Atlantic Books

Australia

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 First published in Australia and New Zealand in 2023 by Atlantic Books Australia,
an imprint of Allen & Unwin
First published in the United States in 2023 by Dutton,
an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

Copyright © Alicia Elliott 2023

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of
the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events,
locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior
permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever
is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational
purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has
given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

Atlantic Books Australia

Cammeraygal Country
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest NSW 2065
Australia
Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

Atlantic Books Australia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Country on

which we live and work. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander Elders, past and present.

A catalogue record for this

book is available from the
National Library of Australia

ISBN 978 1 92292 800 9

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 CHAPTER 1

The Last Exit Out of Alice

Yes, this is technically called “The Creation

Story,” but it’s not the beginning, so let’s get that
little misconception out of the way right now.
There never was a beginning. There was a before,
and before that was another before, and another
before before that. I know that’s probably
confusing to a modern mind like yours.
Colonialism and so‑called linear time have ruined
us. We can’t even wrap our heads around our own
stories because we’ve been trained to think in
good, straight, Christian lines.
But the world doesn’t work like that. It never
has.
Anyway, before before, this world was covered
in water. A deep ocean that held water creatures
like pearls. An endless sky that bore witness to
the brilliance of the birds. Now, when I say “sky,”
some outer space is included in there, too. A lot of
outer space, actually. Pretty much anything that
can be seen from earth counts as “sky”— but that’s
not to be confused with Sky World, which is even

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 ALICIA ELLIOTT

higher than the sky. It’s its own world with its own
problems, as you’ll see pretty clearly once we get
into Sky Woman and her life. Though when you
really stop and think about it, Sky World and its
problems aren’t that different from our world or
our problems, so it might as well be just plain old
“the World.”
Aaaand there I go, getting ahead of myself
again. Sorry. Bad storyteller! (Let me ask you a
quick question: When I say that—“Bad
storyteller!”— do you imagine a white lady with a
pursed butthole of a mouth wagging her finger in
your face, too? Maybe like a nun? “Bad
storyteller!” Wag. “Bad Indian!” Wag wag. “Bad
woman bad human bad subhuman bad unreal
unholy object bad possession my possession his
possession everyone’s possession but your own
bad bad bad bad badddd!” Wag wag wag wag wag.
No? Just me? All right, I’ll remember that for
later. See? Not that bad a storyteller.)
So. Basically. The order of things went, from
top down:

Sky World
1
1
Sky
1
1
Ocean

And at the very, very bottom of the ocean, the

animals heard, there was something called clay.

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They weren’t sure, mind you, but they most

certainly suspected. Heard from a friend’s sister’s
boyfriend’s cousin, and they all but confirmed it.
The animals have always been a gossipy bunch.
No one had ever seen this “clay” or felt this
“clay” or taken grainy, possibly doctored photos
of this “clay” to pass around and praise or debunk,
however— so most of the animals laughed the
whole thing off. Everyone knew there was only sea
and sky. Sink or swim.
Or fly, I guess.

“Somebody’s hungry . . .”
I jump in my seat, nearly choking on a gasp. My hand automat‑
ically flies to my chest, as if to hold in my thundering heart, and I
whip around.
Steve stands there, Dawn wriggling uneasily in his arms.
“Oh. It’s you,” I say, exhaling with a little laugh.
“Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It’s okay. I was . . . in the zone, I guess,” I say, turning back to
look at the computer screen, at the pitiful number of words I’ve
managed to squeeze out. I’ve been writing and rewriting and erasing
and editing this opening section for weeks and nothing seems right.
I want to get it perfect, to capture the way my dad used to tell our
traditional stories when I was a kid. It’s only now, as I labor over
even the smallest word, wondering if it’s the right kindling to stoke
the fire of the reader’s mind, that I understand how much talent and
effort it took him to make our stories seem so urgent and relevant,
even hundreds, thousands of years later. I doubt I’ll ever come close
to the bar he set. I mindlessly tap the space bar on my laptop, as if
that will add anything substantial to the story.

