There There: Part II: Jacquie Red Feather (1) Summary & Analysis

Jacquie Red Feather lands in Albuquerque the night before the start of a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration conference. The theme of this year’s conference is “Keeping Them from Harm,” and is aimed at addressing the “staggering” number of suicides in Native communities. Jacquie takes a cab to her hotel and checks in—the woman behind the front desk smells like beer and acts fairly intoxicated as she checks Jacquie in. Jacquie herself is a recovering alcoholic, ten days sober after a recent relapse.

Jacquie reflects on the itinerant existence that she, her mother Vicky, and her younger half-sister Opal used to live. She remembers staying in a hotel one night and looking out at the beautiful glowing pool. She snuck out to dip her toes in the water, longing to be near it in spite of not knowing how to swim. Now, Jacquie asks the front desk attendant how late the pool here is open. 

Jacquie goes up to her room and lies down on the bed, thinking about Opal, who is raising Jacquie’s three grandchildren out in Oakland. Jacquie texts Opal, asking how she’s doing, before getting up from bed and donning a swimsuit. As she undresses, she looks at the tattoos that cover her body, including a pair of spider webs on the tops of her feet. Jacquie’s phone vibrates with a text from Opal—the text states that Orvil, one of Jacquie’s grandsons, “found spider legs in his leg.” Opal says that the boys are convinced the omen represents “something ndn.” Jacquie smiles at the text, then looks over at the minifridge. She thinks of something her mother used to say—“The spider’s web is a home and a trap.” Jacquie now understands the saying for the first time, realizing that drinking is both the home and the trap for her.

Jacquie goes down to the hotel pool where she swims and then smokes a cigarette. She considers walking to a liquor store near the hotel, but decides against it. On the way back to her room, she gets a snack from the vending machine, and then eats it hungrily before falling into a fitful sleep.

The next morning, Jacquie finds a seat in the back of the main ballroom of the conference and looks around. There are two hundred people in attendance today, and Jacquie—who is here for work rather than a personal commitment to helping Native families—feel like a fraud. When the first speaker takes the stage and begins discussing the problems facing Native American youth—kids he describes as “jumping out the windows of burning buildings” set afire by their ancestors and their community—Jacquie becomes overwhelmed, and runs out of the room.

Crouching in the doorway of her hotel room trying to steady her breath, Jacquie thinks about her own daughter’s suicide, and the painful day thirteen years ago when she had to go identify her daughter Jamie’s body. She saw the large hole that her daughter’s gunshot wound had left in her head and was reminded of Veho, the trickster spider, who went about the world stealing eyes to see better. After her daughter’s suicide, Jacquie broke a six-month streak of sobriety and began drinking more heavily ever. She became certified as a substance abuse counselor and worked for the Indian Health Service, all the while nursing her own addiction.

Jacquie looks through pictures of her grandsons on her phone, feeling her mental state deteriorating every second. She is desperate for a drink, and knows she needs to go to an Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) meeting. There is one scheduled, she knows, for later that evening—these conferences always have them—and decides to take a nap in order to calm herself down.

That evening, Jacquie walks into the AA meeting to find a bunch of “older Native guys with long hair” sitting in a circle. A man in a cowboy hat introduces himself to her as Harvey, and Jacquie finds herself floored: she texts Opal to tell her sister that she is in a meeting with “Harvey from Alcatraz,” the father of the daughter she gave up for adoption years and years ago.

When it is Jacquie’s turn to introduce herself to the group after the start of the meeting, she takes the opportunity to shame Harvey, and begins telling the story of her time on Alcatraz—and the “piece-of-shit kid” who “stretch[ed] a no into a yes” and impregnated Jacquie, who later gave up her daughter at seventeen. Jacquie suggests that the source of her alcoholism is the incident on Alcatraz, and that because of it, her addiction has ruined the lives of her second daughter and her grandsons.

Jacquie sits quietly while the other attendees speak, getting lost in thought about the day she, her sister, and her mother left Alcatraz—Harvey and his brother Rocky didn’t want to leave, and jumped off the transport boat into the water. When Jacquie snaps back to the present, she realizes that Harvey is speaking, drawing a connection between outsized substance abuse in Native Americans and lives lived “in a world made to either break [them] or make [them] so hard [they] can’t break even when it’s what [they] need most to do.” Harvey admits to feeling great shame about the things he’s done in the past before leading the group in the serenity prayer.

After the meeting, only Jacquie and Harvey stay behind. Harvey tries to make conversation with Jacquie, telling her he’s going to Oakland soon for the powwow. Jacquie is hostile, and Harvey tries to explain how sorry he is, and even tells her that he’s just found out “through Facebook” that he has another son. Harvey suggests the two of them travel to Oakland together to try to find their daughter, but Jacquie dismisses the idea. Harvey pushes her to accept, but Jacquie grows frustrated and heads for the elevator. Harvey catches up to her, and suggests there’s a “reason” for their meeting here—Jacquie replies that the reason is that they’re “both fuckups and the Indian world is small.” As the elevator doors start to close, though, she tells Harvey he’ll think about his proposal.

Back in her hotel room, Jacquie opens the minifridge and considers drinking. Instead, she unplugs the fridge, moves it out to the hallway, and calls for the front desk to come pick it up. Knowing that there is still time before they come up to get it, Jacquie puts on her swimsuit and heads for the pool. On the way past the fridge in the hall, though, she stops and pulls several bottles out of the fridge. Down at the pool, Jacquie swims a few laps, and then throws the bottles into the bottom of the pool and goes back up to her room. She texts Opal, asking if it’s okay if she stays with her—she is thinking about coming to Oakland.