A Yellow Raft in Blue Water (Cliffs Notes)

A YELLOW RAFT IN BLUE WATER NOTES including • Life and Background of the Author • Introduction to the Novel • A Brief Synopsis • List of Characters • Critical Commentaries • Genealogy • Character Analyses • Critical Essays • Review Questions and Essay Topics • Selected Bibliography

by William C. Roby, B.A. Doane College

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CONTENTS Life and Background of the Author.................5 Introduction to the Novel ................................6 A Brief Synopsis ..............................................8 List of Characters ..........................................10 Critical Commentaries ..................................12 Character Analyses ........................................65 Critical Essays................................................70 Yellow as a Symbol........................................................70 Dorris’ Narrative Technique ..........................................72

Review Questions and Essay Topics...............75 Selected Bibliography ....................................77

Center Spread: A Yellow Raft in Blue Water Genealogy

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A YELLOW RAFT IN BLUE WATER Notes LIFE AND BACKGROUND OF THE AUTHOR Michael Anthony Dorris was born on January 30, 1945, in Louisville, Kentucky, although some biographical sources indicate Dayton, Washington. His father, Jim Dorris, was part Modoc; his Irish and Swiss mother was Mary Besy Burkhardt Dorris. Dorris married novelist Louise Erdrich in 1981, and they were parents to six children, including an adopted son named Abel, who was diagnosed with fetal alcohol syndrome and died in 1991. This son was the subject of Dorris’ award-winning book The Broken Cord: A Father’s Story (1989). After learning that he was the target of a sex abuse investigation in Minneapolis, based on accusations by two of his adopted daughters, Dorris apparently committed suicide on April 11, 1997, in a Concord, New Hampshire, motel. Dorris earned a bachelor of arts degree from Georgetown University in 1967. He graduated cum laude. In 1970, he earned a master’s degree in philosophy from prestigious Yale University. Immediately following his graduation, Dorris began teaching at the University of Redlands, Redlands, California, as an assistant professor. He moved back to the east coast in 1971 and served as an assistant professor for two years at Franconia College, Franconia, New Hampshire. In 1972, Dorris began a long and fruitful stint at Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire. That same year, he founded and chaired Dartmouth’s Native American Studies Program. At Dartmouth, he served as an instructor (1972–76), assistant professor (1976–79), associate professor (1979), professor of anthropology (1979–88), and adjunct professor (1989). It was also at Dartmouth that he first met Louise Erdrich. Dorris received various awards and prizes throughout his life. He was awarded a Woodrow Wilson fellowship in both 1967 and 1980. He also received fellowships from the National Institute of

6 Mental Health (1970 and 1971), the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (1978), the Rockefeller Foundation (1985), the National Endowment for the Arts (1989), and Dartmouth College (1992). Other honors include the International Pathfinder Award, World Conference on the Family (1992), and the Award for Excellence, Center for Anthropology and Journalism (1992), for essays on Zimbabwe. Dorris’ publishing career is as varied as his teaching career. His first two books, Native Americans: Five Hundred Years After (1977) and A Guide to Research on North American Indians (1988), coauthored by Arlene B. Hirschfelder and Mary Gloyne Byler, were nonfiction studies of Native-American tribes, including their cultures, lifestyles, and eventual demise. In 1987, Dorris published A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, his first novel. The nonfiction The Broken Cord: A Family’s Ongoing Struggle with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (1989), with a foreword by Erdrich, was groundbreaking in that it brought media attention to the debilitating syndrome that affected Dorris’ first son, whom he adopted in 1971; Dorris was one of the first American bachelors to adopt a child. The book was republished as The Broken Cord: A Father’s Story, which won a National Book Critics Award for general nonfiction. Dorris continued a long-lasting writing venture with Erdrich, begun ten years earlier, and in 1991, they published their coauthored Route Two and Back, a travel memoir, and the novel The Crown of Columbus. Dorris’ young-adult novel Morning Girl was published in 1992. In 1993, Dorris wrote a series of essays published as Rooms in the House of Stone and a collection of short stories titled Working Men. A collection of essays, Paper Trail: Collected Essays, 1967-1992, was published in 1994. The following year, Dorris again concentrated his energies on young-adult fiction and wrote Guests. Early in 1997, Dorris published his novel Cloud Chamber to rave reviews; his young-adult novel The Window was published posthumously in October 1997 with equally enthusiastic reviews.

INTRODUCTION TO THE NOVEL A Yellow Raft in Blue Water is Dorris’ first novel, a resounding success. Concerned with the lives of three female Native Americans, the novel interweaves these women’s narratives in a

7 cyclical pattern in which all three women—grandmother, daughter, and granddaughter—discuss their perceptions of many of the same events in their lives. Each woman is trying to find a personal identity, to define herself not only in terms of self but in relation to the other women. In an interview, Dorris has said, “In a matrilocal kinship system, a woman remains a resident in the household of her birth, and passes on the privilege to her own daughters and granddaughters.” In the novel, Aunt Ida, the grandmother, faces the challenge referred to in Dorris’ quote in a very unconventional way. Aunt Ida’s daughter, Christine, misperceives her mother’s motives as hatred and disgust, but it is to Aunt Ida whom Christine turns when she realizes that her daughter, Rayona, is not receiving the proper parenting that Christine feels Rayona should have. Christine returns “home” to Aunt Ida’s, as does Rayona eventually. The novel is as much about creating a sense of home, or a sense of place, as it is about an actual, physical home, which, for Aunt Ida, is a house on a Montana reservation. Dorris has said, “Identifying home is then in essence an act of ongoing imagination.” Each woman in the novel is caught up in defining what “home” means to her. For Aunt Ida, daily existence comprises reenacting her past, but her reenactment is an act of imagination. At one point in the novel, she narrates, “I have to tell this story every day, add to it, revise, invent the parts I forget or never knew.” Christine recognizes that her life is headed in a downward spiral, in part because she is no longer able to imagine a better life for herself. And so she takes her teenage daughter, Rayona, to Aunt Ida’s for Aunt Ida to raise. Rayona, however, is also engaged in a personal battle of imagination, but hers is destructive in that she wants to be anyone but herself. In her mind, if she were someone else, she wouldn’t have to face the teasing that she gets because of her mixed black-Indian heritage (her father is black). Nor would she then experience the displacement that characterizes both her life and Christine’s life. Through these three women’s narrations, Dorris creates a fictional world that mirrors real-life situations. Aunt Ida is a single mother by choice, opting to raise Christine and her son, Lee, alone. Christine, too, is a single mother; she and her husband, Elgin,

8 Rayona’s father, are estranged, although they have an on-again, offagain sexual relationship. And Rayona, as the youngest member of this female trio, faces the daunting challenge of finding her place in this chaotic, unconventional world in the novel. Hers is a coming-of-age story.

A BRIEF SYNOPSIS A Yellow Raft in Blue Water is the story of three women’s lives, three strands of narration that, braided together, form the narrative history of Ida’s, her daughter Christine’s, and Christine’s daughter Rayona’s lives. Divided into three separate yet interconnected sections, each narrated by one of the female protagonists, Dorris’ novel explores the perceptions and misperceptions that define each woman’s search for self-identity. If told in a linear fashion, Dorris’ text would read something like the following. Ida, a young Indian girl raised on a Montana reservation, faces a crisis in her and her family’s life when Clara, her mother’s sister and therefore Ida’s aunt, has a sexual affair with her brother-in-law, Lecon, her mother’s husband and Ida’s father. Clara gets pregnant with Lecon’s child, and to conceal the illicit affair, Ida agrees to accept Clara and Lecon’s child as her own. When the child, who is named Christine, is born, Ida assumes full responsibility for raising it. She even gets a legal decree declaring that Christine is legally hers. Four years after Christine’s birth, Ida has a brief sexual relationship with Willard Pretty Dog, and she gets pregnant with his child, whom she names Lee. Christine and Lee have a very close sister-brother relationship, each relying on the other for emotional support. However, as young adults, Christine emotionally blackmails Lee into enlisting in the military during the Vietnam War; Lee’s best friend and Christine’s rival for Lee’s attention, Dayton, opposes Lee’s enlistment. Christine moves from Ida’s house and the reservation to Seattle, moving from one menial job to another. She’s devastated when she gets a letter from Dayton saying that Lee is missing in action. To console herself, she goes to a bar, where she meets a black soldier named Elgin. The two instantly hit it off and move in together, although Elgin is away from home because of his on-base

9 military duties. When Elgin is released from the military, he and Christine begin what at first appears to be a meaningful life together. However, Christine gets pregnant, she and Elgin get married, and then Elgin begins staying out late after work and oftentimes not even coming home at night. He’s having an affair, and Christine knows it. They both decide that their on-again, offagain relationship works better after they decide to live separately. Christine gives birth to a baby girl, whom she names Rayona, immediately after she learns from another letter from Dayton that her brother, Lee, has been killed in Vietnam. Devastated by this news, she and Rayona return to the reservation for Lee’s funeral ceremony. She and Ida, who has always demanded that her children call her Aunt Ida, argue bitterly, as they did while Christine was growing up. After Christine and Rayona return to Seattle, Christine decides that her life is worthless, and she determines that Rayona would have a better chance at happiness were she to live with Aunt Ida. Christine and Rayona again drive to Ida’s home on the reservation, where Christine basically abandons Rayona at Aunt Ida’s. Christine moves in with Dayton, and the two take up an existence as “an old married couple.” Meanwhile, Rayona decides that she hates living with her grandmother, Aunt Ida, and sets out for Seattle, but not before a Catholic priest on the reservation, Father Tom, sexually assaults her. Rayona takes refuge at Bearpaw Lake, a park where she works as a garbage maintenance worker. At Bearpaw Lake, she meets Evelyn and Sky, a married couple who take Rayona into their home and accept her for who she is, without asking any questions. But Evelyn and Sky eventually learn of Rayona’s past and about her strained relationship with her mother. To their credit, they drive Rayona to a rodeo being held close to the Montana reservation where Ida and now Christine live. At the rodeo, Rayona steels herself and rides a bucking bronco, which Dayton owns. Following the rodeo, Rayona says goodbye to Evelyn and Sky and goes home with Dayton, where she again confronts her mother, Christine. Rayona and Christine eventually gain a better understanding of each other than they’ve ever had before, symbolized by Christine’s giving Rayona one of her favorite rings. Also, although not stated explicitly by Dorris, Christine and Aunt Ida also gain a better understanding of each other.

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LIST OF CHARACTERS Rayona (Ray-yawn-uh) A fifteen-year-old girl whose mother is Indian and father is black. Rayona struggles throughout the novel to find a personal identity that acknowledges both her biracial heritage and her own specialized place in the world. Hers is a coming-of-age story. Christine Rayona’s Indian mother, who, like her daughter, seems confused about her place in the world but resiliently fights for a better future for Rayona than she herself has. Elgin Rayona’s black father and Christine’s husband. He and Christine jointly agree that theirs is a better life apart from each other, although Rayona suffers from their choice. Aunt Ida Christine’s legal mother and Rayona’s grandmother. Ida lives on a Montana reservation and watches television most of the day. Lee Aunt Ida’s son and Christine’s brother, who dies in the Vietnam War. Dayton Nickles Lee’s best friend, with whom Christine lives when she returns to the reservation. Willard Pretty Dog Lee’s father, although no one but Ida knows this fact.

11 Clara Christine’s biological mother and Ida’s aunt. Ida refuses to tell Christine that Clara is Christine’s mother. Father Hurlburt A Catholic priest on the reservation who is Ida’s lifelong friend and confidant. Father Tom Another Catholic priest on the reservation. He makes inappropriate sexual advances toward Rayona. Pauline Cree Ida’s sister. Kennedy “Foxy” Cree Pauline’s son and Rayona’s cousin, who ridicules Rayona because of her biracial heritage. Annabelle Stiffarm Foxy’s girlfriend. At first, Annabelle is as cruel to Rayona as Foxy is, but she ultimately makes friends with Rayona. Evelyn Dial A nurturing woman who works at Bearpaw Lake and befriends Rayona. Norman “Sky” Dial Evelyn’s husband, an easygoing man who accepts life at face value. Ellen DeMarco A lifeguard at Bearpaw Lake. Rayona idealizes Ellen as the picture-perfect girl.

12 Charlene Christine’s neighbor and friend in Seattle. Andy, Dave, and John Rayona’s coworkers at Bearpaw Lake. Mrs. Pretty Dog Willard Pretty Dog’s overprotective mother, who dislikes Ida.

CRITICAL COMMENTARIES RAYONA CHAPTER 1 Summary A Yellow Raft in Blue Water begins in a hospital setting. Rayona, a fifteen-year-old teenager with long, frizzy hair, is visiting her mother, Christine, who claims to be sick. For the last two hours, Rayona and her mother have been playing solitaire; Rayona’s mother cheats at the game, and Rayona lets her. When Rayona’s father, Elgin, enters the hospital room, Rayona acts coldly toward him. She hasn’t seen him since her fifteenth birthday, five months earlier. Elgin and Christine, who are married but estranged, do not get along either. He claims that she isn’t sick (and Rayona agrees), but Christine says that she is. She yells at Elgin to “go back to your little black girl”—Elgin’s having an affair. We learn that Christine is a Native American and that Elgin is black; thus Rayona is half Native American, half black. Rayona leaves Christine’s hospital room, intending to drive Christine’s car home. However, by the time she gets to the car, parked in the hospital parking lot, Christine is already there, trying to break into the car because Rayona has the keys; Christine and Elgin are not going home together. In fact, they never live together for more than one week at a time before Elgin moves out, only to repeat the cycle again and again.

13 Disappointed with her life, Christine announces melodramatically that she’s going to commit suicide. Rayona can go to live with her grandmother, Aunt Ida, on a Montana reservation. Rayona jumps into the car, and Christine drives toward Tacoma, Washington, where she still insists that she intends to drive the car off the road and kill herself. However, Rayona won’t get out of the car, and when she finally does, the car runs out of gas: Christine can’t kill herself. Chapter 1 ends with Rayona and Christine walking to a gas station to get gas for the car. Commentary In Chapter 1, Dorris introduces three of his most important themes: sickness, family, and racial identity. Dorris emphasizes these three themes by beginning the novel in a hospital, where Christine, a Native-American woman hospitalized because of poor, deteriorating health brought on by drinking, and visited by her daughter, Rayona, and her husband, Elgin, struggles to keep her sanity. The game of solitaire, which Christine and Rayona play, symbolizes the lonely existence that both women live. Ironically, however, their isolation means that they must depend on each other for companionship. Christine cheats at the game, and Rayona allows her to, but what Rayona doesn’t realize is that Christine wants Rayona to catch her at cheating. Apparently, their roles are reversed: Christine acts like the rebellious, irrational daughter, and Rayona acts like the wise mother, chiding Christine that she’s not taking care of herself the way she should. The tense family dynamics of Rayona’s family are introduced when Elgin, Rayona’s father and Christine’s husband, shows up at the hospital. Before Elgin’s appearance, Dorris notes that Christine’s wedding ring “cuts into her third finger”; Christine’s marriage to Elgin is anything but idyllic. Christine tells Elgin to leave, but Elgin, thinking that Christine’s stay in the hospital is only one more of many times she’s been there, tells Christine that she’s only playacting at being sick. Unfortunately, he doesn’t realize that Christine is very sick; this time, she’s not faking an illness. Christine’s comment to Elgin, “Go back to your little black girl,” emphasizes the untraditional relationship between Christine and Elgin. Elgin is having an affair, and Christine knows it.

