“Let’s go,” he said to me like we’d just been talking about going somewhere. He brought me to his basement. He pulled out a wooden box that looked like a toolbox. Said it was his medicine box.
“You’re gonna have to help me out here,” he said, his words dragging a little behind. He pulled out a dried plant with red rope tied around it. He lit it. The smell and smoke were thick. It smelled like musk and earth and Fina. I didn’t know anything about ceremony—whatever he was doing—but I knew we shouldn’t have been drunk for it.
“This comes from a long way back,” Six said, and poured some powder into his hand. Then he gestured for me to move my head closer, as if to see it better. Then he took a big breath in and blew it all in my face. It was thick as sand and some got in my mouth, up my nose. I choked and kept blowing out my nose like a dog.
“We got bad blood in us,” Sixto said. “Some of these wounds get passed down. Same with what we owe. We should be brown. All that white you see that you got on your skin? We gotta pay for what we done to our own people.” Sixto’s eyes were closed, his head bent down a little.
“Fuck this shit, Six,” I said through a cough, then stood up.
“Sit down,” Six said, with a tone he’d never used with me before. “It’s not all bad. It’s power too.”
I sat down but then stood right back up. “I’m fucking going.”
“I said sit down!” Six blew on that plant again. The smoke rose thick. I felt sick right away. Weak. I made it out to the front of the house, got on my bike, and rode to Fina’s.
* * *
—
When I woke up the next day, Fina came in and shook her car keys at me. “Get up, let’s go,” she said. I was still pretty tired, but the fever had broken. I thought we were maybe going to get groceries. When we got past Castro Valley I knew it wasn’t groceries or any kind of errand. We just kept driving, through the hills with all those windmills. I fell asleep looking at one of them that looked like a coin from Mario Brothers.
* * *
—
When I woke up we were in a field with orchards on either side of it. Fina was on top of the hood of the car, she was looking down at something. I opened my door, and when I did I saw Fina’s hand wave me back, so I sat down without closing the door. Through the windshield, I saw my grandma get onto her knees and yank something with a thread or fishing line, something I couldn’t see, until the creature came scrambling up on the windshield.
“Get his fur, get some of his fur!” Fina yelled at me. But I couldn’t move. I just stared at it. The fuck was it? A raccoon? No. And then Fina was on top of the thing. It was black with a white stripe that went from its nose to the back of its neck. The thing was trying to bite and claw her, but she had her hand on its back, and it couldn’t grip the metal hood. When it seemed to calm down, she lifted it up by its neck with the fishing line. “Come get some of its fur,” she said.
“How—” I said.
“Rip its fucking fur off with your hands!” Fina said.
That was enough to get me going. I got out of the car and tried to get behind the thing, but it was onto me. I swiped twice but didn’t want to get bit. Then on the third try I pulled a big clump from its side.
“Now get back in the car,” Fina said, and got to her feet. She let the thing down to the ground. She walked with it farther into the field and then into the orchard at the edge of the field.
When she got back into the car I was just sitting there with my hand up in a fist, holding the clump of fur. Fina pulled out a leather bag with beadwork and fringes on it, opened it, and gestured for me to put the fur inside.
“What was that?” I said once we were on the road.
“Badger.”
“Why?”
“We’re gonna set up a box for you.”
“What?”
“We’re gonna make you a medicine box.”
“Oh,” I said, like that was all the explanation I needed.
We drove for a while in silence, then Fina looked over at me. “Long time ago they didn’t have a name for the sun.” She pointed up to the sun, which was in front of us. “They couldn’t decide if it was a man or a woman or what. All the animals met about it, and a badger came out of a hole in the ground and called out the name, but as soon as he did, he ran. The other animals came after him. That badger went underground and stayed there. He was afraid they would punish him for naming it.” Fina flipped on her blinker and switched lanes to pass a slow truck in the right lane. “Some of us got this feeling stuck inside, all the time, like we’ve done something wrong. Like we ourselves are something wrong. Like who we are deep inside, that thing we want to name but can’t, it’s like we’re afraid we’ll be punished for it. So we hide. We drink alcohol because it helps us feel like we can be ourselves and not be afraid. But we punish ourselves with it. The thing we most don’t want has a way of landing right on top of us. That badger medicine’s the only thing that stands a chance at helping. You gotta learn how to stay down there. Way deep down inside yourself, unafraid.”