Translated from the American

Translated from the American


Agnes drove the senior citizen's van from powwow to
powwow, watching all the grandmothers sift into the
even motion of earth, until she came to sit beside me,
holding my son, her grandchild, as we drove west for
the Spokane Tribal Celebration.

"He still has blue eyes," she said,"Only newborns are
supposed to have blue eyes.

She studied my face for a reaction. I felt it darken
by halves.

"When are they going to change?" she asked.

It was the only solid question between us, the last
point after which we both refused the exact.

"They're always going to be blue," I said,
"You know that."

"I have this dream all the time," she said, ignoring me,
"I'm sitting with your son. He's in his crib and he keeps
crying. But when I talk to him or sing to him, he grows.
Really, he grows until he fills the room and I have to
cut off one of his legs to get out the door."

Agnes touched my son's leg with the tip of her forefinger
and whispered a word in Salish.

"What did you say?" I asked.

She repeated it again in Salish.

"In English, you know I don't understand."

"It doesn't make any sense that way," she said.

I began to count mile markers, made mental lists
of everything I really needed: a new pair of shoes,
a winter coat for the baby, a ticket for a Greyhound
traveling back or ahead 500 years.

At that time of the year, the end of summer, the last
powwow, our skins returned reluctantly to our bodies.
We could only come back to our half-life for four walls,
old blanketsm, and black-and-white television. All the

gifts from a thousand cousins buried in the trunk, used
only once and forgotten. I laughed at the Flathead who
gave us the electric blanket in Arlee, a town of random
electricity and occasional water. I asked him what he
remembered and he said half of everything that ever
happened to him.

"Pretty damn good percentage," I said in my mind, then
aloud.

"What?" Agnes asked, though I knew she heard me. She
enjoys repetition as a form of tradition.

"That old man in Arlee said he remembered half of
everything that ever happened to him. I think that's
a good percentage." I said.

"That's nothing," she said,"I remember everything."

"Really?" I asked her. "What's my son's name?"

She called him by a word in Salish.

"That's not his name," I said.

"It's the one I gave him."

"It's useless," I said, only half-believing it. Years
ago, when Agnes tried to teach me the language, she told
me to hold a smooth stone in my mouth, under the tongue.
She would say the words for salt, pepper, mother, son,

and I would try to repeat the Salish exactly, until my
tongue blistered around the stone. Ashamed of my voice
when I could not say the words, I would hide for days
in the trees, stealing food from the kitchen in the
middle of the night.

"His name is Joseph," I said.

"White name," she said.

"He's half white," I said,"I thought you remembered
everything."

"I remember you leaving us to be with the Catholics."
she said," I remember you coming to visit us with your book
of lies, when you told me you could speak German.

I remember you were so proud you knew a foreign
language. I remember I told you English was your
foreign language and you left again."

"It was college," I said, but she had nothing more
for me, either too many memories for her to classify
or not enough words for her to be specific.

She held Joseph tightly against her chest, despite me,
and watched the landscape mover toward her, beside her,
and then away.

The road sign read WELLPINIT--HOME OF THE 99TH ANNUAL
SPOKANE TRIBAL CELEBRATION--25 MILES.

I found myself following a line of cars, followed by a
longer line of cars, all traveling to the same place,
all leaving from another. In some small, ordinary way,
Indians are still nomadic, always halfway.

We pulled into Wellpinit, another reservation town of
torn shacks and abandoned cars. We found the powwow
grounds and stopped at the entrance. The Indian deputy,
a cousin of the Tribal Police Chief or a Councilman,

leaned into our open window. "This here is a dry
powwow," he said."You don't have any alcohol or drugs
in the car, do you?"

"No," I said,"We don't have anything except us."


Sherman Alexie...........from The Business of Fancydancing