White People I Have Loved #1

An essay

iPhoto by Luke Brugger on Unsplash

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In 1973, on the Spokane Indian Reservation, a few of us Indian kids found a baby bird with a broken wing.

“Don’t touch it,” one girl said. “The momma bird won’t come back if her baby smells like human hands.”

We had no way of knowing that was a myth. Only in later years would we learn that you can safely place a fallen baby bird back in its nest, provided that it isn’t seriously injured. And provided that you can find its thatched home. We looked up into the trees but saw nothing that resembled a nest.

“We have to do something,” one boy said. “It’s helpless. Something will eat it if we don’t help.”

We scooped up the bird and carried it to the home of our favorite teacher—a white hippy who played acoustic guitar and sang Joni Mitchell songs to us.

Blue songs for red boys and girls.

We brought that wounded bird to our teacher because we believed in her kindness. Because she wore long flowing floral dresses even in winter. Because her eyeglasses were always sliding down her nose. Because her blonde hair hung down to her knees. She braided it into ropes. She wrapped those ropes around us and spun us in circles.

She taught us algebra before we were suppposd to learn about algebra. We learned that “Solve for X” is a poem.

Standing at her door, our hippy teacher cried when we presented that broken-wing bird to her.

She said, “I don’t know what I can do to help it.”

She was overwhelmed by our faith in her. We’d often seen her cry. She was the only teacher who cried in front of us. She was the only teacher who laughed with us. She once laughed so hard that she farted. And that made her laugh so riotously that she farted again.

God, we loved her.

She cupped that baby bird in her hands. She cupped her hands in prayer. That baby bird was the prayer. Our teacher was a suddenly a priest. She was a holy woman in the Chapel of Her Front Porch.

And we were her expectant congregation.

She looked at us. She smiled.

“Oh, my beautiful, beautiful kids,” she said.

I don’t know what happened to that bird. It was probably too young and injured to survive. And our teacher wasn’t a veterinarian. She probably buried it in an unmarked grave behind her home. I imagine she conducted a private service. And gave a eulogy. She would’ve said something about innocence.

She left the reservation a year later. I don’t know what happened to her. 

But I often think of her holding that baby bird. I think of her holding us. Most of her Indian students are still alive. Too many have died too young.

She loved us. She loved all of us. That we knew.

And, like Joni Mitchell sang, our white teacher was a falling star, a brief and sweet bird, who lived among us and then was gone.