Published in The Armless Maiden, edited by Terri Windling. Tor Books, April 1995.
Dream Catcher
by Will Shetterly
by Will Shetterly
Dear John Marshall,
My name is Crosses Water Safely. At school, I was called my white name, Janine Skunk. I didn’t know my real name then. You always held your nose and waved your hand in front of your face when you saw me, and everyone laughed. Grandmother says skunks are beautiful and smart. She says anyone who can trick Rabbit is smart, and Rabbit knows to leave Skunk alone.
Grandmother dreamed my real name. She saw me in a storm in the front of a canoe. Many people were in the canoe, and they were all scared. But I was not scared. The people stopped being scared when they saw I was not scared. And then the storm went away.
Grandmother lives on a reservation up north. Father said she is a bush Indian. And he laughed like you always did at school, John Marshall. My mother looked down and did not say anything. I want to be a bush Indian when I grow up.
Grandmother came to stay with us last fall. She came because Father told her I was having bad dreams. He laughed when she showed up at our door. He said she was a bad dream herself, and where would she sleep? She said she would sleep on the floor of my room if she had to. She came because she had made something for me. A dream catcher.
Grandmother said all dream catchers look like spider webs. It doesn’t matter what they’re made of. She made the frame of mine with basswood twine and birch branches. The colored string came from a Hudson Bay store. You hang the dream catcher in your window. Bad dreams get caught in it, but good dreams pass right through.
When we hung the dream catcher in my room, Grandmother asked if I remembered the bad dreams. She looked at me very hard and said it was important. I said not really. She asked if I remembered anything about them. I said maybe. She asked what I remembered. I said red eyes. She asked what else. I just shook my head and laughed like the dreams were silly.
I didn’t have any bad dreams that night. In the morning, Grandmother looked at the dream catcher and looked at me and smiled. I smiled at her, too. I wanted her to stay with us forever.
That was the day I took the dream catcher to Show and Tell and told how Grandmother made it for me. Our teacher said it was a good report. But in the hall, you grabbed the dream catcher and said a skunk should be able to scare away bad dreams with its stink. When you threw it down the hall, I was glad it didn’t break.
That night, Father asked Grandmother if she wasn’t tired of sleeping on my floor. She said she didn’t mind. I didn’t have any bad dreams that night, either. In the morning, I looked hard at the dream catcher, but I couldn’t see any dreams. Grandmother said I didn’t know how to look. But someday I would see everything better.
That day, you asked if my grandmother had made me a brain catcher, ’cause I could sure use one. Also, Father asked me to go to the park and play softball with him. I said I was tired. Mother said I was always tired and always in my room and I should go.
When we came back, Father said he needed a shower. Mother said he sure did. Father said I should shower too. I said I was okay. He laughed like I was very funny and said to come on, don’t waste water. Then he saw Grandmother looking, and he said oh, forget it.
After dinner, he brought home a brand new living room couch that folded out into a bed. He said Grandmother should sleep comfortably, since she wanted to stay with us forever. Grandmother said he did not have to do that. He said it was done, and he wanted her to be comfortable. He took a big drink of beer and he didn’t say anything else. Grandmother looked at me and didn’t say anything, either.
At bedtime, she said if I needed her, I should just call. I could not answer. I laughed like it was okay and went into my room and put on the nightlight and got into bed.
I lay there for a long time, trying to go to sleep. I told myself it was okay with Grandmother in the next room. But it wasn’t okay with Mother in the next room.
Then I heard him standing outside the door. I smelled him there. I prayed for him to go away, and I told God I was sorry for whatever I had done. Then he opened the door and whispered my white name. I tried not to hear. When he got into the bed, I tried not to look. He turned my face so I had to look. He said he loved me. His eyes were all bloodshot.
When the door opened, he jumped up and pointed at me and said, “She wanted—” and “You don’t think I was going to—” and “I was drunk, I didn’t know—”
Grandmother came straight to me and hugged me. She wrapped my blanket around me real tight. She said, “We’re going.”
Father said, “It’s not what you’re thinking! You can’t believe—”
Grandmother led me to the dream catcher and took it down from the window.
“She’s my daughter!” Father yelled. “You’re not taking her—”
Grandmother held up the dream catcher and said, “Look.”
He looked at it, and then at her, and then at me. I looked at the dream catcher. Grandmother handed it to me. I hugged it. Father screamed and ran out.
Mother was in the hallway. She did not say anything as we went out. Father was in the living room, curled up in a ball and gasping. Grandmother did not slow down.
I am living on the reservation now. I have two best friends, Adam Mishenene and Martha Kwandibens. I have a dog, Socks. He walks funny because he was hit by a car, but he will fetch anything. I have to talk to a counselor every week who thinks if I say everything that happened, it will be better. Mother and Father have to see a counselor too. Maybe we will be a family again this summer. I said I would give it a try, anyway, and everyone cried.
I wrote to my old teacher, asking how everyone was. She said you had been taken away, John Marshall. When I saw that, I was happy. Then she said your parents had been doing something bad to you for a long time. That is why I am sending you what’s with this letter. You hang it in the window, and only the good dreams come through.
Your friend,
Crosses Water Safely (Janine Skunk)