Ancestor Approved Read online

  A few minutes later I left, saying I had to get ready for tomorrow. I didn’t want Potter trying to get me alone to say his friend didn’t really mean anything by that comment, how he was treating me like one of the guys.

  Just before we slipped out at sunrise for early setup, I saw Potter and Craig sitting in the hot tub, steam rolling into the orange sunlight. I wondered if all five were like my cousin, at the fringes of our community. I knew some pasty Indians, so I knew it was possible.

  “Maybe you can use that tonight,” my mom whispered. “If you ask Uncle Dave, nicely.”

  I didn’t explain that I was just watching two friends spending time together. Potter and his friends seemed close, and I didn’t have any friends like that since the Wampum Incident. I hung with Rez cousins, but they acted like they were being forced. Would I hang with a jerk if he liked me enough? If I didn’t have any other choices?

  “Did you put that box on Potter’s bed?” my mom asked as we headed to the powwow.

  “What’s Order of the Arrow?” I asked as we got into the van, knowing I shouldn’t have.

  “Still being an elephant, huh?” she asked. Big ears, listening, long nose in everyone else’s business. Her business this time. Some custom requests were strange. But if it didn’t violate ceremony, she was willing. If someone wanted a beadwork Elsa with a beadwork Lion King on a medallion, that was the customer’s business. Those commissions generally paid four times regular price. But something about this one bothered her. If it hadn’t been for a family member, I’m guessing she might have turned this one down.

  “I just wanted to know. If it’s so special to him . . .”

  “You wanna try a crack at this?” she asked my dad.

  He’d been the one to give me a Rez version of the Now You’re a Man talk: mostly that I had to wear deodorant and shower thoroughly every day. The basic version.

  “It’s a thing he does,” my dad started. “You have cousins around all the time.”

  Lucky me. Some older cousins had filled in blanks left from my dad’s sketchy “man” talk.

  “Potter doesn’t have that, but his dad grew up with us, and . . . he wants to belong to an Indian community.”

  Potter and I each had one enrolled parent, but because of the way our Nation dealt with enrollment, I’m legally Indian, and he isn’t. Uncle Dave knew, when he married a woman who wasn’t enrolled, that his kids would never be considered Indian. But you don’t get to say who you fall in love with.

  “You gonna tell him?” my mom asked, trying to get my dad to tell me something she didn’t want to deal with herself.

  “It’s your brother’s kid. I think it’s yours to do,” my dad said.

  Suddenly, this got more interesting. Ever since the accident two years ago, my dad usually did anything my mom asked. Our lives were forever changed when he fell off a three-story roof. He called disability insurance his “imaginary friend”: it’s there, but don’t expect much from it when you’re really in a tight spot.

  When they x-rayed his feet, the doctor said they looked like shattered lightbulbs instead of feet. There weren’t any bones to set. It was a long recovery, but he can walk now. Roofing, though, forget it.

  “Potter and his . . . friends. They’re gonna dance today.” I knew this. My mom paused. “Just round dance at the intertribal. His friends aren’t Indian.”

  “That’s what intertribals are for, isn’t it, though?” I said. “So anyone can dance.”

  “That’s right,” she said, “but it’s like . . .”

  My dad laughed a little. She joke-smacked him and he laughed harder.

  “Just show him on your phone,” she said.

  He typed Order of the Arrow into an image search. As I scrolled past that red arrow, the other previews freaked me out: pictures of pasty white boys dressed in confused Indian outfits, like they’d yanked clothes from giant bags labeled Expensive Indian Costume.

  Some guys even looked spray-tanned an identical color. A few wore black braid wigs and headbands. Almost everyone had bone breastplates. Everyone wore that same arrow bandolier.

  Each picture looked like a ridiculous Indian mascot convention, rows and rows of preposterous headdresses and animal-skin hats with giant bull horns attached to the sides. And enough feather bustles that these guys might take flight on a windy day.

  “Why are you showing me these weirdos?” I asked. The results reminded me of pictures you see around Halloween—shapely women in tiny fringed bikinis and headdresses, outfits called “Sexy Princess Deluxe.” My dad was watching a TV show about something called Burning Man, where I saw wasted-looking people in similar outfits. “And how come no one says anything?”

