Crazy Horse's Girlfriend (9781940430447) (30 page)

Speaking of assholes, Margaritte, I want you to know I know I'm an asshole. I'm an asshole, Margaritte, I'd say it a million times if it could take away how I treated you, what I called you. I had no right to tell you what to do, to do what I did with Julia. I told you, I don't even like that girl. She's Indian, and I'm sure you guys are pals again, but Margaritte, in her way, she's just like my mom. She is. She will go out in that big, bright, white world and she will get the job she wants and marry a white guy and be a suburban nightmare. Mark my words. I slept with her because she was there, because she kept coming around, because I was so angry with you. I know it was wrong. But I just want you to know I don't feel anything for her. I love you. And I'm sorry. And I know you'll never forgive me. Let me try to explain myself, if you're still reading this.

First of all, I want to tell you all about me. Because when I met you, I liked you so much, I didn't want you to know me. I have been fucking up all of my life. I started drinking as early as I could. I went to parties in California as soon as I knew about them and my parents were never around, so that was easy. The drinking wasn't much of a thrill after a while. Because all I thought I wanted out of life was a thrill. Something, anything to make me feel alive. Because as long as I could remember I feared dying, and I thought the only way to get over it was to try to die all the time, to see if I could. I've learned subsequently that I was depressed, that I was trying to get my parent's attention. In any case, I started with pot. That was boring. Then one day when I was fifteen and at some kid's party someone brought coke. It was wonderful. It was sailing, thrilling, pumping, killing, machine-gun, fucking, it was everything I'd ever wanted to feel and the best part was there was a way in which it made me not feel at all. The only problem was that it didn't last very long. And I wanted to be high all the time Margaritte. And my grades improved. And my parents loved that. They showered me with gifts, money
—
which was great, because I used the money for more coke, and sold the gifts so that I could buy more coke. CokeCokeCoke. It was like I was falling in love. Until one day I collapsed in class. It was pretty scary. One second I was sitting there feeling like I was the inside of a diamond and the next I feel a little trickle, and then nothing. Blackness. I passed out and nearly hemorrhaged from all the blood I lost. When the paramedics came, I was in bad shape. They took me to the hospital. That was the fall. It was easy for the doctor to tell what my problem was, and when my parents came down, I knew I was probably in trouble. My mom was furious, and blamed my father. She said that my dad should not have stopped going to church and should not have told me it was OK for me not to go. My dad rolled his eyes and told her he was so sick of that fire and brimstone bullshit he could vomit. And that lots of kids experimented. And to calm down. He looked at me like I'd been caught drinking one of his beers and chuckled and told me that he knew I would never do it again. I told him I wouldn't. I was good for a week. Then I started up again and this time, since the flow of money had stopped, I started selling. That's when things really got bad. I loved it though. I was high all the time, I had money, I drove around in beautiful cars, with beautiful women much older than I was. And it was thrilling. I felt like I could never die. That's when the cops caught me. I was doing ninety on the highway, a girl in the passenger seat. I couldn't see anything ahead of me and I didn't care. I ran into a truck. I woke up in the hospital. This time my dad didn't find it all so amusing. The girl I was with was in ICU for days. She lived, but barely. Her face will never be the same. That's when my parents decided to move to Colorado. Which was fine by me. I figured that I would just keep doing what I'd been doing before. That's when I met you.

When I was younger, I'd watch movies, and they always seemed to have the same message: boy meets girl. Boy finds soul. And though I don't think anyone finds anyone's soul for anyone else, Margaritte, you did open my eyes enough to begin to search for it, I guess. Part of it was your honesty. And your poverty. And the poverty of that place. Because I'd never had to want for anything, seeing that, seeing you struggle, that did something to me.
'
Course, you know that it didn't make me stop doing coke. I slowed down though, I did. But stop, no.

This place is like Disneyland. It's fake and everyone comes back and it costs a lot of money. There is little to no point to being here, except to continue the game wherein parents throw money at their kid's problems so that the rest of the world feels sorry for them, so that the rest of the world thinks they had kids for any other reason beyond that they went with the furniture. But I will say that it's given me time to think. It's very hard to get drugs in here, though I've heard that there are ways. But I realized that I haven't been straight for more than a day in years. And I'm only seventeen. It occurred to me that although my parents are pathetic, that they are human. That they want what everyone else wants but they just don't know how to get it. It occurred to me that I wanted to live. And Margaritte, it occurred to me that I love you. That I want you to move to San Francisco and I want to write, and I want to live with Rick and watch him paint and I want you to meet him. And I think you should write too. Can you tell that I've been reading
On the Road
? I can hear you laughing at me. I miss that. That and the fact that after you'd laugh at me, you'd read it and then tell me what you thought about it.

