by Zakes Mda
He came back without making any headway with the casino owners because they didn’t take him seriously. If Kilvert was not a reservation, how could he even dream of opening a casino there? they asked. When he told them about the Shawnee claim that was already in the courts they said he should come back to them when the Shawnee had won their case and Kilvert had been declared an Indian reservation. Only then would they consider going into business with him on his new casino venture.
Although he was not impressed by the way he was treated by the casino operators, who even denied him an audience with the chiefs of either the Mohegan or the Mashantucket Pequot tribes, he was encouraged by what he discovered there. The Mashantucket Pequots, for instance, own what they claim is the world’s largest casino. Yet only thirty-five years ago they were not a tribe at all but were down to one person—one Elizabeth George. The descendants regrouped from other parts of the country and now they are the richest tribe ever. What can stop his Kilvert people from rising like the Mashantucket Pequots?
His people deserved a chance. They have never had a fair deal.
A few days later Obed brings me a yellowing article from the Athens Magazine, Winter 1984, to show me just what he means when he says his people have never been treated well. He got the magazine from the Center.
Wanted: a few good jobs for Indians, says the headline. I read on:
The leaders of a growing minority movement centered in the tiny hamlet of Kilvert have developed a combative style. Are they terrorists or squeaky wheels? “I believe in confrontation and violence if necessary. I believe in tearing things apart if necessary. We want jobs, we don’t want more rhetoric,” said Melton Fletcher, an American Indian activist. Spoken last fall at an Athens County Minority Association press conference, Fletcher’s words express the sentiments many area minorities share—bitterness, disappointment, frustration and anger—at what they believe are long-standing discriminatory hiring practices in Athens.
The article goes on to name Fletcher as a Choctaw Indian and a co-chairman of the ACMA who has been fighting for the rights of the American Indians in southeast Ohio.
Most of Athens County’s Indian population is clustered around the tiny Rome Township hamlet of Kilvert, 20 miles from Athens. Only within recent years have the racially-mixed black, white and Indian people there begun to gain a collective historical, cultural and political self-awareness.
Since the coal mines closed in the 1930s, says the article, the employment situation has been bleak for the Native Americans in southeast Ohio. Eighty percent are unemployed.
“So what happened to Fletcher?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Maybe he gave up and packed and gone to better places,” says Obed. “Or maybe he died.”
Obed sees himself as the new Fletcher, although his methods will not be Fletcher’s. Times have changed. Instead of advocating the use of violence to empower his people he will open a casino. Do I now see why Kilvert should be declared a reservation? After all, the Kilvert Community Center used to be the southeast Ohio headquarters of the North American Indian Council. Do I also see why he is so pissed off with Ruth when she keeps on insisting on a Cherokee heritage and other Kilverters who keep on claiming a Powhatan heritage? How will they get a reservation if they don’t even know which tribe they belong to? Can’t they see the advantages of being Shawnee once and for all?
They are no longer sure what their tribe is because they hankered for and lionized whiteness to the suppression of their Indianness and Africanness during the days of oppression. Many of them could only sing genealogies of their white ancestors. Today they are keen to reclaim all three heritages since they are a source of pride and make them a unique people. But they no longer remember who they were, on the African and Native American side. It does not help that in this area three different tribes lived side-by-side—the Cherokee, the Powhatan and the Shawnee.
“You can only be one tribe to get a reservation,” says Obed sadly. “And Shawnee is the way to go.”
Orpah never spends the night. In the evening, just before sunset, she goes home. I would like her to spend the night, though I have never outrightly asked her. I have hinted at it. She does not get it. Or pretends not to get it. I don’t pursue the matter though my desire for her has returned with a vengeance, especially when I am alone at night and can imagine her sitar whining the night away. Until Mahlon comes in his strange costumes. And all desire suddenly dies.
Sometimes Orpah and I go for a walk in the woods. And she shows me where her father has found the latest ghost orchid. I do not ask her how she knows the exact spot where the ghost orchid was found as she was not there. It is better that she does not know that I know that she plants the ghost orchids herself for her father to find.
