Reality, Race, and the Woman who knew What Mattered

.

My daycare, which I had worried would never get going, suddenly filled up. I had eight school age children. I couldn't believe I was getting $400 a week to go play in the pool at the park. Every month I filled out a form for the welfare office reporting how many kids were in the daycare and how much I was paid. My financial worker then worked out some kind of formula and either issued a welfare check for the next month or didn't. Usually we still received some kind of check, even if small, and Andrew remained on Medicaid.


Wilson called, "Send me $100 for a bus ticket so I can come home." I wired the money right away. He received the money, but didn't come home.

When Wilson finally came home a month later, he started outpatient alcohol treatment. Once a week I went along to meet with him and his counselor. I talked about how difficult it was to live with Wilson's drinking, and Wilson complained about how I didn't clean or cook well.


Early one morning, someone pounded on our door. It was one of Wilson's friends from jail. A couple of our day care children had already arrived and were playing on the living room floor. Wilson told the guy to wait outside. Needing his shoes, Wilson ran upstairs to the bedroom, where I was dressing Andrew. He was upstairs just a moment when we heard one of the children crying. Rushing downstairs, we found the man in the house. He was stoned on something and had tripped over a baby.

"Go on! Get out! Don't you ever come around here high again!" Wilson hollered.

Later that week, Annie and others showed up on our porch with an empty bottle they wanted to fill using our outside lawn hose. It was a hot day, so I didn't see any problem with that.

"No," Wilson told her, "We're running a day care here. You go somewhere else."

"Why couldn't they fill it?" I asked him.

"They were going to spray Lysol into the water and drink it."

____________________________________________

A powwow was being held in the basement of Holy Rosary Church and the kids wanted to go. Wilson stayed home. I think he had an upholstery job to finish. So I took Junior, Joy, and Andrew by myself. This powwow was different than most. It wasn't a contest and there were no cash prizes. It was a powwow to honor the elders and children and they did something I had never seen before. After the grand entry, gifts were given out to the people, courtesy of the tribal government. Our kids stood in front of me watching in excited anticipation as the gift givers came close, then looked on in obvious disappointment as the gift givers passed them by. My guess: they weren't given gifts because the woman standing with them was the wrong color.
__________________________________________________

I was used to Indians hating white people, so it came as a surprise when I ran into an Indian woman who didn’t. One morning I opened my front door to a tall, beautiful Indian woman. She had a five-year-old son who needed day care. I proudly showed her our play equipment and described the federal food program we were on.

"This is great," she responded, "but I'd like to visit one other house to be sure. Do you know of anyone else that has an opening?"

My neighbor had asked a day earlier if we could send a child her way. I decided to give the mother that number. I was sure we'd still get the child. After all, my neighbor was white. Surely this Indian woman will decide we are the preferable daycare.

To my surprise, she chose our neighbor.

"Your neighbor had only her own two children over there, so I felt my son would get more one on one attention."

But that wasn't the only thing that struck me about this woman. A professional in her career, she was educated and self-assured. At a later date, I had an opportunity to ride with her to a Pow-wow. During the drive, she described what she saw wrong in Indian country.

"A whole generation was sent away to boarding schools. While there, they were beaten if they used their native language. But most important, they lost the opportunity to learn parenting skills from their parents. Instead, they learned their parenting skills from institutions. So we are now raising children without the benefit of parenting skills. It is going to take time to heal. But the healing can only come from within the tribal community. No one can do it for us."
.

Relax, You're on the Rez. Nothing Matters.

.
I went to visit Wilson on the reservation in late July. I couldn't stay long; my daycare finally had a child so I had to be back home on Monday. Wilson was staying at Dale's apartment in town. I didn't tell him I was coming; I just showed up.

When I arrived, a lot of people were drinking on the dirt lot that served as a yard. They told me Wilson was inside. The tiny apartment was dark and hot. I don't know how many people were there, too many to count in the dark. Wilson was sitting in a chair by the wall, his chin resting on his chest. I walked over and plopped Andrew into his lap. His head snapped up, startled. It took him a moment to realize it was Andrew on his lap, and then he looked up, grinning.

"Ohhh! Et's youu!" he slurred.

I stayed a couple of days. I didn't mind the partying. In fact, I felt comfortable. I was there helping people. I bought fruit for the kids and toilet paper for everyone else. I was needed. And during the day, Wilson and Dale were sober, having a couple beers only to ward off the shakes.

