You Don't Have to Say You Love Me

by Sherman Alexie

There are family mysteries I cannot solve. There are family mysteries I am unwilling to solve.

Self-preservation was my religion.

My mother was a liar. She broke many promises over the coming decades. But she kept that greatest of vows. She was sober for the rest of her life. And that’s why I am still alive.

I think the u in Juniour was short for “Fuck you and you and you and you and especially you. Yeah, you, the one who still thinks I am going to obey you.”

I was suddenly involved in an Indian-versus-Indian cultural battle—a fight that I have faced again and again and again and again. Yep, that shit has come at me from all four directions. To paraphrase that tribal elder named Shakespeare, we Native folks are “more than kin and less than kind.”

TWENTY YEARS AGO, I sat in a room with more than fifty indigenous men from all over North America as they, one by one, stood and testified about being raped by white priests, white teachers, white coaches, and white security guards and soldiers. These rapes happened in residential boarding schools all across the United States and Canada. And they happened from the late nineteenth century into the late twentieth. I had learned about the epidemic violence in Indian boarding schools, and I’d heard and read the countless stories of sexually abused women, but I had never seen so many male victims gathered together.

SHERMAN,” MY WIFE said after reading this memoir for the first time in its entirety. “Your book is constructed in fabric squares like one of your mom’s quilts.” “I meant it that way,” I said, but that’s a half-truth. I realized I had constructed a quilt of words only after I’d read my own damn book for the first time in its entirety. And then I saw the patterns and repetition of patterns. I saw the stitches and knots. I saw that hands had worked in the same way that my mother’s hands had worked. Fabric square ad infinitum. My mother, the quilter, will always haunt me.

I was completely shocked to see that Donny’s immediate family—little brother, mother, father, and grandparents—were sitting off to the side behind a black mesh screen. I could barely make out their features. They were grieving separately from the rest of us. I was boggled. How do people grieve if they’re not grieving with the entire community? How do they grieve in a separate room? I didn’t doubt the epic size of their pain. I didn’t judge the quality of their grief. I was simply baffled by their ceremonies. That was the first time I truly understood that I was a foreigner. I might have been indigenous to the land itself, but I was a first-generation cultural immigrant to the United States. I was now living in a place where people did not grieve like me. Later, back at school, I was even more shocked to learn that it was the first funeral that most of my classmates had ever attended. Donny Piper was their first death. I thought they were kidding. But, no, it was true. My white classmates knew very little about death. We didn’t keep a tally, but based on the stories I remember from that day, I think I might have attended more funerals than all of my white classmates put together.

BUT, THIRTY-SIX years after those white conservative kids in Reardan unanimously elected me freshman-class president, I wonder how many of them voted for the racist, sexist, homophobic, and immoral Donald Trump to be United States president. How many of their parents and siblings voted for Trump? How many of my former teachers voted for Trump?

Throughout my rural and urban life, among white conservatives and white liberals, I’ve heard many other variations on that same basic sentiment. “Sherman, you’re not like other Indians.” “Sherman, you’re a credit to your race.” “Sherman, you barely seem Indian.” “Sherman, I don’t think of you as being Indian. I think of you as being a person.” “Sherman, you’re not just a Native writer. You’re a writer.” “Sherman, I don’t see color. I see the person inside.” All of these statements mean the same thing: “Sherman, in order to fit you and your indigenous identity into my worldview, I have to think of you as being like me—as being white like me.” I suspect that some of my white friends, if they are reading this, don’t recognize themselves as a person who has said racist things directly to me—who cannot even recognize the racism present in such statements. In being friends with white people, I’ve always had to live entirely inside their circle of experience—inside their white world. And my white friends have rarely, if ever, spent even a moment in my indigenous world. This inequality in my friendships has a lot to do with my own introverted nature; I am far more emotionally available when performing onstage and in the books I write than I am in person. But it happens mostly because “being American” means “being white,” even for a brown boy like me.

I was subjected to racism when certain white folks were afraid of me, the indigenous usurper. So, in the context of the 2016 presidential election, does any of this sound familiar? In 2016, white conservatives elected as president a serial liar who is likely the most fearful and paranoid and wildly insecure white man who has ever run for the office. And those white folks elected him because they believe they are victims. Yes, I am a Spokane Indian—an indigenous American—who grew up with white folks who think this country is being stolen from them. Hahahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahahaha.

I never directly feared for my life and career during a Republican presidency until Trump won the office. I have never felt so scared for the peace and safety of the entire world.

Grief is a sea Creature, a predator Newly discovered, Or so you believe, Until you remember, Genetically, That this same grief Hunted your mother And your father And your grandparents And all of the women And men who created you. What happens to humans Who live as prey? We are furious, furious, Furious, and afraid.

How does the child of a rape develop self-esteem? How does it feel to look into a mirror and see your rapist father’s face? How does it feel to look into your child’s face and see your rapist’s features? How much forgiveness does it take to survive all of that?

“Rape culture” might be a recently created descriptive phrase, but that phrase retroactively and accurately describes the collected history of human beings. And it also describes the culture on my reservation. If some evil scientist had wanted to create a place where rape would become a primary element of a culture, then he would have built something very much like an Indian reservation. That scientist would have put sociopathic and capitalistic politicians, priests, and soldiers in absolute control of a dispossessed people—of a people stripped of their language, art, religion, history, land, and economy. And then, after decades of horrific physical, emotional, spiritual, and sexual torture, that scientist would have removed those torturing politicians, priests, and soldiers, and watched as an epically wounded people tried to rebuild their dignity. And, finally, that scientist would have taken notes as some of those wounded people turned their rage on other wounded people.

Oh, shit! Crank the pulleys And lift me into the endless span. I hope to be remembered As the kind and generous man Who always fought the bullies.

Our parents did not teach us our tribal language. And that was mostly because of shame. The white government, white military, and white church worked together to shame indigenous people for being indigenous—for speaking the language.

IN THE LAST hours of writing the last draft of this book, I realized that memoir is a partial anagram for mom noir.

And, sometimes, when I’m being the best version of myself, I will remember that bullies are created—that bullies seek to torture because they’ve been tortured. When other Indians—friends, acquaintances, or strangers—talk shit about me, I try to remember they are acting out of their own weakness, their own crisis of self-identity, their own pain and fear and paranoia. I try to instantly forgive them. I try. I try. I try.