“You over at Hobuck?”
Impossible to hide where she was staying in such a small community. “It’s so beautiful on the beach.”
He seemed delighted. “What are you doing way out here?”
“Your mother’s been helping me with my research. Stories and music.”
“Whaddya know about that.”
“Not as much as I should! That’s why I’m here. To learn. Maggie, are you still volunteering at the museum?”
“Oh, here and there. Not too much these days.”
“I brought a transcript of our last chat.”
Maggie’s eyes were blank.
“We talked about how your husband was a singer, like his mother?”
“Oh, sure, sure.” Maggie drifted toward the deli. Her sneakers made small squeaks.
“I learned a lot. Should I bring it to the museum?”
Peter watched her work his mother, his smile hardening. He spoke before Maggie could reply. “Why don’t you come by the house? I’m interested in family history.”
“Oh, you live there now, too?”
And again. She’d embarrassed him. A grown man living with his mother. But here, housing was tight. Families lived together. It had been that way since the longhouses.
Peter was smiling, thank God. “Just moved back.” He picked up the bucket. “We’re on Diaht Hill, third pull out. My black truck will be parked out front. Come by Monday morning.” He guided Maggie toward the cashier before Claudia could thank him.
Lingering in produce, waiting for them to clear the checkout line, Claudia tossed a head of garlic into her cart and ducked past the meat section, grabbing a chicken for show. The deli girl was staring. She did not look amused. We weren’t flirting, Claudia wanted to say. This is work for me. She’d forgotten the gutsick social paranoia of small town life, where every relationship mattered, or at least made itself felt.
The coffee maker gurgled at her. She turned in haste, clocking the counter with the right half of her pelvis, and doubled over. Her cabin was not expansive enough for real pacing, but she tried, a small star of pain exploding in her hip as she limped down the hallway, emitting a reedy stream of air from pursed lips.
There was the small matter of what she’d seen. The owl. A harbinger of bad news. Ill spirit of a drowned soul. Siyowen.
And that mink. Kwa-Ti. A trickster. A Transformer.
His laugh had started high, a hyena-like hoot that thickened into something more human, with bass in it, like listening to a man talk with your ear on his chest. The piercing clarity of her delusion haunted her, plucking anxieties from her subconscious with the lucid cruelty of God. It was a vision. Some One was trying to tell her something. Kwa-Ti was a shapeshifter, greedy and boastful. Bound to deceive, he pretended to serve those around him, suffering the consequences only to come back for more, scaling up by orders of magnitude, always. A warning.
No. It was a hallucination, she decided. All kinds of people see things that aren’t there. Yes, but those people talk to themselves. It was a dream. I passed out at the wheel, she affirmed, desperate not to stand among the crazed. I was exhausted. It could happen to anyone. In the days since, she slept and slept and still was tired, as though she hadn’t slept at all. Waking was like drowning at the bottom of a well.
Claudia brought a mug and her bathrobe sash to the breakfast table, where she set up her laptop and printer. In the oven, the butterflied chicken was tightening, its ruddy muscles pulling away from each other without their fatty veil. She sat, passing the sash beneath her seat and over her lap, tying herself to the chair with a grim smile, and opened the first document, copying the entire transcript into a blank file she saved in a new folder, entitled Drafts.
M: Sam’s mother was a real singer. I seen her perform at potlatches when I was a girl. The men drummed in a circle, and she leaned in over their shoulders, her voice all high, cuttin’ through. Nobody could sing like her.
C: What did she sing?
M: Oh, you know, family songs.
C: Do you know them?
M: The songs belonged to her husband. He passed one on to Sam.
C: Could you sing it for me?
M: I can’t remember too good.
Her cursor paused. Grammatical errors should remain, though it filled her with shame, somehow, to leave them there, knowing that Maggie and Peter could read through the diction to the distance between the woman who was asking the questions and the woman who was answering them. They won’t notice, she thought, skeptical. Maggie shifted in her seat when she said it, aware of her error. Or maybe she used the mistake and her confusion as decoys, a bird’s broken wing trick to lure the weasel from her nest.
