“I'm going past Route Three, Mignon,” he said. “I'll drop this off for Rowena, save you a trip.” He gulped down the second glass of orange juice I had poured him. Grinned at me. “But you might want to take the pins out first, Miss Juanita.”
Chapter Eleven
I came to Montana to see what's here. I picked Paper Moon because I liked the name—it reminded me of Tei-shia's laughter. I wanted to go west 'cause I figured it was opposite of where I'd come from. I wanted to hear the sound of birds instead of sirens, and see real animals, not just those poor, sluggish things you see in zoos. I wanted to walk along a lakeshore like they do in the movies. I left home to have an adventure: to do things I'd never done before.
But the truth was I became afraid that maybe I'd have to let some of these adventures go.
I was too scared.
I had been in Paper Moon over two months. I worked nine, ten hours a day at the diner. Came back to my room at Millie's and did my laundry, or helped Millie and Inez around the house. In the evenings, I watched television or just sat on the porch, read a book, scratched Louis behind the ears. Sometimes I would go into town, or ride over to Mason with Jess to shop. Went to Missoula with Mignon last week. I walked to work along the highway, which followed the creek, but I hadn't walked along the lakeshore yet. There were some places I just wasn't brave enough to go.
The mountains rose behind the town, just beyond Arcadia Lake. I had never seen anything like them. Still haven't. They are beautiful, strange, awesome. Snowcapped in places. Even now.
The eagles screamed at each other over my head, and in my mind, they were calling me to follow them up to the mountain's top. Jess lives up there in a cabin on Kaylin's Ridge. Sometimes, early in the morning or late at night, I watched the smoke from his chimney weave its way through the huge pine trees, and then, as if freed from prison, it curled upward to the clouds. He'd asked me many times to walk up there with him. I would have loved to see it, I knew it was beautiful, but I was too scared to go.
Arcadia Lake sets at the bottom of the mountains, not far from the highway. I could see it from the back porch of the diner when I took my cigarette breaks. Through the curling, silver smoke, I saw its waters, dark yet clear. Early in the morning, the deer came through the trees to the shore to get a drink. The geese made an awful racket. There was a family of ducklings I liked to watch, especially the tiny one, who always got left behind.
The cool green of the pine trees along the shore tempted me, too. I wanted to walk along the water's edge, just to get my feet wet. Maybe sit on a rock and watch the deer, I wouldn't say anything. I just wanted to sit there. And listen to the quiet. God speaks in the quiet.
But I was too afraid. Would the trees crowd in on me? Would the mountains and the sky fall down on my head?
Mignon wanted me to go with her and her family to a powwow. All I knew about powwows came from old cowboy movies I'd seen on TV. I knew that wasn't right. But how many powwows did they have in Ohio? Mignon said it was like a big family reunion. I thought it might be fun. It was intertribal: people from different nations including Oglala Sioux like Jess and Mignon. They got together each year this time. The Two Trees Powwow is held back east, Mignon tells me. It's funny. When Mignon says “east,” I think of Missouri or Illinois. She means Meagher County, Montana, a little south of Helena. I told her no, I have plans. But deep down I really wanted to go.
Mignon saw right through me.
“What plans?” she snorted. “You're gonna paint your toenails that weekend?”
“You're so smart.” I pulled her braid. Mignon was becoming like a daughter to me: I helped her with her little boyfriend problems; she sassed me just for fun.
“For your information, Miss Thang, since this place will be closed, I thought I'd go up to Kalispell, maybe see the park, too.”
Mignon shook her head. “I don't believe it. You won't walk half a mile with me to Jess's cabin over on Kaylin's Ridge. And you're going to Glacier National Park? By yourself? Not likely.”
“Well, I'm going,” I told her testily. I was mad at her for not believing my lie.
“And I don't buy it, girlfriend,” she shot back as she went off to deliver a tray of food.