Little Wally was old enough to be learning to pee in a coffee can in Dale’s kitchen. Most of the day, he and Andrew sat in the cool black dirt outside the apartment and dug holes with spoons while the adults lounged in the shade of old elm trees. The little boys were filthy, but it didn't matter. They were happy and the adults were content to just sit and watch them.


Grandpa Walter no longer knew me. His dementia had worsened and he had begun forgetting people, starting with his most recent acquaintances. Naturally, I was one of the first he forgot. Because our relationship had died, I felt grief just as you would when someone dies physically. It’s hard to know how to act when you walk into a room and the person is still physically there. I had to stop myself from speaking to him as I used to, because he would only look at me and then back to his children, as if asking them who I was. Our relationship was gone and I had to treat it that way.

________________________________________________

Because of a car accident some time ago, Dale got an insurance settlement of $5000. He was encouraged to buy a tract house, which sold for only $1000.

"If you buy a house, you won't have to worry ever again about where your family will live."

"Nah," he answered, "I was born poor and I'll always be poor."

Dale took a whole carload of people to the go-carts and then to eat. After that, he and the others drank the rest of the money up.

_______________________________________________

Dorothy was driving around drunk. Stopping at Dale's, she slid out of the car.

"Would youse watch Paul for me?" she asked Wilson and Dale as she leaned unsteadily against the car. Paul was in the back seat, staring out the window.

"I don't have no where to go," she went on, "and he needs a place to sleep."

Wilson and Dale both shook their heads 'no'.

'Come on, bro, "she argued, "he can't be sleeping in the car."

"Well, sober up then and take care of him!" Dale admonished.

As she was leaving I pulled on Wilson's arm.

"You should have taken him. What if she gets in a wreck?"

"But if we took him, we'd end up baby-sitting for days."

__________________________________________

Wilson took Andrew hunting for an afternoon with Dale and Wally. They all piled in the car and drove through the forest for a couple hours; Dale and Wilson shared a six-pack between them. Tammy and I stayed home. Having no goals in life does have its advantages. There are no schedules to keep or deadlines to meet. Forget pressure; forget trying to pay bills. If someone comes after you for money you owe, just pick up and go somewhere else. In the meantime, don't worry about it. You can sit out on the worn, wooden stoop, feel the sun on your arm and the light breeze in your hair, and do nothing.

Well, I could pretend I had no responsibilities for only a couple days. I liked being at Dale and Tammy's and didn't want to go home, but I owned a daycare, so I finally left, driving home alone with Andrew.
.

Open the Eyes of My Heart, Lord

.
They had gone to Texas, traveling through Arkansas. Wilson called Elmer from Fayetteville, and Elmer was to come to meet them. But Wilson's friend grew impatient, and they moved on before Elmer arrived. After a brief visit in Texas, they headed north again.

_____________________________________

The elementary school called me to come and get eight-year-old Candis. Her mother had left my number as a message phone and Candis's hair was infested with lice. I arrived at the nurse's office and found Candis with a scarf around her head.

Annie had her own place now. As we drove to her mother’s apartment, I told Candis about the daycare that I was trying to start.

"Oh! I'll help you! I'll put a table by the door and take the money for you!"


I hadn't been to their apartment before. It was above a downtown bar. Candis led me through an old door and up a filthy flight of stairs. The stairwell stunk of stale beer and urine. In the hallway, wine bottles and dirty diapers littered the floor. At the end of the hall, the window was broken. I stopped to glance out and could see little children in dirty pajamas playing in the alley. One wore a winter stocking cap pulled almost over his eyes as he swung a stick around and threw it in the air.

Annie's apartment was bare. As I'd seen many times before, a mattress served as the bed and there was little other furniture. Annie smiled a greeting and we talked a few minutes. She was embarrassed about the lice. I felt for her. I loved Annie and in all the time I'd known her, had never sensed hardness in her heart nor felt maliciousness. Despite all the troubles and as mad as I got sometimes, she seemed to be honestly unable to turn things around. Despite all I'd seen in her life, I never condemned Annie.

And although I had seen hardness in Wilson, for some reason I never believed that was really him either.

______________________________________________________

Roger asked if he could stay with me. I didn't mind. A handsome boy at eighteen years old, he was one of the few young people in Wilson’s family to have graduated from High school. In addition, he’d had a chance to go to visit Russia with the school and he took it. That was impressive. If anyone was going to make it, I was sure he would. I wanted to help him. 

