And Other Stories by Emma Bull

dreamed my real name.
She saw me in a storm in the front of a canoe. Many people were in
the canoe, and they were all scared. But I was not scared. The
people stopped being scared when they saw I was not scared. And
then the storm went away.
    Grandmother lives on a reservation
up north. Father said she is a bush Indian. And he laughed like you
always did at school, John Marshall. My mother looked down and did
not say anything. I want to be a bush Indian when I grow
up.
    Grandmother came to stay with us
last fall. She came because Father told her I was having bad
dreams. He laughed when she showed up at our door. He said she was
a bad dream herself, and where would she sleep? She said she would
sleep on the floor of my room if she had to. She came because she
had made something for me. A dream catcher.
    Grandmother said all dream catchers
look like spider webs. It doesn’t matter what they’re made of. She
made the frame of mine with basswood twine and birch branches. The
colored string came from a Hudson Bay store. You hang the dream
catcher in your window. Bad dreams get caught in it, but good
dreams pass right through.
    When we hung the dream catcher in
my room, Grandmother asked if I remembered the bad dreams. She
looked at me very hard and said it was important. I said not
really. She asked if I remembered anything about them. I said
maybe. She asked what I remembered. I said red eyes. She asked what
else. I just shook my head and laughed like the dreams were
silly.
    I didn’t have any bad dreams that
night. In the morning, Grandmother looked at the dream catcher and
looked at me and smiled. I smiled at her, too. I wanted her to stay
with us forever.
    That was the day I took the dream
catcher to Show and Tell and told how Grandmother made it for me.
Our teacher said it was a good report. But in the hall, you grabbed
the dream catcher and said a skunk should be able to scare away bad
dreams with its stink. When you threw it down the hall, I was glad
it didn’t break.
    That night, Father asked
Grandmother if she wasn’t tired of sleeping on my floor. She said
she didn’t mind. I didn’t have any bad dreams that night, either.
In the morning, I looked hard at the dream catcher, but I couldn’t
see any dreams. Grandmother said I didn’t know how to look. But
someday I would see everything better.
    That day, you asked if my
grandmother had made me a brain catcher, ’cause I could sure
use one. Also, Father asked me to go to the park and play softball
with him. I said I was tired. Mother said I was always tired and
always in my room and I should go.
    When we came back, Father said he
needed a shower. Mother said he sure did. Father said I should
shower too. I said I was okay. He laughed like I was very funny and
said to come on, don’t waste water. Then he saw Grandmother
looking, and he said oh, forget it.
    After dinner, he brought home a
brand new living room couch that folded out into a bed. He said
Grandmother should sleep comfortably, since she wanted to stay with
us forever. Grandmother said he did not have to do that. He said it
was done, and he wanted her to be comfortable. He took a big drink
of beer and he didn’t say anything else. Grandmother looked at me
and didn’t say anything, either.
    At bedtime, she said if I needed
her, I should just call. I could not answer. I laughed like it was
okay and went into my room and put on the nightlight and got into
bed.
    I lay there for a long time, trying
to go to sleep. I told myself it was okay with Grandmother in the
next room. But it wasn’t okay with Mother in the next
room.
    Then I heard him standing outside
the door. I smelled him there. I prayed for him to go away, and I
told God I was sorry for whatever I had done. Then he opened the
door and whispered my white name. I tried not to hear. When he got
into the bed, I tried not to look. He turned my face so I had to
look. He said he loved me. His eyes were all bloodshot.
    When the door opened, he jumped