For all intents and purposes, Claudia’s presence was predicated on one thing. Maggie would give her what she wanted, would tell her things about spirit animals and songs that she wasn’t supposed to reveal to anyone outside her family. Maggie knew it, too, of that she was sure. The lonely, the young and the old possess emotional acuity, an astute sense of positioning born from need. Last summer, Maggie was killing time, keeping her erstwhile companion close because she needed company. Claudia’s reappearance had to be palatable to this reconfigured family, its prodigal son returned.
For all intents and purposes—Claudia used that phrase incorrectly in an article submitted to her grad school’s journal. The reviewer returned the paper, unaccepted, her error—for all intensive purposes—circled in red, marked ESL? She stared at those letters for a long time before the dimpled pages told her she was crying. She was glaring at the screen now, to no avail.
M: I can’t remember too good.
It would remain in the text, a gauntlet thrown.
C: Did you teach your son the songs?
M: I tried, but he wasn’t interested. And then he was gone.
Would Peter challenge his mother on that point? Could he make her sing?
C: Who went to the dances?
M: Everybody. I could pull out a Neah Bay telephone book and show you. I keep them, just in case. Directories, we used to call them. I’ve got stacks in my house. People keep passing on. I can’t bear to throw their names away.
C: What else do you keep?
M: Oh, everything. I’m about to run out of house!
C: What kinds of things do you keep?
M: Anything that helps me remember. I’m a saver. Like Peter’s jerseys. He started on the basketball team, took the Red Devils to state his junior year.
C: Do you have anything . . . cultural?
M: What do you mean?
C: Materials that pertain to your culture, things that make you Makah.
M: Well, jerseys fit the bill, I guess. I’m not sure what you mean.
C: I’m not explaining myself well. Do you hang onto old stuff?
M: Sure do.
C: Maybe I could come over one day, help you go through it.
M: I wouldn’t want you to go to the trouble.
Muffled thumps and flutters pulled her from the transcript. She looked at the kitchen window, and there she was, her pallid face framed in darkness, mouth speckled with the frantic bodies of moths. They hurled themselves at the light of her laptop, their futile bumps and hovers like fingertips drumming a tabletop. She was out here alone. Lashing herself to the chair was unwise. She tugged the bow; the silk sash slipped its knot, slithering to the floor.
She could not conceal her greedy nature without deleting the whole damned document. Would Maggie remember what she said? Regardless, Claudia could not advance beyond this first draft of their history, aghast at her own depravity. She was hustling a hoarder.
C: It would be no trouble at all!
M: Peter will help me, when he gets back.
Claudia left her breach of basic decency intact. It was a hook. An anchor. Peter would need an assistant. And who better than she?
C: When will that be?
M: He’ll be home soon. Any day now. I feel it.
Claudia stood and stretched, slipping on qui
lted oven mitts to pull out the chicken. Hot fat swished, sizzling as she scavenged juices with a spoon, trickling her meager haul over the desiccated drumsticks. Placing the mitts on a burner, she kept the oven open to warm her hands. Like a bum in front of a trashcan, she thought, examining her ragged nails. She would buy polish. Maybe she and Maggie could do their nails together. Some Makah women were into makeup and that sort of thing.
She wiggled a drumstick. The joint moved easily. She picked up the knife.
She thought Chicanas cornered the market on penciled eyebrows, but it turned out lots of brown girls had a way with brows. There was a certain kind of Native woman, just like there was a certain kind of Latina, who saw her own face as a blank canvas, or, more accurately, a map of flaws, a tenuous topography to be torn down and rebuilt in private with tweezers and a pencil. Many girls began their lives believing they’d be artists, but most only learned to draw over themselves.
She slid the blade around the chicken’s thigh, working it away from the body with small, sliding taps of the knife’s tip.
