Thunder In Her Body (19 page)

With Blaze sitting right beside her on the living room couch, Aaron asked, “Lynette, does he know that you’re black?”

It was an odd thing to just blurt out.  She knew Aaron not to be a racist, as much as anyone reared in American society is not, but he saw the ugliness of racism in the world, and would do anything to keep his brother from being hurt.  Besides, there was
n’t much about her, except occasional frizzy hair, when it got wet, that would let the untrained eye even guess she was black.  She knew that.  His question meant “Do you all have an inkling of the things that might be ahead of you?  Do you know that other people will judge you because of your color, or your declaration of ethnicity?  Are you all ready for all that, plus the racism that Blaze faces, that Indians face, wherever they go?”  That was the purpose of his question.  Not to confront Blaze, or to insult her, but to protect a man he loved as his brother, and to offer his help to this wonderfully intelligent, loving woman who had come into their lives.  Aaron was just blunt – lawyer, white-rich-man blunt.  That was his way.  Before she could reply, Blaze glowered at Aaron with a nettled expression on his face.  He started to say something, but she prevented him forming the words.  The immediate tension had to be diffused.  She didn’t want any cross feelings between these two, especially over her.

“Yes, he does,” she said in an instructive tone. “We have no secrets, no misconceptions.”  There was a pause as a sideways smirk formed on her face.  “And besides, once you’ve had black, you can’t go back!!” she said in a libidinous manner.  It was street talk.  She was a saucy lady and Blaze loved it, but this kind of humor often caught him way off guard.
Beer shot out of Blaze’s nose and he seriously choked, coughing and spewing beer all down his clean shirt.  For a time, he couldn’t get his breath.  Aaron jumped to his feet and lifted Blaze up by his underarms which allowed Blaze’s rib cage to expand, thereby giving his lungs more room to breathe.  Blaze gasped again, then took in a really deep breath.  He breathed heavily for a couple of minutes, before he was all right.

“
Lynn, you’re gonna kill me one of these days,” he said, now trying to laugh.

“If so, sweetie, you’ll die happy,” she replied playfully, with a suggestive wink.

Aaron tried to apologize for the question.  Lynette assured him she understood what he meant.  Besides being well-educated, she was wise in the way people could be curious about people who didn’t fit the stereotypical model of
looking
black or Hispanic or Indian.  In America, looks – color - often determined how a person is treated.  She’d been told more times than she could count that she didn’t
look black
or
sound black
either.  One of her former supervisors, for whom she worked for over nine months, never knew the ethnicity she claimed. Since she checked the
other box
on her agency transfer form, she surmised that he never cared what she was as long as she displayed excellence in her work.  It was fine with her.  Whenever possible, if she felt like investing the time in the questioner, she’d engage that person in conversation and discuss regionality, diversity, ethnicity – and stereotypes.  She related a story about an African-American diversity trainer over on the east coast.  No one knew that he was black.  Consequently, many racist words floated around freely during breaks.  There was often heated discussion in the class about ethnic minorities and their
shortcomings
in the workforce.  In the very last hour of the last day of the training session, the trainer told the group that he was black.  They’d spent 4-5 days with him and no one knew.  He had to tell them – because he didn’t
look
black.  A major part of the lesson for that class was how differently people can be treated when they are identifiable as
something!

Though she’d spelled out her biological pedigree to Blaze, she tried to explain it to Aaron.  Her mother, a beautiful porcelain-skinned, green-eyed, auburn haired woman was an Octoroon, meaning that she was only about 1/8 black.  Her grandfather was a German Jew who emigrated to the U.S. before World War I.  He had a liaison with her grandmother who was the granddaughter of a slave and was part Irish, French, Scot, English and African-American.

“My father,” she said,
“is quite a question mark in that he is of mixed race and there is a good possibility that he may be as much as one quarter Native-American.”  And so she related the story about his people possibly being from Athabasca, Canada.

“As you know, in the U.S., if you have so much as one drop of African
or any kind of “black” ancestry, you are considered “tainted” – its been labeled
the human stain,
which is so ignorant,” she added, “and ‘colored’ for all intents and purposes.  It’s really peculiar.  My birth certificate lists my mother as white, but someone drew a line through that and wrote in “colored’.  My father was listed as ’colored’ and consequently, so was I.  You know back then, the hospitals wrote what they thought, unless someone told them different.  In many instances it was easy to evade the truth if the parent, or family, didn’t display any of the usual characteristics associated with being a Negro.  I was reared colored, became a Negro by social designation, chose to be black, and now my politically correct, hyphenated designation is African-American.  Just like Blaze, a hyphenated Native-American.  That’s what this culture does when it decides it can’t keep you out, so to keep you distinct from the others, it hyphenates you, doesn’t it?” she asked Aaron pointedly.  “You’re not hyphenated Aaron, are you,” she queried.  “Blaze’s ancestors were here 10,000 or more years before yours.  Why aren’t you hyphenated to maybe
a Newcomer-American or white-American?”
she asked, without requiring an answer.

Aaron was a bit uneasy at her words.  There was a sting to them.

“I understand what you’re saying.  I didn’t mean to insult you, Lynette.  You must believe that.  Forgive me if it came out that way,” he pleaded.

“You know, I’m just so used to these conversations, that it no longer angers me.  When I can, I try to see it as an opportunity.  But that doesn’t mean that I won’t take on a bigot, and I don’t distinguish a bigot by color, because they come in all shades from black as the ace of spades to white as the driven snow. I want you to always feel free to talk to me about anything, because I perceive that you know what our world is really like.  I don’t have to walk in Blaze’s shoes to know the barbs and insults that are thrown at him.  But, you understand them.  I suspect you’d take on anyone in ear-shot who’d insult him.  Don’t worry about me, or offending me.  If you ever do, trust me, I’ll let you know when you’ve crossed the line,” she said lowering her head so her eyes came up and caught his.  “I know you love Blaze. I hope you can come to love me, also,” she said sweetly, patting his arm.

