3
Isa
"What the fuck, Mom! She was out just as late as I was!" Odina yelled downstairs. Groaning, I dropped my forehead against the window and waited for Chloe's beat up old Toyota to show up in front of the house. I'd run out barefoot if it meant I didn't have to deal with Odina's crap for once.
Just once, it would be nice to go out and forget I had a twin sister who drove me up the wall.
"Language!" Mom snapped, and I could just imagine the finger she waved in Odina's face. My sister was a far braver woman than me for daring to swear at her in the first place. "We both know Isabel only went to that party to get your drunk ass home safe. You are grounded. That's the end of it."
"That's so fucking stupid. I'm sixteen! All my friends go to parties without their parents breathing down their necks. It's part of being a teenager!" Odina argued back.
"Your sister has made it through her teen years just fine so far without making poor decisions," Mom said, and I winced, knowing just how unhelpful the words were when speaking to Odina. There'd been a time when we were close, when the thought of not having her as my best friend felt like an agony that would tear me in two.
But something had changed between us as children. As she spiraled into her pit of rebellion and destructive behavior, I'd done everything I could to protect her and mitigate the damage she caused. Which of course only made her hate me more.
"Of course! The fucking golden girl can do no wrong. Selfless,perfectIsa," Odina snarled, her footsteps thudding through the house as she made her way into the backyard. She'd climb up into the treehouse we'd called our haven as children, look for the cigarettes she kept stashed there, then rage at me when she discovered I'd taken them again.
I watched through the window as she hurried up the ladder, her mouth running a mile a minute as she cursed Mom and me to Hell and back for the control we tried to exert over her life. I didn't understand why she couldn't comprehend that it came from a place of love.
All I wanted was the best for her, and I wouldn't watch her throw her life away for something that might not even matter to her in a few more years.
"Your sister has a devil inside her," my grandmother said, scaring the bejesus out of me when she popped up in my bedroom behind me. For an eighty-year-old woman, she had the uncanny ability to sneak up on anyone and everyone. "I don't know what she expected. Hanging around graveyards as much as she does."
"Nohkomach."Grandmother.I sighed, pressing a hand to my chest over my racing heart. "You don't even believe in the devil," I scolded, grabbing my purse off the desk in the room I shared with Odina.
Grandmother scoffed, turning her face to the window behind me to watch Odina throw the crates she usually sat on around in the treehouse. "That girl just might make me."
Unable to stop the chuckle that rose in my throat, my chest shook with it. If Odina hated Mother and me, she was downright terrified of our grandmother, and rightfully so. The woman was a menace. One stern look from her and I felt my soul quake in fear. "Are you going to the Center?" she asked, referring to the Menominee Community Center where I spent most of my free time. Grandmother was a staple there, teaching what she knew of our language to my generation, and my parents' before mine.
"Not today," I said with a small smile. "I'm going to lunch with Chloe."
"Ah," she said, her smile brittle. It wasn't quite disappointed, not when she knew I spent far more time at the Center than any teenage girl would normally. "You'll be back tomorrow?" Our heritage was the most important thing to my grandmother: the continuation of our legacy, something that disappeared bit by bit with every day that passed. "You're my only hope, Isa," she said.
I stepped toward her, reaching up to touch a hand to her cheek. "I could never forget who I am and where we come from, Nohkomach," I murmured, glancing back at the window when Chloe honked her horn from the driveway. "I'll see you in a couple of hours," I said with a smile, and I made my way for the door.
My grandmother's eyes felt heavy on my back as I left, but I refused to turn and look back at her. Her stare was ominous. If I'd learned anything in my life, it was that nothing good came from the omens in my grandmother's eyes.
I'd decided long ago that I didn't want to know when something bad came for me. A death I didn't see coming would be the ultimate mercy.
I'd never have to know true fear again.
Chloe parked her car in the lot down the road after hunting for a parking space for nearly twenty minutes. Sometimes, Chicago traffic made me grateful that I didn't have a car of my own. Anywhere I couldn't get by walking, I had Mom or Chloe drive me, so it just seemed easier.
Not to mention less expensive, and since I worked a part-time job as it was and barely had any money to spare? I felt nothing but grateful for the missing expense. Shoving open the passenger side door to a squeak of protest, I climbed out of the car and pulled my thin canvas jacket tight over my chest to cover the bulky cream cable-knit sweater I wore underneath. Even the combination of the two didn't replace the warmth of a true winter coat, but Odina had borrowed mine the week before.
By borrowed, I meant set it on fire in her last tantrum.
"You need a new jacket," Chloe said with a frown, slamming her driver's side door and jabbing the button on the remote to lock the finicky thing.
"You need a new car," I said, sticking my tongue out at her when she glared in response.
"The difference is one costs $100, the other costs thousands, Isa. It's okay to spend your money on yourself sometimes, you know? It doesn't always need to go to helping your parents with your grandmother's medical bills," she said, her voice softening at the end. "They'll make it work. They always do."
"It's just a coat." I shrugged. "I'm used to the cold, and I have plenty of warm sweaters." Even as the words left my mouth, I took off down the sidewalk at a determined pace, ready to hide inside the warmth of the restaurant. The icy wind whipped through the fibers of the sweater, my jeans not doing anything to protect my legs from the bitter cold that settled in my bones and turned my skin red within moments.
Why did I live somewhere that the air hurt my face?
It probably had something to do with my grandmother's ancestral connections to the land Chicago had been built on. So many Native American Nations had once called the land home, and while many had left the city in favor of reservations or more rural skies, there were still a vast number of us living within the city. Modernizing and paving our own way forward.