“I want nothing to do with you. You’re not cutting me off, Dad,” I tell him, slinging the words like stones catapulted over a wall. “I’m the one cutting you off.”
I have no idea where we are. The airfield is in the middle of nowhere, but I turn away from my father and his private planes and corrupt kingdom, and start on a path I can’t even see in front of me. I don’t exactly know how I’ll do it, but I’ll prove him wrong, and all while leading a life free of him and his expectations and his constant disapproval.
I walk away, and I don’t look back.
4
Lennix
Defeat and dust mingle in the clear morning air. We gather on a cliff overlooking the sacred ground we fought so hard to keep and watch helplessly as the bulldozer’s sharp, jagged teeth devour the earth. The trucks plow a careless path over our memories and sift through our holy soil like a conquering soldier pillaging the pockets of the fallen.
This battle is over. The field, lost.
Mena clutches my hand, tears streaking her cheeks. She has been there for me since she stood as godmother at my Sunrise Dance. She wiped away the sweat when I thought I’d die from dancing, from kneeling, from running those four days. She reassured me through every grueling hour. And when we realized Mama was gone, was never coming back, she held me, wiped my tears, and shed her own for her best friend. It wasn’t always easy for my father raising a teenage girl alone, especially one with a cultural history as complex as mine. I had to navigate his world, but also be a part of my mother’s. The community embraced me fully even after Mama was gone and I was attending the private school miles away from the reservation. And this woman, her best friend and my auntie, has been my greatest guide.
Mr. Paul bows his head, shoulders slumped and despondent. Dozens from the reservation and many of the Apache who live in town like I do have come to witness one more desecration. One more broken promise.
“Senator Middleton should be ashamed of himself,” my father mutters, his gray eyes as pained as if this is his land, too. “We can only hope the voters make him pay at the polls next year.”
“They won’t,” Mr. Paul says. “The politicians, the corporations, the government—they take and take and take. They promise and they lie and they trick and betray, but they never pay for crimes against us. We never get our due.”
“How ironic that the pipeline is here,” my father says. “So close to Apache Leap.”
I imagine those brave Apache warriors, with the U.S. Cavalry and certain defeat before them and certain death behind. They chose death over surrender, leaping over the cliff’s edge and into the next life.
“How much has really changed?” I ask, cynicism clogging my throat. “Death, defeat, sickness, poverty. These are the choices they always offer us like they’re doing us a favor.”
“What gives them the right?” Mena asks. “I danced here. I ran and sang and became a woman here.” She turns liquid, dark eyes to me. “So did you, Lenn.”
I can’t even manage a nod. I’m numb. She’s right. If I close my eyes, I can still see the bonfire flames licking bright orange into the darkness, ringed by friends and family, singing, dancing, celebrating. Mama stood by, her face wet with emotion, her eyes bright with pride.
In me.
“My crowns,” I whisper, sudden realization bringing fresh tears to my eyes.
“Oh, honey,” my father sighs, pulling my head down to his shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
At the end of the Sunrise Dance, young women receive the crowns worn by the Mountain Spirit dancers. The elaborate headdresses are decorated beautifully, painted with symbols representing the visions seen by the medicine man. Sacred, they can only be used once and are then hidden. Mine are secreted in the hills surrounding this cursed pipeline slithering through our valley like a serpent, every sound from the heavy machinery below a hiss and a strike.
Injustice never rests and neither will I.
My mother’s words float to me on an arid desert breeze. It feels like we never win, but my mother never gave up. I don’t know how she died, but I do know how she lived. She would have fought until the end. And so will I. I’ll learn to work the very systems set up against us.
Some of the women start singing one of the old songs. The Apache words, the sound—it’s mournful like a dirge. Their voices rise and fall, cresting and crumpling with sorrow. We stand by like pallbearers watching the land flattened and hollowed and filled with tubing. I’ll never forget this feeling, but will call on it when I’m weary in the fight. No, I’ll never forget this feeling.
And I’ll never forgive Warren Cade.
Part II
“What you get by achieving your goals
is not as important as what you become
by achieving your goals.”
― Henry David Thoreau
5
Lennix
Four Years Later
“So have you decided what you’ll do after graduation?” Mena asks.
The question may as well be a pebble she tosses into the river we sit beside. It ripples through the doubts puddled in my chest. My time in Arizona State’s College of Public Service and Community Solutions has been amazing, but now the real world awaits. And it’s broken and hurting and a landscape wrought with so much injustice, I’m not sure where to start.
“I’m still deciding.” I stretch my bare legs out in front of me on the riverbank’s dry patch of grassy land.
“What are your options?” she asks.
“Hmmm, options. Maybe that’s the problem. I have too many of them.”
“Tell me.”
“I’ve been accepted into Arizona State’s master’s program.” I push the heavy rope of my hair back over my shoulder. I haven’t cut it in forever. “I’ve been offered the Bennett Fellowship, which would be awesome and require me to serve in a designated area of community service for a year. Or I have an offer from this big lobbying firm in D.C.”
Mena whistles and sends me a wide grin. “Well look at you. Those are all great options.”
“Yeah, but I graduate in a few months and I’m still figuring out which is the right one. Nothing feels like it.”
I’m like this river, twisting through Arizona’s hills and forking along the way, each tributary leading somewhere different, directing the flow of water in a new direction. You can’t take them all at once. Not for the first time, I recall running to the four directions when I was thirteen, gathering the elements into myself. Which way should I go?
“Maybe it will become clear while you’re away,” Mena offers.
“Somehow, I don’t think Viv and Kimba have meditative pursuits planned for spring break,” I chuckle, plucking at the sun-fried grass.
“Amsterdam, huh? That should be fun.”
“Yeah, Vivienne’s best friend Aya goes to college over there. She’s half Dutch, and has promised to show us everything.”
“You’re so lucky. Make the most of your time there.” She gives me a teasing look. “And maybe finally find a man.”
“Auntie!” I fake a scandalized tone and expression. Mena has never been shy about her love of a fine man. “Well, I never.”