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Michael Dorris is the author of A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, The Broken Cord, Working Men, Morning Girl, and Guests, and co-author with Louise Erdrich of The Crown of Columbus.

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An engaging and masterful collection of essays that vividly captures the author's diverse work as award-winning writer, activist, parent, scholar, professor, anthropologist, critic, and traveler.

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Paper Trail

Perennial

"After church, my Aunt Marion, who would tell you she never cooked, scrambled eggs while I read the funny papers. My grandmother pondered the serious question of midafternoon dinner, and in summer my mother, her hair protected by a cotton scarf, used the garden hose to wash the car. Aunt Ginny telephoned from her apartment in New York at exactly noon, and we each took our turn in speaking to her, not to exceed three minutes total. Later on, the four of us dressed again in our church clothes to come to the table, and we always had an iced bakery cake for dessert. In the evenings my mother and her friends Rita, Ruth Ann, Lou, and Frankie met for canasta, each Sunday in a revolving cycle at a different hostess's house. My grandmother watched Ed Sullivan on Channel 11. Aunt Marion and I played Monopoly, neither of us asking for nor expecting any mercy. Before bed, we met again in the kitchen--the Stork Club, we called it at that hour--for a second generous piece of cake. We kissed each other good-night and said our prayers and went to sleep. Every week of every year, for years and years, without fail."
--Family Circle October 1992

My mother and two of her older sisters were all quite ill during their late teens and early twenties, and as a result my mother married relatively late. She and my father, a young army lieutenant, met on a blind date while he was stationed at Fort Knox. In almost every respect--ethnicity, religion, background--he was romantically, complicatedly different from other men she knew, and characteristically my mother had high hopes, as she traveled alone to California for her wedding and then lived on army bases in Texas and Washington State during their first year together.

In 1947, my father was killed in a jeep accident near Passau, Germany, and my mother returned to live with my grandmother and Aunt Marion in Louisville. I was two, and my mother was in her thirties, more than ten years younger than my current age. A widow after less than five years--one long war--as a wife, she must have been lonely and terribly disappointed, but I never heard her complain or question the sharp turn in her future. My father's insurance money was divided between donations for masses said in his name and my mother's share of a down payment on the house in which she and my aunt still live. Then, with the small monthly stipend from my father's military pension and social security to supplement my aunt's salary, my mother stayed home, devoting herself to the perfection of my childhood.

Before her marriage, according to uncensored snips of stories and to the evidence of the family photo album, my mother was infamous in her circle as a free spirit. She swam at midnight in the Ohio River, spent her vacations from Colgate Palmolive as a below-decks passenger on United Fruit Company boats in the Caribbean, even once sang on a local radio station as part of a trio that included Dale Evans. In the snapshots from her early twenties, she often has flowers tucked in her long, curly black hair or sports an off-the-shoulder blouse. With her strong brow and deeply lidded eyes she has the look of a youthful Loretta Young, with a smile as wide as Lena Horne's.

There wasn't much money during the depression for store-bought clothes, and early on my mother taught herself to sew--she needed a wardrobe for the fun she intended to have. In my favorite picture of her from the period, she has glamorized a cloth coat with epaulets fashioned from pieces of an old carpet, meant to resemble pressed fur. Her expression is bold, interested to see what comes next.

I personally first encountered this adventurous side of my mother when I was nine years old. A friend of my Aunt Ginny's, Henry Lea, had a job as assistant stage manager at the Memorial Coliseum downtown, the theater where nationally touring Broadway plays were presented. One January day Henry called to offer my mother and me passes to see a matinee of The Dark Is Light Enough, a drama starring Katherine Cornell and my mother's all-time favorite actor, Tyrone Power.

My mother took a long time to get ready that morning, and when she finally appeared, perfumed and made up, she was transformed in my eyes into a movie star herself. She seemed almost distant, enveloped in a cloud of graciousness, as if her enthusiasm had reached some plateau of calm from which she could review all that followed with serene detachment. The day, for her, was an occasion, an opportunity to step out of the role she normally played and into a brighter, less constricting version of her possibilities.

The last thing my mother did before we departed was to write a few words on a piece of note paper, stare at it for a moment, make a correction or two, then slip it into her purse. When I asked for an explanation, she would only say, mysteriously, "Just in case, Honey."

I don't recall a single detail about the play--its dialogue was far over my head--but I do remember that my mother sat at attention for the whole performance, her back straight, her full concentration on the rhythm of the lines and the flow of the action on the stage. During intermission we remained in our seats, didn't talk much. I looked at the program, and once or twice my mother checked the paper she had stuck in her purse--but she still refused to let me see the words. There were curtain calls, many of them, yet we didn't leave when the house lights went up.

"A surprise," my mother whispered. "Henry's going to sneak us in backstage." Her voice was tense, and she seemed less thrilled than terrified by the prospect. I followed her to a small door near the orchestra pit, and our friend met the knock.

"It'll have to be quick," Henry warned us. "He's beat. I'll put you in wardrobe and he'll try to drop in to say hello."

We waited in a room filled with wonderful costumes in brilliant colors, drawers overflowing with masks and capes, the props from many productions stacked upon every surface. But instead of exclaiming at each new thing I pointed out, my mother dug once again into her purse and found the now familiar paper. She was still looking at it when we heard someone at the door, and quickly she crumpled it in her fist.

Tyrone Power was the first famous person I ever met, and what I remember about him were his eyelashes: unnaturally long. I shook hands when we were introduced, but I hung my head, tongue-tied with shyness, incapable of uttering a sound.

"Ty," Henry said. "This is my friend Mary Besy and her little boy, Michael."

I glanced up to see my mother step forward without hesitation.

"Oh, Mr. Power." She spoke smoothly, confidently, each syllable enunciated, distinct and clear. "We missed you every moment you were offstage."

It was just the right compliment. Tyrone Power smiled--that was the other thing he had besides eyelashes: teeth--and lingered for a few minutes longer than I think he'd planned.

It was a cold, raw winter dusk. My mother drove with one hand on the wheel and with the other she absently combed her hair. As we made our way down Frankfort Avenue, she sang along with the music on the radio. Somehow I knew that if she ever smoked, which she never did, she would have had a cigarette.

At home, I ran ahead into the house, showed my grandmother and aunt the program, raved about our excursion backstage, our hobnob with celebrity. My mother stood by the door, listened, nodded, even...