myself. A month ago, I heard three Nuyorican (Puerto Ricans born and raised in New York) writers discuss how New York City has influenced their writing. One problem I have faced as a young writer is finding a voice that is true to my community. I was surprised and reassured to discover that as Latinos, these writers had faced similar pressures and conflicts as myself; some weren’t even taught Spanish in childhood. I will never forget the advice that one of them gave me that evening: She said that I need to be true to myself. “Because people will always complain about what you are doing—you’re a ‘gringa’ or a ‘spic’ no matter what,” she explained. “So you might as well do things for yourself and not for them.”

I don’t know why it has taken 20 years to hear this advice, but I’m going to give it a try. Soy yo and no one else. Punto.

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 137). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

MATERIALS FOR ASSIGNMENT THREE

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven Too hot to sleep so I walked down to the Third Avenue 7-11 for a Creamsicle and the company of a graveyard-shift cashier. I know that game. I worked graveyard for a Seattle 7-11 and got robbed once too ofBGNFHten. The last time the bastard locked me in the cooler. He even took my money and basketball shoes. The graveyard-shift worker in the Third Avenue 7-11 looked like they all do. Acne scars and a bad haircut, work pants that showed off his white socks, and those cheap black shoes that have no support. My arches still ache from my year at the Seattle 7-11. “Hello,” he asked when I walked into his store. “How you doing?” I gave him a half-wave as I headed back to the freezer. He looked me over so he could describe me to the police later. I knew the look. One of my old girlfriends said I started to look at her that way, too. She left me not long after that. No, I left her and don’t blame her for anything. That’s how it happened. When one person starts to look at another like a criminal, then the love is over. It’s logical. “I don’t trust you,” she said to me. “You get too angry.” She was white and I lived with her in Seattle. Some nights we fought so bad that I would just get in my car and drive all night, only stop to fill up on gas. In fact, I worked the graveyard shift to spend as much time away from her as possible. But I learned all about Seattle that way, driving its back ways and dirty alleys. Sometimes, though, I would forget where I was and get lost. I’d drive for hours, searching for something familiar. Seems like I’d spent my whole life that way, looking for anything I recognized. Once, I ended up in a nice residential neighborhood and somebody must have been worried because the police showed up and pulled me over. “What are you doing out here?” the police officer asked me as he looked over my license and registration. “I’m lost.” “Well, where are you supposed to be?” he asked me, and I knew there were plenty of places I wanted to be, but none where I was supposed to be. “I got in a fight with my girlfriend,” I said. “I was just driving around, blowing off steam, you know?” “Well, you should be more careful where you drive,” the officer said. “You’re making people nervous. You don’t fit the profile of the neighborhood.” I wanted to tell him that I didn’t really fit the profile of the country but I knew it would just get me into trouble. “Can I help you?” the 7-11 clerk asked me loudly, searching for some response that would reassure him that I wasn’t an armed robber. He knew this dark skin and long, black hair of mine was dangerous. I had potential. “Just getting a Creamsicle,” I said after a long interval. It was a sick twist to pull on the guy, but it was late and I was bored. I grabbed my Creamsicle and walked back to the counter slowly, scanned the aisles for effect. I wanted to whistle low and menacingly but I never learned to whistle.

“Pretty hot out tonight?” he asked, that old rhetorical weather bullshit question designed to put us both at ease. “Hot enough to make you go crazy,” I said and smiled. He swallowed hard like a white man does in those situations. I looked him over. Same old green, red, and white 7-11 jacket and thick glasses. But he wasn’t ugly, just misplaced and marked by loneliness. If he wasn’t working there that night, he’d be at home alone, flipping through channels and wishing he could afford HBO or Showtime. “Will this be all?” he asked me, in that company effort to make me do some impulse shopping. Like adding a clause onto a treaty. We’ll take Washington and Oregon, and you get six pine trees and a brand-new Chrysler Cordoba. I knew how to make and break promises. “No,” I said and paused. “Give me a Cherry Slushie, too.” “What size?” he asked, relieved. “Large,” I said, and he turned his back to me to make the drink. He realized his mistake but it was too late. He stiffened, ready for the gunshot or the blow behind the ear. When it didn’t come, he turned back to me. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What size did you say?” “Small,” I said and changed the story. “But I thought you said large.” “If you knew I wanted a large, then why did you ask me again?” I asked him and laughed. He looked at me, couldn’t decide if I was giving him serious shit or just goofing. There was something about him I liked, even if it was three in the morning and he was white. “Hey,” I said. “Forget the Slushie. What I want to know is if you know all the words to the theme from ‘The Brady Bunch’?” He looked at me, confused at first, then laughed.

