by Daniel Hecht
The afternoon air was cool. Cree sat near the fire where she could pick up a little warmth from the coals, breathing the pinon smoke and burning her lips on the metal rim of the cup. From here, she could see east, past fences to higher land half a mile away, more thickly covered in trees and brush. The sun was lowering to the west, putting the near ground in mixed shadow and sunlight.
"You've done this before?" Ellen asked doubtfully. "Fought with a chindi?"
Cree grinned. "I know I don't look like I know what I'm doing. But the answer is yes. That's what I do. I investigate ghosts and I help people who are troubled by them."
Ellen nodded and blew across her cup.
"Actually, I try not to fight it. I have to . . . let it into me a little, so I can know more about it. It's very powerful, isn't it? Don't you feel it, too—the way it sort of hypnotizes you?"
"Oh, yeah." Ellen's big face moved into that warm grin. "I was trying to think what it was like. I keep remembering this one time I went to New York City with my first boyfriend. It was this big thing for us, catching the Greyhound in Farmington, crazy rascal Navajo kids going to take the Big Apple by storm. We got there on a Saturday night and we were so excited, first thing we did was go barhopping with this couple our age we'd met on the bus. We drank way too much. And later on in this one place, I went looking for the bathroom and by mistake I went out the back door into the alley. I stood there in the dark, looking at these brick walls, and I didn't know where I was. I turned around and then I couldn't tell what door I'd come out of, there were three, four dirty gray metal doors, all the same. Middle of the night, and I didn't know what place I was in, or who I was to find myself in such a strange place. Couldn't move. Didn't know what to do. That's what this chindi does to me."
Ellen sipped her coffee with a faraway look in her eyes, but she came out of the pensive mood with a throaty laugh. "It didn't help that there was this sign in Korean or Chinese or something on the other side of the alley—it could have been written in Martian! Luckily, my boyfriend came looking for me. You can bet I didn't drink again for the rest of that trip."
"I had a night like that in Dublin once," Cree admitted. "My husband and me, our first night there. Ouch."
They shared a smile, and Cree felt like sidling over and warming her hands on the glow from the solid, square woman. They both sipped their coffee. The black mud went down hot and stayed burning in Cree's belly, fortifying her. In the deafening silence, they listened for sounds from the hogan and heard nothing alarming.
Ellen's face grew tight again. "I was going to say, that's the scariest thing, but it's not. The way his hand moves when he's asleep—that's the worst."
"What did it do?"
"It did this"—Ellen mimed a beckoning gesture—" and then it kind of spidered around." She made her hand walk along the ground on all five fingers and grope the contours of a rock, then snatched it back as if the sight scared her. Her plump body shuddered involuntarily.
Even in Ellen's imitation of the gestures, Cree couldn't help but see the intentionality of the movements. The hand adapted to what it felt. It seemed to be trying to figure out where it was. There had to be some self-awareness in this ghost, but like everything else about it, it was incomplete, skewed, somehow isolated in the hand and arm of its unwitting host. A blind being lost in time and space. Lost in Tommy's body.
Cree replenished her coffee and poured some into Ellen's cup. "So you folks live up in Burnham now? Eric was telling me."
Ellen looked relieved to put the subject of the hand behind them. "Yes. We lived on the old place with my parents and Tommy's folks until about ten years ago. First we moved the sheep up there, there's better water and road access. Then I got a job, secretary at the grade school. My husband took a job at the El Paso Gas plant. We still keep a few of our own sheep, but we only help out with the big flock when Ray needs extra hands. We've been after my parents to move closer in, but they won't leave the old place."
Cree nodded. "Were you here for the hand trembling?"
"Oh, yeah. Old Hastiin Begaye came up on horseback. Just about killed him, I think, he's eighty-two."
"What do you think of his diagnosis?"
