Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

Bronze. My father will soon be sent to prison. My
mother, always on the edge of some bottomless
place, will disappear for almost a year. But for this
little time we are a family. Daddy builds L.A.’s
skyscrapers, coming home to shower, slicking back
his black hair with Tres Flores, face and tattooed
arms almost black against his clean T-shirt and
chinos. Mama tends our little apartment, watering
the avocado tree crucified on toothpicks and
suspended in the water of a highball glass, speaking
broken Spanish to neighborhood women when she
hangs out our laundry on the communal clothesline
in back. And me, in sunsuit and sandals, short
“pixie” haircut, darting in and out of the groundfloor
apartment from coolness to perpetual summer.
On this day I am playing with a boy from another
apartment—his name might be Tony—who offends
me deeply. To prove how seriously I take this—
whatever it is—I run into our apartment to ask my
mother for a butter knife. I know, of course, that
she’d never give me a sharp knife, but I use butter
knives in my play often enough that it isn’t an
unusual request. Prying rocks from the hard earth,
making mud pies, chopping up spiky yucca leaves for
my doll’s dinner…
I find my mother in the kitchen. Slender, her skin