Yes, she thought to the bear, thank you for reminding me. And she went back to work on her corn necklace. And though it was tedious and cramped her fingers, she bent close to the firelight and drilled the kernels, praying all the while, and while she was doing that the bear vanished. When Good Face looked up from her work, a very old woman was sitting where the bear had been. Flicker had told her that this ancient one would come and teach her through her whole last night at the wiktut, and that what this old woman was going to teach her would help her to live her life well. But she had not told her who the old one would be. When Good Face saw the old woman sitting beyond the fire, she recognized her from far back in her memory, and was both surprised and puzzled.
It was the very old woman who had first talked to her in Neepah’s wikwam when she had been taken there. She remembered that the old woman had talked to her about tindeh, Fire, and had taught her the Lenapeh words for “good” and “thank you.” It was that very old woman, and what surprised her so much was that the old woman would be here. The last time Good Face had seen her was in that town beside the Susquehanna, during the war, just before the Town Destroyer came through. Good Face tried to remember her name, but was not sure she had ever even known it. It would have been hard to imagine the woman could look older than she had then, but she did look still older. She looked as old as Good Face imagined Keeper Grandmother must look as she stood guarding the door between life and death.
Now the old woman began, in a voice as dry and rustling as last year’s leaves:
“When I saw you before, you were a girl. A wapsi girl, soft and frightened and unable to care for yourself. Now you are a woman. Much will be required of you. I have come to prepare you. My name is Maxk’wah n’wah. You will listen to me.”
Good Face’s jaw dropped open. Small Female Bear was the name the real bear had given to her—or so it had seemed. And of course maybe that had not been a real bear anyway, but a dream bear. Or had it been this elder?
I will know by and by, she told herself, and she said to the old woman, “Huma Maxk’wah n’wah, I am happy to see you and I will listen to you. Waneeshee. I thank you for coming to me.”
“You will not like all of this,” the old woman’s voice rasped and rustled. “To be a woman is always hard, and to be a good woman is harder. A good woman will have cracks on her back like the Great Turtle, from carrying the world. It is the good women who carry the life of the True People around and around the hoop of ages. Men ride us from one generation to the next and they pretend they are more important. But they respect and fear our power. They know that Kijilamuh ka’ong gave us the power to create them. Are you listening?”
“With my ears and my heart, Grandmother.”
“Now that you are a woman, men will want to poke their little man-part into you. That will always be in their minds. When they look at you, your woman-power will make their back start to hunch and their man-part stiffen. Like everything, that is both good and bad. If they did not want to do that, we would all die out, and so that wanting is good. And the pleasure it can give is better than any other pleasure, even the pleasure of eating and laughing. That is what is good about the wanting.
“But it requires wisdom to keep the wrong men from sticking that thing in you, and to keep it from being done at the wrong time. Sometimes both you and the wrong man will want to connect your parts. Therefore you must know the difference between a right man and a wrong man and stop him if he is not right.
“Sometimes even the right man will want to do it at the wrong time. Therefore you must know the difference between a right time and a wrong time, and stop the man if it is not the right time. Are you still listening?”
“K’hehlah, Huma. Yes indeed.”
“Therefore I will first tell you the difference between right men and wrong men. Then I will tell you about right times and wrong times:
“A right man is a man who is not your relative. You must not connect with any man of your clan. Promise that.”
“I will not connect with any man of my clan.”
The old woman nodded, looking hard at her from the wrinkled pockets where her eyes were sunk deep and dark, and said, “You came to us as a wapsini and so in your blood you are not really of any clan. All the same, it is against Creator’s will for people in the same clan to connect, and therefore you will not.
“Other wrong men are these: wapsi men. Unclean men. Drunk men. Brutal men. Men who would not be willing to be your husband. Men who would betray the People. Men who are too lazy or selfish to provide—forever—for any children they make on you. Those are the wrong men. Say them back to me so I will know you know them.”
Good Face repeated them all, in the same words.
“Wehlee heeleh,” said the old woman. Good. “Remember those. Have you any questions about them before we go on to right and wrong times?”
“No, Huma.”
That seemed to displease the old woman. She said, “You should have some questions, if you really want to know. Are you certain there are no questions about right or wrong men?”
“What questions, Huma?”
“You think. You will have to think when those times come. That is one of your responsibilities as a woman with a hole that a man wants to stick his thing in. You will have to think before you know whether some men are right or wrong. You had better learn now to start thinking about protecting that hole from wrong men. Because it is not just the hole, it is your spirit, which is sacred, and it is your children, who are sacred, and it is the People of your Lenapeh nation, who are sacred, and through that hole of yours is a way that all those sacred things can be harmed by wrong men poking into it. Think of your questions, because if you do not have any, you are not ready to protect the sacred things. Think. I am here for all night. I will not go away until I am satisfied that you are a true woman who knows what to protect and how to protect it.”