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 ALICIA ELLIOTT

I have no idea how the hell Steve and Dawn snuck up on me. For
one thing, I can usually smell his cologne from ten feet away. His
mother, Joan, bought it for him. She thinks because she spent more
than five hundred dollars on it and its heavy bottle is bedazzled with
enough Swarovski crystals to make a drag queen feel faint, that it
must smell good. It doesn’t. It smells like an unwashed‑for‑a‑couple‑
days‑patchouli‑loving douchebag. Like what I imagine Jared Leto
smells like. Plus, I’m pretty sure I’m allergic to it because my nose
starts to run whenever he sprays, delays, and walks away. (“Learned
that one from Queer Eye,” he told me once, smiling with character‑
istic earnestness.)
I know he’s wearing it as a tribute to his doting mother, an act
of olfactory love, and that if I even suggest I don’t like it he’ll stop
immediately. But I also know Joan has been passive‑aggressively
planting the idea that I unfairly hate her ever since she and I first
met, seeds of doubt that were no doubt fertilized and watered by my
insistence on having a wedding that centered around my rez, family,
and friends. Even saying that I hate the cologne she bought him
could subconsciously confirm these suspicions. They’re accurate—I
absolutely hate her. But I don’t want him to know that, so I suffer
both the smell and the snot, smiling like a good little wife.
The other thing: I definitely should have heard Dawn. She’s not
quite crying but making an agitated sort of mewling sound I’m all
too familiar with. It usually signals that she’s about to start another
hours‑long crying spree. I’m so attuned to that sound I can already
feel my breasts leaking. They clearly heard her long before I did. But,
if I feed her fast enough, before she starts really getting her little
lungs going, maybe we’ll avoid a fit this time.
I turn back to the two of them and hold my hands out for Dawn.
“Give her here.”
Steve plops her into my arms. I pull up my shirt, pull down the

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flap on my breastfeeding bra, and pray that Dawn will latch on this
time. Miraculously, she does, her little cheeks moving in and out like
a goldfish. Her face fades from burgundy to a calm light brown as I
rub her velvet cheek, soft the way only brand‑new baby skin is. Relief
floods my muscles, and I close my eyes, letting this small victory
loosen my too‑tense body. We sit like this for some time, our shared
exhaustion making us unlikely allies.
“I like how the animals are all conspiracy theorists.”
Shit. He’s talking about my writing. I left it up. Stupid mistake.
I immediately open my eyes, see Steve leaning over me, and cringe.
Not because I don’t want him near me. I do. There’s this amazing
warmth he emits, which makes any room he’s in feel like the tem‑
perature has risen a few degrees from his mere presence, the exact
opposite of the way demons and ghosts are said to make rooms
colder.
No, I cringe because his seeing my writing at this stage feels too
revealing. Like a stranger walking in on me half naked in a fitting
room. Even his praise prickles. The writing is too fresh, too close,
my meandering through it too sensitive for scrutiny.
“Thanks, babe. That’s sweet of you to say. But it’s not good. And
it’s definitely not ready to be read yet.”
I slam my laptop shut, and he stands up quick.
“Oh. Sorry. Didn’t realize you were keeping it secret.”
Steve moves away from me, hurt, and my once warm neck be‑
comes cold again. I feel a pang of shame—so deep and sharp and
fleeting I can’t possibly follow it back to its roots—quickly swal‑
lowed up by regret. I’m doing it again. Pushing Steve away. He’s ex‑
cited about my writing. He wants to encourage me, he wants me to
succeed, he’s told me as much, said we need to set goals for ourselves
as individuals and as a family so we maintain our autonomy. He
doesn’t deserve this.

