Living on the Borderlines

by Melissa Michal

  Her father spelunked. Had all his life. Her mom didn’t let her go with him when she was young. Then one day around ten years old, choices blew softly out the window. Her mom passed of cancer. The disease came from nowhere quickly. And it was up and go with her father. She and her dad found their rhythm, though it was hard with such a large absence. The weight of his hand on her shoulder lingered with the memory of him leaning close to her explaining safety rules, gear checks, and all that caves could hold.

  “Pay attention to the lines in the rocks,” he had said when she was eleven. “They tell you stories about the cave.”

  She would stare at the rocks, touch them, watch how her dad moved among them. He respected the caves and walked slowly, careful not to disturb things. And he memorized their details. “Remember that cave with the swirl marks by the opening, the air in there was different,” he recalled. “I felt safe in that cave. We’re always watched over. But there, things were close to us.”

  She somewhat knew what he meant. She felt the same, too, like when sometimes warmth or dampness wrapped her in among the rocks. The air held her there in those moments, steady and consistent. What she heard or felt was an atmosphere that let her get to know all of its tiny details. And she leaned into that, took everything in, watching, touching, listening, and feeling the space.

  “You get that from your grandmother,” he had said. “She could hear the trees and read what was coming. Weather. People. Deaths. You hear the cave.” Then, he would go right back into cave-exploring mode. “Check your water. Check the lights. Do they work?”

  Her cousin snapped his fingers. “Hey. You ready?”

  She pulled herself back. Nodded at him.

  “Come get your stuff,” he said.

  His friends picked up their packs and lights and fell in line behind him. Their strides matched the swing of their arms, all from years of boyhood together. She tailed the rear.

  Her dad had described the cave he spent his lifetime searching for, something from his dreams or his memories that her grandfather had passed on, too. Only he hadn’t known what point or hilltop contained these memories. So he searched the landscapes of New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts and their mapped caves, and he walked other trails simply looking for caves. He told her these stories throughout her life until she had this same cave invading her own dreams. Now this opening and the lines in the trees below seemed familiar, with details emanating through remnants of his voice.

  “You sure this is it?” her cousin asked as they first rounded the corner and the shadowed cave entrance appeared. “How do you even know?” He looked at her from the corner of his eye. She was familiar with his skepticism, especially of her. Maybe it was a competitive thing.

  “Give me a moment,” she said. She stood at the mouth of the cave. With her eyes, she followed the lines and crevices. The air hit her skin in soft drifts and air pulled her inside. Her whole body desired to go. And her whole body recognized those lines from her dreams, even the way her skin reacted. The smell outside was pine. But right there by the entrance, that pine mixed with what she thought was age. A staleness that hadn’t seen light and that had held in all it knew and attached the knowledge to its stalactites. This is the cave. Explaining why seemed impossible. The knowing drifted there in her mind and body. She nodded to her cousin. “I know.”

  He raised his eyebrows. Her voice conveyed a confidence she didn’t always show around him. His face remained serious, eyes deep brown, indicating his trust. He nodded back.

  She took in a few deep breaths. This had better be right.

  They shuffled into the cave’s mouth. Her cousin and his friends turned on their head lamps. She hated those things and carried a flashlight instead.

  “How you gonna grab on?” her cousin would say. He meant if suddenly things dropped off or fell. He seemed to be the apocalyptic one in the family.

  Her father had let her figure out her own equipment as a teenager. “Whatever feels right,” he had said.

  She didn’t turn on her flashlight. Not yet. Their lights flooded the space enough. She wanted to get used to the cave as it existed and feel her way through touch and how it rose and fell under her feet. If illuminated by lamp light, her pale skin stood out against the black walls like stars in the sky. That’s why her cousin led the way. He knew her process.

  “Here, you put the pack on like this.” She showed her cousin how to put on the gear the first time they took him out. He was eleven and she thirteen. She clipped his carabiners on and checked the pack’s contents. Her dad had purposely picked an easy cave, one they had explored together many times before. Even though her cousin acted gruff, she could see a small light of excitement and curiosity.

  He didn’t touch things and his gait was quick. But he swiveled his head all around as they made their way into the shadows. Nothing seemed to spook him.

  “He’s a natural,” her dad said.

  Even though her cousin lived on the Tonawanda Reservation, and she in Rochester, he came to visit often in the summers. His father had died young from early onset diabetes. And her father and their other uncles took over that role as needed. When they were little, they even bunked together on their enclosed porch, so much cooler in the summer humidity than the old house. Stars hung in the sky on clear nights, streaming the porch with low light. She could never sleep if there was a full moon, yet her cousin slept no matter what with a soft snore. Before he fell asleep, they pointed out constellations, competing for who noticed the most.

  It was no different in the caves once her cousin began spelunking with them. He had to be first, the lead who took care of the mapping, the one checking gear. She didn’t care. But she smirked when she read the map better than he. Her dad thought it good that he showed such a drive for leadership.

  “Let him find his way. You already know how to get around these places,” said her dad. He was right. She went more by feel than maps—the tactile kind of feel, and the emotional kind of feel.

