The Liberation of Ravenna Morton

by Suzanne Jenkins

  “We had to try,” Regina said. “I knew when April called Maria and she didn’t want to know the truth that it was going to end badly, breaking Mama’s heart.”

  “It’s too late,” Ravenna said. “It’s already broken.”

  Seconds passed with no one speaking, Mike patting Ravenna’s hand.

  Walter took his arm off her shoulder, trying to avoid looking at the clock, wanting nothing more than to leave the stifling cabin. He’d run back up the street to his spacious glass and timber mansion on the hill overlooking the Kalamazoo River and watch the football game. When he couldn’t stand it anymore, he spoke up. “How much longer do I have to sit here and listen to my family whine? The only one who should care is Nimaamaa. So she’s dead. Get over it. We didn’t even know her, so it shouldn’t affect us at all. Just pretend she’s still alive, living in White Plains.”

  Son Michael was struggling to keep his eyes open. “Well, if you’ll all excuse me, as much as I’d like to sit around feeling sorry for myself, I had a brutal day saving lives, and I’ve got to go back and do it all over again tomorrow,” he said, pushing away from the table.

  No one argued with him as the others got up to leave, including Dexter, who hadn’t said a word.

  April didn’t hang around long after. She made her way back out through the woods to her car, her flashlight sweeping the ground. Moments like this tested her faith. What was the point of God taking Maria so soon after Gus died? He was the last barrier to her for the birth family having contact. April thought of her brokenhearted mother, who appeared to shrink after hearing the news.

  When she got home, she went to her office, first kissing Ted, who was planted in front of the TV watching political programs. Before she started working, she searched for Maria’s obituary online. It told April more of Maria’s story.

  “Maria Stephanie Patos Wynd, wife of John, mother of Esmeralda Eleni, died on June 25th after a short illness,” April read. Esmeralda? What kind of Greek name was that? She would later find out that John’s maternal grandfather spent time in Spain during World War II. So she had a niece named Esmeralda. Getting up from her desk chair, she went to the stairwell of the lower level of their house.

  “Ted, I have to go back to my mother’s for a few,” she hollered.

  Ted came to the bottom of the stairs. “Why? I don’t want you running through the woods after dark.”

  “Do you want to come with me?” she asked.

  “Be careful,” he said, laughing.

  “Of course,” April said, laughing back.

  She got into her car and repeated the activities of the early evening, parking off the road and carefully picking her way through the marshy path to her mother’s cabin. The smell of wood smoke greeted her again, and she saw lights; her father would still be there. Making her presence known by making the hoot owl sound before she got to the cabin so as not to frighten them, it was something all the children did.

  “Hoooooot,” she called softly. She saw movement in the cabin and approached the door. “Boozhoo Nimaamaa.”

  Ravenna was waiting at the door with Mike standing behind her.

  “April! Best not to come through the woods after dark alone,” Mike said, scolding her. “What’s going on?”

  They ushered her in, Ravenna holding on to her arm.

  “I have some news, and I didn’t want to wait,” April said. It was obvious Ravenna had been crying. Parents grieving together for the child they never knew. How awful would that be? “Maria has a child, a girl, Esmeralda.”

  “Esmeralda? What kind of Greek name is that?” Mike said, appalled.

  April laughed. “I thought the same thing. But a name is not important.”

  “No one ever said a thing about a child,” Mike said.

  “I think we should contact the daughter, don’t you? What do you think, Mama?”

  Ravenna wiped her eyes with a cloth hankie. It was clear she was frightened again. What if the girl didn’t want to have anything to do with her either, like the mother? She hadn’t said anything to the family, but the truth was that she took Maria’s rejection personally.

  The circumstances of Maria’s birth came flooding back to Ravenna—the desperation, the horror of having a baby when she was thirteen; the memories were destructive. She’d aged considerably from the stress in the past weeks since Gus’s death. Worries about the well-being of the remainder of her family haunted her during the day and robbed her of sleep at night. “How old could she be? What if she rejects us? I’m not sure I’m up for any more guilt.”