14 However, what the reader doesn’t know—yet—is that Elgin’s seeing someone else is part of the pattern that Christine and Elgin have established in their marriage. They rely on the regularity of their on-again, off-again marriage, and both concede that this is the only way they can relate. Later in the chapter, Rayona acknowledges that her parents cannot be around each other for long periods of time without fighting. Elgin’s appearance in the hospital room focuses the reader’s attention on racial heritage. Elgin is black; Christine is Native American (Dorris never discloses what Indian nation Christine belongs to); and Rayona is half black, half Native American. Rayona’s mixed heritage is a source of discomfort for her. She never feels that she fits into any established racial category. Although she feels isolated from everyone else because of her dual race heritage, she’s able to find humor in her situation. For example, in a hardware store, she matched paint colors to her skin color: “I found each of our exact shades on a paint mix-tone chart. Mom was Almond Joy, Dad was Burnt Clay, and I was Maple Walnut.” However, Rayona’s humor only hides the deep emotional problems that she has about who she really is. She is a young woman who is trying to discover her personal identity, with no apparent help from her mother or her father, who rarely sees his daughter. The end of Chapter 1 introduces mystery into the novel. Rayona remembers Christine’s taking her to her Uncle Lee’s funeral, and now Christine wants to take Rayona to Aunt Ida’s on the Montana reservation. Rayona knows only that Christine idolizes Lee, Christine’s dead brother, and seemingly hates Aunt Ida, Christine’s mother and Rayona’s grandmother, whom she hasn’t seen since she was about eight years old. (Here and in the following sections, difficult words and phrases are explained.) • abalone The “stone” in Christine’s ring is carved from the pearly, iridescent inner shell of the abalone, an edible marine gastropod. • Volaré a Plymouth automobile manufactured by the Chrysler Corporation in the late 1970s. • Last Rites Catholic rites or sacraments administered to a dying person.

15 • candy striper a volunteer worker in a hospital; originally they wore pink-and-white-striped uniforms.

CHAPTER 2 Summary Having gotten gas from a nearby gas station, Rayona and Christine head back to Seattle, where they live. Christine has decided that both she and Rayona will go to Aunt Ida’s on the reservation. In their Seattle apartment, they pack all their belongings in four jumbo garbage bags, and Christine takes the time to ask her neighbor and friend, Charlene, who works in a pharmacy, to send some illegal, unprescribed Percocet to Aunt Ida’s house for Christine. On the way out of town, Christine stops at Village Video. A week before she went into the hospital, Christine signed up Rayona for a lifetime membership at the video store, and Christine now wants Rayona to rent some videos to take along to Montana. Without stopping for the night, Christine and Rayona drive to Aunt Ida’s reservation in Montana. When they approach Aunt Ida’s house, Aunt Ida is outside, mowing the lawn and listening to music on a headset. She sees Christine and Rayona but ignores them. When she finally acknowledges Christine and Rayona, she asks Christine for three reasons why she should be glad to see her. However, Christine can think of only two reasons. Frustrated, Christine curses at Ida and then picks up her bags and jerkily runs from the house, leaving Rayona with Ida, who speaks only Indian. Luckily, Christine has taught Rayona the Indian language. Rayona runs after Christine, but just as she gets close to her, Christine hails a passing truck, which stops for her and speeds away. Rayona has no choice but to return to Ida’s. Christine has abandoned her. Commentary The episode in the Village Video is an example of how Dorris inserts humor into his novel, but Christine’s determination to get a video life membership for Rayona speaks volumes about

16 Christine’s concern for her daughter. Christine purchases the life membership for Rayona as a symbol of Rayona’s—and her own— permanence in the world. She feels that she has nothing valuable to pass on to Rayona when she dies; also, she understands the personal problems that Rayona faces as the daughter of a black father and a Native-American mother. Having packed their belongings into four “jumbo” green plastic garbage bags, apt symbols of how topsy-turvy their lives really are, Christine and Rayona set out for Aunt Ida’s home on the Montana reservation. However, Christine decides that they first must stop and get videos from the video store. Her choice of videos is telling about Christine. The video Christine, about a car that kills people who threaten its owner, is an obvious choice: Christine, as we learn more later in the section of the novel that she narrates, envisions herself as a tough, take-no-prisoners, indestructible woman. She shrouds herself in an unfeeling, gruff exterior in order to cover up her more sensitive, caring, and emotional personality. She also chooses Little Big Man because she supposedly dated an actor who appears in it. Although the movies are meant for Rayona to have, Christine seems more interested in herself and her wants than she is in her daughter’s. Meanwhile, Rayona remembers the many nights she helped her mother to bed, Christine too drunk from reliving past emotional events to make it to bed by herself. Rayona’s resignation about leaving Seattle is expected, given the many problems she’s had fitting in at school. Again Dorris focuses our attention on Rayona’s dual heritage. Rayona thinks to herself, “I’ve changed schools so often that I never get past being the new girl. Too big, too smart, not Black, not Indian, not friendly.” She’s never fit in with her peers because she’s not what they expect: She cannot be easily categorized. Also, to Christine’s discredit, Christine never stays in one place long enough for Rayona to feel comfortable and accepted in any environment. The arrival of Christine and Rayona on the reservation introduces us to the third female member of the family: Aunt Ida. Rayona immediately notices Aunt Ida’s skin color: “a darker brown than Mom’s, though not as deep as Dad’s or mine.” That Ida’s eyes are invisible behind a pair of sunglasses foreshadows Rayona’s

17 future inability to personally connect with her grandmother, who hides her feelings behind an insensitive exterior, much like Christine does. Christine’s reaction to Aunt Ida’s asking her why Ida should allow Christine to live with her is both humorous and sad. When Christine can think of only two reasons why Aunt Ida should take Christine into her home, she defensively yells profanities at Aunt Ida and then runs away. She again appears to be uncaring toward Rayona by abandoning her at Ida’s, but what neither Ida nor Rayona realizes is that Christine is actually trying to provide Rayona with a better life than she has with Christine. The inability of Ida and Rayona to recognize Christine’s sacrifice highlights Dorris’ theme of perceptions and misperceptions: Christine cares about Rayona so much that she would give her up in order that Rayona might have a better life, but both Ida and Rayona misperceive the reason that prompts Christine’s actions. This inability to communicate meaningfully is a recurrent theme throughout the novel. Rayona’s reaction to Christine’s abandonment of her at Aunt Ida’s reveals a young woman who is emotionally disturbed. In the past, she coped with Christine’s unexplainable behavior by trying to fix her mother’s problems and thereby secure a more defined place in the world for both herself and Christine. However, when Christine abandons Rayona, Rayona doesn’t know how to fix this new situation. She notes that the earth is “ugly” and disorganized, much like her own personal predicament. By ripping the weeds out of the ground and making the earth more presentable, she hopes to make her own life better, more orderly. But she can’t solve her problems by herself. She needs help, and Aunt Ida is the person who will help her, although Rayona doesn’t realize it yet. Ida’s comforting Rayona shows that Ida is a nurturing, caring woman, concerned about others and their problems. Dorris’ choice of language in describing Rayona’s reaction to Ida is soothing and protective: “I am kneeling into her, my face forced into the warm, damp skin about her bra, her breasts against my neck. . . . I press against her fine grass-smelling skin, sink into the basket of her arms.” Ida is the protector, the caregiver whom Rayona seems never to have had.

18 • domicile

a person’s residence, or home.

• Percocet a prescription pain pill. • the rez the reservation. • in Indian Dorris never reveals which native language the main characters speak, nor does he specify which tribe they are members of.

CHAPTER 3 Summary Rayona and Aunt Ida settle into an uneasy routine. Aunt Ida watches television all day and night, speaking to characters on different programs as if they were in the room and she were familiar with them. Rayona spends most of her time in Christine’s former bedroom. She wears her mom’s old clothes, including pedal pushers, and looks at piles of loose photographs that she finds underneath her bed. She also learns that Christine is staying at the home of Dayton, who was the best friend of Christine’s brother, Lee, when they were all growing up on the reservation. Lee is now dead. Father Hurlburt, a reservation priest, visits Ida and Rayona. He cajoles Rayona into attending meetings of the “God Squad,” an informal group of reservation kids who meet at the Catholic mission. Two days later, Rayona attends her first meeting, accompanied by Father Tom Novak, who runs the group. To Rayona, Father Tom is a “real jerk, a dork.” At the God Squad meeting, Rayona meets Annabelle Stiffarm and Kennedy Cree, nicknamed Foxy, who is Rayona’s cousin. No other kids attend. Annabelle and Foxy dislike Rayona and are rude to her. They leave, and Father Tom tries to console Rayona, who rejects his friendship. However, although Rayona distrusts Father Tom, as she does everyone else, too, she becomes his “favorite,” much to her disgust. Christine’s pills, sent by Charlene, arrive at Aunt Ida’s house, but Christine doesn’t pick them up, which upsets Rayona because she thought she’d see her mother when Christine came to get the package. Rayona is also upset because Foxy and the other kids refuse to accept her and make fun of her mixed racial heritage.

19 Only Father Tom seems nice to her, and she doesn’t even like him. Also, Father Tom seems overly interested in Rayona’s pubescent maturity as a woman and asks if she has dreams about sex. Commentary Rayona’s living with Ida allows her to experience her mother’s history in ways that she never would have before. Rayona wears Christine’s old pedal pushers, views 1950s pop-singer posters still tacked on Christine’s bedroom walls, and looks through Christine’s old high-school notebooks. What grabs Rayona’s attention most is a graduation picture of Christine. Rayona tries to see a resemblance of herself in the graduation picture. She wants to find her place in the world, an identity that fits within Christine’s life experiences. The personal identity that Rayona so desperately wants to find is tied up with Aunt Ida, although Rayona doesn’t recognize it. Growing up in Seattle, Rayona learned the Indian language, which symbolizes the personal history that Christine thought was important to instill in her daughter. Although Rayona doesn’t completely realize the importance of the Indian language, she acknowledges that Christine taught her the language in order to “give me my identity.” Listening to Aunt Ida speak nothing but the Indian language, Rayona is glad that she learned it but doesn’t think anything more about it. Even on the reservation, Rayona is stigmatized by her dual racial heritage. Foxy Cree and Annabelle Stiffarm cruelly tease her about her father’s being black. To Father Tom, Rayona feels like she’s his “special project.” To compensate for her differences, Rayona makes her mind “blank” and therefore doesn’t have to face the fact that she’s an outcast from her peers on the reservation. Ironically, the only thing that still attaches Rayona to her mother is the medicine package that Charlene ships to Aunt Ida’s. She thinks to herself, “Having that box in the room makes me feel better, like a promise that might be kept. Sooner or later it will lure Mom.” In Chapter 1, when Rayona’s father, Elgin, entered Christine’s hospital room, Rayona had also thought of packages: “He inspects me like a first-class package, looking for loose flaps.” Unfortunately, Rayona will be disappointed in Christine’s medicine box being a lure to bring her mother back to Aunt Ida’s.

20 The relationship between Rayona and Father Tom is one-sided. Father Tom seems to latch onto Rayona because she is as much of a misfit as he is. His inappropriate comments to her about sex will reach a new level in the next chapter, when he apparently makes a sexual advance toward her on the yellow raft. • for special clothes worn for a “dress up” occasion. • Oakdale

the fictional setting for the soap opera As the World Turns.

• a bead in the living rosary . . . between the first and second joyful mysteries Rosary beads contain beads symbolic of Joyful Mysteries, Sorrowful Mysteries, and Glorious Mysteries. The first Joyful Mystery is the Annunciation; the second, the Visitation; examples of Sorrowful Mysteries include the Agony in the Garden and the Crowning with Thorns. • St. Dominic Savio The son of a peasant, Dominic was born in Italy in 1842. When he was twelve years old, he vowed to become a priest and began studying in Turin, sweeping floors and counseling young boys who were considered misfits. Once, when two boys were about to stone one another, Dominic stepped between them, reminding them of Christ’s sinless soul and telling them to stone him, Dominic, rather than one another. Three years later, he died and was beatified in 1950 and canonized in 1954. He is the patron saint of choirboys. • teased into a rat’s nest A woman backcombs all of her hair until it is enormously bouffant and then lacquers it thoroughly with hair spray.

CHAPTER 4 Summary Tired of being an outcast, Rayona considers leaving the reservation and returning to Seattle on her own. Before she can act on her plans to escape, however, Father Tom cajoles her into accompanying him to a Teens for Christ Jamboree near Helena, Montana. Rayona can’t think of any way to get out of going to what she thinks will be a waste of time. Before she leaves with Father Tom for Helena, she realizes that Christine has picked up the medicine package at Aunt Ida’s. She’s depressed because Christine didn’t even try to see her; she seems to be less important to Christine than a package.

21 The drive to the jamboree is a nightmare for Rayona. Father Tom talks incessantly. She makes up outrageous stories about her past, including a dead mother and a father who’s an international airline pilot. When Father Tom mentions Rayona’s dual heritage, she responds to him with icy coldness. He also questions her again about sex. Rayona and Father Tom stop at Bearpaw Lake State Park; Rayona is surprised to learn that the jamboree doesn’t start until the next day. After several unsuccessful attempts at firing up the grill, and besieged with buzzing, stinging gnats, Father Tom gives up and suggests that they go for a swim. About fifty feet out from the shore, a yellow wooden raft is anchored. Rayona swims to the raft and suns herself. Father Tom tries to swim to the raft but starts drowning, and Rayona jumps into the water and saves him by roughly pulling him onto the raft. As Rayona and Father Tom lie together on the yellow raft, Father Tom moves his body close to Rayona’s and begins rubbing his hips against her. Rayona enters a dreamlike trance so that we don’t know exactly what happens sexually between her and Father Tom. Rayona narrates, “In my dream I move with him, pin him to me with my strong arms, search for his face with my mouth.” Afterward, Father Tom says they have sinned and that they must return to the reservation. He wants Rayona to forget the entire incident. Rayona refuses to return to the reservation, saying instead that she’s going to Seattle. Perhaps out of guilt and embarrassment, Father Tom encourages her to go and even gives her money for the trip. He leaves her at a train station and heads back to the reservation. However, when the train arrives, Rayona chooses not to get on it. She thinks to herself, “I’m happy without reason.” Commentary Rayona’s realization that Christine has picked up the box of medicine from Aunt Ida’s without even waiting to see her emotionally devastates Rayona. She must finally face Christine’s abandonment of her (although we learn in Christine’s narration that Christine thinks she’s actually helping Rayona by not seeing her).

22 Rayona thinks, “I’m not as important as some package she needs from Seattle. My presence won’t bring her back.” As this point in the novel, however, without having yet read Christine’s narration, we sympathize only with Rayona. During the ride to the Christian jamboree with Father Tom, Rayona lies that her mother is dead. But to a great extent, Christine is dead to Rayona—at least emotionally. Father Tom additionally complicates Rayona’s life when he continually talks about how she’s “different” in terms of her mixed racial heritage. Rayona denies that she’s different from everyone else, but Father Tom’s response—”Not that you shouldn’t be proud of [being different]”—seems a little too late to comfort Rayona. Although he’s trying to help Rayona, Father Tom harms her more than he helps her. Also, note that during their drive, Father Tom again brings up the subject of sex. The important theme of the color yellow as a symbol of safety and, paradoxically, false identity is introduced here in Chapter 4. Moored about fifty feet out from the shore at Bearpaw Lake, where Rayona and Father Tom stop, is a wooden raft, painted yellow. When Rayona swims out to the raft, she experiences a feeling of being totally clean, both physically and emotionally. This feeling recalls the time when she tried pulling up all the weeds immediately after Christine left her at Aunt Ida’s. Lying on the yellow raft, Rayona feels safe, cut off from the many problems she has to deal with on land. Truly, the raft is an island of contentment. This contented feeling is suddenly broken when Father Tom attempts to swim to the raft and almost drowns. Heroically, Rayona pulls Father Tom to safety on the raft. Now, with Father Tom also on the raft, the safety that Rayona originally felt turns threatening. Although Dorris is somewhat—and purposefully—vague in his narration about what exactly happens between Rayona and Father Tom on the raft, we know that a sexual act of some sort happens between them. Dorris writes of Father Tom’s physical actions with Rayona, “He presses, presses, presses. . . . His hips jerk against me.” Rayona, unable to cope with what is happening to her, sinks into a dreamlike state: “In my dream I move with him, pin him to me with my strong arms, search for his face with my mouth.” Now scared of his own actions, Father Tom asks Rayona, “What are you doing?” thereby placing the responsibility for any sexual actions

23 between them on Rayona. Rayona is once again faced with an adult who seems to have no control over his actions. The best that Father Tom can do is give money to Rayona for her planned return to Seattle. In fact, he’s paying her for her silence. Faced with nowhere to go and with no one on whom she can rely, Rayona cannot even gain strength from her memories of her mother and father. Elgin left Christine; Christine left Rayona; Rayona can leave no one because she’s all that she has. As she’ll think at the beginning of the next chapter, “I wake up lost.” • Great Northern the name of a railway line. • hootenannies informal performances by folk singers. • rap sessions spontaneous and informal discussions held by people with similar concerns, problems, or causes. • a miraculous medal On November 27, 1830, the Virgin Mary appeared to Catherine Laboure in a vision and asked her to have a medal made. On the front of the medal was to be a representation of Mary herself. The back was to have, among other things, a picture of two hearts, the Sacred Heart with a crown of thorns around it and the Heart of Mary pierced by a sword. Catherine reported that Mary said to her, “Have this medal struck and all who wear it shall receive great graces if they wear it around their neck.”

