The Liberation of Ravenna Morton

by Suzanne Jenkins

  The sound of the rain woke Peggy, while the little baby stayed sound asleep. Peggy washed up a third time that day, dressing in a loose dress to hide the wad of folded rags. The after-birth cramps started as soon as the baby started sucking and were as strong as labor now. Peggy knew they tended to get worse with each birth. Dragging the roll of bloody fabric and newspapers out the front door of the longhouse, she’d do the worst dirty work out of sight of her children. She’d dug a hole in the compost pile to stuff the papers and then cover them over with dirt. Later on, she’d take the sheets to the river to wash, but for now, leave them to soak in the rain.

  The children were quiet while the rain splashed the corrugated roof, standing close and hugging the outside of the house to avoid getting wet.

  Peggy opened the door. “Come in out of the rain. Thank you for being so quiet. Would you like to see your new sister?”

  The children filed into the house, waiting in the kitchen while Peggy went to get Pules out of the same cradle they’d slept in as infants. As they crowded around her, shushing each other, Ravenna hung back, allowing the others to get close first.

  On a clear day, the sun would be making its way over the trees and soon the front of the cabin facing the river would be in shadow. But this afternoon, the summer rain turned into a thunderstorm, with high winds and lightning. Peggy kept the children in the house for the rest of the day, and the younger ones played games while the older helped her with chores. Every hour she’d run to the outhouse to change her rags. Then she’d go into the dark quiet of the room she shared with her husband to nurse Pules. She sat with her back up against the headboard, imagining what Robert’s reaction would be when he discovered she’d given birth that day.

  “Nimaamaa.” Ravenna was standing at the side of Peggy’s bed. She’d fallen asleep, nursing. “Father isn’t home yet, and it’s dark.”

  Peggy sat up quickly, the baby at her breast waking to nurse again. Peggy saw that it was late. The sun had set, and the room was dark.

  “Light a candle, please,” she said, straining to see out the one high window in her room. “Aaniin ezhiwebak agwajiing?” How is it outside? They spoke Americanized English to the children to ease their time in school, but when it was appropriate, their native tongue, Ojibwa, came out.

  Ravenna lit a candle and held it up for Peggy. “It’s still raining.”

  “Maybe he stayed late tonight, to wait until the thunder stopped,” Peggy said, hoping that was why her responsible husband who was never, ever late, would still not be home. “Don’t worry. Did you see to it that your brothers and sisters ate?” She realized she was holding on to Ravenna’s hand tightly.

  Ravenna nodded her head.

  Peggy sat back down on the bed and leaned against the headboard. She was exhausted.

  Throughout the night, the infant woke up to nurse, and when Peggy discovered the bed next to her was still empty, panic would resurface. She did the same thing each time it happened, talking sense, making excuses for him. He’d decided to hang out with the other men after work, something he’d never done before. Or he’d been given the opportunity to make extra money. But when he left the house, he knew she was in labor. He would never have stayed away unless it was an emergency. But what could keep him from coming home?

  By daybreak, she knew he was dead. And when two men from his work, a supervisor she recognized from town and a man who introduced himself as the owner of the mill, came by at eight, it was confirmed. She thought later of the bloody sheet and canvas spread over the front yard and started to laugh. The men were so uncomfortable standing before the young woman with the tiny newborn in her arms, a wet spot on the front of her shirt where milk had seeped through when she was nursing and the evidence that she’d recently given birth on the lawn next to her house, they’d hardly been able to get the words out of their mouths.

  Peggy invited them in, although she could have let them off the hook and said, “Yes, I know he’s gone; be on your way.” But she wanted to see them squirm a little bit, and her curiosity had gotten the best of her. She needed facts. The hows and whys. It was so stupid, the way he died. And even worse, they never thought to come and fetch her while he lay dying in the Douglas Hospital. She could have been with him. He died about the same time she was giving birth, so it wasn’t true that she’d run to his bedside. But she’d have liked the option.

