I placed mine in his and watched my fingers disappear.
“We’ll all look forward to seeing you on Monday after school, Fred. Don’t forget your clubs.” Coach Lannon turned to Dad. “Hank?” He extended his hand, along with a relieved grin. “You’ve got quite a daughter. She’s got one heck of a golf swing. She’ll make you proud.” He smiled at me, and my eyes lowered at another compliment.
Dad nodded, but his smile was cautious. He was still uncomfortable with me competing with boys, especially a bunch of white boys, the kind who grew up in big fancy houses with parents who belonged to country clubs. That was why it had taken me two weeks to mention it to him.
But Coach Lannon had explained that there wasn’t enough interest in a girls’ golf team. “Maybe there’ll be a girls’ team next year,” he’d said. “Or the next.” Except by that time I’d be long gone. It was the boys’ team for me or nothing.
And Dad knew me better than anyone. When I’d finally told him, I hadn’t been able to hide my excitement. It would have been easier to hide the moon. Truth be told, it had surprised him. He’d never dreamed that I’d love golf like breathing; he’d never dreamed I’d become so good.
Neither had I.
Fortunately, Dad never had the heart to say no to his only daughter.
“Happy?” he said after the coach disappeared down the cart path, leaving the air a little easier to breathe.
I nodded, my eyes still soaking in the attention. I was beginning to kind of like Coach Lannon. He was okay, for a teacher.
“Good,” he said. “Then I’m happy, too. For you.”
Still dizzy from my decision, I nodded.
Dad sighed at me and smiled. Then he picked up my golf bag, one of his many garage-sale purchases last summer, along with my clubs. The red plaid fabric was torn around the pockets and the rubber bottom was scuffed, but it held all fourteen of my irons and drivers with room to spare. Dad had told me yesterday that he’d try to buy me a new one, but between his job and Mom’s waitressing, there wasn’t a lot of money for extras. And the plaid bag worked just fine.
“Come on, Fred,” Dad said, threading the bag over his shoulder. “Let’s go home and tell your mother. We’re late. She’ll be worried.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied absently as I smashed one last golf ball across the range with my driver. The ball cracked against the club’s face and made the perfect ping. It rose above us like a comet before it sailed high into the clouds.
Thank you, I said silently to the sky, shielding my eyes from the setting sun with my left hand. I waited for the sky to release the ball. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, I chanted to myself like a kid gauging a thunderstorm. The ball hung in the air an extra second before it dropped into the grass and rolled over a ridge.
And that’s when I knew.
My ancestors heard me. I imagined that they asked the wind to whisper, You are most welcome, Daughter of the River People. I was as certain of their loving hands on my destiny as I was of my own name.
* * *
We drove south on the I-10 freeway to the Gila River Indian Reservation in our gray van that was still a deep green in a few spots on the hood. Despite the peeling paint, it ran most of the time. Somehow Dad always found a way to make sure it got us to school and work and then back home.
Home was Pee-Posh, at the foot of the Estrella Mountains where the earth was as dark as my skin. That’s where we lived; that’s where my grandparents had lived and my great-grandparents before them. To reach it, we had to drive for miles along narrow roads with no stoplights, over bumpy desert washes dotted with towering saguaros and tumbleweeds that scattered across the road whenever it got windy. Most days, I wished Dad would keep driving, especially on the days when Mom started drinking.
“Maybe we shouldn’t tell her that I joined the team. Not yet anyway,” I said to Dad without turning. My bare arm folded across the open window as the air tickled my face. I closed my eyes and pretended that the wind was a boy kissing my cheeks. When Dad didn’t answer, I opened my eyes and sighed. “Let’s wait a while. A week, maybe.” Good news only stoked Mom’s bitterness, especially after a few beers.
“You sure?” A frown fell over his voice.
“Positive. Please don’t say anything.”
He smacked his lips, considering this. “If that’s what you want,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe waiting a week is wise. By then we’ll see if you still like being on the team. You could always change your mind—”
“I won’t,” I interrupted him, turning. How could he even suggest it? “Why? You think I’ll fail?”
“Hardly.” Dad turned his head a fraction. “That’s not what I said.”
“You don’t think I’m good enough?”
He chuckled. “Now you’re being foolish. Of course I think you’re good enough. I just don’t want...” His lips pressed together, holding in his words.
“Don’t want what?”
He inhaled. “I don’t want you to get your hopes up and then be disappointed. That’s all. You’ve never played on a team before. And that coach, the boys you’ll play with—well, their ways are different than ours.”
I frowned at him. Of course I know that, I wanted to tell him. But I hated when Dad talked about the old ways. They sounded primitive. And hadn’t I already survived two years of high school?
“Don’t doubt me, Fred. You’ll learn soon enough.”
I turned back to the open window and lowered my chin so that it rested on my arm, considering this. It was true. He had a point. Sort of. I’d never played team sports. I’d never played much of anything; that was part of my problem. “Let’s just not tell Mom, yet. Okay?” I said without turning.
Dad sighed, just as tiredly. “Okay, my daughter. We’ll do as you wish.”
My brow softened with an unspoken apology for being curt, but there was no need. With Dad, forgiveness began the moment the wrong words left my lips. So I smiled at him. But my happiness faded as soon as we drove up the two narrow dirt grooves that led to the front of our double-wide trailer.
Our nearest neighbor lived a half mile away, which is to say that most days it felt like we were the only ones on the planet.
Two black Labs circled the van and started barking as Dad parked under a blue tarp alongside the house. The engine sputtered for a few seconds after the ignition turned off, and then the desert was quiet again except for the doves in the paloverde tree next to the trailer. They cooed like chickens.
Mom sat outside in the front yard on a white plastic chair. Her legs were crossed, and her right leg pumped up and down like it was keeping time. She had a silver beer can in one hand and another crushed next to her chair. “Where’ve you two been?” she yelled. Her words slurred, but there was still enough of a smile in her voice for my shoulders to relax a fraction.
Mom was still in the happy stage of her inebriation. But the happy stage usually morphed into the overly talkative stage, which then blended into the argumentative stage where she brought up a laundry list of regrets, like having gotten pregnant so young or earning a living waiting on stingy rich white people at the Wild Horse Restaurant at the Rez casino. “You’d think a five-star restaurant would attract a better class of people,” she’d complained a thousand times. And that’s exactly when I’d wish that I could disappear into the sky like one of my golf balls. I’d fly high into the clouds and never come back.
“Had to work late,” Dad said. His tone was cautious, like slow fingers checking the wires of a time bomb. “I brought dinner, though.” He raised a box