There There (4th Block) by Melody Villalobos

Tony Loneman: pg. 15 -16

melodystutzman — 2025-09-15 15:07:42 UTC

"All I heard her say was Drome, and then I was back in front of the turned off TV, staring at it. My face stretched across the screen. The Drome. I tried but couldn't make the face that I found there my own again." (MV)

Tony Loneman: pg. 26

melodystutzman — 2025-09-15 15:10:13 UTC

"I went out into the living room and stood in front of the TV... I tightened my chin strap. I looked at my face. The Drome. I didn't see it there. I saw an Indian. I saw a dancer." (MV)

Tony Loneman: pg. 16

melodystutzman — 2025-09-15 15:12:46 UTC

The Drome is my mom and why she drank, it's the way history lands on a face, and all the ways I made it so far despite how it has fuck with me since the day I found it there on the TV..." (MV)

Tony Loneman pg. 22

melodystutzman — 2025-09-15 15:15:23 UTC

"I listened to him talk about his grandma, about how she saved his life after his family was gone... "I'd give away my own heart's blood for her," Octavio said, his own heart's blood. That the way I felt for Maxine." (MV)

Tony Loneman pg. 26

melodystutzman — 2025-09-15 15:16:10 UTC

"I went out into the living room and stood in front of the TV... I tightened my chin strap. I looked at my face. The Drome. I didn't see it there. I saw an Indian. I saw a dancer."

Dene Oxndene: pg. 42

2025-09-22 16:17:43 UTC

"Back on BART, headed home now, Dene sees his face in the dark reflection of the train window, He was beaming" (AC)

Dene Oxendene: pg. 30

2025-09-22 16:22:43 UTC

"He wrote Lens on the back of the bus seat with a sharpie just before his stop. As he got off the bus in the back, he saw the bus drivers eyes narrow in what wide mirror at the front" (AC)

Jacquie Red Feather- Page 153

2025-09-22 19:22:59 UTC

" Jacquie didn't have a single drinking story she'd want to share with anyone. Drinking had never been fun. It was a kind of solemn duty..." HB

Opal pg. 159

2025-09-22 19:23:37 UTC

"She looks into the rearview and finds her gaze looking back at her through the years..." (LS)

Opal pg. 162

2025-09-22 19:24:22 UTC

"He'd scratched it open and out came those spider legs..." (LS)

Jacquie Red Feather- Page 154

2025-09-22 19:24:59 UTC

" If she'd ever found spider legs in her leg, she probably would have ended it right there and then." (HB)

Opal pg. 168

2025-09-22 19:25:30 UTC

"Opal and Lucas were hanging out at the Indian Center, waiting for people to show up for a community meal." (LS)

Calvin Johnson: pg. 90

2025-09-22 19:25:38 UTC

"Must be nice. Hiding out like this. Home-cooked meals, kid running around. Playing house. With our fucking sister." (MC)

Edwin Black: pg. 64

2025-09-22 19:26:20 UTC

"And as I was growing, getting fatter in real life, the Edwin Black I had in there, on there, I made him thinner, and as I did less, he did more. The Edwin Black in there had a job and a girlfriend and his mom had died tragically during childbirth. That Edwin Black was raised on the reservation with his dad. The Edwin Black of my Second Life was proud. He had hope." (CP)

Opal pg. 165

2025-09-22 19:26:27 UTC

"The boys are afraid of Opal, like she was always afraid of her mom." (LS)

Calvin Johnson: pg. 93

2025-09-22 19:27:01 UTC

"Right on cue, Octavio walked into the kitchen. His eyes turned into bullets- he shot them around the room." (MC)

Calvin Johnson: pg. 94

2025-09-22 19:28:10 UTC

"Octavio kept the gun pointed at me.....I stared down the barrel of the gun." (MC)

Opal pg. 161

2025-09-22 19:28:22 UTC

"Bad luck or just bad shit happening to you in life can make you secretly superstitious, can make you want to take some control or take back sense of control." (LS)

Jacquie Red Feather pg. 100

2025-09-22 19:28:39 UTC

"She put in on in front of the mirror. Scars and tattoos spanned and bent around her neck, stomach, arms, and ankles. There were feather tattoos on her forearms, one for her mom and one for her sister, and stars on the backs of her hands -- those were just stars. The webs on the tops of her feet had hurt the worst." (SM)

Calvin Johnson: pg. 95

2025-09-22 19:29:58 UTC

"My eyes were closed. For a second I wondered if I might still be in the car......I opened my eyes. Octavio was still holding the gun." (MC)

Edwin Black: pg. 72

2025-09-22 19:30:21 UTC

"All without knowing my tribe. Always defending myself. Like I'm not Native enough. I'm as Native as Obama is black. It's different through. For Native. I know. I don't know how to be. Every possible way I think that it might look for me to say I'm Native seems wrong."