CHAPTER 5 Summary Next morning, the first person Rayona sees is the man who runs the gas station at the state park; ironically, Christine and Rayona had stopped for gas on the way to Aunt Ida’s at this very place. The man, nicknamed Sky, asks Rayona if she’d like a cup of coffee, and the two strike up a conversation. Sky discusses his past, including evading the Vietnam War draft by going to Canada, and Rayona talks about her Uncle Lee, who died in the Vietnam War. When Sky learns that Rayona has no place to stay, he calls his wife, Evelyn, who’s the cook at the park, and asks Evelyn if she knows of a park job for Rayona.

24 Rayona locates the park kitchen and meets Evelyn, a large woman who has short white hair and eyes that are “bright and suspicious.” After feeding Rayona, Evelyn gets Rayona a job in the maintenance department, responsible for picking up trash that campers leave behind. Rayona adjusts well to her new environment. She’s responsible for the park area that houses female lifeguards and swimming instructors, including, we will learn, Ellen DeMarco, a young woman whom Rayona’s male coworkers find very attractive. Evelyn tells Rayona that she can stay with her and Sky in their trailer. Commentary The park sign that warns campers to stay where they are if they’re lost and soon they’ll be found symbolizes Rayona’s predicament at the beginning of Chapter 5. She’s lost, but then she’s found—by Evelyn and Sky, two unlikely saviors who come to her aid. Evelyn and Sky are everything that Christine, Elgin, and Father Tom are not: adults who accept Rayona at face value. Without hesitating, Sky tells Rayona about his past, including the fact that he avoided the Vietnam War draft by going to Canada—unlike Rayona’s Uncle Lee. Evelyn, although she has “bright and suspicious” eyes, accepts Rayona without question, noting only matterof-factly that Rayona is black, which Rayona doesn’t dispute, and that she’s not eighteen, as she claims to be. Rayona quickly takes to her new job in the park. She feels a freedom about herself that she’s experienced only once before: on the yellow raft, before Father Tom’s assault. However, she is still seeking a personal identity, wondering just who she is and where and how she fits in the world. Rayona’s discovery of the bottom half of a discarded letter is one of the most important episodes during her time at Bearpaw Lake State Park. The letter presents a picture-perfect world that Rayona has never known. She can’t seem to read the letter enough times to satisfy her curiosity about the “Mother & Pops” who wrote it and the person to whom it is addressed. But no matter how elated the letter makes Rayona feel, it is actually destructive to her, although she doesn’t realize it. The letter allows her to fantasize

25 about how her life would be if only she were a different person, if only she had this “Mother & Pops” as her parents. But she’s Rayona Taylor, with a mother and father who seemingly don’t care about her. No matter how hard Rayona tries to put the letter out of her mind, she can’t. Ironically, although she’s happy that she’s found the letter, she feels sad and cheated: “This scrap of paper in my hand makes me feel poor in a way like I just heard of rich. Jealous.” The letter confirms what Rayona has feared for so long: Her life is anything but picture-perfect, anything but normal. • fresh air funds Sky’s pronunciation of “fresh air fiends”—people who enjoy fresh air instead of turning on their air conditioning or furnace. • Ukie a Canadian who was (or whose family was) originally from the Ukraine. • M.Y.O.B. mind your own business. • come up a boxcar

a pair of sixes on a throw of the dice.

• the paten the plate used to hold the host (consecrated wafers) during the celebration of the Eucharist. • pheromones chemicals secreted by certain animals that influence the behavior of others of the same species. • chinooks dry, warm winds blowing down from the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains.

CHAPTER 6 Summary Staying with Evelyn and Sky is much easier for Rayona than living with Aunt Ida. Evelyn and Sky accept her unconditionally. “There’s a kind of peace in the room,” Rayona thinks to herself about Evelyn and Sky’s living conditions. One morning while Rayona is doing her rounds at the state park, she notices a young woman swimming near the yellow raft, anchored in the lake. This woman is Ellen DeMarco. Rayona doesn’t draw attention to herself; instead, she draws back because Ellen is everything that Rayona wants to be: beautiful and self-confident.

26 Another day, Rayona finds a ripped Grateful Dead T-shirt and gives it to Sky, who instantly falls in love with it. And she finds a cotton blanket on which is printed a huge brown male deer; this she saves to give to Evelyn later. Rayona seems infatuated with Ellen DeMarco. She asks her fellow coworkers about her, and she even asks Sky what he thinks. She pretends that she is Ellen and that she has the perfect life, far removed from her reality. On the Fourth of July, a big day at the park, Rayona meets Ellen and her parents in the lodge’s kitchen, where she’s eating breakfast with Evelyn. Rayona listens to Ellen’s parents talking about their dog Rascal, and she realizes that the scrap of letter she found earlier in the park was written by Ellen’s parents to Ellen. Evelyn, who with Sky secretly read the scrap of letter while Rayona was falling asleep, naturally assumed that the letter was from Rayona’s mom and dad; now she realizes that the story that Rayona told Evelyn and Sky about her parents being on vacation in Switzerland is a lie. Rayona suddenly leaves, deeply hurt that her make-believe scenario has been shattered. Christine, in her yellow sleeveless top, using a green felt-tipped pen, did not write the letter, no matter how much Rayona wants to believe that she did. It was written by Dell DeMarco—from San Diego, California. Commentary Rayona finds a kind of peace with Evelyn and Sky that she’s never experienced before. “There’s a kind of peace in the room,” she thinks to herself the first time she’s in Evelyn and Sky’s trailer. Without meaning to, Rayona idealizes Evelyn, whom she places on an imaginary pedestal. And Evelyn and Sky’s feelings for Rayona are only more solidified when they read the scrap of letter from “Mother & Pops” while Rayona is sleeping and naturally assume that the letter is written by Rayona’s parents. Not even Rayona seems to know who she really is: Sleeping, she dreams of “half-told stories . . . a lot of lives and I can mix and match the parts into something new each time.” The episode in which Rayona watches as Ellen DeMarco dives from the yellow raft further demonstrates that Rayona is living in a fantasy life, unwilling—perhaps unable—to face reality. Here, the image of Ellen, beautiful, graceful, and sure of herself, is coupled

27 with the safety that the yellow raft symbolizes, but both Ellen and the yellow raft are false images for Rayona. Ellen is everything that Rayona is not, although she’s also a symbol of what Rayona could become if only Rayona were more sure of herself. Rayona thinks of Ellen as “everything I’m not but ought to be.” Later, speaking to her coworkers about Ellen, Rayona seems to fall deeper and deeper into fantasy. She yearns to be like Ellen, to be Ellen: “It seems to me she has everything, and I hate to say it but there are times I would trade places.” No matter how much Rayona wants to fantasize or lie about who she is, Evelyn and Sky unknowingly refuse to allow her to do so. At one point, Sky, speaking with Rayona, philosophically tells her that everything in life has a purpose. Even the most seemingly inconsequential action has meaning, whether or not a person knows it. Part of Rayona’s maturing process will involve accepting that there are many things over which people have no control. Life is not picture-perfect, no matter who you are. The episode in which Rayona meets Ellen’s parents and learns that Ellen’s mother wrote the scrap of letter is a defining moment in the novel. In Chapter 5, Rayona had wondered just what kind of person would throw away such a precious letter from parents; now, in Chapter 6, she learns that such a person is the idealized Ellen. This recognition shatters Rayona’s fantasized perceptions about life. Although it hurts Rayona to realize that Ellen is not the perfect person whom she thought Ellen was, she grows from the experience. Also, and as important, Rayona fears that she has disappointed Evelyn who overhears the conversation between Ellen and her parents. Rayona has lied to Evelyn and Sky, whom she likes and trusts. • a sixer of Rainier a six-pack of Rainier beer. • an Alabama tape The reference is to a cassette of Alabama, a country singing band whose popularity spanned several decades and was voted Artist of the Decade for the 1980s by the Academy of Country Music. Chapter 6 is set in the mid-1980s, when Alabama was one of the hottest country groups performing. Some of their biggest hits include “Mountain Music,” “Take Me Down,” and “Close Enough to Perfect.”

28 • American kitsch art or figurines that are characterized by an excess of sentimentality—for example, wide-eyed, tear-halfway-down-thecheek porcelain waifs—or pretentious bad taste, such as a 24-carat goldhandled toothbrush. • UCSD • OSU

the University of California, San Diego. probably Oregon State University.

• flip him the bird to make a sign of contempt by making a fist and extending the middle finger.

CHAPTER 7 Summary When Evelyn finds Rayona, who is staring at the yellow raft moored in the blue lake, Rayona expects Evelyn to be upset with her. However, Evelyn is a picture of understanding and empathy. Rayona concedes that the family story that she told Evelyn and Sky is all a lie, and Evelyn asks Rayona what she wants to do now that her real life story is out in the open. When Rayona asks Evelyn why Evelyn is being so kind to Rayona, Evelyn responds, “Because somebody should have done it for me.” Evelyn obviously has had a life as hard as Rayona—if not harder—and is being protective of her. Although the Fourth of July is the busiest day for Sky and he makes the most money of the year on this day, Evelyn and Sky drive Rayona to Havre, where a large Indian rodeo is taking place; Rayona thinks that her mom will be there. However, once they are at the rodeo, Rayona realizes that her mom is not there. However, Foxy Cree, Rayona’s cousin who earlier made fun of Rayona because of her mixed racial heritage, is at the rodeo, and he’s too drunk to compete in the bareback bronco event. Incredibly, Foxy realizes that he’s too drunk to ride and cajoles Rayona into riding for him by pretending to be him. With his blue jeans jacket on her, and his black Navajo hat sitting above her long, thick braid of black hair, Rayona looks like a long-haired Indian boy. Ironically, Dayton, with whom Rayona’s mom is staying, owns the horse that Foxy is to ride. Annabelle, Foxy’s girlfriend, confronts Rayona about what she’s doing dressed in Foxy’s clothes, and Rayona explains the situation to her.

29 When Rayona rides Dayton’s horse in competition, she’s thrown from the horse. Vowing not to give up, Rayona again mounts the horse, named Babe, but is thrown again. A third time Rayona tries to ride, and a third time she’s thrown. Her attempts at riding Babe are utter failures, but at the awards ceremony, she surprisingly gets a “hard-luck buckle” award for the rider with the most spirit and determination. Proud of herself, Rayona removes her hat and jacket; the crowd is stunned when they realize that Foxy is really Rayona and that Rayona is a female. The crowd erupts in excitement and cheers Rayona. Commentary The yellow raft as a symbol of safety is again important here in Chapter 7. Focusing on the raft, Rayona thinks that if only she stares at it long enough, it will cure all her personal problems. Ironically, then, the yellow raft is as much a symbol of false hopes as it is safety, for no matter how long Rayona stares at the raft, her problems will not go away. Evelyn’s acceptance of Rayona without judging her, even after Evelyn realizes that Rayona has lied about who she is, is an important step in Rayona’s maturing. Until now, every adult has abandoned Rayona, but Evelyn is different. For example, she tells Rayona after listening to her relate her past and then wanting to know why Evelyn is willing to still help her, “Because somebody should have done it for me.” Rayona realizes that Evelyn has had as hard a life as she has so far, and yet, Evelyn is a powerful woman who has a sense of who she is; Rayona now has hope for herself. Rayona’s riding Babe in the rodeo is another step in her finding a personal identity. Although she knows that she’s not qualified to ride and might get hurt, she takes a chance, possibly the first chance she’s taken all her life. She has matured enough to realize, “The ride on Babe is a boundary I can’t recross, and I’m stuck on this side for better or worse.” Ironically, her riding Babe foreshadows the reckless yet independent and, therefore, individualized behavior that Christine demonstrates about herself in her narrative section.

30 At the awards ceremony immediately following the rodeo, Rayona finally acknowledges publicly who she is. Thanks in large part to Evelyn and Sky, she can now claim a personal identity of her own, independent of what people want her to be. • B.L.S.P. T-shirt a Bearpaw Lake State Park T-shirt. • “Fry Bread Power” bumper stickers pro-Indian political bumper stickers. Fry bread is particularly emblematic as a staple Native American food. An authentic recipe for fry bread calls for mixing 4 cups of white flour, 5 teaspoons of baking powder, and 11⁄2 teaspoons of salt together in a large bowl and then slowly adding and stirring in about 2 cups of water until the dough is smooth and shiny. Cover the bowl with a clean towel and set aside for 30 minutes. Shape the dough into 16 balls, about the size of an egg, and roll them on a lightly floured board to 1⁄2-inch thickness or less. Melt lard in a heavy frying pan until it is 11⁄2 inches deep and heat until just before the smoking point. Place the dough into the hot lard, turning with a fork when it is browned on one side until it is golden brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels. Sprinkle with powdered sugar or honey, or eat them plain. This recipe serves six to eight people. • H. Earl Clark Museum The museum is located just west of Havre on Highway 2 and contains information about the history and development of the area around Havre, not far from the fictional Bearpaw Lake State Park and the reservation where Aunt Ida lives. • muscatel

a sweet wine made from muscatel grapes.

• to stay straight here, to stay sober—not to get drunk until after the bronco riding contest is over. • the MC

the master of ceremonies.

• hogtie here, to tie together the four lower legs of a calf as fast as possible.

CHAPTER 8 Summary Still at the rodeo, Rayona meets Dayton and decides to go to his house with him to see her mom. She says goodbye to Evelyn and Sky but not before she gives the cotton deer blanket to Evelyn as a symbol of her thanks.

31 On the ride to Dayton’s house, Rayona and Dayton talk. He tells her that she has the talent to be a real rodeo rider, like her Uncle Lee. However, when they arrive home, the happy mood is broken by Rayona’s mom, Christine, who accuses Rayona of abandoning her. Rayona and Christine argue horribly, and Christine goes to bed. The next morning, Rayona again tries to ride Babe but is thrown. Christine sits with her daughter on the ground and begins telling her life story to Rayona. Commentary Rayona’s goodbye to Sky and Evelyn, who’s wearing a yellow blouse, is as much about Rayona’s recognizing that a part of her life is over as it is that her entire future is before her. Evelyn acknowledges this point when she tells Sky, “We’ll go now. . . . She’s staying here. With her mom.” Note that when Rayona gives the blanket to Evelyn, Evelyn “gathers it . . . and cradles it in a bundle against her body,” very much like Ida enfolded Rayona in her arms after Christine left Rayona at Ida’s. Both Evelyn and Ida are nurturing women who have rough exteriors that help deflect life’s pains. When Rayona rejects Dayton’s assertion that Rayona has the same potential as her Uncle Lee concerning bronco riding, she fails to realize that she is the sum of the many parts that make up her life: Christine, Elgin, Lee, and Ida. She thinks of Lee, “Here was another relative who I’m not anything like,” but we know better. Later in the chapter, Christine accuses Rayona of being like her father, Elgin, “In every way.” What Christine doesn’t realize is that Rayona is also like her. Unfortunately, Christine still compartmentalizes Rayona into different categories. She fails to see that Rayona is now a mature, complex individual who has characteristics from both her mother and her father. At the end of the chapter, Rayona demonstrates her new maturity when she patiently listens to Christine begin her own personal story. Note that Rayona thinks of her mother’s situation, “She’s me staring at that yellow raft this time yesterday.” At this point in the novel, Rayona seems more of an adult than her own mother. Only by narrating her own life’s story will Christine mature as a mother, a wife, a daughter, and an individual.