“Tough titty,” I said, under my breath. I turned back to the pork and beans I was fixing to put in the oven. She had some nerve. I didn't want to hurt Mignon's feelings. Her family had been nice to me. Along with Millie, and most of the other folks in town, they made life pleasant here for me, considering that I was a total stranger. And Jess had given me a job.
But I was too embarrassed to tell them that I was afraid to walk along the lake, or climb up the ridge to Jess's cabin, or go fishing with Abel and the boys, or sit on a plain in the middle of the big sky.
Two Trees Plain is near the foothills of the Rockies. It's a wide-open place, and I'm afraid of wide-open places. How stupid is that? I'm scared that all that air will close in on me, afraid that the mountains will fall down on me, and make me crouch on the ground, curl into a little ball and cry.
I'm afraid of the emptiness of the plain, where God stretches out forever, and I will have no place to hide.
I have spent my whole life in close, cramped, noisy spaces with people falling on top of each other. Crowded cages, really. Tiny apartments, buses, the halls of the hospital, its closet-sized rooms. And as much as I love it here, when you take me away from the cage, I don't know which way to go, or what to do.
It has taken me almost a month to get used to the quiet nights. There are no sirens or loud cursing to lull me to sleep. No gunshots to make me sit up straight in bed at three A.M., about to have a heart attack, hoping Rashawn and Bertie are in for the night, that little Teishia isn't the victim of a drive-by.
The birds sing and cackle, and early in the morning I hear Riddle's Creek gurgling behind Millie's house. When I'm in the house, or standing on the back porch of the diner, I feel safe. The animal sounds can't get me. The quiet won't force me to lose myself in my thoughts. But if I go out there, out in the open, where there's only trees or open space or mountains and real earth beneath my feet, who's to say? I have no history with open spaces or mountains or lakes. In such a place, like the Two Trees Plain, where there is nothing to hide you, there are no excuses. The plain seems endless. The mountains kiss the sky. There are no windows you can shut.
Jess closed the diner after the breakfast rush on Friday, and spent the next few hours loading up the truck. Mignon's family went over early. Mary, Jess's sister, had a tent to set up and food to cook. Her husband, Raymond, and Mignon and Carl had gone with her. I pretended that I had things to do. Made sure the diner was spick-and-span. We wouldn't be open again until Monday. Mopped and waxed all the floors, cleaned out that sparkling oven. Made sure I had dusted away every speck of nonexistent dust. Did a good job of making work for myself. Finally, I just gave up, gathered up my things, and headed out the door. Jess and Dracula pulled up with a screech of tires just as I turned the key in the lock.
Jess sat there looking at me for a few seconds before he spoke.
“You missed your bus to Kalispell.”
I glared at him, kept walking.
“I'm taking the next one.”
His lips curled up in a smirk. He had on those reflective sunglasses that I hated.
“Ain't no next one, African Queen.”
“So I'll take the nine-thirty tomorrow, Lakota Man,” I snapped back. I came down the steps and headed toward the road, and Millie's.
“I just love it when you talk that way,” he teased me, grinning. “Come on, Juanita. Get in. I'll run you over to Millie's.”
“No, thanks. It's only a short walk.”
“No problem,” Jess grunted back. He opened the door to the truck. “Get in.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I'll walk.”
“Well, that's the thanks I get for trying to be a gentleman. Offer the lady a ride, she
snaps my head off.”
I stopped and looked at him.
Jess grinned. Elbowed Dracula, and patted the seat next to him.
“Well, since you're going to make a fuss.” I climbed into the cab. Pushed Dracula over. He whined and begged to be scratched.
Jess screeched away, leaving a cloud of dust behind us, roared down Arcadia Lake Road, then turned onto I-90 and took off. I was being kidnapped.
“This is not the way to Millie's,” I said, mentioning the obvious.
Jess shrugged his shoulders.
“Thought I'd take a detour.”
“A detour through where? Wyoming?”
“Oughta be in Two Trees in three, four hours. Then I'll take you back to Millie's.”
“When?”
