My Body Is a Book of Rules. Elissa Washuta

A girl who guarded her chastity was considered valuable in the eyes of our warriors. A man would willingly give many ponies and robes to her parents for such a wife.

MOURNING DOVE, MOURNING DOVE: A SALISHAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The Indians whom Sheridan had taken on the island were closely guarded. Old Chenoweth (chief) was brought up before Colonel Wright, tried, and sentenced to be hanged. The Cascade Indians, being under treaty, were adjudged guilty of treason in fighting. Chenoweth died game. He was hanged on the upper side of Mill creek. I acted as interpreter. He offered ten horses, two squaws and a little something to every “tyee” for his life, said he was afraid of the grave in the ground, and begged to be put into an Indian deadhouse. He gave a terrific warwhoop while the rope was being put around his neck. I thought he expected the Indians to come and rescue him. The rope did not work well; and, while hanging, he muttered, “Wake nica quas copa mamelouse!” He was then shot. The next day, Tecomeoc and Captain Jo were hanged. Captain Jo said all the Cascade Indians were in the fight. The next day, Tsy, Sim Lasselas and Four-fingered Johnny were hanged. The next day, Chenoweth Jim, Tumalth and Old Skein were hanged, and Kanewake sentenced, but reprieved on the scaffold. Nine in all were executed. Banaha is prisoner at Vancouver, and decorated with ball and chain. The rest of the Cascade Indians are on your island, and will be shot if seen off of it. Such are Colonel Wright’s orders.

(From a letter by Lawrence W. Coe, describing the events of March 28, 1856, at the Cascades of the Columbia)

Tumalth begat Mary who begat Abbie who begat Kathleen who begat Leslie who begat Elissa.

The Dread

During my senior year of college, in the studio apartment the university paid for me to inhabit, as though I was more courtesan than scholarship show pony, I ignored all the helpful warnings handed down from the people in charge who did not seem to believe we children could keep ourselves alive. There were resident assistants roaming the floors, inspectors sniffing the apartments for smoke that had risen from some source other than charred pizza crust. There was the faceless university safety office that shot off missives into our mailboxes, card stock garishly printed to catch our attention but unable to compete with the issues of Maxim or High Times that we would pull from our mail cubbies, so any university notices would be dropped into the recycling, a homogenous stack. We deleted their e-mailed crime alerts and safety tips, too.

All the people who knew better than I did told me a thousand times to SNACK BEFORE AND DURING DRINKING, AVOID MIXING ALCOHOL WITH PRESCRIPTION MEDICATIONS. They said, PACE YOURSELF; they said, DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY DRINKS WITHIN A SHORT PERIOD OF TIME IS CONSIDERED BINGE DRINKING FOR FEMALES? If they wanted me to keep my ounces and hours straight, they shouldn’t have asked me to measure my medicine numerically. I operated by my own logic: for my health, I drank Tropicana with immune-boosting Vitamin C that the carton promised me was dialed up to one hundred percent of what my body needed; for my pain, I added the crystal heat of Grey Goose, which I figured was sort of less unhealthy in its clarity. My liquid dinners delivered two servings of fruit, one serving of venom.

Beyond the walls of the brick compound I called home, there were the good people who worked on the third floor of the University Health Center: the woman who took my tearful appointment requests and refilled the displays of pamphlets on eating disorders, the therapist whose placement of the Zen rock garden on the table next to the patient’s chair only made me suspicious, and the psychiatrist who supplied me with nearly as many mind-altering substances as the liquor warehouse outside the Beltway.

My windows opened to a busy street where student housing was stumbling distance from College Park’s main bars. The strip mall across the street offered the four student food groups: burrito, noodles, rotisserie chicken, and coffee. Some bitter win ters, grown children set couches aflame when Maryland lost to Duke, our archrivals who didn’t feel the same way about us, their hate directed at UNC. The wave of rage seemed to strain against its impotence, desperate to make Duke know how much they were hated so that they would have no choice but to hate back. Riot cops rode through on horseback like Wild West sheriffs, plowing through drunks. In my hallway, the bulletin boards said, LOCK YOUR WINDOWS AND YOUR DOORS, but I slept under exposed screens, welcoming whatever danger might want to claw through the mesh to choke me out in the night. DO NOT PUT YOURSELF AT RISK, the health center’s pamphlets told me. TALK TO SOMEONE YOU TRUST, they said. The girls’ high heels would batter the sidewalk all night long. No matter the day of the week or the reading on the thermometer, a legion of ladies would pass by every few minutes, bound for the bars before midnight, the after-parties after. MAKE SURE SOMEONE KNOWS WHERE YOU ARE AT ALL TIMES. STICK WITH A “BUDDY.” There wasn’t only Grey Goose in my freezer: triple sec kept it company while six-packs of Red Stripe, Natty Boh, and Yuengling held down the fort in the fridge. That year, I slept less often than I passed out at the hands of liquor or prescribed pills, my whittled-down body nestled into the nook of my loveseat.

My closet bulged with defective dresses bought from the warehouse clothing store across the street that sold all the club wear the department stores couldn’t move. The clothes were riddled with loose seams and the bold marks of G-Unit, Rocawear, Apple Bottoms, and other limp rejects from rappers’ street wear lines. The only other clothing store in College Park was the one that sold bikinis.

On weeknights, I drew from my refrigerated reserves while I worked on the assignments that would continue to earn me the perfect “A” average I had maintained since I began to bring home report cards in my backpack from my Catholic grade school. I massacred the language sections of every standardized test. For the entirety

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