Now, I liked art. I was the best student in my high school ceramics class, not to brag about it or anything. But nothing was wrong with painting either. It was Sandria’s medium and Sandria’s call and as it turned out, Sandria’s actual painting class. We were gonna meet at the crappy museum in town.
If I have to be honest.
“So this needs…yellow ochre. Yeah. Just mash it into your palette.”
“You don’t know your paint colors?”
“I do…but by the color. It’s really personal.”
I could picture yellow ochre in my head too, but I still couldn’t paint. I blamed working with teenagers and not finger-painting tots. Sandria’s painting of the day was a lion, and we were bad at it.
“We” included Cricket Gilbert, who I guess was Sandria’s only other friend. She was around my age but in a much different place in her life. There was a husband and a daughter involved, and she worked as a stay-at-home mom exclusively. No judgment or anything, I figured she was happy enough with it at first and simply wanted a hobby.
And of course, her painting sucked like mine did.
“So if the both of you could put some motion into it–”
“Oh hey Gemini!”
Not like valley girls and Nosy Nancies were that uncommon here, but I knew who it was immediately.
Lynn Pullman. Spanish teacher, woman with a classroom next to mine, loudest voice at staff meetings, but someone had to be. And apparently a museum connoisseur, which I refused to believe.
“Honey I thought we were gonna have a museum date,” said her husband, from behind a wall. “And why won’t you let me look at the golden flamingo?”
“Shh, if only you could stop looking at its long legs and feminine curves.”
I couldn’t see Mr. Pullman’s face behind the wall, but it was easy to imagine. Poor guy.
“I need to tell Gem this…hey Gem! You missed our end of the year barbecue today.”
Maybe if I didn’t say anything, she wouldn’t say anything back. I kept my back to her and kept ruining that lion. She had scared Sandria and Cricket away somehow, so my painting didn’t matter either.
My distaste was probably misplaced. Mrs. Pullman was the queen of gossip but the subject of it too. She was neither the most respected nor longest-serving teacher in Lucky Palms but with the gift of gab, we could believe it for a meeting. And apparently my career rested on being in her good graces anyways.
I loved kids, but that much? I’d do it for an old bag about to retire and join the school board but I’d probably be older than Pullman herself by the time she left. Even though her subject wasn’t one of the most respected and she complained all the time, I also figured she’d die at her desk many decades from now. She was some ridiculous fourth generation teacher.
I think it was because she liked talking. Because I was tuning it out.
“…anyways we’ll talk at lunch on Monday!”
“YeahSureCanIPleaseSeeSandriaNowWhereIsShe-”
Lynn found another parent of a student to annoy, this one being the Claremont kids’ mom. She was fine, I figured she could take one for the team.
There was a rock and cactus garden outside the museum in the back. I knew about it because teenagers liked to sneak there for dates and making out, and they didn’t have the good sense to not talk about it near me. Thankfully the museum was empty of youths. Cricket and I were the closest around.
Well, Cricket could still make out like a sloppy teenager. It wasn’t weird even with the age gap, and Sandria would go crazy trying to use her kids’ ages as metrics. Her oldest ones were barely a decade younger than her and not much younger than Cricket, because the foster system is cruel like that.
Plus…you know…I was in that range too. And really jealous but only on the inside.
Did I have to mention again that Cricket was married? Her house was close-by so her husband could have been in line-of-sight if he was out in the yard or anything. Maybe she was the married woman Sheena briefly mentioned in her story. The times would line up enough, especially if she married young like it seemed everyone did.
But they were happier than I was.
“I’m sorry, I gotta cut the lesson short and I didn’t even say anything of value,” Sandria said. “Next time?”
“Yeah, I’ll paint a better lion, I promise,” I said.
“…and be careful with Cricket. I don’t care though.”
Sandria and Cricket went away to her bed for everything you could imagine. All she had to do was get home in time to bathe and feed her kid. And Sandria’s were grown up yet again, or at least of driving age. She said that no one was home.
