Yellowcake (6 page)

His eyebrows rise, thin brown frowns above the mirrored glasses. He says something else.

His glasses are irritating. There's no good reason for them—the windows are shaded. They seem an affectation, an old-fashioned warding off of the evil eye.

"You don't know your language?" he says.

"My language?" she says.

"Oh. I thought you were Diñé."

"I am."

The lenses study her.

"Does your wife like those sunglasses? Because I guess she always has mirrors whenever she's with you. She can do her hair."

The frowns rise a little higher, his forehead wrinkling. He smiles and says, "I'm not married." He takes the glasses off and puts them in his shirt pocket.

"Thank you," she says.

"'Aoo'." He gazes at her—eyelashes long and straight. She swallows, looking away.

They begin talking about where they might hold the meeting and how to publicize it. Terry Conrad tells them how he's seen it done in other areas, turning to her at one point and saying he's glad to have a representative from the bank here. He asks if she has the combination to the vaults, and she says, "Actually, I do," and they all laugh.

"I don't see that we need a huge amount to get us started," the assistant says. "Our firm is willing to offer legal advice on a contingency basis—isn't that right, Bill."

"With the expectation," Lowry says, "that some form of class-action initiative might be put in place. For the town meeting, we could get a meeting room and equipment donated. It would be good to tap locals as motivational speakers."

"People who've been there," Conrad says.

"Becky," Lowry says, "if we asked your dad to speak, would he?"

"No. He's not well enough. Plus, he doesn't go for that kind of thing."

"Maybe you'll speak on his behalf?" the assistant says, brown eyes bright, joyful, a little creepy.

Becky feels Harrison turn and look directly at her. "Go for it," he whispers.

"Maybe," she says.

"How about you, Rose?" Lowry says.

Harrison is still looking at her, she can feel it. She glances at him. His eyes are teasing, full of laughter, and now he seems to be trying for eye contact, making a point of it. When the waitress comes to refill their coffee, Becky asks him to pass her the sugar. He hands her a packet but doesn't let go. She tugs. He smiles. Lets go. He says, "
'Ahéhee'
" which she knows means thank you.

She says, "You're welcome," and rips open the packet.

He smiles widely, as if she's just made his day, and her stomach flips.

Later, walking out, he says, "You should take my class."

"Why?"

"Because."

"Because why?"

He shrugs, putting the sunglasses on. "Maybe you'd like it." They walk into the sunny parking lot, a cloudless furnace, which feels good after the frigid air-conditioned room.

"Are you a good teacher?"

"Some say so. I've seen you over there, you know—at the bank."

"You have?"

"'Aoo'."

"How come you never said hello?"

"You always look so busy. Looks like they work you hard. You like it?"

"It's okay. I like the numbers. Not so crazy about the customers."

"You're not a people person?" He laughs, his laugh whispery, airy.

"Are you?"

"There's nothing like people."

They watch Terry Conrad fold himself into a green Dodge Dakota with tinted windows. "How tall do you think he is?" she says.

"Six-seven."

"You think?"

"He told me.
He
signed up for my class," he says, his tone challenging.

"I thought he lived in Texas."

"'Aoo'. He's just sitting in for a couple of months. He wants enough Navajo to get by on."

"What does that mean?"

"Good question. Yeah, he comes to my office a couple of days ago. He wants to learn hello, goodbye, how's the weather. Like that."

A truck engine starts, and the Dakota pulls out, rolling toward them. Terry Conrad salutes with two fingers as he passes.

Harrison nods. He doesn't seem to care much for Conrad. Becky wonders if that goes for all white people or just him. "So are you going to sign up for my class?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe? I'm telling you, you'd like it." He grins. "Five o'clock. Monday through Thursday this fall. There are only two spaces left. You better sign up now if you want to get in."

"I guess you're popular."

"'Aoo'." He steps aside so she can open her truck door, saying, "
Hágoónee',
Becky Atcitty," as she slides in. "See you in class."

 

At work she tells Arnold about Harrison. "You guys with the language. You're so full of yourselves. You act like you're more Indian than the rest of us."

"Aren't we? Just kidding, just kidding. But really. You should. Go to school. You'd see him all the time. You could visit him during office hours." Arnold laughs, low and dirty.

"Like I'm going to put myself in the position of being graded by him."