Having to sit with the old woman’s presence probing her like a needle made it very hard for Good Face to figure out what she was expected to ask, but when she thought back over the kinds of wrong men, she thought: I can ask a man if he is of my clan; I can see that a man is wapsini; I can tell a drunk man by how he acts. But the others …
“I have questions,” she said. “Why are wapsi men wrong?”
“Because they do not care for the People. And because they are not clean. And because they usually have sickness in their man-parts, which then comes into the women they connect with. What other questions?”
“How would I know if a man was lazy or selfish or if he would betray the People?”
“Good,” said the old woman. “Those are the questions you would have to answer before you knew whether a man was right or wrong to connect with. I am glad you finally thought of those questions.”
Good Face waited for her to answer them, but the old woman just sat, nodding, until she had to ask, “Huma, how would I be able to know those things?”
“Young woman, there are many answers to that question. Some things you can ask a man and he will tell you. Some you may ask him and his answer will be a lie because he wants in your hole more than he wants to be truthful. Some things his relatives and friends can tell you. Some will be displayed as his reputation. And there are some that you might find out just in time, or too late. Too late is when he has already ridden on you and made children or broken his promises. In your years as a young woman and with the guidance of your mother and your aunts and the grandmothers, you will learn how to tell those things. Not all men will deceive. Some never will. Some will sometimes. The grandfathers try to teach the young Lenapeh men to be honorable and to respect women. After this ceremony, all the young men who might look on you will be asked to respect you. You will learn to protect yourself as well as one can. Sometimes your Spirit Helper will warn you. Sometimes a dream will warn you. Sometimes the Chipewuk, the spirits of dead ancestors, will come and warn you of what they know of a wrong man.”
Good Face’s scalp tingled. “Dea
d spirits?”
“Yes. They come back and guard us sometimes, or just to visit us because they are lonely for us. They are not like the dead spirits of the wapsituk, who are said to go up and sit on the clouds forever, being useless. Ours are always nearby when we are in need. That is why we always put a bite of food into the fire for them before we eat. That is why we turn the pipe stem all the way around before we smoke, to invite them from all sides and make them welcome. Always watch the crows and the deer. They have a kind of seeing that can see evil and deceit, and they will warn you. If you have had a Spirit Helper come to you here, think of your Spirit Helper when you have doubt.”
She paused, and Good Face thought: Yes, I saw my Spirit Helper and I think it was you in the form of a small female bear. But she did not say that.
Now the old woman continued, “Even with all that help, there will be times when you will be deceived. When there is a right man, you will learn to trust him fully, and that is a relief to know. But when you cannot be fully sure, keep him out of your hole. Now we have spoken of the men who are right and wrong, and now we will speak of the times that are right and wrong.”
“Waneeshee, Huma. Tell me about the times.”
“One time that is always wrong is this, your moon time. You will be away in the women’s hut at that time, usually, but it could happen that you would not be. Your husband will be taught not to connect with you in your moon time. He believes that your moon-blood will bring him bad luck in hunting or in war if it touches him. Perhaps the game animals will smell your blood scent on him and know a man is near, and will flee before he can shoot them. If your husband is touched by your moon-blood before a battle, he will believe himself too weakened to fight, and he should not go.
“Another time that is wrong is when you have recently given birth, and have a baby at your breast. Your husband will have been taught that too. Therefore, for as long as you do not want to have a next baby, you may nurse the recent one and that will keep your husband from getting on you. It would not really hurt you to do it with your husband while you are still nursing, but keep him believing that, or he will have you carrying children all the time, more than you can well take care of. Men know little about the magic of life-giving, so you can use your husband’s ignorance to keep the number of children from being too many for your health, or too many for the good of the People.
“Another time that is wrong for connecting are those times when Mother Corn is displeased with the People and does not give us good crops. Another is when Misinkhalikun, the Keeper of the Game, is displeased with our men and will not let them kill the game animals. When there is hunger, that is a bad time to make children. When the wapsituk armies are led toward us by Town Destroyers, that is another bad time to be making babies. You do not want to make children whose food will be burned in the fields by soldiers. You will not want to make baby girls who will grow up to be raped and spoiled by diseased soldiers. You would not want to make children who will grow up with no place left to live in. That is one reason why our People have had so few babies for several generations: because the wapsituk have been coming and doing that to us for all that time. You will know in your heart: when the hoofbeats and the bugles of the soldiers can be heard beyond the hill, that is no time to lie on your back making babies for them to spear on their long knives or to kick around like balls.”
Good Face winced and shook her head; these were such incredible horrors as Neepah and Minnow used to speak of.
“I am sorry to have to tell you. They do such things.” The old woman now took from her waist a misshapen, tattered old tobacco bag and drew a short clay pipe from it, and as she filled the bowl she pointed toward the fire and said, “You had better tend to your fire and keep making the tea. I have hardly begun to tell you the things you need to know to be a good woman for our People, and for your children.” She lit her pipe with a burning twig from the fire and said, “Go on with the corn necklace. You must have it finished before I leave you.”
