Secrets of the Anasazi
Sky Whitehorse
This book is dedicated to the National Indigenous Women's Resource Center.
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-Inside of me are two dogs. One is mean and evil and the other is good and they fight each other all the time. When asked which one wins I answer, the one I feed the most.
-Sitting Bull
Flash Forward
Warren came to in the black of night. It was dark overhead but a blaze of light was growing by the water’s edge. At first, he didn’t know where he was, but as he laid there he realized he was in the river, deep down into the canyons. The sound of whooshing waters engulfed his ears while the back of his head was on something hard. After laying there a while he figured he was propped on a rock. If it weren’t there to hold him up he would have drowned.
Ashes fell from the sky like snowflakes into the water around him as he watched the bushes that grew up the canyon walls roar into flames.
He couldn't move; he could barely even blink. It was like a dream where he was paralyzed. His veins felt like scorching hot blood coursed through them.
He heard voices he recognized in the distance... Chantal, Maya, and Lance. He couldn't make out their words over the burble of the river, but it was evident that they were in plight. He tried calling to them for help, but he couldn't get the sound to come out. His brain was telling his voice to work, but there was a disconnect between them. His throat was tight and dry. He focused on his voice box, such a simple thing that he had never thought about until now, yet it seemed so difficult. Seeing the flakes falling down onto him made him feel dizzy.
Everything was spinning. He couldn’t even blink. An ember drifted over his face. He wanted to sit up or roll away, but for some reason his muscles weren’t listening either. It landed on his cheek, scorching him. He took in a deep breath, but even that was labored.
He listened for the voices, but the conversation grew distant. They had wandered farther west down the riverbank.
No. Don’t leave.
A tear trickled down his cheek as the water flowed by him.
1. Rustle Toss and Tussle
Saturday, 2:01 a.m.
Maya stumbled home in the early hours of the morning with hiccups. She jumped onto the windowsill and flung her legs over. Her head pounded after a long evening of dancing in her neighbor’s basement while a live band rocked the crowd. Marshal, the lead singer lived there, only a block away and had parties every weekend... parties her parents would never allow her to go to in a bajillion years. Actually, there were many things she was forbidden to do, which only made her hunger for more adventure.
She was exhausted. She scanned the floor for her nightgown in the moonlit room, quickly changed, and unlocked her bedroom door, heading to the bathroom to wash the makeup from her face and take down her hair. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror.
She made a blowfish face in the mirror then smacked her cheeks and laughed. She swaggered a bit. "A little too much Captain Morgan?" She hiccupped.
When she made it back to her room, she searched for her pillow that wasn't on the bed, but it was too dark. Reaching down, she turned the switch on her bedside lamp. Disturbed by the sudden illumination, a bat flew out of the lampshade and into her face. She screamed, swatting at it as it flapped and flew down the hallway.
Her mother ran down the stairs to see what the matter was, flipping on the hall light. She ducked and shrieked at the sight of the bat swooping in her direction.
Maya watched her mother's shadow from her bedroom as it landed on her mother's head. Her mother swatted at it, but it had become tangled in her hair, flopping up and down on her scalp. "Ahhhh!"
"Mom!" Maya ran to her mother’s side. Maya reached for her mother’s hair. Under the tangled mess was a warm lump jiggling like a Tasmanian devil.
"It's scratching!" Her mom whimpered.
Maya grabbed the small, wriggling body. It felt like a bald rat with wings. The claws were entangled in strands of hair that ripped from her scalp. Maya felt its body take flight as it lifted from her hands.
In that moment her world felt like it was closing in around her. She held her eyes shut and heard the sound of a beating drum, or maybe it was just her head thumping after the loud music from the party.
Her father thundered down the stairs but, before he reached her mother, the bat flapped its way back through Maya's room. She chased it, swatting at it and it flew out the window that clattered shut right as it escaped. Maya’s heart was racing. Her surroundings seemed to open up again, but she was shaken. She returned to her mother’s side.
Dad turned to Mom and asked. “What’s wrong?”
Her eyebrows knitted together in confusion. She reached for her head, but took a moment to answer. "Nothing. I-I don't know what came over me..." she stammered.
