by Laura Hunter
“I’ll convince her. I got her to change my name.” Tall Corn nestled the baby into the crook of his arm, preparing the child for sleep. “What Cherokee man can show his face as Dancing Squirrel?”
Two Tears turned to stare at Tall Corn. “Dancing Squirrel? That sounds like a girl’s name.” She bit her lip trying not to smile.
“My grandmother. It was her idea.” Tall Corn laid Briar in his hammock and set it to swaying. “She wanted a girl to follow Beloved Mother for the village.”
“So that’s why you married me?” Two Tears’ scraping knife plunked on the table. “To be the next Beloved Mother?”
Tall Corn put his arms around Two Tears. “Never. I married you because Great Spirit sent you to be my wife.” He kissed her on her forehead and ran his finger down her scarred cheek with tenderness.
Ordinary June days in Carolina gather enough heat to tassel corn, but Sister Sun cannot convince the ground to hold her warmth this season. And Great Spirit is not cooperating, so she drags a dingy anvil shaped cloud over her face and sulks. Soil holds tight to every mote of sunshine it gathers to strengthen freshening roots. But by dusk, heat escapes bit by bit. Something is out of order in nature. Sister Sun wonders if the crops can produce what villagers will need this time.
She has watched homeless children sleep under newspapers in alleys of Knoxville. She has seen the hungry in shabby coats stand in Al Capone’s soup kitchen line in Chicago. She watches Tall Corn work his fields, toting buckets of water from the branch to water his corn. And she casts a cloud over Briar’s head for his boyish sluggishness.
Repulsed by this year they call 1933, she burns the Midwest day after day and returns to the Carolinas, to slip behind the mountains, leaving pink, lavender and coral strips of ribbon to mark her path.
June, 1933. Near a Carolina mountaintop beneath a copse of fir, the white woman Two Tears and her Cherokee husband sat on the front porch of their unpainted clapboard house as the sky turned grey. Tall Corn leaned his back against the cane bottom chair in which his wife rested and watched a dirty cloud hover in the sky. He shifted against the chair leg to relieve his itching back.
Two Tears yawned.
Tall Corn rubbed his callused hand beneath her long, full skirt, up and down her calf. “Tired?” he asked.
“A bit,” she said. “What with Beloved Mother in the village. I chase myself all day to get food cooked and see to Briar.” She motioned for her son, a lanky boy of eight, to come to her. “Come give me a hug,” she said. The child did not rise. “And still find time to study the book. It takes so long for me to read Cherokee.”
“Beloved Mother don’t expect you to know all’s in that book overnight.” Tall Corn spit tobacco juice off the porch. The spittle created a circle of russet dust by the rock step. “Do what you can with what time you got.”
“She took me in all the time knowing I’m white.” Two Tears pushed her dusty brown hair away from her scarred face. “Helped me birth Briar.” She scratched and then rubbed her lower arm where a mosquito had drawn blood. “If I’m going be the next Beloved Mother, I got to know things.”
“She understands. That’s what she’s all about. Understanding. Good judgment. That kind a thing.” Tall Corn shifted his weight off her chair and sat upright. “Looks like rain in that there cloud. That’s good. Briar’ll go to the fields with me tomorrow, and you study the book.”
Out of the dusky dark, Briar spoke. “I don’t want to go to the fields. I want to stay with Mama.”
“Don’t whine,” Tall Corn said. “Go inside to bed. Sun’ll be here early.” He stood and offered his hand to Two Tears. “Walk with me to the branch, Wife. We’ll watch the moon come over the mountain.”
Two Tears slipped her arm around his waist, and they stepped off the porch together. When they entered the trees, both shivered against the damp.
Draped in impending darkness, Two Tears confessed. “Just don’t know I can pass that last test. I just don’t know.”
Tall Corn stroked her back.
“You got no idea what I would have to do,” she said.
“No matter. You’re my wife, even if you fail.”
From ahead, over the rush of branch water, a bullfrog belched in response.
