Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

I try to write all this down, but when I look down
at my notebook, I see the names of my
grandmothers. María Josefa, María Teodosia, María
Estéfana. I think, “Who was the first missionized
Indian girl child named María?” Who was the last
Indian child to be given an Esselen name? How can I
pronounce those alien names written in Castellano
script filling the black ledgers? They are only
skeletons anyway, not the heart or flesh of a people.
Will I ever know how they sounded coming out of an
Esselen mouth—called by a grandparent, sister,
lover, child, mother, river?
Did someone hide my name in that parchment,
bury it—forget the way back?
Thursday: Oral Tradition
Silence is a long story, a complex art left to
descendants of Native speakers. Ribboned palm
fronds hang absolutely still. A thousand tongues that
don’t move, yet exist whole and fully formed.
Sometimes I dream in Spanish. My mouth moves in
all the proper patterns: the rolling “r,” delicate
placement of tongue against teeth, subtle slip of
consonants. But in the morning I taste a tide of
blood, slick iron in my traitorous mouth.