Love Charms

by Multiple

  “One of you has kept a bone of his!” the Chief accused. The young man took the bone he had been hiding out of his mouth and returned it to the boy’s father. Quickly he repeated the ritual, and this time when the boy stepped on to the land, he was whole again. “This is the way it will be between our two Peoples,” the Chief told the young man. “If you enact the ritual when the first salmon of the run is caught, then our People will continue to return and feed your People.”

  I suspect babysitting for us was the reason she put off having children of her own for several years. When I didn’t react to her story, she asked me, “How do you stop a fish from smelling?” I just looked at her. “You cut off its nose.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Once I was surprised to realize my mother and I were alone at the breakfast table. Normally, there were always others around. At that point, nineteen people were living in our household. I was reading a book on families and I asked her why Uncle Sly lived with us. She got up to get some more tea and said, “You know, I don’t know. When your Aunt Pork divorced him he moved in and never left.” I shook my head, not wanting another cup of coffee. “It’s been good to have him here to watch the kids, although I’ve had to tell him more than once to do a better job at hiding his stash of porn so the little ones don’t find it.”

  “Oh, I remember the first time I found it. Didn’t interest me. Porn reminds me of Coyote—sometimes he’s good and sometimes he’s not.” She looked at me, side-eyes. “And that reminds me of a story that Barnsdoor told just to me last winter when you were in Texas and he was staying with us.” I looked at her in a conspiratorial way. “Wren was out hunting with his Grandmother, Turtle Dove. He was an excellent hunter and immediately brought down a large elk. ‘Grandmother,’ he asked her, ‘what part of the elk do you want? Would you like the neck?’

  “She answered from inside her teepee, ‘No—he might neck, neck, neck me.’

  “‘Grandmother,’ he asked her, ‘what part of the elk do you want? Would you like the rump?’

  She answered from inside her teepee, ‘No—he might rump, rump, rump me.’

  “Grandmother,’ he asked her, what part of the elk do you want? Would you like the front shoulder?’

  She answered from inside her teepee, ‘No—he might shoulder, shoulder, shoulder me.’

  “Exasperated, he asked her, ‘Grandmother— what part of the elk do you want? Would you like the cock?’

  “She answered from inside her teepee, ‘Yes.’

  “Then he gave her what she requested and people began to gather, watching the curious shadows that were cast, and called forward by all the strange sounds that came from her teepee. The people told Wren to take away the serving of elk he had given his grandmother, since it was wrong to play with your food. And that is why even to this day, when you hear the turtle dove, or as it is also known—why the mourning dove sounds so sad.”

  I smiled. I was proud of being able to tie my legend to porn, and still make it about me.

  She sat there quietly and added more sugar to her tea. My mother was one of those people who had tea with her sugar. “So, that’s the story you would tell to make sense of why your Uncle Sly lives with us? Some legend from our Canadian relatives about not playing with your food?” She pushed her tea away without tasting it.

  “This is the way it was,” she began formally. “Long time ago Coyote was going there,” she said. God, she just got serious. I was going to lose. What sane man starts a legend throw down with an Elder? Kill me now. “As he passed by a certain Longhouse by the Columbia River, he saw a female child. Over the years as he passed by, he saw her again and again, but she never changed size.

  “’Oh,’ he told himself, ‘this is no child. This must be a teeny-tiny woman.’ She smiled in a wicked way. “Now Coyote was interested, if by interested you mean aroused, which of course I do, because this is a real Coyote story and not the kind your father used to tell.” She drained away the rest of her tea. “Coyote ran up to her and said, ‘I can’t help but notice you’re kinda small.’

  “’Oh, it’s true,” she said, ‘I always wished I could be the size of normal people.’

  “’You do?” Coyote grinned. ‘I’m a Twatee—a Medicine Person. I can teach you how to use Coyote’s Growing Medicine to help you get bigger.’

  “’You could do that? I’ve always wanted to be bigger!’

  “’Then you just do exactly what I tell you to do.’ Coyote told her what to do. Following his advice, she walked east, looking for three hills that he had described in great detail. What she did not know is Coyote had run off before her. When he came to the three hills, he ran in circles around the center one, leaving his footprints. When he had finished, he went to the top of the hill and dug a hole. He got in and started covering himself up, until only one part of him was still exposed—his iwah.”

  “His penis,” I translated. She frowned and switched to telling the story in Indian.

  “The young woman discovered the three hills. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘it is just like that Twatee described it. And look at all of those footprints of the People he said had been here before to use the Growing Medicine. He must be telling the truth!’ She ran up the center hill, and at the top she saw something sticking out, looking like a mushroom. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘and there’s the Growing Medicine, just like he said it would be.’”

  “She started to lift up her buckskin dress and to lower herself down on the Growing Medicine. ‘Oh, my,’ she said, ‘what if someone would see me pulling up my dress this way? I’d feel so embarrassed.’ She started to walk away. Underneath, Coyote was whispering, ‘Come back, come back!’

  “She was a few feet away when she said, ‘But I really do want to be like normal sized people. And he was right about all those footprints and about the mushroom thing being there.’ She turned around and headed back to the Growing Medicine. She again lifted up her buckskin dress and proceeded to lower herself on to it.

  “Coyote was underneath the ground saying to himself, ‘Yes, yes!’

  “But then she said, ‘But I would be so humiliated if someone saw me out here, pulling up my dress in this way.’ She lowered her dress and started to walk away again.

  “Coyote was underneath the ground with his balls turning blue. ‘Come back, come back,’ he whispered.