Chapter 4
From where Beloved Mother stood on the ridge, the village looked like a cluster of brown mushrooms. The roofs were so dark it was as if a fungus had moved through, smothering all living things. No one moved about. No dogs in the road. No men in the fields.
When Two Tears and the child had come to stay, Beloved Mother took to sleeping on the ground, Great Spirit’s bosom. Times lying awake, she questioned her purpose as diligently as Sister Sun and Brother Moon questioned the first man and his obstinacy on what he could and should not do, for she imagined herself a mere mother, not a Beloved Mother. But the land called to her and she answered, allowing passion for the forest to seep into her soul. She lay in moistness under tree canopies that smothered out underbrush, in dampness that quieted the softest sound. She slept and woke to chirps of birds talking among themselves. She watched open skies by day and noted their prophetic stars at night as they split the heavens and marked the months. She listened as creatures interrupted forest quiet, creatures that saw themselves as safe, even in the presence of man. With this, her being absorbed the essence of earth. Nights she still waited for Great Spirit to speak to her, to call her by name, to give her direction and wisdom for her people.
She awakened in the night with an urge to go to the village. She had been there only a fortnight before, when she raised a rod to the white man called Jackson for entering the village. He had come, heavy with liquor, asking for someone named Mona.
“There’s no Mona. Only Two Tears,” she lied. Her answer surprised her. She had come to accept the young wife of her son. In time, perhaps, Two Tears would learn what she knew, so her people would be safe.
Beloved Mother, now gazing down at what appeared to be a sleeping village, knew why she felt summoned. Light, feathery spirit wisps hovered over the rock chimneys of two different cabins, Great Spirit’s sign that death resided in those cabins. Beloved Mother walked back a ways and called to Briar in the voice of the owl, but he did not answer. She waited and called again.
Death teased her by sending a possum across her path, the young hanging on their mother’s back, one stacked on the other. The possum wiggled her pink, pointed nose and dragged her hairless tail. She curled back her lips to show sharp teeth then glanced sideways at Beloved Mother. She hissed, daring Beloved Mother to cross some invisible line, a reminder that this trail belonged to her and her joeys. Having claimed her place, she dug her pink nails into the dirt to maintain her stability as she sauntered into underbrush.
Beloved Mother wrapped her shawl tight against the morning chill and the shiver the possum sent through her body. She looked again at the village below. She moved her woven pine straw basket to her other arm. Empty, except for one cure.
“Oh Great One, what have I done?” she whispered. Here she stood with no healing herbs. The only other means for healing she carried was her gourd rattle. She knew from the Beloved Mother who trained her that Great Spirit would give only three sunrises before the souls of the sick would merge with the spirit wisp. Once merged, they would float to the river where the horned serpent Uktena would take them under. Without her healing power, they will lose their chance to soar into the eastern sky.
Beloved Mother reprimanded herself for coming so far empty-handed. She would only be able to create a potion of pine needles and pine bark. That would suffice, if the sickness were no more than runny eyes and sneezes. If more, she would need what she left at home. I must be getting old, she thought. She had no choice but to turn back to Tall Corn’s house and collect what she needed for healing.
Halfway down the mountain, she called again to Briar.
Tall Corn answered. They met near the overhang where water seeped through ancient rock layers and mosses covered the ground
. Tall Corn carried a basket filled with cedar chips, garlic, ginseng, wild raspberry leaves and a ginger root, its original stock traded by a Jamaican slave to Beloved Mother’s great-grandmother before the white man’s country cut itself apart with war.
“Why did you leave your field?” she asked her son. “Where’s the white boy?”
“He sleeps in the house,” Tall Corn answered. “If he heard, he couldn’t answer. He doesn’t know the language of the owl yet.”
“Two Tears does him an injustice.” Beloved Mother shook her head. “Tend the fields. Speak the animal languages. He has to learn.” Beloved Mother took the full basket from Tall Corn. “His mother has managed my tests so far, but I have little faith she will pass the final test. I should have chosen someone else.” She shook her head, knowing she may have made a fatal mistake.
