Fashioning the Body: Versions of the Citizen, the Self, and the Subject

I grew up in a house full of women who would be considered "Tom boys" because we were all raised by our two older brothers. This is the order of things: Sam and Joe, the two oldest brothers and then the girls Grace, Mattie, Sharon, Cerise, Manoknae, and Hotahae. These progressivley unusual names correspond to how crazy our mother was becoming. My youngest sister, Hotahae, has this theory that goes a little something like this: Our mother having given birth to ten children and having eight of them survive had a lot of herself drained from her body. Everything that was drained was very unsystematically gifted to us, her children. The oldest got the cream of the crop, the common sense, responsibility, basically half a brain. The younger ones on the other hand had to take from what was left, the CRAZY. 

Because the older siblings were in better shape than us young ones they had to deal with our crazy by trying to evenly distribute our mother's good and bad attributes. An undertaking of this sort is bound to take time so until we have come to some kind of agreement on which parts of our mother go to which of her children we are bound to live a life full of drama. My two younger sisters and I have a miliion and one theatrical performances for me to choose from so I will try and pick one of the most memorable...

 

In Portland there is this mass transit light rail system called the MAX. Recently I went home to visit and I was riding with my younger sister, Hotahae, on a very crowded train because it was the red line to the airport and people had all kinds of luggage stuffed everywhere. Anyways we came to a pretty abrubt stop and Hotahae fell on top of this womans luggage and she got really upset and was accusing Hotahae of falling on her things on purpose and started calling her names. She hollered out racial slures, often informing us and the other MAX passengers that she was an American citizen, and told my sister to go back where she came from! (this last part was quite ludicrous and kind of funny because our family is Native American). Me and Hotahae couldn't get off the MAX just then so I tried to get us as far away from that woman as possible but she rolled her little suitcase right behind us ranting and raving, demanding that my sister give back whatever she had stolen from her bag when she fell on it. Now Hotahae has never been one to just put up with anyone's shit and her usual first reaction is to come out swinging. But I was trying so hard to keep her from fighting with this strange woman that she made a somewhat out of the ordinary decision. She whipped her entire body around, stared the startled woman directly in the eye and sang out "American woman stay away from me! American woman momma let me be!"