A Matter of Unimportance

14. Nothing

Returning to the city was cathartic. The moment I saw the twisting freeways and the glittering waters of the Willamette, it was as if a weight had been pulled from my shoulders. I didn't even like being in vehicles, but it didn't matter. That bus was my way home. It was my carriage after the ball.

I hadn't expected it to be hard to leave the reservation, but it was hard too. It wasn't pulling teeth hard, but it was still something I did with a surprising amount of reluctance in my gate. If nothing else, watching Scouts eyes well up as she hugged me goodbye was a moment I'd recall with an aching heart.

They'd been good to me. I just didn't belong there.

That 11 days had been filled with family time in an overwhelming way that I'd never experienced before. I cooked in the kitchen with Marta. I did makeup for my little sisters. I hung out in my fathers shed and watched him weave grass, paint jewelry, carve wood, and sculpt candles. I'd gone to the creek to watch him fish with my grandfather while staunchly abstaining from the activity until I felt forced to walk back to the house to avoid the suffering of the fish. I'd gone to the library and the cultural center with my uncle John. I'd watched television my cousin Adam.

The time had been very full. It had been eye opening too, to watch my father interact with others. He was bold around his children and courteous to his wife. He was combative with his brother, and very obviously intimidated by his own father. He practically shrunk in on himself in the man's presence, and yet after the night we'd settled on calling me River, all the adults referred to me as such. I didn't witness the conversations that occurred. I just know that my father had even gotten his own father to comply.

My father asked me to stay on my last day there. He walked into the room and told me the guest bedroom could be mine if I wanted it. He told me I could go to the school there. He told me I could be an addition to the family, and that Marta was more than happy to have me. He told me we could all be a together as a family.

The thing about family is that it doesn't extend only to blood. It certainly isn't only meant for the people that like you or treat you well. Family is so much more broad than that, and belonging is such an important aspect of life. Belonging doesn't have to have anything to do with family.

I didn't belong on the reservation. I was lighter than all of them, which didn't really seem to matter, but it was more than that. I was harder than those other kids. I'd taken care of myself in ways they'd never had to do, and I had a pride about it. While I was there I was standing somewhere my mother had never stood. I was deep in a family dynamic that had nothing to do with her, and it wasn't as if I could talk about her anyways. She was Marta's "other woman." I would have been living within a lie that would have torn Florence apart. Marta might have been torn apart by it too. Maybe even Scout and Tamara. Without the lie, would Scout, or even Tamara, have even made it into existence? And if I was considering family, then Grandfather Benjamin couldn't be forgotten. He needed me, as much as he wouldn't admit it. I didn't want to admit that a small part of me needed him either. That closet in his hallway was the only connection I truly had to the material signs of my mothers existence. If not that closet, then the river my father had named me for was also at home waiting for me. The sounds of the city. All of my mothers favorite places. Even my friends at school called out to me silently in a way that made the city home.

My shoes were still caked in mud, potentially ruined, because I did not belong on the reservation. I belonged in my own home; in my city.

My father told me to call him if I ever needed anything. John offered to drive me back to the casino and away we went together. I really liked John. The awkward silence we'd begun in after my arrival had now dissolved. Instead he sang along to the radio and talked lightly on the way, our faces hidden behind smiles. It was a nice way to end the trip.