  “People do,” my dad said. “Order of the Arrow says they’re just honoring Natives and that we should be happy about their love.”

  “That’s bull,” I said, and stopped. Suddenly, Potter’s room flashed into my mind. On the way here, we had five ribbon shirts, but right now, one was missing: the exact red of the bandolier, with white ribbons. I could see clearly what my parents were telling me, like when steam fades away from the mirror.

  We set up at the school and started doing brisk business. My parents silently did Indian Price for certain customers, and I got better at seeing it. No one asked for it, and the only acknowledgment you got was a tiny quick smile. Then that person might bring a friend, who’d also buy something, even just a couple of Jitterbug Men, you know, little men made of big beads and some beadwork wire, guaranteed to hold together as long as you didn’t play with them like toys.

  Potter and his friends swept through before Grand Entry. He wore the red ribbon shirt and the beaded bandolier. The breechcloth he wore over leggings had a huge arrow pointing up. My parents would never put an arrow there, no matter the commission. Uncle Dave said Potter and his friends wanted to have good spots in the stands. They moved in arrow formation like Canada geese, Craig leading in the center, with two red handprints painted onto his cheeks. Were those Potter’s hands? All five crossed their arms rigidly in front of them.

  Mostly, they were dressed like the guys on my dad’s phone, a mash-up of traditional clothes from a range of Indian nations. One guy’s shirt had so many ribbons, it looked like he’d hiked a hula skirt up to his chest. They looked like they’d spray-tanned together before coming. I wondered how that worked with a hot tub. A couple of men followed behind them, in matching khaki outfits, both wearing that bandolier. A third man was dressed in regular clothes. They were following too close to be strangers, so I guessed they were the dads of Potter’s friends.

  Seeing non-Indians dressing up and participating in intertribals was part of what you signed up for on the circuit. Powwow culture was partly a welcome to all who were interested. But it still felt like someone was putting on a costume of you. Particularly when they sprayed their faces. I’m not sure why that bothered me the most, but it did. Potter’s group headed in.

  The Plain-Clothes Dad told my mom he’d be back to talk, but he didn’t return. We usually heard this when someone wanted to leave the booth without buying something.

  The host food vendors cater a big meal on the Saturday for vendors and dancers, but we skipped out so we could spend time together as a family. That’s what I was supposed to say, but I couldn’t help thinking that it felt like staying with strangers.

  I helped set the dinner table. Uncle Dave had planned traditional corn soup ahead, doing the hard prep before we got there. He’d twisted the dried kernels from the cobs, cooked them in wood ashes, and rinsed and rinsed. My mom helped with final steps, adding meat and kidney beans for taste. We’d brought pig knuckles from our butcher. A lot of non-Rez Indians called that poor-people food and used tenderloin, to be fancier, but it never tasted right.

  After dinner, Potter and Craig and I cleared the table, and they asked if I wanted to join them in the hot tub again. I ran up to Potter’s room to change. His regalia was nowhere in sight. He must have hung it up somewhere else when he swi
tched back into regular clothes.

  “Little Man, did you enjoy your first time at the powwow here?” Craig asked once we’d settled into the tub. That Little Man bit was getting old quick.

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s like some others we go to. They’re not all alike, but my mom says a whole bunch have popped up around colleges where Indian kids regularly go.”

  “So you do this all the time?” he asked eagerly, leaning forward.

  “Not all the time,” I said. “Gotta go to school, get my homework done, and travel to powwows. Sometimes I stay home.” I gave a side glance to Potter. He scooped foam, flinging it out. No eye contact.

  The whole family knew about the Wampum Incident, and that I hadn’t been allowed to stay home this time.

  “Did you enjoy your time at the powwow?” I asked Craig back.

  “Sure,” he said. “My dad’s been taking me most of my life. It’s one of the best things we do together. Some of my costumery was my dad’s. He jokes that he’s too fat for it now. I’m honoring his legacy by wearing it. He didn’t stay an Arrowman through the Vigil, but he’s encouraging me to stick to it.” He scooped foam too.

