I have always looked up to my sister Christine. When I was younger, she was the one I observed and learned from. She did crazy stunts that I would never dare to do. As we grew older together, we became closer. Aunt Ida, our mother, had never told us what her life was like. Of course the question of who our father was came up numerous times, but she always avoided the question. It was hard to believe that we had the same parents because we looked so much alike. Christine and I were inseparable, that is until Dayton came along. I started doing everything with Dayton, and leaving out Christine a little more at a time. I could tell she was jealous, seeing me pick Dayton over her, but I did nothing about it. He wasn’t from around here, he was new and interesting, but I liked him. He didn’t know our language or our background, but I didn’t mind. Sometimes I would catch him looking at Christine in a funny way. I wasn’t sure what he was seeing or looking for. I didn’t know if there was anything between them, and I really didn’t want to. Aunt Ida was always proud of me being a good student, but it was the other way around with Christine. Teachers never wanted to put up with her. Christine and I would talk our language with Aunt Ida, but otherwise we would proudly speak English with each other. Christine had big dreams for me, but the rodeo was my favorite thing. All over eastern Montana I was known. Aunt Ida and Christine never came to watch, only wished me good luck and waved good bye. I would have loved for them to have came and watched me just once. I wanted to go big, to be the best, so I knew I had to start going to the bigger rodeos. When the Cheyenne and Calgary rodeos came around, Aunt Ida said I couldn’t. She never minded me rodeoing at all before until I asked if I could go to those. Just like Christine wanted, Aunt Ida probably wanted more from me to than to grow up and be a beet-up and broken-down cowboy. I always kept our traditional clothing for the powwows and I danced in many of them. One night was different from the rest though. While I was in the circle, dancing with friends, relatives, and neighbors, Aunt Ida came and joined. Everyone watched in amazement and she wound around the fire, moving with the music. That was the first and only night of my life that I had seen her dance. Everyone on the reservation thought of me kind of like the Indian JFK. When he was assassinated, Dayton and I took it hard. I looked up to him with respect. Everything that he had done for our country, saving us from the Cuban Missile Crisis and this is how the guy repaid him? It was on every radio station. Everyone talked about him for months. When I was home and not with Dayton, which was hardly ever, Christine told me all about her life and her boyfriends. She told me where they all went, and what they did, all the drama, and everything. Yeah, she got around enough, but she’s my sister and I still liked hearing about her life, being a part of it, and giving her advice. One day however, her boyfriend Diamond came up to me and told me how she yelled at Dayton and told him to get off the reservation. How he didn’t belong here in the first place. I was pissed. I saw her a couple weeks later at the grocery store and tried to avoid here. She said something to me, but I just blocked her out.
I told her I knew what she said to Dayton, all the nasty stuff that came out of her mouth. All she thought was that I was taking his side. Well for what she told him why shouldn’t I? Dayton didn’t tell me about the argument anyway. Her boyfriend did.
“Maybe if you stopped running around with all your redneck white boyfriends you’d care about what was happening in this world!” I know it sounded harsh, and the look in my eye tore her apart, but she should never have said it. That’s the last thing I said to her before I walked away.
About a month later, Christine drove next to me and told me to hop in. She told me that I should enlist for the army. Go serve my country. I didn’t want to, and I knew she wouldn’t understand. Why should I have to go fight someone else’s army? That was all I kept asking myself.
Then suddenly she slammed on the brakes and when we were stopped she turned towards me and slapped me straight across the face. That slap separated us as I got out of the vehicle and walked the opposite direction.
I don’t know what happened to Dayton one day but he became serious about me joining the army. It’s all I heard for a long time so I decided no matter how much I didn’t want to, I would have to. So Dayton and I left the reservation for a few weeks so I could enlist. We didn’t tell anyone we were leaving or where we were going.
I returned the night of the Mission Labor Day Bazaar. No one on the reservation ever misses it. I opened the door to my old high school cafeteria and the scent of all the food mixed into my nostrils. All of the people fell silent as I spotted Aunt Ida and walked down the rows of tables towards her. I placed the brown envelope I had brought back with me from my trip in front of her. It contained my braid that I had chopped off to go into the army. Her eyes glistened with water, and she knew that I had to finally leave her.