Chapter 1
“Junie, we need three Indian tacos, two bowls of chili, one frybread with honey, and four strawberry drinks,” Anita called out to Juniper from her seat perched at the open back of their food truck, Banks Bites, where she took orders.
“Heard,” Juniper responded with a hoarse voice, accepting the scribbled down note passed from her mom. She slid it into a clothespin hanging from a fishing line strung across the top of her work station, slipping behind the other two orders she was still working on.
Fuck, it’s hot.
She wiped the sweat from her brow with the edge of her very damp t-shirt. It didn’t matter that it was early March; the multiple fryers, cooktops, and general heat from the rest of the appliances made a concerted and valiant effort to totally smother her.
“I been asking when your brother is gonna come help us out. He keeps saying he’s on the powwow trail winning contest money to bring home.”
While that was probably true – the winning money dancing in powwow dance competitions part, not the actually bringing it home to the family part – he was likely more concerned with snagging a new woman in each Tribal community he passed through on that powwow trail. Juniper wanted to be more like her younger brother Sam; she’d like to at least have the chanceto snagsomewoman. Instead she was sweating her ass off in the family food truck for the millionth weekend in a row. In the off chance she had caught a woman’s eye in the morning before starting work, her grease-splotched clothes, frazzled hair that smelled like she’d washed it in the deep fryer, and makeup that had met its inevitable sweaty demise were certain to turn heads in the complete opposite direction once she finished for the day.
“You keep that hope alive,” Juniper muttered under her breath.
“Junie, what? You know my hearing’s bad. I can’t hear anything over that fan blasting.”
Juniper didn’t repeat herself, and she certainly wasn’t going to turn that fan down. She attempted to blow a sweaty stray lock of hair from her eyes. The edges barely lifted, then shellacked themselves back to her forehead like they hadn’t even moved.
Just end me already.
She turned back to the fryers, grabbed metal tongs, and produced four pieces of frybread with crispy, golden edges and perfectly fluffy insides.Thiswas the secret recipe frybread that kept people coming back, and back, and back. That kept her stuck there for hours on end, weekend after weekend. She glared at the last piece while she squeezed it a little too hard with the tongs. It had become a symbol of the four walls of this prison she considered herself to be standing in. Where she really wanted to be was outside in the Tribal gardens she had built to provide access to fresh produce for her community. She wanted to have her hands in the dirt, cultivating new life. Hopefullyanew life, for her. Living at home at thirty-three and running her family’s food truck was not her dream. Running her community’s traditional foods program that she had built over the last seven years from the ground up was.
Refocusing, again, on the monotonous task at hand, she plated the next order and called out the service window, “Gloria!” She paused. “Is that Gloria Bearskin?”
Gloria, an older woman who had been a long-time advocate in the Tribe for LGBTQ2S+ causes and Juniper’s work with traditional foods, sauntered up to the window with her soda-can formed white curls bouncing in the breeze. Juniper was jealous of those curls. She wanted to curl up in that cool air right along with them. She also loved the shit out of Gloria and how inappropriate she was, for a womanof her age,as they often joked together. Like how society thinks after a woman turns forty, she should hide herself away from the world to go die in dignity. Gloria had laughed in the face of that expectation multiple times a day for the last twenty years at least.
“Hey honey, thank you.” Gloria took the plates and passed them back to a man about 15 years her junior that Juniper had never seen before.
Juniper curled her fingers on the ledge of the service window and leaned conspiratorially over it. “Speaking of honey, who is that man half your age behind you taking your plates for you to the picnic table? And don’t lie again and tell me it’s your nephew.”
Gloria swatted her with the stack of napkins she had just pulled out of the napkin holder by the condiments.
“Oh, hush. Half my age? Really, Juniper? That man is 43. What I do with my personal time is personal. Didn’t I teach you that even Aunties who snag eligible younger men are sacred too?”
Juniper could see the twinkle in her eye. It told her everything she wanted to know about Gloria’s intentions with that man who was busying himself with arranging and rearranging the plates on the table. He looked nervous. Juniper wondered what specifications she had this poor guy living up to. Good for her though – Gloria knew exactly what she wanted, and she got it.
“I see that, ma’am.Verysacred. No more questions from me, then.” Juniper smirked and winked at her.
“My question for you is, when are you going to find a womanto take up some ofyourpersonal time?”
“What personal time?” Juniper quipped. She looked back at the remaining order tickets hanging up and the new one her mom was waving in her direction.
“Don’t give me that. Every time we’re out in the Tribal gardens together you either tell me about lost love or bad love… what about new love?”
“Well let’s see, Gloria, before you get me in trouble with my boss,” Juniper glanced back at her mom waving a second new order ticket in her direction. “I had my whole heart absolutely ripped out of my chest once by the person I trusted most in this world. Eviscerated, really. Then I dated unsuccessfully for several years. Then I dated a narcissist. I don’t really trust my judgment.”
Juniper caught Gloria’s eyes glossing over with sadness for a moment. Juniper had meant it to be funny. She was questioning if maybe the state of her love lifewasactually just sad. Gloria patted Juniper’s hand she was still using to propel herself through the window.
“Have some fun at least. You work too hard. You’ll learn to trust yourself along the way. You can always count on me to listen.”
Juniper quickly flipped her hand over to squeeze Gloria’s hand into hers.
“I love you, Auntie. See you Monday.”
“Monday, yes!” Gloria’s once glossy eyes now gleamed. “Your first day at your new job. I hear there’s a very nice administrative assistant who will be waiting for you at the front desk, maybe even with a little gift to show you how proud I am of you.”
Gloria winked and Juniper’s heart swelled. On Monday morning, she would start her first day as the Tribal food sovereignty coordinator, where she would bring her traditional foods program under the Tribe’s official purview… and budget.