32 • Stetson a trademarked hat with a high crown and wide brim. • a V with his fingers The peace sign (antiwar) during the Vietnam War was exhibited by holding the palm of the hand outward with the middle and index fingers spread to form a V. • the letter the Blessed Virgin gave to Lucy at Fatima According to Catholic tradition, on July 13, 1917, the Blessed Virgin confided a secret (which was to be written down in the form of a letter) to a girl named Lucy that would be given later to the general public. The secret was divided into three parts, and Sister Lucy, with the approval of her bishop, revealed the first two parts in 1941. The third part was to be made known, by the latest, by 1960. Christine believes that in this letter it will be revealed that either Communist Russia has been converted or the world will come to an end. Because Russia is still under the thumb of non-Catholic communism, Christine is sure that the world is coming to an end. Later in the novel, in Chapter 9, Christine describes how, on New Year’s Eve, she is so convinced that the world is coming to an end that she insists on giving her mother, Aunt Ida, a home permanent before The End. And nothing happens. Christine listens to the radio, hearing New Year’s celebration music in New York, then in Chicago, in Denver, and then in Los Angeles. The world doesn’t end; nothing has changed. She is utterly disillusioned with Catholicism.

CHRISTINE CHAPTER 9 Summary Christine begins her narration by expressing how, during the 1960s, everyone who was white seemed to be having fun. Also, she briefly discusses how political events, including the buildup to the Vietnam War and hippies’ “flower power,” affected the reservation, where she lives with Aunt Ida. Christine, in contrast, was not political; she was enjoying having a woman’s body and having sex with whomever she pleased. In her words, she was “the most popular high school girl on the reservation.” Christine’s narration is as much about her brother, Lee, as it is about herself. Lee is the best-looking teenager on the reservation; Christine is not—she’s just popular with the boys. However, she

33 and Lee have a very close, special sister-brother relationship, except that in Christine’s opinion, Aunt Ida favors Lee more than she does Christine. Aunt Ida and Christine do not get along. As a young girl, Christine is a show-off. On one occasion, she tries to cross a high, natural bridge made of yellow stone but gets too scared and cannot get down from the bridge. Lee saves her by calmly talking her down. When Lee is thirteen and Christine is a sophomore in high school, Lee becomes best friends with a boy named Dayton. Christine notes that Dayton “hero-worshiped” Lee, which Christine doesn’t like because Dayton gets all of Lee’s attention; Christine gets none. Christine and Dayton become competitive for Lee’s attention, but then Christine wonders whether it’s possible that Dayton spends so much time with Lee so that he can actually be near her. When Christine tries to seduce Dayton, he rejects her, which makes her even more competitive with him. Over the course of their teenage years, Lee and Dayton grow closer, and Christine becomes more jealous of their relationship. Perhaps as a way to rebel against both Lee and Aunt Ida, Christine starts drinking heavily and having frequent, indiscriminate sexual relationships with various men. When Aunt Ida confronts Christine about her loose behavior with a married man with two children, Christine rebels even more and moves in with her Aunt Pauline, Ida’s sister. Tellingly, Christine’s motto is “You only live once.” After Lee and Dayton graduate from high school, both become involved in the Red Power political movement. Christine is embarrassed because of Lee’s newfound crusade: She’s afraid that the many servicemen whom she dates will reject her because of Lee’s political stances for Indian rights and against the Vietnam War. When Christine confronts Aunt Ida about Lee, Aunt Ida supports Lee’s behavior, which only causes Christine to be that much more angry at Aunt Ida. Commentary Whereas Rayona compensates for her feeling about being displaced from her cultural heritages by becoming silent and withdrawn from her mother, Christine, as a teenager, consciously

34 chooses to become the most popular girl on the reservation. Both women experience the same pains of finding personal identities, but Christine’s solution radically differs from Rayona’s. Christine says, “I had to find my own way and I started out in the hole.” Rayona has experienced very much the same feelings. Christine’s idealizing her brother, Lee, is similar to how Rayona idealized Ellen DeMarco and, to an extent, Annabelle Stiffarm. For Christine, Lee symbolizes a picture-perfect world very much like Ellen does for Rayona. Note that when Christine attempts to cross the natural-formed bridge made of yellow stone, Lee saves her. She thinks of Lee, “His calmness flowed through me like a rope.” Hence, Lee and the color yellow are linked together in Christine’s mind: Both represent safety—and, paradoxically, selfdenial—just as the yellow raft represents both these qualities for Rayona. Remember that on the yellow raft, Rayona felt free, but Father Tom shattered this freedom. When Lee becomes the centerpiece of Christine’s existence, she’s challenged for his attention by Dayton, who seems to have an almost homoerotic fascination with his friend. If nothing else, Dorris tells us that Dayton “hero-worshipped” Lee, much like Christine and Lee reciprocally did to each other growing up. Concerned that Dayton is beating her out for Lee’s attention, Christine reacts as she always does: She tries to use sex as a tool to get her way and to validate herself, as she does many times during her teen years. But Dayton rejects her advances, and Christine, dumbstruck that any male could resist her sexual advances, is forced to rely on her intellectual powers rather than on her sexual prowess to get her way. She’ll use the political situation of the Vietnam War and Lee’s political aspirations as the linchpin of her strategy to get Lee’s attention. Ironically, here Christine unknowingly learns that sex isn’t the only means she has to get her way. She thinks, “Everything about me was all wrong, and it took me years to forget that it was Dayton who showed me.” Christine’s narration here in Chapter 9 introduces the national and local political background that informs the novel. We learn that Dayton rejected Christine’s sexual advances in 1963, about two months before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in

35 Dallas. Earlier in the chapter, Christine remarks, “You don’t live on a reservation without learning respect for the red, white, and blue,” an ironic remark that hints at the overbearing presence of the federal government in Indian affairs. Kennedy’s assassination reminds Christine that Lee, her ideal brother whom tribal members expect to someday be a great leader of them, “was going to be the Indian JFK.” However, if Lee evades the military draft, he will be dishonored and never attain the status that he—and Dayton—so desperately want for him. And Christine knows this. Christine’s first trip outside the reservation and her many excursions thereafter change her, perhaps for the worse. She says, “I returned from that first trip after only two weeks, but in some ways I never came back at all.” However, no matter how much she thinks that she’s changed for the better because of her newfound wisdom about the world, her new maturity—which is really sexual recklessness—is not acknowledged by her mother, Aunt Ida. In fact, the two women never get along. Perhaps they are too much alike. Similar to her fear of Dayton’s soaking up too much of Lee’s attention, Christine battles Aunt Ida for Lee’s attention, as well. Ultimately, she acknowledges Aunt Ida’s victory of Lee and chooses what, to her, is the only possible course of action: She moves out of Aunt Ida’s house. • the Sacred Heart a painting or illustration of Jesus revealing his physical heart, a symbol of love and redemptive sacrifice. • All Souls’ Night the night before All Souls’ Day, a day of prayers for the dead; usually on November 2. • an Alberta blow a strong, bitterly cold wind blowing southward from Canada’s Alberta province. • When John F. Kennedy was killed November 22, 1963. • ICBM’s intercontinental ballistic missiles. • Red Power Indians Indians united for political and economic reasons, seeking racial equality.

36 CHAPTER 10 Summary Christine confronts Dayton about whether or not he’s going to enlist in the military. Dayton says that he’s not, that he’ll move to Canada if he has to in order to avoid the military draft. Later, when Lee passively agrees with Dayton’s stance and says that he, too, is uncertain just what he’ll do when he’s drafted, Christine slaps him. Christine then hits on a plan to get Lee to enlist in the military. The reservation is run by a council made up of elected members. Christine knows that Lee’s goal is to be elected head of the council, but a draft dodger is not likely to be elected. Christine approaches Dayton, who she knows will talk to Lee, and she tells Dayton that if Lee doesn’t enlist, he’ll never gain the prominence on the reservation that he wants. Her plan works. At the Mission Labor Day Bazaar, Lee enters and everyone realizes that he has cut his hair, an act that symbolizes that he’s going to enlist in the military. Soon after, Christine says goodbye to Lee, who leaves the reservation for military life. Christine also leaves the reservation. She moves to Seattle and gets a boring, menial assembly-line job, which she soon quits. Eventually, she moves to Tacoma and works for an airline, assembling small airline salads. She hears from Lee only sporadically, but eventually she gets a letter from Dayton telling her that Lee is listed as missing in action in the Vietnam War. She’s dumbfounded and in denial about Lee’s perilous situation. One night after work, depressed because she has a dead-end job and is worried about Lee, Christine goes to a bar to drink. She’s surprised that the bar has an all-black clientele. A black man in a military uniform buys her a drink, and the two strike up a conversation. His name is Elgin Taylor, and Christine goes with him to his apartment, where they have sex. Elgin promises Christine that he’ll never leave her. Commentary Chapter 10 is one of the most political chapters in the novel. Mirroring the conflict that many men faced during the Vietnam War era, Lee is determined not to enlist in the military. He’s sure

37 that his only viable option will be to flee to Canada to avoid the draft, as Sky earlier told us he himself did. The conflict between Lee and Christine seems to have no apparent solution possible. Immersed in the Red Power movement of the 1960s, Lee refuses to “fight a white man’s war.” Christine, on the other hand, is most concerned with how Lee’s decision not to fight will affect her. Somewhat selfishly, she’s worried that her many white boyfriends, who had fought in Korea or Okinawa, will reject her because of her brother’s actions. By manipulating Dayton’s hero worship of Lee, Christine finally emotionally blackmails Lee into joining the military. She is a skilled manipulator who argues that if Lee dodges the draft, he will never gain the high tribal office that she knows both Lee and Dayton desire for him. Note that Lee’s decision to join the military is symbolized by the braid of hair that he cuts off his head and gives to Aunt Ida. In Chapter 1, in Christine’s hospital room, Christine braided Rayona’s hair as an act of mother-daughter affection. Here in this chapter, Lee’s presenting his braid to his mother, Aunt Ida, symbolizes the deep affection he has for her. And at the end of the novel, Aunt Ida ritually braids her own hair, as though the motion of braiding re-creates the many narrative strands that together make up both the novel and Aunt Ida’s life. Christine’s decision to move to Seattle is a natural response for her now that her idol, Lee, has decided to enlist in the military and no longer threatens to shatter the ideal image she has of him. However, Christine’s existence in Seattle, and then Tacoma, is anything but perfect. Stuck with performing menial tasks, including making salads for an airline, she compensates for her drifterlike existence by continually changing her appearance. Symbolically, her many changes in her looks mirror her uncertainty about who she really is. The messages that Christine receives in this chapter, the postcard from Lee and the letter from Dayton, recall the scrap of letter that Rayona used to create an imaginary world for herself. The letter from Lee is noteworthy because of the line, “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Rayona’s father included this exact line in his letter to her. But the letter from Dayton shatters Christine’s world and ultimately affects her personal life: Depressed, she goes to a bar for

38 a drink one night after work and meets Elgin. Ultimately, then, the letters in the novel are one of the literary tools that Dorris uses to unify the three female narrations that make up the text. On the surface, Christine’s meeting Elgin seems like the “perfect combination” between herself and another person that she so desperately wants. She builds an instantaneous trust with him—”I said to him what I had never said to anyone before. I said I needed him.” But she will soon learn that no matter how perfect she wants the world to be, she has only herself to rely on. • gone for a skunk here, to gamble on thoroughly defeating one’s cardplaying opponents and keep them from scoring. • WAC

a member of the Women’s Army Corps.

• a shirttail cousin a third or fourth cousin. • BIA

the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

• a silver bola [or bolo] tie a “necktie” made of a long piece of leather cord and fastened at the throat by a decorative clasp. • stinger

a cocktail of crème de menthe and brandy.

CHAPTER 11 Summary Christine moves into Elgin’s apartment, waiting for the day when Elgin will be released from military duty on a nearby base. The two talk on the phone to each other nightly. Finally, Elgin is released from the military. Christine becomes pregnant with Elgin’s child, and Elgin seems to like the idea that he’ll be a father. They move to Seattle, and Elgin becomes a mailman; Christine stays home. Although Christine wants a picture-perfect wedding ceremony, they get married in the Seattle federal courthouse. Christine and Elgin soon drift apart emotionally and physically. Elgin stays out late at night and sometimes doesn’t even come home. Eventually, the two begin to fight about Elgin’s behavior, and Elgin accuses Christine of being a bitch. Christine accuses Elgin of having an affair, which Elgin doesn’t deny.

39 Christine is devastated one day when she gets a letter from Dayton informing her that Lee is dead. Immediately after she reads the letter, Christine goes into labor. Taking a cab to the hospital, she has a baby girl, which she names “Rayona” (from the word “rayon,” a type of material). When Elgin finally shows up at the hospital, Christine shows the letter about Lee’s death to him. Elgin promises her that he’ll start being a better husband, but their relationship continues to be strained. Elgin stays out later and later, and he doesn’t come home for long periods of time. Only once in a while does he come home. Commentary Although Christine’s comment, “I didn’t take precautions,” refers to the fact that she didn’t use birth control, it also has a deeper meaning: She’s wanted for so long to be unquestioningly accepted that she rushes headfirst into her relationship with Elgin. However, now pregnant and married, she’s again forced to accept that her world is anything but ideal. By the end of the chapter, the marriage has deteriorated to the point that Elgin often doesn’t come home at night after work, and when he does, “something was missing.” Christine notes, “My wedding ring cut into my swollen finger.” She acknowledges that “Elgin was gum on the sole of my shoe.” Dorris’ use of the color yellow is especially poignant here in Chapter 11. Having learned that Lee is dead, Christine rushes to the hospital to deliver her child. However, when her life seems to be at its lowest, Dorris reinforces the notion of Christine’s resiliency to face life’s problems by swaddling the newborn Rayona in a yellow blanket. Symbolically, then, Rayona will be both the safety net that Christine so desperately needs and, at the same time, the source of much conflict and worry for her. • C&W club

a country-western club.

• that fish-eyed desk clerk • IHS

a suspicious-looking desk clerk.

the Indian Health Service Hospital.

