Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
One
I was not always a liar. I mean, sure, white lies were inevitable. I told them all the time. My habit of lying started with a simple "Yes, that beaded key chain is really pretty" to my best friend, Joanna, when we were fifteen. It was a vomit-green "lizard," and it was an insult to lizards everywhere. The key chain looked demented, all lumpy with gaps where beads should've been, but I lied through my teeth. What was I supposed to do? Tell her the truth and have her stop beading altogether? I couldn't do that to her. My little fib meant a lot to her, and I realized my words had an impact when she gifted the key chain to me that same Christmas with a little note that read, Thank you for believing in me.
That ugly little lizard, in all its garish glory, still lived on my key ring. It was so ugly, I was convinced that it could ward off evil; it was my little lucky charm and my most prized possession. Joanna ended up finding success with her beadwork. As the years went on, her ambitious designs served as a stable source of income, so I'd argue that my first white lie was a good one.
Sometimes, I lied because it was just easier. Who had time to get into the weeds of things? Just a teensy, tiny fib to save someone's feelings, or hide my own, did a lot to keep my sanity. I wasn't a pathological liar by any stretch of the imagination-it wasn't like I would lie and say I was someone that I wasn't, and not everything I said was a whopper. I wasn't a con artist trying to pull one over on people. I was just Ember Lee Cardinal, a sometimes liar, but mostly an overall good person.
But this lying business did get out of hand, I recognized that. I want to say for the record that if faced with the choice between plunging the toilets of an old and dingy (but well-loved) bowling alley for the rest of your life and the opportunity to dramatically change your circumstances with a few cleverly crafted lies, you would do it too. If an itty-bitty fabrication was the difference between barely keeping a roof over your head or having a stable career with growth-it was a no-brainer. I wasn't going to be slaving away disinfecting fifteen-year-old rental bowling shoes forever. Nope. I was changing my destiny.
I was going to be an accountant! Not like the "accountants" going viral on TikTok, but a real number-crunching, invoice-consolidating, checkbook-balancing accountant for a company-with a high salary! Not some job that paid $7.25 an hour but a salary. With benefits. No one in my family had ever had a salary before, and when we were sick, we would have to take a whole day off work and wait in line at the clinic, missing an entire day's pay. Private health insurance was on the table. Who was I? An accountant, that's who.
Kind of. Accountant adjacent? I took an intro to accounting class at the community college. It was enough to get an entry-level job, I knew that, and somehow, I still couldn't land any job interviews. I'd put in so many applications and gotten zilch in return. That was how I ended up here-desperation makes good people do bad things.
"Order nineteen," I yelled over the crashing sound of the bowling balls rolling down the freshly waxed pine lanes, knocking down pins.
"Not a single interview request?" Joanna, my best friend, roommate, and coworker, asked as she dumped a new jar of pickled jalapeños into the black Cambro for our patrons.
I handed the artificial-nacho-cheese-covered chips to two teenagers on a date. It smelled like burnt rubber; we probably should have stopped selling it today, but Bobby Dean was cheap.
"Not since you asked me this morning," I grumbled.
She meant well. Joanna was an artist, and this gig at Bobby Dean's Bowling Alley was perfect for her creative schedule. She made extra cash selling her jewelry, and she was so talented that sometimes people bought her stuff straight off her ears. It didn't hurt that she was smoking hot with her dark hair cropped to her shoulders, with vibrant purple ends standing out against her tanned skin. I, on the other hand, was not artistically inclined. My earning more money would take my leaving this place and getting a real career. I liked numbers and security, so accounting seemed like the best choice.
"How many rejections is that then? Twenty?" She wasn't looking at me as she wiped up some of the jalapeño brine off the counter.
"Thirty-seven," I corrected, and wished to Creator that I was kidding. I had a teacher once who told me if I applied myself, I could go far. I did apply myself. Quite literally, I applied to every job I could find online. I received thirty-seven rejections. All iterations of the same email: We regret to inform you that we have reviewed your application and decided to go with a candidate who would be a better fit.
