NIZHONÍ MEANS BEAUTIFUL

The first day the bruise appeared, Nizhoní screamed.  

“What?” Her two roommates stumbled out of their beds and into the living room, their eyes droopy with sleep, “What’s wrong? What happened?” 

She pointed at the corner between their yellowed sofa and coffee-stained table, “What is that?!” 

“Huh?” Her first roommate twisted his head, craning his neck and scanning the room, “Where?” 

“That black—purple? Purple-black thing!” Nizhoní couldn’t stop pointing. “What is it!?” 

Silence.  

“Nothing’s there.”  

“I don’t see it.” Her second roommate stepped further into the living room, looking confused but also skeptical.  

“You can’t see it?” Nizhoní also couldn’t stop screaming. “It’s right there!”  

Nizhoní watched in horror as one of her roommates walked right over to the bruise and stood at its center. His body suddenly took on a purple tinge. Nizhoní wanted to throw up. She stepped back, tripping on her own feet, and fell on the floor in surprise, “Get out of there!” 

“What are you talking about! Nothing is here!”  

Her other roommate tried to help Nizhoní up, but she pushed her away. “Help him! Please, get him out!” Nizhoní’s hands flew to her face, fingers pressing into her eyes. “Get him out!”  

“Eric, Eric, just move back. Please, she’s going to hurt herself.”  

“What’s wrong with her?” Eric stepped out of the bruise and went back to his normal color. “Nizhoní, what’s wrong?” He attempted to cross the room and reach out, but Nizhoní immediately recoiled.  

“Get out  

get out  

get out  

get out  

get out  

get out  

get out  

GET OUT!”  

“Eric, don’t! Just leave her alone. Just—” Nizhoní’s other roommate inched away, her voice coming from further down the hall. Nizhoní couldn’t see her anymore.  

“Go back to your room.”  

Eric’s brows furrowed, “We can’t just leave her.” 

“Go back to your room.” From the girl’s tone, Nizhoní couldn’t tell if she was talking to Eric or her. “Just go back to your room, please.”  

Nizhoní listened to their retreating footsteps, daring to lift her head only once she heard both of their doors click close. The girl’s door did an extra click-clack, meaning she must have locked it. The living room was deathly quiet, and Nizhoní did her best to slow her heavy breathing. For a moment, she wondered if the thing had lungs too. If it was breathing the same air she was, if Nizhoní was breathing in the thing’s exhales. And if she opened her mouth and swallowed, then she’d be swallowing the thing. For a frantic moment, she tried holding her breath and closing her eyes because it’d definitely got in her eyes. Did she look like Eric had, purple and sickly, a deadly lilac melted permanently onto his skin? When Nizhoní couldn’t hold her breath no more, she convinced herself that small sips of air were okay, they have to be okay. 

The thing looked exactly the same. Nizhoní couldn’t decide if it was purple or black or a deep green. She watched it from her place on the wooden floor, afraid that any movement might cause it to chase and swallow her. Slowly, achingly slow, Nizhoní stood, stacking her limbs like thin pieces of sticks, barely balancing on her feet. A sharp pain on her right arm made her hiss. She looked down and saw a bruise forming on her outer forearm.  

Nolan and Nizhoní bruise easily, that’s what her parent’s used to tell teachers. They’re also very clumsy and foolish, so they get them on their arms and legs sometimes. Nizhoní remembers her teachers humming in understanding, ah they are rebellious—we get it. Present day-Nizhoní hadn’t had a bruise since she was a kid living at home. She wondered if Nolan still thought about those days. If he still had those bruises that eventually healed physically but never really went away.  

Slowly she raised her arm, comparing it to the thing.  

Ugly and painful. Purple and black. Clumpy and smeared. A bruise.  

Without hesitating, Nizhoní ran back to her room and locked her door.  

Click clack.  

-  

 Her father’s face was almost unrecognizable. Did he always have that scar there, along his jaw? And those teeth, she squinted, had they really become that black and rotting since the last time Nizhoní saw him? Surely not. No. Definitely not. Right?  