A Yellow Raft in Blu

Annie

Willard Pretty Dog

Ida Lee

married to has sex with legal mother to

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Clara

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Christine Elgin Taylor Rayona

42 CHAPTER 12 Summary Over a year after Christine receives Dayton’s letter informing her that Lee is dead, Christine travels to Lee’s funeral on the Montana reservation where her mother lives; the military has finally released Lee’s body for burial. With Rayona lying on the passenger’s seat, Christine reflects on her previous travels to and from the reservation, and she sees a vision of Lee, which unnerves her. When she finally reaches the reservation and Ida’s home, Christine proudly displays Rayona to Ida, who seemingly ignores the fact that she’s now a grandmother. During the wake at Ida’s, held the day before Lee’s burial, Christine routinely goes through the motions necessary of her, but she realizes that everyone blames her for Lee’s death: She’s the person who manipulatively forced Lee into the armed services. When she asks Aunt Ida why Dayton isn’t at the wake, Aunt Ida coldly responds, “He knew you’d come.” Aunt Ida even goes so far as to ask Christine, “Who asked you here? . . . Who wanted you?” Lee’s death doesn’t bring Christine and Aunt Ida any closer emotionally. Following the symbolic and ceremonial burial of Lee—because it’s winter and the ground is frozen, Lee’s body will be buried in the spring, once the ground thaws—Christine and Dayton go together to a local bar, where they talk. However, Christine is very confrontational toward Dayton, and she makes more of her Seattle life than there really is. The next day, the tribe veterans hold a flag ceremony for Lee. During the ceremony, Christine tries to compliment Aunt Ida about how “Indian” she looks, but Aunt Ida spurns the compliments. When a man named Willard Pretty Dog approaches Aunt Ida and tries to cajole her into dancing, Aunt Ida refuses and then suddenly jumps up and joins Willard. Christine seems emotionally removed from all that’s happening. Commentary Christine’s decision to attend Lee’s funeral on the reservation is a signal of her growing maturity. Knowing that she will be criticized for Lee’s death because she emotionally blackmailed him

43 into enlisting into the military, she nevertheless bundles up Rayona and heads to Aunt Ida’s. As she states at the chapter’s beginning, “My brother’s death was a place I had to go, a thing I had to do.” Her growing responsibilities include facing her painful past and her less-than-stellar treatment of both Lee and Dayton. Another sign of Christine’s growing maturity is the mixed feelings she has while traveling to Aunt Ida’s. Although she has traveled the stretch of road many times before, “Today was different. The land drained the life from me, pulled me apart in all directions.” Ironically, her comment “drained the life from me” reminds us of why she’s traveling: Lee has no life left to drain. Resolved to act responsibly as a mother to Rayona, a sister to Lee, and a daughter to Aunt Ida, Christine acknowledges her lonely position in life yet determines that she will meet all challenges head-on: “I was alone in the world, except for my child, and she didn’t even know it. I had to do the right thing and drive us through.” The mystical vision that Christine has of Lee while she’s driving to the reservation underscores the fact that she is not alone in the world, no matter what she thinks. However, her vision of Lee, mounted on a flight of golden stairs, seems overly dramatic given the stark reality of her existence. Lee’s appearance, especially his hair braided “in otter pelt and hanging thick to his waist,” is a powerful image for Christine. Ironically, though, Christine so wants to join Lee that she consciously chooses to kill herself—and, by extension, Rayona: “This must be scaring the shit out of Ray, I thought, but I didn’t stop. . . . [T]he world disappeared. I let it go with no regrets.” Steeled from the experience, Christine rationalizes that one-year-old Rayona is old enough to manage for herself. When Christine and Rayona finally reach Aunt Ida’s, Christine is struck by the similarities between Rayona and Aunt Ida. Both grandmother and granddaughter have a suspicious look about them, and Christine notes that the two share physical traits as well. What is most important, however, is Christine’s reaction to her mother’s and daughter’s similarities: “For a split second I felt betrayed by my own child.” No matter how mature Christine might be, she still has the same clinging possessiveness that she demonstrated concerning Lee. Aunt Ida continues to be Christine’s most dreaded enemy.

44 Perhaps Christine and Aunt Ida don’t get along because they are so much alike. No matter how much the two women battled for Lee’s affection and still battle about who owns his memory, Christine cannot overcome her dependency on Aunt Ida. Faced with the emotional void of Lee’s absence, Christine searches for the only person who can help her through her suffering: Aunt Ida. “My eyes reeled to every corner for help,” Christine narrates, “but finally the only thing I saw was Aunt Ida, and it was like looking into a mirror. We stared at each other over time, over Lee.” During the ceremony in the Mission gymnasium, we get our first clue about who Lee’s father is. Willard Pretty Dog approaches Aunt Ida for her to dance a ceremonial dance with him, but Aunt Ida rejects his advances. However, finally she gives in and dances with him. Christine notes, “There was something going on between them that I couldn’t make out, some silent argument, and it shocked me to see Aunt Ida lose.” Only in Aunt Ida’s narrative section will we learn who Lee’s father is. • like a gaff

like a large hook.

• hoarfrost frozen dew that forms a white coating on grass on frosty mornings. • pinochle a game of cards for two or four people, played with a special deck of forty-eight cards. • calico

brightly colored fabric.

• Purple Heart a military decoration awarded to members of the armed forces who are wounded in battle. • to spell me to relieve someone from a chore for a short time so that the person can rest. • the Consecration the sanctification of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ for use in Communion. • missal a book containing all the prayers and responses for celebrating the mass. • Requiescat in pace • the can

Latin, meaning “rest in peace.”

the bathroom.

45 CHAPTER 13 Summary Lee’s burial ceremonies over, Christine prepares for the trip back to Seattle. She retrieves Lee’s Purple Heart from the garbage can, where Ida has thrown it. Reaching Seattle, Christine, toting Rayona with her, goes to a local bar in order to be with people; she doesn’t feel like being alone. Surprisingly, she sees Elgin in the bar, with his arm around a woman. Christine, Elgin, and Rayona leave the bar together, and Elgin stays with Christine and Rayona for two weeks, but then the destructive pattern of Christine and Elgin’s relationship starts again. Realizing that she’ll never have the picture-perfect family life that she wants, Christine accepts a routine existence with Rayona, although she acknowledges that she takes Rayona for granted. She comes to rely on Rayona’s presence and the stability that Rayona symbolizes in her life. Once, when Rayona is almost seven years old, Aunt Ida makes a surprising visit to Seattle and stays with Christine and Rayona. Ida has come to see a woman named Clara, who’s a patient in Indian Health Service Hospital in Seattle. Ida grudgingly shows small affections toward Rayona. During Aunt Ida’s visit to Seattle, she cajoles Christine, along with Rayona, into visiting Clara in the hospital; Christine cannot understand why Clara would want to see her. Ida explains that Clara is Ida’s mother’s sister, her aunt and Christine’s great-aunt. Christine’s visit with Clara in the hospital seems uneventful, although Clara cries when she sees Christine; Christine is unaffected by the visit and feels that she’s done her duty to Aunt Ida. On the night that Aunt Ida is scheduled to return to the reservation, Christine notes that Aunt Ida tells Rayona to call her Aunt Ida, but Christine thinks nothing of it; she’s always called her mother Aunt Ida. Christine and Rayona’s life reassumes its daily pattern after Aunt Ida leaves. Every so often, Rayona sees her father, but Rayona never tells Christine just what it is she and Elgin do together when they’re away from Christine. Christine silently resents, and is jealous about, the time that Elgin and Rayona spend together.

46 Commentary After returning to Seattle following Lee’s funeral, Christine’s meeting Elgin in the Silver Bullet bar reinforces the misguided directions that her life has taken. Christine and Elgin spar briefly— she ridicules him for dating a fat woman, and he criticizes her for bringing Rayona to the bar—and then spend the next two weeks together. Christine seems unable to change her life for the better, as though she’s caught in a trap but can’t get out. “I was going downhill with my brakes out,” she metaphorically comments, “always barely avoiding a crash.” Chapter 13 focuses to a large degree on the relationship between Christine and Rayona. Christine acknowledges that she takes Rayona for granted, but this acknowledgment doesn’t change the fact. Rayona, the safety net once swaddled in a yellow blanket, acts more as an adult to Christine than Christine does to Rayona. Rayona becomes the responsible parent who puts the milk back in the refrigerator before it spoils. Faced with a life alone without Elgin, Christine relies on Rayona for companionship. Likewise, Rayona, without a father who plays an active role in her life, depends solely on Christine. Christine’s dependence on Rayona is best summed up in her statement, “Rayona gave me something to be, made me like other women with children.” The episode concerning Christine’s visit with Clara in the hospital is more important than Dorris lets on here in Chapter 13. Only in Aunt Ida’s narrative section will we learn just how these three women—Christine, Aunt Ida, and Clara—are inextricably tied together. Note what Christine wears for her visit to Clara: a yellow wraparound and flowered top. Symbolically, she’s protecting herself, but the question then is, from what? Aunt Ida’s only comment about who Clara is, is that she and Ida’s mother are sisters. Significantly, although Christine cannot realize it, her parting sentence to Clara—”I’ll come back soon, little mother”—carries more weight than Christine will ever realize. To Christine’s credit, she’s careful to teach Rayona to speak Indian in addition to English. Through Rayona, Christine keeps a door open to her reservation past, her heritage. Certainly if Christine meant to break completely from her past, she wouldn’t teach Rayona the Indian language. The reciprocal relationship

47 between the two females is best summed up in Christine’s comment, “What I had to give a child, Rayona got, and what I needed, she gave.” To a great extent, Christine lives her life through her daughter, much as she did earlier in her life through Lee. She might be older and therefore wiser, but she’s none the happier for it. • a Mahogany Elgin is joking here, indulging in wordplay; because mahogany is an extremely dark black wood, he is creating a theoretical tribe of black “Indians” and using the term “Mahogany” to approximate, say, “Mohican.”

CHAPTER 14 Summary This chapter records events that Rayona related in Chapter 1, but here we see these events through Christine’s eyes. Christine learns that her many years of drinking have affected her health; her doctor informs her that she is slowly dying, that she probably has only six months to live. Having checked herself into the Seattle Indian Health Service Hospital, Christine is visited by Rayona. When Rayona finally shows up, Christine ritualistically braids Rayona’s hair. Christine asks about Elgin, and then she and Rayona play cards. Unbeknownst to Rayona, Christine purposefully plays badly; she wants Rayona to tell her that she’s cheating. When Elgin shows up at the hospital, Christine is combative toward him. Later, she desperately sneaks out of her hospital room and finds her car, intent on killing herself. But Rayona reaches the car just as Christine is about to get into it. The two argue briefly, and Rayona refuses to let Christine drive off without her. Christine vows to drive to Tacoma, where Rayona was conceived, but Rayona will not get out of the car. Christine and Rayona drive to Tacoma together. In Tacoma’s Point Defiant Park, where Christine has vowed to kill herself, she and Rayona argue about just what it is that Christine intends to do. Rayona screams at her mother about how bad a mother she’s been to Rayona, but Rayona doesn’t realize that Christine is actually trying to make a better life for Rayona— without Christine. When the two women realize that the car is out

48 of gas, foiling Christine’s suicide attempt, Christine decides to take Rayona to Aunt Ida’s, in Montana. Perhaps, she thinks, Rayona will have a better chance at a successful life at Aunt Ida’s. Before leaving home, Christine stops at a video store and rents two movies: These movies are the legacy that Christine plans to leave Rayona. When Christine and Rayona finally reach Aunt Ida’s, Christine and Aunt Ida have a tense confrontation. Aunt Ida asks why she should allow Christine into her home after all of the trouble that Christine has caused Aunt Ida. Christine, dumbfounded that she has to explain her actions to her mother, yells a foul curse at Aunt Ida and then runs away, leaving Rayona with her grandmother. Commentary Chapter 14 details Christine’s stay in the hospital, a scene that Rayona narrated in Chapter 1. By presenting such episodes from more than one point of view, Dorris emphasizes the complexity of life, much like William Faulkner does in his novels about the South. There are no absolutes in life, for one person’s perceptions are only that: one person’s perceptions. As Christine comments later in this chapter, “You know, it’s strange, you live in a place half your life and yet the sight of it from an unfamiliar angle can still surprise you.” In other words, depending on how and from where you view something, that perception will always change. Christine’s stay in the hospital allows her to evaluate her life, and she doesn’t like what she sees. She apparently hates everyone with whom she’s had contact, including Aunt Ida, Lee, and Elgin. But her lashing out at all these people is a defense mechanism against lashing out at herself. However, she’s left with no one to blame for her life except herself, which she recognizes when she thinks to herself, “I hated the mess I made of myself.” Christine rationalizes that if only she were no longer in Rayona’s life, Rayona would have a better chance at success. Blaming herself for Rayona’s less-then-perfect life so far, Christine thinks, “If I could go back through the same hole I would leave no mark.” In other words, without Christine, Rayona would have a happier life. But Rayona doesn’t understand that Christine’s act of suicide is meant to help—not hurt—Rayona. Taking Rayona to Aunt Ida’s to live is the only viable option Christine sees if Rayona is to

49 have a better life than Christine’s. Unfortunately, though, because Christine doesn’t communicate the reasons for her actions to Rayona, Rayona naturally thinks that her mother is abandoning her. Ironically, then, Christine’s attempted suicide is, in her own mind, the greatest, most helpful thing she can do for her child, whom she sees as “the yellow flame on the end of a tall, skinny candle.” What she doesn’t realize is how selfish her actions—including abandoning Rayona at Aunt Ida’s—really are. The permanence that Christine so desperately wants Rayona to have is symbolized in the two videotapes that Christine chooses for Rayona to remember her by. Again, though, Rayona doesn’t know why Christine is determined to rent—steal—the two tapes. Note also that the lifetime guarantee of video membership is a driving force for Christine, who rationalizes that the video lifetime guarantee will be “something to remember me by” for Rayona, “something nice and expensive that didn’t wear out”—unlike Christine herself. Christine’s turning to Aunt Ida for help with Rayona recalls the episode of Lee’s funeral ceremonies when Aunt Ida was the one person to whom Christine turned for support. Speaking of Aunt Ida, Christine says, “I wanted to know she’d take care of Rayona, be a better mother to her than she was to me.” Ironically, then, Christine is hoping that Rayona will get better care from Aunt Ida than Christine herself got, and better care than Christine is able to give to Rayona. Christine’s reasoning of why Aunt Ida will accept Rayona is contained in Christine’s thinking, “At that minute [Aunt Ida] was my last hope, the one person who had no right to turn away from me.” But Christine seems to have forgotten that she rejected Aunt Ida, that she moved away from home. Dumbfounded when Aunt Ida challenges her as to why Aunt Ida should welcome her home, Christine panics and ultimately curses her mother. However, note that Christine’s refusal to bow and scrape to Aunt Ida is really because she doesn’t want Rayona to see her as a weak role model. “I saw Rayona watching and it came to me that nothing, nothing was worth her witnessing me laid low,” Christine thinks. “What she couldn’t do was erase the picture of her mother made a fool by an unforgiving old woman.” And so Christine flees, as she’s done so many times before.

50 • to snooker me to cheat or deceive. • Smokeys patrol.

citizens band radio lingo for officers of the state highway

• the Grand Coulee a dam on an enormous gorge, carved by the Columbia River; located in north-central Washington State.

