Set Me Free (26 page)

Helen adjusted herself in her seat. She scanned the faces before her. Victor was sitting in the middle of the semicircle,
leaning back in his chair. Laughter seemed the furthest thing from his mind. Helen asked, “How many of you are here because
Victor asked you to come?”

All but Victor, Amelia, and Lydia’s hands were raised. Fourteen strong boy arms. Five girl wrists, swaddled in bracelets and
perfume. Helen nodded. “Well, Victor, thanks for spreading the word.” She knew her voice sounded threatened, but she couldn’t
help it. This was all so… odd. The sole explanation seemed to be that she was being mocked. She scrutinized Victor’s face,
looking for a break in it, for an indication that he was making fun of her silly little project. She couldn’t help herself.
She asked Victor, “And what brings
you
here today?”

“I’m here because Amelia invited me.”

A chorus of “ooooooooh” flared up through the arc of chairs, rippling through the bodies of the boys like a wave, followed
by a round of air kissing. Amelia blushed and looked at the floor, but Victor hardly batted an eyelash. His silence had a
power all its own; as soon as the boys noted his steadfast stature, they quieted down and recomposed themselves. The girls
tossed jealous glances in Amelia’s direction.

Lydia’s hand shot up. Helen nodded. Lydia’s face was painted with genuine surprise as she said,“Well, then, I guess I really
am
the only one who doesn’t want to be here. No offense, Helen, but I’m here because Amelia
made
me.” Amelia looked like she might die of embarrassment. Her glance had not moved from the wood floor.

“Thanks for your input,” Helen said. “And I think that’s a good place for us to begin: anyone who doesn’t want to be here
doesn’t have to be. You’re free to go. Because I will say this: if you decide to stay, this is not going to be easy.” She
made eye contact with each person as she spoke. She wanted everyone to know she was taking this extremely seriously. “I will
expect you to do homework just as you would in any other class. For now we will meet twice a week, on Mondays and Wednesdays,
during lunch. I will expect you to attend our sessions regularly. Skipping will not be tolerated. Neither will lateness.

“That said, I know this will be a lot of fun. We’re going to start small, doing scenework, reading plays, discussing them,
playing some drama games, learning about projecting and being onstage, and then we’re going to begin work on
The Tempest,
the last play Shakespeare ever wrote. We’ll build the sets, make the costumes, learn the lines. As we go along, the time
commitment will increase, maybe extending to five afternoons a week, and beyond lunch period, to after school. We will perform
The Tempest
this spring, in front of your teachers, classmates, and families.” She noticed more than a few nervous glances passing down
the chain of listeners, but she didn’t want to spare them. This was going to be a lot of work. They needed to know what they
were in for.

“Shakespeare—” She sighed. She wanted to hook them. She wanted them to get it. She leaned forward in her chair, breaking her
teacherly stance for the first time. “Shakespeare saved my life. Jesse, is it? You called him an old dead English guy, and
he certainly is that. But he’s not just difficult language, and he’s not just elaborate plots that could never really happen.
He doesn’t live in my brain. He’s not a man of ideas. He’s a man of feelings. I
love
him because
when I am sad or lonely, or feeling brave or scared, I can always find a character or a play that will talk to me about what
I’m feeling, that will help me do a better job with my place in the world. That may sound silly to you, but I bet if you stick
with this project, really make a commitment to be a part of it, you’ll begin to see things from my point of view.”

Lydia raised her hand again. It hung eagerly in the air until Helen nodded in her direction. “Have you worked with people
our age before?”

“Well, I’ve worked with young actors, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yeah, but those kids were professionals in New York, right? And most of your experience is with adults.”

“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

“I mean, why do you think we’ll be good at this? Shakespeare is like really,
really
hard. I have no idea what he’s talking about most of the time.” Some of the boys nodded. “I’m just saying, I think this project
is kind of ambitious. And when in the spring? ‘The spring’ is so general, and if we have to build the sets and make the costumes…
And what if none of us are
good?
Even if we wake up one morning and magically understand everything Shakespeare ever wrote, that won’t make us good actors.
Most of us have never even seen a play before.”

Helen let Lydia wind herself down. The kids were slumping in their seats. Amelia was staring fixedly at the floor. Victor
was looking straight into Helen, and she felt as though she were speaking for his benefit when she said, “You can do anything
you set your mind to unless someone tells you you can’t.”

“But—”

“I don’t have the answers, Lydia,” Helen said sharply, back in control. She felt herself shifting into second gear, a clutch
of ambition propelling authority into her voice. “I don’t have any answers. If you’re afraid of doing this, and you think
that fear will keep you from trying, then by all means, please leave. Those of us who are here want to be here. We want to
try.”

And so Lydia was silenced. Books were opened. Act One was tackled. Amelia regained her color, and it seemed, in the twenty
minutes before afternoon classes began, as if everyone might actually be having a good time.

C
AL

Stolen, Oregon
Saturday, October 26, 1996

The second skirmish in the Fleecing-Barrow standoff took place at the first board meeting of the year. We’re talking the end
of October. It always took us awhile to get our acts together and schedule something. The board was composed of twelve people,
including Elliot and me, and Elliot was the one white face in the bunch. Besides the two of us, there were five men and five
women. They ran the tribe: they were consulted by the Forest Service on land matters, they held places of honor at powwows
and tribal ceremonies. They were all over the age of fifty. They were all related. They were all related to me.