He stood at the end of a long, long, long hallway that made Nizhoní feel small, small, small. The corners of his mouth curled upwards, like the tangled ends of his hair. Even from this distance, she could smell him—sweat and WD-40. Nizhoní couldn’t see the whites of his eyes in the dark. So, it looked like two deep holes stared at her, empty darkness that felt almost even more invasive than actual sight. His glasses were broken and hung off his nose at a weird angle. Before Nizhoní could call out, he crossed the floor in three wide steps, which would almost be comical if he weren’t pulling a kitchen knife from the inside of his coat.  

Nizhoní struggled to break free. She was pinned to the ground, between her father’s legs, he pressed a kitchen knife deep into her stomach. She screamed, thrashing her legs, unable to move beneath his weight. And slowly, as if to make sure Nizhoní felt every inch of the blade, her father pulled the knife in a wide arch across her chest.  

The knife went back and forth, back and forth, until Nizhoní’s vision went blurry, and she wasn’t sure if she had a stomach anymore, she sure as hell couldn’t feel it. But before Nizhoní could fall back into death, a huge rush of anger erupted within her, filling her insides like wildfire. A pocket-knife materialized in her hand, and Nizhoní’s arm swiped out. In one long swoop, Nizhoní cut along her father’s bare neck. But he didn’t scream. No, not like she did. Instead, her father’s black smile widened.  

Nizhoní, kept swiping back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, is this what you want!? The weight of broken skin grew heavy on her wrist and her fingers burned with blood. But she kept going, kept swiping and stabbing until her father stopped moving and she could throw him off her.  

He lost grip of his own knife, and Nizhoní watched as it fell to the ground. She crawled back, kicking his knife out of reach, and saw her father rise, kneeling with blood streaming down his front, pooling like rainwater around his knees. And despite all of this, Nizhoní wanted to help him, wanted to call someone, anyone, please help us!  

But before Nizhoní could speak, her father’s head snapped up, he snatched the pocket-knife from her hand, and stabbed her in the heart over and over  

and over  

over and  

over and over and over  

and over and over and over and  

over and over  

and over and over  

and over and over and  

over until suddenly— 

  she jolted awake.  

Nizhoní felt sweat, hot and sticky, running down her forehead. The pounding in her ears didn’t slow down, not until she was crying and hiccupping and hugging her knees.  

From the bedside, she eyed the old wooden handle of the pocket-knife her father gifted her as a child. She threw it into the dresser drawer and slammed it shut.  

- 

Her roommates were always complaining about cold drafts and sore limbs. They got sick easily, which Nizhoní suspected was from the bruise. But it didn’t make her sick, not in the traditional sense at least. Sometimes the bruise gave her a headache, the smell of Bud Light cans and stale cigarette smoke igniting memories she’d worked hard to bury. And sometimes it made her arms and legs itch, itch, ITCH. At night, Nizhoní swore she could feel bugs running underneath her skin, scabs being picked over and over and over.  

And while the bruise liked to terrorize everyone in their tiny, third-floor apartment, Nizhoní’s room remained a safe space. The bruise never followed her into her room. It latched onto people instead.  

Nizhoní did her best to block the bruise’s path, planting side tables and bookcases in its way. Because then, at least her roommates wouldn’t suffer too much beyond a short visit to the hospital, and in one case, a week of being bedridden.  

When asked by her roommates, why did you move the bookcase right next to my door, the TV, the front door, etc., etc.? Nizhoní wasn’t afraid to chalk up her behavior to, it’s a Navajo thing. And very easily, her white-northeastern roommates didn’t question it. Because if they did, obviously they were being racist. When they kept pressing, Nizhoní would make up some overly detailed half-truth, half-lie about the Four Directions and placing things to the East and the Sacred Mountains. That usually got them to shut up, so spiritual, is what they’d say. Somehow, it hurt even more to stand there and smile. 

A couple years back, Nizhoní was absolutely devastated when the bruise appeared in the only section of the apartment that got natural sunlight. It felt like a direct attack on her fragile, paper-thin emotional state. Back home, light managed to sneak into every little crook and crevice of the land, unfurling like woolen blankets on a shared bunk bed. There were no groves upon groves of trees or gangly hills or mile-high buildings blocking the sky. The land was a beautiful upright, open palm for Nizhoní to spin and twirl and breathe in. But here—it’s not like that here. Reluctantly, Nizhoní dragged a large bookshelf in the way of the window. A cold long shadow replaced honey warm sunshine.  

