Indian Blood
When I was growing up
in Missouri,
many Americans
eagerly shared
their tales
of Indian blood
with me,
when they found out
I was Indian.
“I’m a quarter-Cherokee!”
I’d hear, or
“My grandma was part Cherokee”
(For some reason,
Cherokee was the most popular
tribe).
I never met an Apache.
In high-school
after a friend
saw me perform “East Indian” dance,
(we had to say
“East Indian”
to distinguish the dance
from “Indian”
in the less-than-politically correct
era.)
she said,
“I never knew
how Indian you were
until I saw you
dance.”
Years later,
when I lived
in Japan,
Hispanics
approached me
speaking Spanish.
(To the Japanese,
I was just gaijin).
When I studied
in France,
England,
no one believed
I was American.
One fellow student told me,
“I’ve met so many Americans,
you’re not at all like them.”
All I heard was,
“You’re very
European.”.
A few years later,
visitors from India
told me,
“You are not like
the other Indian Americans—
you are very
Indian.”
A few years
after that,
while in India,
I heard the same thing:
“She adjusts so easily!”
A few years
after that,
an American coworker
in St. Louis
told me,
“You’re born in America.
You’re American”
while a Fijian
coworker
of Indian descent
kept teasing me
for not
being married—
after all,
I’m Indian.
Last year
in India,
my cousin’s son
asked me,
“How does it feel
to be in India?
After all,
you have Indian blood.”
Recently,
I helped my father,
who runs his own lab,
at a community health fair
at the Hindu Temple.
While handling vials
of Indian blood,
some members of the community
expressed surprise
at my foray
into science (they didn’t know what
I do,
but knew it wasn’t
science,–and therefore,
wasn’t serious —)
I said quickly—
I do the paperwork,
that’s all.
One extremely wealthy
Indian physician,
who’s known me
since I was a little girl,
asked me,
after I told him I write,
but have nothing
published,
“But where is the income?”
Good question.
Aside from
a grand total
of four Indians
(of whom two
are relatives)
not one
single
Indian
has read my first novel.
All my readers
are American.
(Along with
an Englishwoman
and an Australian).
Indians seem
to not know how
to read my work—
after all,
it’s not published,
so is it really
any good?
The Indian blood
coursing through
my brain
produces
the imagery
on my page.
But non-Indians
feed me
most of my feedback.
I’ll leave it
to my Brazilian friend
to draw the final analysis
of my blood:
“You have Indian blood,
European experience,
and a Latin heart.”
And what do the Brazilians
do, when dealing with the complexities
in their country
that crumple all sense?
They go to the beach,
dance,
forget about it
for a while.
