#3 The Reservation

We are celebrating. I have retired from pageants. My decision, I think at the time, but in retrospect, I think my mom knew two of the judges were skeevy and that there was something inherently not cool about putting a child in a green lamé bikini.

I feel like this all happens on a Saturday. 

Pancakes! Mama is going to make pancakes. I am twirling around the kitchen listening to her laugh when there is a groan, a scream, and a series of loud clatters. And blood, so much blood. Pancake batter and blood.

I watch my mom crawl from the kitchen to the bathroom, frozen before I run for my dad. 'Oh, sh*t' he gasps, looking at her in agony. 

'She fell out. Jim...she fell out.'  She is inconsolable. They go to the hospital. I don't remember if I went with them. I was only 4, so I must have, right?

Years later, it will hit me full on how disturbing it is to live in a subdivision named after a place where people were herded like cattle to their deaths, if Velma Grace's family all but disappeared and that is why we never talk about stoic profiles and fry bread. I wonder if we conjured the nightmare years accidentally by living on a street called Warpath. 

The next months are a blur. We move again, I start life as a cheerleading mascot, Mama seems to get out is bed only on even days.  She sometimes forgets I am with her at places, rushing back in panics of apology and terror.  I learn to make collect calls, to hide quarters in the tongue of my shoes, to fake bravado when strangers ask if I am okay. 

Then there are the long drives to New Orleans for doctors' visits and surgeries. Another house is found, purchased, another baby made.