So I helped him fill out the admission form for the Community College and get a learners permit for a driver’s license. In addition, I took him over to the United Parcel Service warehouse to apply for a job.

Once he got the job, I drove to the warehouse daily to drop him off and pick him up. After two weeks of work, he got his first paycheck. Then he quit.

"Aren't you going to work today?" I asked him after he'd missed a couple days.

"Nah, I don't feel like it. I don't like the job."

Frustrated, I sat down beside him. I could lead him to water, but I couldn't make him drink.

"Roger. I'm not your mom. I can't have you lying around here. If you want to lay around, maybe you should go back and live with Yvonne."

Roger left. He never did go to college. I don't know if he got his driver’s license.

.

"God, please help us. Please save our family."

.
Andrew was a happy, outgoing kid. One of his favorite games was running and hiding behind the living room chair as soon as he heard his dad's car pull up outside. Wilson then came in and made a big deal about trying to find him. Andrew would squeal and laugh when his dad finally crept over and grabbed him.

When Andrew played outside, I had to keep an eye on him. Turn your back for just a minute and he'd be up on the neighbor's porch ringing their doorbell. On a Friday in early May, Wilson and I worked all day penning Andrew in with a fence around the yard. Andrew and I then went to spend that night at my dad's. Cheri called me there the next day, upset. While we were gone, Wilson had gone out drinking. Cheri's broken voice betrayed the strong mask she usually wore; she wanted me to do something to stop him.

"We were all over to Verlin's house," she told me, "Everyone was drinking, then my dad asked me to tie the tourniquet for him while he shot up. It was my 16th birthday and he was asking me to help him shoot up!"

"What happened? Why is he doing this when everything was going so good?"

"He said he felt under pressure." she answered without explanation, "He also plans on going to Texas on Monday."

I felt the color leave my face. Why would he want to go off and leave us? Not knowing what else to do, I called Elmer Dovetail.

"Don't be scared,” he said, "God will watch over your family. Believe it, and thank God for already having helped you."

I tried to do that. I told myself that I wasn't scared about what Andrew would do without Wilson; I wasn't scared that he wouldn't come home. I told myself that I wasn't scared that he would lie to me some more, that he didn't love me, or that I was going to lose my best friend, my son's father.

"God, please help us and Wilson. Please save our family."

It turned out one of Wilson's friends had a large amount of money in the bank and the possibility for fun and travel was too much to pass up. Two days later Wilson gathered some things and left for Texas. With no one to talk to, I wrote a letter to Andrew:

"If he was having problems, I would have listened. He didn't give me a chance. He didn't give me any warning. Now it's too late, because once he starts drinking its almost impossible to get him to quit. I wish I could stop him somehow. I wish I could make him come back. I wish he wasn't an alcoholic. I do love him.
I pray, but he still drinks. So maybe prayers don't work. Maybe if I had more faith the prayers would work.
I haven't eaten since Sunday. I can't eat when I'm scared."

A couple days later Andrew heard a car across the street. He squealed with glee, and ran behind the living room chair, waiting. After several minutes, he peeked out from behind the chair and called, "Daddy! Come get me!"

"Daddy isn't here Andrew."

Andrew was silent a moment, and then stepped out, his lip quivering and eyes beginning to water, "Where's Daddy?"
.

Happy Birthday to an Exceptional Man!

Roland John Morris, Sr.
July 1, 1945 – June 9, 2004

Roland Morris, Sr., 58, ascended to heaven on Wednesday, June 9th after a four year fight with cancer. Roland, a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, was born July 1, 1945, in Cass Lake, MN. Ojibwe was his first language, and he grew up fishing, hunting, and gathering wild rice with family and friends. He also played intramural basketball, worked hard in the woods, spent time in a foster home and various jails, drank, smoked, and played guitar with friends at various bars.

Roland went to college in Kansas and was a draftsman for a short time before becoming an upholsterer. While he struggled with many difficulties in his early years, he was a perfectionist with upholstery and throughout his life performed his craft well.

After a life changing spiritual experience with Jesus in 1988, Roland moved his second family to Ronan, Montana to be near his cousin and Christian evangelist, Frank (Scotty) Butterfly. There, in 1992, Roland and his wife, Elizabeth, created Montana’s first patient transportation service, Mission Valley Medicab. They also helped instigate the Montana Passenger Carriers Association and the charitable organization, Valley Missions, Inc., all without tribal assistance.