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 ALICIA ELLIOTT

“It’s not that it’s a secret. It’s just . . . ,” I start, searching for a way
to invite him back in again. “I’m worried about the tone,” I finally
say, looking up at him through lowered eyelashes, hoping my face is
soft and feminine instead of hard and masculine. It takes conscious
effort for me to do that—look helpless, vulnerable, innocent—in a
way I’m sure would come naturally to so many white women.
“Maybe it’s too flippant?” I add for emphasis.
Steve smiles very slightly, almost imperceptibly. “I like the tone,”
he says, his voice tentative. “It’s ballsy,” he continues. “Totally differ‑
ent from the old sage Indian everyone thinks of whenever anybody
says the words ‘creation story.’ ”
Not everyone thinks of that, I want to say. White people think
of that.
I look down at Dawn, trying to see parts of my family members’
faces in her tiny features, but I fail. She’s asleep now. Fighting naps
all day has finally caught up with her. I pull myself out of her mouth
and fix my bra and shirt.
“I don’t know if Ma would like it,” I confess quietly. “Or Dad.”
“What are you talking about? They’d both love it,” Steve says as
he bends down and kisses my hairline. He gently pulls Dawn away
from me and sets her into her car seat in the corner of the office. I’m
not sure when I put it there.
I get up, move over to the window. Glance out through the
blinds to see the driveway and cream siding of our neighbor’s house.
People don’t exactly live here for the views, I have to remind myself.
“Anyway, don’t worry about anyone else’s opinion. Only
Shonkwaia’tison can judge you,” he says, grinning with obvious
pride.
I pause.
Shonkwaia’tison.

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Today was Steve’s first language class, I remember. He was there,

in some yellow‑tinged classroom reading handouts and forcing his
hard English tongue to make soft Mohawk sounds, while I was here,
pretending I know how to write Mohawk stories in English words.
It’s difficult not to be jealous of him, embarrassed of myself. He slid
the Mohawk in so seamlessly, so confidently. The same way he ap‑
proaches everything, including me, as he slips behind me once more,
his hot hands skating over my hips, my abdomen.
And suddenly I’m in the upper corner of the room, looking down
at Steve and me, as the empty shell of myself leans into the delicious
heat of his body. I try not to panic. This isn’t exactly new: my con‑
sciousness peeling away from the inconvenient reality of my body
and floating into the strange, almost liquid‑feeling air nearby. But
I’m more determined now than ever before: I can’t let old demons
ruin my new life. They’re trying, the demons. Pushing against the
mental membrane I’ve been fortifying since I was a teenager.

J ust last week I was making dinner, standing in the kitchen in the
sleek little dress I’d grabbed from the closet and shimmied into
so Steve would see how well I was handling everything. I’d thrown
my hair into an updo I learned from Instagram but decided against
makeup. That seemed too try‑hard. I had just placed some hand‑
breaded chicken cutlets into the oven when my eyes caught on the
terra‑ cotta‑ colored walls. I started thinking about how much I
hated them. Steve had chosen the paint. Steve had chosen every‑
thing. He’d asked for my input when we first moved in, but I’d
shrugged. I couldn’t consider the world outside my grief. Ma was
newly dead, and I was spending most of my time back at my child‑
hood home on the rez, preparing for her funeral. I’d passed a few

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 ALICIA ELLIOTT

sleepless nights in her bed, her sheets pressed to my nose as I

breathed in her scent of menthol cigarettes and Chanel No5, sob‑
bing. In the mornings, I’d wandered through the trailer, covering the
mirrors and reluctantly bagging her belongings to give away after
the burial. I’d originally wanted a house with a granny suite so I
could look after Ma, make sure she wasn’t pushing herself too hard.
She’d been struggling with the long‑term effects of an injury then,
and I wasn’t sure how well she’d adjust to living without me for the
first time. Once I found out Joan was paying for the house, though,
I didn’t feel comfortable mentioning it, or any of my preferences. She
made it clear the only opinion that mattered was her own. I couldn’t
help but focus on this fact after Ma died—she could have been living
with us, we could have saved her—letting it curdle into resentment for
both my mother‑in‑law and the house she’d gifted us. Devoting any
thought to decorating it in the weeks and months that followed
seemed impossible, even cruel.
And now, thanks to Steve, our entire house looks like it was
ripped from an IKEA catalog—all clean lines and no character.
White cupboards and chrome pendant lamps and black cube
couches. I’m scared to move inside it, scared to dirty it, to disrupt its
sanitary perfection. My stylish yet affordable Swedish‑ designed
prison. My first place off the rez, and yet not mine at all.
I don’t belong here. Even though it was just a thought, it boomed
loud in my mind as I watched the water in the pasta pot come to a
boil. I trembled at the truth of it. I don’t belong anywhere. Not
anymore.
Then another voice, not my own: It’s all burning.
It startled me, this voice, and for a moment I was so scared I
couldn’t move. I saw it first: dark smoke reaching from the oven
door and up toward the ceiling like an angry, vengeful hand. Holy