And so Good Face, increasingly weary, her head beginning to ache from having to think and remember so much, her back sore from bending near the firelight to drill the little kernels, listened to the seemingly endless requirements of being a good woman. Her belly gnawed with hunger and she was dizzy. Sometimes the old woman would be the bear sitting over there beyond the fire, but then she would be the old woman again, still snapping out her advice, and as she had warned, it was not all good to hear. Once Good Face was startled to see an eagle feather waving just before her eyes. The old woman was pointing it at her and saying:
“Be clean! You stink now! You smell of sweat and dust and moon-blood. Your breath reeks from that tea. You smell like those wapsi women who follow the armies and never wash their behinds, from one moon to the next.”
“I want to be clean! But Kahesana said I am not to—”
“I know, I know. And when you are cleansed after this you will feel like a Lenapeh person again, not filthy like a wapsini. Then you will bathe every day even in winter, and will never go to bed with dirt on your face or dust in your hair or an odor on your bottomside. If your husband wants to lie with his head in your lap, he will be able to breathe fresh air. When you speak in the presence of an eagle feather you must tell the truth. Now I put this feather to your lips and you will promise to be clean all the time.”
“I promise that,” she said, and she meant it.
Much deeper into the night, when even the distant owls had stopped talking to each other, the old woman was still wide-awake and giving advice, now about what to do if Good Face should have married what she thought was a right man but was not, or one who had been right until he got some of the white man’s spirit water. The old woman reached around to her side and untied something made with a long leather braid. “This I give you as the one gift you can hold in your hand. The rest you will hold in your head and your heart. I will tell you what this is.” She reached around the fire and extended it to Good Face, saying, “This is your head-cracker button. If a man does not treat you with respect, you may have to use it.” It was a stone about the size of a duck egg, encased in leather at the end of the leather braid, which was of arm’s length. “You know how to throw with a sling or a bola,” the old woman said. “In that manner, whirl this until it hums in the air. You don’t need to throw it. Just step close enough to him, and if he is too stupid to jump back, it will put his lights out.”
Good Face blinked. She still remembered the teachings of her birth family, that one person does not inflict pain upon another. She thanked the old woman for it, but hoped she would never have to use it. Now the old woman said, “Practice with that. You have to know how to use it without putting your own lights out. Now I will tell you another way to change a man’s mind when he wants to treat you badly.
“As I told you before, it will always be in men’s minds to poke their thing in you. When they try that they are like an animal close to a trap. They are thinking of the bait and are not very smart then. Your hand is the trap and the little bag that hangs under his man-part is what you will catch. As you know, there is nothing stronger than the hand of a woman who works. You could tear off that bag and what it holds, if you twisted and pulled hard enough, but that is seldom necessary to change his mind, and you would not really want to do that unless you were truly through with him forever. It will surprise you how much respect a man will learn when your fingernails tell him he is in such a trap.”
Good Face nodded and again thanked the old woman, but again she hoped sincerely that she would never be in a situation where she would have to use that trap.
When the night darkness was fading and the only sounds were the long shrillings of the morning insects but the birds had not yet begun to chirp, Good Face was sitting numb with exhaustion, feeling as if she were still swimming upstream in the ever-flowing river of Maxk’wah n’wah’s words. By now the old woman was through advising on men and women and their body parts, and had been speaking of how a good woman must treat
all the other people of her tribe and village.
She had already spoken of how a woman must be ready and willing to feed any person who came to her house hungry, and how she must be ready to assist any child as if it were her own, and how a woman was first a peacekeeper but must be ready to die like a warrior for her people if the time came for such an action, and how a woman must attend councils when the good of the tribe was at stake, so that she would know what would be best and speak in its favor. Now she said:
“There are many things that make the difference between a good woman and a bad woman, and I have spoken of many of them. Now I am going to speak of the worst thing a bad woman can do. For this, a person may be killed by her People.”
That was startling enough to send a shock through Good Face even as worn down and benumbed as she was.
“Yes,” said the old woman. “Even your own People are willing to kill you for this. It is something everyone is tempted to do sometimes, but you must never do it.”
“Tell me, Huma, so that I may know never to do it, for I want to be a good woman. And to tell the truth, I do not want to be killed either.”
“Truth is exactly what this is about, you see. The terrible wrongdoing I speak of is untrue gossip. It is the worst thing a woman can do among the People. It is worse to tell untrue gossip about a person than to murder a person. But it is done more often because there is such a temptation to do it. Some women find more pleasure in it than in anything their bodies enjoy. You look as if you do not believe this.”
“I do not understand how it can be worse than killing someone. I always thought killing someone was the worst that can be done.”
“Young one, if you kill a person’s body, the pain is over quickly, and that person’s spirit is free to leave and go to follow the Path of Souls through the stars to the Other Side World, which is a better place.
“But with untrue gossip you make a hurt that they feel as long as they live. You murder the honor they have among their People. Everyone who has heard the gossip will look at the one who was lied about and wonder whether the gossip was true. No one should have that done to him or to her. Kulesta! I will tell you a lachimu suwakun.” A story of life.
The Red Heart Page 26