Roland taught his children about wild ricing, hunting, fishing, and a little of the Ojibwe language. But the biggest, strongest desire of his heart was that his children, grandchildren, and entire extended family come to the saving knowledge and acceptance of Jesus Christ. Having watched many friends and relatives die physically, spiritually, and emotionally from alcoholism, violence, and suicide, Roland could no longer stand aside and do nothing. He was concerned for the children and felt distress at the attitudes of many adults within his community. He wanted the self-destruction to stop.

Roland’s relationship with Jesus coupled with his conviction that much of the reservation system was harmful led him to some amazing life experiences. Actively opposing much of federal Indian policy, Roland served as President of the Western Montana organization All Citizens Equal, was a board member and Vice-Chairman of the national organization; Citizens Equal Rights Alliance, was the Secretary of Citizens Equal Rights Foundation.

He also ran as a Republican candidate for the Montana House of Representatives in the 1996 and testified before the US Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in April,1998, the Minnesota Attorney General in 2000, and numerous Mont. State committees. With his family, he also had a private meeting with a member of the President’s Domestic Policy Council May, 2002 in Washington DC.

As time progressed, Roland became more convinced of the importance of Jesus in his life. So in 2000 he attended a year of training at the Living Faith Bible College, Canada. Over the last three years, he and/or his family went on mission trips in Canada and Mexico. During a 2003 trip to a children’s home in Juarez, Mexico, he fixed most of their dining hall chairs, taught 6 boys how to upholster, donated materials, and preached a Sunday street service.

Through the years, he has appeared in numerous newspaper articles across the country. The last article he appeared in was on Friday, May 14th, in the Washington Times. Reporter Jennifer Lehner wrote, “the ICWA [Indian Child Welfare Act] protects the interests of others over [Mr. Morris'] grandchildren,” and “Mr. Morris said that once children are relocated to the reservations, they are subject to the corrupt law of the tribal government. Instead of preserving culture, he said, the tribal leadership uses the ICWA to acquire funds provided through the legislation.” Ms. Lehner quoted Mr. Morris as saying that the law is “supposed to help children, but instead it helps tribal governments.”

Finally, in February, 2004, he and his wife founded the Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare. The purpose of this was to encourage preaching, teaching and fostering of the growth of the Christian Faith in all places, encourage accountability of governments to families with Indian heritage, and educate the public about Indian rights, laws, and issues.

Roland praised God to the very end. When his final struggle began, several of his friends and family were praying with him. When those present sang old-time hymns, he raised his hand in the air for as long as he could. When “I Surrender” was sung, he sang the echo. While Pastor Kingery sat next to Roland, holding his hand, Roland looked him straight in the eyes and pointed his other hand up to heaven. When he passed on to greater life, his good friend Marvin Bauer was softly playing Gospel songs for him on his accordion.

Roland is survived by his wife, nine children, twelve grandchildren and a great grandson. Also important to his heart was his “special” son, Jesus Garcia, in Juarez, Mexico. Surviving brothers include Harry Morris and Steven Jones; and sisters include Clara Smith, Bernice Hurd, Sharon Goose, and Christine Jones, as well as numerous nephews and nieces and his great cousin, Scotty Butterfly.

Roland was preceded in death by his parents, Jacob and Susan Jones; siblings Thomas and Wallace Morris, Robert, Martin, Caroline, Frances, Barbara and Alvina Jones, Loretta Smith, and grandson Brandon Kier.

Roland’s loving friend, Jim Ball, crafted a beautiful casket for him as a gift. Funeral services were at the CMA Church in Ronan, MT, on Sunday, June 13, 2004 and the CMA Church in Cass Lake, MN, Tuesday, June 15. Internment was at Prince of Peace Cemetery. He is strongly remembered for his strength, character, and love for the Lord Jesus.

Roland, our husband, father, grandfather, brother, uncle, cousin, and friend; We Love you and Miss you so very much. You are with God now.

Gi gi wah ba min me na wah

Christian Alliance for Indian Child Welfare
Independent Indian Press
.

Crime: A Family Tradition

.
Cheri spent the spring at a detention center after having stolen a car. When we visited, she proudly bragged about her popularity among the other kids at the center.