“Shit,” he said. “I was hoping you weren’t crazy. You were scaring me.” “Well, I’m going to get crazy if you don’t know the words.” He laughed loudly then, told me to take the Creamsicle for free. He was the graveyard-shift manager and those little demonstrations of power tickled him. All seventy-five cents of it. I knew how much everything cost. “Thanks,” I said to him and walked out the door. I took my time walking home, let the heat of the night melt the Creamsicle all over my hand. At three in the morning I could act just as young as I wanted to act. There was no one around to ask me to grow up. In Seattle, I broke lamps. She and I would argue and I’d break a lamp, just pick it up and throw it down. At first she’d buy replacement lamps, expensive and beautiful. But after a while she’d buy lamps from Goodwill or garage sales. Then she just gave up the idea entirely and we’d argue in the dark. “You’re just like your brother,” she’d yell. “Drunk all the time and stupid.” “My brother don’t drink that much.” She and I never tried to hurt each other physically. I did love her, after all, and she loved me. But those arguments were just as damaging as a fist. Words can be like that, you know? Whenever I get into arguments now, I remember her and I also remember Muhammad Ali. He knew the power of his fists but, more importantly, he knew the power of his words, too. Even though he only had an IQ of 80 or so, Ali was a genius. And she was a genius, too. She knew exactly what to say to cause me the most pain.

But don’t get me wrong. I walked through that relationship with an executioner’s hood. Or more appropriately, with war paint and sharp arrows. She was a kindergarten teacher and I continually insulted her for that. “Hey, schoolmarm,” I asked. “Did your kids teach you anything new today?” And I always had crazy dreams. I always have had them, but it seemed they became nightmares more often in Seattle. In one dream, she was a missionary’s wife and I was a minor war chief. We fell in love and tried to keep it secret. But the missionary caught us fucking in the barn and shot me. As I lay dying, my tribe learned of the shooting and attacked the whites all across the reservation. I died and my soul drifted above the reservation. Disembodied, I could see everything that was happening. Whites killing Indians and Indians killing whites. At first it was small, just my tribe and the few whites who lived there. But my dream grew, intensified. Other tribes arrived on horseback to continue the slaughter of whites, and the United States Cavalry rode into battle. The most vivid image of that dream stays with me. Three mounted soldiers played polo with a dead Indian woman’s head. When I first dreamed it, I thought it was just a product of my anger and imagination. But since then, I’ve read similar accounts of that kind of evil in the old West. Even more terrifying, though, is the fact that those kinds of brutal things are happening today in places like El Salvador. All I know for sure, though, is that I woke from that dream in terror, packed up all my possessions, and left Seattle in the middle of the night. “I love you,” she said as I left her. “And don’t ever come back.” I drove through the night, over the Cascades, down into the plains of central Washington, and back home to the Spokane Indian Reservation. When I finished the Creamsicle that the 7-11 clerk gave me, I held the wooden stick up into the air and shouted out very loudly. A couple lights flashed on in windows and a police car cruised by me a few minutes later. I waved to the men in blue and they waved back accidentally. When I got home it was still too hot to sleep so I picked up a week-old newspaper from the floor and read. There was another civil war, another terrorist bomb exploded, and one more plane crashed and all aboard were presumed dead. The crime rate was rising in every city with populations larger than 100,000, and a farmer in Iowa shot his banker after foreclosure on his 1,000 acres. A kid from Spokane won the local spelling bee by spelling the word rhinoceros. When I got back to the reservation, my family wasn’t surprised to see me. They’d been expecting me back since the day I left for Seattle. There’s an old Indian poet who said that Indians can reside in the city, but they can never live there. That’s as close to truth as any of us can get. Mostly I watched television. For weeks I flipped through channels, searched for answers in the game shows and soap operas. My mother would circle the want ads in red and hand the paper to me. “What are you going to do with the rest of your life?” she asked. “Don’t know,” I said, and normally, for almost any other Indian in the country, that would have been a perfectly fine answer. But I was special, a former college student, a smart kid. I was one of those Indians who was supposed to make it, to rise above the rest of the reservation like a fucking eagle or something. I was the new kind of warrior. For a few months I didn’t even look at the want ads my mother circled, just left the newspaper where she had set it down. After a while, though, I got tired of television and started to play basketball again. I’d been a good player in high school, nearly great, and almost played at the college I attended for a couple years. But I’d been too out of shape from drinking and sadness to ever be good again. Still, I liked the way the ball felt in my hands and the way my feet felt inside my shoes.

