Thieving Forest

by Martha Conway

  Remembering Penelope’s advice, Naomi tried to learn from Nadoko. She asked questions that her old mistress would have laughed at: how do you build a fire up quickly, or tamp it down without letting it go out altogether? What kettles do you use for fetching stream water, and what kettles do you use to cook with? What food should never touch one another, like the bear meat and peas?

  Naomi wondered if Nadoko’s patience with her came from ignorance—perhaps she thought all white women were as backward as Naomi?—but Hato was equally patient, and he knew white people. He spoke very good English from living outside a British fort for a year. Once, when they were walking across a stream with white rocks on the bottom, Hato took her by the arm to keep her steady. And when Naomi made her first samp porridge by herself he complimented her greatly, although it was not nearly as creamy as the porridge Nadoko regularly cooked up.

  What will Susanna think of me now? she wonders. She’s shared pipes of tobacco with Nadoko and Hato, and when their tobacco ran out they smoked red sumac bark that Hato ground into powder. She speaks Wendat easily and has learned how to cook animal rough—the diced organs—in fire embers, and to eat the dish with pleasure. She has learned to look at the world as Hato looks at it, and this perhaps is the greatest change. This is the change she will have the most trouble explaining.

  By the time they came to their canoes and embarked on the river, Naomi felt almost comfortable with Nadoko and Hato. There were others in the group—Hato’s younger brother Detsukwa, and several cousins. They divided up into the four canoes, Naomi with Nadoko. But unlike her first group, this group was not in a rush. They lingered, enjoying the journey. For five days there was not a spot of rain, only blue sky and trees that seemed golden at their tips as the canoes snaked north along a jagged vein of the Great Black Swamp.

  Every day Hato called to her from his canoe to look at various things on the shore: a grebe with a new chick on its back, a wild boar with two striped babies. At night they pulled their canoes up over the bank and camped in clearings bordered by tall bluestem, where they gathered wild grapes, eating some of them and boiling the rest into syrup. When Naomi took off her moccasins to bathe her feet one night, the dried twig of yellow buds that she found so long ago, when she was still with Penelope, fell out. Hato picked it up and gave it back to her. A few days later when she woke up she found twenty twigs with fresh yellow buds in a bunch beside her head. That was when she understood he was wooing her.

  He gave her a polished panther’s bone, a whelk shell, and a necklace with one blue feather. Naomi made honeycakes out of oak flour, and gave Hato the biggest one. Being apart for so many hours in different canoes began to feel intolerable. In the evenings, after they ate, Hato took her hand gently. He kissed her at night after the moon had risen and in the morning when the air was still damp.

  One evening Hato gave her a smooth white stone like a wild bird’s egg, which even now Naomi keeps in her pouch. It is a stone from the river, Hato told her, where they first touched, when he held her by the arm to keep her from stumbling. The stone was a pledge: when they got to the village, he told her, they would marry. Naomi ran two fingers along the stone’s smooth surface. She had nothing of her own to pledge except the twig with the dried yellow buds that she kept in her moccasin. So she gave him that.

  A few days later, Naomi happened to be alone among some trees one afternoon, not far from the riverbank where the others were resting. It was a muggy day, the sun veiled by thin lace clouds. She was looking for food but she didn’t know precisely what. She wanted to make something for Nadoko and Hato. Maybe she could find some early apples. But the ground was wet and spongy, not the sort of place where apple trees grow. As she stepped around a shallow pool of gray water like an unreflective mirror, she noticed that a few small fish were trapped in it. She crouched over to look at them. At this particular angle they appeared purple, and she thought Hato might like to see that. As she was getting down onto her elbows to look more closely, she heard a noise that she first mistook for a frog piping nearby, but the noise went on and changed, forming itself into words. English words. A man was speaking English in a low voice to someone else, who replied in a slightly higher, nasally voice.

