Jonny Appleseed

The narrative jumps to immediately after Jonny meeting up with the Southeast Asian client. He takes a cab home; in his apartment, he has messages from more potential clients. He uses collect calling to instant message his mom; her phone has been cut off due to an unpaid bill. He promises he will be back the following day. He also has a message from Tias asking to talk. Jonny tells him no.

CONTENT NOTE: child physical abuse

Jonny remembers playing with the rez dogs at his kokum's house. Though men in his family tried to teach him practical skills, he was not able to learn them.

Jonny remembers his kokum dressing him up as Minnie Mouse for a Halloween dance when he was ten. He dances with another boy. When he tells his family, his grandmother and mother both laugh and approve; his stepfather Roger physically abuses him until he bleeds. After the beating, Jonny masturbates on the floor: he considers the whole experience "the awakening of my queer body" (213).

Jonny remembers when he was afraid to go swimming with other kids as a child because of his large bellybutton and baby fat. His stepfather Roger comforted him by showing him his own body and letting Jonny touch all of his scars from illness and violence. Roger is Lakota and tells Jonny about how the Lakota revere the bellybutton (217).

A few years later, Jonny gets a wood tick in his bellybutton. He lets it feed for a week before telling his mother and Roger. Roger pulls the tick out and kills it.

For the adult Jonny, his bellybutton is a site of pleasure: Tias sometimes fingers it during sex.

This chapter picks up sequentially right after Chapter 41. Jonny has made enough money from webcam and Snapchat sessions to get back to the reservation. Jonny invites Tias over for what he anticipates will be a break-up talk. When Tias arrives, he’s already drunk and high. The two of them drink beer on the couch as Tias takes his time telling Jonny what he's come to say: he got Jordan pregnant and doesn't know what to do.

Jonny remembers when Tias helped him move to Winnipeg after Kokum died. Exhausted, Jonny napped while Tias made him pierogis. For the first few days, all they ate was those handmade pierogis.

This chapter continues Chapter 44. After their night of drinking, Tias stays over. When they wake up, they have sex. Tias tells Jonny that he and Jordan plan to continue the pregnancy and he plans to get his GED. Tias says goodbye.

Peggy agrees to give Jonny a ride to the reservation . Before she arrives, Jonny spends time in the bed, smelling Tias’s scent.

One of Jonny’s clients is an Indigenous man who at first hides his face. The client is curious and asks Jonny lots of questions about what it's like to be gay. After chatting online for a month, they meet up. They start to have sex and the client asks Jonny to top him. Jonny does.

Afterward, they smoke cigarettes, and the client tells Jonny it was his first time. He asks for advice, and Jonny tells him that “we all got thick skin, but we still gotta let people in” (237).

This chapter continues Chapter 46. Peggy picks Jonny up to drive to the reservation. He dozes off and wakes up to Peggy joking about the movie Snakes on a Plane. When they get to the reservation, Peggy asks him if he wants to come to a party before the funeral. He declines and knocks on his mother’s front door.

Jonny’s mother opens the door and gives him a huge bear hug. He apologizes for missing Roger’s wake. The two of them have tea and bannock as his mother describes the final stages of Roger’s liver disease from alcohol abuse. Roger had refused medical assistance.

Jonny comforts his mother by recounting how she previously told him that neither of them were supposed to make it after birth and by telling her how he imagined her eating mud while pregnant with him. His mother breaks down crying, and Jonny cries too.

Jonny and his mother apply their makeup before Roger’s funeral. His mother tells him that his kokum loved him more than she ever loved her, because his mother made his kokum’s life difficult when she was a wild teenager. When his kokum died, his mother asked her for forgiveness. She ponders why everyone loved her better. Jonny tells her that to love him, his kokum also had to love her, and his mother starts crying. He realizes he feels at home.

The day after the funeral, Jonny and his mother prepare fried bannock and watch the gameshow The Price is Right. She tells him to find a steady romantic partner. She shares with him a dream she had, where they're standing on a river watching Indigenous men spearfish. The men refuse to let either herself or Jonny join them; they say it’s an activity reserved for men. Jonny takes a spear anyway and uses it to catch a huge fish. The men follow Jonny, and he teaches them how he did it.

Jonny remembers the first time that Tias told him he loved him. They were having sex. Jonny doubts he will ever love anyone though he knows he will always feel sad when Tias goes back to Jordan.

Jonny asks Tias to tell him more about his missing sister. Tias talks about missing her and how hard it is to not even know whether she’s still alive. Jonny reassures Tias that his sister must still think about him because he’s a good person.

Jonny remembers spending time with his kokum and attending her funeral. He remembers being one of her pallbearers and feeling how light her body was in the casket.

He regrets never getting to hear from her the story of who he is, which she promised to tell him at a future visit. He never came back because of the cousins who promised to beat him up (for being gay) if he visited. He remembers the slippers she wove him for the cold: green and gray, still in his closet.

After his kokum’s funeral, his family sits around in her house with the Chief and other community dignitaries, telling stories about her. Jonny’s mother tells the story of the time his kokum caught her making out with a boy (his father) in the front yard. Afterward, she put his parents to work doing chores.

Jonny visits his grandmother’s grave and directs an internal monologue addressed to her. He screams and punches the earth, then cries onto her headstone. He promises to return and walks back to his mother's house.

Jonny remembers going through his kokum's photo album with her and listening to her stories. He looks back through the album and for him the family comes alive; he describes the feeling as “our bodies are a library, and our stories are written like braille on the skin” (251). He says he wouldn't change it for anything.