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shit, I thought. Something really is on fire. As soon as the thought

popped in my head, the sound of the fire alarm echoed in my ears,
then the sound of Dawn’s confused yelps started in the living room
like high‑pitched harmonies. I knew logically those sounds must
have been going on for a while by that time, but for some reason I
hadn’t heard them.
It was like my body suddenly went on autopilot. I grabbed oven
mitts, opened the oven door, snatched the baking sheet, slammed
the door shut, and dropped the baking sheet into the sink with a
clatter. I turned on the taps, anxiety sharp in my chest as I watched
the steady stream of water rush over the charred remains. As I ran
to grab a broom so I could turn off the smoke alarm with the end of
its handle, it occurred to me that Steve was due back any minute. He
couldn’t see this. He couldn’t see any of it.
Once I’d stopped the alarm, I unclipped Dawn from her car seat
and held her to my chest, shushing her as I plotted. If I called Steve
and told him we were out of diapers but insisted he had to buy a
specific brand that he would have to drive across town for, that
could buy me another half hour. I could order some chicken on a
delivery app, set it out on our plates at the dinner table, then tie up
the garbage with the burned chicken and run the dishes through the
dishwasher. No evidence. It’d be like it never even happened.
Everything went according to plan. I thought I was in the clear.
But then, while we were eating dinner, the demons came back for
more. At first, everything seemed normal. Steve had launched into
the minutiae of his day—how the head of the department invited
him out for lunch, which he thought would help with his tenure.
Then he went on about the progress of his colleague Scott’s home
reno, then his department head Lou’s wife Sheila’s latest publica‑
tion. He didn’t ask me how my day was in all that time. Part of me

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was relieved since I didn’t have to lie. The other part of me was
nearly vibrating with so much swallowed rage. If Sheila’s day mat‑
tered, and Scott’s day mattered, why the fuck didn’t mine?
“Well, Steve,” I might have said if I had any spine, “I nearly
burned down the house while you were gone. This dress I threw on
just for you now stinks like baby puke and sweat. Your daughter
doesn’t want the milk from my tits, so I’m always sore and she’s al‑
ways crying. I can’t sleep at all. And I never want to fuck you or
anyone again.”
He’d probably still find a way to excuse my rudeness, to paint it
as some endearing joke. He’s that type of person. Endlessly opti‑
mistic, incredibly loving. The type of person who genuinely tries to
get to know people, and once he does, focuses almost exclusively on
the good in them, using their past circumstances to explain away
what others might refer to as shitty behavior. The type of person
who listens deeply to everything everyone says to him, remembers
the tiniest, most otherwise inconsequential details of each conver‑
sation, then asks about them whenever he sees you next, whether
that’s in a week or six months. His attitude toward others made
everything infinitely more interesting, like each interaction had the
possibility to unfold into a fascinating short story, complete with
rich characters and unearthed complexities. By the time I was get‑
ting ready to move off the rez, my cousin Tanya joked people were
going to miss Steve’s visits more than they were gonna miss me. I
admired that he was so likable, with his constant kindness and fo‑
cused interest. I still do.
But that night, after the fire scare and the rush to figure out din‑
ner and the droning conversation, I couldn’t think about any of that.
I was silently simmering, unsure how to put out the blaze inside me.
Maybe that played a role, like a key unlocking a door.
Steve finished his meal and shouted, “Nya:wen!” Exaggerating

