Reviving Ophelia - Mary Bray Pipher [38]
She paused. “Sometimes I see Native Americans among the homeless downtown. I don’t even know if they are Sioux. My mother might be one of them.”
I asked, “Would you like to know more about your people?”
Franchesca looked out at the snow. “In a way no and in a way yes. It will make me madder and sadder, but I feel like I can’t know myself until I know.”
I wrote down the name of a Native American writer, Zitkala-Sa. “Maybe you could check out some of her books.”
“Do you think I am being disloyal?”
I thought how to answer. “Your interest in your past is as natural as that snowfall.” Franchesca rewarded me with a smile, her first that hour.
Franchesca loved the books of Zitkala-Sa, who was a Sioux of the Yankton band, born in 1896. She wrote of being ripped from her family on the reservation and being sent to Indian School. After reading about Zitkala-Sa’s experiences, Franchesca asked Betty and Lloyd to take her to visit Genoa, a now abandoned Native American school.
The trip went well. They walked around the three-story brick building and peeked through its dusty windows at the old sewing machines and work benches. Later they ate roast beef sandwiches in the main street café and talked about other places to visit. They traveled to powwows and to a conference for Plains tribes entitled Healing the Sacred Hoop.
Over the next few months Franchesca visited the Native American Center and volunteered to work part-time. She was assigned the job of making coffee and serving cookies to the senior citizens. She joked with them and listened to their stories. From them, she learned many things about the Sioux nation and reservation life. She learned to make fry bread.
Some of our sessions were family sessions. We distinguished between adoption, race and adolescent issues and talked about the adolescent concerns first. Francie thought her father was too strict and her mother too intrusive. She felt that Lloyd and Betty still saw her as a little girl, and Lloyd struck her as rigid and inflexible. Betty got on Franchesca’s nerves. “For no reason, I just want to yell at her.”
Lloyd compromised with curfews, but remained firm about knowing where Francie was. Betty agreed to stay out of Francie’s room and respect her meditation time. After these talks, Francie began to joke with Lloyd again. After school, she sat in the kitchen and told Betty about her day.
We stopped pretending that the family had no feelings about adoption. Everyone had feelings. Lloyd worried that Franchesca might be more vulnerable to alcoholism the way so many Native Americans are. Betty was fearful that someday Franchesca might find her real mother and abandon them. Franchesca felt she lived in between a brown and a white world and wasn’t totally accepted by either. She loved Lloyd and Betty, but she could not look to them for clues about her identity. As we talked about these issues I remembered something Wendell Berry said: “If you don’t know where you are from, it’s hard to know who you are.”
Franchesca told Betty and Lloyd that she wanted information about her biological mother. They were ambivalent, but agreed to allow Franchesca to look into her health and tribal background. Franchesca was glad to have some information, but she wanted more. She told Betty and Lloyd, “Someday I will have to find her.”
In our individual sessions Franchesca grappled with many issues. She was uncertain who to befriend. “My old friends are shallow, but my new friends are getting into trouble.”
I suggested she consider making one or two close friends and not worry about belonging to a crowd. I reminded her that the people at the Indian Center were her friends.
Franchesca learned to center herself by meditating. She prayed to the Great Spirit for guidance before she began. She had two worlds to combine, two histories to integrate. She made conscious choices about what she would keep for herself from both worlds. She would keep her home with Betty and Lloyd, but she would visit the reservation and learn more about the Sioux. She would return to her parents’ church, but