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Everything Gets Mixed Together at the Pueblo Elizabeth Eslami Everybody is supposed to be on the bus at 12:15. This is everybody, most of them white. There are a lot of them, small and tall, fat and pale, but if you are looking down at them from the pueblo, they just look like golf tees lined up, brittle and wooden. Kind of like this: I I I I II I I III I I. The bus will take everybody up to the pueblo to see the Indians, who are already there now, holding sweaty McDonald’s drinks in their hands, staring out from behind screen doors. Waiting for everybody to come up. Everybody meets outside the Visitor Center, by the stone wall, with access to some enterprising Indian vendors who have walked down from the pueblo to sell bowls, key chains, and miniature terra cotta animals. The vendors wear sunglasses and t-shirts with basketball team names on them, and sometimes caps turned to the side. They sit at their tables, not talking. They pant a little, as if being around everybody is like being out too long in the sun. Everybody touches the pots and the terra cotta animals, murmuring admiration . Some of them won’t buy anything at the asking price for fear of being deceived, duped by the cunning Indians. Every dollar subtracted from the price is a small victory for them, like planting tiny flags in the fat of their hearts. A voice announces the imminent bus departure over an intercom. “Please be ready,” it asks, without sounding like it is asking. Everybody has to go to the bathroom before they board the bus. They take their children, whose cheeks are pink and whose mouths twist down into fussy sneers, into the stalls, where sounds of protest echo against the sandstone. The 327 children are then taken by their hands to the sink, where water runs down artfully into a slit from a New Age faucet. “No! Don’t want to wash our hands,” the children say. “The bus is leaving, come on,” the pink parents snap. Outside, there are brown Indian children, or “Native Americans,” as the pink people call them. They run in the heat and laugh. They do not sweat. They do not wash their hands, nor are they made to wash their hands. They urinate in the outhouses on their own and without coercion, or else they squat and defecate in the street, where their feces will later be eaten by dogs. The Pueblo parents love their children, but they allow them run to the end of the cliffs, and they neither worry about nor keep track of their bowel movements . Occasionally, as a result, the children fall to their deaths, or their stomachs explode before they can be taken down to a doctor. Most of the time, though, they are happy, living with disparate things, long shorts and tennis shoes, poverty and worms that burrow into the soles of their feet. In a way, they resemble the pink children, but only superficially, with their buzzcuts and t-shirts that read “Patriots” and “Dontcha Wish Your Girl Was Hot Like Me.” The brown children run to the edge of the mesa and look down at the pink children below, about to be taken up by the bus. They laugh and throw rocks down. Their parents do not say a word. It’s 12:15. Everybody gets on the bus. They file in and plop down in their seats, ignoring the Indian driver and the Indian guide, both women in long shorts and sandals, with straight black hair that streams over their rounded shoulders. The guide’s name is Jennifer. The driver, Kathy. “Everybody please sit down. This bus will take you to the top of the pueblo,” Jennifer says, her voice flat and trained. “Here we go,” the parents say, putting their arms around their children. “Are you ready to see some real live Native Americans?” As the bus pulls away, the adults turn and watch the Visitor Center disappear in the dust behind them. Everybody is shocked when they first see the Visitor Center, a massive structure constructed of the finest pale pink sandstone, according to the most refined architectural principles, with special museum wings jutting off to the side like spider legs. Some are unable to fathom that the building represents the Indians they think they know, the ones with drinking problems who live in the gutted hulls of...

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