A calm and normal heart, p.1
A Calm and Normal Heart, page 1
A CALM
& NORMAL
HEART
CHELSEA
T. HICKS
Stroies
AN UNNAMED PRESS BOOK
Copyright © 2022 by Chelsea T. Hicks
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to info@unnamedpress.com. Published in North America by the Unnamed Press.
www.unnamedpress.com
Unnamed Press, and the colophon, are registered trademarks of Unnamed Media LLC.
Hardcover ISBN: 9781951213541
eISBN: 9781951213558
Library of Congress catalog data available upon request.
An earlier version of the story “A Fresh Start,” formerly called “A Fresh Start Ruined,” first appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern (2020); as well as the story “Brother,” formerly called “Lawton,” which first appeared in Yellow Medicine Review (2018).
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Designed and typeset by Jaya Nicely
Manufactured in the United States of America by McNaughton & Gunn
Distributed by Publishers Group West
First Edition
na^tse wacpe wida, howaiki shche?
dada^ ozhu hlok’a thikaxa pe
tsexope a^oxda cka katho^ tsexope eko^ mi^kshe
howaiki shki bre tsi wida paxe na^
ithape ena^ kako^ dada^ zani doda hu da apa
kako^da wathusho^da^
a^zhi na^tse wacpe
howaiki etsi dxa^ atsi hi^e?
my functional heart, where are you?
what turned you into an empty glass
is it that I love the spiders & am like one
wherever I go making my house
I have only to wait & all things come to me
& therein break their necks
but a calm & normal heart
where does that come from?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
TSEXOPE
A FRESH START
BY ALCATRAZ
SUPERDRUNK
BROTHER
A SMALL URGE
WETS’A
MY KIND OF WOMAN
THE WIFE
FULL TILT
HOUSE OF RGB
THE GOOD MEDICINE OF THE LIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Wazhazhe people are currently revitalizing our language, which is called Wazhazhe ie. Due to limited recognition of Indigenous characters in fonts, I use Latinized spellings rather than the Wazhazhe ie orthography created by Herman “Mogri” Lookout. This orthography, depicted on the cover of the book as well as in chapter titles, is the written language of Wazhazhe ie, which translates literally as “Osage talk.” As Wazhazhe elder Myron Red Eagle once told me, spellings in our language may vary from person to person. I have reflected that quality of the living language in my usages within these stories. I hope my inclusion of the language will support Wazhazhe ie, and the practice of including Indigenous languages broadly in literature.
—Chelsea T. Hicks
TSEXOPE
One time between a breakup and a shackup, I went home for a visit. I had most of my stuff in my car but I didn’t really want to move into my aunt’s place, so I went to the laundry-mat to procrastinate. I parked right across the street from the yellow house where my iko used to live all the times she divorced my grandfather. An old man was traveling down the street, headed west via lawn mower, and an orange tabby cat greeted me as I roamed in and started up the laundry. There was no one else around. I sat in the gentle breeze from the open windows and listened to the grasshoppers sing on the long grass of the hill behind the building as I opened an old newspaper. Inside was an article dated from two summers ago, telling about the movie.
The movie went without introduction among Wazhazhe people, as it was telling one of our stories at the hand of a big-name director with a cast of equally famous celebrities. They were filming the story of how I^shdaxi^ spouses of my ancestors had murdered them with the plan of inheriting our oil money. This had happened to many of our ancestors, and the film was sending a shock wave through the tribe, as we did not often talk openly about old traumas. At the end of the article, there was a call for actors, with audition information. Like most Wazhazhe people living in town, I’d auditioned, but I was not one of the few who made it.
As I folded the paper up, an older woman emerged from the laundrymat’s office. She was I^shdaxi^, in cargo shorts.
She addressed me. “Are you with the film?”
“Hello. No,” I said. “Are you? I thought the film had wrapped.”