We walk to the Federal Creek and she shows me where Ruth used to swim as a little girl. She surmises that her dad used to peek at the girls swimming in the buff from the bluffs. But no one can swim in the creek now because it is polluted.
“There’s septic tanks and all that crap,” she laments.
On sunny days—and there are many of them—we go mushroom hunting in the woods. She has her favorite spot where the sponge-like morels grow. She teaches me how to pick them out. I must not confuse them with the false morels, which are poisonous, she warns me. There’ll be other kinds as well late in the summer: the chanterelles and the chicken-of-the-woods. But if I come on my own I should stick to the morels because they are easier to identify, she warns. Unless I want to die from mushroom poisoning, even before her daddy kills me. She adds this last one with a naughty twinkle in her eye.
Fresh mushrooms must wait for Obed because he is the only one who knows how to cook them properly. When he comes, if he is not spending that evening with Beth Eddy, he returns to the wild to dig from the ground wild garlic and shallots. Wild mushrooms taste like the most heavenly meat when they are sautéed with wild garlic and shallots. And Obed is the master.
As we sit eating his creation with rice he confides in me that things have not been good at home lately. There is no food in the house, except for the bottled sauces and relishes. For a long time now no money has come from the quilts. No rent from me since I left. The food from the Center is not enough and is intermittent. The family no longer gets Orpah’s share because she spends a lot of time at my RV. Obed spends a lot of time with Beth Eddy at her apartment in Athens since she moved from the sorority house. Mahlon broods even more.
“Why tell him all this?” asks Orpah. “It ain’t none of his business.”
“It ain’t none of his business ’cause you eat here all the time,” says Obed.
This embarrasses me.
“You mooch here and at Beth Eddy’s too,” she says.
I wonder why Beth Eddy became Beth Eddy to us and not just Beth.
“Ruth, she don’t do nothing ’cause she’s thinking about a bunch of religious crap all the time,” Orpah adds.
“We’ll see if it’s crap when you go to hell,” says Obed.
“Ain’t no hell but Kilvert,” says Orpah.
“That’s a lot of bull and you know it,” says Obed. “Ain’t no better place than Kilvert. Kilvert’s gonna be heaven when I’m done with my casino.”
I have got to help Ruth. Next morning I do not go quilting but take the short walk to her house. The chimes and Orpah’s sitar take me back to my stay here. I was happy here. I have missed this house. I have missed Ruth.
My body tingles at the sitar. The sitar has a way of playing these random games with me. Sometimes it is just pleasant music and does nothing more. Like when she played at the bluegrass festival. At other times it arouses me to madness. Perhaps it is the particular song that she plays at the time. The particular mood she is in when she plays it.
Ruth is at her workstation but she is not doing any work. She is just sitting staring at a pile of fabric. The first thing she utters when I walk in is: “Where them kids at?”
I don’t know where Obed is, I tell her. But Orpah mu
st be in her room for I can hear her sitar. Surely she can hear it too? She starts complaining about how I have been a negative influence on her children since they no longer spend their time at home. Before I came here they used to listen to her. Can I believe that even Mr. Quigley is doing naughty things he would never dream of doing before I came here? For instance, she found dandelion moonshine in Obed’s bedroom. She only learned later to her utter shock that Mr. Quigley was involved in the manufacture of this potent beverage from the dandelion flowers.
“Mr. Quigley shouldn’t do such stuff with them kids,” she says. Between sobs she says that the first Quigley, Lord have mercy on him, must be turning in his grave when his descendants are behaving in this manner. The first Quigley was a man of God and a prophet. It is unfortunate that none of the men who came after him followed his path of righteousness.
“Mr. Quigley will go to hell one of them days,” she says.
“I hope this will make you feel better,” I say, giving her five twenty-dollar notes.
She looks at me for a while, and then smiles. She shakes her head and withdraws both her hands to her ample chest.
