Tracy Hauff

Review for Chokecherry: The Wild Story of a Bitter Young Woman

"This is such a powerful, moving story. And the thing I like best about it is how Tracy tells it in such a straightforward manner, without a hint of self-pity or blame for the protagonist, Tallie. Her writing is rich with description, not only of the settings and the people involved, but also with the emotional impact of everything that happened. She has a natural feel for presenting the facts in a way that conveys the emotional impact of each scene without any effort to enhance it. In other words, she has a natural talent for story-telling. Extremely well-written, the book has a perfect story arc. The prologue opens with the scene where Tallie finds herself in jail again, and expressing a desire to change the pattern of her life, she establishes so many questions that we want answered right up front. A great beginning, and of course, from there, the story does not disappoint. The redemptive quality of her story is so strong and her turnaround remarkable."

Russell Rowland, Author of "In Open Spaces" and "The Watershed Years"; Editor with Lynn Stegner for "West of 98: Living and Writing the New American West "; Fiction Editor for NewWest.net



Chokecherry: The Wild Story of a Bitter Young Woman

      PROLOGUE

     Concrete and steel surround me. Cold, rigid, permanent fixtures formed to hinder human abuse and withstand time. The slender solitary window underscores the starkness with its pitiful offering of gray November sky and hint of freedom. The heavy metal door slams shut behind me and two bright-orange bulky shapes roll over in their bunks, groaning with the effort of shifting their own weight, they stare at me through sleepy, indifferent eyes. My heart is heavy, my feet reluctant to step any further into this dismal space. I do not know these women, their level of aggression or wrongdoings, but I do know I must not act like a sad frightened woman who regrets bleaching her hair a shade of golden blonde. What I considered chic at the time now places me in the vulnerable minority.

      I move toward the window, having made the decision that the first rung on my ladder will be a concrete stool bolted to the concrete floor. The steel desk sitting below the window will serve as the second rung, and at desktop height, I can grab the bed frame and hoist myself onto the thin stiff mattress. There is no other way to reach the top bunk in Cell One of Cell Block Ten in Pennington County Jail.

      I am an inmate in the correctional facility I once promoted as an “innovative, award-winning project” while employed as the marketing director for the architectural firm that designed it. Design-Build magazine featured an article I wrote in which I praised the multi-disciplinary expertise and collaborative efforts involved in the construction of the detention facility. I also supplied the magazine with the glossy color photo of the jail that graced the front cover.

      I appreciate the irony.

      Lying on the top bunk trying to decipher the graffiti gouged into the ceiling, I recall the conversation I had with the intake officer. I could not get a straight answer to a simple question. “What time will I get out on Saturday?” I politely asked as she shoved my bedding and miserly toiletries across the counter.

      “Sometime between eight and five,” she snapped, distancing herself from the conversation and me.

      “I need a more specific time so I can tell my ride when to pick me up.”

      She stopped, her head pivoted slowly in my direction, eyebrows lowered, brown eyes squinting, chapped thin lips pursed, her unspoken message was clear: our brief discussion had ended. A look of irritation, disgust, aggression, or seduction can abruptly end conversations in jail and gauging the temperament of fellow inmates by their facial expressions is a valuable survival skill. The dangerous inmates are the ones with stone faces; their impassive features conceal their thoughts while they calculate the element of surprise. Correctional officers don’t bother to mask their moods; if they were having a bad day before their work shift, you will have a bad day if you bother them with questions or complaints.

      Never one to give up easily, I try again the next day. Same question, different guard. “What time will I get out on Saturday?”

      “Depends on how busy we are,” she said. This is encouraging, so I pursue it further.

      “Well, say you’re not very busy, then what time will I get out?”

      I get the look, but no answer.

      They release me at 9:15 on Saturday morning. I have served the obligatory five days for my DUI. Outside the jail, I take a deep breath and fill my lungs with cool pure oxygen—the tonic of life. I don’t think one can truly appreciate the familiarity of clean, fresh air unless they have been confined in a place laden with the odors of unwashed bodies, overly processed foods, human excrement, and sour breath. Enormous ventilation ducts help to filter the stale air, but they are useless against the overpowering subliminal stench of anger, bitterness and despair.

