LeAnne Howe

There she was standing over me. She inched her face close to my face. She put her hands on my face. I remembered her immediately, but did not speak. My eyes blurred. They were hot and heavy. It hurt to look at Ain’t Sally. It hurt to see. I closed my eyes. I felt her cool touch. She chanted. “You will be well. You will not die.Chim chukma taha che. You will be well.Chi pesa taha che.” She sang to me. Then I heard her leave. A woman whose bed was surrounded by white partitions, moaned again. This was not a new sound. It was a constant. Her breath whistled irregularly. There was no escaping the whistle. The whistling sounds were everywhere in the white room. Then they stopped. Another woman in another bed called out. No answer. She pushed the bell. Women wearing white dresses came into the room. They pushed the partitions back. They said the whistling woman was dead. I went back to sleep. Before the hospital. Before rheumatic fever. Before the dead woman. I had met Ain’t Sally. I was seven years old. Ain’t Sally was an ancient Indian relative who lived in Hayrick, outside of Dublin. A place of the Snakes. A place of memory. Once a base camp for nomadic tribes following buffalo, once a county seat, Hayrick, Texas took its name from a solitary mountain standing in the breadth of open grasslands. Only a state government road sign remains, marking the place of Hayrick. Marking the sign of the Snakes. The only time we visited Ain’t Sally, I rode in the back seat of our green 1950 Chevrolet, and listened to my Indian grandmother tell stories about our family. Chapters went like this: —Life in a  Dugout. —Making Lye Soap. —How Grandfather got VD. I don’t remember much of the drive to Hayrick. We drove the rural roads of West Texas. There were two lanes of dust and dirt, stagnant, green-belted river beds and one-lane bridges. When we arrived at Ain’t Sally’s the old woman ambled out of a rusted screen door of a paintless wooden house. Breasts sagging, her thin body lacking in strength seemed unable to support her weight. She wore a sleeveless dress that revealed naked brown skin, skin that was no more than a sheath for aging bones. Hairless underarms. She fed us saltine crackers and cold squirrel dumplings. She asked me questions. She asked me about my secrets. I don’t remember having any to tell. She told me hers while I ate. She said I reminded her of someone she’d seen a long time ago. I remember dancing for her. I told her I was a bird. A manbird. A hunter. I danced around the kitchen table and sang and pretended to be PowWow Dancer. A bird of dance. A bird of rhythm. When my mother and grandmother went to town, Ain’t Sally took me for a walk around her place. The farm had belonged to her relatives. We went down to the dry gorge and she pointed out all kinds of roots and trees. She asked me if I knew about the plants of the pasture. I said yes. I thought I was lying. As we walked farther from the house, I remember a hot gusty wind picked up her voice like dust tendrils on bedrock and blew it away from me. I ran to catch the sound. I found Ain’t Sally sitting on a granite rock. —Ala Tek. Indian girl. —Come and see, on our land, the four winds of the old days will blow through our hair. Then she tugged at my black braids. —Come and visit the Snakes, Ala Tek. —When I was your age they blew across this place like red dust devils on flat neutral plains. —Can you see them. —Do you hear the Snake People calling us? —Yes. I can see them. I hear them. They are naked and wild. Their eyes, like black grapes shining in the Sun, stare back at me. —They’re hungry. I watch the Snake People eat the fleshy intestines of my uncle’s butchered cow. I taste the hot blood, roll it around on my tongue and remember. It makes me sweat. I watch the Snake People play games around the carcass. And before we walk back into the house, the old woman and me, she runs her crooked fingers across my eyes and says. —Ala Tek. Indian Girl. —The ghosts of your ancestors will visit you there. The rest of the visit blurs. My last memories are from that day. She waves to me from her front porch. She never explained the Snakes. She only said, “Che pisa lauchi. I’ll see you. Indians never say good-bye.” I never saw Ain’t Sally again until she appeared in my hospital room. I thought she was dead. I didn’t know about the Snakes until some twenty-five years later. To make the sign of the snake means: Comanches are here.

First, night opened out. Bodies took root from rotting salt and seawater into evidence of red life. Relentless waves pumped tidal air into a single heartbeat. In the pulp of shadow and space, water sucked our people from sleep. That’s how it all began. At least that’s all we can remember to tell. It began with water and heartbeat. In minutes we tunneled through corn woman’s navel into tinges of moist red men and women. Yawning, we collected our chins, knees, breasts, and sure-footed determination. A few thousand years before Moses parted the Red Sea, and the God with three heads was born in the Middle East, the Choctaw people danced our homeland infra red. Finally when the stranger’s arms reached to strangle the West, Grandmother eavesdropped on the three-faced deity who said that chaos was coming. When he puckered his lips and tried to kiss her she made it rain on him. “Maybe you’ve forgotten you were born of water and women,” she said, walking away laughing.

Ya kut unta pishno ma* Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma So I moved to this place, Iowa City, Ioway Where green-headed mallards walk the streets day and night, and defecate on sidewalks. Greasy meat bags in wetsuits, disguise themselves as pets and are free as birds. Maybe Indians should have thought of that? Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Maybe you would have left us alone, if we put on rubber bills, and rubber feet, Quacked instead of complained, Swam instead of danced waddled away when you did what you did… Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma So I moved to the Place The “Jewel of the Midwest” Where ghosts of ourselves Dance the sulphur trails. Fumes emerge continuous from the mouths of Three-faced Deities who preach, “We absolve joy through suffering.” Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma So I moved to this place where in 1992, up washed Columbus again like a pointy-chinned Son of Cannibals. His spin doctors rewrite his successes “After 500 years and 25 million dead, One out of 100 American Indians commit suicide One out of 10 American Indians are alcoholics 49 years is the average lifespan of American Indians.” Each minute burns the useful and useless alike Sing Hallelujah Praise the Lord Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma And when you foreigners build your off-world colonies and relocate in outer space This is what we will do We will dance, We will dance, We will dance to a duck’s tune. Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma Ya kut unta pishno ma