  “Hey, look what’s up ahead,” her cousin had said.

  A small trickle of water made its way down one wall. Her dad nodded at her and put his hand on her cousin’s shoulder. Their dark olive skins matched as did the tilt of their heads. Neither moved. Her dad swirled his hands around the wall, feeling for its natural markings and getting quite damp in the process. Her cousin remained standing back. She touched the wall with her dad, her paler, smaller hand matching the splay of his fingers, side by side.

  If nothing else, the guys were quiet, also finding their way by intense concentration. All that echoed along the walls were crumbling footsteps, shifting rocks, the occasional grunt, and someone’s aluminum water bottle swinging against a backpack with a clang. The cave kept them in a fairly straight line that first half hour. Slowly, they descended. Such small elevation changes, it almost seemed they remained level.

  After an hour, her cousin stopped so abruptly that the guys bumped into one another. She had hung back far enough to avoid collision. Her strides, small and careful, slowed her pace.

  “What’s the hold up, brah?” one friend asked.

  “Something’s not right,” said her cousin. He twisted the map around. “It doesn’t indicate on here that we’d be further below ground. But feel that air.”

  “You can’t always go by maps,” said another friend.

  She wanted to agree, but remained silent.

  They all paused, peering up, then down, then out toward the darkness ahead. Listening. That and touch was all you could do in the rocks and moisture and endless black and gray. She listened to the air moving around the empty spaces, sometimes hitting craggy masses. It sounded like slow breaths.

  “Guess it’s nothing,” said her cousin. He waved his hands, inviting them onward.

  She remained at the back, steps behind. With each step, rocks and silt pushed through, forming a floor that rarely seemed to run flat. When she ran her hands across the walls, their grooves and crevices made each one unique and even
recognizable. She loved this about caves. The swirls in her fingertips passed across small lines of veins, smoothed edges, all dry. Nothing crumbled in her hands. The hot air now dotted her forehead in beads and in pockets under her arms. The guys wiped their foreheads with rags or bandanas. They slowed to her pace.

  Her cousin stopped once more. This time, two openings stood in front of them. He tilted his head toward the left, then the right. He balanced himself by putting one leg forward and straightening his back. The floor was beginning to get even more unlevel.

  “We’ll check this one. You go in that one,” he said. He pointed her toward the right tunnel. Alone. At least he trusted her to do this. She just wasn’t sure she wanted the responsibility, even though she was so sure this was her dad’s cave.

  She nodded and worked her way in, rambling around the pockets of sudden raises in the floor. The darkness had an odd way of lightening and darkening depending on the texture of the rocks and her focus.

  “This is an important place to our family,” her dad echoed her grandfather.

  She had met her grandfather but did not remember much about him. He smelled of vanilla pipe tobacco, which would haunt her later in the strangest places. She could walk into a store he had never been in and smell him, or at least someone who must have smoked the same tobacco. A hunt around the store never revealed the smell’s origin.

  Her grandfather told her dad many stories—Creation, family, his own life. One stood out to her dad that he took seriously. It seemed to connect to all of the other family stories. Each autumn, as things settled down, he relayed the story about a cave. A great-great-great-great-great-uncle had found his way there after hearing about it from yet another cousin. It contained something that either her grandfather couldn’t, or wouldn’t, explain.

  Her grandfather’s stories never told of the cave’s exact location, merely what it held and what it looked like, surrounded by several tall, old pines that came to sharp top points, boulders all around, and these very specific lines. Lines that needed long periods to describe and dreams to see.

  When her grandfather died, she was five. Her mother was still alive and consoled her father. It was the only time she saw him cry openly, deeply sobbing. He hid that when her mother died. She remembered him leaving so often and she wondering if he would even come home. Months after his father’s death, her dad’s search for the cave became more intense.

  Now she suddenly dreamed of that cave and images revealed more details. Because she stood right by the cave in those dreams, she still didn’t know its exact location.

  She did internet searches and happened upon cave maps. Maybe this was her way, too, like him, of searching for her own dad among those rocks. Whenever she went in a cave, he was there again, part of her thoughts. She created a list of places that might have caves to explore over the summer and see if her cousin would join her. At the third map, she stopped. The layout of the cave seemed familiar. She absolutely knew—no explanation.

  “That’s the cave.” This map, she trusted. Goose bumps ran along her arms, and her breath caught in her throat. She had trouble breathing and her hand didn’t want to move the mouse to click on other maps.

  Her cousin shook his head when she told him, but didn’t protest. Some semblance of light appeared for a brief moment in his eyes, though, a remembering.

  “If we find it, we find parts of our family,” her father would say. “There are connections in places that bring us back to our stories, and our heritage.”

  About ten minutes later, the walls around her crowded closer. Water tumbling over rocks in cascading force made its way to her ears, softly at first. It wasn’t the normal dripping that many caves exuded down walls and across floors. Her flashlight reflected off of the dampness. As the water grew louder, more powerful, spray hit her forehead and the tops of her hands. A weight turned in on her shoulders, a weight she couldn’t see, but knew was there.

