Sisters of Grass

by Theresa Kishkan

  When they all took their places, Jane and Mary seated on either side of Nicholas, Margaret thought how nice the room looked in the May light. The best tablecloth dressed the table, a white damask edged with Honiton lace, a gift from Aunt Elizabeth one Christmas. There was a fine rib roast, bowls of the last of the winter vegetables mashed with butter and flecked with spring onion, cut glass dishes of serviceberry relish and green tomato pickle, a little pot of shredded horseradish mellowed with thick cream, and jugs of icy spring water and fresh milk. A basket of coiled cedar root was filled with biscuits covered with a linen cloth. In the middle of the table, a blue willow vase held the first sweet peas of the year from the vines trained on netting against the eastern wall of the house.

  “Ah, this looks good, Jenny, my love.” William stood at the end of the table, carving thick slices of beef, the ones close to the middle of the joint nicely pink in their centres. Margaret took the platter of meat around the table, helping each person to the slice he or she chose. Her mother served vegetables and gravy, and Jane took the bowls of condiments to those who asked for them. William said a brief grace, and everyone began to eat. For the first part of the meal there was little conversation. But as first servings disappeared and those wanting seconds were helped to meat or vegetables or another high golden biscuit, William began to ask Nicholas about his work.

  “Well, I understand that you know Mr. Teit, sir. You know then, of course, that he has published several monographs on the Indian people here in the Nicola Valley as well as on the tribes at Lillooet and some others. I’ve been studying under Dr. Franz Boas at Columbia University, and he is a great admirer of Mr. Teit’s work. In fact, he commissioned much of the research that Mr. Teit has undertaken. I’m working on my master’s degree, and Dr. Boas suggested that I should translate the monograph on the Thompson Indians into French, because there is great interest in this material in Europe. I began the work this winter, and I was enchanted, I suppose you could say, by the descriptions of the Thompson people and their lives. I wanted to see it all for myself though I know that much of what Teit describes — the religious ceremonies and the hunting and fishing rituals, for instance — is no longer the usual practise. And I’ve been trying to visit each village, from the small ones below Lytton to Slaz, near the Cornwall ranch, to Quilchena, which I gather is the last real Thompson village before the Okanagans begin. Though Mr. Teit told me that Spahomin is as much Thompson as Okanagan, and I’ve been hearing both languages about equally. He felt I should meet Mrs. Stuart’s mother to see the finest baskets around and to talk to her about her knowledge of medicines and plants.”

  “You are certainly right to do that. Jenny’s mother, of all the elders at Spahomin, has an amazing memory, and, more than that, she continues many of the traditional ways and knows why they’re important.”

  “Yes, she’s a wonderful woman. I’ve been talking to her about baskets, and she’s given me a wealth of information. She even has me making a little coiled basket though I’m all thumbs. But she says the only way to really know is to do. So I’m doing, or trying at least!”

  Margaret smiled. When her grandmother had begun to teach her to make baskets, she, too, had five thumbs on each hand. She cried when the split root refused to coil evenly, and her first imbrications were untidy and irregular. Now she could make a passable basket, but nothing like what her grandmother could do with her eyes closed. And often it seemed as if that was how she was making them, because she could coil perfectly without even looking at the emerging basket on her lap, her hands and fingers working as though of their own accord. Fly patterns, arrows, nets . . . she would reach for strands of bitter cherry, pale grasses, and the design would emerge from the surface of the basket.

  After dinner, Margaret cleared the table and drew a jug of hot water from the reservoir on the stove to add to the cold water she had pumped into the sink. She began to wash the dishes and was startled to hear Nicholas ask where he might find a tea towel to begin the drying.

  “Oh, you don’t have to help. You’re a guest! Why don’t you sit on the porch in the shade?”

  “I’d like to help,” he answered. “I’m perfectly capable of drying dishes, and it’s nice to be in this kitchen. Anyway, I have a motive. If I help, you’ll be finished that much quicker, and I’d hoped you could ride part way back with me. I noticed some unusual pink flowers, well, maybe they’re very ordinary, but I’ve never seen them before. Anyway, they’re blooming by the road about a mile from here, and I know you’ll be able to tell me what they are.”

