Page 20 of To the Moon and Back

That was interesting, because I would have thought they were.

In my head there was some intersection between blood quantum and “being traditional,” but I had no idea how or even if they overlapped.

Matthew had tried to explain once that I had two official cards in my name, one that said I was Indian and one that said I was Cherokee.

The attorney general had hand-delivered the cards to my parents after my transfer, but I’d never seen them.

I suspected my parents had thrown them away.

“Besides,” Matthew added, “you were laughing by the time I got you.”

I nodded. I imagined Mom and Dad leaning over my crib. Tickling me, waving a rattle. I bet even back then Dad was doing his nose trick, where he presses the tip of his nose back like a pig and when he lets go it stays that way for a good ten seconds. It was hilarious.

“Listen, Dells,” Matthew said. “If the answer to this is yes, then you can say yes, and we never have to talk about this again. But I looked into it a little, and I read that Mormon beliefs are, you know, abstinence-only, and—”

“Noooooo,” I said, hands over my ears.

Matthew rolled his eyes. “I have some kind of responsibility here to ask. Do you, or do you not, understand that Hollis College offers free birth control at its student health center? They say so on the website.”

I crossed my arms.

“Della, please. Can we agree I might know something about accidental pregnancies?” He smiled, just with his mouth, like we were close enough to joke with each other.

I thought about how awful this was, Matthew trying to parent me.

I thought about my parents, who had only prepared me for a temple sealing to a husband. If I did it that way, our family could be together for time and all eternity.

I thought about my first kiss, at camp last summer with my boyfriend.

Ethan. It had happened right before I climbed into my tent with Ada.

I woke up in the tent in the gray part of morning and her arm was around my waist, and I stayed very still like I was sleeping.

She likes me , I thought. And also, what a terrible thing to be alive.

For six weeks after camp, Ada and I emailed every night. I’d felt like I could talk to her honestly, about all the things I was feeling. Then I thought about losing my family, in this life and the next. I blocked her email address.

“My fertility isn’t your business,” I said. “But I did hear you.”

Matthew nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry. That’s all I needed.”

I turned sharply to the next poster. “Was I walking when I moved here?” I asked.

“Yep, already walking.”

“Right.”

There were things I wanted to ask him. I wanted to know what it feels like to get your daughter back.

What it feels like to give her away again.

What it feels like to learn that the law meant to keep kids in the tribe doesn’t apply in your case, and it’s maybe a tiny bit your fault, or maybe it’s the power of nine non-Indians in black robes, and what you do when you’re standing outside the Supreme Court with a five-year-old girl in your arms and you know she doesn’t know that they’re going to take her back.

You don’t know when they’ll take her, only that they will, and the clock starts now.

More than anything, I wanted to know about the beginning. I wanted to know why he had signed me away.

I was fourteen when I’d first googled my case. I tried “Emma Ericson why dad didn’t want” before being redirected to my old name. Della.

My real dad—that’s how I thought of him, still—had been yelling at me for some childish infraction at Family Home Evening. My running-away fantasies led me no further than the internet. I stayed where I was—at the computer, in a nightgown, past midnight. Screen shining bright in my eyes.

I watched a lot of the old news coverage online. The footage was fuzzy, but the three people crying I knew well.

Mom and Dad say I’m “not even full-blood Indian.” They count my white ancestors on many fingers. They say a number, a fraction, and one of the justices repeats it in court.

Matthew says he’d assumed my birth mother would keep me. Assumed?

Mom and Dad say, “This is a nightmare. This is a nightmare. This is a nightmare.”

The county fair was another tradition. After I’d reenacted most of my firsts with Matthew, our visits came to hinge on tradition.

Sometimes the visits blended together, and I could remember those afternoons at the fair with Matthew in a continuous stream of different heights and ages.

As if they were many moments from our life together, and not just interruptions of the real thing.

The fair was held in a field somewhere—the grass short, sharp, brown.

The rides were the kind that could be taken apart and reassembled at the outskirts of many small towns, their seats flat and faded.

They tie you down with thin, loose ropes and you hold on to your people and scream.

Food vendors lined up on either side of the entrance, the smell of grease thick in the air.

