Indios by Linda Hogan

Author:Linda Hogan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wings Press
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

It has been many years.

I saw my husband kiss the new woman

And still it hurts.

I thought, he loved this young woman

more than he loved me.

I felt pain in one chamber of my heart.

He was like a child,

He always wanted more.

Her father had the more.

And would give him a place in the world he wanted,

The politician, the man who never had to grow food

Or work for any other man.

It happened so quickly

That I was locked out of my life,

My world, my bed.

He sent a messenger

To say I was to go into exile.

At first I took the children to the woods.

The servants, my own people, brought us food

But there was a chill in the air, in everything.

We went to my childhood friends

And lived for a time

In the servant’s quarter.

I hid my weeping while the children played together,

Hidden.

She was a thief, that young woman.

She slept in my bed.

She slept with my husband.

And right away, to secure her life

She was pregnant with her own child

While we were in exile in our own land.

Her father, something of a King, sent a message

Saying it will be a good marriage of gold and money,

A good position in the world

For your children and you will be cared for.

He didn’t even know my name

Or that now my life counted for nothing in this world.

Rejoice, he said.

Your son may be a king one day.

My marriage became illegal under new rules.

My husband, a man nothing could touch,

Not even our memories,

Married a woman who saw my children

As playthings,

As souvenirs of a people gone,

A people noble and savage at the same time.

When did he last hold one of them?

When did he last speak?

He’d always said

They were such trouble.

You know there is no love deeper

Than mother and child.

He was already taking away my life.

And then one day they came on horseback

And as I had foreseen, they took my children

Even as I fought them

And with my own horse, I chased after them

Through the splashing water,

But they turned on me, to kill me.

She was large with child when I returned

And I hid behind the trees and underbrush

Like an animal to watch.

She dressed my daughter in a golden gown

And placed a crown of flowers on her head.

I stepped out. What are you doing? I asked.

You never dressed her well, she said.

I took the crown of flowers away.

Mother, they smell so sweet, my daughter said.

I took them off her dark hair.

Eho, I said, Let’s go.

My daughter wanted her flowers back.

How little did she know.

It isn’t good for us here, I said.

We have to leave the flowers behind

And we will get more.

You Indian! She said to me. You savage.

I want my flowers back.

My child said that.

She hated what I was,

Without knowing she was the same.

And there was hate in her eyes.

Oh my heart.

They had taken her from me

In so many ways.

But not my son. He stood strong.

He said, Mother I will come to you.

I had the power only to weep.

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