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the last syllable the way he always does because he knows it makes
me laugh. Or it did. Before Ma died and Dawn was born and I
disappeared.
“Nyoh,” I replied quietly, shoveling a forkful of salad into my
mouth.
“Oh, guess what?” he asked as he swept my plate into the dish‑
washer. “U of T is offering a beginner Mohawk class this year. I
talked to Lou and the department is going to pay for me to enroll. I
managed to convince him it’ll benefit the department to have staff
who speak Mohawk. Isn’t that great?”
It was as if everything paused for a second. I couldn’t breathe. I
couldn’t think. When the pause was over, it wasn’t just my insides
that shook with fury. It was my outsides, too. I reflexively grabbed
my fork. It came from a silverware set Steve’s great‑uncle Bob had
given us as a wedding gift. His wife had gone on and on about the
proper way to polish it before we’d even opened their gift. I stared
down at that fork, thinking about how beautiful and shiny it would
be if not for my oily fingers. I focused on the smudges, the way they
blurred at some edges but stayed sharp in others, and I willed myself
to stop shaking like an idiot. But just as the thought came to me, it
was like my consciousness slingshotted outside of my body and into
the air over my head. I could see the dining room from above and
from my eyes at the same time—one vision layered on top of the
other like overlapping transparencies on an overhead projector.
What was happening to me? Why was I so mad? And why was I fall‑
ing out of my body again, the way I used to before I met Steve?
I sat at the white table and curled and uncurled my toes, trying
to pull myself back into my skin as Steve told me what he knows
about his new language teacher. Once I did, I encouraged. I carefully
wiped the fingerprints from my fork, placed it back down, and I
smiled. Steve was none the wiser.

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 ALICIA ELLIOTT

T hat’s what I need to do now, as I float above my office,

Shonkwaia’tison echoing in my head, my bitterness as con‑
spicuous as each Mohawk syllable Steve uttered. I need to ground
myself in my body.
I start by zeroing in on Steve, his dampening hands running all
over my skin, his mouth on my neck, kissing me. I never used to
mind how sweaty his hands would get. In fact, I used to like it. I had
convinced myself his hand sweat was evidence of his fragility, his
anxiety, his need for me. Right now his hands remind me of a catfish
freshly yanked from the creek. I focus on them, feel saliva well up in
my mouth, the sour before the puke, at the exact moment his hands
brush the outside of the giant maxi pad shoved between my legs.
We both jerk and pull away from each other, embarrassed by my
post‑childbirth body.
“Sorry,” I say before I can really consider what I’m apologiz‑
ing for.
“It’s fine,” he says before he can really consider that this interac‑
tion is all wrong.
Well, I’m certainly back in my body now: the unwashed, still‑
bleeding heft of it. I pull away from him and lengthen my spine.
“It’s only been six weeks,” I say, avoiding his eyes.
“I know. You’re right. I forgot. I’m sorry.” His words fast as he
backs away from me, hands up, like he’s a little kid who’s been caught
stealing candy at the corner store.
“You look ridiculous,” I manage, genuinely laughing this time.
He laughs, too.
I love Steve more than I knew it was even possible to love an‑
other person. I can tell by the way I always turn toward him

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whenever he’s in a room—still—as if he’s the sun and I’m a sun‑