At first I just shot baskets by myself. It was selfish, and I also wanted to learn the game again before I played against anybody else. Since I had been good before and embarrassed fellow tribal members, I knew they would want to take revenge on me. Forget about the cowboys versus Indians business. The most intense competition on any reservation is Indians versus Indians. But on the night I was ready to play for real, there was this white guy at the gym, playing with all the Indians. “Who is that?” I asked Jimmy Seyler. “He’s the new BIA1 chief’s kid.” “Can he play?” “Oh, yeah.” And he could play. He played Indian ball, fast and loose, better than all the Indians there. “How long’s he been playing here?” I asked. “Long enough.” I stretched my muscles, and everybody watched me. All these Indians watched one of their old and dusty heroes. Even though I had played most of my ball at the white high school I went to, I was still all Indian, you know? I was Indian when it counted, and this BIA kid needed to be beaten by an Indian, any Indian.

I jumped into the game and played well for a little while. It felt good. I hit a few shots, grabbed a rebound or two, played enough defense to keep the other team honest. Then that white kid took over the game. He was too good. Later, he’d play college ball back East and would nearly make the Knicks team a couple years on. But we didn’t know any of that would happen. We just knew he was better that day and every other day. The next morning I woke up tired and hungry, so I grabbed the want ads, found a job I wanted, and drove to Spokane to get it. I’ve been working at the high school exchange program ever since, typing and answering phones. Sometimes I wonder if the people on the other end of the line know that I’m Indian and if their voices would change if they did know. One day I picked up the phone and it was her, calling from Seattle. “I got your number from your mom,” she said. “I’m glad you’re working.” “Yeah, nothing like a regular paycheck.” “Are you drinking?” “No, I’ve been on the wagon for almost a year.” “Good.” The connection was good. I could hear her breathing in the spaces between our words. How do you talk to the real person whose ghost has haunted you? How do you tell the difference between the two? “Listen,” I said. “I’m sorry for everything.” “Me, too.” “What’s going to happen to us?” I asked her and wished I had the answer for myself. “I don’t know,” she said. “I want to change the world.”

These days, living alone in Spokane, I wish I lived closer to the river, to the falls where ghosts of salmon jump. I wish I could sleep. I put down my paper or book and turn off all the lights, lie quietly in the dark. It may take hours, even years, for me to sleep again. There’s nothing surprising or disappointing in that. I know how all my dreams end anyway.

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 1141). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.

Back in the days

when everyone was old and stupid or young and foolish and me and Sugar were the only ones just right, this lady moved on our block with nappy hair and proper speech and no makeup. And quite naturally we laughed at her, laughed the way we did at the junk man who went about his business like he was some big-time president and his sorry-ass horse his secretary. And we kinda hated her too, hated the way we did the winos who cluttered up our parks and pissed on our handball walls and stank up our hallways and stairs so you couldn’t halfway play hide-and-seek without a goddamn gas mask. Miss Moore was her name. The only woman on the block with no first name. And she was black as hell, cept for her feet, which were fish-white and spooky. And she was always planning these boring-ass things for us to do, us being my cousin, mostly, who lived on the block cause we all moved North the same time and to the same apartment then spread out gradual to breathe. And our parents would yank our heads into some kinda shape and crisp up our clothes so we’d be presentable for travel with Miss Moore, who always looked like she was going to church, though she never did. Which is just one of the things the grownups talked about when they talked behind her back like a dog. But when she came calling with some sachet she’d sewed up or some gingerbread she’d made or some book, why then they’d all be too embarrassed to turn her down and we’d get handed over all spruced up. She’d been to college and said it was only right that she should take responsibility for the young ones’ education, and she not even related by marriage or blood. So they’d go for it. Specially Aunt Gretchen. She was the main gofer in the family. You got some ole dumb shit foolishness you want somebody to go for, you send for Aunt Gretchen. She been screwed into the go-along for so long, it’s a blood-deep natural thing with her. Which is how she got saddled with me and Sugar and Junior in the first place while our mothers were in a la-de-da apartment up the block having a good ole time. So this one day Miss Moore rounds us all up at the mailbox and it’s puredee hot and she’s knockin herself out about arithmetic. And school suppose to let up in summer I heard, but she don’t never let up. And the starch in my pinafore scratching the shit outta me and I’m really hating this nappy-head bitch and her goddamn college degree.

