When I arrived in Atlanta I did so with a bitter heart. I was angry at my Uncle Steve for sending me away and I hated the idea of living around a bunch of Americanos. After living on the reservation for so long I had come to believe that most white people were lame and stuck up. I wanted to be with my people, who were wild and free and real.
What I knew about the south was only what I had seen by watching Anne of Green Gables. I was picturing men in overalls and ladies with hats serving ice tea expecting me to say things like, "yes, mam I've been doing lovely today!" What a nightmare!
The landscape was vastly different from California or the beautiful deserts of New Mexico. I had moved to a rain forest! Every direction I looked there were trees, and what looked like branches of ivy growing over everything. My aunt and uncle lived in a cookie cutter neighborhood where every third house was the same. Their house was a small, narrow two story. I would share a bedroom (and bed) with my little 12 year old cousin.
As time went by I got use to things just like I had every other place I had lived. By the time I was 16, I had been a little girl who loved her mother, a child who missed her father, a crack baby, a sex abuse survivor, a treasure hunter, a candy thief, a hamster murderer, a police informer, a snake wrangler, an unloved child, a resident of a battered women's shelter, a Mormon, an entrepreneur, a pool shark, a trash collector, a skier, a manipulator, a tap dancer, and an Indian.
I had moved 38 times that I can remember. I understood that I still had to take care of myself, no matter that I had been taken in and adopted by my uncle and aunt. I got a job at 16. I worked at a daycare and supervised the after-school program. Everyday after I got out of school I took the bus home and walked to work. I made $6.00 an hour. Things were looking up for me. Pot enabled me to live comfortably in my own skin. I had a family who showed me lots of love, was doing well in school and had a job. Later I would find anxiety medication to replace the drugs, and I have no shame in admitting I need medication today. The only shame is in not finding help, if you need it.
