I Can Make This Promise

On July 4, 12-year-old Edie travels to nearby tribal lands with her parents. She has little context for understanding the cultures she sees around her. She sees an Indigenous woman wearing a “Find Our Missing Girls” (9) T-shirt. Edie meets a dog without a collar and hopes to help it get home, but her parents stop her, saying, “Someone will come along for him” (9). They head to a booth to buy fireworks from an Indigenous teenage boy, and he gives her a free extra firework.

Edie and her parents set off their fireworks on a field alongside many other people. It’s “like a war zone” (14) with all the fireworks in the sky and smoke in the air. Edie lights her extra firework, which contains a tiny parachute. She runs across the field to catch it as it falls. Having retrieved the parachute, Edie meets a boy around her age who introduces himself as Roger. He tells her, “You look Native” (19). People often say similar things, but it feels different coming from an Indigenous boy: Roger’s words make Edie feel seen, rather than alienated. Edie and her parents go home, with Edie still thinking about the dog and Roger. She asks her mother why fireworks are permitted there but forbidden in her own neighborhood, but she receives no answer. She also asks her mother if they can make fry bread at home after seeing it for sale at the event.

In the morning on July 5, Edie meets her friends Amelia and Serenity, with whom she is planning to make a short film for a competition. She suggests that the three of them base their film on the dog she met, whom she is calling Bruno. Serenity is enthusiastic, but Amelia is unimpressed. She has been behaving strangely for a while, but Edie does not know why. The girls decide to make their own popsicles instead of continuing to discuss the short film.

Amelia, Serenity, and Edie climb up to Edie’s attic in search of popsicle molds. They do not find what they are looking for. Instead, they find a box of letters and photographs that Edie has never seen before. There is a woman in the pictures who looks very familiar, but Edie is not sure why. Serenity tells her, “She looks almost exactly like you” (36). The girls also find a letter that was apparently written by the woman in the photographs. It is dated 1973 and signed, “Love, Edith.”

Edie is shocked; she never knew where her name came from. She considers the fact that she knows nothing about her mother’s biological family. Edie feels betrayed now that she knows that her parents have been keeping secrets from her. Serenity encourages her to ask her parents about the discovery, but Amelia wants the three of them to solve the mystery alone.

At dinner that evening, Edie is sullen. Her father complains about work but says that he is happy it allows his wife to be a full-time parent. Edie asks her parents where her name comes from, but they simply tell her that it is a “timeless” name with no particular meaning. Edie decides to keep her discovery a secret, since she realizes her parents are willing to lie to her.