Mia Darien - Good Things

From the Author: The plight of the First People’s children being taken from the reservations and placed in Caucasian homes has been a secret for a long time. The tribal lawyers fight, to keep their children, but it is an uphill battle. I would like to thank the Lakota Law Project for offering me answers to the questions I had about the issue, and for supporting me in my decision to bring this story to light. For more information on the Lakota Law Project, please visit http://lakotalaw.org/

I would also like to thank Reverend Melissa Burchfield and Reverend William E. Ashton for guiding me through all my diversity and spiritual questions of the past year and being the inspiration for the group of people I use for Gabby’s religious group.

Jemine Windsong stood under the green and gold striped awning of the used bookstore she had just exited, watching as the lights went off behind her. The woman in the shop had made her tea, and let her sit in one of the reading areas all afternoon. Jemine had not eaten the cookies the woman had set out, even when her stomach rumbled, because she knew she could barely pay for dinner, let alone one of the books the woman sold, and it felt like she was taking advantage. She offered to help the woman stock books, or to sweep the floors, but the woman had said that it had been slow lately and she didn’t need any help.

Wasn’t that the story of her young life so far? A willingness to do, but the world’s lack of acceptance and an unstable path behind her, now made worse with her last choice to try and return home. It felt like it was the right choice, but making her way had not been easy.

She pulled her sweatshirt hood over her head. Colorado summer days were warm, but the evenings cooled, especially when the huge thunderstorms rolled in, lighting the clouds with spectacular shows in black and white, just like Great-Aunt Winterhawk’s ancient TV. Another wet evening, and the need to find a place to stay dry. The Waffle House down by the freeway had let her in a few times, but then the manager told her more than a cup of coffee was needed as booth rental, leaving her in a position of trying to pin down which car was his so she could see if the nicer waitstaff would let her stay when he wasn’t there.

A sound next to the building caught her attention, and she moved around the corner into the dark of the small town street and looked into the parking lot. There the woman from the bookshop was locking the door as she talked on the phone. The pale blue of the phone’s light built shadows into the older woman’s face as Jemine had seen in the fires of the reservation cast upon dancers and storytellers. As they always did, the thoughts of her home brought a lump to her throat, but foster care had dried away the tears. The woman turned and her purse caught on the door handle, sending her phone sliding across the dark pavement, almost to Jemine’s feet, as the other woman cursed into the night. “Fuck.”

Picking up the phone and offering it to the woman, Jemine smiled shyly, then turned to go once it was taken. As she moved, the woman waved a hand at her, then held up one finger, asking for Jemi to wait. Blue eyes looked appraisingly at Jemine and she began to squirm under the scrutiny, tugging nervously at her long, black braid. The woman was a few inches taller than her, and understandably more well fed, considering Jemi’s homeless state. As the other woman had let her stay and read earlier, Jemi decided to see what she wanted to say.

The phone conversation from this end was mostly, “Yeah I’m fine,” then listening, “Yes, I will get that and see you soon.” Jemine listened, but unlike the loud conversations her mother used to have over the phone, she could not even determine if the other speaker was male or female.

The bookstore woman hung up and continued to look at Jemine. “Thank you, I appreciate it,” she said and gestured with her phone. “Have you eaten dinner yet?”

Jemine shook her head, eyes narrowing slightly.

“Good. I am Gabby and I have to go pick up some things for a meeting, I could use help carrying them. In exchange, you can eat with us,” Gabby spoke with a gentle smile, and Jemine could almost feel the tension she was holding, ready to bolt at any sign of danger, melt from the woman’s kind demeanor. Gabby turned to her car, then looked back at Jemi. “Come on. You don’t expect me to leave my phone’s rescuer unfed, do you?”

Returning the woman’s look with a guarded one of her own, Jemi shook her head and followed, getting into the passenger seat of an older car. The interior was neatly kept, just like the bookstore, except a bag in the back and a few books on the back floorboard. She stayed quiet as Gabby got in and started the engine.

“Afraid dinner is likely to be a mishmash of whatever everyone brings. It’s my chance to be in charge of the meat, do you like chicken?” Gabby asked, not looking at her as the woman carefully pulled out of the lot, signaling as she turned right towards the main area of town.

“Eat about anything,” Jemi said softly.

Gabby chuckled. “Me too, as is obvious,” she said, then turned up the music. It was the same as had been on in the bookstore, piano and soulful singing, some horns, but nothing like Jemi had ever heard. “You like jazz?” Gabby asked.

“That the music?” Jemi asked, then when the other woman nodded, “Seems okay.”

“Find it gets me through my Mondays, no matter what day they fall on,” Gabby stated with a chuckle as if she had made a joke.

Jemi just stayed quiet, looking around. She hadn’t ventured far from the freeway in her time in town. She needed to find a ride north but the last ride had been with a foul-smelling trucker and she felt she had just gotten away in time before something bad happened. Great-Aunt Winterhawk was her grandmother’s sister and she had always told Jemi to follow the spirit wind, as it would tell her what she needed. But while in foster care, she felt like almost all the spirits of her people had left her. Maybe it was because of the Christianity most of the homes offered. The church her grandmother had attended was one of tolerance, acceptance and peace, but in the foster homes, religion felt forced. One of the other girls had told her that foster parents were judged by the social workers and if the social workers felt they were not Christian enough, they might get less children.

In her young life, so much had changed. Jemi’s mother was a white girl. She’d been sixteen, the age Jemi was now, when she got pregnant. Her father, a Lakota from the reservation, took her in with his family and did the only thing he could do at eighteen to support a woman and child: joined the military. They never married so when he came home in a flag-covered coffin two years later, the uneasy truce between Jemi’s mother and grandmother ended, and her mother left, only to appear every once in a while asking for money and then threatening to take Jemi away. Grandmother said her mother was getting money from the government that should have been Jemi’s because of her father’s death, but there was no way to try and get custody unless her mother signed her rights away, which she always promised but never did.

That was why when her grandmother’s spirit went to fly with the ancestors, Child Protective Services came onto the reservation and took her. She had no family left but her mother and her great-aunt, who was gone on a spirit walk when they came. Not that the spirits would have stopped them, nothing ever did once the county took interest in a child of the tribe.