Indigenous Arts & Stories - I will make peace with my mother

PART ONE: angry

 

A boy in class says a woman who stays with her abuser deserves it

If she puts her children at risk

This makes her a monster.

 

I don’t know how I feel about that.

 

 

I will build you something new out of anything I can get my hands on

Spit and sticks and grass,

Bits of string, like swallows

Insulate with the skins of old selves we shed

They are tougher than you’d expect.

 

 

 

There is an old family portrait hanging above grandma’s bed

In this picture, you’re standing beside a man who is not my father

but he has the same self- assured smile that makes me sick

Your eyes do not smile in this picture.

You won’t tell me about this man, I don’t even know his name

Sister told me that this man once put you in the ICU

I don’t know if this is true or not,

the details are slippery

you won’t answer my questions.

 

I will never allow myself to be angry with you.

 

You are more essential to me than water

I remember how you held onto me and I remember that you couldn’t stop crying,

out of hope and out of fear,

This condition of the women in my blood

to shrink ourselves out of the space we deserve

into bite-sized pieces

only because it’s all we ever learn

Manifesting our worst fears in our daughters

passing on insecurities like we pass the fucking bottle.

 

I will never allow myself to be angry with you.

 

I understand that returning fire can prove to be more than lethal

I know the drill

grab the youngest- get low,

Don’t wimper, never look him in the eye

We’re taught to read the sound of our things breaking like code

Wait for the crescendo of shattering to fall

Determine when it is safe to sort through the rubble

We mend what we can, we hide what we can’t

This is the secret I was born to keep.

 

I will never allow myself to be angry with you.

 

I know how deceitful he is

I know how quickly he can make you think you love him all over again

And I know that if I beg you to leave

You will shake me sternly by the shoulders, unbelievably calm.

‘We have nowhere to go,’

 

I will never allow myself to be angry with you.

 

I know you felt helpless

(I will raise my little sister like my sister raised me)

You are trapped in more ways than I could ever imagine.

Cyclical violence becoming internalized

(I do not want this for any child of mine)

 

 

 

I will never allow myself to be angry with you,

I gentled my rage years ago.

Anger is not something I can afford.

 

 

 

 

 

I will build you something new with anything I can get my hands on.

Spit and sticks and grass,

the best parts of our old lives

 

 

 

 

 

like swallows.

 

 

 

 

PART TWO:  learning

 

When I speak to you

I am afraid I will slip up.

I say wâciye,

both hello and goodbye

I teach you the words that encompass everything

maskwa,

bear.

“We are Bear Clan, y’know,” you told me once

 

I want to teach you how to sing a morning song

and I want to show you how to play a drum.

 

your voice is so small, and you don’t like to sing loudly

the shame they chewed into your tongue hangs heavy,

so shy

 

I dream that I am being sucked up by swamp, clods of mud in my mouth

body aching to move,

nikâwiy, nikâwiy nikâwiynikâwiy

I am screaming, no noise

you cry.

 

 

 

PART THREE: healer

 

“Your mother’s always been a troublemaker” mosom tells me,

he always speaks of you with endless kindness, smiling as he remembers your youth.

alimisiw

“Troublemakers, the lot of you.”

 

we stopped by the side of the road,

parked the car

wordless, you walked to the lake

“He’s going to go soon, y’know.

I wish he could see this.”

you bend down and bury a tobacco tie under a rock,

scoop up the water to wash your face, and turn to me to smile

kapâšimow

To bathe, to cleanse, to let it all go.