  Mike put his arm around her shoulder. “I can find out how old she is. Ravenna, we need to try. Let’s just give it a try. We have nothing to lose. The girl doesn’t know us, so if she rejects us, it won’t be personal,” he said, as if reading her mind. “It will be of circumstance. What do you say?” He patted her arm while they waited.

  Ravenna wouldn’t be rushed again. She looked at April. “Can you do the dirty work again?” she asked finally.

  April nodded.

  “I do want to meet her,” April said. “I think it’s essential now. I want to know Maria, and this is the only way.” She kissed her parents good-bye and left for her car under their watchful eye.

  Her father would spend the night and sneak out at dawn as he always did. Knowledge of this was a joke among the children, never disclosed to their parents.

  ~ ~ ~

  The next day, April was behind in her cases at work, but she made it a priority to type a short letter introducing herself to Esme Wynd and telling her how awful she felt about upsetting her mother when she’d called. “The last thing I ever wanted to do was to upset Maria,” she wrote. “I want to meet you and hope you’ll get in touch when it’s convenient. Let’s get to know one another.” She added her cell phone number and signed it. The letter went out with the afternoon mail. April was on pins and needles for the next week. When Esme finally called, it was to tell her she was coming.

  “I hate telephone conversations. They are as bad as text messages. When we talk, we need to be face to face,” Esme said.

  Now, of course, she was regretful that she hadn’t at least given April a chance to tell her about her grandparents still being alive. She wasn’t ready for this first meeting with Ravenna, but longed for it in theory.

  As she trudged behind Wiley through the marsh grass toward the cabin, her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry. She didn’t realize she was still holding Wiley’s offered hand, grasping it, hanging on for both the treacherous journey and the unknown that lay ahead.

  She needn’t have worried, because as they climbed the embankment, she could see the top of Ravenna’s head as she strained to see Esme. Esme thought, My mother’s stature didn’t come from this side of the family, when Ravenna came into view. Willowy was the word that came to mind. She gave the appearance of being tall, standing ramrod straight, with hair as brown as her own and just a few streaks of gray through it, like Maria’s before she got sick. But when they stood face to face, the top of Ravenna’s head just skimmed Esme’s chin.

  Then Ravenna grabbed Esme and buried her face in the soft cashmere coat fabric; Esme thought she might be weeping. Uncertain what she should do, her family wasn’t demonstrative, this was almost uncomfortable. But then she thought she heard the woman saying something in an unknown language interspersed with English words: little baby, love, Maria, over and over again.

  Wiley stood by and facilitated the meeting by placing his hand on Esme’s back and the back of Ravenna. She thought he was putting just a faint bit of pressure on her to lean into the hug. Ravenna pulled back from Esme, looking at Wiley, and spoke words that were musical and beautiful but unknown to Esme, and he answered back. She concluded they were speaking Ojibwa. Ravenna pulled an ironed hankie out of her pocket and offered it to Esme.

  “Come with me,” she said in her lilting and nasal voice, leading her into the cabin.

  She has an accent, Esme thought, surprised, but she would find
that speaking their language lent itself to those inflections, and she would have them herself, in time.

  “You look so much like my sister Nadie. You will meet her, I hope. And April and Regina, you could be their sister.” She turned to Esme. “Did you bring pictures of your mama?”

  Esme, stunned at her absentmindedness, shook her head. “I should have. I wasn’t thinking, obviously. I’ll call my father and ask him to send pictures right away.”

  They reached the cabin, and Esme saw its charm but also that this was a subsistence lifestyle. Ravenna must want it; her children were educated and employed. Surely they wouldn’t hold back money from Ravenna. And Mike Hetris was an established artist. He must have money he could give her. There was a gigantic woodpile at least six feet high; Ravenna would barely be able to reach the top of it to pull wood down. It snaked its way from the cabin, which was about ten feet from the river’s edge, and acted as a border around the cabin, with a narrow opening that led into the woods.

