GRAND FORKS, ND

By Shannon Rothenberger

Sunday
Deep green and blue sparkles in the house where it's always okay to sleep late. Sky huge and blue, land stretched endlessly sun baked fields and fields of green. My hips ‹ rose hips, skin perfumed by sweetgrass air, nipples harden in the soft fresh breeze, bliss alone in wide spaces. Prairie enters me, brings itself home. Everything else said, how tribal we are, that doesn't matter. This has been going on for hundreds thousands of years.

Monday
Here what you want is what you get but often someone else decides what you want. Papa Phil knows a lot of things. Though he pretends to grumble, it's his idea to help. He won't take no. Anyway, I don't say no. I watch his hands shake, thick capable hands now arthritic and... shaking. Mortality. He still pretends to be gruff about how you ain't doing it right. Then look up and his eyes are warm. Around here if you do anything, eight people come around to argue with each other about the right way. I told one cousin I need a bicycle and now I have four, all broken.

I love it when small town jaws drop, the stares. Here's a big sky that touches down all around the spread out top of the world. Even in August, it's not easy to get my father to do things. Sluggish clear frozen vodka in his veins. He's Porky at home (though he hasn't been fat since age 3). Porky has hiding places, wide pockets of time where no one can come in. Smoke numbs, objects crowd around, protection.

And there are pictures here of me and the ghost. My husband who walked away last Christmas without a word. I guess I'm a ghost in these photos too. Don't know her. Can't find them. Pork told Grandma Lil I have a boyfriend now. I'll let Lil think that so she'll be happy. So she can make me blush. Then again, she can also make me eat Dairy Queen.

Lil showed me the old wooden shutters. Papa made them himself when the kids were little. "Would you believe he was a lover and a ladies man, and he could still do such nice work with his hands?"

We tied up the tiger lilies, staked them to the house because they were falling over. Because Grandma wanted us to. And I've teased my bearlike cousins, watched them fix a car. I've looked through the hole in the fence across the street, thrown a peach pit in. I've bought nothing.

Tuesday
Most sensual storm last night. It's talking to me, dancing with me. Papa says, "North Dakota produced you!" Yes, I feel it in my sunflower bones.

I got stuck in the mud washing my hands on the bank of the Red and it didn't want to let go my shoes. Had to step out of my sneakers and pry them out of solid black mud. It wasn't easy. It frightened me a little, like this place with its bigger-than-you extremes. What if it doesn't let go of me? But Grandma says they use that mud to heal sores.

Yesterday in the middle of a hot sunbath we got hail, big as marbles. They covered the ground, white ice, bounced around crazy, dented the cars, for 20 minutes.

I walk barefoot down the streets and alleys like when I was a kid, pick crabapples on the riverbank, snap a photo of a wild rabbit eating Grandma Lil's angel food cake ‹ the whole cake. Watch a world of little kids on bikes go by. Nothing is locked up.

Lying on the porch reading my book ‹ Aunt Shirley drives up. That warmth in the hugs of Indian women here, firefly eyes, knowing glee. Same thing in the clubhouse two blocks away. I leave my porch and stroll over. Each house bumps into view, a battered portrait. And the sky is brilliant buttery welcoming sky. It owns me. Here's nothing more I want than to ride out under it, in it, wrapped in blue silk of my birth.

Walking back at last light, I see our petunia-decked porch from a block away, my father and grandparents sitting outside. I live here. I can't possibly imagine living here. Months, years, what'd that be like? Everyone shut in, apathetic. I'm for roaming, know this. Places are what you let in. Today this place calls me home.

It doesn't hurt me anymore to not be seen, to be misunderstood, misinterpreted. Even when my father demands coffee refill, tells me he's used to service. And Lil says don't sit in Porky's chair, he's king of the road around here. That seems normal for them. We all know ourselves our own way. Anyway, there's plenty to go around. Lots of room.

