Blackbird

          I’m called Kade. Sometimes Kadie and maybe K, but never Kat or Kris and certainly not Kelly. It’s the sound of them, honestly—they just don’t feel like me. In my ears, they’re more like a whisper in the distance rather than any name of mine. And to be frank with you, I’m not fond of being called after in a mumble or faint plea. I much prefer you shout my name if anything at all. “Put your chest into it,” is what I want to tell them, but I’m always too busy pretending to not hear their hesitation—the stutter-step of the tongue that trips over the first syllable of my real name, and the recoiling realization that they’ve already got it wrong in more ways than one. I don’t blame them. My name is hard. Hard to pronounce. Hard to understand. Hard-hitting and thought-halting once I tell you how it’s really supposed to sound. 

          My name is Bineshii Makade. When I was hiding in the womb of my mother, before she knew of my gentle existence, she dreamed of a blackbird. The small, feathered thing would visit her each night in her dreams when she slept. It stayed close all throughout her time carrying me in her round belly, and eventually, I became her blackbird; her Bineshii. But with wings as dark as mine and a name that is so unique to their ears, I was bound to be stripped of my feathers sooner than later. “It's what happens,” mom explained to me, “when you are surrounded by those unwilling to try.”

          “Bin-AY-she,” is always what I start with. The name that is first in line to meet my ears when mom calls me for supper. I watch as they nod their heads, letting each syllable roll around their tongues. “Mah-kah-DAE,” is what follows, flowing smoothly from my supple lips like the spill of water over softened stones. They nod once more, and as I wait, eager for them to ask me again—ask me to repeat my name and hold their hands gently as they struggle with the unfamiliar sounds—they abandon their efforts and resort to pretty pet names and half-identities that are better fits for their friends that didn’t grow up on the reserve. 

          First I was Bin; blackbird halved by oblivious tongues, cut from the sky and turned into nothing more than an alternative for “trash bucket”. But mom didn’t like that, no not one bit. She stormed into the principal's office one odd autumn day, and that was the last time I’d ever hear “Bin” and be expected to turn around. 

          It took very little time for an assortment of other contortions to be bestowed upon me—like Ash and Bee and Shea and Esha—before my classmates grew tired of plucking the feathers from my back and turned to my next name: Makade.

          Such simple spelling allowed for my name to be stripped down into Mak and then into Kade when I told my friends that I didn’t want to become another Makenzie. It was fine by them, honestly—they’d already spent so long trying to name me anyways. So Kade is what sticks to me now, like ink to a page that was never meant to be written on.

          So that’s how I became Kade; Kade with a long “A” and a hard, definitive ending. I am Bineshii Makade, the blackbird that my mother dreamed of all those nights ago, and I am Kade, a girl whose name is hard to pronounce.