In her time since living away from home, Nizhoní had only seen the bruise touch something twice. Her first roommate Eric, and a previous roommate’s cat, Sunny. Sunny died inexplicably within a week of touching the bruise. She hadn’t seen Eric since he moved out almost two years ago, but Nizhoní followed him on Facebook. So far, he seemed to be okay. Eric had had to cut his lease short when his father was hit by a truck in New Jersey. Nizhoní didn’t know what New Jersey was like, maybe it was full of trucks, maybe cities in New Jersey had miles and miles of trucks waiting to run over unsuspecting fathers. She wanted to believe that his father’s accident wasn’t relate to the bruise, no way, nope, not at all.  

Nizhoní didn’t like to think about how the bruise could kill. In all her years living with it, Nizhoní couldn’t figure out what the bruise really wanted. She thought back to all the bad things she did: stole a younger cousin’s pretty blue camera in elementary school because she didn’t have anything nice like that, so why should she?; accidentally destroyed her older cousin’s award-winning painting of two sheep, the soda was on the table why did he leave his painting on the table too?; started an awful rumor about her best friend just because she was starting to get more attention for a quote-un-quote beautiful pencil sketch that actually didn’t look like flowers at all but like the outline of a deformed horse’s butt, so maybe she has a thing for butts, I’m just saying. Nizhoní was used to feeling jealous. But, perhaps even worse, Nizhoní was also used to acting on her jealously. This long line of jealously, and even longer line of jealous acts, well, that must be the reason for the bruise, it must be. 

There wasn’t anything else wrong with Nizhoní, at least, nothing she could pinpoint. So, she spent hours cleansing her soul of jealousy, doing her best to repair old damages. Calling up her younger cousin up to confess, yeah, I stole your camera and then threw it in the ditch. Texting her older cousin, you were right, I purposely dropped Coke on your old high school painting, it shouldn’t have won the ribbons anyways. And Facebook messaging, remember that rumor about you liking butts and touching them in the bathroom? I told everyone that. But really, you made it so easy.  

The bruise didn’t go away. In fact, Nizhoní thought it got a little bigger.  

A name from her contacts list caught her attention. It’d been years since she had talked to her brother. And for a second, Nizhoní’s finger hovered over the ‘call’ button, considering. But almost as instant as her consideration, a deep fear, and maybe even a deeper sense of regret, made Nizhoní freeze, close the app, and throw her phone onto the bed, it doesn’t matter anyways. 

Her brother’s name rang in her head. And despite everything, maybe, Nizhoní thought, just maybe, she was actually an ugly person.  

- 

It was the fourth night in a row that she dreamed about her father and his old pocket-knife. No matter how many times Nizhoní tried talking to him in her dreams, he never responded. His violence was always the same, but even if Nizhoní anticipated his movements, she just wasn’t fast enough to escape. She wondered if she should find somewhere to practice, the image of a pocket-knife training montage flashed through her head, ridiculous. No, the best she could do, as of now, was wait it out. The dreams would stop. Just like how the bruise would eventually go away.  

From the kitchen table, Nizhoní leaned back in her chair to gaze out into the living room. The bruise was still there, but that was only for now. She returned to her laptop, typing out a couple of emails she’d put off since last week. Nizhoní wrote grants for a living—well, she drafted them. By the time her associates were done editing, the work was a whole different thing. It didn’t annoy her. As long as she wasn’t expected to do any more than churn out chunky word vomit, then Nizhoní didn’t care what stuck. A lot of Nizhoní’s life was like that, not caring about who stayed and who left. She could hear her father’s old voice in her head, you can’t damn fucking trust anyone but your-damn fucking-self, remember that. And as much as Nizhoní hated her father, she knew he was right.  