CHAPTER 15 Summary With no place to go, Christine realizes that the only person on the reservation who will accept her without question is Dayton. She hitches a ride to his house, wondering all the way whether she has done the right thing by leaving Rayona with Aunt Ida. Although neither Aunt Ida nor Rayona realizes it, Christine’s actions are intended to provide Rayona with a better future. At Dayton’s, Christine makes herself at home, waiting for Dayton to return. She pretends to be asleep when she hears Dayton opening the door, but then she stops playacting and asks Dayton whether he’s surprised to see her. Dayton doesn’t seem overly surprised to see her, although he asks her where Rayona is. He accepts that Christine is very ill and that she has come to the reservation to die. Christine and Dayton begin a routine life together. Dayton goes to work every day, and Christine stays home; they live a husband-and-wife life together, but they’re not lovers. One day, while Dayton is away at work, Christine finds a hidden package that contains news clippings about Dayton’s alleged sexual assault of a teenage boy at a public school near the reservation (Dayton was a teacher at the school). She learns that Dayton was sentenced to five years in the penitentiary but that he maintained his innocence throughout the trial and his years in prison. Christine learns from her friend Charlene in Seattle that Charlene has shipped medicine for Christine to Aunt Ida’s. When Christine and Dayton go to Aunt Ida’s to pick up the medicine, Christine tries to get Aunt Ida to realize just how sick she is. Aunt Ida, unable to face that her only remaining child will die, yells at

51 Christine, “I never wanted you! . . . I had no choice.” Stunned, Christine can only ask that Aunt Ida take care of Rayona. Commentary Christine’s staying at Dayton’s is ironic—but not surprising— because Dayton was Christine’s perceived enemy for Lee’s affections. That Dayton accepts Christine into his home is not surprising because he alone is the one person who doesn’t judge her. He accepts her on her own terms, without question. What Christine fails to recognize, however, is that her own daughter, Rayona, also accepts her, without question. Christine is surprised to see a painting of Dayton and Lee in Dayton’s home. What surprises her even more is that, in the painting, Lee is wearing his prize brass buckle, which he never wore. To a certain extent, then, Dayton has come to terms with Lee’s death in a way that Christine is unable to. And what is even more surprising to Christine is finding a picture of her and Rayona. Whereas she expected Dayton to reject her following her victory over him in getting Lee to enlist, Dayton has accepted her as a part of his life. Dayton accepts his past but doesn’t constantly—and negatively—reevaluate it as Christine does hers. Christine notes of him, “It was as though he took himself at his word, he didn’t look back.” His even-keeled life seems to rub off on Christine, who becomes more and more content with who she is and what she’s experienced in her past. Although understated, a defining moment in their lives together is when Christine, without fanfare, sets Lee’s Purple Heart on Dayton’s desk while he’s at work, an act that symbolizes Christine’s acknowledgment of Dayton’s important role in Lee’s life—and in her own. The emotionally charged confrontation between Christine and Aunt Ida here in Chapter 15 emphasizes Dorris’ theme of how perceptions are individually based. For example, when Aunt Ida shouts at Christine, “I never wanted you! . . . I had no choice,” Christine is hurt and outraged by Aunt Ida’s words, as any person would be. She assumes that Aunt Ida’s statements have a literal meaning, as perhaps they do. But what Christine does not—cannot—know are the reasons for Aunt Ida’s apparent rejection of her. “You don’t know anything,” Aunt Ida says to Christine. Here, Aunt Ida is as

52 much at fault—perhaps even more—as Christine is for the two women’s abysmal relationship, for she fails to explain why she feels the way she does about Christine. Note that Christine’s reactions to Aunt Ida—”I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t see her weak”—are based on the same reasons she wouldn’t let Rayona see her grovel in front of Aunt Ida in the previous chapter. All the women in the novel are afraid to show their vulnerability, which they equate as weakness but which is the overriding factor in why their relationships with each other seem so doomed to failure. • Wildroot a brand of men’s hairdressing. • just tooling

just driving around, rather aimlessly.

• Santana a Latin rock/blues group that played at Woodstock and was especially popular during the 1970s and early 1980s. • Happy Hunting Ground derisive Anglo slang for what some Anglicans believe Native Americans look forward to after death and upon entering heaven.

CHAPTER 16 Summary As time passes, Christine and Dayton continue their routine of living together. One day, Aunt Ida surprisingly visits Christine to tell her that Rayona is gone. Rayona’s disappearance disturbs Christine, who must face that she’s been a terrible mother to Rayona. Ironically, Christine and Dayton talk more and more about Rayona, as though Rayona is their child. When Dayton leaves to attend the rodeo in Havre, Christine is left alone in the house. Growing ever more sick, she relies on the pain medication to relieve her physical suffering. Christine is flabbergasted when Dayton returns from the rodeo—with Rayona. Christine and Rayona immediately start arguing, but Dayton acts as peacemaker between them. Unbeknownst to Rayona, Christine still thinks of her as her “miracle.” Christine, Rayona, and Dayton become accustomed to each other in Dayton’s house, and Christine and Rayona appear to get along better than they did before. Aunt Ida even visits them and

53 has a nice evening. As an act of healing and—perhaps—love, Ida arranges for Christine to receive medicine that will relieve her physical suffering. When it’s time for Babe to be picked up from a farm where Dayton sent Babe to be impregnated by a stallion, Christine offers to go along with Rayona; she wants to spend as much time with Rayona as she can before she dies. On the way to get Babe, Christine and Rayona stop at a restaurant to eat. Facing the fact that she’s going to die soon, Christine decides to pass on her valued jewelry to Aunt Ida, Rayona, Dayton, and Elgin; her jewelry is the legacy that she will give to others. When Rayona reaches into her wallet to pay for the meal, the scrap of letter that she found while working at Bearpaw Lake State Park falls onto the table. Significantly, Rayona throws it away: She’s rediscovered her real mother, Christine, and no longer needs a makebelieve, picture-perfect family. Commentary Christine’s staying with Dayton creates the stable home life that she’s always sought throughout her life. Whereas Rayona, Aunt Ida, and even Elgin deny that Christine is dying, Dayton accepts her illness at face value. They act like “an old married couple,” with an “imaginary child” named Rayona. Because Christine has no responsibilities outside of the house, she spends countless hours replaying over and over again the many conflicts that make up her past. Most important, she wonders why Aunt Ida’s cruel words to her in the previous chapter “somehow sounded to me like an apology, like raw sympathy.” Christine is beginning to understand that her perceptions of things are not the only perceptions, that she must take into consideration how other people—here, Aunt Ida—perceive the same things. Christine and Rayona’s combative meeting after Rayona and Dayton return home from the rodeo is similar to Christine and Aunt Ida’s confrontation when Christine and Rayona first returned to the reservation in Chapter 14. Christine accuses Rayona of abandoning both her and Aunt Ida, and Rayona accuses Christine of abandoning her. Their argument mirrors Christine’s accusations against Aunt Ida and Aunt Ida’s responses to Christine.

54 Note that Christine first thinks that Rayona is Lee; for Christine, Lee represents her past and Rayona her future, with her as the linchpin between the two. Throughout their first night again together, Christine keeps mistaking Rayona for Lee, in part because of the medicine that she’s taken, but more importantly because she defines her own life in terms of other people, predominantly Rayona and Lee. But Christine is still unable to express publicly her love for Rayona. We know that Christine thinks of Rayona as “my miracle,” but Rayona does not know this. The defining moment in the novel for Christine is when she determines to gives her four rings to the four people who together make up her life and define who she is: Rayona, Aunt Ida, Dayton, and Elgin. For Rayona, Christine chooses her sterling silver turtle ring because the turtle is most like Christine: “Slow but gets there in the end.” To Rayona, Christine’s gift is symbolic of the emotional journey that she herself has been on and solidifies her relationship with her mother. The picture-perfect world encased in the scrap of letter written by Ellen DeMarco’s parents is mere illusion, a fantasy that Rayona no longer needs or believes in, and so she throws the scrap away. Christine’s donning the “smudged amber-tinted glasses” on the drive back to Dayton’s symbolizes how she is more at peace with herself and with her relationship to Christine. “When I put them on,” Christine narrates, “they turned the world yellow like an old photograph.” The glasses may be smudged and imperfect, but the yellow world that Christine now sees represents her newfound contentment. Throughout the novel, therefore, yellow has symbolized safety and contentment. • La-Z-Boy a brand of recliner chair. • June berries blue-black and purplish berries growing on shad bushes.

55 IDA CHAPTER 17 Summary Ida begins her narration with the comment, “I never grew up, but I got old.” As a fifty-seven-year-old woman, Ida is a paradox: She seems like an old, emotionally cold woman, but she’s actually only middle-aged, and she has feelings—although she might not show them. She wants Christine to have a better life than she does, but she sadly recognizes that Christine doesn’t. Ida’s narration concerns her family life when she was growing up. This history begins when Ida is fifteen years old. Her mother, Annie, is sick and can no longer care for herself or her family, so Ida’s mother’s much younger sister, Clara, comes to stay with the family. Ida immediately takes a liking toward Clara, her aunt, and tries to monopolize Clara’s attentions away from Ida’s sister, Pauline. Ida sees in Clara everything that Ida is not but that Ida wants to be: pretty, mysterious, and urbane. What Ida doesn’t recognize is the sexual tension that lies just below the surface between Clara and Ida’s father. Clara soon becomes part of the family, caring for Ida’s mother. Only Ida’s sister, Pauline, resists showering attention on Clara. Ida, however, shares all of her feelings with Clara; Clara is the affectionate “sister” whom Ida never had. Incredibly, and unsuspectingly, Clara gets pregnant. Ida’s father, Lecon, is the father. When Ida’s mother learns of the sexual affair between her husband and her sister and that Clara is now pregnant, she and Lecon argue incessantly about who is to blame: Clara, Lecon, or—amazingly—Annie. Clara secretly makes a plan whereby she’ll give birth and then Ida will publicly claim that the baby is hers. Ida and her parents agree to the plan. A young Father Hurlburt, a priest at the local mission, arranges for Clara and Ida to travel to a nunnery in Denver, Colorado, where they will stay until Clara gives birth. Selfishly, Clara seems more interested in visiting Denver, a place where she’s never been, than worrying about the baby that grows inside her.

56 Commentary Ida’s commentary begins with the mysterious phrase, “I never grew up, but I got old.” However, throughout her narration, she explains what she means by this comment. At an early age, she assumed the awesome responsibility of raising a child as her own when she herself was figuratively still a child. Although Ida’s narrative section is the last presented in the novel, hers—to a great degree—is the most important, for she explains the history that shapes her, Christine’s, and Rayona’s present and future. She explains, “My recollections are not tied to white paper. They have the depth of time.” Continually she relives her past by creating her present, actions that ironically separate her from the people about whom she thinks. Hers is a lonely existence: “I have to tell this story every day, add to it, revise, invent the parts I forget or never knew. No one but me carries it all and no one will— unless I tell Rayona.” Ida’s life, then, is an act of creation. At age fifteen, Ida grasps onto the only bright spot she knows: Aunt Clara. She idealizes Clara much like Rayona idealized Ellen DeMarco and Christine idealized her brother, Lee. “I claimed her,” Ida says of Clara. Ida’s search for perfection mirrors her father’s; Lecon’s overriding concern is that “Everyone must think us the perfect family.” But we know, having read both Rayona’s and Christine’s narrative sections, that an idealized, picture-perfect world is a false reality in which people get hurt. Lecon’s behavior regarding his extramarital affair with Clara emphasizes the negative treatment that males receive in Dorris’ novel. With the exception of Dayton, who seems feminized throughout the novel; Father Hurlburt, who is Ida’s closest and longest-lasting friend; and Sky, an adult with a child’s innocence, men do not fare well. Elgin is a philanderer who disbelieves that his wife is sick and whose sexual desires are never sated. Lecon is much the same as Elgin, apparently forsaking his sick and dying wife for a brief tryst with his sister-in-law, Clara, who is as much to blame as Lecon for their misbegotten sexual indiscretions. And Father Tom is certainly no saint, for he seemingly preys on Rayona’s insecurities about herself. Although Lecon is surely as at fault as Clara for their affair, Clara is much more the opportunist than Lecon. For example, after

57 it has been decided that Clara and Ida will both travel to Denver for Clara to have her baby, Clara’s strongest reaction to this news is that she’s never been to Denver before; she’s looking forward to visiting the city. “I’ve never been there,” she says, but note how Dorris characterizes Clara’s reaction: “Clara smiled to herself.” She sees Denver as a vista to be explored, as a city in which she can “have a good time.” Ultimately, then, she’s unconcerned that she’s pregnant. • her carpet valise a sturdy bag made of carpet material and used for traveling. • in the tin in the tin pie plate. • a pallet layers of quilts and blankets laid on the floor, usually for children to sleep on during long stays by relatives, when beds are few. • the Infant of Prague The exact origin of the Infant is unknown, but we do know that it came from a monastery in Bohemia and, from there, was obtained by a noblewoman who gave it as a wedding gift to her daughter, who gave it as a wedding gift to her daughter. In 1628, the daughter, Lady Polyxena, presented the statue to Carmelite nuns, saying, “I am giving you what I most esteem of my possessions. Keep the sculpture in reference and you will be well off.” The statue then became known as the Infant Jesus of Prague. It stands about eighteen inches high and has a long golden gown around its wax body and a golden crown atop its head. Since then, copies of the Infant have been made and distributed to European churches and all parts of the world. • a perfect Palmer hand During the first half of the twentieth century, penmanship was a required course, beginning in second grade and continuing through sixth grade. Children nationwide were required to practice loops, swirls, and push-and-pull zigzags in Palmer notebooks, hoping to master the gently inclined, smooth continuity that is the hallmark of the Palmer method. Scholastic tests often carried two grades— one for content, the other for handwriting. • the sums

mathematical addition problems.

58 CHAPTER 18 Summary At the nunnery in Denver, the nuns take an instant liking to Clara, who tells them that she was raped by a mysterious stranger. They dislike Ida, who’s pretending to be Clara’s sister, and put her to work doing tedious chores. Ida is so busy with chores, and Clara is so sequestered by the nuns, that Ida doesn’t even see Clara until after Clara gives birth (on August 10) to a baby girl. When Clara mentions that she’s thinking of giving up the baby for adoption, Ida threatens to expose Clara to the nuns. Clara allows Ida to care for the baby. Ida and the baby, whom the nuns name Christine, return to the reservation; Clara stays in Denver. When Ida and Christine return home, Ida learns from Father Hurlburt that Pauline is now living with a different family because her parents argue all the time. And Lecon is drinking heavily. He is disappointed that Clara didn’t return with Ida and Christine. Over the next two and a half years, Ida and her family cope with a newborn child in the home. Lecon is gone most of the week, and when he returns home on the weekends, he’s drunk. The women get relief only when he again leaves for work on Sundays. Ida cares for Christine as best she can, noting that although Christine isn’t pretty, she has a “quality . . . that made you look at her twice. She had no fear.” But Ida has fear, fear that Clara will return and steal Christine away from her. Over the years, Ida sequesters herself and Christine in the house. Their only regular visitor is Father Hurlburt, whom Ida comes to rely on for companionship. Ida’s worst fear occurs four years later, when Clara returns to the reservation. Ida is stunned when she realizes that Clara does intend to take Christine with her. Hoping that Clara will become bored with Christine and that she’ll not want a misbehaved child to worry about, Ida intentionally tries to show Christine’s worst behavior to Clara. But Clara has other plans: She wants to give Christine to a family that wants a little girl—for a price. Determined that she will never let go of Christine, Ida, with the help of Father Hurlburt, secretly gets legal papers that declare that

59 Christine is her daughter. Clara is livid that she no longer has control of Christine and leaves the reservation. Ida sees Clara only two more times in her life: at Lee’s funeral and when Ida visits Clara in Indian Health Service Hospital in Seattle, when she forces Christine to visit the dying Clara, whom Christine doesn’t know is her biological mother. Commentary At the convent, Ida is treated as the less important, tagalong sister to Clara. “Me, I just backslid,” Ida says of herself. Note that Ida becomes lazy, a stereotype of Indians that Ida assumes. The nuns’ perception of Ida—”I was everything those nuns expected an Indian to be”—is false, but as Dorris has pointed out throughout the novel, perceptions are safety nets that people use to block out reality. Too often, if you perceive something to be true, then it becomes true in your mind. This type of thinking is exactly what the nuns have in terms of Ida, who allows them to believe that their stereotypes are true because she doesn’t dispel them. Ida’s family relationship to Christine is complicated at best. Technically, Ida and Christine are first cousins, but because Ida’s father is also Christine’s father, Ida then is also Christine’s half-sister. Given the ruse that Ida and Clara play on the nuns, Ida is also Aunt Ida. And then Ida becomes Christine’s mother—at first, only emotionally, but ultimately legally. Lecon’s withdrawal from his family after Ida and Christine return home from Denver only increases our contempt for him. Pejoratively he comments, “Nothing but girls,” in characterizing his family. Resorting to drinking liquor when home from work, which isn’t often, he blames Ida for his unfortunate situation at home. “It was as if he forgot truth,” Ida says at one point. Ida takes pride in Christine’s independent, fearless nature. No matter how Ida tries to steel herself from loving Christine, Christine makes emotional inroads into Ida’s heart. Even though Ida insists that Christine call her “Aunt Ida” as a means to keep an emotional distance between the two for fear that Clara might return to claim Christine, “every time she said it, the feelings for her I couldn’t help, the feelings that came from being the one she came to when she was hurt and the one who heard her prayers, the feel-

60 ings I fought against, got flaked away.” Ida is unable to resist an emotional attachment to Christine; she grows into motherhood. Ida’s battle against Clara for legal guardianship of Christine shows just how much Ida has become attached to Christine. With Father Hurlburt’s help, she becomes Christine’s mother not only emotionally but also legally. Although Christine never learns the truth about how Ida and Clara are really related to her, and although she seemingly rejects Ida as her mother, as readers we know the deep personal sacrifice that Ida makes for Christine. By not telling Christine about her past, Ida attempts to protect her and herself—ironically from each other, as though Christine’s knowing the truth and Ida’s having to defend her actions would be more painful than the combative relationship that the two women now share. • a large indulgence a large amount of money due for sins in order to shorten one’s time of punishment in purgatory. • Old Crow a brand of whiskey.