Ellen looked worried again. "All these years, I'd say I didn't believe that stuff but I'd go along. Kind of hedge my bets? And I think the old ceremonies do good for people. But with Tommy this way . . . " Clearly, Tommy's possession had erased any doubts Ellen might have had. She whispered, "Hastiin Begaye, he was scared. He said it's the worst he's ever seen. He tried to look like this was business as usual, but I could tell he was glad to get out of here."
"What ceremony did he prescribe?"
"Two ceremonies. The first will be the Evil Way. That's to get rid of the chindi, to give it what it wants, let it have justice. The second we'll do in a month or so. That's the Beauty Way."
"What does that one do?"
"It's to restore Tommy to harmony and unity. Make him healthy and strong after the ghost goes. Hastiin Begaye said Tommy is divided inside, that's what makes him weak and unhappy. He needs to be just one person."
Cree was struck by the insight of the diagnosis. As Joseph had said, he was a boy at odds with himself. Some of it was ordinary teenage stuff—trying to differentiate between himself and his parents or grandparents, loving them yet needing to rebel. But it was amplified by his conflicted sense of what it meant to be Navajo in twenty-first-century America, and by his disconnection from his dead parents, his yearning and resentment, curiosity and confusion. Tommy was divided, not certain which image of his past or future to embrace. Which meant that getting the ghost out was only half the battle. Beauty Way: a way to make him whole. The Hand Trembler must be a very perceptive man. Again, it all came down to who Tommy was.
"Ellen, can I ask you about Tommy?"
"If I know the answer."
Cree tried to think of a way to circle in on it. "Your brother—did he have any other children besides Tommy?"
"No. He and his wife, they got kind of a late start. Then they got killed. You know about that?" Ellen looked away, saddened by the memory.
"Yes."
"Tom, my brother, he was a good guy in a lot of ways, but later on he got to drinking and it made him a little crazy. Funny, because Bernice, his wife, she went the other way—when he first brought her home, she was pretty freewheelin'. But then she settled down and was a good mother. A good sister to me. We still miss them both."
Cree nodded. "Does Tommy look like your brother?"
Ellen turned to look at her closely, troubled by the question. "Why do you ask that?"
"Did they adopt Tommy, or—?"
"No!"
"Are you sure? I mean, could they have—"
Ellen burst into laughter again, shaking her head at the crazy bilagâana and her outlandish questions. "I'm about as sure as I can get! Tommy was born on the old place, right in my brother's house. Bernice looked like she'd swallowed a watermelon for the last three months. When it was time, she came on fast, one minute she's making fry bread and the next she's got contractions five minutes apart. We couldn't chance putting her in the truck to go to the clinic, she'd never make it. I was the one who caught Tommy from between her legs. I rubbed him until he made his first cry, then I cut his cord myself. That sure enough for you?"
Ellen looked at her with brown eyes that were puzzled, amused, and completely candid. There was no doubting the truth of what she said.
So there it was, at last. Tommy was not Julieta's child.
Cree thought of Julieta and her longing for her lost baby and her deep sense of recognition and all the waiting and yearning over the years: a beautiful, intelligent, dynamic woman who lived and worked so hard while struggling to conceal the deep wound so close to her heart. A weight fell on Cree in a heap, not so much the fatigue of the last week as the sorrows of lifetimes. She knew she should probe Ellen for information about Tommy's mother and father, try to learn more about who they were, what they wanted, how they lived. B
ut right now she was too stunned. She realized yet again how much she had relied on Julieta's connection to Tommy as her one handle on the situation. How much she'd trusted it. How much she'd wanted Julieta to have found her child.
The bitter emptiness was all too familiar. The power she'd given Julieta's supposed connection to Tommy said a lot about where Cree Black was in her own life.
"What?" Ellen asked. "What's the matter?" She watched Cree, worried at the sudden change in her odd guest.
"Nothing," Cree said hoarsely. How would she break it to Julieta? "Nothing. Really."
And that about summed up her progress, Cree thought. Now she was left with nothing. As Julieta was.
