One String Guitar Read online

  Praise for One String Guitar

  “One-String Guitar tells stories so embedded in sensations and rhythms of everyday consciousness that when it takes us across the boundaries of identities and cultures, we travel there with open hearts and minds. From the Pine Ridge Reservation of South Dakota, to the rust-belt Central New York town that becomes a refuge from the genocide in Rwanda, to the borderland of transgender identity, we are taken on a journey of pain but also of hope and love for these characters in crisis. de Vestel is an astute interpreter of historical trauma, addiction, and mental illness who conveys an understanding of home and the notion of a socially-constructed family from the perspective of the displaced.”

  —Rebecca Garden, Associate Professor

  of Bioethics & Humanities, SUNY

  Upstate Medical University

  “One-String Guitar is a revelation. It’s also a novel you should give yourself plenty of time to read so that you can savor its many depths, both personal and political. Earlier in her career, Mona de Vestel was a spoken word poet and performance artist of magnetic power, all her incandescence is right there on the page where you have been waiting for it all your life.”

  —Nancy Keefe Rhodes, arts writer & editor

  “Congratulations are in order to Mona for the achievement. Here you will find a compelling narrative of grace rare in an inaugural work. This is a meticulously crafted text that still somehow manages to sprawl across characters, cultures, continents, and an impressive array of emotional registers. It is a sophisticated work, polished, crafted, deeply layered while never forgetting what makes literature literature – it is a good read, reeking of authority. The text facilitates unique character intimacy before reforging it in the horrific genocides of Rwanda and the First Nations without ever sliding into easy sentiment or sensationalism. This is a journey both disturbing and revelatory, and ultimately beautiful as only meaningful literature can be. This inaugural work establishes Mona de Vestel as a contender and true voice. This one she can be proud of. Forever.”

  —Arthur Flowers, novelist

  “Akin to Leslie Marmon Silko’s weaving, One-String Guitar is at once a personal, political and poetic novel, that draws the reader into lives beyond the borders of geography, culture, and even biology. de Vestel is a skilled storyteller, traversing multiple landscapes, and contending with the charged political consequences of genocide and complex intersections of class, race and queer identity. Her treatment of relationships is reminiscent of Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts: sensitive, revealing and finely-attuned. You won’t want to put One-String Guitar down.”

  —Amy King, author of The Missing Museum

  One-String Guitar

  A novel

  by Mona de Vestel

  Harvard Square Editions

  New York

  2016

  One-String Guitar

  Copyright © 2016 Mona de Vestel

  Cover design by Megan McDonagh © 2016

  Photo credit: Adam Jones, Ph.D./Wikimedia Commons Personal website: adamjones.freeservers.com

  Bio photograph by John Dowling Photography

  None of the material contained herein may be reproduced or stored without permission of the author under International and Pan-American

  Copyright Conventions.

  ISBN 978-1-941861-26-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published in the United States by

  Harvard Square Editions

  www.harvardsquareeditions.org

  “HEDLEY: You watch. One string make plenty, plenty music. Now when I was a little boy I asked my grandfather where his mother was. He say she was long gone far away. Say when he play this he could hear her pray, I asked him, “How?” He say, “Listen.” (He plucks the string.)”

  – Seven Guitars, August Wilson

  To the people of the Oglala Lakota Nation and the Tutsi, Hutu and Twa people of Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo. To all of my ancestors and my family across and beyond bloodlines.

  Part I

  Chapter 1 – Edgar Owl Feather

  Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota, 1998

  They come at dawn to tell me she’s dead. When I open the door, two half-breed cops walk into my house like they’re home. I feel disoriented, it being dark outside and having them stand there on my doorstep. One of the cops looks at me with his freckled face. Must have Irish or French blood in him and I think how his white side makes his Indianness look strange. He is wearing his black hair cropped short, in a crew cut. His cheekbones, no doubt about it, are Lakota. For a moment, I wonder if we’re related. I pray we aren’t. Don’t want no goons in the family.

  Even before they spoke, I knew she was dead. But knowing it only took me to the places I remembered. I paid no mind to the goons standing in my house and I just let my mind take me to the dead zone. I walked in the desert where nothing grows. I closed my eyes and made myself fall, a tumbling rock at the foot of the black hills. Fallen rock, I said to myself. You are now a fallen rock. I went to the foot of the mountains where my ancestors were born and waited for gravity to turn on me but nothing happened. I even waited for Felicia to come to me to say: “Our child is dead now. Our child is dead.” She never did.

  “Edgar Owl Feather?”

  “Yes, that’s me.”

  “Can you come with us to the station?”

  “What’s this about?”

  “A young woman was found dead at the New Hope Rehabilitation Center; we believe it is Maya Owl Feather. We need you to come identify the body.

  There is a point when a man realizes he’s got no reason left to live. I reached this moment the second they tell me Bird Girl’s dead.

  Just last week, she was sitting no more than two feet away from me. I could have done something to save her. I should have done something, but I didn’t.