CHAPTER 19 Summary With her mother dead one month, her father gone, and Pauline married, Ida now focuses her attentions on her and Christine’s future. She speaks with Father Hurlburt about Willard Pretty Dog, who is again living on the reservation after having been wounded and disfigured in battle during World War II. Ida pictures herself, Willard, and Christine living together. Because he’s so badly disfigured, Willard doesn’t associate with anyone; he stays to himself most of the time. But Father Hurlburt arranges for Ida to meet Willard, and when they finally do, Ida is matter-of-fact about Willard’s physical scars (“His weakness made me bold”) and gains Willard’s respect by telling him about her rough life; Christine seems not even to notice Willard’s disfigured features, and he soon feels comfortable in Ida’s house. Willard, scheduled for reconstructive surgery on his ear, checks himself into the hospital. During the time he’s there, Ida learns that her father has died. She doesn’t appear to be overly concerned about him.

61 Willard again goes to the hospital, this time for surgery to repair his entire face. While he’s gone, Ida learns that she’s pregnant with Willard’s child, but she keeps the news to herself. She doesn’t even tell Willard’s mother, Mrs. Pretty Dog, when she, Mrs. Pretty Dog, and Father Hurlburt drive to see Willard after his surgery. Willard’s surgery is a success; he is as handsome as he was before the war. Mrs. Pretty Dog, uncaring of Ida’s feelings, tells Willard that now he can return home, that he no longer needs Ida as his nurse. Courageously, but insensitively, Willard tells his mother that although Ida is not a beautiful woman or a smart woman, she stayed with him throughout his rough times; he’s not about to abandon her now. Ida, resigned that Willard thinks of her more as a chore than as a wife or lover, agrees with Mrs. Pretty Dog: Willard should go home to his own house. When Ida’s pregnancy becomes public, she refuses to say who the father of the child is. She doesn’t even tell her sister, Pauline. During the time that she’s pregnant, Ida seems consoled that she has Christine to rely on, to help pass the time. Ida’s pregnancy reminds her of her time in Denver, waiting for Clara to give birth to Christine. When Christine asks about her birth, Ida refuses to answer any of Christine’s questions. Also, Ida still cannot believe that Clara would have given up Christine for adoption. Ida vows to be a better mother to her soon-to-be-born child than Clara ever would have been to Christine. Ida gives birth to a baby boy, whom she names Lee. Commentary Willard Pretty Dog is the first and only man to whom Ida ever tells her life story. Ida tells Willard the many unhappy stories of her past, an event that is similar to Christine’s divulging her history to Elgin and then Elgin’s deserting Christine. Note that Ida becomes her own listener, as though her life story is someone else’s and she is merely a spectator to the telling: “As I listened to my own story, I lost the control of its interpretation. I heard it as a tale on the radio, so sad it deserved applause and a trip to Florida.” The phrase “a trip to Florida” demonstrates that no matter how hard her life is, at least Ida retains her sense of humor.

62 When Willard unknowingly demeans Ida while she, his mother, and Willard discuss his future following his successful reconstructive surgery, this is but another episode in the novel in which men seemingly treat women badly. Without understanding how she will perceive his statements, Willard says that Ida is not beautiful or smart. Stunned by his insolence, Ida withdraws from the conversation. Note that Ida characterizes the situation and her feelings as yellow mums that “withered on stiff stalks,” an image of aridity and death, much like her feelings now for Willard. We’re left wondering how men like Willard or even Elgin, who can have good, meaningful relationships with women like Ida or Christine, can so arrogantly and selfishly sacrifice the relationships without knowing what they’ve done. During her pregnancy with Willard’s child, Ida is determined to act courageously and independently as a role model for Christine. Her reasoning for her steely behavior is similar to Christine’s reasons for not groveling to Ida in front of Rayona when Christine and Rayona first returned to the reservation. Ida says of her own behavior concerning Christine, “I wanted her to see me smart, to know she could be that way herself in front of any man.” Ida is Christine’s only female role model, just as Christine is Rayona’s only female role model. Unfortunately, both women fail to demonstrate that females can be vulnerable and yet not weak, have feelings without those feelings being trampled. • scything grass cutting grass by swinging a scythe, a long-handled implement with a single-edged, curved cutting blade. • Kate Smith a U.S. singer, popular as a radio personality during WWII for her moving rendition of “God Bless America.”

CHAPTER 20 Summary Ida reflects on how different Christine and Lee are while they’re growing up. Lee is a fussy baby; Christine is controlled, reminding Ida of Lee’s needs. In fact, Christine comes to think of herself as Lee’s mother, not Ida.

63 As Christine and Lee grow older, they begin to question Ida about their father, thinking that they must have the same father. But Ida is adamant in not discussing who their fathers are. Christine, out of spite when she’s angry at Ida, calls her “Mother” instead of “Aunt Ida,” which Ida insists on. Also, Ida still fears that Clara will return and claim Christine, a thought that Ida can’t stand, for she loves Christine like her own daughter, which, in every way except biologically, she is. Ida doesn’t limit Christine and Lee in anything that they want to do. She’s more of a follower than a leader. For example, one night when Christine is eleven years old, Ida sees her running outside without her clothes on. Ida merely calls Christine and Lee into the house and acts as though she saw nothing; she’s determined that Christine and Lee should make decisions on their own and live with the consequences. When Christine becomes deeply involved in Catholicism, Ida doesn’t discourage her interest, but she doesn’t encourage it either. Christine soon becomes enthralled with a letter that the Catholic nuns at school tell her was given by the Blessed Virgin to a girl named Lucy in Portugal. Supposedly, the letter, when opened, will reveal either the end of the world or the Catholic conversion of all of Russia. Christine is so consumed by the letter that Ida, fearful, discusses it with Father Hurlburt. On New Year’s Eve night, Ida, acknowledging that Christine needs mystery in her life, allows Christine to stay up late, listening to the radio for either the end of the world or Russia’s conversion. Ida is determined to allow Christine to keep her faith in miracles. When the station goes off the air late at night, Christine falls asleep. Father Hurlburt arrives, and he and Ida sit on the roof of the house and talk while Ida braids her hair. Commentary “No two children living in the same house could have been more different, or more close.” So begins the last chapter of the novel. Ida, of course, is referring to Christine and Lee, but the statement could just as well be about Christine and Ida, who, from Lee’s birth onward, fight over which one of them should care—and cares more—for Lee. When Christine was small, Ida worried that

64 Clara would return and reclaim her. Now she must fight Christine for Lee’s attention. “She believed she held the house together by the force of her will,” Ida exclaims about Christine. Paradoxically, then, Christine acts independently as Ida wants her to, but at the same time Ida resents this same independence and forceful will. Chapter 20 is more about Christine and Lee than about Ida, who appears to be the passive follower of her two children. To a great extent, because her childhood was ripped from her the moment she assumed responsibility for Clara’s pregnancy, Ida lives her life through her children. “I followed in their wake,” she narrates, “responding to their passions, experiencing lives I might have lived.” She creates her life out of theirs, accepting Lee’s insecurities about himself—”Lee did not know his own power and feared to test it”—while merely surviving Christine’s brash, antagonistic hard-headedness: “For her I was the boulder to shove against, the obstacle in her path, the water through which she must swim.” Ultimately, then, Christine uses Ida as a battleground to test her own strength; in contrast, Lee doesn’t even acknowledge that he has any personal strength. The novel ends with two powerful images that recur throughout the entire text: the arrival of a letter and the braiding of hair. Christine is positive that the letter from the Blessed Virgin will determine the course of events in the world. She’s so certain in the validity of the letter and its possibilities that she places her entire faith in it, only to be devastated when neither Russia is converted nor the world ends. Ida comments, “Christine was snared by her innocence, by her belief in wonders of any kind, by her belief that her life mattered. . . . Christine took responsibility for the universe.” Here, Ida’s narration helps explain Christine’s later reckless behavior, which Christine discussed earlier in her narrative section. With her hopes and religious faith shattered, Christine has nothing left to believe in—including, sadly, herself. No wonder her credo becomes “you’re only young once.” The image of braiding at the end of the novel is powerful in that the physical braiding of three strands of hair mirrors the three narrative braidings of Ida’s, Christine’s, and Rayona’s individual stories. And again, Ida’s is the linchpin that holds all three narratives together. From her, no doubt, Christine learned how to braid hair, which she does to Rayona’s hair in Chapter 1. And at the be-

65 ginning of Chapter 17, Ida’s first narrative chapter, Ida mentions that no one knows the whole story of her and Christine’s and Rayona’s life—”unless I tell Rayona, who might understand.” Here at the novel’s end, it seems more likely that Ida eventually will tell Rayona the whole story. If she indeed does so, her telling Rayona will be a symbolic act of braiding strands of hair, of entwining “three strands, the whispers of coming and going, of twisting and tying and bending, of catching and of letting go, of braiding” these three women’s lives together into one whole that is cumulatively theirs and ours, that is A Yellow Raft on Blue Water. • Kateri Tekakwitha The daughter of a Christian Algonquin mother and a pagan Mohawk chief, Tekakwitha was born in 1656 in what would become New York State. When she was four years old, all of her family died of smallpox. Tekakwitha survived but was terribly scarred and weak for the rest of her life. After she was converted by missionaries, she lived a single life, teaching prayers to children and helping the sick and aged until she died in 1680, at the age of twenty-four. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II on June 30, 1980.

CHARACTER ANALYSES RAYONA Although the events narrated by Rayona in her narrative section of the novel take place within a brief span of time, perhaps only six months, we learn a lot about this fifteen-year-old girl. Hers is the story of a young woman trying to find her place in the world, trying to discover a personal identity that embraces her family’s history. One of the biggest factors driving this classic search for identity is Rayona’s dual-race heritage: Her mother, Christine, is Indian; her father, Elgin, is black. From the outset of the novel, Rayona is unsure of herself. Her uncertainty is based in part in the apparent role-reversed relationship that she has with her mother. In the hospital scene in Chapter 1, Rayona seems more like a mother to Christine than Christine does to Rayona. For example, note that Christine cheats at cards, but Rayona lets her. Traditionally, we would expect a child to cheat

66 at cards and a parent to chastise the child. What we as readers do not realize—until Christine’s narrative section—is that Christine wants Rayona to catch her at cheating. Rayona and Christine’s playing cards is symbolic of their relationship throughout most of the novel. Christine’s actions, including wanting to kill herself apparently because of her destructive marriage to Elgin, are those of an irresponsible teenager. But Rayona is present to help her mother. She never questions Christine’s actions except to say that Christine is making mistakes in how she’s running her life. For example, following Christine’s abortive suicide attempt, Rayona is stunned that her mother would want to stop and rent videos before the two women leave Seattle for the Montana reservation on which Aunt Ida, Rayona’s grandmother and Christine’s mother, lives. Again, however, like the episode in which Rayona and Christine play cards, Rayona misperceives Christine’s motives for renting the videos: For Rayona, it’s a waste of time, but for Christine, the videos symbolize the memory of herself that she wants Rayona to have of her. Misperceptions drive many of the characters’ actions in Dorris’ novel. Rayona’s brief, initial stay on the reservation emphasizes the thorny issue of her mixed racial heritage and the psychological effects that this heritage has on her. For example, when she is first introduced to Foxy Cree and Annabelle Stiffarm, she perceives that they will reject her as a friend; she is the proverbial outsider trying to gain acceptance. And she is right. Foxy says to Rayona, “You’re Christine’s kid. . . . The one whose father is a nigger.” Foxy calls Rayona “Buffalo Soldier” and leaves derisive notes in the Africa section of her school geography book, asking her when she’s “going home” to Africa. To these racially motivated taunts that she receives, Rayona reacts by pulling away from all human contact. “I make my mind a blank,” she says. When Father Tom, a priest on the reservation who later apparently sexually assaults Rayona, constantly makes Rayona’s dual heritage an issue that he wants to discuss with her, he unknowingly reinforces the stigma of race that Rayona feels. For example, when Father Tom says to Rayona, “It’s not easy being a young person alone at your age . . . when you’re different,” Rayona responds, “I’m not different.” She wants to be accepted and

67 fit in without her Indian/black heritage being an issue. However, the problem is that everyone seems to make her heritage an issue. Only when Rayona meets Evelyn and Sky at the state park does she finally find people who accept her without making her heritage an issue. Sky doesn’t even acknowledge her skin color, and Evelyn’s first comment when she meets Rayona—”He didn’t mention you was Black”—is the only acknowledgment that she makes. To Evelyn and Sky, Rayona’s race is unimportant. Rayona as an individual, as a person trying to make her way through life, is what’s important. Evelyn emphasizes this last point when she tells Rayona why she’s helping the young girl: “Because somebody should have done it for me.” Rayona is accepted as the person who she is. She no longer needs the false, illusory image of a perfect Ellen DeMarco. By the end of the rodeo, she’s more sure about herself and is ready to once again face Christine and—by extension—herself. Her narrative section ends on a positive note in that she and Christine are again communicating with each other. Rayona’s future can only get better. CHRISTINE Like her daughter, Rayona, Christine is searching for a personal identity throughout her narrative section. However, Christine’s search seems more destructive than her daughter’s. Faced with a debilitating illness brought on by years of heavy drinking and prescription drugs, Christine faces the stark reality that she’s dying and that no one believes her. Only now, at the end of her life, does she reflect on the destructive path that her life has taken. Although Christine doesn’t know it, Ida is not her biological mother, although Ida certainly is her emotional mother. Christine’s mother is actually Clara, Ida’s aunt and therefore Christine’s greataunt, whom she once meets in a Seattle hospital when Ida forces her to go. This unconventional genealogy symbolizes the reckless, devil-may-care life that Christine leads. As a teenager, Christine revolts from Ida and begins drinking and partying heavily. Whom she sleeps with is inconsequential to her. As long as she feels important to the men in her life, at least during her teen years, she doesn’t care what other people think about her.

68 After her brother, Lee, is born, Christine defines herself through him. For example, she mothers him as though she, not Ida, were his mother. Later in life, when Lee faces enlistment in the military and the threat of fighting in the Vietnam War, Christine again defines herself in terms of him, but her actions are ultimately destructive, both to herself and him. Afraid that men won’t be attracted to her because her brother is a draft dodger, Christine emotionally blackmails Lee into enlisting in the military, which he ultimately does. However, her guilt in Lee’s enlisting is overwhelming later when she learns that he has been killed in the war. She must face the fact that she played a role in Lee’s death by manipulating him to enlist and that she now faces total rejection from Ida, who idealized Lee. Christine’s personal search for identity culminates with her moving in with Lee’s best friend, Dayton, on the Montana reservation. As she notes at the beginning of Chapter 16, “Dayton and I settled into the routine of an old married couple.” The stability that she finds at Dayton’s is ironic given that she fought Dayton emotionally and mentally over who would influence Lee’s decision about whether to enlist or not; Dayton changes Christine’s outlook on life. Before moving in with him, Christine had never found the life that she so desperately wanted with a man. For example, her unconventional married life with Elgin, Rayona’s father, was anything but ideal. But with Dayton, she discovers the stable—though nonsexual—relationship that she’s always wanted. At the end of her narrative section, Christine finally seems at peace with the many relationships in her life. Concerning Rayona, she admits, “She was my miracle, and I knelt beside her.” These two women’s relationship, although unconventional, is a life-giving force to each. Dayton remains the bedrock on which Christine depends, not only because she’s living in his house but also emotionally; by building a greater understanding between them, Christine is finally able to face the destructive role that she played in Lee’s death. And concerning Ida, Christine acknowledges that they will always have a contentious relationship. Such conflict, however, can become something to rely on because these two women will always judge each other’s actions but learn to accept each other.