  “Why am I just finding this out now?” she asked.

  The men were embarrassed standing before her.

  “We couldn’t find the house,” one answered apologetically. “We tried. The storm was so bad the road was flooded over.”

  She understood about Riverside Trail being treacherous in the rain. She wanted them out of her house now, but it would be temporary. They’d take some responsibility for what was really an accident in the shop. A piece of machinery malfunctioned and injured her husband, killing him. To some employers, an Indian was expendable, but this one liked Robert. He would moderately provide for Peggy and her nine children, to keep a roof over their head and have money to buy whatever it was a family of ten needed, within reason. Eventually, he’d help market Peggy’s baskets.

  Summer ended, and the older children went back to school. Every morning, they’d walk to Sixty-Second Street together to wait for the school bus that took them six miles into Douglas. She’d return again at three to wait for it. The care of the children filled Peggy’s life, and it took away some of the intensity of her grief. If their families had still been around, she could have surrendered the care of her children and stayed in bed or, even better, taken her own life. But since she was alone, it wasn’t a choice.

  The harvest wasn’t as meager as they’d feared because of the rains, which finally came the day Robert was killed. Peggy would walk up the hillside with her newborn on her back, Nadie on her hip and the two others tagging along. Peggy would work harvesting ears of corn, the children stuffing the ears in burlap sacks. Every few hours she’d stop and sit under a tree at the edge of a field to nurse Pules, while the two little ones carefully dug potatoes. At the end of the day when the sun was beginning its descent over the trees, they’d walk back down the hill to wash up and walk back to the bus stop.

  On a Friday at the end of September, the owner of the sawmill was waiting outside of the cabin for Peggy as they were coming out of the woods, dragging a huge bag of corn, a child riding her hip and one on her back. Two little children followed close by, one with a picnic basket and the other dragging a giant potato vine, trying not to let the potatoes touch the ground.

  “Mrs. Morton, can I talk to you?” he asked, walking alongside of her.

  She ignored him as she stashed the bag of corn in the shed. Taking the potato vine from her son, Peggy went to the water pump behind the house to wash the dirt off the potatoes, which would be their dinner.

  The man followed her timidly, watching her work. The river was moving fast, a light fog starting to lift off the water as the air cooled off. “I’m sorry about everything. I want to help you in some way.”

  “I don’t know your name,” Peggy said.

  “Patos,” he answered. “George Patos. The men in the shop said you might need some help with your harvest. I’m not a farmer, but I can help you pick corn. My sister’s boy, Mike, will be here for the weekend. It’ll give him something to do.”

  Peggy wanted to tell him to drop dead, but she needed the help. The corn needed picking before the deer noticed their other food supplies were drying up as the autumn advanced. Sadly, time was marching on without Robert.

  “Okay, I could use the help,” she said. “Please go because I need to get ready to pick my children up from the bus.”

  He nodded his head and turned to leave. She’d only take advantage of the help he and his nephew offered because she was desperate.

  Chapter 5

  The harvest completed with George and Mike’s help, Peggy Morton’s longhouse was filled with food hanging to dry, meat she’d harvested alone—venison, wil
d turkey, dove—dressed out and salted. Herbs hung from the rafters, and canvas sacks of potatoes and dried corn and beans were suspended from hooks on the walls to protect them from mold. She used wooden boxes set down into the soil as root cellars, and they were filling with carrots and turnips and other root vegetables.

  The kitchen garden would continue to produce as long as Peggy was diligent about covering the plants when frost started. Every night she, Ravenna and her oldest son, John, took the time to place old canvas sails over the plants. In the morning when the sun started to show over the hillside, they’d gently remove the sails and fold them up. The extra work provided fresh vegetables until the first hard freeze.