  She had the narrow face of a goldfinch in late spring the way she cocked her head to the side, listening to the leaves rustling. Could she hear them? Voices. That’s all I hear. Everyone blaming someone else. No one taking responsibility. Outside, the wind is howling. Spring’s full of anger, always, rageful. I don’t know why we try to make it seem like spring is cute and cuddly, pink and white, blue like they’re announcing the birth of a boy. Spring is messy, pushes the earth out of the way. Young shoots tear open by themselves for a chance at light.

  On the day Bird Girl arrived at the rehab center, her eyes were haggard and sunken, her hands scratched as if a cat had attacked her. I wanted to save her, maybe I even wanted to hold her the way I held her when she was a baby and her mama was already gone. But Mary, the rehab director and one of the many white BIA staff members just wouldn’t have it.

  “You know you can’t work with your own daughter,” she said, grabbing me aside as I was walking with Bird Girl.

  “Since when do you care about the well-being of Indians, Mary?” I asked her. She rang her hands nervously.

  “I can help her.” I was whispering now, glancing over in Bird Girl’s direction every few seconds.

  “Not like this. You can’t help her as her counselor. And you know it.”

  Deep down, I knew that Mary was right, but I couldn’t let Bird Girl go.

  “I can help her,” I heard myself expressing a little more of my own despair than I’d have liked.

  “And how do you plan on doing that?” Mary was angry now. She’d never really liked me in the first place.

  I didn’t know exactly what I meant by this, and I suspected that she didn’t either. Our feet were touching now and I realized that if I leaned, our faces would brush together. I saw that her eyes were changing into the blossoming of a strange flower and I prayed that she would change her mind.

  “How can you help her overco
me her grief?”

  “I know I can help her,” I whispered, placing my hands on her shoulders. I had never touched her before. She stood very still and then leaned forward.

  “OK. You get one chance. One chance is all you get. But if you screw it up, consider yourself fired.” I was surprised by the part about being fired but I really didn’t give a shit. I wanted to save my baby girl.

  The truth is that I’d lost Bird Girl a long time before the cops marched into my home. When she was 13, I caught her drunk in the back of our shed with a pint of gin. I sat her down real quiet and told her about her mama. I talked to her about Felicia, but that only made it worse. One day I realized, you can’t save them all. Sometimes you got to cut the noose to save yourself. I reckon that’s what I did with my own daughter.

  When I last saw Bird Girl a week ago, she wasn’t talking in group. It was her silence that tipped me off. She’d usually be like the others, rambling on. Complaining. But on that last day, she was quiet. I liked to call her that. I’d been calling her “Bird Girl” since the day she was born. And that’s a good thing. Birds are free. Sometimes I see her like those young meadowlarks just out of the nest, flying into window panes in early summer. They’re full of life, flying into their own distorted reflections. It takes a certain kind of bird to stay on course. There are many shiny things out in the world. You just have to stay on course.

  New Hope, that’s the name of our drug and alcohol rehab center, got these chairs from a broken down school they closed in the southern part of the county. They said there was no more funding for the school and we needed chairs. So we got ‘em.

  Rony was still talking about the white man. The white man this, the white man that. That’s all they talk about. All of their energy goes into talking about the white man. When they’re not flying into the glass pane, they’re looking for it.

  “Rony, why’d you punch him, anyway?”

  “You know why I punched him. He was calling me names. How long are we going to take this shit?”

  “What do you think about what Rony is saying, Maya?”

  Bird Girl stopped scraping the paint on her chair. The sound slipped out of earshot. She looked up at me with those eyes that reminded me of her mother’s.

  She was young. But her face looked ancient, like somebody up in the spirit world had doubled her 28 years with suffering.

  “You got nothing to say about it? You always have something to say, how come you’re quiet today?”

  Everyone laughed. Bird Girl looked down again. I’d just lost her. Didn’t mean to get the group to turn on her. This pack of wolves often turn on each other—on themselves even. They don’t even know it. Time was up anyway.

  “You should have clocked him harder. I heard you can kill someone if you punch ‘em right. Like in that soft part, right above the nose” Jeffrey piped in. He pointed to the third eye—that one place to get the white man down.

  “Let’s wrap it up here. Anyone got anything else they wanna add?”

  They were all quiet. Bird Girl had gone back to scraping the chair with her nails. We stood up and the sound stopped. We gathered round and held each other by the hand.

  “God, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

  Everyone hugged and then it was over. Gary, a big bear of a guy, came over, grabbed me by the arm, and pulled me to him. He’d been doing this after every meeting for six months now.

  “Thanks, man.”

  “You good?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, I’m OK. You know. One day at a time.”

  “Uh huh. Yeah.”

  I pulled away, looked around and Bird Girl was gone. After group, there’s an hour of quiet time alone. People go off and write, they walk outside, they read a book, they talk, play a game of cards. I like to call this “center time.” It’s a moment for them to figure out who they are. For most, this is the hardest time. Growing up on the res, all they have is time and they spend their energy trying to kill it with booze, with sex, dope, and anything else they can find. Now that they were in rehab, they had to learn to figure out who they were all over again. Like a kid learning to walk. With the booze gone, everything’s got an edge. Like someone turned up all the lights real bright and is shining them in your face. After a while, you wanna look away: you wanna find that shield again, something to take the edge off.