  He stacked the dried dishes on the worktable, and Margaret put them away after she’d finished washing the pots and scalding the dishcloth. She could smell him there by the sink, a nice smell, like her father after a bath — some sort of soap, and damp hair. When his arm brushed hers, a thin flame of lightning ran up her spine and spread out along her shoulder blades. When she tried to speak after that, her words were thick in her mouth. She wondered if he could tell. Did she want to accompany him part way home? She nodded a wordless yes.

  (Whatever happens, I am waiting. The cup of her throat, her small breasts . . .)

  Margaret’s parents were agreeable to her escorting Nicholas part of the way back to Spahomin, and so, after making arrangements for the young man to return to spend a day or two in the high country in the next week, they said their goodbyes. Nicholas and Margaret, who had changed into her riding pants, went out to saddle the horses. Margaret decided to take Daisy, who had not been ridden since Thistle had been brought home to the ranch; she brought out her saddle, struggling with the cinch as Daisy moved about as far as her rope would allow her. Nicholas’s borrowed horse, a dun gelding, waited patiently while Margaret settled Daisy, who pranced and sidestepped excitedly. Then they rode out to the road and headed toward Douglas Lake.

  “Look at that thunderhead! We often get storms after a hot day. They don’t last long, an hour or two at the most, but the sky is spectacular, even so.”

  Nicholas looked to where Margaret pointed. A huge cloud formation filled the southwestern sky, lit from behind by the falling sun. They rode on, letting the horses lope a bit and reining them in by a low-growing clump of pink flowers.

  “There! That’s the plant I meant. It looks almost like a cactus or succulent with its fat leaves.”

  Margaret got off her horse and Nicholas followed. She bent to the clump of flowers and dug around with her fingers underneath. Pulling up a few white stringy bits of root, she said, “This is bitterroot, it’s one of the most important food plants of my grandmother’s people. They would dig big sacks of this in spring, earlier than now actually, this clump is a bit late. They’d peel the roots and dry them, and they’d use them all winter. Grandmother Jackson told me that bitterroot would be traded for dried salmon with the people over on the Fraser River and the lower Thompson. It was very good for you, although I thought the pudding my grandmother made so I could taste it was awfully bitter. No one had much sugar, so they’d use dried berries, I guess.”

  “The flowers are lovely. I thought of you when I saw them.”

  Margaret blushed, looking at the soft pink blooms. She got back on her horse and rode a little further, followed by Nicholas. By now, the thunderclouds were almost directly overhead and big drops of rain began to fall.

  “We should get out of the open right away, because this storm is too close. See that stand of cottonwoods over there? We’ll head for that. It’s safer to wait it out under a group of trees than to stay in the open or near just one tree.”

  As they reached the trees, a clap of thunder startled the horses. Margaret dismounted and pulled a rope out of her saddlebag, hobbling Daisy deftly. Nicholas watched as she did the same with his horse. Each time thunder rumbled around them, the horses would snort and lay back their ears, the whites of their eyes showing. But both showed the good sense to stay in the sheltered area, and anyway, hobbled, they couldn’t have run.

  “Did I embarrass you with my comment about th
e flower? I’m sorry, but I got carried away. Your skin is so lovely, particularly when you blush.”

  “No one speaks to me like that, I’m not used to it.” Margaret didn’t know how to have this kind of conversation, and she could only be honest. “Well, actually, one person did, but I thought she was just being kind.”

  “I assure you it’s not kindness but the truth.”

  Just then a brilliant flash of lightning articulated the sky to the west. Margaret counted to eight before the thunder sounded. “My father says you count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder and then divide by five. That tells you in miles how close the lightning is. Less than two miles away, right over that hill,” she said, pointing to a low rise on the other side of the road. “Exciting to have it so close, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not really thinking about the lightning.” Nicholas looked at her blushing face, leaned over and kissed her mouth quickly. To his surprise, she returned the kiss with an ardour he hadn’t expected. He put his arms around her and kissed her again under the dripping cottonwoods while the horses huddled nervously together nearby.

