“A reputation for what?” asked Vern, her mouth dry.
“You know. Running through girls.”
Vern watched Gogo carefully. “Right,” she said, doing her best not to react. Vern was in no place to judge who Gogo had or hadn’t been with.
“That’s not why I invited you in here,” assured Gogo as she stood.
“I know,” Vern said, and she did. If Gogo wanted something, she would say it outright. She’d offered up her bed because she genuinely thought it would help.
“Are you in any pain?” asked Gogo, in medic mode.
“Always,” Vern said, but hopefully she didn’t sound too self-pitying. “It’s manageable, though. I should probably try to get some rest.”
“Do you want me to read you to sleep? We can get through Winter in the Blood together,” said Gogo.
Vern resented whatever softness she still had in her that made her melt at Gogo’s offer. “I don’t—not if it’s too much.”
“It’s nothing,” Gogo said, and tugged the paperback out from her back pocket. She pulled herself on top of her desk and sat, feet resting on the wooden chair. “Ready?”
“Ready,” said Vern, and closed her eyes as her head sank into the pillow. It took her ages to slip under, desperate to hang on to every word. It was a small thing, but she could not remember ever having been pampered so lovingly.
* * *
AFTER THAT NIGHT, Vern and Gogo developed a rapport. They handed pieces of themselves—meager offerings—over to the other.
Vern learned that Gogo’s mother died when she was four. Bridget had taken custody, taking her off the rez she’d called home up until that point. That was the central conflict between them: Bridget’s belief that she’d rescued Gogo and Gogo’s belief that her aunt had stolen away her birthright, her history, her heritage. “I can barely speak Lakota anymore,” said Gogo, shaking her head. “All she remembers is the bad, but that was never my story. I had people. History. Who am I without tiospaye, you know?”
Gogo often used Lakota words without explaining them, and Vern rarely felt like breaking the flow of conversation to ask.
“Why not go back?” asked Vern one day.
“And leave Bridget? I’m all she has. Plus, she raised me.”
“But you’re not responsible for her,” said Vern.
“Yeah I am,” Gogo said, genuinely perplexed by the idea that she might not be. “When you love someone, you take care of them whether or not it’s convenient. Fuck, you do that even when you don’t love somebody.”
Vern felt no such duty. The only peace she’d found in this life was living for herself, and she’d not be ashamed of it.
“Besides,” Gogo continued. “I’m not sure there’s anything for me back on the rez, or if I’d even fit in there anymore. Bridget made me into an outsider.”
Vern wondered what it must be like to have a claim to a land, to have a relationship with it that stretched back millennia. Cainland was built on the idea of Black people’s right to their postslavery forty acres, but forty acres of whose land? There had been talks before about returning to Africa, but it always seemed like Africa didn’t belong to them anymore. Maybe Gogo’s feelings about the rez paralleled Cainites’ feelings about the mother continent.
Gogo also tagged along on walks with the family.
“What you reading?” Howling always asked. Gogo had moved on from Winter in the Blood to Margins of Philosophy, Writing and Difference, and Dissemination by somebody named Jacques Derrida.
Vern stowed away the titles of books like morsels she might snack on later. She liked being reminded of the incomprehensibleness of the world. There was more to life than Cainland, more to earth than its collected sorrows. There was wonder and awe and the allure of nothingness. No one had figured everything out, but there were people who’d made their home in the searching. If they could dwell there, so could Vern.
In quiet moments, Gogo would share less esoteric texts aloud. She’d say, “Vern, isn’t this good?” then read a short excerpt for her. “I hope you live without the need to dominate, and without the need to be dominated,” Gogo read, pausing to ensure she had Vern’s full attention. “I hope you are never victims, but I hope you have no power over other people.” Gogo’s voice, crisp, dulcet, and deep, seemed made for oration. Vern always sprang to alert at the sound of it. “And when you fail, and are defeated, and in pain, and in the dark,” Gogo read on, “then I hope you will remember that darkness is your country, where you live, where no wars are fought and no wars are won, but where the future is.”