___Two Standards ___________________
-- at a Native Writers’ Conference in Norman, Oklahoma
Joan's one eighth. I'm a quarter.
When we walk into Billy's
I want to look like her,
full Osage. "You wouldn't find
an Indian here," she tells me,
"if not for the conference."
And the cigar-chewing driver
shuttling in from the Will
Rogers Airport confides:
"I never seen so many
Indians all in one spot."
The bar's packed like a bar
should be. Joan shows me off,
introducing her friends
to a light-haired, East Coast
educated outsider
whose mother, Betty Tallchief,
is Oklahoma's pride.
"At that table are some
Osages you should meet."
They know my relatives
in Fairfax, though they come
from Pawhuska, Pawnee.
Angela says the Tallchiefs,
the keepers of the drum,
will host the Osage dances
next June. "Will you join us?
You'll be given your Osage
name." Even though my grandmother
Tallchief’s daughters became
well-known as ballet dancers,
she displayed photographs
of my mother and aunt
when they were twelve, eleven
in Osage ceremonial dress,
performing at a powwow.
My mother said her father's
mother taught her those dances.
I say, when asked, I never wanted
to dance, but here, in Billy's
with the jukebox repeating
the Beatles' "Twist and Shout,"
all I want is to dance
and to adopt my mother's
Osage name "Wa-Xthe-thon-ba":
"Two Standards." All I want
is to return to Oklahoma
and answer Angela "Yes,"
though New York City's half
a continent away.
I am my mother's daughter,
"Two Standards," and tonight,
forgetting my given name,
I will take that ancestral one.
“Two Standards” appeared in Infidelities (Story Line Press, 1996). Copyright © 1996 by Elise Paschen.
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