  For a few moments Naomi could see nothing, and then the two men came into view. They were soldiers, or maybe scouts. They wore blue uniforms and hats that were slightly too large for them. They looked scarcely older than Mop. What were they doing so far into Indian Territory? All soldiers have two things in common, Sirus used to say, lice and the flux. Naomi watched the men squat to relieve themselves, and one scout was close enough so that she could see his trousers down about his knees. They continued to talk to each other calmly, as if disinterested in the business they were doing here in the woods.

  All she had to do was stand up and they would see her. They would take her back to their camp or their fort—wherever they came from. One had red whiskers and the other one, the one with the nasally voice, laughed at something with a pitch like a woman’s. Naomi breathed into her chest and crouched farther down. Maybe she should approach them about Penelope, direct them to her. But how could she do that without being taken herself? And if they saw her, they would make her come with them. They would have no scruples about killing Hato or anyone else in their party. A squirrel jumped out from somewhere, startling the two men, and the man with the red whiskers cursed. A rustle of leaves, twigs breaking, and they were gone. When Naomi returned to Nadoko and Hato, she said nothing about them.

  And now here she is trying to sleep in Nadoko’s longhouse, turning over and pushing her hot feet outside the blanket. She enjoyed those long days spent out among the white rocks and the bluestem, fishing from the riverbank or stitching the side of a moccasin while Nadoko showed her how to angle the needle. They stayed in the village for only a few weeks before they left again to go on a fishing trip. Hato and Nadoko prefer to spend much of the summer away from the village, but now the time has to come to start preparing for winter, Nadoko told her. So they have come back.

  She does not miss Severne. She loves her sisters, but she does not miss living with them, all their noise and quarreling. Perhaps this is the uncomfortable feeling that seeing Susanna has brought up. Without realizing it, she thought that that life was over. And she was glad. She sighs without meaning to, and Nadoko opens one eye, a habit of hers that Naomi still finds unsettling. One of her dogs is lying behind her legs, wound up like a ball of dark yarn.

  “Ekwa-toray-shay,” Nadoko says quietly. Let us both sleep.

  Naomi is good to her word. The next morning a young boy leads Susanna up to the northern end of the village to live, and Akwendeh-sak is given a bolt of cloth for the trade.

  Susanna’s new mistress is an old woman called Onaway who is some sort of relation to Naomi’s foster family—an aunt or an older cousin. Naomi’s foster mother, Nadoko, exclaimed over Susanna in Wendat and squeezed Susanna’s two hands in her own with apparent pleasure. Susanna can see at once that she is wealthy, just as Naomi said. She wears a dozen copper bracelets on each arm and she tells Susanna proudly—Naomi translates for her—how she owns many European items: spades and umbrellas and shawls. Nadoko is especially proud of a short fur cape, which she wears every morning over her deerskin dress.

  That first morning they stand outside Nadoko’s longhouse with the sun pouring down on their heads. Nadoko touches Naomi’s arm, and then Susanna’s arm, and then her own arm. Here we are together. But Susanna is not sure how pleased Nadoko really is that she has joined her family. There is a look about her—not sly exactly, but maybe secret. As though she is thinking something else.

  Although the father of Nadoko’s children is dead, he had been a senior chief in the village and people respect the family. Nadoko has two grown sons, Hatoharomas and Detsukwa, and a daughter who died the previous spring of the blue cough. Naomi is a replacement for this daughter. They are all tall and handsome, well dressed, and, Naomi tells Susanna, clever in business. Their longhouse is
the largest in the village, made of slabs of bark over pole frames that extend back almost into the trees. It is big enough for four or five families to live in comfort. Inside there are hammocks for the men to sleep on, and the women use the space underneath them to store wood. They hang their food jars and clothing and anything else they want kept away from the mice on thick poles that rise up to the roof. The mats and skins that serve as flooring give the room a slightly animal smell, not unpleasant, that mixes with the smell of smoke and cooked meat.