  I remember thinking that I should have gone to find my Bird Girl, to talk to her, and see if she was OK, but I didn’t. It’s funny to think about the way we make decisions. One moment, I’m standing in the dark, hand reaching. Moon’s out, a full moon, all round and pregnant. I like to imagine that moment right before everything changes; it reminds me I’m alive. But then I don’t move like that night with Felicia. I stayed still in the dark, feet buried in the snowdrift, I looked, and then it happened. This is what it all comes down to. Choosing to move or standing still.

  The rehab center had a stench. Always did. A cross between chlorine and urine. Not quite urine, but an afterthought of dirty bathrooms. Sometimes I slip back into the past, to escape. The past is my glass pane, it’s my booze, it’s what keeps me off balance. I slip into it sometimes, or just plain fall in it.

  It’s like the day Jessie that new girl, came into group last winter with her big belly. She was ready to pop. And I remembered my wife, Felicia. The way she looked the day I left. Everything they say about pregnant women shining like a brand new fruit was true about Felicia. There was this light that came from deep inside her. If I took her in the dark with me she’d lead the way. Felicia’s face was smooth, so young, so full of the life in her belly. Two babies.

  Sometimes I get stuck on that day, that very last day before I left. It’s not even a day, it’s a moment. A static picture, motionless. But I can hear everything. I remember the breeze. Days had gotten warmer by then; it was an early spring day in the camp. We were all hungry as fuck. The Feds had cut off our food supplies. It was up to the warriors to get the people some food. This is what I told her. I remember standing there; she was scared. She looked real scared and I told her not to worry.

  “If they catch me, they got nothing on me,” I told her. “They got nothing.”

  She was holding her belly, placed her hand on the top of the mound knowing she needed to protect them. Her hair was long, real long having grown so much during the pregnancy. She had it pulled back in a twist, to keep it off her neck. And I remember her glistening face and the wind brushing up against her hair. In her eyes, her deep black, piercing eyes, I saw the fear, but more than that, I saw her strength. She knew she had to be strong for the babies. And then I was gone.

  The problem with the past is that it keeps me from moving forward, like a giant rock tied up around my ankles. Sometimes I want to cut it loose, but the rock is the only thing that keeps me connected to gravity: it’s the only thing that keeps me standing. If I get rid of it, what will I have left?

  I like to keep to myself. I don’t mingle much. Ain’t no point in it. No point in creating more rocks to tie around myself. I like my work. I try to help. Try to make a difference. In the end, it’s not for me to judge how well I did down here. One day, I’ll leave this sad, fucking place, and Tunkašila will judge how much I helped, how much I didn’t.

  There is so much space around me now. Don’t have too many friends. I like to think I have more friends than enemies. On a good day, I’d say that’s true. And then sometimes, everything just crashes, and I wonder if I’ve done anything to help my people. But like I said, it’s not for me to judge.

  But now Maya’s dead and I’ve got two cops in my house. I keep saying this in my head over and over again. Bird Girl’s dead. I try to stir, but my body is slow. Bird Girl’s dead. Funny how the body protects itself from the mind, coils on itself like a snake under attack so the mind can’t get to it with its poison. All I can think of is the sound of Maya’s fingernails scraping that old chair. I’m stuck
on the smallest detail, on the smallest piece of life.

  “How did she die?” I hear myself asking the cops. What am I going to do with that information? Why am I asking this?

  “We’re not sure yet. The counselor on duty just found her an hour ago in the bathroom. She’d been drinking.”

  Everything is moving really fast in my head now. Like I just got thrown into the eye of the storm. My mind begins to leak its poison into my body. Should have gone to find her after group. I should have gone.

  Outside, I hear the wind. A nasty wind is coming from the West. I didn’t move and now she’s dead. I pull on my old jacket and slip on some shoes. Sandals I use in the house. I can’t think straight.

  The goons and I ride in the dark. On the horizon, the sun’s peeking, getting ready to do its show. Ain’t nothing left to shine on in this res. Reminds me of the shows my grandfather used to do for the tourists. Made them feel like they were a part of a myth or something. The old west with the good Indian. The tamed Indian, the broken tiger in the zoo.

  I don’t talk to the cops. And when they speak, I keep it simple. Words make me fall into their traps. They like to drag out things you say to them, stupid things about the weather and shit like that, so they can use it against you. Like the time my friend Jimmy told a cop he didn’t like the rain. Made him feel sad. I knew that about him too. He told me about it one day. Anyway, he told the cops in passing about not liking the rain. After they took him in, they’d put him outside every time it rained. It was shit like that bad cops liked to remember. Some say that’s what makes a good cop. Someone who can use you against yourself. Like I said, the worse kind of traps are your own.

  The cops say nothing. Must be tired or something because they usually like to talk. But these leave me alone. When we get to the station, they take me to this empty room and the same two cops ask me a bunch of questions. The whole time they’re asking me questions, I keep thinking how strange they’re making such a fuss over one of us being dead. I put both feet down on the ground. Keep myself grounded with mother earth. I try to remember that I know the way. To remind myself not to get lost.