Matthew bought me a funnel cake, and when the vendor shook the powdered sugar can, tiny flecks of white blew off like smoke in the wind.

We carried the funnel cake together, each holding a side of the oil-spotted paper plate.

I told him I wanted us to do the bucket ride first. It was a knockoff of the famous Disneyland teacup ride and I was too old for it to be fun, but it was something we did together.

Every year Matthew got a blurry picture of the two of us whirling in an oversized tin bucket and he had them framed and lined up on the brown-painted walls of his hallway.

Twelve years of us, my eyes moving gradually from terrified to amused.

The line for the bucket ride was long, and these were the things we talked about. Food. Movies. Music. What is Happening Right Now. Basically, how I spoke with my language partner in Spanish class at school, our voices clear and earnest. And Pablo, do you like to eat the sandwiches?

Someone tapped Matthew on the shoulder. He turned.

It was a woman, definitely Indian—at least I thought—in short shorts and a loose tank top. I didn’t recognize her, but why would I? And what made me think I knew she was Indian?

“I’m sorry, I gotta ask,” she said. “You’re Matthew Owens, right?”

I turned away from her and pretended to study the clouds. I slipped a lock of hair between my teeth and bit down.

“Yep,” Matthew said. “Sorry, but have we met?”

The woman fiddled with her glasses and squinted over at me. “It’s been a long time,” she said. “But our moms wove baskets together. Wait, oh my God, is this her ?”

“I’ll tell my mom your mom said hi, okay?” Matthew pulled me behind him. His shirt was sweaty and clung to his back.

“It’s really her,” the woman said. “I didn’t know if she’d make it back here.”

If it weren’t for Matthew, she wouldn’t have recognized me.

Mom and Dad have kept me out of the public eye, at least since the day I came home to them.

I wasn’t even allowed to have an AIM account anymore, because Dad found out about all the Indians sending me chat requests and invitations to play chess online.

Are you Baby Della? I used to stand in the grocery store parking lot every Sunday for you.

My daughter made you a sign that said OUR CHILDREN ARE NOT FOR SALE.

“We don’t get much time together,” Matthew whispered to her. “Let’s keep this between us?”

It was too late. I heard the whispers move down the line, then right back up to us in shouts. “Baby D!” someone said. “It’s her!”

Matthew held my wrist too tight, and I heard the click of a camera. I spit my hair out of my mouth.

He whispered over his shoulder. “Okay, Dells, we gotta go.”

He walked fast, me almost skipping to keep up.

We passed the rides. Little airplanes spinning in circles, ponies following each other in star formation, swings circling higher into the sky, and I saw my world so clearly.

Mom and Dad and Matthew chasing me, and me chasing them right back. A single camera flashed.

A woman pushed forward. “They took my baby niece and we never saw her again,” she said. “But you found your way back, praise Jesus!” She held her camera up close to my face, and I blinked.

Grandma and I sit on the closet floor. She presses my face into her chest, and she plays with my hair and rocks me without a noise.

The men bang at the door, and my father won’t answer, and they bang some more until they knock it open.

Grandma sucks in her breath. I hear boots on the kitchen floor, thundering steps kicking open doors and checking under beds.

They come closer. The closet door swings so wide it bangs the wall, and I’m taken aback by light.

A man in a mask and helmet and goggles kneels to take me.

I scream. Grandma is holding me too tight, and I’m afraid to breathe. The man has a flashlight on his helmet, and a gun bigger than me under his arm. His hands pull at my feet. I cry for my father, who should be saving me but isn’t. But never did.

It would be ten years before I saw the photo. It was on the cover of an old magazine. My father stands behind three men with guns. Hands behind his head, he stares toward the closet in the back room.

Matthew picked me up and carried me to the truck. I kicked and squirmed because I was a grown woman now. I didn’t want to be lost in these strangers, and I didn’t want to be scooped up in arms that hadn’t carried me in years.

Matthew threw me into the passenger seat and slammed the door. “Duck down,” he said.

I held my head between my knees, my fingers knotted in my hair.

Matthew drove fast. A cloud of dirt kicked up behind us, like cowboys on horses in old Westerns. He jerked to a stop before the highway. “Seat belt,” he said, and like a dutiful daughter, I put it on.