Growing Up Ethnic in America: Contemporary Fiction About Learning to Be American by Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Jennifer Gillan
Authors: Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Jennifer Gillan
Tags: Historical, Anthologies
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agents in ten-gallon hats are dishing out miniature flags to a congregation of undercover AIM activists posing as nuns and cheerleaders. This evening I write a postcard to my coworkers.
Hey guys! Today I witnessed 500 years crammed into a mini-segment of 60
Minutes.
Andy Rooney would love this! After today, I know for sure that the melting pot is definitely melting. Perhaps we should recycle it and repair the Liberty Bell. Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.
Day 3
Blue reservation mornings …
I am recovered by sobbing explosions, whiny country chords of Garth Brooks which Cousin Cookie has detonated in the living room. She keeps the volume at maximum while she pieces together star quilts, or restores rodeo-dud fabric in her yellow sewing room down the hall. An expert seamstress, she handiworks the prom gowns for the female student body at Poplar High. She draws herown patterns, designs her own rhythms. You could give her any page from the formal section in the Sears Catalogue and she’d sew it by sight. Her mind’s eye is a charmed needle, her slim fingers remnants of stained satin or silk.
Blue reservation nights …
Alice Brought Plenty arrives at the house delivering years of regret. Her shoulders sag from balancing buckets of accumulated tears. Her mother’s tears, her grandmother’s tears, her sister’s tears, her own tears. Her broken heart is a country-and-western ballad ripped, mangled, and torn beyond recognition. She throws the shards at Cookie’s feet. Cookie gathers the fragments patiently, tenderly, as if she’s collecting fragile and valuable pieces of glass. Alice stands waiting at the door while Cookie repairs her damaged heart. With surgical grace, Cookie bastes the brittle splinters using her own regretful years as a guide. She stitches Alice’s heart with strands of her grandmother’s hair. The needles she uses are slivers of her children’s bones. She knots the ends of the threads with mercy, with blood. The vessels are secure, the chambers sealed.
Pain cannot arrive if it hasn’t a place to sleep.
Day 4
Poplar is devoid of grand casinos and gambling parlors. No golden palaces of chance to lay down your stakes and wager an accumulated lifetime of credit. But today, to commemorate the town’s 100 years, the officials have designated a white rancher’s field to compete with the riches and splendor of LasVegas and the American Dream. The wide-open throat of this acreage is painted with numbers, sectioned five feet by five feet, until a government handout purchased by a jolly rancher adopts the appearance of a casino’s roulette board. Passenger-filled planes jetting over this crude design mistake eastern Montana as a holy shrine. The television newscasts preempt
Days of Our Lives
to inform the American public that the Fort Peck Indian Reservation is now the center of miracles. TV evangelists and talk-show hosts begin speculating as to the significance of the sacred site. The
National Enquirer
wants to know God’s motivation behind the divine conception. Cranks fill the circuits on syndicated radio waves. Eyewitnesses of the account sell their stories to
The New York Times
and the
National Examiner.
There is a rumor that the Pope is coming. An AP bulletin is issued to the Defense Department. The President assures the public that he is taking the matter under the advisement of the Congress and that in the meantime, there is no need for alarm. Busloads of tourists come to the reservation to snap Polaroids and interview tribal elders. Somebody spotted Elvis eating Indian tacos. The government organized negotiations to trade the Black Hills for this newly discovered sacred shrine. Jane Fonda donates millions to the American Indian Fund. Oliver Stone makes a movie, casts John Trudell in the lead. Mother Teresa abandons the leper colonies and commits her life’s service to the North American Indians. Years later, the truth is finally revealed. The Holy Shrine is demoted to the Big
Hey guys! Today I witnessed 500 years crammed into a mini-segment of 60
Minutes.
Andy Rooney would love this! After today, I know for sure that the melting pot is definitely melting. Perhaps we should recycle it and repair the Liberty Bell. Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here.
Day 3
Blue reservation mornings …
I am recovered by sobbing explosions, whiny country chords of Garth Brooks which Cousin Cookie has detonated in the living room. She keeps the volume at maximum while she pieces together star quilts, or restores rodeo-dud fabric in her yellow sewing room down the hall. An expert seamstress, she handiworks the prom gowns for the female student body at Poplar High. She draws herown patterns, designs her own rhythms. You could give her any page from the formal section in the Sears Catalogue and she’d sew it by sight. Her mind’s eye is a charmed needle, her slim fingers remnants of stained satin or silk.
Blue reservation nights …
Alice Brought Plenty arrives at the house delivering years of regret. Her shoulders sag from balancing buckets of accumulated tears. Her mother’s tears, her grandmother’s tears, her sister’s tears, her own tears. Her broken heart is a country-and-western ballad ripped, mangled, and torn beyond recognition. She throws the shards at Cookie’s feet. Cookie gathers the fragments patiently, tenderly, as if she’s collecting fragile and valuable pieces of glass. Alice stands waiting at the door while Cookie repairs her damaged heart. With surgical grace, Cookie bastes the brittle splinters using her own regretful years as a guide. She stitches Alice’s heart with strands of her grandmother’s hair. The needles she uses are slivers of her children’s bones. She knots the ends of the threads with mercy, with blood. The vessels are secure, the chambers sealed.
Pain cannot arrive if it hasn’t a place to sleep.
Day 4
Poplar is devoid of grand casinos and gambling parlors. No golden palaces of chance to lay down your stakes and wager an accumulated lifetime of credit. But today, to commemorate the town’s 100 years, the officials have designated a white rancher’s field to compete with the riches and splendor of LasVegas and the American Dream. The wide-open throat of this acreage is painted with numbers, sectioned five feet by five feet, until a government handout purchased by a jolly rancher adopts the appearance of a casino’s roulette board. Passenger-filled planes jetting over this crude design mistake eastern Montana as a holy shrine. The television newscasts preempt
Days of Our Lives
to inform the American public that the Fort Peck Indian Reservation is now the center of miracles. TV evangelists and talk-show hosts begin speculating as to the significance of the sacred site. The
National Enquirer
wants to know God’s motivation behind the divine conception. Cranks fill the circuits on syndicated radio waves. Eyewitnesses of the account sell their stories to
The New York Times
and the
National Examiner.
There is a rumor that the Pope is coming. An AP bulletin is issued to the Defense Department. The President assures the public that he is taking the matter under the advisement of the Congress and that in the meantime, there is no need for alarm. Busloads of tourists come to the reservation to snap Polaroids and interview tribal elders. Somebody spotted Elvis eating Indian tacos. The government organized negotiations to trade the Black Hills for this newly discovered sacred shrine. Jane Fonda donates millions to the American Indian Fund. Oliver Stone makes a movie, casts John Trudell in the lead. Mother Teresa abandons the leper colonies and commits her life’s service to the North American Indians. Years later, the truth is finally revealed. The Holy Shrine is demoted to the Big
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