“Two Tears is the only daughter you will ever have,” said Tall Corn. “When I return, I’ll pull Briar by his long legs into the field with me.” He laughed. “And Two Tears will succeed. The Great Spirit would not have sent her if he had not wanted her to follow you.”
Great Spirit tosses a thundercloud aside and dozes a time longer, giving young Sister Sun time to brush the mist skyward so she can warm the ground and arouse morning creatures. He can rest easy now.
Beloved Mother hurried to the village. On cabin porches and in hallways that split cabins into two rooms, speckled dogs lay on their bellies. None barked or whined as she approached.
Air in the valley, unlike that on the mountain, was colder in the shadows. When she arrived, it was past time to begin cooking for the day, yet no smoke rose from chimneys. Beloved Mother wondered if the illness was stronger than the Great Spirit’s gift of fire or if the people had wasted the ash with water to kill the fire itself. To have done so would be a serious mark against the village. Fire, even mere embers, must be kept alive, even in warmest weather.
Beloved Mother opened the door to the first cabin where a spirit mist hung overhead. The sulfurous smell of stale urine and sweaty bodies kept too warm met her before she stepped inside. Illness permeated the room. She hummed, a humming that eased into a low singing voice, more chant than song. Family of the child moved away from the child’s bed as she neared. They did not speak, for she, as Beloved Mother, must first invite them to do so. She offered no such invitation.
On a bed of boards attached to the wall lay a child, a boy not yet three summers. She saw by his open mouth that his meat-grinding teeth had not yet appeared. Standing over the child, she shook the gourd rattle lightly. The child didn’t move. She shook again, harder this time. The child didn’t flinch. She moved back and forth down the bed, shaking the gourd over all the child’s body, chanting louder with each movement. If she had not seen the rise and fall of his thin chest, she would have thought that his soul had already left his body.
Beloved Mother spoke to the family, now a huddle against the far wall. “Who’s his mother?” she asked.
A bony girl, no more than fifteen, inched forward.
“Tell me.”
No one responded.
“Has he touched a forbidden animal?”
The child-mother interlocked her fingers before her pouched belly to stop her hands from shaking and told of her son’s illness in jumps of words: his fever, his runny nose, his dry cough followed by his listlessness. In the night, his body had burned to the touch, so she put out the fire to cool him. It did not help. She removed his breeches and shirt. That did not help. He would take no water. Then he fell asleep before dawn, and no one had been able to wake him. She sent her younger brother up the mountain trail to the house of Tall Corn to find her, for she believed Beloved Mother could heal any illness. Her brother had not returned.
Beloved Mother told the mother to bring light. In the glow of the kerosene lantern, Beloved Mother leaned close and saw something she had never seen before. Red spots over all his body, as if the ant had tried to eat him alive.
She began with a drink of pine needle and bark potion to take away the redness of his eyes and to treat the body as it overheated. If this did not return the wisp of soul that had left the body and now floated above the cabin, she would take him to the water and dip him in seven times to cleanse the evil spirit from his soul.
When she tried to feed the child the drink, he did not swallow. He slept the sleep of the winter bear. She drew the light closer and saw the same red bumps on the back of his throat. This strange new disease baffled her. Though she could not name the disease, she knew the child must drink or he would die.
She told the mother to open all windows. “Borrow some fire, clothe the child and come for me when he wakes,” she said.
While puzzling over this baby she left behind, she walked to the next cabin. There she found a girl of six summers. The spots were the same, but the child was not asleep. The child told her, after Beloved Mother sang her chant and rattled her gourd, that she couldn’t swallow for the fire in her throat.
Beloved Mother went from cabin to cabin looking for more of her people with the odd red splotches. She found none, but she did find an aged one of the village rocking back and forth and holding his head. He whimpered in pain. When she approached him, he struck out at her with one arm. “Leave me to die,” he cried. “I have offended Great Spirit. Leave me to die.”