“Mom? Are you sure you’re ok?” Maya came towards her.
"Everything is fine." Mom smiled.
Maya wrinkled her forehead, unable to understand why her mother didn’t seem fazed. It was as if she had dismissed what had happened or, forgotten it?
Mom started back upstairs to bed.
"Maya?" Dad put a hand on her shoulder. "Is everything okay?"
Her heart thumped and her throat was dry. "There was a bat..." she said in a shrill voice. "It was in Mom's hair!"
Mom stopped on the staircase and looked back at her.
"A bat?" He looked at Mom but she shook her head and shrugged as if she didn't know what Maya was talking about. "I think you were just having a nightmare. Your mother is fine. Go back to bed, honey."
"But there was! Mom, you know there was." She tried to understand why her mother would deny something so irrefutable.
Mom cocked her head to the side and came back down the stairs where they stood. "Honey, c'mon. A bat? It’s an old wives’ tale. Bat’s don’t fly into people’s hair. You know how I feel about superstitious beliefs. There is no room for them under this roof.”
Maya felt tears welling in her eyes. She had always yearned to know more about their Native American heritage and customs, but her mother thwarted her attempts at asking questions. She even threw away some of the gifts her grandmother tried to mail occasionally for tribal ceremonies. “I didn’t know bats in hair were a superstition.”
Her mother sucked her cheeks in. “I love our tribal family, but not ignorance. There is no spiritual realm. There are no gods or goddesses. Dancing and chanting over bonfires are silly rituals. Our people need to focus on letting go of old customs and embracing education. That’s why I moved away from family to raise you and your brother here."
Maya felt angry at the way her mother talked about their people. If she had been lucky enough to be brought up the way her mother was she would never move away from them. She put her head down as thoughts were swimming in her head. She remembered her visits to her grandmother’s, but they never stayed long. Just as any rituals were about to take place her mother would whisk her and her brother into their room for the evening.
Mom frowned. "Are you feeling ok?"
"I'm fine." Maya’s eyes were wide. “I’m worried about you.” She hiccupped.
Mom placed a hand on her forehead to check for a fever. She furrowed her brow. "Have you been drinking?"
"What?” Maya backed away. “No," she lied. She must be able to smell it on my breath.
Mom gave her a stern look, one that told Maya she could see past her lie, but she didn’t refute. "I think you need to get to bed."
⭐⭐⭐
Saturday, 9:05 a.m.
Mom looked deathly ill as she tried to make breakfast the next morning. Her face was pale, and she had dark circles under her eyes.
"Mom," Roy said, "you look terrible."
"Yeah, you should go lay down," Maya agreed.
Mom waved her hand at them. "Don't be silly. I always make breakfa–" She coughed into her hands.
Dad looked up from his laptop. "I think you need to make a doctor appointment. You’ve been hacking all night."
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head in dismissal. "Don't be silly. It's just a little cough."
Dad frowned but didn't argue.
She began coughing harder. As she pulled her hands away from her mouth, there was blood on her fingers.
Dad jumped up from the table and rushed to her side. He held her wrist. His mouth gaped, and an involuntary gasp escaped. "We're going to the hospital. Kids, get in the car."
Maya exchanged glances with Roy as they lept up from the table to get their shoes on.
The car ride lasted only ten minutes, but it felt like hours with Mom coughing all the way. Maya rubbed her mother's shoulders from the backseat. They pulled up to the hospital and walked in. The ocean of people inside blurred in the wake of their own emergency. The four of them entered through the automatic door.
A staff member walked by.
"Please, can you help?" Maya asked.
"You have to check in at the desk, miss," he said, pointing to the front.
She sighed when she saw how long the line was. They waited behind other patients as Mom continued to clear her throat. After some time, they were finally admitted. Mom was taken into a room to lay down.
Maya, Roy, and Dad stood in the hallway with the doctor. It was so quiet the only sound that could be heard was the wheels on a breakfast cart being pushed over the tile by a woman in scrubs.
"Has she been out of the country recently?" the doctor asked as he wrote on a clipboard.
The three of them shook their heads.
"Has she been exposed to anyone with an illness?"
"None that we know of," Dad replied. His eyebrows turned up and he folded his arms over his chest.