________________________________________________

Shirley called to tell us Misty had been picked up for stealing at Butler Drug store. The police had taken her downtown. Would we go get her?

We arrived at the courthouse. The officer spoke briefly to Wilson and then released Misty to his care. Outside on the street, Wilson and Misty laughed together. Disgusted that he wasn’t mad at her, I walked a few feet ahead of them. Behind me, Wilson asked Misty, "Why did you take those cookies?"

"I was hungry!" she said, as if Wilson were stupid for asking, and then laughed.

Too mad to keep my mouth closed any longer, I turned and spat out, "Well why didn't you just walk the four blocks to our house and get something to eat then!"

Wilson and Misty looked at each other and started laughing. I turned and kept walking.

______________________________________________

Wilson had been sober in the six months since his release. If you included his time in the workhouse, he'd been sober almost a year. In April, we began making plans for a June wedding. Wilson bought me a wedding dress, and we had a portrait taken of Wilson, Andrew and me together. After the pictures were taken, we stopped at Dairy Queen for some cones, then at a park next to the river. Wilson took Andrew, on a short walk while I waited upstream. The weather was warm, the trickling water peaceful and the trees just beginning to bud. Wilson showed Andrew the ducks, then turned and came back. We each took one of Andrew's chubby hands and swung him as we walked back to the car.

It felt like we were a family.

Andrew: Visiting Dad at the Workhouse, Grandpa on the Rez

.
With Wilson put away for six months, I considered moving out of state as soon as I finished school. But when it got right down to it, I was too scared to leave my family. So I stayed. I even installed a phone, which Wilson then began calling on. He only had a few minutes to talk; there were many other inmates waiting their turn. But he begged me to stay with him and to please be around during the times that he had phone privileges. I didn't make any promises. He asked me to come visit. I agreed initially, telling myself I was only doing it for Andrew's sake.


The aged brick building, long and maybe three stories high, could have been a factory except for the barred windows. Walking through the big door into the tiled, room size entryway, the long line of women waiting for visitation had already formed. Only so many men at a time could fit into the visitation room, so the visiting women were allowed in on a "first come first serve" basis. The line progressed as each woman approached the barred door and gave the guard her name and the name of the man she was visiting. After registering for the visit, we were instructed to wait until our name was called.

One set of women was called at a time. Upon hearing our names, we lined up and were allowed into a narrow room off the side of the entryway. A row of chairs lined up in front of a row of windows. We sat down and waited for our men to appear.

Wilson was glad to see us, but I remained aloof. I was only there for Andrew. I held Andrew on the ledge in front of the window so he could see his Dad. After a couple glances Andrew noticed him, but for the most part he was more interested in climbing back into my lap and pulling on the shirtsleeves of the women sitting on either side of me.

Wilson wanted us to come back again; but taking the bus to the workhouse was too difficult, what with putting the stroller on and off the bus and making the connections. On top of that, I was still mad at him. But Wilson wrote and called daily. Sober in the workhouse, he was making promises.

"I'll never drink again if you marry me."

While Wilson was in the workhouse, Wanda moved out of her house. This didn't surprise me; she and her family seemed to move every six months or so for various reasons. She called to tell me to come to the house to get the things Wilson had stored there. Not having a car, I called Wanda's mother, Yvonne, to ask if she would help me move Wilson's things.

"Get your white people to help you," Yvonne said, and hung up.

I wasn't going to call my "white people." Wilson was in the workhouse for crashing up the car given me. There was no way I was going to ask them to come all the way down to the south side to help get his things moved. So Wilson lost his possessions, including his mother's sewing machine.

________________________________________________________

In early June, when Andrew was about six-months-old, I borrowed a car and took him up to Salmon Lake to get enrolled in the tribe. When I arrived at Walter's house, he was around back in the yard. Seeing me, he smiled, walked over and gave me a hug. He was still agile and able to get around, but his mind was becoming forgetful. He would forget he had just bought bread or potatoes and would go buy more. Annie laughed about how many lemons were in the fridge.

We sat down with Dorothy on a blanket in the shade and talked. Andrew lay between us, his chubby legs waving in the summer air.

As the afternoon wore on, Andrew' bottle emptied.

"Paul," Dorothy called to her son, "go fill this bottle up."

It bothered me that Paul and the other kids were ordered around so much.

"No," I said, quickly standing up. "I can take care of my kid." I took the bottle in the house and filled it myself.

