When the past is better dealt with in the present: Alicia Elliott's "Unearth"

This is one of the shortest entries in this year's Best American Short Stories anthology, and my critique of it is going to be short, as well. I've rushed to get it out a bit, since today is the recognition of Columbus Day here in the U.S., and today seemed the day to put this out.

This was a donut story for me, as it had a bit of a hole in the middle. It started strong, with a grotesque juxtaposition. The body of a Mohawk child who died under suspicious circumstances back during the days of residential schools for native peoples in Canada is found underneath what will be the foundation for the latest sleek fast food joint in a well-to-do suburban neighborhood. It's a literal Indian burial ground, although nobody knew it until now.

The story then slows down for me a bit as we go into the past. I'm never sure what to do with a story when it goes into detail about terrible wrongs done in the past. Hopefully, most people now know about the crimes done to native children when they were taken into residential schools, where the idea was often to forcibly remove the Indian from the child. It's not just the U.S.; Canada has its own troubled past with this, too. They've done better in some ways than the U.S., but as this story makes clear, they've still got more than their share of baggage. Early in the story, there is a reference to a quote from Canada's first prime minister, "Kill the Indian, save the man." With the younger brother of Beth, the story's main character, the school seems to have killed both. "Turned out killing the Indian saved no one. It just killed Indians."

Maybe the reason "Unearth" slogs when it's in flashback mode for me is because the subject matter is kind of familiar. I've heard this story before about the terrible treatment indigenous peoples suffered. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with it. Maybe, as the story puts it, it doesn't "do much for me" because I'm not the one this happened to. I'm like the people living in the new development next to the site of the old residential school. They forget because it's easier to forget. "It was always easier to forget when it didn't happen to you."

Beth tried to forget, but couldn't. Her younger brother disappeared right after going to the residential school, and he was never found nor was any justice done. Her mother went to prison for attacking the Anglican priest who brokered sending the boy to the school. Beth wore masks and adapted. She became a nurse, had a daughter of her own.

What helped her to adapt was the same thing that made her unhappy as a child: she doesn't look like a Mohawk. That was a problem for her when she was young, because she felt alienated from her own people. But it allowed her to blend in outside the reservation. She "let people think she was Portuguese or Italian or Greek."

Where the story really comes together for me is at the end. Beth has a daughter, it turns out, and this now-grown daughter never knew anything about Beth's past or about the brother who never came back from residential school. The daughter, although somewhat annoyed by her mother's call, still answers, and has no problem dashing off reasons why the mother should be proud of the life she lived: "You were a nurse--you helped so many people."

The real beautiful part of this story is when Beth goes back to her old home. She's looking for the ingredients to the corn mush her mother used to make. She wants to feel some connection to the life that was severed. And even in the middle of the smoke shops and the obvious devastation European colonialism still has left on the land, she finds when she is ready to go looking for it, that life is waiting for her. A young Mohawk who is studying the language, trying in her own way to connect to her own roots, calls Beth "Istha," meaning "auntie." Beth doesn't remember the word, but she is happy that someone recognized her as Mohawk. The girl says of course she knew she was Mohawk, because she's "got that tough Mohawk look" to her.

The story reminds us of the best way to handle our past traumas. You need to go back to the past to remember, but life can get stuck in the mud if you stay there too long. The best way to deal with the past is in redeeming what you still can here in the present. That's how you honor your past.

FOR KAREN CARLSON'S ALWAYS INTERESTING TAKE ON THIS STORY, GO HERE.