The Red Heart

by JAMES ALEXANDER Thom

  And so Flicker had died content in knowing that her daughter’s care was in the right kind of hands. Now Tuck Horse was following Flicker over to the Other Side. It would take four days for his spirit to leave the earth and start the journey on the Path of Stars. Little Bear Woman glanced from the carving of the grave marker to the profile of her father and she thought:

  I know you would never have left me until you were satisfied that I will live well and be cared for as well as you cared for me. Now my good husband has assured you. But, Father, I am sorry you could not wait and see the grandchild who will be here so soon.

  There were not many Lenapeh in this town, but the Miami people had been to Bicker’s funeral so recently that they knew how to help observe a Lenapeh funeral. They came at sundown and sat holding a quiet vigil outside the wikwam, where Tuck Horse’s body lay in torchlight. At midnight a shaman of the town arrived and stood beside the corpse. He held in both hands a bowl-shaped seashell in which herbs smoldered, giving off wisps of smoke to carry his prayers toward the Creator.

  “Kiji Moneto! O Great Spirit! Please hear us!

  “Now comes on the long road toward the Spirit Land this man. In his walk on Turtle Island there were always hard things in his way. He was driven from place to place by Town Destroyers. His flesh that he leaves here is covered with scars. He has told us that in the Land Beyond, the land his people call Awaskumeh, he will be happy to walk on paths that are only smooth and bright, and not stumble anymore over hard things. He is tired of pain and war and sorrow. He has always lived in a way to be worthy of a straight and smooth way to Awaskumeh.

  “He has harmed no one but those who made themselves his enemies. He did nothing to make them his enemies; they came to him that way, and only those did he harm. He always kept all his promises and he never deceived. And so, let Keeper Grandmother open for him the door to the smooth and bright path.

  “Kiji Moneto! Let him take no one else’s spirit with him!

  “Kiji Moneto! O please hear us and see him on the smooth and bright path, for if you so see him, so will he be. This is what we want you to do for our brother, who is worthy of it.

  “Now, Kiji Moneto! This man’s daughter will feed his friends who have come here. None of those here are sick. No women here are in their moon-blood. No one is here whom this man disliked. Thus there is no one here who should not be, for anyone who should not be here would trouble the start of his journey. The food for this feast was prepared by a virtuous woman, his daughter, and not touched by any woman in her moon-blood. And so all is right as he goes forth on his journey. When daylight comes, his friends will lay him in the ground so his body may return to Mother Earth and nourish all living things, just as they nourished him when he walked here. And so the Sacred Circle will go on. Though there are those who disturb the turning of that Sacred Circle, he was not one of them, and they were his enemies.

  “Kiji Moneto! Please hear us! Our prayer comes to you on the smoke you see coming up from this place.”

  Maconakwa could not attend her father’s burial the next day because she was pregnant, and it was believed that a spirit leaving the grave might take along the spirit of an unborn. So it was Minnow who made the small fire at the head of the grave every evening at sundown for three nights, so that the old man’s spirit could take fire to keep him warm on his journey through the stars.

  It was on that third night that her water broke and Maconakwa called out to her neighbors. Soon two old midwives hurried in and added wood to the fire, to warm and brighten the wikwam. They scolded her for not having summoned them earlier so they could have prepared the town’s birthing hut for her. So her first baby would be born here in her own wikwam, which did not have a center pole to grasp with her hands while she squatted to deliver. It meant she would have to have a strong young woman to support her, or else hang on to one of the bent saplings of the wikwam frame, which in labor might be given so much stress it could break and damage the house—and which, in any case, was not convenient because the midwives could not move around her easily. She wanted Minnow to come and support her, but Minnow was tending the fire at the grave. It was considered bad to change fire tenders, and so she would have to stay out there at the grave and someone else would have to come and help. This gave the midwives even more to scold her about, and Maconakwa was afraid she had offended these Miami midwives. But then, while they were undressing her, she glanced under her arm and saw that one of the old women, even while scolding her, was smiling, and she realized then that this peevishness was just a part of the expected demeanor of midwives. Minnow had told her, so long ago that she had nearly forgotten, that these were the kindest and most generous of women and that they did what they did because of their love of new life, and often feigned grouchiness simply to make the birthing mother fear them enough to obey them.

  They were brewing a tea of sumac leaves and berries, which would make the childbearing labor easier. It was ready by the time a strong and tall young Miami girl came in. She was a granddaughter of one of the midwives.

  Maconakwa had been told often by Flicker what to expect in this matter of delivering a child, about how it was supposed to come out, how it could hurt beyond all measure even if nothing was going wrong. But she had also told her of the things that sometimes do go wrong, and how it might feel if they did. Flicker had said, “You know your husband’s body so well that you can see it in darkness by feeling it with your hands and your body, is that not so? And his man-part you know so well that you can see it with feeling even when it is hidden inside you, is that not right?” And Maconakwa had agreed, blushing that even that remarkable fact was so. Flicker then continued: “You have known your own body many times longer than you have known your husband’s, and so if you have been paying any attention to being alive, you should be able to see what goes on inside your body by how it feels. If you pay attention to your belly with its baby inside, you ought to be able to see how it is lying and how it looks and how well it is.”

