Chapter 6

We'd walked a mile or so, and were nearing downtown, when I responded to Darlia's remark about school. "That's one of the reasons we've kept you there."

She has a good memory – she knew what I was talking about. "It's a long way from home, an' I know it's got to cost you guys a lot of money."

"Well, we got the money, that ain't no problem. But you do have to get up early in the morning."

"That's no problem, since I go to bed on time."

"Not always happily," I said, remembering some of the fusses our otherwise calm daughter had put up when she was learning that bedtime meant bedtime.

"Did I ever scream and fight?"

"Scream, yeah, an' you've got a set of lungs too. But you've never fought us."

"I've argued, though."

"And mostly you've argued well – even when we were right and you were wrong and we settled it that way, you've mostly done your best to make sense and persuade us, instead of just wearing us down."

"You've taught me that, you an' Mom."

I grunted. "I guess you don't remember some of our fights when you were little."

"I've heard about 'em – I'm glad I can't remember."

"I sometimes wish I couldn't," I said, and I hoped my tone ended that line of talk. Cecelia and I have never talked about what we call our bad time, because it's just too painful and frightening to keep in mind. The lessons we learned from it we keep, but the month itself we'd just as soon lose.

"Talking can take you places you don't expect," Darlia said, getting the hint from my voice but refusing to ignore things. "You don't intend to go there, but you wind up there anyway."

I looked at her again as we got up on the sidewalk to make way for an oncoming stake bed truck. As the truck passed I could see that it was carrying sacks of feed – some farmer stocking up for his cattle or maybe his hogs. "Yeah," I said, "you get places you never meant to go. And I don't hear you apologizing."

"I didn't do anything wrong," was all she said, but it was what I'd been looking for.

"That's right, you didn't."

Now she looked at me. "You were testing me."

"More like educating ... well, yeah, there was a test in there too. But you are getting older, and you need to learn to stand on your own, and when you think you're in the right, to stand there no matter how much I'm not pleased."

"Awkward sentence, Dad," she said.

"Yeah, but you got the point."

"I did." She stopped in front of an antique store, where probably most of the stuff was just old and unwanted, not actually antique. "That is the most glaring vase I've ever seen." It had an iridescent glaze with blue and green and yellow in it.

"It ain't the prettiest, though, is it?"

"I could make a prettier one, an' I ain't never thrown anything."

We moved on while I replied. "Have you learned anything about Lahtkwa baskets and pots and such?"

"A little, but that's all so far. Uncle Memphis says I need to learn, 'cause it's part of my heritage, but he's been so busy teaching me the language and the songs and the stories that other things have sort of slid."

I don't know what I'd have said next, because just then a man stepped out of the store we were passing in front of – this one auto parts. He nodded very slightly at me, and I nodded back. A nod can be a fulsome greeting in the rural west where I grew up, or it can be insulting, and the rural west has more in common with the rural south than with any other part of the country. This man was merely following the form of politeness.

"That's Jack Stump, isn't it?" Darlia asked.

"Yeah."

"He hates me 'cause I'm black."

"Well, you're half black, actually, but yeah."

"Dad, he'd hate me if I was only a millionth black. He's one of those people who thinks black is forever."

"If black is forever, that ain't a bad thing."

"Oh, I know that," she said. "I'm proud I'm black, just like I'm proud I'm white an' Indian. I'm not ashamed of any of my ancestors, and I'm sure not ashamed of Mom. But it doesn't make sense that someone who's, oh, 90% white and only 10% black would be black to him instead of white, but someone who's 90% black and 10% white wouldn't be white."

"'Lia, if you can ever make any kind of sense out of racism, you'll be smarter and wiser than the whole human race put together."

"It doesn't make sense, does it?"

"Not one single little bit," I said, watching Stump drive off in his pickup.

"Dad, I don't hate anybody, and I don't hate many ideas, but I hate the idea that just 'cause I'm part black I'm inferior."

"You just keep on that way, Darlia," I said. "You keep on that way, and I guarantee you you'll be right."

After a bit I realized I was hungry, glanced at my watch, and realized it was getting to be lunch time. Darlia called Cecelia to let her know we'd eat in town while we both walked toward the food. Leanna of course doesn't have a McDonald's or a Burger King or any such place, but it does have Anna's, a burger joint that's been in town for umpteen ages, in the same building. It's one of those places that used to be everywhere before the interstates went in, when people still traveled through country rather than across or around it. These days you can travel hundreds of miles and not see an actual town, just the clip joints around certain freeway exits, but there was a time when every few miles you'd come to a town, and in that town there'd be motels and burger joints and restaurants, with local people in charge, and local cooking.