“Sunday night.”
“Sunday night?” I should have known. “I can't go to Two Trees! I was planning on going up to the park! And besides, I don't have any clothes! I didn't bring anything! All of my stuff is at Millie's!”
Jess was unfazed. He smiled at me. I was hot. Well, sort of.
“You're about Mary's size,” he said, referring to his sister. “You can borrow some of her clothes.”
“Nice of you to offer,” I said, sarcastically. “But I don't have a toothbrush … or a comb …” A stupid thing to say since I had all these twists in my hair.
Jess looked at the top of my head, and grinned. His whole face was turned upward with his smile.
“Juanita, they sell toothbrushes all over the country. Even in Two Trees, Montana. And as for a comb …” He made a face and pulled one of my corkscrews of hair. I swatted at his hand.
I wished I had a trout to hit him with.
“This is kidnapping, you know,” I said, trying to act upset. I wiped Dracula's slobber off my jeans. In about four thousand years, I might get used to that dog's slobber.
Jess was not intimidated.
He laughed.
“Yeah. Ain't it?”
At Two Trees, Mignon, Carl, and Mary weren't surprised to see me. Mary handed me an apron and a spoon, told me she couldn't remember my recipe for buffalo wings and to hop to it. Said we'd have fifty hungry relatives to feed in a few hours. Mignon saw me and smiled that smile. Said she just happened to have an extra sleeping bag and pillow with her. Mary pointed out a tote bag full of my clothes. I was not fooled.
We ate, and I met every Gardiner relative west of the Missouri River. Although I caught some sideways looks (Jess says I'm the only African American queen for miles), everyone was warm and friendly. And they wouldn't stop feeding me. I ate so much, I was miserable.
But the plains made me nervous.
I stayed close to Mary and Mignon, and close to camp. The plains opened up on the east, the land stretching out flat and smooth for miles. And to the north, I could see the Rocky Mountains. There was nowhere to hide. It made my stomach jumpy.
So I kept to the small places.
The next morning I cooked breakfast for fifty people— the entire clan. I was so busy, I didn't notice the activity going on at the west campground. By the time I got breakfast cooked and served, there were those who were ready for lunch. It was one-thirty before one of Jess's female cousins took over and I headed back to Mary's trailer to lie down.
Just as I reached for the door handle, the drums started.
And I stopped to feel them.
When my daughter Bertie was in middle school and still listening to what I told her, she joined a little dance group that met after school in the auditorium. Bertie loved that class. They learned ballet, you know, dancing on your tippy toes. They learned modern dances with scarves and poles, and Irish folk dances (although I never could figure out why little black kids on the east side needed to know Irish folk dances. Did they teach African dance to the little Irish kids in the all-white suburbs of the city?).
After six weeks or so, they had a recital. The teacher and the students painted the sets, and made the costumes and props themselves. Those little girls were so proud.
They danced to Tchaikovsky and to Duke Ellington's “Satin Doll.” They tap-danced with cardboard top hats, and pretended they were cats in The Pink Panther.
And then the drums started.
Bertie and the other girls swayed back and forth to the intensity of the sound, then broke into a traditional West African dance. By the time the girls finished, we were all on our feet.
But it wasn't so much the dance we were responding to as the drums.
Now, like then, I felt the drums before I heard them.
The pounding rhythm caught up with my pulse and pulled it along to a faster beat. The blood raced through my veins to catch up, and my body began to move. The constant “tom, tom, tom” pulled at my guts and echoed deep into my bowels.
I ran over to join Mignon and Mary in the crowd, and watched as the men and boys I had served buffalo wings and hamburgers to yesterday afternoon danced.
I did not recognize them.
The cowboy hats, jeans, denim shirts, and lizard-skin boots had all gone. So had the wire-rimmed glasses, watches, and silver belt buckles. There were no Ray-Bans or Nike Air Jordan sneakers to be seen.
