Crazy Horse's Girlfriend (9781940430447) (10 page)

Mike looked up. The sign said
Squaw Pass
.

“Wow, isn't that… I mean, doesn't it mean ‘cunt' or something like that?”

“Yeah, I heard it was insulting, like it means slut or cunt, but then I heard it's an old Iroquois word for you know, vagina.”

“Say vagina again,” he said, laughing and poking me in the arm with his elbow.

“Yeah. That word is hot. ‘Let me touch your vagina' will get you in every time,” I said, my stomach twisting pleasantly.

“Will it?” He asked.

“About as much as ‘let me touch your squaw' will,” I said and he elbowed me again and I pushed him a little. He laughed and put his arms around me, sideways, hugged me and then pulled back and took my hand.

“Let me touch your vagina,” he said thoughtfully, shaking his head.

“Just keep saying it, Mike, just keep saying it… ” I said.

“You know,” he said, kicking a stone, “you're the only Indian I've ever been friends with.”

“I thought you said you hung with a few, back at home.”

“I mean, I saw them around, but I lived in a really white neighborhood. All my life. My friends were white. My girlfriend is, well she was white.”

“She isn't anymore, huh?”

He looked at me, a sarcastic expression on his face. “Yes, she's still white, but I don't think she's still my girlfriend.”

“You don't think so, huh?”

He unclasped hands with me and punched me on the arm, gently. “No.”

“How did you leave things?”

He sighed hard and ran his long fingers through his hair.

“We didn't really, I mean, we didn't talk after, well, after she cheated, and then I found out, and then I cheated.”

“Yikes.”

“Yes. I suppose that wasn't very smart of us.”

“Well, no, but… did you try to work it out?”

“What was to work out? I mean, I loved her, I think I loved her, but we were young, and stupid and probably very bad for each other in a lot of ways,” he said, looking off into the distance. “And then my dad moved and it was probably for the best.”

We walked in silence for a while, and he took my hand again. It was nice, late March, and things were beginning to really warm up, and become green. The road twisted up, and we followed it, walking into the woods when we saw a path. It was rocky, and we could hear birds in the pine trees, squirrels and chipmunks yelling at one another. We walked for a while, and then sat down by a creek where there was a series of large, moss covered rocks by the edge. I picked a small rock up and threw it into the creek, watching the water ripple.

“So, have you ever tried meth?” he asked. I was surprised by his question.

“You mean the delicious and nutritious drug? Well, once. I didn't like it,” I said, running my hands over the bluebells growing beside the rock.

“Why not?”

“It rots your body and soul, eventually. So there's that. But it makes you feel, or no—it makes you not feel,” I said, sitting down on a fallen tree. I took my sweatshirt off. I had on one of my millions of wife-beaters.

“That can be good though, sometimes, don't you think?” He asked, peering at me intently, as if I was under glass, or underwater. “Well, not the rotting your soul part, but the not feeling part.”

“I don't know… ”

“Well, sometimes it's good to not care,” Mike said.

“I can understand that. Sometimes I feel like that, especially at home. I think that's why I smoke weed so much. Otherwise I'd have to really deal with shit my parents are always spewing.”

I pulled a stick out of the dirt and threw it in the water. I watched it float down the creek, the small bubbling sound it made comforting. The aspens shook in the wind, the sound of it like coins rattling. The sun was beginning to fade. I turned to Mike. “So, where are your parents? You said they were gone for a bit.”

“Bahamas.”

“Wow. For how long?”

“Only a few days,” he said.

“Do they travel a lot?” I asked, and Mike looked strange, pensive.

“Well, my dad does. He used to travel alone. I think he liked it. He doesn't talk much.” He paused, threw a stick of his own into the creek. “But now my mom insists on going with him.”

“I see.”

I had wondered if my dad had cheated on my mom. In fact, I assumed he had, considering the way he was. Once, I had come home to my mom crying, my auntie in the kitchen with her, her hand on the small of her back.
Just come to church with me, you'll feel better
, my auntie kept saying, but I didn't think church made
her
feel any better about anything. Jake's dad was a quiet Cherokee guy, a preacher, and he took his conversion, and everything else, extremely seriously. Every time I went over there, the house was silent. No TV. Jake's older siblings, the ones that his parents had had naturally, had already gone. I remembered their braids though, Jake's dad's eagle fan. My auntie's beading. Now all of that was packed away into boxes, all of it in their dusty, quiet attic, as if it were evidence of a secret life. Though sometimes my auntie would come over and try to teach me to bead, ask me about Native American Church. My mom had never gone. And had stopped going to Church with my auntie years ago. There was so much I didn't understand about them.

I leaned over and kissed Mike, gently, and he kissed me back. He had come to sit down next to me on the tree and he leaned towards me, his hands sliding down the backs of my arms. He pulled back, brushed my face with the back of his hands. Looked into my eyes. I looked back, the black of our gaze reflecting something that was the same: the same pain, the same anger, and the same strange, dangerous hunger. He put his hand on my shoulder, slid it to my back, put his lips on my neck. I leaned into it.

“Oh God,” I whispered, and then I jumped up suddenly, pain radiating out from my ass.

“What?” Mike asked, looking offended.

“I-I think something bit me!” We looked down at the log and saw that there were fire ants beginning to crawl to the surface, their little red bodies busy running the various worn-in crevasses. We both brushed our pants, and started back, holding hands as the light died, the mountains golden, the trees making their deep, mysterious noises.