46
JULIETA WAS halfway to Window Rock when her cell phone rang. She almost drove the truck off the road as she grabbed it and flipped it open. It was Joseph.
"Where are you?" she shouted. "I've been trying to reach you since last night!"
"I'm at home. I was here. I just had a lot to think about."
"I've been so worried! Are you all right?"
He seemed to consider that. "I was hoping you could come up to my place."
"I'm on my way to your place now!"
"See you shortly, then," he said. And he hung up.
Joseph lived in one of the flat-roofed, sandstone-block houses on the hill in the center of Window Rock. He opened his front door before she reached it. He looked bone tired, but he struck her as handsome and fine as he stood there in T-shirt, khakis, bare feet. When she came up the steps, he put his arms around her and she leaned against him. She wanted to bury herself in him, hold him forever, but the hug he gave her was guarded and brief.
He led her into his living room. As always, she liked the feeling of his place, the mix of tastes. The house was small, just a one-story, two-bedroom shoe box, but well built and charmingly decorated. This living-dining room ran from one end to the other, so windows gave light at both ends, one set offering sweeping vistas to the south and the other shorter views uphill to the red pillars and cliffs of the Chuska bluffs. Over the years, Joseph had bartered his services for the splendid Navajo rugs and other artworks that decorated the place, but he had also hung his walls with framed prints of Miro and Chagall. His bookcase was filled with photo collections, medical texts, biographies, and a collection of comic books, and was topped with a collection of cards and gifts that grateful patients had given him. The Formica dining table and chairs looked as if they were left over from his med school days, but he had invested in a nice calfskin couch and oak coffee table.
The rooms were spotless and fresh, as always, but today there was something different. It took Julieta a moment to realize it was the flowers: a big vase of mixed blooms on the table, another on one of the stereo speakers. Through the door, she saw a cloud of carnations in a clay pot on the kitchen counter.
She caressed the petals of a rose and looked a question at Joseph.
"Well," Joseph said. "I wanted it to be pretty here. When you came. Not much in the way of fresh flowers in Window Rock, but I found these in the cooler down at Basha's."
They stood there for an awkward moment. He looked exhausted and wary, yet somehow at peace with himself. Like a man who had made some decision and had resigned himself to the consequences.
"Thank you for coming. Can I get you something? Coffee, or—"
"Joseph, what's going on? Why are you talking to me like this? I'm not some stranger."
He tossed his shoulders uncomfortably. "Let's sit down."
She let him lead her to the couch. She sat on the edge of it as Joseph took the big chair across the coffee table from her. She waited for him to do whatever it was he intended to.
"I didn't answer your calls because I needed time to think. Before I talked to you. Didn't want to talk to you until I'd figured something out. Figured out a starting place."
"For what? You're scaring me!"
He looked fiercely at her for a moment before springing out of his chair and crossing the room to one of the windows. He leaned against the window frame with one hand and massaged his face with the other. Against the light from the window, he made a trim silhouette, thin at the waist, strong at the shoulder. The muscles in his jaw rippled and rayed from tension.
"Julieta. You see the door to my bedroom?"
She glanced over. A short hallway, the narrow door of a closet, then the door to his room. From this angle she could just see the corner of his bed, covered in a patchwork quilt, and the bookshelf beyond. Another vase of flowers stood on the bookshelf.
"There's a man who lies in that bed every night. And he thinks about you. He wants you to be in there with him. But that's never happened. For a lot of reasons, that's never happened. And that's a big mistake."
Julieta felt heat spread through her: embarrassment, alarm, longing. This was something they'd forbidden of themselves. Why? The taboo had begun, unnoticed, in the months after Peter, and solidified in the time after giving up the baby and the scary period of the divorce. Then for a while they had both been scared of love, of consequences, of mistakes. Later, the taboo had been reinforced by her occasional lovers and his, the distance and tact and accommodation required. Living around it, not looking straight at it, was so habitual that it seemed impossible to face it now. What could she say? There's a bed like that down at Oak Springs School, too. True, but such a contrivance. He deserved better.
