blood can heal them. Six times a day they come into the bright, hotly lit chamber, approach the platform where I am tied by my arms and legs, and prod at the bruised, tender flesh of my arms with their sharp, pointed fingers. I have grown accustomed to their intent, their anger, their rage at the sight of the nerves and veins running in blue lines beneath the chalky brown outer layer of my skin. I try not to wince, to not give them the satisfaction of knowing how much it hurts, that pinch upon my skin, and the sharp, sharp pinprick. Sometimes the needles aren’t as sharp as they once were, but they say nothing as the blunt end of the needle punctures through the purple-and-black bruises all along my arms.
I turn and watch the liquid spurt into the long, clear glass cylinder. Their hopes rise with each filling of the specimen collector, each change that my blood undergoes as they try to craft their cure for this disease of their own making. My face is reflected in the glass syringe, and my lips purse and my eyes shimmer with tears I can no longer shed. The only liquid my body can conjure is my blood; and soon, I know, if they continue taking it from me against my will, there won’t be anything left inside of me to steal.
II.
My mother had a beautiful laugh. I can still remember the sound, coming from dreams that pretend to follow the false sleep the lights keep me in. She was always laughing. She laughed when my father sang to her with his clapper sticks.
My dad’s hands always moved in perfect rhythm, pushing his song skyward. My mother’s laugh moved up and down the length of the sticks, and this is how I remember them. Laughing. Singing. But never speaking my name. Just singing into the thousand tiny pinpricks of light under the dark sky of home.
I remember watching her touch the tall grasses, singing to them as they drifted under her fingers. The image of the kelp beds dancing under Pahe Pahe’s song come to me, and I see that my mother, like Pahe Pahe, is singing to the grasses of the earth. Her song makes magic as she pulls certain grasses from the earth and begins to pass them through her teeth. “The grass needs to be softened before it can take the shape of the basket,” my mother says. Some grasses make the journey through her mouth, others remain undisturbed. “We save some for next year so that there will always be baskets for the coming seasons….” I can hear her voice so clearly, so sweetly, that even in my mind, after I have spent all this time locked away in a laboratory that keeps me alive for my blood, I feel her strength seep into my bones.
Her fingers shape the tough grasses, softened by her mouth, into a knot of a cross. “This is the heart, the beginning, of any basket,” she says. My fingers, tiny, follow hers, moving the softer pieces between the tougher ones, her patient and loving hands guiding mine. “Baskets hold water, seeds, grass, even babies. The baskets hold our hearts, keep us connected to the earth, to the sky, to the sea, to one another….” Her hands are gentle as she guides mine, and when I am finished, my basket is lopsided, uneven, filled with little holes. My mother laughs and holds it up to the sun. “This one is good for collecting acorns,” she says, her smile coloring her voice. “We’ll need those for good soup.”
When they came to take me away, my mother wasn’t laughing. She made no sound at all as the dark matte of blood oozed out from the wound in her head where they had shot her dead. It spilled onto the red dirt as it pooled in the setting light of the sun. My mother’s blood was weak, they said as they pulled me from her arms. Not enough Indian to make a cure, they said.
Her eyes were open and empty as they pulled me into a helicopter, the sound of the blades drowning out my screams.
My father does not come for me….Only his voice seeks me out in the darkness, in the crying-out voice that tears across my mouth. He is there, too, his body lying not far from my mother’s. He does not move. His blood is thin, weak; yet it is the same color as mine.
I lost my name that day. It was then I became “2231.” “It.” “Redskin.”
Dirty Indian.
III.
My father’s voice is singing in my mind when I feel the kindly ones’ fear shift into something different.
Something is happening. I can taste the shift in their fear upon my tongue. I can taste their blood between my teeth as it pumps, diluted, through their veins in a failing attempt to graft my immunity to their weakness. Their fear tastes of metal, hard and cold, and the death stench is soon upon them.
Their fear fills my eyes, my nose, my lungs. Stronger than ever in my mouth. Time slips past, and their entrances into my chamber grow fewer and fewer. They are losing their war against this plague, and they curse my strength as their own death marches forward in the blackness of their blood. Inside me, gaining strength from my mother’s song, my blood pumps stronger and stronger. Their taking grows less frequent, and I feel the renewal of my blood bloom within.
The door opens and the bloom withers. They have come once again.
The air changes around me. I’ve not felt this one before.
A fresh anger moves in waves across the room, and I strain against my binds to see who this one is. Her scent is not of fear. She is not dying. Her blood is pure.
A woman comes to my side, and I see her clearly. No mask, no veil to hide behind. She is beautiful, her face dark against the harsh lights. Her eyes are black like mine, her hair is pulled back from her face, and beauty shines from her. I look up into her eyes, and in them I see a sea of night stars, an ocean of inky darkness, and she looks at me, hard.
Her mouth is moving, but I can hear nothing from her mouth, only my father’s song from a distant memory.
Am I dreaming? I have not been able to do so for as long as I can remember.
I’m too lost in the woman’s eyes to make out the pattern of her words that string along in my head.
All I can see are the stars in a dark expanse of ocean and sky. I know the place of each of them in the night sky, the name for all the plants and animals. The name of the people.
My mouth opens and I try to speak, but nothing comes out. She reaches out, her hands resting upon my face, and the expanse of night sky swims in her eyes. I think she is crying when her words begin to form in my head.
“Sela.” She is saying, over and over. “Sela, Sela, Sela…”
