My grandmother, at the age of 16, married an Irishman who
was 39 years old. This was before World War I, in a miserable, rain-sodden
little town on the Washington
coast. The local industries were logging, whoring and booze. The Indians, of
which my grandmother was one, did a little of each, but survived mostly by
fishing, which they had always done. They lived in shed and shacks and tents
and dugouts. The scrounged the detritus of white “civilization” for what they
needed. They had no past, they had no future. Those were luxuries for whites.
Indians survived, waiting for nothing.
Actually, my grandmother was a half-breed. She grew up with
her Quinault mother and never knew her father. By the time she was twelve,
though, she knew one thing: she didn’t want any kind of life she had ever seen.
She wanted out. The Irishman promised to take her away. He was big and talkative and sometimes wore a
suit. He said they would go to Ireland,
where she would live in a city. She would know ladies and gentlemen, church-going
and socials, streetcars and restaurants. She would live in a kindly society,
where children had a future. The Irishman waxed eloquent about the glories of a
land that far surpassed not only this miserable logging town, but the whole United States.
In truth, they weren’t going anywhere. The Irishman couldn’t
stay sober long enough to find his way out of even such a pathetic town as
this. To this day I am puzzled how someone I knew as a canny old woman could
have made such a mistake, even at that tender age, but make it she did. And it
was a horrible mistake. The Irishman raped her when he pleased and beat her
senseless if she resisted. He made her work as a dishwasher in a camp kitchen
and collected her wages directly from the foreman, after which he drank them
up. He forced her to beg food from her family. He ridiculed her because she was
Indian, and illiterate. He told her every Indian woman was a whore in the eyes
of the whites.
My grandmother lived with the Irishman for two years. She
didn’t know what else to do. Her family didn’t want her back. They had worries of their own, and in that
world you were old enough at 16 to bear your own troubles. She was afraid to
run away, not only because she feared he would catch her and inflict awful
punishment, but because she knew nothing of the world beyond this one soggy town.
She had never traveled more than 20 miles from her birthplace. She had never
been to school. She couldn’t read. She didn’t know a thing about the state she
lived in, much less the country. Above all, she feared being an Indian alone in
a white man’s world. In this godforsaken
town, at least she knew who would help her and whom to avoid. What if the world
out there turned out to be full of Irishmen, with no Indians even to look on
her with pity?
She thought about killing the Irishman. She would say he was
going to kill her. It was believable—he often left her face bruised. And she
knew that no one respected him. But an Indian did not lift his hand against a
white man. He was sure to hang if he did.
Lummi Bob killed a white man in a drunken brawl. He said the white man
was trying to kill him. They hanged him anyway. My grandmother had not seen it,
but she had heard about it. She could scarcely rely on the understanding of a
white court (about which she had only the foggiest ideas). The whites had no
reason to fear Indians, but they did.
The town policeman picked up the Irishman often, and let him
sleep it off in the jail, which was merely a room with some bars in the back
part of a wooden storefront. My grandmother had often gone there to get him and
take him home, hung over and snarling. The policeman was young, not from the
area. He looked kindly at her, as if he understood her predicament. But he
never said anything. It wouldn’t be proper for a policeman, she thought. After
all, he’s white, too.
One night—it was in April—the Irishman didn’t return to the
hovel they called home. But that was not unusual. She preferred it that way.
She could sleep alone and relax. There would be no stink of whiskey in the bed (which
wasn’t really a bed, but only some boards nailed together and set across some
crates). She would have to deal with him in the morning, but that way many hours
away so she didn’t care. Now, she would have time without him, and that was
like a gift. She washed herself with water warmed on the woodstove. She always
felt so nice after wiping her body down with warm water. She had coffee. The
Irishman would have belted her if he knew that. Coffee was expensive, and it
was for him. She didn’t care. If she was careful, he wouldn’t know. She wrapped
the tattered blankets around her and snuggled into warmth. She had no past and
no future, but right now, she was warm, and warmth was happiness.
People were pounding at the door. What was it? She staggered
out of bed. There was no light. She opened the door, and there were people
there, but she couldn’t see their faces. She wasn’t afraid, just puzzled.
Nobody ever came here. A man spoke. She knew his voice but couldn’t recall his
name. He was saying something about a fire at the jail. Her husband—the Irishman—he
had been in the jail. He might be dead. She had to come.
There was an explosion inside her. Something said, be
afraid. Something else said, you are free. She dressed quickly and went with
them. There were still flames, but the jail building had mostly burned by the
time they got there. There was no sign of any life in the wreckage. She could
see nothing. The policeman was there, cursing. She asked him, what happened? The
policeman scarcely heard her. He was cursing and cursing. “The goddamn bastard,”
he said. “The goddamn bastard started a fire in the cell. He thought he could
get out if the place was burning. He thought we’d let him go.”
My grandmother left town the next day. She had no idea where
she was going, but now it didn’t matter. This was a sign. She was being given
another chance. Go. Go. Go. Whatever it is, will be better than this.
Eventually, my grandmother ended up in western Oregon. We know nothing
about the intervening years, except that in part of that time she broke horses.
She was an admired horsewoman into her seventies. I’ve never known anybody who
had her feeling for animals. When I have a difficult dog, I always think of
her. She would have known what to do.
She went to work for my grandfather, a lanky graduate of the
University of Minnesota who had finagled his
industrialist father into buying him a ranch. My grandfather was not
necessarily the world’s greatest catch. He was something of a ne’er-do-well,
always trying to make good for last year. He was easy-going, always popular
with hired men (many of whom were Indians) because they could sweet-talk him. But
he was a gentle man. He never struck anybody, that I know of. Nor did he drink. They were married sometime
in the 1920’s, after my mother was born. They made a life together. It wasn’t
always peaceful, and it certainly wasn’t always easy. One morning my grandfather
woke up to find everything he owned frozen in the ground, worthless. My
grandmother sold eggs and sorted potatoes. From that, she got Social Security
in her old age. She was pathetically grateful for those monthly checks. She
lived in a trailer with several dogs and cats. She told the most spell-binding
stories. At least, I thought so.
He always called her Nita. Only many years later did we
learn that she had told everybody—including him—that her name was “Juanita.”
She said her mother was Spanish, from down in California. I don’t know whether my
grandfather believed it or not. My mother did. She was older than I am now when
she learned that her mother was Indian, and that she had once been married to
an Irishman.