  When the storm had passed and they rode their horses onto the Douglas Lake road, Margaret felt as though she carried it all inside her — the pungent smell of damp rocks and sage, the flowering buckwheat, the blackbird’s shrill whistle, the warmth of the sun emerging from the back end of the thunderhead. Her mouth was remembering his mouth upon it, not like anything she’d ever known, yet she seemed to have waited her entire life to feel the texture of his lips, the pressure of his teeth. Nicholas was smiling at her, the blue of his eyes exactly like the bells of clematis that grew on the mountains.

  She rode with him as far as the fork in the road where you could keep going to Douglas Lake or take a rougher trail up Hamilton Mountain. “You’ll be fine now,” she told him. “Just stay on the main road, and you’ll be there before dark.”

  “Margaret!” He pulled his horse up beside hers and took one of her hands in his. “When will I see you next? Will you be able to ride with your father and me when he takes me to see the cattle?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll see you when you come to meet with him, though.” She was wondering how she could ride with them and not touch Nicholas, not hold his hand as she was now, their fingers laced together, unwilling to become two hands again, rest on the horns of their saddles as they moved away in separate directions, each hand at a loss unknown to it before.

  The tea towels arrive, and with them a carefully written account of their making and a brief description of the manufacture of linen. I keep them wrapped in their tissue and enter their arrival in my ledger. I think of the woman’s surprise at my welcoming such items for my exhibition and how little attention we pay to the archaeology of our own lives. Those reassembling our history will have such random scraps of our fabric. Photographs of isolated events, letters, a journal if we’ve been careful, a memory or two carried in the minds of our children.

  When I travel to the Nicola Valley, it seems all of piece but protective of its stories. There are clues, of course — the community of graves in the Murray churchyard and the silent buildings in what’s left of the townsite. The museum in Merritt has exhibits that offer a glimpse into the mining history, the ranching history, and enough objects to make me spend hours looking into glass cases where beaded gloves and newspapers repose alongside fossils and old harnesses. And there are buildings in Merritt that were there a hundred years ago, still bearing their dry siding and windows of wavy glass, one with a copper cupola. If I stand on the sidewalk and unfocus my eyes until I can just see their shapes, it’s as if. As if.

  A QUILT HAS COME, moving me to tears, an uncontained crazy quilt with a contained border. The pattern moves freely over the body of the quilt, the border follows a geometric pattern of control. A typewritten text accompanies the quilt, explaining that it had been pieced together with scraps of clothing from all the members of the maker’s family who had died. Black velvet, faded brown corduroy, the heavy coarse worsted that fishermen’s trousers are made of, tweed, gay flowered prints, the satin of fine gowns, tiny fragments of lace and the soft flannel of baby clothing, shards of fabric carefully fitted together, all framed with a three-inch-wide border composed of narrow strips of alternating colours of corduroy and worsted, looking for all the world like a stack of cordwood. The backing is pieced of sugar sacks, some of them plain and some faded prints. It is tied rather than quilted, tufts of grey wool threaded through at regular intervals. Staring at it, running my fingers over the lines of yellow feather-stitching outlining each scrap, feeling the soft nap of the velvet, the worn wales of the corduroy, I know that I am reading the map of a human heart. A cartography of grief and loss, a small remnant of pink flannel to indicate a baby daughter gone to an early grave, the constant black of the mourning clothes, the trousers of a husband lost at sea. The text is matter-of-fact but carefully records the date of each death and the provenance of each scrap: Alice Jane Morris, died March 2, 1923, pieces of fabric from her summer dress; Rachel Mary Morris, died in childbirth, September 14, 1932, scrap of her wedding dress; Albert Thomas Morris, lost at sea and given up as drowned, herring, March 11, 1943, cloth taken from the cuff of his fishing pants. And then the text concludes with a fragment of hymn:

  Riches I need not, nor man’s empty praise,

  Thou mine inheritance, now and always,

  Thou and Thou only, first in my heart,

  High king of heaven, my treasure thou art.

