“In My Next Life” is a short story by Pam Houston, which was originally published in the short story collection Cowboys Are My Weakness (1992). The collection won the 1993 Western States Book Award and was praised for Houston’s moving, intense portraits of relationships between men and women, childhood trauma, and the complexities of Native and white identity. The unnamed narrator of “In My Next Life” is a white woman who prefaces the story she is about to tell, “This is a love story,” and then clarifying that unlike typical love stories, this one is about two women who fall in love but never have sex. The narrator meets Abby, a mixed-race woman of Native American heritage who works as a horse trainer when one of the narrator’s horses develops an attitude problem. She hopes that one of Abby’s classes on horse training will teach her how to handle the errant horse she loves. Abby is preternaturally gifted with horses, and the narrator quickly becomes enamored of her talent and, then, her. On meeting, the two women discover that they have an immediate, strong connection. They also have a lot of similar emotional baggage. Both are in the midst of difficult relationships with men who are failing them in various ways. Abby’s boyfriend, Roy, abuses drugs, while the narrator’s boyfriend is an alcoholic. As they grow closer, they choose to stay in these relationships, tolerating the men’s flaws. At the same time, the women have many differences as well. Abby has a traumatic past. When she was a child, her stepfather often raped her. In her teenage years, she fell into drugs and prostitution. Her education emphasized the white part of her racial background, and she never learned to value her Native side. Now, with “advanced degrees in botany, biology, and art history,” Abby has “come out” as an Indian woman. She practices as much of her ancestors’ customs as she can. The narrator describes one such ritual: at sunset, Abby joyously sings to the four horizons in half-English, half-Navajo until the moon rises. This cultural divide becomes an issue in the relationship when Abby discovers a lump in her breast. Instead of having it medically diagnosed, she decides to practice shamanic healing—she has decided that she will live her truth of being one with nature no matter what. Abby explains to the narrator that in her understanding, Native culture doesn’t distinguish between reality and imagination—this slippage allows Abby to rely on magic rather than science to deal with her illness. The narrator struggles to accept this choice, complaining, “I even want to believe in her magic, but she’s ignoring hundreds of years of medical research,” and annoyed that Abby’s beliefs often come too close to the sixties hippy movement that the narrator used to belong to. Ultimately, she asks her gay friend Thomas for advice on how to bridge the gap between them. Thomas answers that the women’s love is the thing that will ultimately enable the narrator to cross the divide. Two years after finding the lump, Abby, too sick to remain at home, ends up in the hospital. By then, the cancer is metastatic; even after Abby undergoes a double mastectomy, it is too late to keep the cancer from spreading to the rest of her body. The narrator can now see how much of Abby’s innate power has been drained by the imprisonment of medical intervention. Unable to commune with nature, Abby spends her hospital time staring out the window as if plotting her escape. Abby decides against chemotherapy or any other radical treatment. During this time, the two women, who would have gone on to have a physical relationship—according to the narrator—if Abby hadn’t become so very ill so quickly, spend their days expressing physical affection through nurturing and almost maternal touch, hugging and holding each other. The narrator helps her beloved die in peace. In accepting love as the bridge across a cultural rift, the narrator finds a way to make peace with Abby’s insistent and sometimes frustrating beliefs. Unlike many of the other protagonists of the stories in the same collection, the narrator has indeed managed to find a soul mate—but this makes her loss all the more profound.

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Pam Houston

Adult

Short Story

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