Later that day while unpacking, I kept Andrew's bottles in my bag and kept all our things in the middle of the bed. I didn't want to bring any roaches home.

After enrolling Andrew, I spent the next day with Walter, driving him 14 miles to town to buy tires. As we drove into the tire lot, Walter motioned, saying, "Oh, I forgot my money. We have to go back."

I pulled back out of the lot. When we arrived at his home, he got out of the car and began walking up the sidewalk. Halfway to the door, he stopped, turned, and fished in his pocket.

"Oh," he said looking into his wallet, "I had money with me all along."

We drove back to the lot. As it turned out, this was the last time he recognized me and the last time we enjoyed time together.

.

During the summer I went on long, daily walks with Tonya, but other than that, I hung around the house missing Wilson and not wanting to miss any call. I slept in the basement bedroom and ached for him constantly. When I was given money from my school, I called Wilson and gave him half of it. I was lonely without him.

I was so bent on getting back with Wilson; I bought airline tickets to Las Vegas with my credit card and talked Dad into lending us money for the trip using the Buick as collateral. He agreed reluctantly.

A week before we were to leave, Wilson called. "Someone stole the Buick. I got up this morning and it was gone."

I went to his house to call the police. The police located the car later that day in a wrecking yard. They had towed it from where it had gone off the road and through a guardrail. It was totaled.
Wilson had some cuts on his arm and his glasses were missing, but told me he had fallen off of the curb while drinking the night before. After over four years of sobriety, he was drinking again.
"You were drunk and crashed it, didn't you?"

Wilson denied it. But at the wrecking yard I found his glasses on the dash of the car under the broken windshield. Despite my suspicions, I told Wilson that I believed him.

Cheri, angry at her dad for both drinking and seeing me again, moved back with her mother.


Although our collateral was gone, I took my dad's money and time off from school and we went on the trip to Las Vegas anyway. I wasn't really interested in gambling. I had only suggested Las Vegas because I knew it would interest Wilson. The manipulation (his and mine) had worked; we were a couple again. The first half of the week was fun. We played games, walked the brightly-lit streets and saw a show. On an evening about half way through the trip, Wilson slid a wrench into his boot and went off by himself to what he said was the Indian side of town. I stayed at the motel and studied my homework. He wasn't gone as long as I thought he'd be.

"Some people thought I was a nark, so I didn't hang around." Instead, he took some money and went downstairs to gamble. When he came back up, he was drunk.

While getting our breakfast at a buffet the next morning, Wilson claimed he'd lost our last $100 dollars in a taxicab. I was four months pregnant, and we were broke. Our room was paid for, but the plane ticket couldn't be used until the reserved day. In the meantime, we'd have to find a way to eat. My dad refused to accept anymore collect calls.

Late one night, after a couple days of not eating, Wilson returned to our room with a plate full of chicken. An employee had set it aside in a back room for his own dinner, and when the man had gone to grab a drink, Wilson slipped in and took the plate. Chicken had never tasted so good.

And the plane ride back couldn't come soon enough. But we were now back together again.

A week or so later Wilson woke up shaking. The weather was hot, but that wasn't the reason he was sweating. He needed a drink. After calling around, he found out people were drinking over at his ex-brother-in-law's. We got in the car to drive the mile or so to his house. As we passed the park, a tire on our car suddenly blew.


"Here," he said, "go over to that store and call AAA. I'll meet you over there."

And he left.

So five months pregnant, I waited in the heat for AAA to come fix the tire. But I said nothing when I finally arrived at the brother-in-laws. I just smiled and laughed with the rest of them.


"The reason you can't leave me is because I have medicine in my bag that keeps you with me. Wanda’s dad gave it to me a month ago," Wilson told me.
But he wouldn't tell me just what a medicine bag was or what was in it. All he would tell me was that it was personal, and that he shouldn't have said as much as he did.

"I shouldn't have even told you I was carrying it."


It was hard for me to decide whether or not he was just being melodramatic, but I chose to believe him. I wanted to believe there was a real reason, not my fault, for continuing with this relationship.


How comforting it was to now have an excuse. My behavior was now beyond my control.

All in a Good Day's Drunk

I returned to his home after not too long. Later that October, Yvonne was in the hospital in labor with Bradley and needed someone to go to her house to take care of Wanda. I didn't mind helping and the county would pay me, so I offered to go.
There would be no phone for me to keep in contact with Wilson, but he told me he'd come up and visit in a couple of days.