  The cabin proper was built at the end of a row of structures that were added over the years. So that although it wasn’t technically like the longhouses the Iroquois built, the Mortons referred to it as a longhouse, because it was long.

  There was an impressive collection of bentwood furniture on a covered brick patio, which stretched across the back. Esme imagined that in nicer weather, they’d spend most of their time outdoors. Wiley held the rickety screen door open for the women to pass through. The smell of vanilla, apples and wood smoke struck her first, and then the undertones of herbs and something cooking on the stove. The room they entered was a large space that appeared to be the main room, and what looked like a sleeping area was behind a log wall. There was a piece of frayed rug hanging from the opening, and it was pulled aside to allow heat from the wood stove to reach the back. A narrow doorway covered with another remnant of a beautifully woven and dyed rug accessed the rambling rooms behind the cabin.

  Around the perimeter hung apples strung on twine to dry along with what looked like plums. Esme would later find out that the offspring of ancient fruit trees from primordial forest still blossomed and bore fruit in the summer, but the apples were from trees planted by Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century. Her children brought her fresh fruit and produce, but Ravenna continued to forage and gather and put up for the winter. It was what her mother and her mother’s mother before her had done. It was so much part of her life to respect the land and make use of its bounty.

  Baskets caught Esme’s eye. It was clear from the bales of reed in the corner of the sleeping area and bunches of grasses hanging from the rafters that someone here was a weaver. Beautiful handled baskets were stacked one on top of the other, almost to the ceiling.

  “Are you a basket weaver?” Esme asked, thinking, Silly, what else would she need all of this stuff for? And as the words were out of her mouth, she remembered a small basket she bought at the Westchester Craft Show in White Plains the summer before. She closed her eyes and saw the little acorn-squash-shaped basket, perfectly formed with a lid and handles at the sides.

  “May I pick this up?” she asked, pointing to a lovely basket on the kitchen table. She turned it upside down and written in pencil, just like the one she had at home, were printed tiny letters spelling out Ravenna Morton, Saugatuck, Michigan. Chills ran up Esme’s spine. This is more than a coincidence, isn’t it? She turned to Ravenna, doing her best to control her voice, but the excitement of the discovery belied her attempt at composure.

  “I have one of your baskets,” she said. “Last summer I went to a craft show in the town I’m from, in White Plains. My mother was with me. There was a beautiful woman selling the baskets. I remembered her because her appearance was so striking.”

  “That would be my daughter Regina,” Ravenna replied. The full impact that Maria had met her sister but didn’t know it hit Esme, while Ravenna seemed to take the information in stride.

  “My mother talked to her. They touched hands. We had no way of knowing, of course. Oh, it’s so sad,” Esme said passionately, embarrassed in front of Wiley. “Regina might remember.”

  “Let’s have tea. It will help us make sense of this,” Ravenna said. She turned her back to Wiley and Esme.

  “I should go,” Wiley said.

  Ravenna turned to him. “Please stay,” she said. “I think you’ll help us, being here. Don’t you think, granddaughter? We need a level-headed man to help us keep on the right course.” She laughed, a light cackle, and Wiley joined in.

  “She’s pulling your leg,” he explained. “I’m more emotional than most women, you’ll see.”

  “Yes, yes,” Ravenna said. “You are a mess.”

  Esme wasn’t there yet; she couldn’t see the humor in the discovery. It was still too sad. She heard this stranger call her granddaughter. Would that ever become a reality for her? Was it necessary that it did? She suddenly missed her mother all over again. But she was here in Michigan, in a cabin by the side of a flowing river. This woman was her grandmother. She needed to try to get to know her, and the process would be slow, deliberate, and painful.

  “Regina does the craft shows?” she asked, wanting to continue the conversation but not the emotion.

  “Yes, she markets my baskets all over the country. It’s how I live,” Ravenna replied.

  “It’s what the whole family lives on,” Wiley said. “Don’t be modest, Miss Morton.” He looked at Esme. “Besides her own kids, she put her siblings through college and their kids, too, with baskets.”

  Ravenna cackled again. “You’ll go to hell, lying.”

