The Feed

Several of my cousins lean up against the house, taking long drags from the pack of Marlboros we share. We have always been this way —addicted and generous. A pow wow tape plays from inside the open garage where two old uncles are thinking to themselves in the safety of its shadows. Our aunties are in the kitchen, preparing the boiled meat and chokecherry soup and laughing about old jokes they still hang onto because these things are a matter of survival. Outside, we ask about who was driving around with who last night, where so-and-so got beat up, whose girlfriend left him for someone else. (But she’ll go back to him, we all think to ourselves.) Aunties carry the full pots and pans to the picnic table, an uncle prays over our food in Assiniboine. We all want to forget that we don’t understand this language, we spend lots of time trying to forget in different ways. No one notices that the wild turnips are still simmering in a pot on the stove.