Before she could find the right words, Joseph turned back. He came across the room to her and sat on the edge of the coffee table. He took her hands and held them as he looked into her eyes. His eyes were deep brown, rimmed with dark lashes, unhesitant and unyielding.
"So what I figured out was, that's the starting place. That's the first thing I had to tell you—I wasn't going to pretend anything different, ever again." He paused to let that sink in: Wherever they were going, there was no going back to where they'd been. "The second thing was, I need to ask you for a promise. There are things I want you to promise me you'll do today. You have to promise you will do all of them, not just some, no matter what. I need to talk to you, we need to go for a drive, then we need to come back here and figure something out. After, you can do whatever you need to. Can you promise?"
It can't be happy, she was thinking, and it can't be easy. Or he wouldn't do it like this. The thought scared her to death. There was so much to fear right now. But then she thought: It must be necessary, or he wouldn't do it like this. This must be the only way through.
"Okay," she said.
"You're sure."
She mouthed the word soundlessly, cleared her throat, and tried again: "Yes."
He held her hands so hard they hurt, still looking into her eyes. Then he got up and pulled her with him. To the door, out to his truck.
Not talking, they headed east on 264 and then north on 666. The mountains loomed on their left, the flat, empty basin of the Chuska Valley yawned to the right. Late-afternoon sunlight washed the land, a chilly white light in the dry air.
Still Joseph didn't talk. In the silence, Julieta's fear grew. She took his hand and held it there on his thigh, making him steer with one hand, too scared to ask him to explain.
This was the way they'd have to go to get to the Keedays' place, but Joseph wasn't saying anything and at last she couldn't stand it any longer.
"Are you going to tell me where we're going?"
"Julieta, all these years, I didn't know where your baby went. I wasn't the one who found a home for him. My uncle did. He's the one who knew the family who wanted a child. But he made the same deal I made with you, and he'd never tell me. Sometimes I asked him, and he wouldn't. Even when you were . . . when it was so hard for you not to know. That's why I couldn't tell you anything about Tommy. I didn't know."
"Your uncle Joe Billie?"
"Yes. I know what you're thinking, he's an alcoholic and not to be trusted. But he's more complex than that. He did a wise and compassionate thing back then, for both of us. I believed him when he said he found a
good home for your child. And he's helped us a great deal with the Keedays. He's helped me in other ways, too."
She wanted to ask him whether Tommy was her baby, or, if not, whether he knew where her child was now. But there was no point. Joseph had a plan. In her confusion and exhaustion, she found some comfort in knowing he had thought this through. Despite her rising sense of alarm, she felt a desire to surrender to it, to Joseph. She couldn't fight any of this. There was release in relinquishing the fight.
"Okay," she said.
He looked only minutely relieved. Whatever else he had to say, it was hard for him. Without thinking about it, she took her hand back and braced it against the dashboard as if expecting a collision.
"Back when you were pregnant," he began, "I did something that has been a big problem for me. We made a lot of mistakes, both of us, but this was one of the worst for me."
She waited.
"Peter called me. He wanted to know where you were, you weren't answering the phone at the old house."
"What?"
"He said he wanted to come back, he had already broken up with his girlfriend in San Diego, all he wanted was you. But I didn't give him your number. I told him he was no good for you, you were better off without him. He didn't show up. Not long after, you decided to give up the baby."
Julieta heard it, but it didn't connect for a little while. When it did, she crushed herself up against the door, as far as she could get from him, choking on rage. "How dare you! How could you have done that?"
Joseph didn't flinch. "Because you were falling apart. And because I loved you. I thought I'd be better for you than he would be. I didn't trust him to love you."
She stuttered with indignation as ten thoughts clamored for expression. "How could . . .Jesus Christ, Joseph, what. . . everything I was doing was controlled by men, first Garrett and then Peter, and all you could do was control me some more? What you did determined my whole goddamned life! You're just as bad as they were!"