      Although not my first time in jail, I am much older now and not as resilient as I was in my younger years. Five days without freedom or privacy is dreadful, the company scandalous, and the lack of proper beauty products is devastating to mature skin. I am ready to change. I want to change. Jail is not for me, and I may be here again if I do not change. The required alcohol and drug testing confirmed what I already knew: alcoholism and addiction are not to blame for my incarcerations. I am merely another candidate for a psychological case study: Freudian theory of personality, the conscious and unconscious mind, the influence of the past on present behavior, cause and effect.

      The first thing I do when I get home to my cabin, tucked away alongside Rapid Creek in the Black Hills, is submerge myself in the deep claw-foot bathtub. Steeping in the warm water, breathing in jasmine and bergamot, I experience childish delight as the skin-softening bubbles pop merrily around me, performing double-duty by sloughing off the week’s filth and soothing my limbs. My body relaxes, my mind will not. I am about to embark on a mental cleansing and so many questions need answering. One hundred twenty-two hours in lock-up was ample time to reflect on my life. Should I write about what led to this recent conviction? Can I dissect my brain, slice open my belly, pierce my heart, and chance that others may mock me? It would be much easier to write a poem, à la Plath. Let others decipher the metaphors and interpret convoluted emotions. However, that is not my style. I am blunt by nature and must be honest, for I am seeking the truth for myself and will not hide behind elaborate words and innocuous innuendos. I will not squander any more precious years with self-medicating coping tactics. I regret desecrating my youth—years that should have been spent in joyful pursuit of life were soiled and tossed aside like disposable wipes.

      Was I born with a rebellious nature? Was my adoptive father, with his stoic Oglala Lakota-German disposition, responsible? Did his harsh upbringing at Pine Ridge Indian Boarding School beget his inability to express verbal or physical affection? Did my perception of being unloved as a child cause me to act out? On the other hand, did I simply inherit defiant DNA from my irresponsible, philandering, ostentatious biological father? Was it the authoritarian environment or the wild cowboy gene? Nature or nurture? Most likely, it was the incompatible fusion of the two.

      I go to sleep with question marks floating before me and wake to the tune of them tap-dancing across my mind. How did my nerve-wracking escapades become a way of life? Why did I make such poor choices? Why did it take so long for me to acknowledge my irrational logic? When did this all begin?

      In order to complete my metamorphosis, I must find answers to these complex questions and the only way I know to find them is to go back to the beginning. Some people will swear that they remember life events as early as two years of age. I could not. After spending an entire year in hyper-recall mode, summoning all five senses—seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, and tasting my formative years, I do not remember anything before age five. That was the year I broke my collarbone for the first time, had a gaping gash above my left eye closed with stitches, received a whipping from Father for punching my older brother in the nose, and stole the mailman’s hat—that caper resulted in a bloody skinning of both knees when I fell during my hasty getaway. One could reasonably say it was a year of violence and worthy of remembrance. Throughout my childhood, I continued to acquire an assortment of physical scars with no idea of the emotional scarring yet to come; the obscure scars that would become etched into my psyche and go untreated for decades.

      As I lay on that top bunk wondering about the previous inmate who had carved her resentment into the ceiling—her rage and hostility so evident with each sharply slashed letter; a fury began to simmer deep within my belly, its heat intensifying with each offensive memory. My past confronted me in that concrete cell, forcing me to acknowledge, purge, and, ultimately, exonerate myself from guilt and shame.

      It was time.



CHAPTER ONE (Excerpt)

EASTSIDE BOYS AND HILLTOP GIRLS

     Every August our entire family accompanied Father to Deadwood when he attended the summer session of federal court. We traversed the southern half of the state from East to West, from cornfields to the Black Hills. In the early morning hour, we would pile into our station wagon, the Black Beast; three kids in a row in the back seat, one draped over luggage in the cargo area, and the youngest child, Lisa, cradled in Mother’s lap.

     Numerous stops were made along the way so Father could check on his parolees who were scattered across the Rosebud and Pine Ridge Indian Reservations. The sweltering summer air was at its peak, and though stifling inside our big black car without air conditioning, Father did not allow us to get out of the vehicle during his visits. Our bladders were emptied before the Black Beast exited the worn BIA highway—an obstacle course that was peppered with potholes—and turned onto an almost non-existent dirt road. With grasshoppers zinging, meadowlarks singing, and buffalo grass waving a cheery hello, we would pull up to a shack in the middle of the parched prairie.