The first night went all right. The next day, I helped Wanda into my wagon and we went for a drive. We ran into her cousins down on the Avenue. Climbing into the car, they asked if we'd drop them off at a bar down the road. One thing led to another, and we stopped at a couple of bars.

I usually never drank at all, let alone with Wilson's relatives. I am still not sure why I did this time.
Maybe because it was Indian summer and the weather was great.
Maybe because I felt it was my job to take Wanda where she wanted to go and who was I to tell her what she could or could not do?
But more likely, it was because it was exciting for me to be away from Wilson and with people that just wanted to have fun. So I had a couple of drinks with them.

"I always wanted to be like Wilson," Verlin, one of the cousins, proclaimed to me over his beer, "Ever since I was a little kid watching him and Dan Hunter drinking with my ma in our kitchen, I always wanted to be like him."

Outside of the second bar, while transferring Wanda from the car to the wheelchair, I misjudged and almost dropped the chair backward with Wanda in it. I decided that I shouldn't drive and asked Verlin to. I didn't drink anymore that evening.

Eventually we found ourselves back at Wanda's. Somewhere along the line, a couple of girls none of us really knew had joined our group. As everyone sat in the living room laughing and drinking, the new girls, one skinny with straggly, sandy-colored hair and the other heavier and more Indian looking, tried to snag on Wilson's nephews.

As their partying progressed into the night, I became bored and went in to the bedroom to read. But that didn't help.

Restless, I returned to the main room and sat down. I don't remember saying anything; I don't think I even had time to. I wasn't seated but a moment when suddenly, the skinny girl with straggly hair jumped up and came at me. In her right fist was a knife. It happened so fast I had no time to think beyond, "Oh my God, what do I do?"

She was just a couple of feet away, ready to lunge, when Wilson, Pam, and Pam's boyfriend came in the kitchen door. Wilson took one look at what was happening and he and Pam’s boyfriend chased the girl out the living room door.

Everyone else in the room stayed where they were, guffawing to each other about what just happened. Still in shock, I neither heard what they were saying or cared. After what seemed just a moment, Wilson came back in.

"The girl must have been stoned, because both of us together couldn't get her down," said Wilson, "we hit her over the head with a 2X4 and she was still standing."

They didn't know where she went. She'd run off somewhere behind the houses.

I left with Wilson then. As we stood with Pam and her boyfriend outside by our car, Wilson asked me what had happened. I started to tell him, but to my embarrassment, began to cry. My whole body, tense as a rock until that moment, was now crumbling. What might have happened had Wilson not come in when he did?

But I knew it wasn't okay to cry, especially with Pam watching, so I stopped.

I heard rumors that Savannah had been beaten and molested by Annie’s boyfriend out near Mission. It was a rumor said in passing; it was just part of a conversation. I’m not even sure who said it.

Late one night during that ricing season some relatives drove up to Dorothy's house. Wilson and Dorothy went outside to talk to them. I stayed inside knowing it was none of my business. From the window I could hear Savannah screaming and crying, "I want my mom! I want my mom!"

Annie was gone again, drinking, and no one wanted the responsibility of keeping the girls. Poor Savannah, she knew that no one really wanted her and Candis, so she screamed for her mom to let her aunts and uncles know that she didn't want them either. I'm not sure who finally took the girls or where they went, but they didn't stay at Dorothy's.


Ricing was almost over.

"My dad said this will be the last time we rice together," Wilson told me ruefully.Walter had a feeling and just "knew" this was the last time. His dad wouldn't come out and say something like that unless it was true.


At home, Wilson’s daughter Cheri had stopped coming on the weekends. She spent time with her friends instead. I was sorry she didn't want to see us but also secretly relieved and even more relieved when Misty also quit coming. The fewer kids to take care of, the easier the weekends were. Besides, we never really went anywhere anymore, except to visit my family, and Wilson didn't go with us. It was easier the fewer children I had.

We were hearing from Junior and Joy that Cheri and Misty were running around. The little ones also said that their mother was paying the older girls to steal cigarettes from their corner store.

Sitting on the warm sidewalk with Junior and Joy one morning, I wondered why I was hanging around. Why couldn't I just walk away?

Suddenly, Joy looked up at me, smiled, and asked a question. Junior laughed at her question, and I hugged them both.


Maybe God wants me to stay here for them.