I know you probably hate me. But so much of me hopes that you don't hate me so much that you won't write back. Margaritte, I'm getting out soon. And I'm going to turn eighteen in a year. And so are you. If I can just get through one more year with my parents, I can get out. I want to go to Colombia. I want to meet my parents, my biological parents. I want to go there with you. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I have a few more things to tell you, and then I'm going to stop. I've probably overloaded you, I know and for that I am sorry. I'm so sorry, Margaritte. I hope you can trust me. Trust me just enough to write me one letter back. Even if it's to tell me how much you hate me. Margaritte, I've had this funny feeling for a long time. It's that you kept our baby. I don't know why I think it. I shouldn't. And it doesn't matter. And I'm not writing you because of that, I swear. You were right. But it's part of what's kept me alive in here. It's part of why I don't ever want coke again. I really don't. It's just another lie. I've been lied to all my life, and I'm tired of being angry at my parents, or the world. I want to see what else I can feel.

There's so much to tell you. So much I want to tell you. And you know I'm a complicated person Margaritte, you know I live in my head. That I dream too much. That I get too angry. That I'm so worried about what's real I can't even see what's in front of my face. That I talk about stripping it all away, but I'm the first to put the mask on. But I'll work it out. And I will understand if you don't want to talk to me. But I'm going to keep on trying, I want you to know that. I've met lots of funny people in my life, and smart people, and there are at least a couple of people I admire, or think are genuinely good. But it's different with you. I don't know why. I'm only seventeen. But I get that. I love you. Please write me. Please tell me you want to sit somewhere free.

—
Mike

My hand drifted down into my lap with the letter. I looked up and then ahead, and then everything went fuzzy and my head filled with a kind of white noise. I don't know how long I was like that, but I came back to reality because the chick next to me was poking me in the arm with one of her long glittery nails. I looked over at her and she said,
Like, your number is being called?
I blinked and tried to get myself together. I pulled my number out of my pocket and looked at it. They called it again, the voice over the loudspeaker crackling with urgency and irritation. It was my number. I mouthed
Sorry, thanks
to Ms. Nails and picked Christine up and walked over to the counter. I looked at the lady, set Christine down beneath the counter between my feet and smiled. There was so much to think about. So much my heart could never contain. I had no hope. I had infinite hope. But first there was paperwork. Dear God, there was always paperwork.

 

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A

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K

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Thank you. To my family of course, and especially to my mom & my sister, because they have had to put up with my mad scientist head for so long. As in, their entire lives. I'm so glad I wasn't pitched into a dark, bad crack in the earth (yet!). Thanks to my community, because even though I was made fun of for my love of dork books, I know they were only trying to toughen me up for the journey ahead. Which took eleven years in the case of this book. Which brings me to the agents who tried so hard, especially the last, to school me & sell this book to a big press. Which the last one almost did, several times. GOD I'm so glad they didn't. But their feedback was invaluable & it taught me not only what I shouldn't compromise but what wasn't a compromise at all, but something that just needed to be fixed. Thank you, my readers: Eden Robinson, Barbara Harroun, Jon Davis & Darlene Deas. Without smart readers, where would any of us be? Thank you
Stand
, you lovely British magazine. You published the first short-story version of this, which I wrote when I was twenty-four, but wasn't published until ten years later. Thank you to every journal that's ever published me, actually. I have a big, bad scary mouth and you said that's OK, we like that here. Thank you to Western Illinois University (especially David Stevenson), you gave me a job where I had time to write! What? That still exists? Thank you to every Native writer who ever existed (especially, in my case, thanks to Eden Robinson & Susan Power, who are my lady-heros, big time). Without any of you, none of us. Thank you to my editor, Maired Case, who waded through my novel with a good, sharp knife. Thank you to Curbside Splendor & Victor Giron. JESUS American letters are lucky you exist. Thank you of course & definitely & mostly, to Jacob S. Knabb, who years ago I kept seeing on THE Facebook, saying all kinds of smart things on people's pages & who has kept saying incredibly smart things in person. I'm so lucky that he saw something in my monster baby, something he got behind with iron fists. Man, I'm so glad I missed that plane. And lastly, thank you M, again. M. My muse, my sadness, I guess this letter has to be sent to the sky.

 

 

ERIKA T. WURTH 
is Apache / Chickasaw / Cherokee and was raised on the outskirts of Denver. She teaches creative writing at Western Illinois University and was a writer-in-residence at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals, including
Boulevard
,
Fiction
,
Pembroke
,
Florida Review
,
Stand
,
Cimarron Review
,
The Cape Rock
,
Southern California Review
and
Drunken Boat
. Her debut collection of poetry,
Indian Trains
, was published by The University of New Mexico's West End Press.

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