  She stopped before the water grew too loud. Leaning against the wall, layers of rock protruded into her back. They felt like support, though, rather than a bother.

  All these years exploring caves, their eccentric characteristics were home.

  Following behind her dad had never been easy. He had always liked a quicker pace, even though he explored caves like she did, feeling his way through. But he preferred light like her cousin. He would stop and wait for her when he wanted to tell her something or point out parts of the cave.

  Then he would listen to the noises the cave emanated. “They have something to tell us. But we have to learn their language. It’s a feeling instead of words. It’s like our spirits that don’t speak English; they speak our first language. And we can’t explain why certain things are difficult to form into English words.”

  She didn’t know much Seneca. Only the basic greetings. He didn’t know much, either. When she grew older, she understood what he meant, though. She got easily frustrated with the other world, outside of Indian country. But it was the world she had been raised in. So it was hard to explain why she couldn’t put into words her sheer anger at assumptions about her Nativeness. And why she couldn’t describe how the caves talked to her dad and to her. They just did. And she couldn’t express what the drums did to her blood and bones as singers called out the old songs. Her words fumbled trying to justify these knowings to others. Her cousin didn’t get it, either. He tried to say the same thing about her not living on the rez, how she didn’t understand. She walked away in those moments, wishing time rolled back to before her dad died.

  “You can’t always get those people there,” her dad said. “They won’t let the walls down to understand. They don’t always know what’s blocking them to connect with our ways.”

  Warm air curved its way over her face, not at all cooling. She unclipped her water bottle from her pack and swigged several gulps. She wanted to continue on, but the heavy feeling told her to turn back and find her cousin. Bring him back. The water faded somehow into the background, and what came to her ears instead were whispers. She didn’t usually hear whispers that formed actual words. But those vibrations in her skin and mind, she knew them here. Go back.

  It didn’t take her as long to get back to her cousin and the boys. They had explored their side as well.

  “What’d you find?” asked her cousin.

  “We need to take that one.” She pointed behind her.

  “Why? We can feel air over in this one. We need to go further that direction.”

  She stared at her cousin. Air? “Why don’t we at least try this way?”

  He paused and thought about her urgency. Then his eyes blackened. She saw them often turn when something upset him, like mostly white teachers in rez colleges and Native wannabes.

  “No.”

  The skinny one put his hand on her cousin’s elbow. “Maybe she’s got something.”

  She nodded. “There’s something back that way. It pushed me to come get you.” Her direct gaze at her cousin raised his eyebrow. He knew she meant come get him.

  “You think it’s your dad?” he asked.

  “No.” She really hadn’t thought about it. Just something familiar. The entire cave held something to it …

  “There aren’t no Iroquois petroglyphs or even pictographs. You’re looking for something your dad made up,” he said. It came out quiet.

  “Yeah, those are ghosts you need to forget,” said his friend with the glasses. “We only came for the fun anyway.”

  The air in her lungs disappeared. Her head began to fill with a sharp heaviness. Her cousin knew the stories about the cave, and he had listened just as intently when they were six or seven, sitting on the couch with her dad. She figured that was why he spelunked with her when her dad died. Insisted on it. She had thought that he could remember those experiences with her and her dad in the caves and draw a connection to him.

  But she threw back her shoulders and hid her sadness. “I’m going that way anyway.”

  The guys laughed. All but the ski
nny one. Hard laughs that drew up from the belly. The guy with glasses stopped though.

  “That’s just great, cuz. You go on and get lost in there.”

  On that summer porch under the stars, before she and her cousin fell asleep in those younger years, the stars seemed to conjure certain conversations. Her cousin was more open than usual those nights. He would tell the Creation Story. How Sky Woman found a hole in the clouds and looked down, down, until she fell and fell. The animals below saw her falling, and so they dove into the water surrounding Turtle. They were looking for mud to soften her fall. Finally, the muskrat came up with mud, barely in time for her to land. She danced around the back of Turtle, spreading the mud, shuffling and shuffling until earth was fully formed. Her favorite part was always the turtle as Mother Earth; how they were really all on the back of this huge turtle.

  “So if we’re on Turtle Island, does that make us really tiny or it really, really big?” she asked her cousin.

  He smiled and replied, “We’re all really small compared to everything we are a part of.”

  She thought she heard echoes of her dad’s words in that reply. “So do you think, then, that dad’s cave is real? Was Grandpa telling us something?”

  “Of course,” he said. “That’s what our stories are for.”

  “What’ll we find there?”

  “I don’t know. But it will be cool.”

  Their laughter followed her for a few minutes until the cave swallowed their hollowness. This time, she navigated the rises in the floor with ease as she made her way back to the water sounds. Nothing kept her from moving forward. And again, heat invaded the crevices of her body. She grew used to the heat as well as the space that continued to close in above and around her.

  The beam of her flashlight revealed space opening up ahead. As her foot stepped forward into this space, she touched nothing. Before her momentum could pull her back, she felt herself fall, out into nothing. Instinct kicked in and she grabbed the wall and its little protruding ledges, the ones that had comforted her before in their sameness across caves.