“How? What did you do?” Beloved Mother asked.
“I can’t say.” The old man continued to sway. “It’s too bad.”
“You have to say. I must know what animal brought this disease.”
Ah, this morning. The encounter. She crossed the invisible line on the trail. “Is it the possum who looks out of red eyes in the night?”
“No,” the man answered. “Yes. . . No.”
Beloved Mother leaned into his face. “Tell me what you did to offend Great Spirit or the village will die. Your great-grandson lies almost empty. His soul waits to join the spirit mist.”
The old man sang out a woman’s keening song. For his great-grandson. For himself.
“Speak up,” she demanded. “Or I will curse all your descendants.”
Sister Sun perks up her ear. She looks east to see if Brother Moon has yet appeared. Perhaps she should awaken Great Spirit.
The old man quieted his wailing. A fortnight ago, the night after Beloved Mother left the village, he had wandered into the underbrush to relieve himself when, in the darkness of a new moon, he stumbled on something soft and long. He returned to his cabin and after dawn the next morning he sneaked back to see what had lain in his path. There, as Sister Sun began her trip over the mountain, lay a white man, the one Beloved Mother had called Jackson. The one who had wandered in and out of the mountains for the past ten years. Dead. Covered with red spots. Beside him sat a mother possum eating flesh from the dead man’s arm. Her joeys sucked her teats.
The old man chased her away with a limb, but in doing so, he slipped on damp leaves and fell on the white man’s bloody arm. He jumped up and rubbed the blood from his hands, yet some entered his body through a cut on his thumb. And now his head throbbed with this knowing. He touched a white man and soaked up his blood. He was no longer true Cherokee. He was ready to die.
Beloved Mother should have known the possum brought the disease, either directly or indirectly, when it drew its line across the trail. But no Beloved Mother before her had given her knowledge of this disease. Her lack of knowledge left her with one choice. Take the children to the river and dip each for cleansing.
Great Spirit rolls in from the south and speaks through the mourning dove to Beloved Mother. “There can be no separation of worlds, real or dream, physical or spiritual,” he says.
Beloved Mother shivered. She should know something more, but she did not listen. She was too frightened to hear to any voices, human or phantom.
Great Spirit trumpets out a blast of thunder at Beloved Mother’s insolence. “How dare she ignore my counsel?”
The mother of the girl-child walked with her daughter to the river and led
her into the cold mountain water where Beloved Mother waited. The child trembled and cried as Beloved Mother pushed her head back and back, again and again, under the water. The mother wrapped a woolen blanket about her child and carried her tight against her bosom back to their cabin.
Beloved Mother had no words of comfort or guidance for the mother. She stood statue-like in the cold, rushing water, awaiting the next child to be delivered unto her.
Mother of the boy-child feared the great horned serpent that lives in the river. She feared the serpent would take her child and she grieved openly, for Beloved Mother had told her at the child’s birth that he would be her only child. She clung fiercely to the child and wailed against Beloved Mother’s dipping him in the river.
Beloved Mother pulled the baby from his mother and reentered the water. She pushed his head down, one, two, seven times. The child didn’t open his eyes. He didn’t cry. His hot body smarted Beloved Mother’s hands as she held him to her breast and chanted a weak, life-giving song to the Great Spirit. Mid-chant, the child stiffened, threw his head back and stopped breathing. He was lost. Lost to the white man Jackson and the mother possum who fed on his arm.
Great Spirit shoves a thunderous cloud before the young Sister Sun who sits amazed by what has happened. He drops shadows over the village. Villagers along the riverbank lose their faces in the dim light. Great Spirit spits out a grunt against this pathetic Beloved Mother who has no ears to hear.
The boy-child’s mother fell to the ground. Her keening echoed across the water. Behind her, Beloved Mother waded out of the water to gather wood for the tiny boy’s bier. Villagers along the bank separated into two barriers, protection for the well children who shrank behind them. Beloved Mother followed a darkened pathway as she left.