Wednesday
Erotic storm pounding the house, walls of wind shriek down the street, sirens on the weather warning, flash floods, lawn lakes all pelted rumbling flash and crack. Shake the house. And I am running, pony panting along the river; there I go horse stamina, attracting flies. Down the alley, onto the porch, push ups, dips. All silent again. Just a few leafy branches drifting down, wet feathers.

The smell of this house has always been comforting and exciting at the same breath. Walk onto the hall carpet, green geometrics, into upstairs bathroom and inhale powdery cologne ghosts of past residents‹cousins, aunts, uncles. Where it really hits is on the stairs down, green geometry again worn to velvet dry as straw, but here comes grandma/grandpa smell from the livingroom. Even in summer it smells like snow, cold, powerful, Christmas morning. It curls your toes. Under that is something mushroom-clean, not moldy but wet tree bark. On top is sweetness of her Estée Lauder Youth Dew (always) layered with his Brut. These perfumes have mingled over the years like fuzzy wallpaper and old plush couches-red and black. To me this is the smell of red and black, plus wood paneling with a touch of cigar smoke.

We missed the second big storm while we were in the movie theater. Pork hasn't ridden a bike in decades but after one false swerve into the neighbor's garage he's delicated balance, swoops and glides ahead of me, looking like himself, bare legs smooth as Inuit soapstone.

West on University, south on Washington (through underpass on the way to the old café, flashback to banana seat days) and west for a long time on the bikepath to the multiplex. Sky overcast and sidewalks jumbled cracked and muddy with deep puddles kicked up by my wheels dotted me with grouse speckles. Muddy again.

On the way home the sun broke through retreating ragged-black topped storm clouds sailing southeast to drown Minnesota. Beautiful to ride through hometown with hometown boy on golden light pumped down every intersection like gods' veins and he showed us where they used to live.

Cousin Duck came to get us to hang out at Jeannie's with Dick and Shirley. Seediest restaurant on the strip, but they don't bother you. Stick to coffee because the cook's arms are covered with scabs.

Uncle Dick tells the story. Papa had women at every stop when he worked on the railroad. Papa's answer? "Well, I never got off the train."

Bunch of Shirley's Chippewa sisters and nieces came, smoked and cracked us up, full of fun and arrogant, probably the way I seem to them. North Dakotans are so self-satisfied, it's hard to describe. I see it in people's Indian walks; at home in their bodies, it's almost fuck you. It must be Grand Forks because you don't see that in Fargo.

Thursday
Fishing for catfish with Papa, leeches for bait. Papa loves this river: "It's so peaceful. Don't like to see four walls around me."

In the car, Lil waits for us, fuming. "I hate that river." Why? "Because he loves that river more than he loves me."

We are off to the big woods. Dropped tobacco in the river that owns me. The one that flows north. Asked it to help me use my time wisely. Send me something to do, use me well, then send me home.

Friday
I'm sitting on a cliff in the woods by Uncle Chuck's house, facing east, full rising sun on me. Below is the Mississippi River, crawling past a wilderness island in its stream. No neighbors. Just bird sounds, wind sounds. Spirits all around.

I felt them last night under the almost full moon and yesterday late still hot when I followed deer trails along the ridge through shoulder-high grass, wild flowers and thistles to a bank I descend where the deer do, across gray mud so soft ‹ see the hoofprints and into cool water. Amber. I swam in the Mississippi. The river that starts here and floats you down to New Orleans in the fall. The river of dreams. Here it's only nine feet deep and wide across as a four-lane.

This is Anishinaabe homeland and I can feel why. I won $$ at Northern Star Casino on Leech Lake Reservation yesterday. Not looking for the big pay-out, just the patience to keep playing.

And these are our people. They nod at my dad, stop and talk to us. We're not members, but we're related. Loved by the same spirits. Understanding. Don't need more. There's reasons for being a hybrid. I feel my self filling up, no need to talk.

My Cree husband never admitted to masturbating. Not in the usual way, with a magazine. The woods excited him; he'd get lost all day in Manitoba bush, see berries bright with dew, pop, see soft, fresh mushrooms, pop, see golden sap dripping down a big pine, pop, pop, pop.