     The Federal Government provided the flimsy houses, oblivious to, or blatantly disregarding, the flawed construction that would neither withstand the extreme temperatures of the Dakota Plains nor endure the wear and tear of extended families. Plain square boxes dotted the scorched grassland. The homes displayed neglect that white people assumed was laziness and disrespect, but they were actually the poignant depiction of a culture still struggling to assimilate into a perplexing way of life forced upon them. The occupants—once proud nomadic Lakota people whose living skills had been efficiently honed to tear down and pack up an entire village at the first sighting of a buffalo herd—were now dealing with peeling paint, broken windows, and plumbing problems. Haphazardly nailed boards, uneven patching, and crude framing marked attempted repairs from hands that had never signed on for homeownership. 

     On the dry cracked soil in front of the homes, under a primitive overhead shelter made from pine boughs, sat an unusual arrangement of armchairs and couches with fluffs of stuffing escaping their shabby seams. An occasional rusted cooking stove and an assortment of wobbly kitchen chairs completed the assemblage. Living outdoors in the summer, alongside their sway-backed horses and lean, hungry dogs, the Lakota people appeared to be content, but their poverty tugged at my young heart.

     As a child, no one told me that multiple branches of Oglala Sioux protruded from my family tree and this was not something I would even suspect, given my pale skin and blue eyes. Conditioned by years of racial intolerance, Mother and Father all but renounced their Indian heritage. Mother embraced her Scandinavian roots and Father, raised in the Pine Ridge Indian Boarding School for thirteen years, went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in Social Work and served as a Commissioned Officer in the Army before embarking on his lifelong career for the Federal Government. He worked hard to establish a better life away from the impoverished reservation.

     The Indians greeted Father respectfully with never a hint of hostility or resentment even though he had the power to send their loved ones back to prison. He shook hands with the elders and gave pieces of hard candy to the children. On the rare occasion when he actually found his parolee at home, they would sit in the outside parlor and visit. I watched him as he talked, one moment lecturing with a stern look, the next minute laughing along with them. The Indian people loved to laugh, but their children wore somber faces as they circled our car, sucking on the hard candy, their big brown eyes sneaking glances at the ‘white’ people.

     The visits would take up an entire day, and on the final leg of our journey, when all we could see for miles was a black canvas glowing with tiny flecks of light, Father would sing sad cowboy songs. I never tired of those ballads and sniffled while Seth would tease me by poking me in the ribs. Poor “Little Joe the Wrangler”, trampled to death in a cattle stampede set off by a bolt of lightning. A dying cowboy begged his pardners to “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie” and they were not very good friends because that is exactly where they threw the dirt on top of his lifeless body. The lyrics were sad, but Father’s singing was comforting, signaling that the trip would soon be over and our final stop, in front of Grandmother’s house, was near.

     Father was a prolific storyteller and listening to his tales helped pass the time on these trips. “Your mother was the most beautiful woman in Bennett County,” he began. “When I met her, men were standing in line hoping to secure a date with her. In fact, when I asked her to marry me, she had several other suitors eager to win her hand.”

     “Why did they want her hand?” I asked.

     “It’s a figure of speech. When you ask a woman to marry you, you ask for her hand in marriage.” I nodded, even though it did not make sense to me. In my mind, the figure of speech equaled a gory image.

     “One of them,” he continued, “was a circus performer whose specialty was swallowing a fiery sword. Another was a farmer who owned a fleet of combines, and the other guy was a handsome, wealthy, shady individual who owned a car dealership in Nebraska.”

     “How can you swallow a sword, Dad?” I asked.

     “Oh, it takes years and years of practice.”

     “But how could he swallow it if it was on fire?” I asked.

     “Stop interrupting me, Tallie,” he said, with a noticeable trace of irritation. I really wanted to know the answer to that question, but I bit my tongue because I also wanted him to finish his story.

     “She liked the sword swallower, but she didn’t want to raise kids in the circus so she turned him down. She was afraid the farmer would want you kids to drive his combines and everyone knows that the combine business is very dangerous. Combine operators tend to have fingers and toes missing, so she told him no, too. She had a sneaking suspicion that the car dealer was a tad too shady and she didn’t want to move to Nebraska anyway, so she told him she couldn’t marry him.”

     “But she liked everything about you and she married you!” I shouted, happy that I knew the ending for the story.

     “Yes, she did and here we are today,” he said.

Mother listened with a slight smile on her face, never contesting his narrative. The only truth in this story was that Mother was the most beautiful woman in Bennett County. She married Blake, my biological father, when she was eighteen years old. He was eager to marry sooner, but she was adamant about becoming a high school graduate before she became a wife.

