The Final Rose

Chapter Twenty-Four: Home

I saw my mom's car before I saw her. She waited in the bus depot parking lot in her light blue minivan. It had only been the two of us for two decades, and she'd never had need to tow many things, but she'd gotten a good deal on the vehicle and it mostly ran okay. The driver side window was rolled down, and I could hear the nasal tone of a sportscaster calling a college football game. It reminded me that the temperatures would soon drop and the snow would follow as every living thing hunkered down for a long winter.

A representative from the show had shown up at my hotel room shortly after I'd woken up alone to drive me to the airport for my return flight to the United States. I'd been traveling all day, switching planes at numerous airports across the country before eventually arriving back in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I'd had to take a bus for the final leg of the trip. Only murders took the bus, but I didn't have much choice. There were no airports near the reservation.

My long shadow cast over my mom as I walked up to her car. Her mouth was scrunched and her brow furrowed in concentration as she worked through the crossword puzzle in the weekly newspaper. She never used a pen—only a pencil. She'd never had the confidence for something more permanent.

She looked up from her crossword puzzle. "You got tan," she remarked.

"We were outside a lot," I explained.

"Do you need help with your bags?"

"No, Nimaamaa. I'll get them."

There were questions in her eyes, but she knew me well enough not to press. I'd talk and tell her all that had happened when I was ready.

My mother's hometown, which had also become mine after my father's death, was one of the oldest towns in the state of Michigan. Her people, the Anishinaabe Ojibwe, had become the prominent residents of the region in the 18th century, displacing the previous Wendat, or Huron tribe. The area had historically been part of New France and then New Britain—or Canada as it's known today—until the region became part of the United States in the aftermath of the American Revolutionary War.

At the age of seven, my first impression of my mother's hometown was the same as when I'd returned as an adult to help out my mom after she'd broken her hip. Poverty. It was hard to believe that in the world's richest nation that such abject living conditions continued to exist.

The landscape was a bizarre cluster of pine and birch trees and the corrugated metal of modular homes. All of the residences in her little corner of the world were trailers plopped precariously on rows of cinderblocks or rotting particleboard foundation. The roads were paved, but driveways leading up to each home was a smooth dirt or gravel path. Blacktop was a luxury—and it was covered in ice and snow for a good portion of the year anyway. Dogs without collars roamed the streets. People grew vegetable gardens outside of their homes and hung up their clothes to dry in the sun. Modern amenities like satellite dishes stuck off the side of some of the nicer homes, but most did without.

The reservation school was the largest building in town—a big cinderblock construction that might have been mistaken for a prison if not for the lack of wire fence and all of the children milling around, even in summer. The school served free lunch for kids during summer vacation, and I remember spending afternoons playing basketball with my cousins and puking up my 2% milk if it got too hot out or if I played too rough.

We rode the short drive from the bus station to my mom's house in silence, save for the football game on the radio. My mom had bought our house with the money from my dad's life insurance policy. We'd been able to scrape by with assistance from her family who still lived in the area before eventually she'd had to find work at the checkout counter of the local grocery store. I'd stocked the shelves of the store when I was old enough to work. All of my earnings had gone directly into a bank account to make sure I would have enough money for college when the time came.