Opal pg. 50

2025-09-22 19:30:59 UTC

"'Sister, you don't have to worry. All these people, even these young ones over here, they're all our relatives. So don't be scared...'" (CM)

Dene Oxendene pg. 148

s61664_1 — 2025-09-22 19:31:31 UTC

"My dad never talked about being Native and shit to the point that we don't even know what tribe we are on his side. Our mom has native Blood on her Mexican side too, but she doesn't know too much about that either. Yeah and my dad wasn't home hardly ever, then one day he was really gone. He left us. So I don't know, I feel bad sometimes even saying I'm native. Mostly I just feel like I'm from Oakland." (MY)

Tony Loneman: pg. 142

2025-09-22 19:31:32 UTC

"Tony will ride his bike down Hegenberger, across the overpass and on the sidewalk past the gas stations and fast-food chains. He'll feel the weight and hear the jangle of the bullets at every bump and crack." (LS)

Calvin Johnson: pg. 89

2025-09-22 19:32:43 UTC

"Next thing I heard was the screen door opening and closing....thinking Sonny had maybe run out the front door. Instead, there was our brother right there in the living room.....They both had forties in their hands."

(MC)

Edwin Black: pg. 63

2025-09-22 19:33:22 UTC

"I once dreamed I'd become a writer. Which is to say I graduated with my master's in comparative literature with a focus on Native American literature. It certainly must have looked like I was on my way toward something. With my degree in hand in the last picture I'd posted to Facebook."

Jacquie Red Feather pg. 101

2025-09-22 19:33:30 UTC

"Jaquie kneeled in front of the minifridge. In her head she heard her mom say, "The spider's web is a home and a trap.". And even though she never really knew what her mom meant by it, she'd been making it make sense over the years, giving it more meaning than her mom probably intended. In this case, Jacquie was the spider, and the minifridge was the web. Home was to drink. To drink was the trap." (SM)

Opal pg. 51

2025-09-22 19:33:56 UTC

"'You gotta know the history of your people. How you got to be here, that's all based on what people done to get you here. Us bears, you Indians, we been through a lot. They tried to kill us. But then when you hear them tell it, they make history seem like one big heroic adventure across an empty forest. There were bears and Indians all over the place. Sister, they slit all our throats." (CM)

Calvin Johnson: pg. 94

2025-09-22 19:34:25 UTC

"You don't pay, you lose the shit, I don't give a fuck how you lost it, it's gone, then you disappear and show up in my uncle's fucking kitchen." (MC)

Tony Loneman: pg. 132

2025-09-22 19:34:35 UTC

"His heart will be in his ears thinking about the bullets in the bushes, the powwow. And wondering how he had wound up here under the moon, under the looming coliseum walls, hiding bullets in bushes." (LS)

Edwin Black: Pg. 63

2025-09-22 19:34:54 UTC

"No reboot after unplug, just a sudden and mutse black screen- my face reflected in it, staring first in horror at rhe computer dying, then at me face reacting to seeing my face react to the computer dying. A little part of me died then, seeing my face, thinking about this sick addiction all this time ive spent doing almost nothing." (HH)

Calvin Johnson: pg. 96

2025-09-22 19:35:35 UTC

"On the way to the car we saw a kid on his bike watching from far off." (MC)

Bill Davis: pg 81

2025-09-22 19:36:02 UTC

"There's no room here for old people like Bill anymore." The symbolism here is Bill and Edwin. Times change, back then there were more people like Bill in the world but now it's people like Edwin who can't handle having a job and argues with everyone. "It just seems like young people have taken over the place. Even the old people in charge, they're acting like kids." People get influenced by their environment, the more young people there are the more people get influenced by them including the old.

Jacquie Red Feather pg. 104

2025-09-22 19:36:51 UTC

"...But what I was on that trip, my little brother, Harold, found a gun I kept in my closet. He shot himself between the eyes with that gun. He was fourteen," the guy said and coughed off-mic. (SM)

Opal pg. 57

2025-09-22 19:38:37 UTC

""You have to know what's going on here," she said. "You're old enough to know now, and I'm sorry I haven't told you before. Opal, you have to know that we should never not tell our stories, and that no one is too young to hear..."" (CM)

Edwin Black: pg 64.