SITTING IN HIS OWN BEDROOM Thursday night, with a fire burning in his Kiva fireplace, Blaze poured out the miserable story about his marriage.

“I met her when I was stationed in San Diego, he said.  I’d been in the service about six years and was about to re-enlist.  I was lonely, away from home, from the reservation for the first time, and I wanted somebody for myself.  Met her in a bar one night.  She was by herself.  That should have been my first clue.  She was kind of a trashy looking white girl, but pretty in a hard sort of way.  Kinda flashy, you know what I mean?  Well anyway, first one thing led to another and we started fooling around together.  Had dinners together; she cooked for me a couple of times – that should have been my other clue.  She couldn’t cook worth a damn.  Well, anyway, it wasn’t her cookin’ that kept me comin’ back, so before I shipped out for the next tour, we got married.  I thought it’d be nice to have someone to come home to.  When I came back the next time, about 2 months later, she was pregnant.  We had a baby girl.  Hell, I was delighted.  We rocked along for a couple of years – marriage wasn’t so bad.  Then I got sent out on a special assignment and when I got back, she was pregnant again.  But the worst part was that when I went back to the ship, I had a raging case of the clap.  That bitch had given me the clap,” he said angrily.

“I don’t have to know this,” Lynette spoke.

“Yes you do.  You need to know everything there is about me, and it ain’t all beautiful,” he replied.

“I tried to work it out with her.  I wanted to go for counseling but she said she didn’t have a problem.  Oh, and by the way, it wasn’t good enough that she had given me the clap, one of the other times I came home on leave, I left with some sort of rash.  Took penicillin for a week and had to rub some sort of antibiotic ointment on my dick twice a day.  Goddamned bitch!  Found out she’d been fuckin’ around all the time.  I had three kids with her, or at least while we were married, and I’m not sure if any of them are mine.  Wasn’t any DNA test back then.  So anyway, I raised them as mine, until I couldn’t take it anymore.  I’d come home from an assignment and there’d be evidence that some man had been in the house with my children, or some guy on the base would make a crack about her.  The wives even told me what was going on behind my back.  She got pregnant a fourth time, and I told her to get rid of the kid, ‘cuz  I was outta there.  She said she had a miscarriage.  I don’t believe it.  But that doesn’t matter.  The straw that broke the camel’s proverbial back was when my CO called me in and discussed my ‘family matters’.”  She was fuckin’ anything that wore a uniform, and it was about to affect my security clearance.  You know all about that, don’t you?” he asked.

“Yeah, I do,” she replied.

“Well the Navy meant a lot to me.  They had invested a lot of time and money in me, and damn it, I was good at what I had been trained for.  I went through the toughest training the military can put on you, and I was goddamned good.  I was selected to go places and do things that nobody would ever believe, and I came back in one piece, most of the time.  So, out of anger and just plain meanness, I brought an ol’ whore home one night when my wife was out, and the kids were somewhere else, and I was going at her pretty good, when
Beverly came home early from some club or wherever the hell she’d been.  She caught me, how do they say,
inflagrante delicto
, and you know what, while she was standing at the foot of the bed cursing me, I climbed right back up on that whore and continued to work my stuff, right in front of her.  That’s how much I hated her by then and that’s how low I was feeling about myself.  She stormed out, and shit, I finished up on the ol’ girl. I’d paid for it, I wanted my money’s worth!  I went to the JAG office the next day and got advice on how to file for divorce.  With my work, I couldn’t keep the kids, so she got them.  And God forgive me, even if they weren’t my blood children, I wish I had fought for them, ‘cuz she fucked at least two of them up, for awhile anyway.  She’s a crack whore now and my youngest son is too,” he said despondently.   He paused, thoughtful before continuing.  “You’ll like my daughter, I’m helping her get through med school.  She says once she graduates and does her internship, she’s gonna come back here and do at least two years for the Indian Clinic.  I’m so proud of her.  My middle  boy went to college for awhile, but dropped out.  He works for a large construction outfit up in New York State.  He’s doing pretty well now that he’s gotten straight and away from his mother.  But that youngest one – shit.  He’s so fucked up and she did that to him,” Blaze lamented, leaning forward in the chair with his head held down.

“I started drinking after that.  Oh, I wasn’t falling down drunk, and I never drank on the job – hell, that could have killed me in my line of work.  I drank a lot on the weekends, drank alone a lot.  I was busy fuckin’ up my life over that dumb bitch and the kids that might not even be mine.  It galled me to my soul to have that child support check taken out of my pay each month, but I swallowed the constant reminder and hoped that the kids reaped the benefit of that money.  God how I have hated that woman”.  Blaze covered his face with both hands, but he did not cry.  It was as though the fire of anger had dried any tears a long time ago.  His face showed rage, pain and disgust.  Finally, he rested his head on the back of the upholstered chair and stared away into nothingness.

The foul language was so uncharacteristic; the rage coursing through Blaze’s body was palpable.  He carried so much hurt with him.  Lynette was hurt for him.  She went over to him and put her arms around him.  She climbed up onto the chair with her knees astride his hips and let him bury his face in her breasts.  She gave him the only gift she had – the warmth of her body, the nurturing softness of her breasts, quiet understanding of his pain, and loving arms willing to hold him until this all passed.  They did not make love that night, for the first time, but they held each other through the darkened hours.  It is not clear if either of them slept.

C
HAPTER 12

                                                                                   
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