Excerpt
A Council of Dolls
Both my parents are tall, my father Lakota tall from South Dakota, my mother Dakota tall from North Dakota. Dad was in the Korean War, fought near a place called the Yalu River. Mama wrote the name down for me, along with the name of Dad's medals and his Marine unit. She said I should be proud of him, as if I wasn't. She said he was so tough, being an Indian from the Dakotas, that he could stand the cold better than most troops, and he wasn't too fussy to eat anything. No one thought he'd come home alive, but he did. His older brother died over there; the one Mama was supposed to marry.
The one she said should have been my father. She said it real quiet when she thought I was asleep. But I heard her. I wonder who I would be if my uncle had been my dad. Maybe I wouldn't be Sissy who dreams herself into songs, who spills her milk at dinner, who makes Mama so angry. I have a bunch of secret thoughts, and one of them is that I'm glad Dad is my father, even if it means I have to be Sissy and not the better version Mama wishes I'd be.
Dad lets me sit on his lap sometimes when he's reading, and now I can read along, but he used to let me pretend, when I was too little to figure out the words. He doesn't mind when I latch an arm around his neck and rest on him like he's my pillow. I like to look over at Mama, sitting on the couch.
If I were allowed, I'd run my finger across Mama's face the way I do with Christmas bulbs to feel their shine. I bet Dad would like that, too, since he says she's more beautiful than any actress in Hollywood. She sticks her tongue out when he says that and waves her hand like she's shooing flies. I don't know why she doesn't see what we do when she looks in the mirror: how her long face Dad calls a "perfect oval," is smooth as dark cream with a dimple in her chin that gives it fight. She has black hair shiny as crow feathers, and long eyelashes that brush down her cheeks when she's sleeping. Watching Mama makes me miserable sometimes because I don't think I'll ever look like her. Everyone says I'm cute, like Grandma, with a heart face and brown eyes that crinkle when I smile. People say both me and Grandma are "sincere," even in our looks. Which I guess means we try hard.
Mama calls me her shadow, so that's another name. She says I'm always underfoot, but I can't help it when she takes me everywhere. She doesn't like to be alone. She tells stories about what she was like at my age, when she was seven years old. How she went to Indian boarding school with her sisters, but they were older, so they slept on a different floor. How she cried and cried until some Ree girls almost smothered her with a pillow. She always stops the story there and says to be careful around Arikaras, the ones she calls Rees, because they used to be our enemies. I nod and tell her I'll remember. There was a nun who was mean to her because she didn't like that Mama was smart and that she'd taught herself to read before she ever went to school. The nun locked her up in a dark closet when she knew all the answers, because she was supposed to be dumb. She told her the Devil was in there with her, and Mama sassed back that she didn't care. She tells me I'm lucky to have teachers who
want me to learn, instead of nuns who want to keep me down. But I can't imagine anyone keeping Mama down, not even Dad, a Marine with medals. She's the only person I know who grows when she gets mad, gets bigger and bigger until it's like she fills the whole room, and there's no air left to breathe.
We eat lunch in the cafeteria and a woman at the next table stares at my doll Ethel in a way that's not very friendly. I don't want Ethel's feelings to be hurt, so I switch her from the table to my lap, where the woman can't glare at her. She wears pretty cat eyeglasses with shiny diamonds at the outer edges—it's too bad she ruins them with her mean look. For some reason I think,
That's a Myrtle from the suburbs, the kind of woman Mama says she isn't! Something tells me Mama wouldn't be allowed to join that particular group. Not that she'd want to.
Excerpted from A Council of Dolls by Rory Power. Copyright © 2023 by Mona Susan Power. Excerpted by permission of Mariner Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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