The Feec

Several of my cousins lean up against the house, taking long drags
from the pack of Marlboros we share. We have always been this way
—addicted and generous. A pow wow tape plays from inside the open
garage where two old uncles are thinking to themselves in the safety
of its shadows. Our aunties are in the kitchen, preparing the boiled meat
and chokecherry soup and laughing about old jokes they still hang onto
because these things are a matter of survival. Outside, we ask about
who was driving around with who last night, where so-and-so got beat
up, whose girlfriend left him for someone else. (But she’ll go back to
him, we all think to ourselves.) Aunties carry the full pots and pans to the
picnic table, an uncle prays over our food in Assiniboine. We all want to
forget that we don’t understand this language, we spend lots of time
trying to forget in different ways. No one notices that the wild turnips
are still simmering in a pot on the stove.