degree. I’d much rather go to the pool or to the show where it’s cool. So me and Sugar leaning on the mailbox being surly, which is a Miss Moore word. And Flyboy checking out what everybody brought for lunch. And Fat Butt already wasting his peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich like the pig he is. And Junebug punchin on Q.T.’s arm for potato chips. And Rosie Giraffe shifting from one hip to the other waiting for somebody to step on her foot or ask her if she from Georgia so she can kick ass, preferably Mercedes’. And Miss Moore asking us do we know what money is, like we a bunch of retards. I mean real money, she say, like it’s only poker chips or monopoly papers we lay on the grocer. So right away I’m tired of this and say so. And would much rather snatch Sugar and go to the Sunset and terrorize the West Indian kids and take their hair ribbons and their money too. And Miss Moore files that remark away for next week’s lesson on brotherhood, I can tell. And finally I say we oughta get to the subway cause it’s cooler and besides we might meet some cute boys. Sugar done swiped her mama’s lipstick, so we ready. So we heading down the street and she’s boring us silly about what things cost and what our parents make and how much goes for rent and how money ain’t divided up right in this country. And then she gets to the part about we all poor and live in the slums, which I don’t feature. And I’m ready to speak on that, but she steps out in the street and hails two cabs just like that. Then she hustles half the crew in with her and hands me a five-dollar bill and tells me to calculate 10 percent tip for the driver. And we’re off. Me and Sugar and Junebug and Flyboy hangin out the window and hollering to everybody, putting lipstick on each other cause Flyboy a faggot anyway, and making farts with our sweaty armpits.

But I’m mostly trying to figure how to spend this money. But they all fascinated with the meter ticking and Junebug starts laying bets to how much it’ll read when Flyboy can’t hold his breath no more. Then Sugar lays bets as to how much it’ll be when we get there. So I’m stuck. Don’t nobody want to go for my plan, which is to jump out at the next light and run off to the first bar-b-que we can find. Then the driver tells us to get the hell out cause we there already. And the meter reads eighty-five cents. And I’m stalling to figure out the tip and Sugar say give him a dime. And I decide he don’t need it as bad as I do, so later for him. But then he tries to take off with Junebug foot still in the door so we talk about his mama something ferocious. Then we check out that we on Fifth Avenue and everybody dressed up in stockings. One lady in a fur coat, hot as it is. White folks crazy. “This is the place,” Miss Moore say, presenting it to us in the voice she uses at the museum. “Let’s look in the windows before we go in.” “Can we steal?” Sugar asks very serious like she’s getting the ground rules squared away before she plays. “I beg your pardon,” say Miss Moore, and we fall out. So she leads us around the windows of the toy store and me and Sugar screamin, “This is mine, that’s mine, I gotta have that, that was made for me, I was born for that,” till Big Butt drowns us out. “Hey, I’m goin to buy that there.” “That there? You don’t even know what it is, stupid.” “I do so,” he say punchin on Rosie Giraffe. “It’s a microscope.” “Whatcha gonna do with a microscope, fool?” “Look at things.” “Like what, Ronald?” ask Miss Moore. And Big Butt ain’t got the first notion. So here go Miss Moore gabbing about the thousands of bacteria in a drop of water and the something or other in a speck of blood and the million and one living things in the air around us is invisible to the naked eye. And what she say that for? Junebug go to town on that “naked” and we rolling. Then Miss Moore ask what it cost. So we all jam into the window smudgin it up and the price tag say $300. So then she ask how long’d take for Big Butt and Junebug to save up their allowances. “Too long,” I say. “Yeh,” adds Sugar, “outgrown it by that time.” And Miss Moore say no, you never outgrow learning instruments. “Why, even medical students and interns and,” blah, blah, blah. And we ready to choke Big Butt for bringing it up in the first damn place. “This here costs four hundred eighty dollars,” say Rosie Giraffe. So we pile up all over her to see what she pointin out. My eyes tell me it’s a chunk of glass cracked with something heavy, and different-color inks dripped into the splits, then the whole thing put into a oven or something. But for $480 it don’t make sense. “That’s a paperweight made of semi-precious stones fused together under tremendous pressure,” she explains slowly, and her hands doing the mining and all the factory work. “So what’s a paperweight?” asks Rosie Giraffe. “To weigh paper with, dumbbell,” say Flyboy, the wise man from the East. “Not exactly,” say Miss Moore, which is what she say when you warm or way off too. “It’s to weigh paper down so it won’t scatter and make your desk untidy.” So right away me and Sugar curtsy to each other and then to Mercedes who is more the tidy type. “We don’t keep paper on top of the desk in my class,” say Junebug, figuring Miss Moore crazy or lyin one. “At home, then,” she say. “Don’t you have a calendar and a pencil case and a blotter and a letter-opener on your desk at home where you do your homework?” And she know damn well what our homes look like cause she nosys around in them every chance she gets. “I don’t even have a desk,” say Junebug. “Do we?” “No. And I don’t get no homework neither,” says Big Butt. “And I don’t even have a home,” say Flyboy like he do at school to keep the white folks off his back and sorry for him. Send this poor kid to camp posters, is his specialty. “I do,” says Mercedes. “I have a box of stationery on my desk and a picture of my cat. My godmother bought the stationery and the desk. There’s a big rose on each sheet and the envelopes smell like roses.” “Who wants to know about your smelly-ass stationery,” say Rosie Giraffe fore I can get my two cents in. “It’s important to have a work area all your own so that...” “Will you look at this sailboat, please,” say Flyboy, cuttin her off and pointin to the thing like it was his. So once again we tumble all over each other to gaze at this magnificent thing in the toy store which is just big enough to maybe sail two kittens across the pond if you strap them to the posts tight. We all start reciting the price tag like we in assembly. “Handcrafted sailboat of fiberglass at one thousand one hundred ninety-five dollars.” “Unbelievable,” I hear myself say and am really stunned. I read it again for myself just in case the group recitation put me in a trance. Same thing. For some reason this pisses me off. We look at Miss Moore and she lookin at us, waiting for I dunno what.