69 IDA As Ida says at the beginning of her narrative section, “I have to tell this story every day, add to it, revise, invent the parts I forget or never knew. No one but me carries it all and no one will.” Hers is the linchpin that connects all three narrative sections in Dorris’ novel. Raised on a Montana reservation, from which she never moves, Ida is faced with the grim decision at fifteen years old to raise her aunt’s child as her own. Although she has the emotional feelings for Christine that any mother might have for a daughter, Ida and Christine’s relationship is tenuous at best. They seem more like rivals than mother and daughter. For example, when Ida’s son, Lee, is born, she and Christine battle over who is the better caregiver to Lee. Ironically, however, no matter how much Christine resents Ida as a mother, it is Ida to whom Christine turns to raise and protect Rayona. Of all the female characters in the novel, perhaps with the exception of Evelyn, Ida is the most stable, strong, and self-determined. For example, she fights Clara for the right to raise Christine as her own, legal child even though she knows that she’s giving up her life’s independence. Even more, she intentionally rejects Willard Pretty Dog as a lover after she learns that she’s pregnant with his child. Her decision is mitigated by Willard’s thoughtless comments about her following his successful reconstructive facial surgery: “Ida may not be beautiful. . . . She may not be very smart. But when no one else cared for me, she was there.” His comments are more painful than he realizes, for they also characterize other people’s relationships—most notably Christine’s—to Ida and not just Willard’s. At the very end of the novel, the image of Ida braiding her long black hair is a powerful symbol; the braiding symbolizes the narrative strands that together make up the novel. “The cold was bearable because the air was so still. I let the blanket slip from my shoulders, lifted my arms about my head, and began,” she says at the end of Chapter 17. The phrase “and began” is significant in that it is so matter-of-fact; the simplicity of it parallels the bold simplicity of Ida’s narration. Although we might not think so at first, during her entire life, decisions seem to be made for her rather than by

70 her, but she faces them resolutely and with a determination not found in other characters. Ida’s braiding her hair symbolizes her creation of her own individualized story. The three strands of hair that she rhythmically interweaves are similar to the novel’s three narrative sections, which together make a complete whole that is all three women’s lives. Separately, each woman struggles, but united, they form a cohesiveness that gives strength, power, and validation to their stories. Ida, as the last narrative weaver in the novel, is the foundation on which both Rayona and Christine build their own life stories.

CRITICAL ESSAYS YELLOW AS A SYMBOL The color yellow is the most important symbol in the novel, as the title suggests, and is most often linked to the character of Rayona, especially the image of the yellow raft moored offshore in the lake at Bearpaw Lake State Park. The symbolic color yellow informs many of the novel’s themes, including how perceptions are individualized, how reality shatters illusions, and how characters seek feelings of permanence. The most apparent use of yellow as a symbol is the yellow raft anchored in Bearpaw Lake. Before Rayona swims to the raft, her life has been anything but conventional. She’s had to face a reversal of roles concerning her mother, Christine, who acts more like a child than Rayona does. Also, Rayona has been stung many times by racism, both overtly and passively, because of her dual heritage: Her mother is Indian, her father black. It is on the yellow raft that Rayona feels at peace—initially— with herself. Leaving Father Tom on the shore, she swims to the raft and then suns herself on it. Note that the raft apparently expands the universe for Rayona, a universe that so far has included racism and a feeling of displacement: “I pull myself over the side and lie on the sun-warmed dry boards, panting and soaking up the heat. The silence is wide as the sky.” However, the calm that Rayona experiences on the yellow raft is shattered by Father Tom’s arrival. Lying next to Rayona, Father Tom jerks his hips against

71 her. Perhaps as a defense against Father Tom’s advances, her enters a dreamlike state: “In my dream I move with him, pin him to me with my strong arms, search for his face with my mouth.” Ultimately, then, the yellow raft is deceptive: Rayona is as much at risk on it as she was before. The raft provided an initial sense of security that Father Tom violates. The yellow raft also symbolizes escape for Rayona. She first sees Ellen DeMarco as Ellen is diving into the water off the raft. Unfortunately, the yellow raft in this episode is unhealthy for Rayona because she takes refuge in an illusory world in which she idealizes the perfect life that she assumes Ellen has. Even the way that Ellen gets onto the raft seems perfect: “She hoists herself onto the yellow boards in one smooth, strong motion.” On the raft, Ellen is everything that Rayona wants to be. Hers is the picture-perfect world that Rayona’s is not. Rayona, comparing herself to Ellen on the yellow raft, falls short of perfection, which Ellen symbolizes: “I’m afraid to see anything more, to see something wrong, something out of place, something to ruin the picture. . . . In that moment she’s everything I’m not but ought to be.” Here, then, the raft symbolizes what Rayona would like to be but isn’t. However, Rayona’s self-image is destructive, which the yellow of the raft reinforces in her mind. The security that the yellow raft symbolizes for Rayona is broken at the beginning of Chapter 7 when Rayona must face up to the many lies that she’s created about her own life. At the beginning of this chapter, she tells Evelyn, who just so happens to be wearing a yellow blouse, her real personal history. Whereas Rayona thinks that Evelyn will reject her after Evelyn learns the truth about Rayona, Rayona in fact assumes control of her life because she tells someone about it. Telling her story makes it real for her. But before she actually tells Evelyn her life story, Rayona tries one last time to deny who she is and counts on the yellow raft to help her. She thinks to herself, “I’m stopped, halfway down the trail, with my eyes fixed on the empty yellow raft floating in the blue waters of Bearpaw Lake. Somewhere in my mind I’ve decided that if I stare at it hard enough it will launch me out of my present troubles.” The “trapdoor” that the yellow raft represents to Rayona is an illusion that Evelyn dispels; Rayona must take control of her life if she’s to make anything out of it, and the yellow-bloused Evelyn is

72 the one person who helps Rayona acknowledge who she is and the life that she’s led thus far. For Christine, the color yellow at first is associated with failure, but at the end of her narrative section, it symbolizes the peace that she eventually finds in herself and the world. Growing up, Christine faces the challenge of crossing a naturally made yellow stone bridge on a dare that she herself makes. However, she’s unable to cross the bridge alone, and her brother, Lee, comes to her aid. Faced with her own failure, from that point on she leads a reckless life of abandon. Only at the end of her narrative section, having reaffirmed her relationships with Rayona, Dayton, Ida, and the memory of Lee, does the color yellow symbolize the peace of mind that Christine has craved so often throughout her life. Reunited with Rayona, Christine and her daughter return home to Dayton’s after having eaten lunch together. During the meal, Christine privately acknowledges the mistakes that she’s made and the hurt that she’s caused the people whom she cares for. After giving Rayona her prized turtle ring, an act that symbolizes her own permanence in Rayona’s life, Christine dons yellow-tinted sunglasses for the ride home: “When I put them on, they turned the world yellow as an old photograph.” The world as an old photograph is comforting to Christine, for she, like Rayona, has found her place in the world and feels more comfortable about who she is. The “old photograph” symbolizes the fact that Christine has finally accepted her past for what it is: a mixture of good and mostly bad times during which she acted irresponsibly and selfishly but now has a better, more healthy grasp of. Here, then, yellow symbolizes peace, but not the illusory peace that the yellow raft symbolized for Rayona. Peace here is real, a feeling that everything will work out for the better. DORRIS’ NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE A Yellow Raft in Blue Water is especially noteworthy for the narrative technique that Dorris uses to tell the stories of the three female protagonists. Rather than narrate the history of these three women’s lives in a linear fashion, in which one episode directly follows another, Dorris opts for a more Native-American narrative

73 structure, in which the plot is circular rather than linear and no single episode or narrator is more important than any other. This circularity emphasizes the totality of experience rather than individual viewpoints, for only through the culmination of all experiences do we understand the history—and future—of the complete telling. Rayona’s narrative section, which forms the first third of the novel, is the most stand-alone section of the novel, but Rayona discusses more than just her own history, as do the two narrative sections that follow hers. She begins her narration with the episode in which she’s visiting her mother, Christine, in the hospital. Her narration then moves to her experiences at Bearpaw Lake State Park, then at the rodeo, and finally at Dayton’s house. However, the episode at the hospital is again related in Chapter 14 by Christine, and we get a different, new perspective on the events that transpire. For example, whereas Rayona cannot understand why her mother cheats at cards, we learn in Christine’s narration that Christine cheats because she wants to be caught. Even more revealing in terms of dual narrations of the same event is the episode in which Christine seems so determined to get a lifetime video membership for Rayona at a video rental store. Rayona cannot understand why her mother seems so obsessed with the video membership, but in Christine’s narrative section, we learn that Christine thinks of the membership as an heirloom gift for Rayona, something that will remind Rayona of Christine and give Rayona a sense of permanence in the world. Rayona is unable to understand Christine’s reasoning, as are we when we read Rayona’s narration. Only after we read Christine’s narrative section do we understand the significance of the lifetime video membership. Another example of how one character perceives experiences differently than another character concerns Christine’s receiving the package of medicine from her friend, Charlene. When the package arrives at Aunt Ida’s, Rayona, who’s now staying with Aunt Ida, her grandmother, assumes that the package will entice Christine to at least show up to get the package. However, one day when Rayona arrives home at Aunt Ida’s, she notices that the package is gone: Christine has come to get the package but didn’t even stay to see Rayona or leave a note. Naturally, Rayona perceives

74 Christine’s actions as evidence of abandonment. However, we then learn in Christine’s narrative section that Christine hasn’t abandoned Rayona but, rather, hopes that Aunt Ida will do a better job of raising Rayona than Christine has done. Christine’s actions are meant to help her daughter, but Rayona can’t know this because Christine never tells her. Only by reading both Rayona’s and Christine’s narrations do we learn the motivations for Christine’s apparently selfish acts. Ida’s narrative section provides the foundation on which Rayona’s and Christine’s narrations rest. As she says at the beginning of her section, “I have to tell this story every day, add to it, revise, invent the parts I forget or never knew. . . . I am the story.” Ida is correct in her claim that she is the story, for without her, Rayona’s and Christine’s narrations would not have the power that they do. But Ida’s story is as much about what she doesn’t say as it is about what she does. Hers contains the secrets that might help both Rayona and Christine better understand their own lives. Ida’s secrets include who Christine’s real mother is, who Lee’s real father is, and who she herself is in relation to Christine and Rayona. To Christine, Ida is paradoxically her legal mother, her half-sister, and her first cousin, and she insists on being called Aunt Ida. To Rayona, Ida is her legal grandmother and her aunt. Ida’s narration, which seems more about Christine and Lee as children growing up on the reservation than it does about herself, holds the best promise that her many kept secrets will be revealed and that the female members of her family will benefit from their being told. Concerning her own story, Ida says, “No one but me carries it all and no one will—unless I tell Rayona, who might understand.” The key phrase here—”unless I tell Rayona”—is important because Ida will probably pass on the family’s story to Rayona before she dies. She no doubt understands the importance of family history and will not allow it to die when she does. Our last image of Ida is at the end of the novel, when she begins braiding her hair. This image of braiding symbolizes the three narrative strands that cumulatively make up Dorris’ novel. The three strands of hair represent the three narrative stories that are the novel. Speaking of Father Hurlburt, Ida narrates, “As a man with cut hair, he did not identify the rhythm of three strands, the whispers of coming and going, of twisting and tying and blending, of catching

75 and letting go, of braiding.” Ida’s comments here are more about the narrative structure of the novel than they are about her braiding her hair. Together, the three distinctive yet intertwined stories that are Rayona’s, Christine’s, and Ida’s histories are the interrelated and dependent narratives that create A Yellow Raft in Blue Water.

REVIEW QUESTIONS AND ESSAY TOPICS 1. Write an essay in which you discuss the significance of the novel’s title. Which character in the novel is most linked to the yellow raft, and why? 2. Discuss how disease and sickness play roles in the novel. 3. Men do not fare well in Dorris’ novel. Are there any men who are role models for Lee? for Foxy? for Dayton? 4. Write an essay in which you compare Rayona’s and Ida’s characters. What can Rayona learn from her grandmother? Can Ida learn anything from Rayona? 5. The color yellow is important thematically in Dorris’ novel. What does yellow symbolize for Rayona? for Christine? 6. Does Father Tom sexually assault Rayona on the yellow raft? Support your answer. 7. Discuss Christine’s selection of videos that she rents for Rayona. Why does she choose the videos that she does? 8. In Chapter 2, Rayona says, “I’m not what they expect.” What does she mean by this statement? 9. What is the significance of the package of medicine that Charlene sends to Christine?

76 10. Compare Sky’s and Lee’s actions concerning the military draft. Is one response more honorable than the other? Why or why not? 11. What role does the Vietnam War play in the novel? 12. Discuss Ellen DeMarco’s impact on Rayona. What significance does the scrap of letter have that Rayona keeps? When and why does Rayona throw away the scrap? 13. Compare Evelyn and Aunt Ida. How do they individually help Rayona? 14. What is Dayton’s role in the novel? Is he a positive role model for Rayona? 15. Many episodes in the novel are humorous. Find one such episode and discuss Dorris’ narrative technique of including humor in this otherwise serious novel. 16. How does Christine’s emotionally blackmailing Lee into enlisting in the military affect her life after Lee is killed? How does his death affect Dayton? 17. Does Christine really love Rayona? Does Ida love Christine? Write an essay in which you compare these two relationships. 18. How do Ida’s many secrets affect both Rayona’s and Christine’s lives? Should Ida tell her secrets to them? Do you think that Ida ultimately will tell Rayona? 19. Compare Christine and Clara. Does one character fare better than the other? If so, why? 20. Discuss Ida’s decision to reject Willard Pretty Dog after she becomes pregnant with his child. Are her actions ennobling?

77 21. One of the most powerful images occurs at the end of the novel when Ida braids her hair. Write an essay in which you discuss the symbolism of braiding in the novel.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY BOOKS AND ARTICLES BONETTI, KAY, et. al., eds. Conversations with American Novelists: The Best Interviews from The Missouri Review and the American Audio Prose Library. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1997. BOURNE, DANIEL. “A Conversation with Michael Dorris.” Artful Dodge 30-31 (1996): 20-32. COWART, DAVID. “‘The Rhythm of Three Strands’: Cultural Braiding in Dorris’s A Yellow Raft in Blue Water.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 8.1 (Spring 1996): 1-12. FORGET, CHRISTOPHER. “Identity and Narration: The Braided History.” Bulletin of the West Virginia Association of College English Teachers 16 (Fall 1994): 12-17. OWENS, LOUIS. “Acts of Recovery: The American Indian Novel in the ‘80s.” Western American Literature 22.1 (May 1987): 53-57. RAYSON, ANN. “Shifting Identity in the Work of Louise Erdrich and Michael Dorris.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 3.4 (Winter 1991): 27-36.

ONLINE RESOURCES “A Broken Life.” Salon Magazine. April 1997. www.salon.com “An Elegy: Believing in Michael Dorris.” www.hotlink.com/72997

78 BROTHER MICHAEL OF THE HOLY TRINITY. “The Third Secret Revealed!” www.fatima.org/third02 “Michael Dorris.” www.students.vcsu.nodak.edu “Michael Dorris, 1945-1997.” Native American Authors Project. The Internet Public Library. “Michael Dorris: In Memory.” www.nativeauthors.com “The Native American Rights Fund.” www.narf.org “Our

Michael

Dorris.”

www.eesdl.iisd.ca/pcdf/meadows/

dorris

“Remembering Michael Dorris.” Salon Magazine. June 1997. www.salon.com

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80 NOTES