Being the Murdered Indian
The thing about being the murdered Indian is you set the plot in motion.
You will be sunbleached bones and fabric strips, snag of hair on root-exposed tree. You will be page 12 news, you will be the feds telling your parents girls run away, it happens, she’s probably fine.
They will say girls like you. They will say and they will say girls like you.
You will be photos on posters at the rez grocery store, you will be I miss yous on your friends’ Facebook pages, the box of your favorite things in your parents’ trailer. You will be the empty look in your mother’s eyes when she dials the feds, when the line rings and rings, when she holds, holds, holds, when she says is there any news and they say no, say, no, check back in six months.
You will be your older sister taking in your kids, you will be the name they have forgotten. You will be the way your sister winces when the littlest calls her mama, the way she says no, no, you have a mama and she’s coming back.
The way she says: She’s coming back.
Cathy Ulrich is the founding editor of Milk Candy Review, a journal of flash fiction. Her work has been published in various journals, including Black Warrior Review, Passages North, and Wigleaf and can be found in Best Microfiction 2019, Best Small Fictions 2019 and Wigleaf‘s Top 50 Very Short Fictions 2017 and 2019. She lives in Montana with her daughter and various small animals.