  And so with Flicker’s words in mind, Maconakwa had, for all the months of her pregnancy, seen the baby growing inside, so that when it began to move, she believed she knew each move the baby had made, whether a heel or an elbow had pressed sliding along the wall of the womb.

  Now she was squatting on the floor of her own wikwam, which was round and domed as if it were a womb she herself lived in, and she was holding and being held by the smooth, strong, sweaty arms of the Miami girl, and her middle was by its own volition squeezing down hard, even when her own mind was too intently looking inward to remember to press and squeeze. And even though it hurt everywhere, she could feel a protruding pressure where there should not be one, and a twistedness inside, and she felt that the baby was not lying the way it should have been. She pressed down and her waist squeezed down and so much sweat was trickling down over her body that it was like squatting naked in the rain trying to excrete a blockage of waste. This was her first baby, but she knew it was not supposed to feel like this. Flicker with mere words had taught her how it should feel.

  She gasped and groaned, and said to the midwife who was massaging the sides of her swollen abdomen, “Stop a moment. Your hands are confusing me! Stop touching and let me see!”

  “E heh,” the midwife grunted, apparently knowing just what she meant, and removed her hands. “Tell us, then, Maconakwa,” the old one murmured, and looked at her, waiting.

  Maconakwa concentrated inward, trying to see through the pain. It was like trying to see through smoke. A surge of contraction would scatter her concentration. Sometimes she would start to cry out from the pain, but she knew from hundreds of talks in the wiktuts that white women were scorned for their screaming, lying-down births, and she did not want anyone to think of her, “Listen to that red-hair wapsini. She must think she is the baby!” And she would just groan and hold back the outcry. And sometimes when she tried to see to her inside, she would remember instead the feeling of her husband inside her, and she would wish he were here in
stead of away hunting, where he had been for more than a moon, unaware even of the death of Tuck Horse. And he did not know that this had started, that she was trying to put his child forth into the Earth Walk. When he was gone hunting, she did not even know whether he was still alive. For even though the treaty the general called Wayne had made the tribes sign had stopped the wars and the invasions, wapsi men still wandered into the Indian lands and murdered hunters, or sold them spirit water so vile that the drinkers died of it. That general had died the year after the treaty, and perhaps that was why the white men were not behaving the way his treaty had promised they should.

  But her mind was not supposed to be wandering to her husband. She was trying to see the baby inside her, and so she concentrated and felt with her inner feelings, until she was able to say, “It is turned some, that way. An elbow I think is up beside its head and tries to come first.” She took her arms from the girl who was holding them and with her palms a little way apart in front of her sweat-wet belly she made a turning gesture several times to show the midwives how she thought the baby was lying wrong.

  And so, with their incredibly strong, wiry arms, and the help of the young woman, they laid her back on the floor so she rested on her shoulder blades and the back of her head, and they lifted her legs and hips high, and the young woman stood between her thighs and held them and rocked her, swaying from side to side, while the old women prodded and kneaded the outside of her belly, trying to change the baby’s position. The weight of her insides pressed on her lungs until she thought in panic that she would suffocate. These midwife women, Flicker had told her, would not put their hands inside to reposition a turned baby unless they absolutely had to, but some of them were very skilled at doing it this way, and so Maconakwa understood what it was they were doing and why, but it was hard not to feel desperate when one could not breathe.

  Finally she heard one old woman say something, and she felt herself being lifted and set again on her feet, where she squatted while the young woman clutched her arms again, and this time when the next great shove rippled down through her middle and the heels of the old women’s hands added to the squeezing and pushing, this time although the pain was almost unbearable it did not feel wrong. There was an unbelievably awful stretching and yielding that made her groan out all of her breath, and when she inhaled again she smelled excrement, and then followed a huge slumping and sliding sensation as if all her insides were extruding. Behind her eyelids were flashing suns, and in her loins maddening fire sparks, then more stretching and sliding. She was out of breath and so faint suddenly that only the young woman’s grip kept her from collapsing. But when she opened her eyes, the young woman’s face swimming in her vision was smiling, white teeth and sparkling eyes. And she heard one of the midwives say in Miami, “Kwenanswa pelosaw! E heh!”

  She knew what that meant.

  It was a girl baby.

  Her eyes began to tear with joy, but a cautious joy, and she gasped, “Is she well?” When the woman answered yes, her soul soared.

  One of the midwives held in the palm of her cupped hand a little heap of yellow-brown powder and crumbs, and she put it under Maconakwa’s nose and told her to sniff it hard and quickly. Still squatting, naked, bathed in sweat and still not having seen her baby, she inhaled. Her nose and eyes immediately prickled and tickled and stung, and she knew this was sneeze-weed flowers all ground to powder; she was at once off into an explosive succession of sneezes, none of which relieved the need to sneeze again. She thought she would fairly die of sneezing, but when at last she was finished, nose draining and eyes watering, the afterbirth had been expelled.

