News From Native California - Spring 2016 Volume 29 Issue 3 | Page 31
and his granddad. But their talk of leaving the Rez and consequently leaving each other is countered by the warmth
and fit of each other’s hands, and with each step, with each
word, with each laugh, it gets harder to let go.
In Spring, men uncover the backyard barbecues. The
more fastidious might even scrape off last year’s greasy grit.
The charcoal is lit and carne asada sears on the grill. The
picnic table brims with fresh guacamole, beans boiled with
ham hocks, salsas both red and green, Indian potato salad
made with generous dollops of Best Foods mayonnaise, and
a stack of torts. Beers cool in a tub of ice and people laugh
and talk between bites. Dwight Yoakam is on the stereo
singing about the “Pocket of a Clown,” heads bob as folks
chew. After the meal, horseshoes resume, iron shoes clanging
against steel pegs. Men hoot and trash talk when a double
ringer is thrown, but these days more women throw shoes
as well, and maybe she throws the double ringer and trash
talk commences in a higher pitch.
In Spring, a newlywed bride, taking her new wife role
seriously, is every Indian man’s dream. She looks terrific
barefoot, in bun-hugging shorts and a tight halter-top. She’s
elbow deep in a bowl of dough, her inexperienced fingers
trying to hear what her DNA is telling her. Her mother and
grandmothers have done this to perfection, she wonders
why she didn’t pay more attention when they tried to teach
her the right consistency for tortilla dough.
But she tries. In her palms, she forms lopsided balls about
the size of lemons. She flours the board, pressing out with
dough with her rolling pin, flattening them into circles that
more closely resemble maps of Texas.
She heats the comal, the cast-iron one she got as a
wedding present, blisters tortillas on it, and when cooked,
sets them on a plate covered with a dish towel. And he
comes home from a day of pounding nails to find his wife
making tortillas. He smiles. She looks so cute with bits of
dough and flour sticking to her cheek because she tried
to swipe some hair from her eyes with fingers still sticky
with dough.
Spring causes men in
T-shirts to suck in their
guts as they walk into
the Rez store—just in
case.
An Indian marriage
without tortillas?
Well, let’s just say he
doesn’t want that.
And she proudly butters one and hands it to him. And if
he knows what’s good for him, he won’t say a thing about
Texas, or how they are a little salty for his taste. No, he’ll
shut up and eat, making only sounds of pleasure, lavishing
her with praise, because when an Indian woman’s feelings
get hurt there’s hell to pay. She may get mad and never make
him another tortilla. An Indian marriage without tortillas?
Well, let’s just say he doesn’t want that.
In the 1950s and 1960s, reservation house parties were
Lucky Lager gatherings, that being the Indian beer back
then. Tall cans of Lucky Lager would sit everywhere, and
whoever cleaned up in the morning would find many half
full, but with a cigarette in them.
And people would stack forty-fives on the record
changer, and the song would go from a bopping “Rock
around the Clock,” to a grinder from the Platters, to the
stroll, where people would line up and a couple would
stroll down the center.
There was something permanent to the stroll, because
there are Indian couples who strolled in 1958, that still stroll
today. You see them at Indian weddings, these days grayer,
slower, a little rounder, but still able to smile at each other
as they dance. And when the wedding is over, they walk out
arm in arm, still in love after all these years.
The couple getting married would do well to watch and
learn. Because Indian love has its vicissitudes, its good days
and bad, days when she thinks her lover is little better than a
Rez dog, but somewhere, deep down, love abides.
Indian love is often a diehard love, a love spiced with equal
parts laughter and passion, and jealousy and contention. But
through it all, love can and does endure.
It’s a love often begun in the Spring, when basketballs
swish through nets, and the girls, pretty as all get out, throw
cat-eyed glances at the guys, who might try, but can’t stop
thinking about them.
Author’s Note: The clever lede in this essay, of course, is a nod to
John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row.
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