  The winter after Robert died, an ample wood supply existed because of his dogged woodcutting. The family would never have to worry about heat no matter how cold it got. As soon as the snow melted that spring, Peggy made it a priority to have the children collect fallen wood for kindling and to fire the wood cookstove. The older ones hunted for downed trees. Everyone got into the act, using the handsaw to cut through the larger pieces. They complained that their right arm was twice the size of the left, except for Ravenna, who was left-handed.

  Mike came to help every weekend. His right arm grew bigger, too. “My bicep is huge, but Ravenna’s might be bigger,” he said, teasing.

  Along with the firewood, the children collected birch and ash wood for Peggy’s baskets. She used only found materials or fallen wood, preserving standing trees. They’d drag the logs home, and the process of peeling the bark off and splitting the wood began. Peggy used a four-pound hammer-like tool to pound the split ash. The sound of the banging was a reminder to the children of the effort it took to support them; the baskets were the only income the family had besides what George gave them. Peggy also used the sweet grass that grew in the marshy areas around the cabin. She’d cut it and wash it in hot water boiling over an open fire. Then she’d hang it in the cabin to dry, and its sweet vanilla scent filled the room.

  Peggy learned to weave from her mother, who’d learned from hers. In the early days of Douglas, they’d trade baskets to farmers for oats and wheat. George Patos took the finished baskets into town, where two souvenir shops bought all he had. Native baskets were growing in popularity as tourists purchased baskets marketed as woven by a real local Indian. All the children watched Peggy weave, but only Ravenna showed the interest to learn. By the time she was eleven, her baskets were selling as well as Peggy’s were. Collectors said they could feel the spiritual connection to the earth when they held Ravenna’s baskets, adding her earliest creations to their collections. Peggy and George laughed about this. If they only knew, Ravenna secretly thought, that something so beautiful was made from grasses that grew in a swamp.

  ***

  The first time Mike came to help during the harvest, Ravenna was shy around him, staying close to her mother. Over the following months, he worked at farm chores as Peggy prepared the cabin for winter, becoming like an older, trusted son whose help she accepted because she was desperate. Peggy’s grief over losing Robert slowly faded as the task of providing for her children grew. The children looked forward to his arrival from Chicago every Friday. Ravenna looked forward to it, too, and they bantered back and forth like siblings.

  One afternoon, the children were standing along the river with fishing lines thrown into the water.

  “Hey, squaw!” Michael yelled over to Ravenna. “Hand me that bait box.”

  Ravenna could feel the gooseflesh traveling up her arms, and her younger sister looked up at her, watching for her response. The family had put up with their share of racism, people calling them redskins and worse.

  “Calling me a squaw in that way is an insult,” she said. “It’s a beautiful word that you should use to honor a woman, not shout orders at her.” After she spoke, the other children looked at Mike and nodded their heads in agreement with her, smirking at him.

  “How was I supposed to know?” he asked innocently.

  “It’s your ignorance,” she said angrily. “You should know. You’ve been around us long enough that you should make it your business to know the proper way to speak to me.” She tossed her long hair, refusing to look at him for the rest of the evening.

  Mike felt awful about it, too, going to Peggy later and telling her what happened. Peggy repeated the explanation Ravenna had given him. Squaw was a beautiful word that meant everything that made a female a woman.

  “You better apologize to Ravenna,” Peggy instructed. “She will hold a grudge, you know.”

  Mike had learned that she was strong and opinionated. Ravenna was growing up, and Mike noticed this, too. He slept with the other boys in the back part of the longhouse, which was the original tarpaper shack. One night he got up to use the outhouse and heard whispering and giggling coming from the small cove. He tiptoed around the outhouse, and that’s when he saw Ravenna bathing with her sister. Heart pounding, he knew what he was doing could get him in trouble, but he couldn’t help himself. She was beautiful; there was just enough moonlight for him to make out that she was a woman. He knew that if Peggy caught him peeping, he’d be banned from coming back. The next morning, he couldn’t take his eyes off Ravenna.

