Willow

He reveals, by a cell phone text, that our great-grandmother was a full blooded Mohawk from the St. Regis tribe. He is cavalier, witty—responding to my playful fault-finding of his recent hunting trip. This older brother of mine with his facial hair, his silence, his love of the outdoors. We have looked at each other askance these many years, as I ran down that lilting road in my high heels and hope, turning my back on him, and on the rest of them in that house settled quietly at the dip in the road—pulled instead toward the music of a faraway city. He ignored me, too, as I ran away, walking off into the woods with his gun, with his bow and arrow. He doesn’t like that I tell stories, won’t like that I am telling this. He is a Silent Man whom I suspect the Mohawks would have a name for, but since I do not know that name, do not know that language, the great-granddaughter of the Mohawk woman will communicate across the gulf of human silence and an impervious technology...

Y have u never told me this b4?? I text him back.

In the closet, I pull down the photo albums that I have meticulously maintained, with the dates and locations written in black magic marker along the spine. I am looking for the year my grandfather died—1992—and the obituary I remember keeping there. I want to find the Mohawk woman’s name, the mother of my French Canadian grandfather... Many mornings, I sat beside him on the tiny wooden stool in the barn, listening as the milky liquid he manipulated from the belly of a cow sprayed forcefully against the side of a dented tin pail. The cow flicking its long tail, the both of them peaceful. But when one of his animals got sick or hurt, my grandfather would dare Jesus Christ to come down from the heavens and duke it out with him in that barn. Esti-Tabernac! he’d swear. Merde! And I would cower in a corner, never afraid of him, but of the Son of God who I was sure would appear in that old barn to smite this fierce man. And me, too, for loving him… And now I wonder if it was his Mohawk mother’s blood that raged?

I feel that same fierceness sometimes…

I find the obit, tucked in the back of an album of smiling photos of me in an ancient Upstate town. My grandfather’s name is bolded along the top of the newspaper clipping. I search through the quiet print and find her there, alongside her husband. Her name is Willow... Willow of the St. Regis Mohawk tribe. But that is all I know—and what is in a name other than a superficial understanding of what it means? I think it was Marx who said that.

I have worn many names, and all of them have tugged a bit through the shoulders, pulled a little at the sleeve. My father’s name, my step-father’s name, and then a husband. In my closet is a fire-proof box that contains the papers that gave those men the right to name me, to hide my story deep within the pages of their own. Like Willow got named, and her story concealed…

But I am Rachel and my history will not be erased by a silent tongue, by a tawny piece of paper in a fire-proof box. I am the daughter of Ann; the granddaughter of Marjorie and Mary; the great-granddaughter of Maude and Willow. This French Canadian stew with a fearless dash of Mohawk. This great-granddaughter of the St. Regis tribe, with her Westchester, her degree. The impassioned sister of the Silent Man. Beware my fiery tongue, beware my stories…
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