“Who’d pay all that when you can buy a sailboat set for a quarter at Pop’s, a tube of glue for a dime, and a ball of string for eight cents? It must have a motor and a whole lot else besides,” I say. “My sailboat cost me about fifty cents.” “But will it take water?” say Mercedes with her smart ass. “Took mine to Alley Pond Park once,” say Flyboy. “String broke. Lost it. Pity.” “Sailed mine in Central Park and it keeled over and sank. Had to ask my father for another dollar.” “And you got the strap,” laugh Big Butt. “The jerk didn’t even have a string on it. My old man wailed on his behind.” Little Q.T. was staring hard at the sailboat and you could see he wanted it bad. But he too little and somebody’d just take it from him. So what the hell. “This boat for kids, Miss Moore?” “Parents silly to buy something like that just to get all broke up,” say Rosie Giraffe. “That much money it should last forever,” I figure. “My father’d buy it for me if I wanted it.” “Your father, my ass,” say Rosie Giraffe getting a chance to finally push Mercedes. “Must be rich people shop here,” say Q.T. “You are a very bright boy,” say Flyboy. “What was your first clue?” And he rap him on the head with the back of his knuckles, since Q.T. the only one he could get away with. Though Q.T. liable to come up behind you years later and get his licks in when you half expect it. “What I want to know is,” I says to Miss Moore though I never talk to her, I wouldn’t give the bitch that satisfaction, “is how much a real boat costs? I figure a thousand’d get you a yacht any day.”