“Better you give it to them starving kids in Ethiopia,” she says.
“Okay,” I say, “I am buying a quilt with it…from you.”
“Ain’t got no quilt to sell,” she says. And then adds with emphasis: “To you.”
She insists I can’t leave without drinking her sassafras tea. She says she also has corn bread for me; despite the lies that Orpah must have told me that there is no food in her house. I stay with her for a while, eating her corn bread with the tea and listening to her latest political hobbyhorse. This time it has to do with crime that is creeping into such peaceful places as Kilvert. They should hang the criminals and they will learn a good lesson. Folks need guns to protect themselves. She announces grandly that she is pro-gun and pro-death penalty. Yet she is pro-life!
I tell her that I am pro-death. How else do I mourn without death?
“The best thing you can do for me,” she says when I am about to leave, “is to get me some gingham from Africa. They must still have it there. Old-timers used gingham for their quilts. You can’t buy it in the U.S. of A. no more. I wanna make my quilts with gingham and you’ll see how folks gonna buy them like they was hot cakes.”
It must be after midnight. I can hear the sitar. Maybe it is just whining in my head, for the house is too far to actually hear it from here. But I can hear it as clear as if it was just outside the RV. And it does to me what it did that first night. The night I had to flee from my own erection. This time I will not flee. I will challenge it. I wake up and put on my jeans, plaid shirt and sneakers. I practically run to the house.
I hide behind Mahlon’s bush and abuse myself. If the asylum at The Ridges were still in operation I would abuse myself all the way to Athens and get myself committed. That is what this sitar is doing to my head and my body. Just as the rhythm gets faster I stop abruptly. Mahlon is walking to Orpah’s room. He must have come out through the kitchen door. He must have dressed up in his own bedroom, which confirms my suspicion that Ruth knows all about his nighttime shenanigans.
Tonight he is in a dark double-breasted frock coat of a Union Army major general, white gloves, gold epaulettes, dark pants and Nike sneakers. His black Confederate officer’s slouch hat is too big for his head. He walks stylishly swinging a sword.
The music stops as he floats into Orpah’s room. And then the laughter and the mumblings and the screeching. I want to hear what they are saying. A little devil in me tells me to kick the door and barge in. Instead I walk closer to the window. I almost place my ear against the pane, making sure that I don’t touch it lest they discover me before I discover what they are up to, in which case my mission to save Orpah from the man and from herself will flop.
Through the slits between the worn blinds I can see Mahlon pacing the floor as he recites something about a long journey that Massa Blue Fly undertakes over snowy hills and through forests devoid of leaves. He buzzes like a fly and Orpah laughs like a little girl. I can’t see her though. She must be somewhere on or near the bed. Mahlon “flies” around the room, his arms outstretched like the wings of a plane. The more he flies with the buzzing sound the harder Orpah laughs. And then he stops the flying and resumes tracing the long journey across frozen rivers and down slippery slopes. Until Massa Blue Fly arrives at his destination and gives some good news to the Abyssinian Queen. Somehow ghost orchids find their way into the celebrations that follow Massa Blue Fly’s good news. Ghost orchids float in the sky and fall on the ground and on the flowing robes of the dancers. The Abyssinian Queen swoops down from the topmost branch of a ghost tree and floats with the ghost orchids.
I can hear Orpah and Mahlon clapping their hands and singing “The Song of Massa Blue Fly.” The singing is far from being wonderful. Neither singer seems to take their singing seriously. It is obvious that the song is being improvised on the spot and the singers mix it with laughter. I am hoping she will play the sitar but she never does.
Mahlon says, “Shhhhh,” and they are both silent.
He is very close to the window.
The blinds are suddenly yanked open and the light splashes all over me. Mahlon is smiling at me menacingly. Surely he is going to kill me this time. He opens the door and says, “Why not come in if you wanna hear right?”
