I imagine those brave Apache warriors, with the U.S. Cavalry and certain defeat before them and certain death behind. They chose death over surrender, leaping over the cliff’s edge and into the next life.
“How much has really changed?” I ask, cynicism clogging my throat. “Death, defeat, sickness, poverty. These are the choices they always offer us like they’re doing us a favor.”
“What gives them the right?” Mena asks. “I danced here. I ran and sang and became a woman here.” She turns liquid, dark eyes to me. “So did you, Lenn.”
I can’t even manage a nod. I’m numb. She’s right. If I close my eyes, I can still see the bonfire flames licking bright orange into the darkness, ringed by friends and family, singing, dancing, celebrating. Mama stood by, her face wet with emotion, her eyes bright with pride.
In me.
“My crowns,” I whisper, sudden realization bringing fresh tears to my eyes.
“Oh, honey,” my father sighs, pulling my head down to his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
At the end of the Sunrise Dance, young women receive the crowns worn by the Mountain Spirit dancers. The elaborate headdresses are decorated beautifully, painted with symbols representing the visions seen by the medicine man. Sacred, they can only be used once and are then hidden. Mine are secreted in the hills surrounding this cursed pipeline slithering through our valley like a serpent, every sound from the heavy machinery below a hiss and a strike.
Injustice never rests and neither will I.
My mother’s words float to me on an arid desert breeze. It feels like we never win, but my mother never gave up. I don’t know how she died, but I do know how she lived. She would have fought until the end. And so will I. I’ll learn to work the very systems set up against us.
Some of the women start singing one of the old songs. The Apache words, the sound—it’s mournful like a dirge. Their voices rise and fall, cresting and crumpling with sorrow. We stand by like pallbearers watching the land flattened and hollowed and filled with tubing. I’ll never forget this feeling, but will call on it when I’m weary in the fight. No, I’ll never forget this feeling.
And I’ll never forgive Warren Cade.
Part II
“What you get by achieving your goals
is not as important as what you become
by achieving your goals.”
― Henry David Thoreau
5
Lennix
Four Years Later
“So have you decided what you’ll do after graduation?” Mena asks.
The question may as well be a pebble she tosses into the river we sit beside. It ripples through the doubts puddled in my chest. My time in Arizona State’s College of Public Service and Community Solutions has been amazing, but now the real world awaits. And it’s broken and hurting and a landscape wrought with so much injustice, I’m not sure where to start.
“I’m still deciding.” I stretch my bare legs out in front of me on the riverbank’s dry patch of grassy land.
“What are your options?” she asks.
“Hmmm, options. Maybe that’s the problem. I have too many of them.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ve been accepted into Arizona State’s master’s program.” I push the heavy rope of my hair back over my shoulder. I haven’t cut it in forever. “I’ve been offered the Bennett Fellowship, which would be awesome and require me to serve in a designated area of community service for a year. Or I have an offer from this big lobbying firm in D.C.”
Mena whistles and sends me a wide grin. “Well look at you. Those are all great options.”
“Yeah, but I graduate in a few months and I’m still figuring out which is the right one. Nothing feels like it.”
I’m like this river, twisting through Arizona’s hills and forking along the way, each tributary leading somewhere different, directing the flow of water in a new direction. You can’t take them all at once. Not for the first time, I recall running to the four directions when I was thirteen, gathering the elements into myself. Which way should I go?
“Maybe it will become clear while you’re away,” Mena offers.
“Somehow, I don’t think Viv and Kimba have meditative pursuits planned for spring break,” I chuckle, plucking at the sun-fried grass.
“Amsterdam, huh? That should be fun.”
“Yeah, Vivienne’s best friend Aya goes to college over there. She’s half Dutch, and has promised to show us everything.”
“You’re so lucky. Make the most of your time there.” She gives me a teasing look. “And maybe finally find a man.”
“Auntie!” I fake a scandalized tone and expression. Mena has never been shy about her love of a fine man. “Well, I never.”
“Exactly. You’ve never,” Mena says, her chuckle knowing and throaty. “And, girl, you have no idea what you’re missing.”
I’m picky. I know that. My bar is high and I haven’t found a man I wanted to take that final step with, to give my body to. I dated a few guys in college, had a good time, and even experienced real passion. But when it came down to it, I just didn’t want to be with any of them that way. I’ve taken the elements into my body. The first time I take a man into my body, I want it to mean something to me.
“I’m not judging you or anyone else,” I tell Mena. “Believe me. I know I’m in the virgin minority, but I’m just not that pressed. When it happens, it’ll happen, and I think I’ll know who that first time should be with.”
“I’m not rushing you, honey. I see too many girls down at the reservation clinic pregnant and stuck with a baby before they’re ready. I say anything you’re not ready for, just wait. That includes sex.” She slides me a wicked grin. “But, oh, when you find the man worthy to crack that code.”
“I’m not a safe, Auntie,” I protest with a short laugh.
“I think you are.” Her eyes and mouth sober. “I also think something kind of froze in you when your mama disappeared. I wish you’d kept seeing that therapist. I told Rand one session wasn’t nearly enough.”
My good humor slips, too, but I force a grin, hoping to restore it. “I have a ten-year plan, and the therapist doesn’t happen until around year eight.”
“You’ll have to let yourself feel again, Lennix. I see it, you know? That reserve you have with everyone. That guard that locks into place when you feel anyone you could care about getting too close.”
She’s right. Something inside me did flounder, fall when Mama never came home. That hurt is a dull ache I’m not sure will ever go away. Better not tempt fate to do that to me again. My father? Well, it’s too late to block him out. And if the Sunrise Dance hadn’t tied us together inextricably, the last eight years when Mena has surrogated for my mother time and time again would have. I have my best friends I made at college, Vivienne and Kimba, but that’s about it. Anyone beyond them stands outside a closed circle. I think again, as I do unreasonably often, of the man I only knew by his first name, Maxim. Something about him stormed through my defenses right away even though I was too young for anything with him.