flower starving for his light.
But I can’t help but notice: he hasn’t suffered at all since we’ve
gotten married. If anything, he’s excelled. Now that he’s married
with a baby, he can better relate to the older, tenured faculty in his
anthropology department. He can bring me along to dinner parties,
where I feel like an exhibit on display, and dress up our daughter in
cute baby drag so that strange white women are more enticed to
scoop her out of her stroller or car seat without my permission. Ev‑
ery action we take is purposeful and imbued with meaning for him,
because it makes him more “relatable,” more “feminist.” And
through it all, he has the luxury of forgetting about not only the
pain and violence of the actual act of childbirth but also the ongoing
trauma it’s stamped on my body.
Me, though? I’m consumed by this inescapable feeling of hope‑
lessness. Every day is the same. Same exhaustion. Same humiliation.
Same loneliness. I look out at the young women who walk past the
house and fantasize about where they’re going, who they’re gonna
hang out with, what drugs they’re gonna do when they get there,
who they’re gonna fuck when they start to come down and every‑
thing else has lost its glitter. Fantasizing is all I can do. I’m stuck
here.
Steve doesn’t notice. He wouldn’t, though. He’s too blinded by
the picture of us he’s fixed in his mind. That’s partially my fault—
Steve’s not knowing. I’ve perfected the art of looking like I’m okay—
more than okay, even, great—since back when I was working at the
racetrack as a kid. You could never let men at the track see you
flinch, because then they’d know the way in. They’d know how to
make you uncomfortable. How to make you hurt. Better to keep
that hidden. Better to keep yourself hidden.

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Still, that word comes back again, nagging at me.

Shonkwaia’tison.
Mohawk feels like a weapon coming from Steve’s lips—not be‑
cause he’s necessarily wielding it that way but because history is.
Here was the language I had lost, the language my parents and
aunts and half my grandparents had lost, which was so different
from the English that’d been forced on us that I secretly worried my
tongue would never be able to make those sounds. And here was
Steve, rattling it off easily, as if it weren’t an endangered language,
my endangered language; as if those words, which held my culture,
were simply . . . words to him.
The thing is, though, they were. And why wouldn’t they be? He
didn’t need to question his identity and worth every time he said a
Mohawk word. His voice didn’t shake when he spoke, scared any
mispronunciation would signal to everyone he didn’t really belong.
That he never did and never would.
That wasn’t his legacy.
It was mine.
When you both die, Steve will have to translate your ancestors’ words
to you.
As soon as the words enter my head, I see my ancestors staring
at me, disappointed, their foreheads crinkled like tissue paper, as
they slowly push out syllables for Steve to catch and pass to me. I
shake my head slightly to chase the words—the vision—out.
No. Not now. I’m the one in control.
“Did you learn that word in class?” I manage to say without my
voice cracking.
“Learn what?” he asks, distracted. “Shonkwaia’tison?”
I nod, afraid that if I say anything, I’ll scream or cry.
“Yeah, mostly.” He’s grinning like a schoolboy getting praised by

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his favorite teacher. “I mean, I’d hear your ma say it all the time be‑
fore, but I wasn’t sure of the syllables. Was it okay?”
Hearing him mention Ma feels like a tiny dagger in my gut. I
swallow—quietly—then force my voice to mimic excitement. “Yup.
Good job, babe!”
“Thanks.”
He nuzzles into my neck and I know I’m being unfair. An ass‑
hole. He’s learning Mohawk, for fuck’s sake! It’s one of the hardest
languages in the world to learn, and he’s learning it. He’s learning it
for me and he’s learning it for our daughter. Yes, he’s also going to be
able to use this to better position his career, but that doesn’t negate
the good. He talked to Melita about her experience learning it, and
he knows it’ll be easier for Dawn to retain Mohawk if it’s spoken at
home, too. I know he cares, that he would never intentionally make
me feel bad for not knowing my language. I know that he would
willingly act as translator for my ancestors and me—gladly, even.
Just as I know there is a disconcerting plea in his voice, barely
perceptible. I’m not sure what it’s a plea for, but it immediately
strikes me as everything that’s wrong with him, with us. We’ve been
married nine months but it already feels like decades of unsaid
words have settled between us.
A lattice pattern of silence and secrets to match the sofa set.
That night I have one of my recurring nightmares. They started
during the pregnancy: terrible dreams so thick I had to be shaken
from them violently. There was blood, always. So much blood. In
this one, which started shortly after my mother’s funeral, Ma was
alive again. She pulled up in her car to the front of our new house,
smiling and happy to see us. Steve and I were waving from behind
the screen door, Dawn content in my arms. But when Ma began
to walk up the sidewalk toward us, the squares of cement started

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 ALICIA ELLIOTT

to simmer beneath her. Each step she took melted her body from the
bottom up. Still, despite my screams for her to turn around and go
back, she wouldn’t stop. She kept coming, her skin, muscles, bones,
and blood puddling behind her.
It was so real I could smell her sizzling flesh long after I’d
screamed myself awake.

