Rez Girls

I found her there. In a broke down shack all crumbled cinderblock on the Rez. Sharp, one of the Corbiere boys used to rent this place and opened up what turned out to be a temporary smoke shop selling cheap native smokes. Trash, crushed smoke packs and old beer bottle labels fluttered in a some secret breeze, yet she lay in a heap in a corner as still as stone. She looked as though carved from a single mass of alabaster, gleaming in the moonlight which forced itself through gaping holes in the roof. That fat moon up there, resting in a starless sky. My own beer bottle clatters to the floor.

She is serene and although she has the indignity of only a tshirt and socks on, I saw her when she had breath, behind my eyes. A teenager with back hair, shiny and smelling like the Pantene shampoo we all favoured. Her eyes were a shade of brown lighter than my own. Her name was Adeline.

I touch her shoulder. She is cold and hard, ungiving like a smooth rock under my hand.

I wondered if I should be afraid and when the cops arrived in their polyester uniforms, I was. Shouting and drawing on me, there’s the tangy and sour taste of fear behind my tongue and the sense of scalding spreading beneath the skin of my face.

‘What are you doing here? Fucking tell me your name! Don’t lie, you little bitch!’ The older cop yells. I see their trigger fingers, the snouts of their pistols pointing towards me. It feels as though all of the air has gone out of the room.

‘I found her here. I don’t know her, she’s from here’ I say. He rolls his eyes at me and smirks to the others.

‘One of those’ he says. He’s looking down on her with icy eyes. They walk over and I hear the wisk wisk sound of their pants, walking towards her. I swear I hear an oily sounding snicker. I feel shamed for her, on display and gawked at as though she was merely a mildly interesting piece of roadkill. I feel this for myself under their eyes as if I’ve got no pants on in front of these ‘lawful’ men who have guns, power, position and authority over everything I am.

I might not go home, I think.

But no, I’m not put into the back of a cruiser with strange men with icy eyes staring at me in the rear view mirror. It’s not over.

The walk home by the moon is lonely and long, down a familiar dirt road then around the bend toward my mom’s house lit from within and I feel the warm night breeze of July on my skin. It carries smells of fresh sweet grass and woodsmoke and smudge, and the damp earthy smell of cedar. Then I know: if those things can’t make us clean, there’s nothing that would.