Marcia Crosby

alone? When is it alright to tell my family, my community? I was
raped over and over, over and over.

Say fondled. No...abused. No...touched. No, Not raped. Don’t
say the word, he made you pancakes in the momning. He made you
pancakes and he was so quiet when he touched me. Not a word, not
a threat, not a sound, just heavy breathing and grunting and touch-
ing. And silence. I am so quiet in this world. T will not be silenced.
I write now using a huge Webster’s dictionary like the one he used
to use for cross-word puzzles. Grandpa was so smart. he always
used that great big dictionary. he learned a lot at the residential
school.

When I wake up in the morning I sometimes think this is the day
to die. Death, inevitable when 1 think I am all alone in this world
with my pain and I wish somebody could fix it because I don’t know
how. Maybe that wish is like when I was a little girl and I used to
dream about saving all the poor dirty kids standing outside the bar
waiting for their parents. 1 wanted to take them home and bathe
them in the tub that you used to bath us in. I think about being clean
and being loved and I wish I could clean up the whole world with
that same gesture of love that we experienced in the morning in our
tub. Did you think you were washing away the night of abuse? Did
you think it would wash away the secret and your silence? I don’t
know grandma but my faith in the need and the ability to truly clean
the world up with a bath is an act of love that ignores life’s ugly
realities. This is not something I want to do. I want to love the way
you did but not in pretended ignorance. I want to love but not in
silence, I want to speak the night and speak your gesture of love. I
want to speak, to scream, to wail, and to cry out, yet, I need to
dance, to heal myself. I want to expose the night so we can have our
day.

When I write, I dance my words on the page. I speak sadness
with the joy of self-realization, of agency and self-identity. I am
whole even in my fractured life of so many worlds: the village, the
city, my colleagues, my children, and my family. Oh god I just want
to dance. I just want the world to flow out of me. I just want my joy
to be true. But it’s so rare so far away. let my joy be true. Let it last
a little longer next time. At times when I think life is pretty good for
me as an Indian woman like right now this moment as I speak to
you, I take the words, and dance them on the page. But then my

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