  At first Susanna is a little in awe of the large space, the plentiful food, the many possessions. Nadoko’s younger son often carries an unfurled brown umbrella—like his mother, he is fond of English goods. He is called Detsukwa, which means fishhook, because of his long crooked nose. The older son, Naomi told her, is named Hatoharomas and called Hato. This month he is training boys in a lodge at the uppermost corner of the village, and so is not living in Nadoko’s longhouse. For a few days nothing more is said of him.

  Susanna’s new mistress, Onaway, lives at the far end of the longhouse away from the cooking fires, which worsen her cough. Other than her cough she seems healthy enough despite her age. Although Onaway has three grown daughters and two grown sons, they live elsewhere with families of their own and can no longer help their mother. She is happy to have Susanna do her chores. Most of the work is the same—fetching wood and water, building up a fire, boiling corn—but here she is properly fed and Onaway does not throw sticks at her. Meera said that the wealthier families live here in the north near the head of the stream, and indeed everyone seems to have clearer skin and newer clothes. Susanna does not have to walk so far to find kindling, and even the stream seems brighter and moves at a quicker pace. She no longer has to wear a rope attached to her wrist, and she is not tied up at night. But she moves everywhere with a crowd of women, not only Onaway and Nadoko and Naomi, but other women as well who are somehow related to Nadoko. Susanna is never left alone with Naomi. Is this by design? She wonders if Naomi has already formed a plan to leave, and what that might be.

  “The Wyandots have a proud history,” Naomi tells her one morning outside Nadoko’s longhouse, after Susanna has been living there for almost a week. “Nadoko has told me many stories about them. They are one of the oldest tribes. Holders of the council fires.”

  They are sitting with Nadoko and Onaway pounding corn. Although the afternoon is warm, the light is no longer lengthening into summer but rather backing away. Huge white clouds seem to dip down into the village itself. Is it late August, Susanna wonders? Early September? She is getting impatient to leave, but still has found no chance to talk to Naomi alone.

  “They believe trade is more important than war,” Naomi is saying. “Also—you’ll like this, Princess—women here are prized since they alone have the gift of foresight. Can you imagine the farmers back in Severne believing that?”

  “I did not feel particularly prized by Akwendeh-sak,” Susanna says. She pounds the corn in her wooden mortar bowl a little too hard and a few kernels fly up over the rim. Carefully she picks them out of the dirt and looks at Onaway. Akwendeh-sak would have thrown a stick at her, but Onaway pulls the mortar closer to Susanna and shows her how to hold it up a little so the rim makes a kind of wall. Onaway knows no Delaware or English, so they communicate mostly by gesture. Her warm fingers remind Susanna of Ellen. She has the same gentle touch. Naomi is grinding her corn neatly and efficiently, Susanna notices. When did she learn to care about food preparation?

  “Women in general are treated very well here,” Naomi continues. “They harvest their own fields, sell their own crops, and keep the profits. They hold positions of power in the village. Nadoko has herself appointed several chiefs.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?” Susanna asks sharply.

  “It’s interesting,” Naomi says. “I think it’s interesting, at least.”

  Susanna pounds the corn harder. After a while she says, “I’ve been trying to work out what seems different about you, Nami. I mean apart from the clothes. I realize that it’s that you’re not carrying around your violin. Do you miss it?”

  “No,” Naomi says. She moves her own bowl clockwise and begins pounding again. “I guess you think that’s strange.”

  “Don’t you?”

  Naomi doesn’t answer. Soon it will be time to fetch wood and begin building up the cooking fire, but for the moment they can remain in the sun’s warmth working the corn and enjoying each other’s company. Susanna feels a twinge of guilt for speaking so sharply to Naomi. Naomi is just making the best of a bad situation.

  “I did wonder about the bear,” she says, trying to repair the conversation. “You know, the one in the enclosure with the crooked ear?”

  “Oh yes, the bear.” Naomi turns to Nadoko. “Hanone,” she says. She tells Susanna its history: some hunters found it as a cub wandering in the forest alone, without a mother, and they brought it back to the village where the boys played with it and taught it tricks. It is now fully tame. At night the bear sleeps in its pen but sometimes during the day the children lead it outside to play.