She shrugged. “I heard something was happening tonight. At the museum.” As she spoke, she eyed my blue Mustang parked outside. She didn’t bother to answer my question, but she kept standing there, so I told her whose relative I was. She didn’t seem to know the names but waddled off like an old turtle anyhow, satisfied with this barest of info. I changed my laundry over, thinking of her I^shdaxi^ ancestors and the courthouse they’d built to try themselves for their own murders, never referring to our ancestors as people but always only as the Indian. I thought about going up there to roll a cigarette and stare at the downtown.
My phone buzzed.
Are you going to the museum thing? Buh you
didn’t tell me you were home.
I’d been in town all of thirty minutes and my whereabouts were known and circulating. The laundrymat woman had probably gotten on Facebook and started spreading gossip out of boredom. Or not. I mean, what was there to report? Woman with stuff in her car arrives in town? There was nothing they could do but speculate, as I had kept to myself and pretty much stayed out of trouble. I went outside to the curb and sat while I rolled a cigarette from tobacco and other plants I kept in my pocket. The cool wind was nice, not strong enough to challenge my rolling.
An old friend passed by in a teal Nissan but didn’t see me. It was the turn of the hour, nearing dusk. Cars crisscrossed intersections in a scramble. Up the hill, the courthouse towered over it all like a throne blocking the sun. I stared at it, imagining my great-grandmother’s trial, how each one of her witnesses mysteriously disappeared and never returned. It was my opinion that ghosts lounged alongside the resident owls in the eaves of the building. The tobacco made me feel like I could bear to go up there and try to talk to her spirit, but I had been so tired, almost too tired to move. I was strangely comforted by my laundry tumbling in thumps behind my back.
More texts came in on my phone—something really was going on at the museum—and people wanted me to respond or commit to meeting up. I watched as cars headed up the hill, past the courthouse. It was the first tribal museum in the country, and we were proud of it. Maybe I could manage seeing all those people in their foldout chairs on the lawn for whatever was happening. Last time I’d gone up there, I’d seen some moccasins sculpted in clay. I wanted to have the pleasure of seeing them again. I got up and just started walking, leaving my laundry behind as I headed toward Grandview. With each step, the courthouse loomed. Made of copper turned green, with Corinthian columns, it was a symbol of the assimilation forced and facilitated by our oil wealth, the United States government, and the boarding school little more than a stone’s throw away. My iko had attended that school and slept handcuffed to her bed by the nuns so she couldn’t run away. That was the reason I barely spoke my language and now studied it.
Through the interconnected parking lots, I took the least visible route, behind the chief’s office toward the museum’s long lawn. I saw a screen set up, as large as a movie theater’s, and beyond the white square of fabric, a crowd of Wazhazhe people in powwow chairs. This wasn’t an art thing, but a movie, a sort of drive-in without cars. I saw one of the friends who’d been texting. Under his flat-brim, he had severe bone structure and a slim figure. He watched me.
I went over to him, with his black jean jacket and his hat reading PROTECTOR. He was Normcore Native Cool. Just the sight of him almost made me laugh, thinking of the old pickup line I couldn’t help but notice you noticing me…
“Hawe,” he said. “Tha^tsie.”
“Hawe da^he. Atsipe.” I motioned around to everyone there.
“Da^he. Ma^ze ie owado^e ada^ka kaxe.” He nodded at the big screen.
“Hi^tse thuza ma^thi^. Do^pa dada^ othatse thaishe?”
“Dada^ a^thatse da^kadxai?”
“Are you asking me to dinner?” I said. We smiled at my mistake of switching to English, and our ability to understand each other.
“So are you in the film or what?” he said.
“No,” I said. “Everyone keeps asking.”
“They’re wondering why you’re here.”
“Oh,” I said, like I didn’t already know. I never knew what to say to him.
“So what brings you back this time?”
“A job.” To myself, I added that I was simply in need of one. Plus, shelter. I also reminded myself it was all right to be private about my own business. I just didn’t like people knowing things about me. A black wolf spider crawled onto my moccasin. We both noticed it and intuited the message: I was on my own, and strong enough to be living my life that way.
