Excerpt
Ken put his pencil down and slowly came back to the room. “Come
and take a look,” he said.
She stood beside him and silently gazed at the picture. “I wish I could
do that,” she whispered. Then she placed a hand on his head, “My god,
you’re soaking,” she said. Ken’s hair was as wet as if he had come in from
a spring shower. His shirt clung to his body in damp folds.
Still gloriously naked, Jessica sat beside him on the couch and told him
what it was like to be an Indian. She and her sister had been fortunate.
They had escaped much of the pain that so many of her race had lived
through. The girls had attended a public school but Patrick had been sent
to a residential school and refused to talk about those years.
The Indians had been chased from their land again and again. She expressed
no anger or resentment. Her voice remained gentle and soft –
that gentleness fanned the flames of Ken’s anger. Wars had been fought in
Europe over territory and land. Why had the Indians not fought back?
“It’s not in our nature to lash out and hurt others,” she said. “When we
get hurt, we hurt ourselves. It seems to be something that is rooted deeply
in our cultural background.”
She said that she and Patrick and her sister belonged nowhere. They
were not white and yet by Indian standards, they were not natives either.
They belonged to no tribe and did not live on a reservation. They were
completely free and had no wish to be involved in any part of the political
or racial battle. “We’ve managed to make a very good life for ourselves,”
she said. “We work together, we are partners and we help each other.”
Jessica was describing the life he wished to live. His story was different
but it was also the same. He too had no desire to be categorized or pigeonholed.
He too wanted to unfold and allow life to happen rather than
force any particular direction.
Jessica turned down the lights, leaving one kerosene lamp glowing in
the dark. Then she took Ken’s hand and led him into her bedroom. Like
everything else about her, her room was also unexpected. It was as spare
and sparse as her manner. To still his turmoil, Ken forced all his concentration
on studying his new surroundings. He slipped under the goose
down cover and Jessica lay opposite him, her face cradled in her hand, her
eyes unblinking, gazing deeply into his. “I’ve never slept with a man,” she
said. “I’ll bet you can’t say that.”
“Actually I can,” he said grinning.
“You know what I mean,” she smiled back at him.
“Yes, I do.”
She waited and when he didn’t reach for her, she asked, “Is there something
about me? Maybe, you don’t like me?”
Manolis Aligizakis 