  At last she was washed of sweat and allowed to lie down in bed, and the infant’s shrill cries diminished and stopped when she was laid on Maconakwa’s bosom. She guided her nipple to its puckering little red mouth and, in a state almost dreamlike, gazed on its dark little head, the miniature hands, the little brown buttocks. She had created life! That truth was almost too much to encircle with her mind, but her soul engulfed it. The midwives had tied a little band around the infant’s middle. She knew what that was for, having been taught everything by Flicker and Minnow, and by women talking in the wiktut over so many years. The band held a piece of puffball mushroom in place on the tied umbilicus, which would be left on till it withered and came off. The puffball would keep it from becoming inflamed or swollen.

  The little lips were so strong on her nipple. Were it not for the delight they sent down her belly and up into her ears, the suckings would almost hurt.

  She looked down at the little eyelids, as yet unopen, the line of fine black eyelashes. Clearly, this was an Indian baby. A few times her husband had wondered aloud whether his child would have red hair. He had not said anything against that, but she presumed from his tone that he would prefer a child that did not look in any way wapsini.

  She wondered how many days it would be before he returned from hunting to see what she had given him, this infant. And just as she was thinking that, one of the old women said:

  “Why doesn’t The Awl come in? I told him, come when the child cries.”

  “You told him?” Maconakwa said, looking up in surprise at the wrinkled face. “He is here from hunting?”

  “Go see if The Awl is outside and tell him he has a kwenanswa pelosaw,” the midwife told the girl.

  He came in at once and knelt by his wife and baby, his tunic dense with wood smoke, fingernails black from butchering and fire-tending and jerky-making, hair lank and greasy. In his angular face, cross-lit by the fire, glowed pride and tenderness. His hard, veined, brown hand reached toward the baby’s round head, but he did not quite touch her, as if afraid he might hurt the little creature.

  “They said it is a female child. Good!”

  “Husband! I did not know you were here! No one told me! I am so happy!”

  “How good it is that Creator brought me home just this day. A dream led me to return.”

  “They said you were outside while I was birthing. I did not cry out, not at all.”

  “Good. My wife I know to be strong.” She could see in his eyes that his affectionate regard for her was as genuine as she always hoped. And when he examined the baby, she could tell that he was fully pleased as well. He said, “The midwife told me I could come in after the baby cried. I did not hear it.”

  “But they said you were just outside the door.”

  “Yes. But I did not hear. As I cannot hear birds and high noises because of the shrillness in my ears.”

  “And yet you hear me now, though we talk softly.”

  “E heh. But yesterday riding in wind, my own horse whinnied and I looked up, thinking I had heard an eagle.”

  She gazed at him tenderly for a moment, thinking, then said, “When the spring brings may apple to fruit, I will put drops of its juice in your ears. Kahesana said that has given some people back their hearing.”

  He shrugged. “So we should try it,” he said, but his face showed little hope for it. “So long as I can hear you talk to me, I am content.” He bent forward and pressed his cheek to hers, and she was enveloped by the wood smoke smell on him. He murmured, “Forgive me that I was not here for burying your father. I only learned on returning to the town that he Crossed Over. He was a man full of honors.”

  She lowered her head and blinked. Then she said, “As soon as I became a person with no parent, I became a parent.” Without a parent, she thought. Unless faraway white parents still live.

  They sat in silence awhile. He was gazing at the baby, whom Maconakwa was gently caressing as she nursed. He stopped her hand suddenly and held it and looked at the damaged, nailless forefinger. Some deep and tender thought passed behind his eyes for a moment, so intense she felt her scalp prickle. “What?” she exclaimed.

  He held the damaged finger to the baby’s head. “Think of this name for our daughter,” he said. “Keshkeneshkwa.”

  “Hurt Finger? Cut Finger?” It seemed such a strange name.

  He
nodded. “When I saw your hurt finger touch this baby so kindly, I was told, this is the name sign.”

  “Then,” she said, “so it should be. Our daughter will be Cut Finger.”

  Pittston, Pennsylvania

  In the front room of Will’s new house at Pittston, Ruth Slocum slightly moved her grandson’s cradle and looked down at the infant with foreboding. This was Joseph’s first child, and she thought she saw an aura of death about him.

  Every time she looked at him, she felt cold.

  Jonathan was his name, after his grandfather. Sometimes Ruth Slocum, now sixty-four and full of arthritic pain, wondered whether she saw death around this child simply because he was named after her late husband, whose whole memory was overshadowed by his own violent death twenty years ago.

  That would not be fair, she thought. Think that way and thee might well place a doom on the poor innocent!

  She did not really believe in spells, or placing doom, or any such things; they went against her faith, which was a practical and no-nonsense kind of faith whose powers were strictly those of the Inner Light, always positive powers.

  But still, this baby seemed to have no future she could see, no matter how positively she tried to see him. There was the aura, which was there whether she tried to perceive it or tried not to. And there was that dullness in the infant’s eyes, eyes that were more like the sunken eyes of an old man than like a child’s. This was the only baby she had ever seen that appeared to know already anything it might ever care to know about the world around it. This was a baby that seemed to have been born old, and Ruth expected that Joseph would be taught his first direct lesson about life’s deep losses by this unfortunate child.