She made a career of such merciless scrutiny, which led her to this jagged point on the Pacific, the same sea she swam as a child. Peeling strings of meat from bone, Claudia worked late into the night, deleting phrases that betrayed her. Excising the errata was as fierce and satisfying as standing before the bathroom mirror, squeezing blackheads from her nose. Please get over your disgust, she told herself. Like you haven’t done that, like you’re not going to do it again.
Chapter Four
CAUGHT BETWEEN HIS daybed and the wall, his arm was chilled. A downpour rattled the trailer. His trapped hand clutched the bedpost, asleep. Touch sent painful tingles through the warm, alien skin. He left it and watched rain dapple the glass.
The dream, again. That night teemed through his mind like he had never stopped bailing his dad’s blood with a sawed-off milk jug, crying and shaking and sloshing clean water on the gunwales while his mom watched from the troller.
“Gimme some light!”
“Looks good,” she hollered. “Let’s go!”
The skiff dipped and spun with the restless ocean. Staggering, he stripped and flung his clothes overboard and his boots into the troller. Winding line around his wrist, he leapt in.
The cold bit hard. He thrashed and scrubbed at his stained hands, his mind tugged down a long spiral to the sea floor, his father’s big frame falling through the deep like a feather, blown off course by sharks that would bump and nose and return, grimacing.
His arm snapped up, tangled in line she hauled in, one fistful at a time.
“Want me to take over?” Hacking out the words, his throat and lungs raw with salt, he clung to a cleat, covering his nakedness.
“I know the way.”
The skiff orbited the buoys. Two ravens circled, croaking. They flapped toward the wooded coastline emerging green and misty in the early light. To the north, dark jade mountains. Vancouver Island. Just south, Shi Shi Beach buckled into sea stacks towering above the froth. She motored past Tatoosh Island into the mouth of the strait, scanning the horizon through smears of cloud.
Waves wept from rocky shores. He checked over his shoulder. The land was gone. Sobs echoed, endless and rising beneath the boat, reverberating through his body, whirling him awake. Again.
“Shit.” He rolled out of bed, wiping his wet face, trying to shake off the dream that loomed like a hangover too many mornings.
The air in her room was humid with the warmth of slumber. A murky wail erupted from her chest, chased by splutters. Her hands raised above her head, snarled in sheets printed with basketballs and hoops. His childhood sheets, worn to holes. He took her arm. The fleece sparked and shocked him. “Ow. Mom!”
“Huh?” She pushed her face between her dimpled elbows. “What’s the matter?”
“You were crying. In your sleep.”
“Sorry.” She eased out a hand. It quavered against the folds of her neck.
“Don’t be.” His voice was groggy. “I’m going now.”
“You’re going to leave me.” Shadows moved across her face. She plucked at the sheets, fitful.
She had no right to guilt him, no right to be weak just when he was ready to reckon with the ache he held so close it had grown into his skin. This old woman came along and stole his mother, leaving someone too frail to fight. Peter went back the way he came, sidestepping through her crap, and pressed his spine against the doorframe.
“You were dreaming.” The price of his silence was flight. Always had been. “It’s four in the morning.”
“Time to get up.” She raised one knee, then the other.
“Go back to bed.” He reached for the doorknob.
“I’m old, son.” She massaged her thighs with the heels of her hands. “Sleep doesn’t come when I call.”
“Well, good morning then, and good night.”
Bleach water sluiced down the drain. Peter scoured the bathtub, mulling over whether his mother was demented, forgetful or a mastermind. Maybe she got bad on purpose to bring him back. Being here felt wrong. This was not how it was supposed to go. He rinsed the brush, yellow gloves slippery. Bit by bit, his mind rested on what was in front of him until every surface was clean but his own.
Refreshed, or at least showered, Peter paused by his mother’s room and tapped the plywood with his knuckles. Hearing nothing, he banged harder. No response. He girded himself to see her sprawled on the floor and hip checked the door. Nothing. Her bed was made. The rest of the room was knee deep. Where was she?
