Archive for the ‘Kat Beyer’ Category
Something to Get Used To
Monday, November 24th, 2008
Jenny first found out on that night deep at the bottom of October.
She came home from trick-or-treating early. Her parents were skipping back and forth between bad Halloween movies, laughing, taking turns when the doorbell rang. Jenny was coming down the hall with a glass of milk when she heard her mother talking to a solitary kid.
“Trick,” the kid said, in a voice too old for somebody so small, and Jenny dropped the glass to get to her mom.
On the doorstep the kid stood smiling, while her mother’s head and torso disappeared into the bag in his hands.
Over his head she could see Mrs. Stevens from up the street, standing by the gate with five kids who were waiting their turn. She watched herself think, “this is like so embarrassing,” while she stopped herself from screaming.
She never knew how she knew what to do: raise her hands, snap them downwards, shout the word she didn’t know at the top of her lungs, then turn and race to grab the hall mirror off its hook. She hobbled back with it while the kid stared at her and her mother’s legs kicked over the top of his bag. She braced it against the door and yelled out the next strange word that would force him to look at himself.
He looked. She never saw what looked back at him, but it was enough, apparently. He exploded in a shower of autumn leaves and moldy Tootsie Rolls. Her mother sprawled across the steps with the bag on her head. She pulled it off and blinked.
The kids at the gate stared. Mrs. Stevens stepped from behind them, gently placing on hand on each head and saying, “forget,” in a voice that carried in the suddenly quiet air.
“Pretty good,” she said. “Although I always carry a hand mirror. Cheaper,” she added, nodding towards the hall mirror. Looking down, Jenny saw it was cracked clean across.
They both looked at her mother, who stared at Jenny.
“You should burn that bag,” said Mrs. Stevens.
“OK,” said her mother, dropping it. She added, “my mother-in-law tried to tell me about this.”
“That’s OK. Nobody ever believes it. Then they hit adolescence, and—boom! She can come study with me, if you want. In exchange for yard work or something.”
“As long as she doesn’t miss soccer practice,” said her mother.
“We can work around that,” said Mrs. Stevens.
Jenny sat down on the step. In the hall she could still see the shattered glass and milk on the floor.
“This will take getting used to,” she thought.
A Change in Government
Monday, November 10th, 2008
There was a little stir among the people in the longhouse when Seven Fights came in; “they didn’t expect you,” whispered her brother with approval. As if propelled by the murmuring air, a solarbot swished over to her and blinked its one eye suspiciously, then revolved and shot upward and away into the blackened roof beams.
“Did that thing just moon me?” She whispered back.
“It’s decided you’re safe.” He chuckled. “The council’s about to find out different.”
He led her to a place against the southern wall, where the other speakers waited. Someone passed a plate full of corn scones, croissants, sesame balls, and five other kinds of snacks she couldn’t name. A French delegation was speaking, so she had to keep her eyes and ears on the Onandaga translator.
“White guys are all the same,” she heard someone mutter behind her. “The only way to keep a treaty with them is to make sure you have enough ammunition.”
“And vaccine,” somebody whispered back at him. An old woman turned her head, slowly, and they both went quiet.
After the French were finished, the Speaker slammed his staff down and looked at her, and she realized with a shock that that was all the introduction she was going to get. She stood up and walked to the center of the dirt floor.
“Grandmothers and grandfathers,” she began, facing the elders sitting against the East wall, her throat dry. “Guests of the Seventeen Nations,” she added, turning to the delegations from Paris, Beijing, Cairo, and Harare. “Fellow sachems of the Haudenosaunee—” she went on, before her voice was drowned in the roar of surprise that had accompanied the words “fellow sachems.” They hadn’t heard, then. She waited until they fell silent.
“I come before you as the newly chosen Sachem of the United Tribes of the Southwestern Deserts. Among my people, it has always been considered strange that the women of the League choose the leaders but are not the leaders. Therefore they have sent me, in token of this time of change.”
This time the roar in the longhouse seemed to take on a variety of textures—the roughness of anger, the high pitch of delight, all mixed together. She stood still, looking straight into the eyes of one grandmother who sat against the wall, gazing at her and smiling faintly. “This is how it starts,” she thought.