A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (eBook)

A Novel

Michael Dorris (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
298 Seiten
Publishdrive (Verlag)
978-0-00-101033-8 (ISBN)

Infos

Michael Dorris has crafted a fierce saga of three generations of Native American women, beset by hardships and torn by angry secrets, yet inextricably joined by the bonds of kinship. Starting in the present day and moving backward, the novel is told in the voices of the three women: fifteen-year-old part-Black Rayona; her American Indian mother, Christine, consumed by tenderness and resentment toward those she loves; and the fierce and mysterious Ida, mother and grandmother whose haunting secrets, betrayals, and dreams echo through the years, braiding together the strands of the shared past.

Textauszug

Chapter 1

I sit on the bed at a crooked angle, one foot on the floor, my hip against the tent of Mom's legs, my elbows on the hospital table. My skirt is too short and keeps riding up my thighs. Mom has earlier spent twenty minutes pulling my long frizzy hair into a herringbone braid and has tried to give me beauty magazine tips to improve my appearance—cosmetics to highlight my cheekbones or soften my chin, a blusher that might even my skin tone. I check the clock on the wall. Five minutes till the end of visiting hours. I want to leave but Mom would hit the ceiling and tell me I'm not polite.

We play solitaire on the sliding desk pulled across the foot of the electric bed. With the back moved all the way up and a pillow wedged under her knees, everything Mom wants is within her reach. Her round face is screwed into a mask of concentration, like a stumped contestant on "Jeopardy" with time running out, and her eyes see nothing but the numbers on the cards. She wears her favorite rings, a narrow abalone, an inlaid turquoise-and-jet road-runner, and a sandcast silver turtle. Dwarfed among them, the thin gold of her wedding band cuts into her third finger. She's on her throne, but her mind is with the game.

 

In the last two hours we have each drunk three plastic glasses full of warm ginger ale and Mom has sampled a second lunch, abandoned as the two other women in the room sleep through the afternoon visiting hours. We talk softly to keep our privacy.

Mom turns each trio of cards and slaps them down clean so that only the top one shows. "This time I can feel it," she tells me.

I don't disagree but I could. The last pass through I have seen a two of clubs and a jack of spades hidden below an early ten of hearts. The cards will win this hand.

After squaring the deck Mom starts through again. This time she snaps the sets into her palm before she lays them out, and the first face to appear is the black two. She pegs it onto its ace without changing her expression but does seem pleased to see the jack.

"Come to Mama," she whispers and matches it to her queen of diamonds. The ten follows suit. "What did I tell you? Nothing to it." Her eyes are large and brown, dull from her morning medication and from not enough sleep, but they flash with her victory.

I can't help it, her cheat bothers me, but I go along. It's not worth arguing about.

"You're on a roll," I tell her when all fifty-two are distributed, ace to king, in four matching rows. "Now try the other kind, the jump-over."

"I quit when I'm ahead." She pushes the pile in a jumble toward me, finds the button that adjusts her angle, and sinks to a reclining position.

I take the cards, shift my weight, and shuffle, riffle, and pat them even. Out of habit, I offer Mom an illegal cut, which she ignores, then I pick up the deck and peel off a four of clubs.

"Do you remember how?" Mom asks.

The object of the game is to reduce everything to a single pile. You set the whole deck down, one by one, then find a match with the card that comes before, either by suit or number: a six on a six, a spade on a spade. You can find its mate next door or by jumping back two, no more no less. I usually end with about twenty short stacks. This time it's eighteen.

"I never win this," I say, rising to leave.

"You fold too easy. Let me see those cards once ..." But

 

Mom doesn't move. Something's wrong. She seems suddenly smaller, as if she has shrunk in her bed. Her eyebrows relax and she stares to the ceiling. Her hands go limp at her side. It occurs to me for the first time that this hospital visit might be different, that she might really have a disease. I start to reach for the white cord with a button on the end, but Mom snatches it first and puts it under the sheet. She looks over my shoulder and makes like she's trying to smile but can't quite bring it off.

I turn and see my father in the doorway. For a big man he's quiet, and I'm always surprised when he appears. He's tall and heavy, with skin a shade browner than mine. He has let his Afro grow out and there's rainwater caught in his hair. His mailman uniform is damp too, the gray wool pants baggy around his knees. At his wrist, the bracelet of three metals, copper, iron, and brass, has a dull shine. I've never seen him without it. He looks uncomfortable and edgy in the brightly lit room and wets his lips.

"Rayona, what's happening?" he asks me.