Their faces were painted, red and white on the cheek, and the work shirts had been replaced by bare skin or fawn-colored animal skins trimmed with feathers and multicolored beads. There was turquoise everywhere, and some of the clothes were marked with symbols I had never seen before.
The drummers sang and chanted, using words I did not understand. Their voices were high and screeching sometimes, low and almost mournful other times. The drums kept time. The syllables were foreign to me, but the meaning, somehow, got through.
I picked Jess and Carl out of the group, but just barely. The drums had changed them. They were other people now, strangers, living in another place and time. They were dancing for a dream long gone, or one yet to come.
They kept pace with the drum, lifting their knees high, bobbing their heads up and down. Jess's eyes were closed. His lips moved as if he were praying to himself. I wondered what he was thinking about. I wondered if he was thinking at all.
As I watched, the whole scene became hazy and strange, sort of like I was looking at the dancers through an old nylon stocking or something. Like a dream.
Real, but not real. And it touched me deep, in a place I can't describe in words.
It was like church. Sometimes, when you listen to the preacher, and something he says touches you, you feel hot tears slipping through the corners of your eyes. And your throat gets tight. Or when the hymn is especially great, and the joy in your heart overcomes you with reverence and pleasure. And you shout “Amen!”
That was what it was like.
Like religion. It was no wonder that Jess was not himself. He had got the spirit.
I had got it, too.
Got up real early the next day, washed up, and threw on some clothes. Put on the coffeepot, and left Mignon sleeping, buried under the quilts. Headed for the nearest Porta-Potty, but noticed it was way 'cross the campground, and I had to pee bad. So I decided to take my chances with nature. Grabbed the toilet paper and headed out toward the plains. Scared up some rabbits and a snake, as Abel would say. Scared myself, too.
Watched the sun come all the way up, and put my hand up to my forehead to see if I could see as far as Minnesota. That's what Jess had said about this place. “It's so flat that, on a clear day, you can see all the way to Minnesota.” Well, it was a clear day, and I could see far, but since I didn't know what Minnesota looked like, I wasn't sure if I saw it or not.
I turned to go back and had walked a little ways, too, before I realized that I was lost. An eagle flew over and screeched. I jumped and my blood ran cold. Stopped and went back the way I thought I came. But that wasn't right either.
The plains stretched out forever in front of me, and I could see good enough. I could see that there were no tents,
trailers, or trucks. No campfires, no stalls, no people. There was nothing but land, a few boulders and some scruffy little bushes.
My heart pounded in my chest and my ears, and I kept repeating to myself over and over, “Be cool, don't get upset, you're only a few steps away from camp,” but it didn't work. My stomach started quivering when I turned the opposite way and found myself staring into a solid wall of green pine trees that led up into the mountains.
I twirled around again and tried to go back over my steps. Looked for the rock where I'd set the toilet paper. Searched and searched for the little rabbit hole I'd stumbled over, the skinny little bush I'd seen with its tiny purple flowers.
Instead, I felt the wall of green begin to close in on me from behind, while the huge, open sky began to drop onto my head. And while I wanted to run toward the open plains to get away, where would I go? What was out there?
So I let the sky push me down onto the ground until I was curled into a little ball, shaking like a leaf and staring at the wall of green that seemed to be moving in my direction.
“Juanita! Juanita! Where are you? Juanita!”
I could barely hear his voice because my heart was pounding in my ears. I felt him before I saw him, because I had closed my eyes against the huge moving green wall that was threatening to swallow me up.
“Juanita! My God, what's the matter? What's happened?”
He covered me with his body, and gently uncurled my shoulders with his hands, pulling me to my feet, then supporting me when my shaking knees buckled.
“Jesus Christ, Juanita! Where the hell have you been? What happened to you? Did a bear attack?” He looked wildly around us, scanning the landscape with a trained eye for telltale signs of his brother bear.
“N-n-no.” I could barely talk with my teeth chattering. “I-I went to pee an-and got l-lost.”
Dancing on the Edge of the Roof Page 13