  Esme figured the artist might not make enough to pay college tuitions, but a basket maker? She was impressed.

  Carrying two mugs of hot tea over to the table, Ravenna was watching Esme closely, worried the young woman was becoming overwhelmed. If it got too intense, she might leave, and then everyone would be mad at Ravenna for chasing her away. “Try not to take in too much,” Ravenna said.

  Esme looked at her gratefully but doubted it was possible to stay unscathed by what she was learning. “It might be too late,” she said. “I still can’t believe it. You’re Ravenna Morton. The name didn’t sound familiar at the time, but why would it? My mother has several baskets you wove. She keeps things in the baskets she loves. Loved.”

  The impact hadn’t hit yet; Maria owned and loved baskets that her unknown birth mother wove. How was this even possible?

  Ravenna was having her own inner dialogue. The idea that her daughter used the baskets touched her. She wove bits of her own spirit into her baskets. If her daughter handled the baskets, she had to have picked up some of the spiritual DNA they held. Some of her real, physical DNA, too. She looked at her hands; after the beating they had taken preparing the splints and weaving them tightly into a basket, her palms were calloused and scarred. She pulled out a chair and sat at the table with a plunk.

  “You’re sitting?” Wiley asked, surprised.

  “Eh, be quiet,” Ravenna whispered, frowning.

  Wiley chuckled. He raised his eyebrows at Esme, but she didn’t get it.

  “I want to sit next to the daughter of my own daughter so she can see into my eyes.”

  Eventually she’d have to bare her past because Ravenna didn’t want Esme to think giving Maria up was easy or that she’d had a choice. It was horrible, gut wrenching. But the past would remain private for the time being, because she believed Esme needed to get to know them first, needed to discover if they were likeable enough to bother with before secrets would be shared. Esme might be her granddaughter, but she was still a stranger. The entire family would be impacted once the truth was revealed. She’d do it in stages, too. Give each person a chance to absorb it in their own time.

  “Tell me your first impressions of this place,” Ravenna asked.

  Esme didn’t have to think too long. “Definitely the quiet and the lack of traffic. Traffic is horrible where I come from. Having to take a boat ride here; now that was a big first impressi
on,” Esme said. She left out her first impression of Wiley’s face.

  “Ah, yes. The boat. I have a canoe; if you look between those two trees, you can see the tip. It hangs there to keep dry and to prevent easy theft,” Ravenna said, pointing out the window over the sink at two white pines. A canoe hung on the largest tree. “I like a canoe because I’m The Indian Lady Who Comes to Town in a Canoe.”

  Although Ravenna kept her face deadpan, Wiley burst out laughing, but Esme didn’t understand right away.

  “She’s lived here all her life, and people still refer to her that way,” Wiley explained.

  “Oh, I get it,” Esme said, suddenly embarrassed. She didn’t say it out loud, but she thought, Awful.

  “My children hate it, but I don’t mind. I’ve been called much worse,” she admitted, studying Esme’s face, her discomfort with the racism clear. Ravenna changed the topic yet again. “I’ll show you how to get to the cabin from the road so you don’t always have to come by boat.”

  “I don’t drive,” Esme said.

  “You can ride a bike. It’s a safe bike ride,” Wiley said. “But I’m always available unless I’m out on a charter.”

  Esme tried not to respond, but involuntarily spurted out a little giggle. What a dope I am. Wiley is offering me a lift whenever I want. “Okay, well, thank you,” she said demurely, trying to cover up her childish response.

  But Wiley seemed to like it; he had a grin on his face. It was refreshing not being disregarded because he was the hot bait guy.

  The first time he’d heard the expression, he was filling a bait order and Katherine answered the phone. Covering the receiver with her hand, she whispered, frowning, “Hot bait guy, you have a call,” handing the phone over to him. If money hadn’t been at stake, she would have corrected the caller. She didn’t like people deriding the bait shop or its owners.

  After Wiley spoke to the caller and hung up, he turned to Katherine. “So I just booked a charter for a bachelorette party. Will you go?”