Keema Waterfield - Inside Passage: A Memoir

Copyright 2021 by Keema Waterfield.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without written permission except in the case of brief quotations included in critical articles and reviews.

Inside Passage is a work of nonfiction. The author has written this book from her point of view, and and it is based on her memory and interpretation of certain events. Some identities, names, and details have been modified, changed, or fictionalized to protect privacy.

Printed in the United States

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Green Writers Press is a Vermont-based publisher whose mission is to spread a message of hope and renewal through the words and images we publish. Throughout we will adhere to our commitment to preserving and protecting the natural resources of the earth. To that end, a percentage of our proceeds will be donated to environmental activist groups and the authors focus donation. Green Writers Press gratefully acknowledges support from individual donors, friends, and readers to help support the environment and our publishing initiative.

Giving Voice to Writers & Artists Who Will Make the World a Better Place

Green Writers Press | Brattleboro, Vermont

www.greenwriterspress.com

ISBN : 978-1950584567

Cover art by Fawn Waterfield.

THE PAPER USED IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PRODUCED BY MILLS COMMITTED TO RESPONSIBLE AND SUSTAINABLE FORESTRY PRACTICES.

For my mother, my first love story. And my children, the sequel.

I would like to begin by respectfully acknowledging that I live and write in the unceded territories of the Sli (Salish or Flathead) and Qlisp (upper Kalispel or Pend dOreille) Peoples. I honor their stewardship of this land and its life-giving rivers, and their continued guidance in caring for this place for generations to come.

I also respectfully acknowledge that I was born in and imprinted upon the unceded traditional land of the Denaina People, where much of this story takes place. It is a place of great beauty and strength, and I honor their enduring care and commitment to the land and water that has shaped me from birth.

Additionally, I respectfully acknowledge that I spent my formative years on the unceded traditional land of the Lingt (Tlingit). I honor their abiding commitment to the land and water, and their rich cultural legacy of song and dance that so deeply informed my childhood.

I make this acknowledgement out of gratitude to the Sli, Qlisp, Denaina, and Lingt People, and all Indigenous people who have been in relationship with this land for generations, past and present, and also in recognition of the historical and ongoing legacy of colonialism. The story I am living has unfolded at every step upon lands whose traditional occupants have and do endure terrible hardships as a cost of systemic colonialist infringements. I would like to honor the Indigenous people of this country with remembrance and a call to work together as a nation to dismantle colonial practices.

Looks like youre going to have that baby any minute, a guy at the table nearest the stage says. He has weekend stubble and the cargo shorts-paired-with-flip-flops thing going. Its Sunday evening at a local brewery in a mountain city in Montana, so he fits right in. Dont worry. I got you if it goes down. He raises a full pint glass in salute. Im an EMT.

I smile, adjust my mic stand, and do a mental eye roll. Wouldnt that be fun? Delivering my baby on a brewhouse floor with a drunk heckler to assist?

The baby should make it through a couple more songs, I say, strumming my guitar. This ones a true story.

I only play music for the fun of it: a few originals, a few covers. Mostly early evening shows at breweries and distilleries, and art galleries. I thought for a time that I might make music my lifes work one day, but I let college suck me in instead. Then more college, some travel, marriage, now kids. Besides, without my sisters songbird highs and my mothers silken lows, what good is my own voice to me beyond casual enjoyment?

I remain a lazy musician, wholly averse to the hustle. My sisters doing it: late-night gigs, radio appearances, an album a year, the occasional indie film score. It looks good on her. It also looks hard.

I played with my daughter strapped to my back when she was tiny, but shes recently discovered the power of her legs on an open dance floor, the thrill of fast circles in a crowd of dancers. Very little in this world feels as perfect and true as picking my way through a song with my kid out there, holding hands with her best friend, working her way through a toddler two-step until they fall on top of each other, laughing, in the small space theyve carved out in the crowd. The smile in my husbands eyes as he lifts them back up and teaches them to spin each other.

Tonights show has gone past bedtime. My daughter aims tired eyes my way at the end of a slow tune and blinks heavily. I know whats on her mind. She shakes loose from her father, makes her way to the stage, and climbs up. I set my guitar in the stand, lean into a stool, and pull her to my lap for the last song. She curls her legs under the round curve of the baby in my belly and lays her head against my heart, singing along. She knows these songs already.

As were packing up, the EMT stops by. Making a family band? he asks, nodding at my daughter, busily strumming my guitar now nestled in its case.

His question summons the yaw and snap of our family tent in a Southeast Alaskan wind, my mother and siblings pressed close under our shared blankets. Ravens cawing from the trees outside, a sea of campers rousing for another day of bass and fiddle and guitar in the endless string of music festivals that may have been the happiest and loneliest part of my life. The creosote and steel tang of the harbor as we board yet another ferry, bound for Ketchikan or Juneau or Sitka or Haines, compelled by our family curse to chase the music and wander, wander, wander. The loneliness of being perpetual new kids softened by the sweetness of Moms guitar on her lap, my siblings and I on the floor at her feet reading an endless pile of books and jumping in when the harmony grabs us. The pure knowing. This is my place.

I would do that again, I say.

Make sure the drunks sleep outside, my mother says, splashing cold water on her mouth at the trailers kitchen sink. She pulls long, dark hair away from her face and leans in, drinking deeply from a cupped hand. She gasps and lays her head across one arm on the lip of the sink.

Twenty years and change, my mother is all belly and glowing olive skin and great doe eyes. Freckles form bright constellations along her cheeks and arms. Summer stardust, she calls them.