Nizhoní didn’t know the names of her new roommates. She’d moved to the East Coast to get away from home, from all the grey-clouded emotions they were determined to collect in metal buckets. Nizhoní wasn’t looking for friends, just people to split the insane two-thousand-dollar rent. Her mother was worried about Nizhoní’s sudden decision to live outside of the Four Sacred Mountains. Nizhoní had saved up some money working twelve-hour shifts at a local 7/11, about a mile’s walk from where she lived. Ever since she was little, Nizhoní had been the secluded type, so a gas station job was a chance to get out of her house and eventually, out of the reservation. Which, looking back now, was stupid. Nineteen-year-old Nizhoní was stupid, don’t ever listen to your younger self, is something else her father used to say. She missed home. She missed the sun, the flat land, the dirt roads, and the rowdy cousins who liked to stick their stuffy noses into everything with their dirt covered feet. 

Nizhoní talked to her mother on the phone the other day, when are you coming back home? And, as much as Nizhoní wanted to say, I’m coming home soon! She knew she couldn’t return home with the bruise. Something about it made facing her mother, her brother, and people, after all these years, unbearable. Nizhoní looked back out at the bruise. If she didn’t know better, she’d swear the thing was smiling back at her. She didn’t know how it was possible for a smear on the wall to smile back at her, but the gesture felt uncannily similar to her father’s. 

- 

Her father didn’t have a grave. Graves were too expensive. When he died, Nizhoní was eighteen and her brother was fifteen. Their mother didn’t want anything to do with his body, it took me nearly 18 years to divorced him, he’d not my problem anymore. And their father’s own siblings nearly broke their own necks turning their cheeks the other way, only offering two twenty-five-dollar gift cards to Sonics and Panda Express as a sign of their condolences.  

Nizhoní remembered exactly how it felt to receive the news. She was suddenly falling, and falling, and falling, unable to feel her hands, her feet, her neck, unable to move her body. Then, just a suddenly she stopped falling. It felt like her insides had collapsed, becoming an internal disgusting splatter of hot blood, tears, and snot. She was suspended midair, just above the ground, thin lines of wire barely holding her wrists and ankles. The sensation of screaming felt more like a memory, something that happened to her years ago, and not as she fell. Nizhoní was never able to describe this to her family and friends beyond, it hurt. But you don’t forget that kind of hurt. it never leaves your body.  

When the funeral director asked if they’d like to hold a service, which casket were they thinking of, could you sign these papers, is it just you and your brother? Nizhoní was the only one on the other side of that heavy-set desk answering his questions, no, which one is the cheapest, do you have a pen, yes, it’s just me and my brother. The funeral director was an older man in a black suit and narrow glasses that made his eyes rat-like. She could imagine him scurrying across the floor at night, all hunched and scrawny, like the rats that used to live in their garage. He looked at Nizhoní like she was just another pathetic little rez girl: dead father, alcoholism, drug abuse, poverty. Nizhoní wanted to take the heel of her foot and stomp on his face, just like she used to with the rats back in their garage.  

“You don’t have enough to bury him.”  

Nizhoní already knew this.  

“You can cremate him, but that’s gonna be $700 bucks, including the urn.”  

Nizhoní didn’t want the urn.  

“That’s your lowest option.”  

Looking out the window, Nizhoní wondered if her dad knew beforehand that he was going to die, and if he just kept it to himself to spite her. If he decided to die early just so he could watch everyone else scramble, turning over rocks and stones for spare change. She wondered if he thought his death was gonna be a big event, and not just a small conversation in a small office between a funeral director and a girl less than half his size.  

Just throw me in a box and float me down the river, that’s what her dad told her once after too many beers. And boy did she want to, she’d be saving 700 bucks. But something told Nizhoní that the funeral director wouldn’t just hand over his body.  

“Cremate him.” 

- 

Nizhoní and her brother didn’t come prepared. They forgot to bring water, their clothes were too exposed, and nobody had mentioned sunscreen. The walk took forever, they walked in a straight line, stepping over dry weeds and bunches of miniature cacti. The clear sky hurt Nizhoni’s eyes, forcing her to squint past choppy bangs. She could feel the heat from the hot sand through her shoes. If they stood still for too long, no doubt their feet would burn.  

