Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

he cut her face, he broke her ribs. Then he raped her.
And just left her.”
Louise’s voice trembled; not just with fury, but
anguish. Anguish for what that nameless woman
must have felt…
“Left her there, bleeding, in the dark, didn’t care
what happened to her or nothing,” she went on,
letting her grief ignite into anger again. “That’s what
Al went to prison for, and he deserved all eight years,
and more. He ruined that girl’s life. He’d probably
done it before and never got caught. And he goes
around telling everyone, ‘Oh, I thought she was
eighteen,’ ‘Oh, she lied to me,’ ‘Oh, she was afraid of
her older brother.’ He’s just a lying son of a bitch.”
In that moment, Louise’s hatred for our father was
a carved mask obscuring her face with shadow and
flame.
I wonder what my face looked like when denial
fled and left me standing without the last shred of
pretense.
Images burst through my mind: My father,
bellowing at my little brother as he cowered on his
bed, “Stop crying!” My father, yanking the black