Monkey Beach

Lisa continues reminiscing about childhood. She remembers going to the beach with Jimmy, an excellent swimmer with ambitions of joining the Olympic team. He is good-looking and popular with girls but ignores them all except for one named Adelaine Jones (nicknamed Karaoke). Lisa is a terrible swimmer and prefers to hang out with her cousins Tab (Tabitha) and Erica. Tab’s mother is Al’s alcoholic sister Trudy (Gertrude).

Mick occasionally babysits Jimmy and Lisa. One night Lisa asks him if he had been shot. Mick explains to her that he had been “on a reserve called Rosebud” and there had been a scuffle with a group called the Guardians of the Oglala Nation who were trying to frighten a woman Mick had befriended (53). Lisa recalls learning more about Mick’s passion for Indigenous rights. At an event commemorating the passing of one of Al’s cousins, other family members are in formal clothes, but Mick staggers in wearing a leather jacket and a T-shirt proclaiming American Indian rights.

Lisa’s thoughts wander to her grandmother, Ma-ma-oo. She remembers Trudy and Ma-ma-oo not getting along, suggesting unresolved issues between them.