  “Stop staring at me,” she said, noticing. “You’re being creepy.”

  Mike quickly looked away.

  “Ravenna!” Peggy said. “Please be respectful.” She looked at Mike suspiciously after that, attempting to keep a closer watch on the couple, but it would be futile as they started considering each other with a different eye, a romantic one.

  Ravenna noticed Michael, how handsome he was—tall, lean, with a wonderful sense of humor and personality. And Michael could only think of Ravenna’s body. They talked when they worked in the field side by side or while Ravenna prepared her splints or braided the sweet grasses she would use for baskets. Crouching down beside her, he was intrigued with the way her hands manipulated the grass, fingers long and thin but strong and precise in movement.

  “You really know what you’re doing,” he observed. “I wonder if I could learn.”

  Ravenna stopped what she was doing and looked at him. “Of course you could learn. You can count, can’t you? Basket weaving is all about the mathematics.” She placed a splint in his hand and guided him, the touch of her hand on his sending heat waves through his flesh.

  They started sneaking out of bed at night to meet. Innocent, they talked in whispered voices, wading out to a rock in the river, where they would sit until the gold line along the horizon revealed the sun was going to be up soon. By July, they were fighting the physical pull young people succumb to. Kissing each other passionately, but limiting their contact to when they were on the rock because of the false sense of security it gave them. We can’t go too far sitting on a rock, can we?

  Passion would override their common sense and the fear of Peggy, and soon the kissing continued when they were on dry land. Michael planned when he was going to have sex with her, climbing the hill through the woods to the field, pulling Ravenna along behind him. There was a grassy lawn next to the hedgerow, and it was private and safe. Michael took his shirt off and laid it on the grass for Ravenna. They sat together for a while, pretending they weren’t going to do more than kiss, but it was difficult to stop. He pushed her back, and Ravenna allowed it because she didn’t know what was going to happen. Confronted with the actual act, she couldn’t do it. Wanting to get down the hill, away from Mike, Ravenna knew she’d narrowly avoided compromising her self-worth.

  The couple didn’t speak the next day, worried Peggy would notice something amiss. They limited their time together when Peggy was around, but the temptation was always there in spite of their precautions.

  Chapter 6

  Mike went back to Chicago for his senior year of high school. Thirteen-year-old Ravenna started school again, terrified because in September, her period never came. Every time she went to the outhouse, its absence sent waves of fear through her. During October, she w
as sick to her stomach every morning. Pretending nothing was wrong, she prayed denial would make the problem go away.

  Mike came back to help with the harvest, but Ravenna kept her distance, staying close to Peggy during the day and not venturing out at night when everyone was in bed. Mike didn’t pursue her, either.

  By the following winter, she was hiding her belly from her mother. It was easy as long as the weather was cold. It was a brutal winter, everyone wearing as many layers as they could. Halfway through the month, the cold spell broke.

  “This is as good a time as any to get a bath in,” Peggy said.

  They had a big, copper tub she’d fill with water and then add boiling water from the teakettle and a large stockpot she’d keep on the woodstove. She set it up in her bedroom so the bather could have some privacy. The four little ones got in first. The older ones dragged the tub to the doorway and poured the water out on the ground. They’d bathe separately in fresh water.

  Ravenna held back, handing toweling off and refilling the kettle, stoking the woodstove to keep the water hot, helping the little ones dress. Finally, it was her turn. She took the kettle and filled the tub, preparing everything so her mother wouldn’t feel it necessary to barge in while she was naked. She got her clean clothes ready and pulled the curtain closed. She quickly got in the tub, lathered up and rinsed off in record time, and was just stepping out of the tub with a towel pulled around her chest when Peggy came in with an armload of basket-making supplies to put away.

  “I’ll get out of your way,” she said. As she was preparing to exit, she glanced up and saw her daughter’s breasts. Ravenna was only thirteen.