“Why don’t you check that out,” she says, “and report back to the group?” Which really pains my ass. If you gonna mess up a perfectly good swim day least you could do is have some answers. “Let’s go in,” she say like she got something up her sleeve. Only she don’t lead the way. So me and Sugar turn the corner to where the entrance is, but when we get there I kinda hang back. Not that I’m scared, what’s there to be afraid of, just a toy store. But I feel funny, shame. But what I got to be shamed about? Got as much right to go in as anybody. But somehow I can’t seem to get hold of the door, so I step away for Sugar to lead. But she hangs back too. And I look at her and she looks at me and this is ridiculous. I mean, damn, I have never ever been shy about doing nothing or going nowhere. But then Mercedes steps up and then Rosie Giraffe and Big Butt crowd in behind and shove, and next thing we all stuffed into the doorway with only Mercedes squeezing past us, smoothing out her jumper and walking right down the aisle. Then the rest of us tumble in like a glued-together jigsaw done all wrong. And people lookin at us. And it’s like the time me and Sugar crashed into the Catholic church on a dare. But once we got in there and everything so hushed and holy and the candles and the bowin and the handkerchiefs on all the drooping heads, I just couldn’t go through with the plan. Which was for me to run up to the altar and do a tap dance while Sugar played the nose flute and messed around in the holy water. And Sugar kept givin me the elbow. Then later teased me so bad I tied her up in the shower and turned it on and locked her in. And she’d be there till this day if Aunt Gretchen hadn’t finally figured I was lyin about the boarder takin a shower. Same thing in the store. We all walkin on tiptoe and hardly touchin the games and puzzles and things. And I watched Miss Moore who is steady watchin us like she waitin for a sign. Like Mama Drewery watches the sky and sniffs the air and takes note of just how much slant is in the bird formation. Then me and Sugar bump smack into each other, so busy gazing at the toys, ’specially the sailboat. But we don’t laugh and go into our fat-lady bumpstomach routine. We just stare at that price tag. Then Sugar run a finger over the whole boat. And I’m jealous and want to hit her. Maybe not her, but I sure want to punch somebody in the mouth. “Whatcha bring us here for, Miss Moore?” “You sound angry, Sylvia. Are you mad about something?” Givin me one of them grins like she tellin a grown-up joke that never turns out to be funny. And she’s lookin very closely at me like maybe she plannin to do my portrait from memory. I’m mad, but I won’t give her that satisfaction. So I slouch around the store bein very bored and say, “Let’s go.” Me and Sugar at the back of the train watchin the tracks whizzin by large then small then gettin gobbled up in the dark. I’m thinkin about this tricky toy I saw in the store. A clown that somersaults on a bar then does chin-ups just cause you yank lightly at his leg. Cost $35. I could see me askin my mother for a $35 birthday clown. “You wanna who that costs what?” she’d say, cocking her head to the side to get a better view of the hole in my head. Thirty-five dollars could buy new bunk beds for Junior and Gretchen’s boy. Thirty-five dollars and the whole household could go visit Granddaddy Nelson in the country. Thirty-five dollars would pay for the rent and the piano bill too. Who are these people that spend that much for performing clowns and $1000 for toy sailboats? What kinda work they do and how they live and how come we ain’t in on it? Where we are is who we are, Miss Moore always pointin out. But it don’t necessarily have to be that way, she always adds then waits for somebody to say that poor people have to wake up and demand their share of the pie and don’t none of us know what kind of pie she talkin about in the first damn place. But she ain’t so smart cause I still got her four dollars from the taxi and she sure ain’t gettin it. Messin up my day with this shit. Sugar nudges me in my pocket and winks. Miss Moore lines us up in front of the mailbox where we started from, seem like years ago, and I got a headache for thinkin so hard. And we lean all over each other so we can hold up under the draggy-ass lecture she always finishes us off with at the end before we thank her for borin us to tears. But she just looks at us like she readin tea leaves. Finally she say, “Well, what do you think of F. A. O. Schwarz?” Rosie Giraffe mumbles, “White folks crazy.” “I’d like to go there again when I get my birthday money,” says Mercedes, and we shove her out the pack so she has to lean on the mailbox by herself. “I’d like a shower. Tiring day,” say Flyboy. Then Sugar surprises me by sayin, “You know, Miss Moore, I don’t think all of us here put together eat in a year what that sailboat costs.” And Miss Moore lights up like somebody goosed her. “And?” she say, urging Sugar on. Only I’m standin on her foot so she don’t continue. “Imagine for a minute what kind of society it is in which some people can spend on a toy what it would cost to feed a family of six or seven. What do you think?” “I think,” say Sugar pushing me off her feet like she never done before, cause I whip her ass in a minute, “that this is not much of a democracy if you ask me. Equal chance to pursue happiness means an equal crack at the dough, don’t it?” Miss Moore is besides herself and I am disgusted with Sugar’s treachery. So I stand on her foot one more time to see if she’ll shove me. She shuts up, and Miss Moore looks at me, sorrowfully I’m thinkin. And somethin weird is goin on, I can feel it in my chest. “Anybody else learn anything today?” lookin dead at me. I walk away and Sugar has to run to catch up and don’t even seem to notice when I shrug her arm off my shoulder. “Well, we got four dollars anyway,” she says. “Uh hunh.” “We could go to Hascombs and get half a chocolate layer and then go to the Sunset and still have plenty money for potato chips and ice cream sodas.” “Uh hunh.” “Race you to Hascombs,” she say. We start down the block and she gets ahead which is O.K. by me cause I’m going to the West End and then over to the Drive to think this day through. She can run if she want to and even run faster. But ain’t nobody gonna beat me at nuthin.

Barnet, Sylvan; Burto, William; Cain, William E.; Nixon, Cheryl. Literature for Composition (Page 1157). Pearson Education. Kindle Edition.