He motioned for me to sit beside him.
“Ha^ko w ashchila tha^she?” he said.
I sat. “What am I thinking about?” I wasn’t sure I understood.
“Howe.” He nodded yes.
The things I thought most about were my dreams, which were of walking in dried creek beds of carved red clay called the Paths of Sorrow. I had repeating dreams of walking red earth with school children toward wooden staircases like the ones used as queues for old coasters.
“Ipaho^ ma^zhi.” I don’t know.
He searched my face, wanting to know more, I guess, but I didn’t look back at him. My old best friend walked by. I almost said her last name. Cygne, which means swan. She’d become a devout Christian, and I wasn’t in the mood to be evangelized. She wore her hair gelled in crispy black curls, or strands processed straight, depending on the day and her mood. Curly today, which contrasted with her eyes sunk in liner and her hands clutching a book.
I stood. “I got laundry going down there,” I said, and indicated the bottom of the hill.
“Want company?” my friend asked from under his flat-brim.
“You’ll miss the movie.”
“Yeah, but I’ve missed you.”
“Wow.” I laughed. “Eshe.” I had not been expecting that. I felt myself getting nervous as we went down the hill and made our way to the laundrymat. My mind stayed blank, and I focused on minute details to stay calm, twigs and leaves crushed into the corners of the concrete steps, and the tattoo on his forearm. I wondered if the woman would put out more gossip, or if this visiting was hugely uneventful, and I was being absurd from too much time spent alone. The laundrymat let off steam through vents, and I anticipated the clothes warming the tips of our fingers.
“I worry about you,” he said.
“Why?” I said.
He nodded toward my car and held the door for me. “Doesn’t seem like you’ll ever come back. All that stuff in your car.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I kept to my silence.
He took his phone out and showed me a picture of a piece of paper. “This is what we’re doing out here,” he said. “See what you think.”
Thi^kshe Kshe Dxa^ Tse The Ke Pa The She Ka E The apa/apai
I imagined myself Thi^kshe SITTING / ROUND SINGULAR ANIMATE OR INANIMATE in the middle of my rug back in the home of my ina in Kawazhi Dawa^ I imagined myself Kshe LYING / LONG SINGULAR ANIMATE OR INANIMATE ENTITY on my bed in a hoodie, alone for once, headphones in. I imagined myself Dxa^ STANDING SINGULAR ANIMATE ENTITY in a clean room, wherever it was, drinking a smoothie after vacuuming. I imagined myself Tse STANDING SINGULAR INANIMATE ENTITY because I had stood there so long I had become a lamp, a dead tree, a bolt of metal I became in my imagining The MOVING SINGULAR ANIMATE ENTITY and I left my room, or my apartment, or my house, and went to Bartlesville Wal-Mart, where there were Ke SCATTERED PLURAL INANIMATE ENTITIES many, many plastic objects being ogled purchased possessed by Pa PLURAL ANIMATE ENTITIES, which created incredible yearly waste hoarding in The THIS where She THAT was making Ka THESE, THIS, THIS ONE into E THAT ONE, THAT PERSON, SHE/HER, HE/HIM, THOSE PERSONS, THIS (PRAGMATICALLY OBVIOUS) PERSON OR THINGS, THE FOREGOING, SHE HERSELF, HE HIMSELF, THEY THEMSELVES all those who were buying littering dying and in this imagining I questioned, “And why could I not be The apa/apai OVER THERE APART and yet become Nika Thali^ A GOOD MAN” and to myself I replied, “Well, I am interdependent here and she who I see as Wak’o^ Thali^ Wida A GOOD WOMAN WHO IS MINE is not at that location at this time.”
“What is this?” I finally said, after I’d read the whole thing. Judging by the last line, I thought maybe he was flirting. He had finished folding my laundry. It was all done. I began to apologize, but he shrugged, and I laughed. “I love it,” I said, handing him back his phone.
“Yeah,” he said, showing his dimples. Our hands touched when I returned his phone.