Roy frowned as he rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged.
Maya nodded. "She was attacked by a bat last night.”
The doctor’s eyebrows pulled together and he wrote as Maya tried to look over the clipboard at what he jotted down.
The doctor pulled the clipboard closer to his chest, out of her view. He looked down his nose at her, pulling his chin up.
Dad scowled at her. "There was no bat. The child imagined it."
The doctor scribbled on the paper.
Maya's eyes widened as she balled her fists. "But there was–"
Dad put his face near hers and whispered. "This isn't time for funny business. Your mother and I know you were drinking. It altered your perception.”
Maya stormed down the hallway to the waiting room where she sulked. She knew what she saw.
Days passed, then weeks, and the doctors were stumped. They had run dozens of tests but were no closer to finding a cause for the symptoms Mom was displaying. She was sent home as there was nothing they could do for her at the hospital.
Maya was getting ready for school in the bathroom one morning the following week when she found clumps of her mom's hair in the bathtub. The amount of it was alarming. She cleaned it out not wanting her mother to have seen it. Hopefully she still had plenty of thick hair on her head to cover the loss. She turned to placed it in the trash when she noticed bloody tissues overflowing onto the floor. She tied up the bag and replaced it.
From where she was, she could hear her father's voice as he talked on the phone in a whisper. "... she's lost quite a bit of weight..."
Maya froze, trying to hear his conversation. She tried to go undetected as she looked for her father's expression, but he had his back turned to her.
"Maya," Roy called.
She jumped at his voice.
“Time to get to school."
She ran to the living room, lifting her backpack in a huff, and headed to the car. She put her seatbelt on, feeling uneasy about what she had seen and heard.
Roy was in good spirits, sitting behind the wheel wearing his favorite aviator shades with reflective yellow lenses. His carefree nature made her feel more at ease. "I need your help in math again."
Maya let out an exasperated sigh. Helping him with homework was the least of her worries. "You're the only older brother I know that needs help from their sister."
He shrugged. "Will you just do my homework for me, then?"
"Not again!” She shoved his shoulder.
He laughed.
“You have no shame."
He looked at her with pleading eyes and a pathetic frown. “You love me.” He backed out of the driveway, trying to make her feel sorry for him with his pathetic faces.
"Seriously? How can we be having this conversation right now?”
“Now is as good of time as any.”
She sighed. “Aren't you worried about Mom?"
"Well, of course, but she's going to fight whatever it is and be back to her usual self."
She glared. "Unbelievable. You're in denial."
"Hey!" someone screamed from outside the car. There was a loud bang.
They looked out the back window to see Bella pounding on the trunk. She walked around to the back door, flung her backpack onto the seat, and got in. "You need to watch where you're going."
"Sorry," Roy said. He closed the garage and pulled into the street.
"So..." Bella said, "which one of you farted in here?"
Maya and Roy pointed to each other.
⭐⭐⭐
Friday, 9:30 p.m.
(Hours before the bat incident.)
The night sky was crisp and clear over the Whispering Pines residents’ upscale neighborhood. The winds swept through the streets making leaves twirl as if an imaginary whisk whipped them up. They traveled down the street then scattered over the curvy walkway that led to a grand sized home at the end of the cul-de-sac. The porch light bathed the red front door in light. A semi-circle of stained glass above it gave it a fine curbside appeal.
Little did Maya's family know that something had traveled a long way to pay a visit. If they had listened to their intuition, they may have noticed the change in the weather. The shower of falling stars that fell like tears from the sky would have been their first clue.
The family was too wrapped up in their own lives to take notice. Nothing seemed more important than online shopping for the mother of two. There were elegant dishes to shop for. The father sat next to her on their elegant couch with wooden feet that stood on the rug like lion feet as he watched the late-night show. He unwound every evening after a long day at the office this way. Then there was their oldest son, Roy, who sat across from them sending messages on his cell phone.
The signal on the television froze, making the picture pause as the sound of the whistling wind could be heard outside. He frowned, pushing the button on the remote, but none of the channels were coming in. After a few minutes of trying he gave up and called to his daughter.
Secrets of the Anasazi Page 1