Tina: Part One

I have wanted to tell stories about my wild Indian friend for years and never wrote anything down about her. I think about her still almost everyday. There is an old brick house up on State street and her mom, Lorraine, sold it when she divorced, but the house was zoned commercial after that. An insurance guy bought it and when Tina would come to visit me when she was older she'd flip the house her middle finger as if to curse the new owner, like it was his fault she was no longer there. She'd say, "Fuck Nick Koon Insurance. Fuck 'em." And brood for a few minutes... Then, as if changing her mind about mood, perked up and was all happy like and go, "So whaddya wanna do now?"

This is a friend that appeared to me from out of the dark place from the invisible soul, a sister, shadowed and terribly exciting. We had fun All. The. Time. when we were little. Later, things changed, but I never knew anyone as funny as she was, or as brave.

Wild, sad and silly girl I met her because my dad was in business with her step-dad Roger. Her mother had been married 5 times and had a child with each husband so none of the 5 kids looked anything alike... Not one bit, not one iota similar; size, proportion, coloring, face structure ~ they looked nada, nothing even close to alike. All I can think is Lorraine was going for variety in her husbands.

Tina's natural father was a full-blooded Cherokee called Boots who she never met until she was a teenager. Someone convinced her for awhile that the white-as-a-lily Roger was her dad... I can remember in first grade I said to her, "But why is your skin brown and your hair black?" Not long after that I think her mom must've told her about Boots because she came to school one day and pointed to a picture of Tecumseh on the wall in the classroom and said, "That's what my real daddy looks like."