  The foam had brown flecks, like dirty wash water. Craig stood, and his belly and forearms were several shades pinker than his chest and face. They were flicking Tan-in-a-Can flakes that the chlorine had washed off.

  “We’re gonna have to spray again tomorrow morning,” Craig said. “Just in case I decide to go breechcloth only.” He grinned. “I’m just kidding, Little Man,” he said, climbing out of the tub. Laughing, he yanked up the back of his trunks, giving himself a gross wedgie. “No amount of Savage Tan is going to get rid of these ghostly butt cheeks.”

  “Get going,” Potter said, laughing. “Your dad’s expecting you.”

  “He just wants to show me his OA dance moves,” Craig said, rearranging his trunks.

  “Promise is a promise,” Potter reminded, but not pushy.

  “Okay. Seven early enough so we’re not rushed?” Potter nodded, and Craig headed in.

  “You can go with him,” I said. “I’m old enough to stay here alone.”

  “Never leave anyone alone in a hot tub,” Potter said. “We aren’t supposed to stay in too much longer anyway.”

  I started to climb out, but he said, “Wait. Not yet. I wanna talk man to man.”

  “Don’t you mean ‘Man to Little Man’?”

  “No,” he said. “Look, I know Craig can be a lot to take.”

  I said nothing.

  “But you have an entire Rez to hang with. Cousins, non-cousins, all knowing Rez life. I don’t have that. My dad talks about his home Rez and my mom talks about hers, and I’m never going to have that. Even when they take us for visits, it’s not like I really fit in.”

  I had to admit, people from home didn’t warm up to strangers that fast, even if they knew the stranger had relatives from the Rez.

  I also had always thought that because his mom was not enrolled, she’d grown up as a City Indian. Guess I had gaps in family knowledge.

  “Neither Rez will ever feel like home to me. OA isn’t perfect, and I’m maybe one of the only real Indians in it,” he added. I could not stop picturing those spray-tanned boys with face paint, headdresses, and arms folded dramatically across their chests in front of giant bonfires. He sighed, then mumbled, “But it’s all I have.”

  I was surprised he’d had to face homecoming visits on two Reservations, and not surprised that he hadn’t found much comfort in either place. Maybe I could make a difference.

  “You have me,” I said. “We could be a Rez of two.” It sounded dumb and I had questions, but mostly, I wanted my cousin to feel like he was home, even if just for a little while.

  “And on Sunday, you’ll go home and won’t have to think about everyone around you not knowing what it means to be Indian.” I’d been going to powwows my whole life, and I’d never thought about what it meant for people like Potter.

  “But these guys don’t know what it means at all,” I said.

  “It’s what I’ve got. If I need someone, they have my back. Know what I mean?”

  I did, even though that wasn’t even always true at home.

  “You know about the Wampum Incident, don’t you?” I said.

  He sat still for a minute, then looked down at the water and nodded.

  I got caught at last summer’s National Picnic with a stolen hank of wampum beads. “Well, I’m going to tell you something no one else knows. I didn’t do it.”

  Potter looked at me like oh, sure. Does anyone ever believe someone they think is a thief? “My friend Garth and me, we were walking the circuit, and he asked me to carry them ’cause his pocket had a hole. I left a little loop visible, so I wouldn’t forget. An hour later, the guy who really owned the hank was grabbing my arm, accusing me of being a thief. He was even madder ’cause we’re both vendors.”

  “Pretty sure your friend’s pocket didn’t have a hole,” Potter said.

  “Gee, I guess you got your Detective Work merit badge,” I said, and we laughed. “Garth had stolen the hank off the table.”

  “Duh. So then what?”

  “I claimed I wanted to show my mom to see if she had anything we might trade.”

  “Well, no one believed that,” Potter said.

  “I’m thirteen, and for real, pretty honest. Guess I wouldn’t get my Lying merit badge.”

  “They don’t have a merit badge for good lying,” he said. “Or detective work.”

