Seventeen Chairs
Mae threads her keys through the same ring three times before realizing she's already home. Apartment 4B, 1642 South Muskogee Avenue. Tuesday, 4:47 PM. The lock that needs jiggling since January when Derek tried to fix it with WD-40 and made it worse.
Inside: seventeen chairs.
Against north wall: three chairs draped in shawls from powwows her grandmother drove to in the Buick that caught fire outside Anadarko but kept running anyway. Southeast corner: two chairs, one covered entirely in safety pins. Her grandmother spent November through March of her seventy-first year on it, watching The Price is Right with the sound off, pinning during commercial breaks. Pattern emerging: stars first, then something that might be mountains or might be birds diving or might be her grandmother forgetting what she started and just continuing anyway.
One thousand seven hundred and forty-three pins. Mae counted during the three days between the funeral and when the priest said it was okay to touch her grandmother's things, though Father Martinez said "effects" not "things" and Mae had to Google it to be sure.
Derek's heating Hot Pockets. The pepperoni kind that explode no matter what setting.
"Five tours or six?"
"Five. Same man asked about blood quantum twice."
"The one with the turquoise?"
She nods. The turquoise man. Shows up every few months, different tour each time, never remembers her. Keeps buying jewelry from the gift shop—$47.99 plus tax for Chinese turquoise on German silver—wanting her to bless it. Last time he had his daughter with him. The daughter looked at Mae like she was sorry. Not for anything specific. Just sorry.
Derek moves toward the safety pin chair.
"Don't."
Not asking anymore. Just stating. Like how she states "We are still here" seventeen times per tour minimum, more during spring break when the groups are larger.
The pins have started rusting where her grandmother's thumb oils accumulated, bottom left corner where she always started each row. Some pins won't close anymore. Some have turned green-black like the pennies Mae finds in the Cherokee Nation Family Fun Center parking lot where she takes her nephew sometimes even though all the games are broken except Whac-A-Mole.
Derek brought folding chairs from Target last month. Still in his truck. $34.99 each, the ones rated for 300 pounds which seemed optimistic for that price point.
"Your dad called."
"Okay."
"Wants us to come to Easter."
"Can't. Tours."
Derek nods. Plates the Hot Pockets. One exploded, cheese forming what looks like Oklahoma if you squint. They eat on the floor, their usual spot where the carpet's worn through to whatever's under carpet—concrete or plywood or just more wearing away.
The chair by the kitchen has her grandmother's diabetic socks draped over it, the compression kind Medicare covered partially. Beige. Size large though her grandmother's feet were small, shrunken to almost child-size by the end. The left sock has a safety pin holding a hole closed. Different from the art pins. This one purely functional. Still.
Her grandmother's note, in the Samsung Galaxy S6 Mae keeps charged though the screen's cracked:
"Don't let anyone sit on these. They're busy."
Then below, added in what must have been pen running out of ink:
"Busy holding what didn't get said."
Then below that, different day entirely:
"The clinic has margarine."
Mae never figured out if that last part was related.
Wednesday she counts: thirty-two tours scheduled for next week. Spring break. Nancy's email at 11:47 PM, typed on her phone judging by the autocorrect turning "headdress" into "headrest": "Can you do the authentic headrest talk?"
The tourists want:
- Teepees (never lived in them)
- War bonnets (Plains tribes thing)
- Broken English (speaks three languages, two fluently)
- Noble suffering (ignoble suffering doesn't photograph well)
- Mystical connection to land (pays $1,847 rent for 900 square feet)
- Authentic sadness (has regular Walgreens sadness, on sale)
She gives them:
- Pottery techniques
- Removal acts of 1830
- The same seventeen words in Cherokee
- "We are still here"
- Directions to gift shop
Thursday morning she tries a new route to work, avoiding Classen where the Value Village manager Gerald has started recognizing her. Last week: "Back again! Finding treasures?" His enthusiasm aggressive in that retail way where not responding feels like assault. She bought three cushions she didn't need. $4.99 each on sale. Purple. Orange. Green that's almost grey like the walls at Indian Health Services where her grandmother waited six hours to be told what she already knew.
The chair nearest the door: star quilt her grandmother made in 1962 when her first daughter died. Edith. Four months old. The stars misaligned where grief interrupted geometry, one point pulling north when it should go east. The batting showing through in twelve places like bones through skin.
Derek texts from work: "Love you."
She texts back: "The clinic has margarine."
"What?"
"Sorry. Love you too."
Friday's first tour: the turquoise man. Third time this month. This time he's bought a dream catcher, Made in Indonesia, $23.99.
"Can you authenticate this?"
"It's authentic."
"Authentic what?"
"Authentic dream catcher."
He looks satisfied. Takes a photo of her holding it. She doesn't smile.
After work she sits in front of the safety pin chair. The pattern. Can almost see it now. Stars into mountains into birds into—her grandmother's hands. That's what it looks like. Her grandmother's hands trying to hold something that won't be held. The pins just marking the attempt.
2 AM makes them look exactly like what they are: metal pushed through fabric one thousand seven hundred forty-three times by a woman whose granddaughter would count them while Googling what "effects" meant.
Derek's asleep. Makes that clicking sound with his jaw she's started finding comforting. She gets the good blanket, the Pendleton knockoff from Costco, $49.99, almost as good as the real thing if you don't know what you're looking for.
Sits on the floor. Thinks about her grandmother on hospital linoleum, November 14th, refusing the chair.
"Floors are busy too."
"With what?"
"Holding everything up."
The safety pins make noise at night. Small clicking when the building settles. Like counting. Like her grandmother's fingers working through winter. Like teeth chattering. Like the turquoise man's credit card hitting the counter, again, again, again.
She falls asleep counting pins. Loses track at 847. In her dream the number continues: 848, 849, 850, until the count becomes the tours, becomes the days her grandmother didn't say things, becomes the seventeen chairs holding what silence looks like when you pin it down one safety pin at a time through November through March through the rest of your life.
Morning. Derek making coffee. The expensive kind from Elemental Coffee, $23 per pound, that tastes like chocolate if chocolate tasted like trying too hard. He steps around her. Has learned the geography of not-sitting, the archipelago of chairs and cushions and the spaces between where life happens now.
"Your sister called."
"Okay."
"Something about Easter."
"Working."
He nods. Pours coffee. The mug from Graceland her grandmother bought in 1987 on the trip she took with church ladies, all of them standing in Elvis's bathroom saying nothing, feeling holy.
Thirty-two tours next week.
Thirty-two times she'll say: "We are still here."
Thirty-two times someone will ask about teepees.
The safety pin chair between her and the window, morning light making the pins look medical, surgical, like treatment for something that can't be cured only decorated. Bottom corner where the pattern breaks. Where her grandmother's hands just put pins anywhere because anywhere became somewhere became one thousand seven hundred forty-three facts about continuing when you can't say what continues.
She touches one pin. Moves it slightly. The whole structure shifts, clicking like dominoes that don't fall, just adjust.
Stays that way.