"Girl, you are so chicken shit."

"He wears a wedding ring, but he said he's not married."

"And you believed him? You are a child."

She sort of feels like one. She feels almost chipper. "Chipper" is one of her dad's words, something he picked up years ago from the mill workers. "You're chipper today," he would say when she was little, and Becky would howl, "Chipper, chipper, chipper like a bird." For a while everything was chipper. Hamburgers were chipper. The moon was chipper. She's thinking of this as she drives the ten miles from the bank to her folks' house late that afternoon. She notes chipper things along the highway, the wrecking yard that goes on for miles and miles, growing a little more every year, a metal monstrosity, today a chipper one, and she doesn't even notice the absence of worry, which usually starts the minute she leaves work and grows into full-blown dread by the time she gets home, until she makes the turn into her parents' lot and sees her father dozing on the porch swing, wrapped up in his Pendleton blanket, even though it must be ninety degrees out. A lump instantly clots her throat.

"Hey, Dad," she calls, getting out of the truck and walking over to him. He opens his eyes. Face the color of ash, lips tinged purple, oxygen tank at his feet. "What are you doing out here?" she says.

"Waiting for the army." His lips peel back to expose colorless gums. It's Monday, and Becky's aunts Katie and Pip will be on their way. Soldiers in the Army of the Lord. Her mother's unmarried sisters have been coming three or four evenings a week since her father relapsed, helping with housekeeping and dinner, sometimes staying after the dishes are cleared to do their crafts. Becky's mother is a beader. Katie knits, and Pip does needlepoint. Her father will wait to say hello, then will disappear out back when the prayer circle forms. Since the relapse, he's been first and last on the prayer list. Becky thinks it creeps him out. Though she'll join the circle—her aunts insist—it creeps her out, too, and has since she began cutting Bible study when she was nine. Over the years her aunts have gotten more and more zealous about their faith. They tell Becky she's walking on Perdition Road because of the movies she watches (so violent) and the company she keeps (Arnold). Her mother has toured Perdition Road, too, from the aunts' point of view. Delia is the youngest of six, three brothers, two sisters. She is not related to them by blood. Their parents, Swedish missionaries, adopted Delia at birth. She is the only Navajo.

It was dancing that got Delia started down Perdition Road. Becky's mother loves to dance—she taught Becky how to country-swing to old Merle Haggard records when Becky was very young. "It's not the dancing that's sinful," her aunts chided. "It's what it leads to." In her mother's case, it led to marriage to a pagan.

"Something smells good," Becky says.

"Can't smell," her father says.

"Smells like cinnamon."

"Yeah, she's baking something." He nods toward the house. "You running today?"

"Soon as it gets cooler." She and her father, both long-distance runners, have run two marathons together. Before he got sick, her father could run a marathon in under four hours, usually finishing at the top of his age group. He's forty-six.

An old black and white Datsun pulls into the dirt yard, Aunt Pip honking as she comes. She swings the car in a wide arc to park under the willow tree, the only tree in the yard. The car's bumper is plastered with stickers. Today there's a new one:
AS SURE AS GOD PUTS HIS CHILDREN IN THE FURNACE, HE WILL BE IN THE FURNACE WITH THEM.

"Hello, hello, hello," the aunts call. They open the back doors, and pull out baskets of craftwork.

Pip and Katie look so much alike they could be twins; they're treelike women, solid and shapeless, strong-limbed, long-fingered, long-necked. Their chins are broad and square and always tilted slightly skyward, as if in prayer. Their cheekbones are high, and their eyes are silver dashes. Their hair, once sunflower yellow, has darkened over the years and now is the color of autumn wheat. They usually wear it braided and wrapped around their heads. When she was little and stayed with them in the house they share in Farmington, Becky would sit quietly and watch the long unwinding and brushing of the hair at night, and she thought they were as beautiful as angels. She loves them to death. They would do anything for her, she knows. In her moments of doubt, when she worries that the fiery hell they so fervently believe in might really exist, she holds on to the hope that they'll sweet-talk whoever's in charge and get her into heaven.

Delmar's old dog, C3PO, has come out from under the porch and begun to bark. "Oh, hush," Katie says, stepping up on the porch. "How's everything? We brought peaches."

"Where'd you get them?" Becky says.