Back at Mike's house I sat down on the couch and looked up at him. He looked down at me. “Do you… want to stay?” He asked, and I nodded. He looked happy, almost goofy, and he tripped on his way to the kitchen to get us drinks. I'd never been around someone like Mike before. The boys in town were so tough; they didn't want to know what I thought.

“You like Woody Allen?” he asked.

“Yeah. He's funny. My parents have some of his movies. I think that's why I have different taste in movies than some of my friends. We always watched Woody Allen. And Mel Brooks. You ever seen
History of the World Part I
?”

He handed me a thick wool blanket and I folded into it while he lit a fire.

“Yes. I love that movie. Oh, my God, the opening? With the cavemen?” He put a movie into the VCR and settled on the couch next to me, laughing as he fit his body into mine.

“Totally. That always killed me.”

“Yeah,” he said, kissing me and then picking up the remote. “You ever seen
Annie Hall
?” he asked.

“Nope.”

“Well, you're in for a treat. The woman in the film—Annie— she kind reminds me of you. Though you have more, ah, bravado I'd say.”

“Bravado?”

“Balls, Margaritte, balls,” he said, and I laughed.

“My balls are totally giant. It's actually a problem.”

“You should get it checked out,” he said.

“I don't really see myself coughing and bending over for someone in the near future.”

Mike looked at me, his eyebrows coming together and his eyes lighting up. “You don't?”

“Not if it's to check my giant balls out.”

“I'll keep that in mind.”

We sat and watched the movie, and it killed me, it really did. Though I didn't know why Mike thought I was like that Annie. She was skinny, and insecure and said stuff like la-dee-dah. I wouldn't be caught dead saying shit like that. Though I liked the part about the eggs. Me, I felt like I was more like that Alvy guy, always saying the wrong thing and enjoying it a little too much.

Leaning into Mike felt good, like we'd been doing it forever. And yet it was exciting too, because we were so new. After the movie he asked me if I wanted another drink and I asked him if he was trying to get me drunk.

“Yes,” he said, and disappeared into the kitchen to get us yet another gin and tonic. He sat down next to me, handed me a drink. He looked up at me, his long eyelashes pointing down, just like my mom and auntie's did. It made Indians look shy, even when they weren't, like in the case of my auntie. But Mike, he did seem shy. But there was a funny kind of boldness to him too. I liked that combination.

“Margaritte… I like you but, you don't have to—have to—
you know
, unless you want to.”

“I don't have to bend over and cough for you?”

“Stop teasing me,” he said, running his hand down my arm.

“But it's fun. And it's all I got.”

“Like I said, you are a very silly, silly girl.”

“Yeah,” I said, and he began to kiss my neck. His hands moved to my breasts, hesitantly. And then away. He looked at me.

“It's OK,” I said.

He smiled. “Maybe I should touch parts of you and stop. And ask if it's OK. Like a game.”

“Yes, just like bingo. Or Monopoly. Except with my vagina.”

He practically roared and then stopped. “You're trying to distract me.”

“Maybe.”

“You're not… ”

“A total vagina? No, but my balls are huge.”

“Margaritte… ”

“No, I'm not a virgin. I'm a total whore. Actually, I need fifty dollars to make you holler, heyyyy.”

“I don't know what to do with you,” he said.

“I have a thought.”

“A sexy one? A sexy thought?”

“Pretty sexy.”

“What?”

“What if like, we don't really exist. What if we're something… ”

“Cruel, Margaritte, cruel.”

I laughed a large, maniacal laugh and then leaned over and kissed him. I broke. “I'm sorry. I guess you just make me nervous. In a good way.”

“Don't worry. I like you too.”

I looked into his eyes and wondered. I had to admit, I didn't know him. Not really. But he seemed kind. “What the hell,” I said, and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

I reached down, took his hand. “To your bedroom, you naughty thing you.”

He smiled and stood up. He led me down the hallway, and into his room.

I got up the next morning and Mike was wrapped around me, still sleeping. I'd remembered waking up in the middle of the night because he'd kept mumbling “hmm,” in his sleep, which struck me as pretty funny. Every time he'd done it, I would wake up, giggle, and try to cover my mouth so I wouldn't wake him up. I'd look over and his face was all scrunched up, and even that was so funny that I'd have to work even harder not to laugh, which would almost wake him up.

I disentangled myself and went to the bathroom, then into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. I couldn't get over his house. The kitchen was full of marble and everything that wasn't marble was brass. I looked around for a coffee maker and found one, and then opened cabinet after cabinet looking for coffee. I was trying to figure out how to work the coffee maker when I heard Mike behind me, and jumped.

“You scared me!”

“Sorry,” he said, wrapping his arms around me from behind and kissing my cheek. He looked at the coffee maker.

“Trying to figure it out?”

“Yeah. It's… smarter than me.”

“Nah. Just more complicated.”

I didn't know what that meant, but I let him take the coffee out of my hands and work the tall silver machine until it was singing along. I sat down at the table.

“What have you got planned for today?” He asked.

“Well, I'm gonna go back home. Not
'
cause I want to but because I'm due to be back from Juila's. And you know, I'm grounded.”

He nodded and got up. He poured us coffee, set a mug down in front of me and went back up to the counter, the morning light coming in from the windows and hitting his black, black hair. He stood there for a while, looking out the window, his long, brown body leaning, his mug by his hand on the counter. I looked at him and a surge of something come up inside of me.