Nobody wanted to carry the urn. It was heavy and warm in Nizhoni’s arms, when you’re the oldest, you’re automatically the urn-carrier. She had to keep shifting it, from her left arm to the right, then from her right arm to the left. Nizhoní did her best to keep the sides from grazing her wrist. But it still stung. Everything stung, her feet stung, her arms stung, the back of her neck stung.  

At the top of the rocks, Nizhoní undid the urn. The plan was to pour the ashes over the edge of the sandstone cliffs and hope it fell downwards. But it turns out cremated ashes are bagged. Nizhoní and her brother didn’t know that. They thought, like most people probably did, that the ashes were poured into the urn as it was—as ashes and nothing more.  

Nizhoní tried not to focus on how weird this was, tearing your father’s plastic cremation bag. The ashes got on Nizhoni’s hands, but she didn’t feel too weird about that part. She didn’t expect their dad’s ashes to be bagged with a black zip tie, like a piece of trash.  

Once Nizhoní opened the bag, the wind changed directions and the ashes blew straight into her face. A good amount got in her mouth. Nizhoní instantly noticed how, pleasantly, it didn’t taste like anything. It was just rough against her teeth, like sawdust. Some part of her mouth, the part that houses memories and scars in its tissue, was reminded of the old pieces of clay she used to eat under her father’s art table. She remembered swinging from leg to leg, reaching up with small hands to snatch pieces of fresh clay from his crow figurines, picking off claws and feathers and tips of crow beaks. Maybe her father’s ashes actually tasted like clay.  

 Some of it got in Nizhoní’s hair, turning it stiff and clumpy. She was surprised by how much her hair felt like she’d just put on hairspray. It got all over her clothes, and no matter how many times she brushed off her pants and shirt, it wouldn’t go away.  

The wind kept blowing it in Nizhoní’s face and her brother saw it all happen. For a moment, they were a little disgusted. They weren’t sure how to react. But eventually, Nizhoní made eye contact with her brother, did that just happen? A moment passed, the wind blew a couple of weeds into her eyes, and she did her best to brush them out of the way. Nizhoni’s brother kept looking at her and pretty soon, they were both laughing.  

They laughed so hard their chests started to hurt. Nizhoní laughed so hard she almost started crying, and she could also see it in her brother’s eyes, the strange need to cry, but also laugh at the same damn time. Nizhoní couldn’t breathe, everything felt so fucking hilarious and sad all at once. Maybe that’s what she should say in their father’s obituary, so fucking hilarious and sad—all at once. 

Their mother was just over the rocks, and Nizhoní was pretty sure she thought they were going crazy, with all the insane laughter happening. Slowly, their laughter died down. And Nizhoní, hands on her knees, head downturned, muttered a slight, “Jesus christ,” before returning her attention to the empty bag of ashes.  

She realized that those ashes and that urn didn’t feel like her father. In her mind he was already gone, long before she tasted his ashes, and long before she got the phone call. Not dead. Gone.  

Nizhoní and her brother walked back and met their mom halfway. The walk felt shorter, but it was still hot. They scrounged around their old van for spare change, hoping to buy a bottle of water, before they realized that they could buy snacks and drinks with her brother’s EBT card. Nizhoní didn’t feel comfortable using the EBT for junk food, but their mother insisted, fuck President Nez’s junk food tax. Nizhoní didn’t like thinking about her brother, she didn’t like using his name. They had the same father, not the same mother. But Nizhoni’s mom didn’t care, family is family is family, is what she’d always say. Up until now, she hadn’t considered how her brother felt, losing their dad at fifteen. Some part of her didn’t really care, and convinced herself that, just by being male and looking like him, the loss of their father didn’t affect him as much, or at the very least, not as much as her.  

Ever since her brother was old enough to walk, people always commented on how much he looked like their father. They’d pull out photograph after photograph, holding them in front of Nizhoni’s face, in a gesture that felt almost childlike, look, look, look at your dad and your brother, don’t they look alike, when he was his age?  