"At the fruit stand. Hush, smelly dog."

"Don't let him in," Pip says.

C3PO scoots between Katie's legs and into the house. Pip follows, crossing her eyes at them.

Becky's father begins struggling up from the swing, and Becky helps him. "Tell
Shízhánee'
I'm out back," he says.

She replies, "I'll come, too."

But Aunt Pip calls, "Becky, do you want to join the circle?"

She meets her father's eyes. "Too late," he says, smiling. She watches him totter down the steps and around the house.

They don't care if she doesn't contribute to the petitions, as long as she's holding their hands, a part of them. They pray in the large living room, with its cedar walls, which her father built. These days it smells as much of sickness as of cedar, and the smell irritates the lump in her throat, though today the sick smell is almost hidden by whatever's baking, and by C3PO, smelling way too doggy in the hot weather. Eyes half closed, Becky watches her mother, whose face has started to take on the gray hue of her father's. In the last six months, spidery lines have appeared at the edges of her mother's mouth, which always seems downturned, so unlike her. Her mother rarely gives in to moods—she thinks that's sinful—but depression has been pulling at her. Her father's luck—
Shízhánee'—
doesn't look so lucky these days.

They have always seemed to be in love, her parents, unlike her friends' parents, many of whom are divorced or who seem to live to quarrel. Her father says it was love at first sight. He first saw Delia at a community basketball game. He was playing for Shiprock, she was rooting for Fruitland. With seconds left in the fourth quarter, he had the ball when he saw her, a delicate, doll-like Indian sitting calmly in the middle of a pink crowd. He threw wildly, and swoosh—the rez team won by three points. He had given Delia her name:
Shízhánee',
Lucky.

When they're through praying, Becky says, "I'm going to go run," but Aunt Katie clutches her hand, tugging her toward the table, while Aunt Pip steers her mother toward the kitchen. "Your grandparents sent something for your dad," Aunt Katie says. Becky's maternal grandparents have been running a mission in Argentina for the past ten years. Katie takes an envelope from her craft basket and hands it to Becky. There's a check inside for three thousand dollars. "It's for a casket."

"Wow," Becky says. "How'd they come up with so much?"

"They prayed for it," Aunt Katie says, her eyes full of the unsaid lesson—that Becky could get on that money train, too, if she only would.

"Caskets cost that much?"

"More. But this will buy a cherry-wood one. Isn't cherry his favorite?"

Her aunts have been having these hushed conversations with Becky about the funeral costs for a while, trying to save her mother the pain of making arrangements. They mean well, she knows. In the prayer circle they always pray for the miracle of health, but they are practical women, ready to do what needs to be done.

Her father has been worrying about money, too. Since the mill closed, he's been making a meager living farming, and her mother makes a little with her beadwork. They have huge medical bills, and there won't be any farm income this year. Though the house is paid off, property taxes keep rising, and he's been worrying about how Delia will pay them on her own.

"He'd probably prefer a less expensive one. He likes cherry wood, but..." Becky says.

"He deserves it," her mother says hoarsely. Becky turns and sees her standing in the kitchen doorway. Her chin quivers.

"Go for your run, sweetheart," Aunt Katie says, hugging her hard.

C
AN YOU JUST
put your head down?" Dr. Callahan is saying to Ryland.

It had been down. Now it's up again. Ryland has turned into a turtle this afternoon; his head, poking up out of his carcass, wants to see what's going on. He forces it back on the little paper pillow. He's lying on an examination table, and he's wearing a paper gown that ties in the back. Socks and underwear. That's it. The nurse, Rae Freitag, a woman he knows from church, has covered him with a thin cotton blanket, so not everything in this room is paper.

The day has been horrible. They sat in Dr. Callahan's waiting room throughout most of the morning because he had been called to the hospital for an emergency. Finally, the receptionist told them they'd better reschedule, so they went home, but then the office called in the middle of the afternoon, saying the doctor was back and wanted to do the procedure now. Ryland was against it; the man had wasted enough of their time, but the receptionist said they'd better come now because the doctor was going on vacation in a week, and he wanted to do it sooner rather than later. So they went back. Now Rosy is in the waiting room, where Ryland banished her. At the very last minute, as they were walking down the hall toward the examination room, he said, "You don't need to come with me."