Bread cooled on the kitchen counter. He snuck a piece.
“Mom?” He swallowed the last bits, cleared his throat and called again, louder this time. “Mom!”
A crow cawed. It began to rain.
Could she be with Dave? Peter hurried next door. No one answered his knock. Inside, the TV blared celebrity news—boob jobs, cleanse diets and DUIs. Peter gave another three blows.
“I said, come in!”
A teenage boy cradled the remote in the middle of a couch covered in burn holes and car magazines, the television so loud that Peter had to shout.
“I’m Peter, Maggie’s son. Your next door neighbor!”
The boy made no move to get up. “I’m Beans. Dave’s my Grampa.”
“Is he around? I’m looking for my mom.”
“The waitress at Warm House called. Maggie headed up 200 Line again.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“Grampa’s got it handled.” Beans changed the channel.
“I would have gone!”
“He’s got nothing else to do.”
“I’d like to know if my mom is wandering.”
“She goes straight for 200 Line every time.”
“Why?” His mom told him about a big development—housing and services—being built clear across town in hills where folks used to bathe and pray, out of the way of the big wave that would come when the ground shook, which was just a matter of time.
The kid stared at a starlet’s court-mandated monitoring anklet.
“I said, why 200 Line?” Peter moved closer, noticing for the first time that Beans was stoned to the bejesus. The set’s blue flicker illuminated the patchy beard on his baby cheeks.
“I don’t know, she says she can hear drumming and stuff.”
“Why didn’t you come tell me my mother is wandering around hearing things?” Peter stepped in front of the television with folded arms. Beans leaned to one side for an uninterrupted view. “Look, I’m here now. I want to be notified when stuff like this goes down. I’ll be the one to get her. I’m going to leave my cell phone number on the counter. Give it to that waitress—what’s her name?”
“She won’t call you. She doesn’t know you. No one does.”
“She can get to know me.”
“I’m sure she’ll like that.”
His mother tottered along, her back curving toward the earth, flanked by Dave and an EMT who had draped his jacket over her sh
oulders and held an umbrella over her head. They nodded at him as he pulled alongside.
Peter watched Dave brush his mother’s head and shoulders with a cedar bough, shaking his rattle and singing in shifting, repeating tones. He stayed far enough away that the song was an idea of song. The melody slid toward him, passing through the downpour’s insistent conversation with the pavement.
After Dave brought her back, Peter tried to stay out of the way. This mute woman was foreign to him. Her bones creaked when he led her to her chair. He wrote down the names of her medications and called the clinic, asking what they were for and who prescribed them and could he talk to that person, but the lady who answered the phone said Maggie didn’t have paperwork on file naming a health care surrogate or giving him power of attorney. He started another list, detailing signatures he would need when his mother woke up to the world.
He cleared the hallway and living room, hoping to provoke a protest. None came. She watched him like a television, sitting in her armchair for days. He dismantled egg crates and threw phone books and newspapers into a trashcan fire he kept flickering in the front yard. The rest he shoved in garbage bags.
He hoped he wasn’t being negligent by letting her snap out of it. What if she’d had a stroke? Or maybe she took the wrong combination of pills. That’s probably what it was. I’m a bad son. She needs a doctor. Someone in Seattle should look her over. Would the tribe pay for it? Or did she belong in a nursing home? I didn’t come here to send her away.
He waited, working his way down the hall, reading headlines from newspapers draped over each pile.
TWO MAKAH APPEAL THEIR WHALING CONVICTIONS
TACOMA — Two Makah men convicted of two misdemeanor violations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act have appealed their verdicts in U.S. District Court.
The yellow corner of the Peninsula Daily News tore in his hands.
In the hearings, Arnold blocked Fiander’s attempts to defend Noel on the basis of the Makah’s 1855 Treaty of Neah Bay that guaranteed them the right to hunt whales, on tribal culture and on religious freedom.
Subduction Page 4