us clean, and Dad was getting us dirty. He took us into the woods and showed us how to spot a rabbit run and set a snare. We yanked gophers from their holes with loops of string and picked pail after pail of berries. We rode a mean little bucking pony, fished perch from a nearby lake, dug potatoes every year for school money. Mom’s job had not lasted. Dad sold firewood, corn, squash. But we never went hungry, and there was affection in our house. I knew I was loved because it was complicated for Mom and Dad to get me from the welfare system, though I’d helped out their efforts with my endless scream. All of which is not to say they were perfect. Dad drank from time to time and passed out on the floor. Mom’s temper was explosive. She never hit, but she yelled and raved. Worse, she could say awful things. Once, Sheryl was twirling around in the house. There was a shelf set snugly in the corner. It held a cut-glass vase that was very precious to Mom. When we brought her wildflower bouquets, she would put them in that vase. I had seen her washing the vase with soap and polishing it with an old pillowcase. Then Sheryl’s arm knocked the vase off the shelf and it struck the floor with a bright sound and shattered into splinters.
Mom had been working at the stove. She whirled around, threw her hands out.
Damn you, Sheryl, she said. That was the only beautiful thing I ever had.
Tuffy broke it! said Sheryl, bolting out the door.
Mom began to cry, harshly, and put her forearm to her face and cheek. I moved to sweep up the pieces for her, but she said to leave them, in such a heartsick voice that I went to find Sheryl, who was hiding in her usual place on the far side of the henhouse. When I asked why she’d blamed me, Sheryl gave a hateful look, and said, Because you’re white. I didn’t hold anything Sheryl did then against her, and we became close later on. I was very glad for that, as I have never married, and needed to confide in someone when, five years ago, I was contacted by my birth mother.
I lived in an addition tacked on to the tiny house until my parents died. They went one right after the other, as the long married sometimes do. It happened in a few months. By then, my brothers and sister had either moved off reservation or built new houses closer to town. I stayed on, in the quiet. One difference was I let the dog, a descendant of one that growled at the welfare lady, live inside with me. Mom and Dad had stationed the television in the kitchen. They had watched it after dinner, bolt upright on their kitchen chairs, hands folded on the table’s surface. But I prefer my couch. I’ve had a fireplace installed with a glass front and fans that throw the heat off into a cozy circle, and there I sit every winter night, with the dog at my feet, reading or crocheting while I listen to the TV muttering for company.
One night the telephone rang.
I answered it with a simple hello. There was a pause. A woman asked if this was Linda Wishkob speaking.
It is, I said. I experienced a strange skip of apprehension. I knew that something was about to happen.
This is your mother, Grace Lark. The voice was tight and nervous.
I set the phone back down in the cradle. Later, that moment struck me as very funny. I had instinctively rejected my mother, left her in the cradle the way she’d left me in mine.
As you know, I am a government employee. At any time, I could have found out the address of my birth parents. I could have called them up, or hey, I could have gotten drunk and stood in their yard raving! But I didn’t want to know anything about them. Why would I? Everything I did know hurt and I have always avoided pain—which is maybe why I’ve never married or had children. I don’t mind being alone, except for, well . . . That night, after I’d hung up the phone, I made a cup of tea and busied myself with solving word puzzles. One stumped me. The clue was double-goer, twelve spaces, and it took me the longest time and a dictionary to come up