Sisters of the Lost Nation

We all reach for something… Sometimes what we long for is so out of reach that we get stuck or lost in our pursuit of it. The point is not to lose sight of what you already have because if you try too hard for things above you, you might lose sight of everything that’s important.

What am I supposed to do? Listen, Anna, we all try to get noticed. All the time. Everywhere. That’s lige. Especially for people like us. If the others, don’t notice us, we disappear.

Never feel guilty for being where you belong.

Never feel guilty for being being where you belong.

Let one truth take precedence over other truths. Missy is a drug addict who was at the hotel and went missing. All those things are true, yet everyone says she’s an addict like that one fact is all that matters. Like it’s her own fault she’s missing.

Hot fury flared within Anna. “Why do we bother?” she said. “Why do we try to fit in when we can just take care of ourselves?” “It’s not about fitting in, it’s about finding balance. Rattlesnakes and field mice. Owls and rabbits. Alligators and deer. They’re predator and prey, yet they share the same ground. Mind you that the people in town aren’t predators and that we on the reservation aren’t prey. You’d think we’d be able to share the same ground. You’d think it’d be easy.

She said Frog eximplified transformation. He entered life in one form and left it in another. From egg to tadpole, to tadpole with legs, to amphibian with tail, to tailless frog, he was never the same. He began life in water, only emerging once he was his true self. He symbolized change, rebirth, and renewal, and his spirit could bring rain. Anna stared down at the ill-fated frog. The reservation was transforming…. And yet the very symbol of change had become a victim of it. The absurdity didn’t escape her.

If a boy escaped the fire with the basket, or if a girl fled the flames with the bow, then the tribe would know the child’s true nature, and the child would be honored for being a perfect and unique balance of male and female, neither one nor the other, but something more—a third gender, one thought to possess two spirits instead of one. The child, it was believed, would grow to be the tribe’s best protector, teacher, healer, provider, and caregiver. The child would forever be respected and revered.” Gran’s hands fell into her lap. “But that was long ago.

The head has the same eyes as the fish, beady and unblinking, only they’re cloudy and flat, sunken deep into its skull. Its hair grows wild, tangled with beetles, twigs, and burs, and it trails the head like a tail. The flesh itself is rotten and foul, dead as the Heaven and Hell tree, once the tallest old oak on the reservation—its branches stretching for the stars, its roots reaching for the abyss below—and as ragged around its missing neck as the hem of my jeans.” The chain he wore on his wallet rattled as he lifted a foot over the fire, showing off the frayed cuff of his pant leg, streaked with mud. “The mouth”—he paused, clenching his jaw to steel himself—“that’s the worst part of it. It can stretch as wide as it wants . . . wide enough to suck you between its wormy lips.” She thought of the catfish again, their mouths gaping and wide, flanked by whiskers that had curled and turned black after her father had hacked off the fish heads and tossed them into the fire he’d stoked to cook the fish fillets. “It’s got a tongue of old leather and teeth like shattered glass, jagged and sharp.