I walk into Orpah’s mother-in-law room. The Marilyn Monroe cut-outs are stacked on one side to create more room. Orpah is sitting in a Buddha-like pose on the bed and is in the pirate’s costume she was wearing that first night, although tonight she is wearing a maroon Victorian bonnet. She does not look amused at all.
“He can’t come in,” she says. “He ain’t got no costume.”
“It don’t matter,” says Mahlon. “Let him stay. Let him see what he wanna see.”
“I promise I’ll be quiet,” I say. “I won’t utter a word.”
She does not address me. She’s not even looking at me but at her father when she says, still in a little girl’s voice: “Without costume he’s like naked. You don’t do them memories when you’re naked.”
She is surrounded by crayons on the comforter. She holds a sheet of paper on which there is a work-in-progress: stylized ghost orchids floating among stylized branches of ghost trees.
So this is how she creates her work.
“I knew the motherfucker was out there all the time,” says Mahlon as he ushers me to sit on the bed next to Orpah.
“He can’t take no part in our memories,” says Orpah.
“He won’t take no part,” says Mahlon. “But it don’t matter if he see them memories, little girl. He can’t change them no ways.”
“They’re not for seeing by nobody.”
“He’s seen some already.”
“He’s a fuckin’ spy,” she says. “He’s the one who’s gonna tell on the Abyssinian Queen.”
She still does not look at me. It is as if I am not there at all.
“I am not going to tell anything,” I protest.
“We’ll kill him if he tells on her,” says Mahlon.
He is a medium man. He gets his stories from the ghost trees. He transmits them to Orpah who then re-creates them.
9
Mother of All Mourning
Now I know why it is always winter in Orpah’s pictures; why her ghost trees are devoid of foliage: Mahlon’s midnight stories are set in wintry landscapes. His memory begins and ends with winter frolics, winter journeys and winter crossings. When Orpah’s obsessions force into the performances ghost orchids, which by nature bloom only in summer, they adapt to the season of Mahlon’s visions and float like snow flakes among the naked branches of ghost trees. They fall on the flowing garments of dancing celebrants where they gleam like misshapen stars on undulating skies.
Mahlon’s performances date back to the time when the children were children. And when Mahlon was still Mahlon. When his face was not marred by a permanent smile. When
his hogs and cows were thriving. When his garden was blooming with flowers. He read bedtime stories to the children before they slept. They all shared the same bedroom at the time. Mahlon sat on the children’s bed and read them stories about little mermaids, mermaids that were headless, princesses and peas, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and many others. Stories set in faraway lands and written in bold letters and illustrated in colorful pictures in books that Mahlon brought from the Center and from used-book stores in Athens.
When he could not get more books he read the same stories over and over again. Until the children could complete the sentences. Until they were bored with them. Then he took to creating his own tall tales. These were not confined to bedtime. He told them after dinner at the kitchen table. Or on the porch during balmy summer evenings. He did not only tell them. He performed them.
Later he went to the forest to get more stories from the ghost trees. And from all sorts of other trees. Those that could bear witness to how things used to be. Those that sprouted from the seed that fell from those that saw and remembered. That is how stories became memories. That is how he became the medium man.
At first Ruth did not mind these stories. But the more she read the Bible and The Word was revealed to her, the more she felt uncomfortable with them. Stories about the sun that was lonely because nothing else had been created yet and about a black woman who flapped her wings and swooped down from ghost trees that were so high they touched the clouds were unchristian. She banned them from the house.
Her Mr. Quigley did not want to upset her. But he was too addicted to the performances to give them up. And so were the children. By this time Mahlon had sold his small farm and the family had moved to the present house. Mahlon took to performing his stories for Obed and Orpah in Orpah’s room. Soon the costumes were introduced. At about the same time Obed was gradually withdrawing from the performances because he had outgrown them. Orpah never outgrew them. Instead she became a co-creator of the stories. Mahlon would come up with only the beginning of a new tale, and between father and daughter a tandem story would develop. Or Orpah would complete the stories by painting them.