When Nizhoní was a little girl, she got stung by a wasp on the edge of her lip. It turned an ugly purple that refused to heal, and while it hurt like crazy, she loved the attention, does it hurt, are you okay, oh, god that looks bad! Her looks were never compared to her father’s. And especially not her mother’s, who was said to have been a local beauty, that broke more hearts than she loved, turning down every guy that asked her out until she met Nizhoní’s father and saw his gorgeous long braided hair. Nizhoni’s mother named her Nizhoní because it meant beautiful and harmonious in Diné Bizaad. But when Nizhoní grew up, she knew without anyone telling her that she was a disappointment. The old bee-sting on her lip never really went away, instead it prickled and swelled whenever someone said her name with a raised brow or compared Nizhoní’s brother to their parents.  

Nolan looks just like you! 

Oh, that’s funny! He’s not related to me, but we’re still family. 

Watching her brother from the backseat, Nizhoní could feel the phantom pain now, pinching, a strange sense of jealously. Because even though Nizhoní was covered in the remnants of their father’s ashes, she didn’t feel any closer to him. In the passenger-side mirror, Nizhoní watched as their mom tended to a bad sunburn, noting how her arms looked as red as the rocks they walked over that day.  

- 

Some nights, Nizhoní couldn’t sleep because her arms and legs itched, and the back of her neck burned with old sunlight. From her apartment in the city, Nizhoní wondered if her brother felt the same way, all the way back on the rez. She should’ve asked him. Nizhoní hadn’t talked to Nolan since that burning day.  

Every now and then she remembered his smile and the laughter they shared at the top of sandstone. When their father was around, it was hard to smile. Growing up, Nolan was perhaps treated the worst by their father, but in some ways, he was also the closest to him. Nizhoní managed to distance herself, slipping behind shadows and underneath bed covers to avoid their father’s tantrums. And Nizhoní remembered being a child and watching her younger brother fend for himself. They both fended for themselves. Falling back onto the couch, Nizhoní wanted to scream, how much longer will we keep fending for ourselves? 

She eyed the bruise from her seat in the living room and wondered if it weighed anything. If it would drag her down, down, down, tight hands around her calves and ankles, forcing water into her lungs and turning her vision black. Or, if the weight would disappear, if everything would disappear, and Nizhoní could leap from branch to branch, like the small sparrows she’d watch from her second story window with all-too familiar envy.  

 In all her time knowing the bruise, Nizhoní never felt the urge to touch it. Instead, she felt the urge to flee, to run and never stop running, ‘till her heels sanded to the bone and became impossibly calloused. Ever since it showed up, everything in her body told Nizhoní, don’t touch. The warning was almost primal, something evolutionary.  

But now, strangely, Nizhoní had the irresistible urge to touch it.  

The dreams hadn’t stopped, and she wasn’t if they ever would. Sitting up, Nizhoní reached for her cellphone and scrolled through her contacts, N…N…. She didn’t even know if his number was the same. No, her father wasn’t going anywhere, at least not yet. And Nizhoní didn’t know if she truly wanted him to disappear fully.  

Her pointer finger managed to pinpoint his contact, and as the dial rung, Nizhoní stood, stepping around their communal coffee table. For a second, she stood in front of the bruise, partially covered by their living room bookcase. Nizhoní was breathing heavily, and she could hear the bruise match her breath—inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. An old part of her, that used to feel panic in waves against rocks, felt a strange familiar comfort.   

Carefully, she managed to move the bookcase out of the way, leaving the bruise open and the window bare. An onslaught of sunlight ran up the walls, turning the room orange, filling it to the brim like sweet, honey river water. It felt good.  

The dial tone stopped. A low click, and then suddenly another voice spoke on the phone.  

“Hello?”  

Nizhoní took a deep breath, and stepped into the pool of sunlight, touching the bruise with her bare feet. To her surprise, she felt warm; a neglected warmth rediscovered, that spent years buried deep below her entwined throat and stomach. It was as if she had stepped, toes first, into a steady stream of flooded rainwater, from a dessert pool, void of the fear and anger that grew gradually with burning sandstone.  

As Nizhoní opened her mouth to speak, she had never felt more beautiful. “Hey.”