What did that even mean? These were entry-level jobs that paid a few dollars more an hour than what I was making in the bowling alley. With every rejection, it was getting harder to believe they weren't auto-rejecting my application because I sounded like I came straight off the reservation . . .
Which I did.
My name was a pretty common Okie name. My high school was in Ada, right in the middle of Indian Country. But I felt like those shitasses hadn't even bothered reading my application or my cover letter. I was honest (mostly); I wanted to learn and grow. Did any of that matter? Not when you were "Indian," apparently. Something we could call ourselves but rubbed us the wrong way when non-Natives tried to foist the inaccurate label onto us.
"E!" Joanna cried. And there it was. The pity. The tone of Why are you doing this? The cry of outrage for putting myself in this type of situation.
I rolled my eyes, bracing myself for the same conversation I'd had a million times. "It's going to be fine," I said, and before she could try to convince me to give up, I walked off to start refilling the napkin dispensers. She followed me around the counter, dodging a few men and their beers.
I was shoving the tiny napkins into one of the silver dispensers when Joanna pushed the others away and invaded my space, leaning against the counter, casual confidence in all her Indigenous glory. Each of her fingers had a silver-and-gemstone ring, and her wrists were stacked with beaded bracelets that jingled as she tapped her chin in thought, drawing attention to her full lips. She was tall and commanding and didn't take shit from anybody. Including me.
"I believe you. You were always the smartest kid in our classes, and you've been dealt some shitty hands. Why don't you wait to apply for these jobs until you finish more of the accounting classes?" she asked.
"I need to be making more money now to pay for those classes." Sarcasm laced my voice as I mimicked her casual stance.
"I could give you a loan." Her exaggerated tone put mine to shame.
"No."
"It's not your fault that-"
"Stop."
Talking about the rejections, I could handle. I was not going to get into it again about my brother, Sage, and the reason I was broke. Joanna knew and I knew that he'd lost my money. Talking more about it wouldn't help me right now. I needed forward-moving action. I reached around her to grab one of the discarded napkin holders.
"Okay, I'm sorry. I just want to help you."
"I know," I sighed, and punched the napkins into their place harder than was needed. "All this would be easier if I was white."
"Why would you say something stupid like that?"
I said it to be flippant, but lights and bells went off in my head like a jackpot win at the slots in the casino. Ding. Ding. Ding. There was a possible solution to my problems.
"Joanna!"
"We have to be proud of who we are and where we come from. Don't buy into the colonizer's propaganda."
"Yeah, yeah, yeah." I grabbed her shoulders. "Listen to me." The napkins and customers around us were forgotten.
"Fucksake! What?"
"I'm just gonna be white."
"Your dad is white." She looked beyond confused.
"Exactly, so it's not really a lie. I'm just going to check the Caucasian box on the applications."
"Does that really matter?"
"Let's see."
"You also don't have any accounting experience on your résumé." She extracted my hands from her.
"So what? I do all the register balancing here, and I help you and my auntie with your online taxes."
Joanna's face brightened. She finally understood where my mind was at.
"I can be your reference." Her smile lit up my entire world.
"Some people have private bookkeepers to handle all their business stuff."
"You're hired. Now it's not technically a lie."
"This is brilliant! Why didn't I think of this before?"
"Because you were playing as if the game was fair. Everyone lies on their résumé. Play by everyone else's rules." Joanna was excited, and it was infectious. "You know," she continued, "we are the only ones who answer the phone around here. You can be the bookkeeper for Bobby Dean too. I can also be your reference here." With that last bit, she did her impression of Bobby Dean himself with his lazy Okie twang; it was a perfect match.
"So, I'm doing this then?"
"You're doing it." We squealed and hugged.