These are the first words I've heard from him since my fifteenth birthday five months ago, when he telephoned to say he'd be late to the party, so I'm not friendly.

I stand. I push five-ten, taller than any other girl in my school, but I still feel short in front of him.

"Don't you say hello to your father?" Dad asks me.

"Elgin," Mom says behind me. "I thought you only visited when I was asleep."

Visited? Mom must have called to tell him she was out of commission. There's no other way he could have known because her friends are not permitted to speak to him these days.

"You go on now, Ray," Mom says. "Elgin and I have to talk." She has been busy rearranging herself and the bed. The cards have disappeared and the table is pushed off to the side. She's now lying almost flat, with the sheet tucked under her chin. The pillow still supports her knees, though, so she has to lift her head to see us.

"Now don't rush off," Dad says to me. "Let me get a look at you."

He inspects me like a first-class package, looking for loose flaps. His eyes measure and weigh, take me apart and put me back together. I wait for him to compliment my height, to say, as he likes to do, that I take after him rather than Mom, who only comes up to my ear even in her highest heels. I expect he'll judge I'm too skinny. But he just shakes his head, half sad, half confirmed in some belief.

"I'll see you tomorrow, baby," Mom says like an order. She's impatient for me to go so she can have Dad to herself, and that makes me curious.

I don't know what she sees in him. She has other boyfriends who call when they promise, pay the check at restaurants, and want to live with us.

"Ray doesn't have to leave, Christine. She's no fool."

Dad's words run along my backbone and make my shoulders tighten. I'm interested in all opinions regarding me that don't have to do with my height or weight. I file away that I'm not a fool, according to my father who hardly knows me, and stay tuned for what he thinks I'll understand.

Dad reaches into his pants pocket, takes out Mom's beaded key chain, and jiggles it from his fingers. "I'm returning your car."

Mom shakes her head no. "Keep it till I'm ready to come home. Come collect me."

"That takes more than a dented Volare."

"Is that what you say to a sick woman? It's got new plugs!" Mom says.

"It takes more than new plugs. And anyway, you don't look so sick."

He's right. She looks disappointed, mad. Her chin juts. She props herself on her elbows, bringing her chest close to her knees. Her eyes are narrow slits buried in the fullness of her flushed cheeks.

"Look at the chart. Ask the goddamn doctor. I'm sick enough for him."

Dad tucks the keys into my shirt pocket, together with a green parking lot stub. "Hold these for your mother. A-6. Don't forget."

Mom is ready to explode. Her lips press together in a tight seal and she tries to drag the pillow out from under her legs. She opens her mouth to say something but all that comes out is air. It is as if she has just run a long race and lost. She tries to sit up the rest of the way, to get out of bed, but she's tangled in the sheet, trapped on her back.

 

"Get the hell out of here." Mom's voice is rough, hard-edged. Her body twists on the mattress. I can tell she hates to be helpless when Dad's so indifferent.

He watches her as though she's some stranger. "It's not going to work this time. Just give it up."

"You give it up. You! I don't give nothing up."

Dad touches my arm. "Go on now. I have to talk to Christine."

Mom is furious, maddened by the snarled bedclothes. One of her rings hooks in a flaw of the sheet and she tries to rip it free, but the material is too tough.

"I'll call you," Dad says, and points a long finger at my chest.

"Go back to your little black girl, then," Mom shouts. "Forget us. Who needs you, anyway." She collapses into the pillows, throws her arms over her face, then stops all movement. She's listening, waiting. She expects Dad to apologize like he always does when things go this far. She's pulled her ace from the hole and bet her whole pot.

Dad watches for a second, then quietly backs out the door. His jaw is set, his wide curved lips are hard, his half-closed eyes look as if they're painted on his face.

The two other sick women in the room are awake, and as alert and interested as if they were watching TV. They are old ladies straight off the reservation, their eyes bright and full of gossip, although their bodies are fed with tubes. I can read their thoughts: That little Indian woman, I don't know what tribe, with a big black man. And a child, a too-tall girl. She looks like him. They are delighted. They have a story to tell if their children visit that's more interesting than rough white doctors and Indian nurses with boyfriend problems. They look from the door to me to Mom on the bed, and then back at each other.

Mom's breathing is rain in the night, beating on the windows and blowing the curtains. I don't want to be here when she peeks and discovers Dad's gone, so I leave too, heading for the stairs, away from the elevators where he might be waiting, wanting to explain himself on a slow...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 13.8.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Romane / Erzählungen
• ISBN-10: 0-00-101033-6 / 0001010336
• ISBN-13: 978-0-00-101033-8 / 9780001010338