After the fire, we pile into my old Elantra—six cousins, four shades of skin, two lost earrings, and no plans except Taco Bell before it closes at 1:00 AM.
It’s 12:45 now.
“Faster! Faster! Faster!” the youngest cousin demands from the back seat, sandwiched between his sister and my brothers.
“This thing doesn’t go any faster, dude,” says my passenger, the eldest cousin, his long hair dancing in the wind.
Even with the windows down, the car smells of cedar, smoke, and salt—like prayer songs and old sweat, like the funeral clinging to our clothes.
The boys wear dress pants and pressed shirts with floral appliqué blooming from the seams. The girls, outnumbered four to two, pair plain tees with ribbon skirts. We all wear sneakers—Nike, Adidas, New Balance—mixing streetwear with tradish pieces like a couple of modern-day NDNs.
There’s a handful of dollar bills and quarters at the bottom of my purse, sticky with tobacco and gum residue, but just enough for a $5 Luxe Cravings Box. We order at the drive-through window and park in the back of the lot.
The drink is passed around from eldest to youngest—six mouths, one straw, no worries about swapping spit. “What’s mine is yours” has always been our motto, and what are germs to people who share grandmothers and grief, anyway?
We tell stories about Grams between bites of our burrito and taco. We talk about how much she loved this place. How she brought us here every Sunday, still dressed for church, heels clicking on the pavement so loudly that the employees, who knew her order by heart, could hear her coming. How she’d tear open hot sauce packets with her teeth, saying a Southern woman’s food wasn’t right without spice, and smiling when it made us sweat. How she’d eat so much, she’d fall asleep for the rest of the afternoon once we got back to her house, sprawled across the living room couch until supper.
When the box is empty, the straw chewed and bent, our words trail off. The lot is quiet, save for the faint chirping of crickets, but I do not start the car.
Tomorrow, we’ll wake to the ache of Grams’ absence, our clothes still laced with the scent of her funeral. Next week, we’ll go our separate ways—three of us back to college in different corners of the country, the eldest to his job in New York City, the youngest staying on the rez for his final year of high school. But tonight, six cousins sit under the flickering glow of a Taco Bell sign in a rundown Connecticut town, carrying Grams’ stories on our tongues, her spirit in our hearts, and her blood in our veins.
And I’m not ready for that to end.
Kiara M. Tanta-Quidgeon is a Mohegan researcher and scholar of Indigenous health and well-being, as well as a storyteller who writes poetry, short stories, creative nonfiction, and blog-style essays. She is currently based in Boston, Massachusetts. https://www.kiaramtantaquidgeon.com/