"ONE WINDY DAY" Chapter Nine

Bad girls are SO much more fun to write about than good girls like Heather! We really got a little carried away with Itsy who was all attitude and defiance, unlike Heather the Doormat. We also let the good dad slip a bit. Drinking haunts all the reservation families, even the ones who don’t normally drink.

The old culture valued shelter for everyone. People lived in family groups but not nuclear families and private rooms were not an option. The new culture teaches that everyone should have their own private room and undisturbed “things.” The two ideas run into each other all the time on a reservation where adequate housing is always a problem and families include cousins or half-sibs who come and go. Adding or subtracting this person or that can disturb the dynamics of the household, even when there is no particular tension. If there is already something simmering, it can get explosive. To add Itzy, who prided herself on saying the worst in the worst language she could summon up, to a household where the family survived through denial meant all sorts of scandals.

One of the biggest dangers in writing Itzy was making her way too attractive, but we didn’t want her to be a monster either. We wanted her to give Heather some lessons in how to have a backbone. And now Che was having to face someone stronger than he was.

Chapter IX
CRISIS

"No, no, no, NO, NO, NO, NO !! That girl can NOT have my room!" Heather was screaming with desperation. Somehow, for some stupid, mysterious adult reason, her half-sister was going to come live with them. "I can't stand it. I'll run away. I'll..." She ran into her little bedroom-- her BELOVED, PERSONAL, PRIVATE BEDROOM-- and threw herself onto her bed, sobbing and screaming and biting her pillow.

Heather's father looked at her mother and sighed. "Couldn't we put her in Buddy's old bedroom?"

"I don't even see why she has to come at all. I don't want her in Buddy's bedroom. I don't want anyone in Buddy's bedroom. It's the only thing I have left of my only son and I don't want it invaded by some stranger." And she went into Buddy's bedroom herself and slammed the sliding door shut. The sounds of weeping seeped under the door.

"What am I going to do?" Heather's father asked himself. "She's my daughter. She needs a home, too. Buddy is dead. He's gone. No one can hurt him. We don't need a room to remember him. We have lots of memories. But this girl needs us. I can't let her down." He sat on the couch and put his head in his hands. Pretty soon he got back up and reached a beer out of the refrigerator. The sun got in his eyes as he passed the window. It was just slipping down over the mountains.

By the time it was really dark, Heather's father was drunk and in no mood for anyone to argue with him. Both Heather and her mother stayed in the small bedrooms, but now they weren't crying anymore. They were trying not to make any noise and they were listening to see what he was doing. Mostly he was talking to himself, but occasionally they heard a crash and tried to picture whether something had been broken.

Finally he got tired of being alone. "Come out here, you goddamn complaining women!" he yelled. "Come out here and tell me to my f-- face I can't have my own daughter in this house! Whose f-- house do you think it is? Who do you think pays your goddamn bills? You think you're so goddamn fancy! Too good for this trailer, eh? Why not try living in the street? That's where my goddamn daughter has been-- in the street! What kind of f-- life is that? Think you're too good, don't you?"

He began banging on Heather's door. "Come outta there, little Miss Fancy Pants. Get a taste of life! See what it's really about. Time you grew up." Heather was holding her breath in her room. She hadn't known her father to be like this since she was little. Only in her earliest memories, so early they seemed like maybe a movie or something, did she know her father to yell at her. It was terrifying. He banged harder and harder, getting more and more angry.

She couldn't stand it. "All right, dad. All right. She can have my room." There was a silence. Then she heard her dad leave. Her mom was crying. Heather put on a tape and wished she were numb, wished she couldn't feel anything, that she didn't even exist.


The half-sister didn't arrive for another week. During the whole time Heather wished she hadn't given up her bedroom and wouldn't have to sleep on the couch. She tried to figure out some kind of way to get her dad to back down, but he was stony-faced when he was there and soon left for the week's work anyway. He would bring the mysterious newcomer when he came home the next Friday.

On Friday both Heather and her mother went around jumpy and over-alert. Every time a car door slammed their stomachs clenched. At last it really was her father's pickup that pulled into the front yard. The door opened and the half-sister more or less strutted into the room.

She was dark, like Heather, but her hair was cut in short spikes except in the back where it slid down her back in a kind of scalp lock. She wore a lot of makeup and a big baggy jacket, silver and black, over what looked like the sort of t-shirt Heather's mother would never let her wear. Her ears, all along the outside rims, were studded with-- good Lord, how many?--pierced earrings. Most shocking of all, she had a pierced NOSE !! Truly, there was a little jewel nestled in along one nostril. Involuntarily imagining the original hole being punched, Heather flinched.