Anyway, I didn't love him because he was sane. I loved him because he was wild, and sometimes wild things just take off. I'm that way too, so I know. What it is, he can't make me sad. He's just a guy from another tribe.

Something's rearranged itself inside of me. Along the web of bring something positive into my life or I got no use for you. There goes a garter snake across my foot as I said that. Now a deer swims across the river. Big splash.

Later
Uncle Chuck: Why don't you show your dad some web sites?

Me: Do you want to see Amazon.com?

Pork: No.

Me: I thought you did?

Pork: I'm afraid I might buy something.

Me: You don't have to buy anything. We can go to a powwow site. You probably forgot your password anyway.

Papa Phil: That's it! You just want his password so you can run up his credit card!

Me: That's your reality.

Chuck: The problem is he makes others endure his reality.

Grandma Lil: Why won't you let Porky shop?

Me: There's a shopping psychosis in this family. You're all sick people.

Chuck: I hear wind chimes.

What I see about myself is I have so much energy, I don't need coffee. Because then it becomes impulsiveness and I can't stop my mouth. I end up being glared at by three people, one accusing me of trying to make him shop, another yelling at me for trying to stop him from shopping and a third calling me a thief. The fourth guy leaves his body.

It's the lifelong message that I am "too much." I no longer let them stuff me with food, alcohol, cigarettes, swallow my silence with shame. Tomorrow, at his son's wedding, Chuckie will drink rum and grab me, tell everybody I'm his mystery girl; he hopes they think his granddaughter is "our baby." I say, yeah, our baby'd have three eyes and a tail. Nausea.

Saturday
Spent all yesterday in Gull Lake. Swam through reedy water, got bumped by turtles, lay on the grass, talked with my father in water ‹ always the best conversations. He feels much as I do, but he doesn't say anything to them.

Normal life? All day I drifted and floated underwater for where my passion lies. More like passions ‹ that's the problem. Clarity and drift, then mud ‹ wait for it to clear.

All these feelings are riverlike, gentle, at peace because nothing is expected of me. I'm already at the center. Full, like last night's harvest moon, deep orange. All these trees whispering around are comforting. I'm permeable somehow, happy flapping, a big white sheet on a line in the sun, sieving grass perfume.

Sadness and anger pass through me, but they are weak tea versions of themselves. It's my cousin's wedding day, so I don't expect too much from it. I laugh when Grandma Lil says I have nothing to fill the top of my dress. Later she tells me I'm fat so I should skip lunch. It helps to have her with me as the externalized voice of fear, so I can separate from that. Hear it as a voice. So in that way, she is my teacher too. Gonna be another hot one.

Sunday
My father never came back last night.

Last time I saw them, Chuck was driving, beer can on his knee. I didn't sleep much. Neither did Phil and Lil. We sit here sweating, swatting flies, waiting to miss Papa's VFW picnic, waiting to miss my plane home, waiting for the police to call, imagining the accident, the local headlines: Just another DWI in Brainerd.

This heat is like a fever. Everything feels wrong. Don't let them be dead. I wouldn't have gotten in a car with Chuck drunk as he was before dinner. Of course I did, so I know.

When they finally drag ass in, they're short on explanation and long on charm. No apologies, of course. Lil says that's not their bag.

I'm loading all the bags in the car when Chuck holds out his arms. "There's the one I didn't dance with!" I give him the Bronx cheer.

He announces, "Shannon should have been there-to save us! And teach us some new dances."

I say, "I'm not in the savior business." Slam the trunk of the car. See ya. Maybe in heaven where they ain't got no alkyhol.

At the dregs of the VFW picnic, Grandma Lil makes me choke down potato salad, corn, baked beans, a hamburger without a bun. "They won't feed you on the plane." She's right about that.

Parting from them is mostly foggy. On the drive to the airbase, my father points to a hawk flying over our car. He's excited. "A big hawk!" A good sign, though I missed it. He gives me a cigarette as my pre-flight prayer offering. All is forgiven.

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SHANNON ROTHENBERGER is a writer and citizen of New York, NY, USA, the World.