So lunch in the teachers’ lounge was slightly less depressing than lunch at my desk. Ours was cramped and didn’t have a microwave for some reason. I grabbed a frozen meal, like a fool.
But paired with hot coffee…yeah it was still bad. Curse our principal and her fear of microwaves and bluetooth devices. I’d have my whole lunch to steam over that…
“Oh…Goldwasser.”
“Pullman.” I grabbed my lunch and almost left the teachers’ lounge unscathed.
“Well, I see you’re getting cozy with the parents,” she said, cornering me near the fridge. “Pretty bold for someone who feels weird about Ms. Chee.”
“Yeah, weirdly hot and bothered.” Most of the staff already knew what I was. My big college scandal was getting caught in the buff at Mount Holyoke, the pieces were easy to put together. And no one could discriminate against me as a public employee. I didn’t even think Mrs. Pullman was capable of it.
“Oh, I know, there aren’t laws against it, but stay protected. Every young teacher needs to,” she said.
“Yeah, hopefully I’m in bed with her next time we speak.” Hey, I knew it was a bluff too. She probably knew about Cricket already. Mrs. Gilbert was young enough to have been a Pullman favorite or enemy. “But hey, it’s all rumors and I can’t get a date to save my life.”
“You’re right, will you be at the school board meeting?”
I decided on that spot not to. Surely Sandria would offer me something better to do.
It turned out that Sandria needed a glorified groundskeeper for a day. Whatever! I was feeling as lucky as I could with her screwing Cricket left and right when her husband wasn’t watching.
First step: get an invasive fish species out of her pond. It loved ground meat and was an ugly, muddy looking thing when we brought it up.
“Why did you move out here?” Sandria said. She probably knew that I was from far out east, where ivy crept up walls and snow fell. It was a culture shock here. I was surprised anyone lived here by choice. At least Sandria had a rightful claim to the land and thousands of years of ancestors adapted to it. Me? I knew I was a settler. But that blame was on far more evil people back in the old country.
“Job offers do that to you.”
She nodded kind of sagely. “It’s a long drive back home for me too…yes I know it’s only six hours. But I thought I was getting offered something better.”
“Is this still about student loans.”
“No, they’re almost paid off.”
Next and last: tend to her citrus trees. Winifred planted them and somehow without any rain or anything, we had big fat lemons. And someone baked lemon bars that week too.
“Why did you do this anyways?” I asked her.
Sandria shrugged. “I felt bad for the kids. Always have.”
“Were you a foster child?” She shook her head no. “Felt abandoned by the system that keeps screwing your nation over?”
“How could you tell?”
I smirked. “You could say I know my history.”
Some things were better left to summary than dialogue. I don’t know why she trusted me, but I figured that her kids/my students helped out with that. I at least tried to be sensitive to their plight, but the whole school tried their best too. Even Mrs. Pullman. As far as I knew, her parents were immigrants and her maiden name was far more difficult to pronounce. Some people felt like aliens in a place that was meant to be home. I’d be like a lost puppy in Israel or Germany. But Sandria’s children had a double whammy of it.
Her job was necessary due to a little law called the ICWA. In short, tribal kids go to tribal fosters and adoptions. And supply always exceeds demand in the system of abandoned children, no matter who they were. It was supposed to be an experimental living situation tended to by multiple teachers and foster parents and ample state and tribal funding. Sandria, fresh out of university, was the only one to arrive to an abandoned house. It smelled like death and cat pee. There also weren’t any cats.
Besides a few foster stipends, the money didn’t either. She thanked the citizens of Lucky Palms for their bouts of kindness. The first gift, naturally, was wallpaper.
She was confused by how few of her children had official tribal status, since they could be matched with anyone. But in the end, she figured her care might have been better than the rest. Most of her children were Diné like her, by one definition or another. And for those who weren’t, like Sheena and Winifred, was it bad to be raised Diné? Was it bad to have an experimental family at all?