     Blake was a tall handsome cowboy of English and Oglala Sioux descent who did exactly as he pleased. He traveled hundreds of miles to enter a rodeo or a poker game, drank liquor half of every day, and had no desire to earn an honest living or practice monogamy. He was a proud father when May was born. He would take her with him to the local tavern for his afternoon eye-opener and plop her down atop the bar to show her off to his drinking buddies. When Seth was born three years later, the nurse had barely wiped the cheese from his face before Blake commented, “He doesn’t look a bit like me.” I arrived the following year, but Blake had lost all interest in his family. Mother and I sat for hours in the hospital lobby waiting for him to pick us up, but he had disappeared, chasing after a steer that assured him a winning time or a woman who promised him a wild ride.

     It was no surprise to anyone when Mother divorced Blake and married Carl, who had carried a torch for Mother for many years. A puppy love crush that began while they both attended Pine Ridge Indian Boarding School resulted in their marriage after many years of separation. Their brief courtship was far from romantic. Carl sat patiently on Grandmother’s couch every night while Mother nursed Seth and me through weeks of severe coughing and choking spells that prevented us from sleeping at night and eating during the day. Even the doctor did not know if we would survive the Whooping Cough.

     Mother’s older sister, aware of her struggle to care for her young fatherless children, volunteered to raise Seth. She and her husband had three daughters and welcomed the idea of a little boy joining their family, but Mother declined their well-intended offer and continued with her efforts to support her small brood, working for thirty-five cents an hour at the drugstore in the dusty rural town of Martin.

     Located in southwestern South Dakota, Martin sprang up like a weed amid inhospitable terrain. The land is as dry as parchment paper in the summer while frigid layers of snow and ice cover the dormant wheat and alfalfa fields in the winter. Colorful red and yellow buttes of the Badlands present a majestic, rugged northern border and to the immediate south lies the Nebraska Sandhills—the largest sand dune formation in the western hemisphere. Twenty miles west of Martin you enter the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation - home to the Oglala Lakota Sioux, and thirty miles east will place you among the Sicangu (Burnt Thigh People) on the Rosebud Indian Reservation.

     Once belonging to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Bennett County seceded in the early 1900’s, taking the final slice out of the tribal lands promised to the Oglala Sioux in the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty. The secession bestowed the land primarily to white ranchers and left the reservation with the boundaries that exist today and Bennett County containing prized Indian Trust lands. Martin is a town rife with social and racial division - White versus Full Blood Indian versus Mixed Blood Indian and who rightfully owns what.

     Four generations ago, pure Lakota blood pumped through the veins of three of my great-great-grandmothers—Molly Red Kettle, Eagle Woman, and one woman known only as Chief Swift Bird’s daughter. One great-great-grandmother was one-half Sicangu and another was one-half Sans Arc. Out of four sets of my great-great grandparents, only one set was full-blooded European Caucasian, this was my great-great grandfather Sandvik from Sweden.

     Mother, May, Seth and I lived with Grandpa and Grandma Sandvik in a tiny stucco house that had a magical hollyhock fence in the backyard. Toys were a luxury we could not afford and I would play with the beautiful bell-shaped flowers, imagining that they were sweet fairy princesses. I would pluck the ruby-red and hot-pink bodies from their long nurturing stems and twirl them like ballerinas until their fragile petticoats fell apart, littering the dusty ground with soft, crushed velvet.

     Carl was happy to spend time with Mother even though listening to sick children crying, coughing, and vomiting was part of their courtship. He became acquainted with the very worst in the beginning of their relationship and did not run away in a state of panic. Mother knew he was the man for all four of us.

* * *

     One summer, while in Deadwood, we stayed in an apartment in the historic Franklin Hotel. Seth and I slid down the banisters and explored every inch of the hotel, especially the areas marked Employees Only. We couldn’t read yet, but an irate employee pointed to the sign and said, “This means stay out. Get it? Stay out.” His exasperation made us that much more intent upon gaining entrance to the forbidden zones.

     Leaving the hotel one morning, I ran into the street in front of an oncoming car. The driver slammed on her brakes, sending her groceries flying to the front dash and her heart rocketing up her throat. Jumping out and racing to the front of her car, she looked at the pavement, expecting to see me squashed under her front tires, which had stopped within inches of me.

     I escaped death that day in Deadwood, but at age nine, for some inexplicable reason, I believed that I was dying. This preoccupation with my death occurred within days after we moved into our newly constructed house in the Hilltop Heights subdivision.