2025-09-22 19:39:15 UTC

"When I moved back in with my mom, the door to my old room, to my old life in that room, it opened up like a mouth and swallowed me."

Edwin Black: Pg. 73

2025-09-22 19:40:48 UTC

"Well, what i have going on comes with an easy answer and even more so when i see my relfection in the mirror omn the front of the fridge, which by the way, i know you put there for my benefit." (HH)

Dene Oxendene pg. 148

s61664_1 — 2025-09-22 19:40:50 UTC

"He's glad he's already been recording. sometimes not having a story is the story." "It's like having him as a dad and not knowing, and how he fucked us up as a dad, I don't wanna come off like I think that's what being Native means. I know there's a lot of Native living in Oakland and in the Bay Area with similar stories. But it's like we can't talk about it because it's not really a Native story, but then it is at the same time. It's fucked up." (MY) Also goes with The struggle to find Identity

Jacquie Red Feather pg 106

2025-09-22 19:41:31 UTC

"The big hole. The shot between the eyes. Like a third eye, or an empty third-eye socket. The trickster spider, Veho, her mom used to tell her and Opal about, he was always stealing eyes to see better." (SM)

Tony Loneman: pg. 142

2025-09-22 19:43:42 UTC

"At the coliseum entrance he'll take each of the boxes of bullets out and empty them into a pair of socks." (LS)

Bill Davis: pg 82

2025-09-22 19:43:51 UTC

"Karen tells him to stay positive. But you have to achieve positivity in order to maintain it. He loves her thought. All the way. And he tries, he really tries to see it as being okay." Karen inspired Bill to be more poisitive and this was because she is his family. "At least he's got a job now. He's working. Every day. That's a lot. For him. Please. I don't want to discourage him. The goal is to get him out there on his own, remember. And then we can talk about you being able to move in finally," Karen says, her voice sweet now. This is the way that Edwin (who Karen is talking about) has been parented. She doesn't want to discourage him and wants him to go on his own which may have been reasons for why he is like this.

Calvin Johnson: pg 146

2025-09-22 19:46:09 UTC

"Dene's going to set up a story telling booth kinda like storycorps." (OW)

Bill Davis: pg 84

2025-09-22 19:50:27 UTC

"On his first day of work, Edwin got into it with a vet on the bus. Bill doesn't know how it started, but whatever happened, the guy chased Edwin all the way down International in his wheel chair. Luckily he chased him in the right direction and Edwin made it to work on time despite getting kicked off the bus— probably because he got chased." Edwin is trying very hard as is seen by getting a job. But he can't fix his personality as shown with him getting into a fight with a vet. Bill also had to come with him showing that he is still very immature.

Opal Viola Victoria Bear Shield page 46

2025-09-22 19:51:55 UTC

"jacquie's last name is Red Feather, and mine is Bear Shield. Both our dads left our mom. That morning our mom came home beat up, we took the bus to a new house, the yellow house. i dont know how she got us a house. On the bus i moved closer to my mom and put a hand into her jacket pocket." i think this goes with the theme "the struggle to find identity" because of the statement made about the difference in last name. though she never specified if she knew her dad or not a big part of her family is missing so i think the other half of her identity is missing, most of the first few years your alive you really only know your family so you are your family

Opal Viola Victoria Bear Sheild page 47

2025-09-23 18:57:03 UTC

out on the sidewalk, our mom turned to face the house "say goodbye to it, girls"

i'd gotten used to keeping an eye on the front door. i'd seen more than a few eviction notices. and sure enough, one was right there. our mom always kept them up so she could claim she never saw them, in order to buy time.

Opal Viola Victoroia Bear Sheild page 48

2025-09-23 19:14:23 UTC

"were going to be with our relatives. Indians of all tribes, we're going to be over where they build that prison. gonna start from the inside of the cell, which is where we are now, indian people, that's where they got us, even though they dont make it seem like they got us there. were gonna work our way out from the inside with a spoon. here, look at this" she handed me a laminated card from her purse the size of a playing card. it was that picture you see everywhere, the sad-indian-on0a-horse silhouette, on on the other side it said crazy horse's prophecy

Calvin Johnson: pg. 94

2025-09-23 19:17:13 UTC

"Charles would shoot up from out of his chair and put Octavio in a choke hold... Give me the gun, Calvin. Get the fuck out of here... I'm not leaving" (DV)

Orvil red feather: Pg. 121

2025-09-23 19:43:10 UTC

Mirrors have also been a problem for him. The word stupid often sounds in his head when he looks at himself in the mirror.