“It’s simply my calling,” she said. “Justified by…well, everything.”
The house was quiet enough. The kids’ shared bedroom was empty, which was good. They hogged the only television in the house. It was a dinky one propped up with milk crates, but they got basic programming between all the static.
“This ain’t so bad,” I said. It was cooler in the house and I was going to get that ginger sunburn.
“I appreciate the help,” said Sandria. “I never get to watch TV anymore.”
“Too busy with Cricket?”
Sandria rolled her eyes. “She bans screentime in the house.”
“Well, I’m never busy once papers are graded,” I said. “And summer’s coming up.”
“I mean…I think you should come over if you’re bored. I never thought this house was fun though.”
I slowly outstretched my arm, to try and put it around her. I figured that the way she met Cricket was far dirtier. “Weeeeellllll, let’s make it fun.”
“Oh no, you’re single aren’t you?” Sandria gently pushed my arm away from her skin.
“I’m not meant to be someone’s one and only,” she continued. “It’s been…I know it sounds crazy but it’s been determined for me for a while.”
“Cultural?” I asked.
“What’s wrong with that?”
“You’re nowhere near there anymore.”
“I’m Diné to my bones, my kids are too. I know…I at least used to know people who were gay and Diné but there’s nothing wrong with what was laid out for us.”
Sandria put a lot of stock into the creation myths of her people. As with all creation myths, there was a man and a woman and out from their love and loins came the Diné people. And a third kind, the nadleehi, took on the other roles. They were the barren and the biological dead-ends, who guarded crops and resolved conflicts between the sexes. Yes there was a war between them, stopped only by the nadleehi, who weren’t fettered with marriage and children.
I guess the unwanted children of men and women were the ultimate battle to be fought by a modern nadleehi.
Or in the modern day, the nadleehi got translated into the “two-spirits”. A broad label used across North America for native people who conceptualized those outside of manhood and womanhood. They were gay! They were transgender! They were the guys who cared for children or wove or whatever assigned female activities a tribe had. They were routinely mislabeled by archaeologists. It was supposed to cover the various roles thought of by 500 different nations? And they still existed. I don’t know if Sandria really pictured herself in the modern gay/lesbian/gender non-conforming framework, and she didn’t need to.
“Okay then, heavy stuff,” I said. I didn’t know much about two-spirit people outside of it getting tacked onto the acronym at our uni’s GSA. It was a nice gesture but we didn’t have many native students. “So where does Cricket fit into this?”
“Human urges. We’ll never be committed to each other. I go months without seeing her when I need to.”
“It’s my fault I’m annoying about this, not yours,” I said.
“Nah…don’t say that,” Sandria said. “You’ve been kind, and that’s hard to come by, aaaaand you’re touching me again.”
“I won’t commit if you don’t want me to.”
“I just don’t want it to get in the way of the kids.”
“They’re my students,” I said. “I’d lose my job that way.”
“And I’m really happy for you, mom!”
Jacqueline dared to enter her own bedroom. I thought she was staying late at wood shop.
Unfortunately, she didn’t catch us at a good time.
“Get yourself a lemon bar, I’ll deal with Jacqueline,” said Sandria.
It didn’t seem like there was a punishment for her at all, as seemed usual for Sandria’s children. And I got a lemon bar! They baked it deep and cut them big enough to need a fork for. But it tasted good.
“Can we talk?” Jacqueline escaped her room.
“It’s nothing serious between your mom and I,” I said. “And we’ll just…not tell anyone about this. Like until you’re not in my class anymore.”
“No, that’s fine,” she said. “I just wanna vent.”
“Go ahead!”
“Aw sweet, you mean it?” She asked. “It might be a long story.”
“Your mom didn’t say no sleepovers.” I started to relax into my chair. It was better than being a cold, impersonal teacher. Not even Mrs. Pullman stooped that low.