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 CHAPTER 2

A Moment for the Meet-Cute

W e met through my mother. He was writing a chapter in his

book on Indigenous planting, and she was the only seedkeeper
who would talk to him. I remember sneaking in after my shift at the
bingo hall, stinking of cigarettes and coffee. I didn’t want Ma to
catch me and saddle me with a list of chores before I could escape to
hang out with Tanya and Melita. Or worse, have to interact with her
in one of her drugged‑out stupors.
The first thing I saw was his back. It was an attractive back—the
result of discipline and design. I watched without a word as he
shifted that beautiful back against one of Ma’s horrendous wicker
chairs, self‑consciously adjusting his slouch so it gave off the perfect
amount of professional aloofness. In that moment I thought I could
see what he might have been like as a child: patient, proud, eager to
impress. He was the type who’d always needed a teacher to acknow‑
ledge his right answers, who’d seemingly constructed an entire
identity from those sparkly stickers pressed in the corners of check‑
marked tests.
I didn’t mean to laugh, it just happened. And as soon as that
giggle hit his ear, he seemed to deflate a little, the way men do when‑
ever a woman laughs off script. He darted around and looked at me,
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“I’m sorry,” he said, smiling, straightening in his chair. “You

probably weren’t expecting me.”
I knew at once it was the most perfect thing a man had ever said.
Maybe it was the way his voice was lowered—like we were telling
each other secrets; like we were already lovers. Maybe it was because
he was even sexier from the front than from the back. Or maybe it
was the fact that he seemed to have decided as soon as he met me
that I was a person worthy of respect. Either way, when Ma walked
through the door not a second later, clearly in good spirits that day,
and asked me to do her a favor and take Steve here on a midnight
walk so he could better understand the way our medicines were di‑
vided between light and dark, I shut my mouth and nodded like a
goddamn idiot.
“Make sure you show him the cattails down around the crick.
And bring some back for me, eh? I wanna make ’em into tea.” She
smiled conspiratorially. Later—after I took him on the medicine
walk; after we ended up skinny‑dipping in the crick; after I burned
leeches off his bare ass with my Betty Boop lighter while he
squealed; after he showed up at the bingo hall the next day to see me
and found himself pressured into playing a game of bingo with the
old Native biddies we forever after referred to as “the blue‑haired
crew”; after we started talking breathlessly on the phone nearly ev‑
ery night, him telling me all the new places he wanted to take me,
all the wild things he wanted to show me; after I reluctantly passed
him my writing and he gushed over it, called it “fresh” and “exciting”
the way my dad had; after he made me forget that I was a no one
with no future and I began to feverishly imagine who I could be free
from my home and my history; after being with him made every
moment feel precious—after all of that, I asked Ma why she talked
to Steve when no other seedkeeper would. I expected a long, wind‑
ing explanation, drawing on the teachings of our wampum belts,

