Pigs in Heaven
Page 118
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“I’m grateful that she’s alive. But I’m not happy about the circumstances.”
“Maybe you and me are just going to have to be enemies,” Alice says.
“I don’t think so. But I want you to understand how deep these feelings run. For this whole century, right up until 1978
when we got the Indian Child Welfare Act, social workers would come in here with no understanding of how our families worked. They would see a child who’d been left with someone outside the nuclear family, and they would call that neglect. To us, that is an insane rationale. We don’t distinguish between father, uncle, mother, grandmother. We don’t think of ourselves as having extended families. We look at you guys and think you have contracted families.”
“That’s true,” Alice says, thinking of her empty address book. She can’t deny it. It struck her back in Kentucky, when she wanted to leave Harland but couldn’t think where else home might be.
“We couldn’t understand why they were taking us apart.
My brother Gabe, going to a man and woman in Texas when we had a whole family here. I’ve seen babies carried off with no more thought than you’d give a bag of brown sugar you picked up at the market. Just a nice little prize for some family. The Mormon families love our kids, because they think we’re the lost tribe of Israel. Little pagan babies to raise up and escort you into heaven!”
Annawake’s eyes are streaming tears. She looks up at the darkening sky. “These were our kids,” she tells Alice, and the sky. ‘Thousands of them. We’ve lost more than a quarter of our living children.”
There is a whole fleet of yellow wasps floating on the water now. A breeze too slight for Alice to feel causes them all to slide across the surface along the same diagonal. One by one, they lift off into the air.
Annawake wipes her face with the back of her wrist, and looks at Alice. “I concede your point that Turtle was abandoned. She wasn’t stolen, she was lost and found. It’s not the first time an Indian parent has given a child away, I have to admit that to you. There’s a real important case, Choctaw vs. Holyfield, where that happened. But the way our law looks at it is, the mother or father doesn’t have that right.
It’s like if I tried to give you, I don’t know, a piece of the Tahlequah courthouse.”
Alice hands Annawake a handkerchief. Young people never carry them, she’s noticed. They haven’t yet learned that heartbreak can catch up to you on any given day.
Annawake folds and unfolds the cotton square on her lap.
“We see so many negative images of ourselves, Alice. Especially off-reservation. Sometimes these girls make a break for the city, thinking they’ll learn to be blonde, I guess, but they develop such contempt for themselves they abandon their babies at hospitals or welfare departments. Or a parking lot.
Rather than trust to family.”
“It’s a sad story,” Alice says. “But if you make Turtle leave the only mama she knows now, you’re going to wreck a couple of lives.”
“I know that.” Annawake looks down, tucking behind her ear a lock of hair that immediately falls out again. “I could also tell you that some wrecked lives would be made whole again. There’s no easy answer. I’m trying everything I can think of to avoid legal intervention. I’d kind of cooked up an alternate plan, but it doesn’t seem like it’s working out.”
She gives Alice the same careful study again, looking for something.
“What does the law say?”
“That’s easy. The ICWA says a child should be placed with relatives if they’re available, or with other members of the child’s tribe, or, third choice, with a member of another Native American tribe. The law is clear.”
“How’s your conscience?” Alice asks.
Annawake lifts her feet out of the water and splashes a little, causing the minnows to flee. “The thing is, I’m really not jaded and cynical. My boss thinks I’m a starry-eyed idealist. That’s the whole reason I pursued this case, instead of minding my own business. At the time I met your daughter, I had never experienced a crisis of faith.”
Alice looks up at the sky, so much brighter and more silent than the one reflected below. “I wish I could say I always knew what was right,” she tells this mysterious child.
Annawake brushes Alice’s hand so lightly she could have imagined it.
28
SURRENDER DOROTHY
THUNDER POUNDS IN THE DISTANCE and rain coats the Dodge’s windshield, drifting across it in sheets like the hard spatter against a shower curtain. Taylor bangs on the steering wheel. “This isn’t a city, it’s a carwash!”