I stood. “Want to go to Tulsa?” I said. I didn’t know what I was saying, but the idea seized me and I seized it back. “Real quick,” I added, absurdly. “We could go to The Colony and listen to a show. There’s a Cherokee-language band playing there tonight, I think.”
He stood, immediately ready, and I quickly turned away to hide the smile on my face. We went outside and while I made space in my car, I thought of my life back in Los Angeles. I imagined dancing at La Cita, where the Indigenous motherfuckers there, as an ex had called them, didn’t differentiate between Mexican and Native, and we didn’t have to divide ourselves like cold slices of butter the way we did here. I felt the need to enact some type of violence. I started the engine.
“About what you wrote,” I began, not knowing what exactly I was going to say. “There’s so many people in the world, and we all speak English. I don’t want to be limited to the people here, or to our tribe. I don’t think people have to be with someone in the tribe, or even with another Native, for that reason. If that’s what you meant by showing me the poem thing.”
“Controversial,” he said. “Some women are good at getting men.”
“What?” I was confused. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I mean, maybe you’re just saying that to be a tease. Or you’re saying it because you do want to be with someone in the tribe, and I’m your only viable option, and you’re baiting me.”
I laughed. How had we gotten here? This was the longest conversation we’d ever had. His out-loud analysis was good, but he hadn’t pegged me. I wondered if I regretted this outing.
“Maybe we ought to go back to that film,” I said.
“I’m in it,” he said.
“Oh, wow. Well, I’m sorry I didn’t ask. Maybe we should go back, if you want to.”
“No,” he said, and I could hear joy in his voice. I wished I could see him. From the way his voice traveled, I could tell he was looking at me, but my seat was farther forward than his so I couldn’t even catch him in my peripherals. He was tall, probably as tall as I would be if I were a man. I focused on taking the curves in the road smoothly.
“Do you roll cigarettes?” I asked. “There’s some tobacco in the glove box.”
He laughed. “You smoke? Na^niopazhi. Cowboy killers.” But he opened it and he rolled. “You could get some man out there in L.A.,” he continued, picking back up on the topic I now wanted to avoid. I had spoken bluntly like that to intimidate him, but he was more comfortable than I was, and he had easily called my bluff. He was still going, getting bolder with each word.
“Not that there are any Wazhazhe men for you. But our men, aren’t they the ones that need you? And more generally, every man wants to be needed. However, a woman that needs her man too much will become unhappy. It’s peo a^katha, when a woman sees that a man knows how to do something and she does, too. You have that.”
“Philosopher?” I said, not exactly following him, but meaning to tease anyway. He handed me the cigarette and lit it. It was nice having his hand near my mouth, and I put on Tears for Fears in my CD player and thought of my life in SF, where the DJs and the drag queen cover bands had everyone dancing through the club like tumbleweeds. My date and I touching each other’s backs as we danced, and me never knowing if there would be a bottle of whiskey or a gun or nothing tucked into the back of their jeans under the hem of a silky shirt.
“So you’re a city girl,” he said when the song ended. “You like Tulsa, huh?”
“Well. You want to ride around drinking in a truck on the back roads? Or what?”
He shrugged. “You don’t have to drink.”
“I get really bored when I don’t drink,” I said.
“You could bead. Watch some TV. But… Diet Coke and whiskey it is,” he said. I let him choose his own music next, and we listened to the Rolling Stones. I skipped “Under My Thumb” but otherwise let the whole album play until we got downtown. There was no show at The Colony, so we went to Mercury Lounge. We listened to Americana under a blue neon sign.
BIG
BAD
LUV
“I guess this is boring, too,” I said after a couple of songs.
He laughed. “Everyone here is ugly,” he said.
“You’re ugly,” I said.
“Am not.”
We laughed. I tried to play footsie with him but my foot got caught on the metal post under the table, and I accidentally kicked him. We play-kicked each other under the table. Hooking up with him was starting to seem like a good idea.