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the Great Law, the Code of Handsome Lake. Instead, she gave the
same knowing smile she gave me that first day, shrugged, and said,
“You were single, and he was cute.”
I don’t think Ma expected me to marry Steve. She liked him, I
know that. It helped that he paid her for her extensive knowledge
and didn’t freely pilfer it like other academics had in the past, as
though they themselves had divined our knowledge from ancient
texts hidden in dangerous jungles instead of simply asking our
people. It also helped that he consulted her on every detail of his
book, listening closely to her long, circular stories without inter‑
rupting, then deferring to her judgments. But her liking him didn’t
negate the obvious: Steve was white. Even if we loved each other,
that love did not grant him passage to live on my territory. Band
Council’s bylaws forbade it. We could never live together on the land
I knew so well, among the people I loved so fiercely. Our children
couldn’t live there—not with him. And, depending on who our kids
married, their kids might not live there, either. My culture would be
slowly filtered out until it was a distant echo, summoned only as the
shallow basis for ill‑formed arguments over Indigenous rights. “Ac‑
tually, my great‑great‑great‑great‑grandmother was Native, so . . .”
Ma outlined all of this for me—and when I look back on it now,
it’s clear she did so with compassion. Didn’t even mention Dad and
his lifelong insistence that I marry a Native man, which I should
have been thankful for. But I didn’t trust any of her motives then. I
still saw her as some sort of disappointed coach or prison guard in
my life—a person who had always asked for and expected too much
of me, never noticing the impact this had. I was so sure that Ma was
trying to keep me in that trailer with her that I greeted all her warn‑
ings and even well‑wishes with an upturned lip and an eye roll. It
wasn’t until after she’d died that I’d considered: she’d never asked
me to stay with her all those years. I’d chosen to. I’d unfairly made

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 ALICIA ELLIOTT

Ma my scapegoat my entire life. Someone I could blame for my own

feelings of failure.
Meanwhile, Steve was my white knight, carrying me off from
the tower I’d been imprisoned in since birth—a tower I’d, in some
ways, built higher all by myself. Keeping people out. Keeping secrets.
Not anymore. I wanted to leave the rez. I wanted to be part of some‑
thing exciting, for my life to have a distinctive shape I could show
others as proof that I was someone. I wasn’t the pathetic girl‑woman
living at home with her mom anymore. There was no more risk of
failure. I was gonna give my ma a son‑in‑law to brag about, then
grandkids to show pictures of to anyone who asked and anyone who
didn’t. She wouldn’t have to feel embarrassed when her friends
asked her about me anymore. I was so sure that this would make
her—and me—happy. It wouldn’t help the fact that my mother had
never fully recovered from her car accident seven years ago, that she
couldn’t work or move without extreme pain, that she needed more
and more help that, once I left, wouldn’t be there. But, like all the
darkest, most difficult, and most necessary conversations, we ig‑
nored it, just as I ignored how Ma started to treat her pain with
drugs. I never mentioned when she began to slur or fall asleep, never
mentioned when things seemed to accelerate once I moved out. I
could offer her this dignity, at least.
Ma’s overdose threw a wrench in everything. She didn’t get a
chance to walk me down the aisle. She didn’t even get a chance to
meet her granddaughter, much less brag about her. Sometimes I
wonder if, in the moments before she died, Ma saw her life roll be‑
fore her eyes like a film, the way some people say it does when you
have a near‑death experience. And if she did see her whole life played
back for her, what she thought of it. Whether she had regrets. Things
she wished she’d done. Things she wished she hadn’t. Places she
wished she’d gone, or people she wished she’d kept in touch with. I

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wonder whether she felt proud of her life. I wonder if she felt proud
of me.
Or maybe she regretted it all, and the whole thing coming to a
close was a relief, like when you finally fall into bed after an espe‑
cially long, grueling day.
I sometimes hope that, wherever she is, she can’t see or hear me
so she can’t be ashamed of what I’ve become, how I sit and stay and
shut up for Steve’s mother and colleagues, who I’m sure see me as
little more than a trained dog. Other times I hope that she’s watch‑
ing always, silently rooting me on, giving me strength. I need her
strength. There are times the loss of Six Nations weighs down every
part of me. Those times it seems regret is not a feeling but a per‑
manent state of being, as constant as air. But then I do something
as simple as piss in a toilet I can actually flush, or turn on my tap and
drink a glass of water without boiling it first, or walk five minutes to
get fresh produce instead of driving half an hour, and the ease of
those things reminds me of the value of living somewhere my
daughter and I can not only survive but also thrive. In those mo‑
ments, I am truly thankful.
And at the same time, I am absolutely furious I have to be thank‑
ful in the first place.

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