  “I know. Sorry,” I said. “Anyway, the guy didn’t believe me, and neither did my mom. She offered him almost anything from our table to trade and forgive. He chose one of her originals, like three times the price on the wampum hang tag, and I’m banned from his booth.”

  “A jerky move on his part,” he said.

  “Well, some Indians can be jerks, like anyone else. We’re not lugging around noble savage batteries in those high cheekbones we’re all supposed to have.” He laughed.

  At an event like this, they must hear a thousand white people tell about the Indian princess ancestor they found on RoyalHighCheekbones.com. “Anyway, that’s part of my punishment.”

  “Part?”

  “When I refused to explain, my mom hung the wampum beads around our booth sign. So now, at every event, I’m reminded. She says I can have the hank when I tell her why I did it. I quit hanging around Garth, but I still can’t tell. His family’s fierce. She might think she was being a good Rez auntie, telling his parents. But if he was busted, he might really get it.”

  “Even if he doesn’t have your back, you still have his,” he said.

  “Somebody’s gotta,” I said. “I kinda see why you hang with Craig . . .”

  “But?” he said.

  I was so terrible a liar, he could hear my pause. “But you don’t need spray tan,” I said.

  “Sometimes you do things for the other person’s benefit,” he said, like I hadn’t just told him about Garth. “Even with costs.” I nodded and stood up. Potter suggested that we could both crash in his room, but I volunteered to stay in the man cave, so he could have his room back. The regalia wasn’t in the cave, either. He must have hung it somewhere I didn’t see. Too bad. I was hoping to secretly try it on.

  As the sun rose, my mom was chatty, laughing about things she and Uncle Dave had caught up on. Our inventory was pretty wiped out already, so we were going to have a light day. You’d think we’d break down early, but the only times we did that were when we’d sold out entirely. Then we just enjoyed the powwow. Today, we set up our Plan B for Light Tables. My mom kept examples of her custom work that no one at powwows bought, but that showed her skills. She also had nice-quality photos of other pieces.

  As we guessed, not many people stopped at our table. People don’t like waiting for things. The powwow T-shirt fundraiser stand was doing great business. The shirts had the powwow logo and dates, and the vendors were smart enough to know some Indians come XXXL. People bought them t
o support the event and saved them for future birthdays or emergency clothes.

  I’d overheard a couple people talking about a Rez Dawg shirt at some other booth. I bet it was way popular, so I might have to settle for a bigger one when I track it down. We lived on Dog Street, so I was a for real Rez Dawg. Made me wish I was still friends with Garth. He’d like that. Maybe I could get him one and be hopeful. It’s not like either of us was going to move away. We’d be friends again at some point. You just didn’t know when.

  Potter and his group showed up before Grand Entry, Craig in the middle again, with the same dads trailing behind. The guys checked out my mom’s photos, and our last two ribbon shirts, too small and too big for any of them. They were cream colored, with two purple collar and cuff ribbons, and across the chest, two short streaming ribbons.

  This Two Row Wampum design was popular at home. It documented the treaty that maintained us as Nations separate from America. Here, it probably didn’t mean much to anyone.

  “I like your work,” the Plain-Clothes Dad from yesterday said, flipping pieces around and putting them back. My mom nodded. This was part of the dance for him. If the beadwork had tires, he’d kick them. “You do custom work, I see,” he added. He then put his arm around Potter’s shoulder and brought him closer. “Like Potter’s sash here. Beautiful.”

  “Thank you,” she said, curt for her.

  “Normally, that’s a restricted item,” he added. There was always more coming. “Arrowmen may only purchase one from the Scout Trading Post with proof they’re Arrowmen.”

  “Yes,” she said. “His parents purchased one. They sent it to me, so I would know exactly the dimensions and details.”

  We could hear that he was really saying she had no right to use their official patterns without paying for the use. Bead workers flirted with the law of other people’s images all the time, like cartoon characters or Batman, hoping no Hollywood lawyers hung out at powwows.

  “What’s going on, Dad?” Craig said, wandering back from the next booth over.

  “Just complimenting Potter’s aunt for her crafting skills,” the dad said. “Would you like a sash like Potter’s?”