Kelle Groom

I think of the man who sat behind my grandmother’s sister in church and told her the percentage of Indian in her blood, calling it out over the white pews. I wonder what made him want to count it like coins or a grade. I wish I could hear him now when I think of her saying that all the Wampanoag blood in her body would fit in one finger, discounting the percentage it seemed, but why was she such a historian, tracing the genealogy of the last Wampanoag up to her own children, typing it all on see-through paper? Maybe like me she felt a little self-conscious caring about what we’re made of instead of simply being satisfied dressing our bodies and driving them around. Maybe she felt shy for loving someone she’d never met, I mean I do. I think of the knife cutting into flesh and the fork carrying it