Before the two women already in the room could rise, the girl flopped down. "Oh, shit!" she said, "This place is a dump." No one knew what to do. Maybe that's why the girl acted that way. No one even dared look at each other. The girl took out a can of snuff and filled her lip. Heather couldn't help but gape. The girl laughed. "Want some, babe?" She held out the can. But Heather could only shake her head.

At last Heather's father, who had a suitcase awkwardly dragging his arm down, began to wrestle it through the little hall to what had been Heather's room. Over his shoulder he said, "Heather is giving up her room to you. It wasn't easy to do."

"That right?" said the insolent girl. "Guess I'd better come check it out.

The rest of that day and most of the next few days were a blur to Heather. She could not adjust to the idea that she was related to this amazing creature, this mixture of Madonna and... what? Roseanne? She was a slob; there was no doubt about that. And she treated everyone else like dirt. Heather's father just didn't seem to know what to do about her. Heather's mother hated her on sight. She had some definite ideas about what to do, but was afraid to even speak to the creature for fear of going too far.

At least she stayed in Heather's former bedroom almost the whole time. And Heather's mother stayed in Buddy's old bedroom. In fact, she began to sleep in there and let Heather sleep in her bed when her father was out of town during the week. There was a television in there, which helped Heather keep from thinking too much.

One night everything on the boob tube was just too predictable and stupid. Heather could feel the anxiety, the unanswered questions, all rising up in her stomach. If she had something to eat, she reasoned, maybe that would settle her down and make her sleepy. Quietly, not wanting to wake her mom, she slid the bedroom door open and padded up the hall in her nighty.

She was startled to see the front door standing open, someone sitting on the doorstep with her feet out on the little sheltering shed's floor. Cigarette smoke scented the air and floated in the blue light that came in from the nightlights. Heather could see the cigarette tip in the girl's mouth get brighter and then dim. "Oh, hiya, kid," said the girl. "Didn't mean to scare ya."

"You didn't," lied Heather.

"Wanna sit for a while? There's a pretty nice little breeze in this doorway. Here I'll shove over." And she did. Heather perched gingerly, tucking her nighty skirt in around her. It WAS sort of nice there. Then she saw the girl was drinking a beer, too.

Heather tried to think of something to say. "This must be pretty different for you, huh?"

"You could say so."

"Were you with your mom before?"

"Yup. Mostly."

"Is she...I mean...um...how come you're not with her now?"

"Jesus, kid! Don't they tell you nuthin’ in this family?"

"No." It felt like a relief to have someone else notice that nothing got talked about. "No, they just mostly sit on everything and wait."

The cigarette glowed twice before the girl answered. "Well, my mom was killed in a car accident." Anticipating Heather before she even had time to react, she blew smoke out and snapped, "Don't feel sorry. She was turning a trick at the time and her John was drunk. She was stupid to let him drive. She wasn't that much of a mother to me. I guess you can tell. You're lucky, yourself. You got a nice little standard life here, all tucked up with mom and pop."

"My brother was killed by a car. He was your brother, too."

More glowing and smoke blowing. "Hell, I lose people I don't even know I got." They sat in silence for a long time. "Ain't there nothin' to do around here?"

"Not much."

"What do YOU do?"

"I dunno. Go to school. Hang around with friends."

"I ain't seen many friends." Long silence. "I suppose you don't want 'em comin' around and seein' what your sister is like, huh?"
This was the truth, but Heather tried to deny it, then thought she would follow her new sister's example and be honest, but she didn't have a lot of practise. "No...Well, you are kind of DIFFERENT."

"C'mon, kid! I'm a real wreck! A sleaze! A skag! No one anyone would be proud of."

"You could change."

"Not me. I wouldn't if I could. I'm doomed, baby, DOOMED. And proud of it."

She put the cigarette out on the threshold, leaving the butt right there, stood and and sauntered back to the room Heather could not keep from calling her bedroom. Pretty soon Acid Rock was coming out of the room, but it was turned low.

Heather picked up the butt, brushed the ashes away, put the butt in the empty beer can the girl had also left, and stuffed them into the trash under the sink. She felt strange, as though she'd been taken to another planet. All at once it occurred to her that she hadn't seen Che for a while. If his grandfather had had a telephone she would have called him right that moment, even though it was kind of late.


Che was suffering through his first sweat, thinking to himself, "This is crazy. I'm gonna die of heatstroke in this little old beaver house." But his grandpa, who had badgered and bossed him all day until he had the right materials collected and had put everything together in a way that suited him, was sitting across from him rocking and singing softly. He couldn't let an old man sit there and take the steam and heat better than he could. He was Che: Macho Man, Big Stud.

But he couldn't breathe. He HAD to at least stick his head out. The old man looked over at him, perhaps sensing his desperation. He laughed and threw more water on the hot stones. Che groaned, but he didn't leave.