A rough and insistent tap on my shoulder reminded me that I was still at work. I turned around to see Bucky, one of our regulars. He played in the Little Big Horns bowling league of old retired Native men who thought Bobby Dean's, with the three-dollar beer, was the best place to spend most of their time. Their team name was totally a dick joke that no one but them thought was clever. None of them were Lakota.
"Toilet's backed up again." Bucky burped and used his thumb to point behind him toward the men's bathroom.
I watched Bucky make his way back to his buddies, dragging toilet paper that was stuck to the bottom of his shoe.
"It's your turn," Joanna said, and walked back around the counter.
I didn't care. With my new application strategy, this was going to be the last clogged toilet I was going to plunge at the bowling alley.
Two
I was always early to everything. And not just a few minutes early. No matter what I did, I was always an hour or two early to things. Did I have a life? That was yet to be determined. There is a prevalent stereotype that Natives are always late to stuff, but it was physically impossible for me to be tardy for anything. It was written in my DNA that Ember Lee Cardinal was and always would be very early to everything. Especially if I was excited about something like, for example, an interview for an accounting assistant position.
That's right. I had an interview! My first application as the new and improved me was a smashing success. When they asked for my job history, I put accountant for Bobby Dean's Bowling Alley and Bar. For school I put that I was a graduate of the Oklahoma City Community College, with an associate's degree in business accounting / finance support. When I googled the school, they didn't offer just an accounting degree. News to me, and I took two classes there-English and algebra. Accounting / finance support sounded pretty fancy and qualified, so I put that down.
Then, when I got to the last question before submission, it read, "Check Your Ethnicity." The list included American Indian / Alaska Native (I steered clear of that one), Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic or Latino, and then, lastly, White.
I clicked the box.
I submitted it and got an interview request back in a day. A one hundred percent success rate so far. The email in my inbox read, Dear Ms. Cardinal, we are very impressed with your application and would love a chance to learn more about you and discuss the position. Below are the times we are available for an interview. We are hoping to fill this position as soon as possible, so please let us know at your earliest convenience.
So here I was, loitering at a coffee place called Stellar Coffee Café, trying to calm my nerves. What made the coffee so stellar? It wasn't the price, but it had the best view of the prettiest building in downtown Oklahoma City-the First National Center. BancFirst Tower was taller by a few floors, but that building was an ugly rectangle. Devon Tower was super tall and new, and looked like aliens lived in it. The First National Center was stunning-it might as well have been the Empire State Building with its vintage art deco glamour. And I had an interview with a company that lived inside it. Things were really looking up.
I loved downtown. This was a metropolis, so much more than the mobile home I grew up in outside of Ada. The city center was beautiful and urban with green parks among the skyscrapers. There were cities with taller buildings, but I hadn't been to any. Sometimes, when I was downtown, I liked to pretend I was in New York City on my Okie-mind version of Park Avenue, with all the expensive shops and restaurants.
I breathed in the warm, earthy scent of my coffee and watched the street come alive with sophisticated commuters. People with what I liked to call dumb money. They drove expensive luxury cars that made no sense for a place like Oklahoma, where thirty minutes outside of downtown was flat rural land full of hay fields. The men and women hustled up and down the sidewalk looking at their phones, diamonds and gold winking in the morning sun. They were just like those people I'd grown up watching on television in Sex and the City and Law and Order. The high-powered lawyers with their briefcases and the bankers running late, needing to make their trades or whatever it was they did in there. I wanted to be just like them.
I stared down at my black skirt and blazer. Boring. And not even comfortable. I was much more at home in a pair of jeans, but rich businesswomen on TV always wore pencil skirts. I'd found this mismatched suit at Goodwill. I was like Goldilocks with a skirt that was a size too tight and a blazer two sizes too big. In my mirror this morning, I thought if I bunched the sleeves up, it looked intentional. It was the best I could come up with on a budget. In the light of my apartment, they looked like they matched pretty well, but with the morning sun streaming like a spotlight, the brightness showed that the skirt was slightly more faded than the blazer.