I knew going in that my opinion would be unpopular, if only because my way wasn’t as showy as my antagonist’s. Elliot had
placed twelve crisp collated and stapled packets on the “conference table.” We met in the gym, so the conference table consisted
of two of those awful institutional tables that are supposed to be portable but end up propped in hallways for years on end
because they’re too heavy to drag in and out of the damn storage closet. I was late. Eunice was the only nonboard person in
the room—she kept the minutes—and outside of this room, she agreed with me only occasionally. One glance at her as I tiptoed
into the alreadyin-progress meeting, and I knew she was not going to take my side.

I let Elliot do his talking. He laid it all out before them, and even I felt myself a little seduced by how he pitched it:
“The Benson Country Day Conservatory for the Arts is a world-class institution. What they are offering is nothing short of
a miracle. As we’ve discussed ad nauseam in previous meetings, the private money we believed
would be in place by now to keep Ponderosa Academy afloat has simply not materialized. It has been my great pleasure to use
my inheritance to get this institution off the ground, and you all know that a considerable part of my duties as headmaster
are taken up with fund-raising. We are technically a private school that does not charge its students any tuition. So even
with considerable private funding, we are in the constant, precarious position of losing money.

“Benson Country Day wants to help us. They know we are a vital institution in this area, providing an essential resource to
Neige Courante children, and they do not want to change that. Let me make this abundantly clear: their offer would in no way
hurt the education of Ponderosa Academy’s Neige Courante. On the contrary, Benson’s proposal would accomplish for our children
something Ponderosa isn’t able to attain on its own: an expansion of space, an improvement of philosophy, an enlargement of
resources for all Neige Courante students. It goes without saying that the contribution our children would make to Benson’s
community is inestimable. I’m talking about what Benson would give our children in return. Our children would spend time at
Benson, living in Portland and utilizing Benson’s world-class facilities: science labs, the World Wide Web, exposure to a
larger world. In exchange, Benson students would come here, expanding our cultural understanding—they have a very diverse
student body—”

“How many Indians go to Benson?” I guess I’d decided it was my turn to talk.

“Well, urn, I don’t have that information in front of me, Cal. But I do know there are Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, Korean,
not to mention African-American—”

“They haven’t exactly shown much interest in Indians until now, right?” I was getting a whole room’s worth of dirty looks.

Elliot glanced back down at the packet balanced in his hands. “If everyone doesn’t mind, I think I’d like to get back to the
proposal before opening up the room to questions.”

“Actually, I do mind,” I said, which was met with groans.

Sandra Courrament tried to shut me up. “Let him finish, son.”

I hate that. I hate being called “son.” I leaned back in my chair and waved my hand to let him talk. I’d get my turn. He droned
on about financial matters and dichotomies of self and tribal empowerment and and and. Then they all applauded, which I should
have expected. It made me angry to see them lined up like ducks in a row, beaming up at him adoringly.

I raised my hand. I mentioned the boarding schools our ancestors had been sent to. I drew brilliant comparisons between that
“good” idea and this one, both introduced by white men, both in the interest of brown people who weren’t wise enough to stand
up for themselves or to look ahead to the future. Nearly everyone was tsking and booing, but I kept talking because I was
angry and because they refused to listen. And when I was done, there was silence. We sat in silence. Then, slowly, as if he
were tapping energy from the rest of the elders, the oldest Neige Courante in the room, and quite possibly the world, straightened
in his chair as everyone swooned in his direction. His name was Robert Terrebonne. I have no idea how old he really was. All
I know is that his skin was leathery and his eyes rheumy, and that he was already a man when my father was born. His role
in meetings such as this was usually limited to nodding occasionally But today his reedy violin of a voice had a lot to say.

“We’re not idiots, son. Some of us lived through that very bad time. You did not. You forget that. Those schools were bad.
We were beaten there. Our language? Taken from us. Our land? Taken from us. Elliot’s plan and that plan are different. We’re
living in the twentieth century. Our children need to be“—he paused, savoring the next word—“globalized. They need to see
something out in the world besides the Neige Courante Way.”

“At the expense of losing the Neige Courante Way?”

“What makes you think we would lose it?” Sandra was glaring at me, and her fingers were white where they gripped the tabletop.
“You don’t have much faith in this school, in our leadership, if you think a trip to Portland will take our children away
from the Neige Courante way of life.”

“Trust me,” I said. “The kids at Benson are undoubtedly spoiled rich brats. We can check that out with Amelia Barrow if we
need confirmation. It’s not hard to guess that they’re children of privilege. Their parents have sent them to a so-called
world-class institution—something I know about—one of those places full of all those amenities about which Elliot just spoke
so glowingly. And you’d better believe that one of the primary reasons Benson is so hungry to get their hands on our kids
is that brown-skinned children bring dollars to private institutions. The place will be eligible for lots of grants and will
be awarded all sorts of money, all sorts of recognition, for being so devoted to our ‘charity cases.’ I’m sure it doesn’t
hurt that we’ve got some prime land here—well,
Elliot’s
got some prime land here—ripe for development. It’s no secret that the land east of the mountains has risen in value in the
last ten years. And let me remind you folks, Elliot owns this land. Not us. Not the Neige Courante. Will Benson buy it? If
they do, I’ll bet you anything—”

“Don’t embarrass yourself, son.” Robert Terrebonne again.

“I’m not your son.”

“You’re certainly acting like a child.” Sandra’s finger chided me.

“I’m trying to help you all! I’m trying to help you see before it’s too late! Before those assholes come in—”

“You got to go to Harvard.” Robert’s voice was laced with judgment.

“I worked damn hard to get in, and I worked damn hard once I was there.”