“Maybe you and me are just going to have to be enemies,” Alice says.
“I don’t think so. But I want you to understand how deep these feelings run. For this whole century, right up until 1978
when we got the Indian Child Welfare Act, social workers would come in here with no understanding of how our families worked. They would see a child who’d been left with someone outside the nuclear family, and they would call that neglect. To us, that is an insane rationale. We don’t distinguish between father, uncle, mother, grandmother. We don’t think of ourselves as having extended families. We look at you guys and think you have contracted families.”
“That’s true,” Alice says, thinking of her empty address book. She can’t deny it. It struck her back in Kentucky, when she wanted to leave Harland but couldn’t think where else home might be.
“We couldn’t understand why they were taking us apart.
My brother Gabe, going to a man and woman in Texas when we had a whole family here. I’ve seen babies carried off with no more thought than you’d give a bag of brown sugar you picked up at the market. Just a nice little prize for some family. The Mormon families love our kids, because they think we’re the lost tribe of Israel. Little pagan babies to raise up and escort you into heaven!”
Annawake’s eyes are streaming tears. She looks up at the darkening sky. “These were our kids,” she tells Alice, and the sky. ‘Thousands of them. We’ve lost more than a quarter of our living children.”
There is a whole fleet of yellow wasps floating on the water now. A breeze too slight for Alice to feel causes them all to slide across the surface along the same diagonal. One by one, they lift off into the air.
Annawake wipes her face with the back of her wrist, and looks at Alice. “I concede your point that Turtle was abandoned. She wasn’t stolen, she was lost and found. It’s not the first time an Indian parent has given a child away, I have to admit that to you. There’s a real important case, Choctaw vs. Holyfield, where that happened. But the way our law looks at it is, the mother or father doesn’t have that right.
It’s like if I tried to give you, I don’t know, a piece of the Tahlequah courthouse.”
Alice hands Annawake a handkerchief. Young people never carry them, she’s noticed. They haven’t yet learned that heartbreak can catch up to you on any given day.
Annawake folds and unfolds the cotton square on her lap.
“We see so many negative images of ourselves, Alice. Especially off-reservation. Sometimes these girls make a break for the city, thinking they’ll learn to be blonde, I guess, but they develop such contempt for themselves they abandon their babies at hospitals or welfare departments. Or a parking lot.
Rather than trust to family.”
“It’s a sad story,” Alice says. “But if you make Turtle leave the only mama she knows now, you’re going to wreck a couple of lives.”
“I know that.” Annawake looks down, tucking behind her ear a lock of hair that immediately falls out again. “I could also tell you that some wrecked lives would be made whole again. There’s no easy answer. I’m trying everything I can think of to avoid legal intervention. I’d kind of cooked up an alternate plan, but it doesn’t seem like it’s working out.”
She gives Alice the same careful study again, looking for something.
“What does the law say?”
“That’s easy. The ICWA says a child should be placed with relatives if they’re available, or with other members of the child’s tribe, or, third choice, with a member of another Native American tribe. The law is clear.”
“How’s your conscience?” Alice asks.
Annawake lifts her feet out of the water and splashes a little, causing the minnows to flee. “The thing is, I’m really not jaded and cynical. My boss thinks I’m a starry-eyed idealist. That’s the whole reason I pursued this case, instead of minding my own business. At the time I met your daughter, I had never experienced a crisis of faith.”
Alice looks up at the sky, so much brighter and more silent than the one reflected below. “I wish I could say I always knew what was right,” she tells this mysterious child.
Annawake brushes Alice’s hand so lightly she could have imagined it.
28
SURRENDER DOROTHY
THUNDER POUNDS IN THE DISTANCE and rain coats the Dodge’s windshield, drifting across it in sheets like the hard spatter against a shower curtain. Taylor bangs on the steering wheel. “This isn’t a city, it’s a carwash!”
