Black Indian by Shonda Buchanan

Author:Shonda Buchanan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO028000 Biography & Autobiography / Native Americans, FAM001010 Family & Relationships / Abuse / Child Abuse, SOC031000 Social Science / Discrimination & Race Relations
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
Published: 2019-08-25T16:00:00+00:00

THAT DAY THE air was so hot and soggy my thighs rubbed together in my cut-off shorts every time I moved, leaving painful rashes. An incision had developed on the thin pearl skin behind my baby toes. I was in constant pain. But it was summer. The landscape seemed to melt when I looked far off down the road; the edges where the horizon met the sky shimmered like a pool of fire water, and I knew if I stayed in one spot on that road, it would catch up with me. Defeated, I hobbled to the house, trying not to let my thighs meet, and snaked my worn tennis shoes from under the bed, someone’s hand-me-downs that had finally given up and flapped when I walked. Perfect for the mucky pond’s outskirts and dirt road.

“Watch out for bloodsuckers,” I heard Mama’s voice come from the open door. I dashed off before she could tell me I was too young to go. At the pond, two slimy leeches attached themselves to Loren’s calf. Then on the way home, six buck-toothed white boys—bloodsuckers—appeared, who must have followed us on that lone dusty road. They were jealous of Tyrone’s Olympics-worthy acrobatic moves swinging on the rope that hung from the oak tree above Blocker’s Pond: they were jealous of Tyrone’s bravado and confidence.

“Hey, yellow niggers,” one of the white boys called.

“Y’all sho is uglier than hell,” another one said, hitting the ground with a stick.

Tyrone and Loren pushed us girls behind them, fists up.

“Come on, honky,” Tyrone snarled. “You bad.”

We looked every bit our redbone Mulatto blood, with hair that curled like Cocker Spaniels when wet, and these boys were the sons and grandsons of cross burners that lurked in the backwoods, setting snares for raccoons and the like. Suddenly, like ghosts, Theresa, our German Shepard, streaked out of the woods, followed by Justine, our Alaskan Malamute, fangs bared at the white boys.

“You white honkeys is lucky cuz if I’da sicked my dog on you, you’d be dead,” Tyrone yelled.

Theresa and Justice formed a front and back guard, protecting us as we walked the rest of the way home. I can’t remember if we ever went back to that swim hole. Possibly Mama had had a premonition—“watch out for bloodsuckers”—but she could also have meant beware bad decisions and bad men.

Because that day when we got back to the house, a man was living there.

I’m sure that’s not how it happened, so suddenly, but that’s what it felt like. One minute it was Mama and us, and the next Robert Gene was buying Wonder Bread and fixing hinges on doors. I can’t quite remember his face, but his presence hovers over that piece of the past like a silent watchdog: the mean, stealthy kind that waits for you to get close enough to bite. That’s how he lingers in the periphery of my mind. I didn’t know what to make of him then so I avoided him, but my brothers skulked and rebelled.

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