  Nadoko begins speaking, and Onaway and Naomi both stop to listen. When Nadoko pauses and nods in the direction of Susanna, Naomi says, “She is telling a story. She wants me to translate for you. It’s about a Wyandot man and his wife who were traveling from one village to another when they were captured by a company of bears. The bears took the couple back to their mountain and put them in a beautiful cave with lots of nut trees and other food nearby.”

  The bears told the couple they must not leave, Nadoko continues, but every night the man tried to escape. However, each time the bears found him and they beat him until every bone was broken, or they gave him diseases that left his body limp. But the following morning the bears always showed his wife how to cure her husband, until she knew as much as they did. And when that time came, the bears released the couple, saying, “We are friends of the Wyandot. Now we have shown you how to cure yourself when sick or injured. Bring this knowledge back to your people.”

  Naomi translates Nadoko’s words almost without pause. Out of all of Susanna’s surprises, this is perhaps the greatest: Naomi’s fluency in another language. Although she is smart, Naomi was always lazy about schooling. She could barely be bothered to learn her times tables.

  “Why did she tell us this story?” Susanna asks when Nadoko has finished.

  “Nadoko and her family are from the bear clan. She is very proud of that. By telling the story the Wyandots keep the bear clan sacred.”

  “I think she wants to warn us against running away.”

  “Careful,” Naomi says. “Most people here know more English than you might think.”

  Nadoko stands up abruptly. She spreads her arms and speaks to Naomi pointedly, an instruction that Susanna does not understand. Then she goes into the longhouse. Onaway is leaning back against a tree trunk. She has fallen asleep in the sun.

  When Nadoko comes back out she is holding something in her hands. A basket. She looks at Naomi and waits.

  Susanna looks over at Naomi, too. “What? What does Nadoko want?”

  Naomi picks up her bowl and sets it down beside her. “Susanna,” she says, and then stops. She tries again. “Susanna, there is something I must tell you. It was a surprise to me, too. But I’ve changed.”

  “You’ve changed? What do you mean?”

  Naomi hesitates again. Then she says, “I’m in love.”

  “What? How can you be in love?”

  “I’m in love with Hato. Hatoharomas. Nadoko’s oldest son.”

  Hatoharomas? For a moment Susanna cannot speak from amazement. “But that makes him your brother!”

  “Susanna, don’t be foolish, of course he’s not my real brother.”

  “But I don’t understand. I thought you would want to leave. To play your violin again.”

  “I feel, indeed I have long felt, that that is no longer my fate.”

  “But what else could
you do? You’ve never liked doing anything else!”

  Naomi says, “I have married him.”

  “What?” Susanna stands up. She feels an urgent need to move, to do something. She looks at Nadoko who surely cannot follow their conversation, but who nods nevertheless.

  “I fell in love with Hato, I betrothed myself to him, and now we are married.”

  “But Naomi, he’s an Indian!”

  “Oh Susanna, don’t be so closed minded.”

  “What about home? What about our store?”

  “I know it’s hard to understand, but I like living with Hato and Nadoko. I’m learning so much. And I don’t miss my violin at all. Not at all. Don’t you think that means something?”

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Susanna, I know this is difficult.” Naomi stands and tries to take her hand but Susanna pulls it back. She feels as though she’s been holding on to her self-control as one would hold on to the end of an icicle, trying to climb it like a rope, and now it’s slipping out of her hold.

  “Difficult?” she says. “This is nothing, this is easy. I don’t have to fight with wolves for meat, I don’t have to wade through miles of bog and pull leeches from my legs over and over. All of which I did for you. For you! For you and Penelope. And now you tell me, now you say...” She is stuttering with emotion. She wants to shake Naomi hard. Nadoko is watching her closely.

  “Susanna...” Naomi says.

  “How can you want to live with the people who did all this to you?”

  “They weren’t the ones who took me.”

  “And what about me? How will I ever get back?”

  Onaway makes a soft snore. Naomi looks at her and says quietly, “You don’t have to leave. We could find a place here for you, too.”