  In Margaret’s box, the postmarks on the letters form a map of another kind, cancellations of stamps in the tiny Spences Bridge post office, letters sent from the train station in Seattle, notes given to porters to mail as a train paused on a cold morning in Fargo, North Dakota, the early winter snow already falling. Letters from Astoria, telling of hair styles and books, new species of birds to be added to a life list kept in immaculate copperplate. In my mind, I flag each place in order to remember it as important when the map makes sense, is practical enough for my own journey.

  And as for my own explorations of the valley, I have walked the road that she might have walked behind the Nicola River where the old grist mill would have been, I have driven to the Douglas Lake ranch, watched a golden eagle in contemplative flight over towards Hamilton Mountain. At a distance, someone on a horse, a dog at foot. In my pocket, a sprig of southernwood, its keen aroma keeping me alert to the country.

  Everything at home had a dreamlike quality when Margaret returned. The grey pine fence-rails, the windows shining with late sun, the enamelled bucket by the barn pump, all of them luminous. She unsaddled Daisy and, before she turned her loose in the corral, kissed her neck again and again.

  “He seems a nice fellow,” her father commented as she entered the barn to put the saddle and bridle away. He’d seen her kissing her horse and hoped she hadn’t noticed him smiling.

  “Oh, yes,” she replied.

  William wondered what to say to her. She looked as though she was miles away, and he remembered the feeling well. The point about intense attraction was that it changed you forever, took you out of yourself to make possible all the years of work that made a marriage — building barns and raising children, living through difficulties, physical pain and occasional deep loneliness — that follow it logically as apples follow blossoms on a tree. The reasons that kept you connected to the object of that attraction remained true in their essence but altered, too, as bodies altered, as land changed over the years. But wasn’t she too young for this? Jenny had been, what, eighteen when they’d met? He somehow imagined she’d been more ready for what happened than Margaret was, but he supposed that was what a father must think. And surely it was his responsibility to protect her from pain and grief as much as he could.

  “Will you want to go up to the meadows with us when we go?”

  “I’ll have to talk to Mother first and make sure she won’t be short-handed, but I’d love to go.”

  They fed the horses, and Wi
lliam handed Margaret the bucket of milk to take to the house. He remained in the barn, lighting a kerosene lantern when it got too dark to see what he was doing. Which was turning a broken rein over and over in his hands.

  Those horses that came to our truck on the Pennask Lake road, heads low and eyes curious — it seemed they had something to say as they crowded around me while I stood in the autumn field with my paper bag full of apples. The one, the bay mare that I dream of, had eyes fringed with black lashes, eyes of deep beauty.

  If there had been a way to speak to her, I wonder what I would have asked. Did a girl come this way, which tracks on this vast expanse of grass are hers?

  They made a camp in a narrow cut between two ridges, some distance from the cow-camp. William wanted to use it as a base so that they could lighten the horses’ loads and venture off to explore the higher country where the cattle spent their summers. There was a creek nearby for water and a pine that had been split open by lightning several years earlier; its fallen branches would make excellent firewood, dry and fragrant with pitch. Margaret had camped out with her father on many occasions and knew the way he liked to set up — big stones brought for a fire ring, tents in a sheltered area, horses tethered to sharp pegs but with plenty of room to graze. She shook out the saddle blankets and put hers in her tent to give her some protection against the hard ground. Jenny Stuart had packed stew in a sealer for their evening meal and some flour premixed with baking powder, to which they would add water and a lump of lard from their tin for bannocks. A half-dozen eggs, wrapped in pages of Eaton’s catalogue, a slab of bacon, some cornmeal, two onions, dried beef, a bag of cut oats to make into porridge and to reward the horses. Most of the camping gear had been carried on the blue roan gelding, the best packhorse they owned.