  “Once more she looked at the Growing Medicine, and told herself, ‘He promised I could get bigger—that I could be like normal people. She walked back and lifted up her buckskin dress. Then she lowered herself on top of the growing medicine repeatedly, just as Coyote had instructed her.”

  She looked me in the eye. “When she returned to her Longhouse, Coyote followed her. ‘You did what I told you to do,’ he smiled. ‘You used the Growing Medicine. And now you’re going to get bigger. For Nine Months you’ll get bigger. And at the end of nine months, I’ll return. If it’s a boy I should take him. But if it’s a girl, you should keep her.’”

  “Wait,” I said, “This has nothing to do with Aunt Pork and Uncle Sly, does it?” I held my coffee mug defensively. “This is about how I use iwah-mah.” I automatically switched to Indian and used the proper word for more than two penises.

  “Sometimes a Story is just a story,” she concluded.

  “As if you’d ever tell a Story that’s just a story,” I sneered. “You think I didn’t notice we’re the only ones here? What is it you really wanted to tell me? Skip the stories. Skip the sizzle and give me the meat. You have always known I preferred sausage.”

  “Enjoying sausage is not what this is about,” she said. Suddenly she looked like she could play on the WNBA. I wanted to know how she could do that—suddenly look huge and threatening. Maybe it was just a Mom thing. “You think we wouldn’t notice what you had done with the Doctor’s son? It’s a given that a Two-Spirit like you makes the most powerful of Twatees. It’s because regular men see the world through male eyes. Regular women see the world through female eyes.” She turned her eyes on me and I
felt very small. “But Two-Spirit people see the world through both male and female eyes. It means you automatically see more. It makes it so much easier for you to be a Medicine Person—a Twatee.” She got up and poured herself the last of the tea.

  “I don’t care that you go for sausage. I mean, so do I.” She positively leered at me. It is wrong when your mother leers at you. “And with twelve children, you just know a few are going to turn out to be Two-Spirit, just as you know at least one will cut off his braids and become a Republican.” She looked at the photo of Cancer on the wall and we both sighed. “The whole point for this is that you misused your ability in order to seduce the Doctor’s son. That’s just part of what a Twatee does while learning who he or she is. We’re here alone because you’ve just been slipping and sliding around the whole Twatee thing. You’re old enough that you should be doing a better job at being who you are. I’m sending you off to live with your Uncle Feeney.”

  And that was how I was exiled one state over to live with my Uncle Feeney, the pig farmer. And yeah, the most feared Medicine Person west of the Mississippi.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “I will miss you,” Taurus said as he hugged me. “You’re going to die. It will be a very ugly death and Uncle Feeney will feed you to his pigs.”

  “Pigs,” Aries hissed. “Stinky hogs. You’re definitely going to die.” She grinned so wide her eyes disappeared. “Of course, if you get a single pig turd on you, you’ll kill yourself.”

  “Then the pigs will eat you,” concluded Taurus.

  The first time Uncle Feeney and his family came to visit us (that I remembered) he was going to work on Aunt Beans, who was having problem with her legs. In later years I would wake up with a pain that wasn’t mine and then try to figure out who it belonged to. That was how Uncle Feeney always knew when to suddenly show up. We brought him a glass of water and he would dip his fingers into it and wet her hair as he sang a purification song. We dutifully sang with him, and periodically he would really get into what he was doing, and stop singing to concentrate on pulling out of her whatever shouldn’t be there.

  There was a legend that said Coyote was going along and saw a beautiful woman and he desired her. He used his Tamanawis—his Spirit Power on her, and she fell over unconscious. He came into her village and announced he was a Twatee, and he had felt her grow ill. He let everyone know he had come to cure her. He passed out large sticks made of yew and told them they needed to help him sing his Song. “But my Power is such I need to work in secret. You can’t look at me.” He looked as wise and solemn as he could. It was not an unusual request. Our mother’s mother was like that—she only worked with a person one on one. Many people never even knew she was a healer.

  “Now when I reach inside to pull what’s hurting her out, she is going to cry out. When you hear that, you know what I am doing is working and you must pound your stick and sing as loud as you can to give me the additional strength I need to deal with this evil medicine that has caused her so much pain and suffering.” Everyone nodded in agreement. He took one of the yew sticks and began to pound it on the ground the way a lot of other Native Nations would use drums. He sang and after a moment the People took over the Song.

  He nodded and slipped into the young woman’s lodge. As he continued to sing, he began to rape her. She began to scream. The People all looked at each other and they pounded their sticks harder and sang as loud as they could, believing they were helping her. When Coyote had finished with her, he slipped out on the other side of the lodge and went on his way. Not all Coyote stories have happy endings, but some end with Coyote being satisfied.

  When Uncle Feeney would stop singing, we would go on with the song. Uncle Feeney was what my mom called “deef,” so when he would start singing again, he couldn’t hear where we were in the song, so he would always come in at a different place. This would crack us up and we would break down laughing. Then he’d get angry, and cuss us out for not taking healing seriously. Then something would usually break in the room, but he would never notice it because he had turned back to his work on Aunt Beans, or whoever would be on the patient’s chair.

  When he would arrive, word would immediately spread and all sorts of people would show up, wanting him to work on them. On Sunday we would take him to the Pentecostal Church and the members would work on him. Once I asked my mother why he did all this healing work, but needed others to do the same with him.

  “Every time you heal someone,” she said, “you give a piece of yourself away. Eventually you need healing yourself. Our Old People always point to that chair in the center of the circle—the patient’s chair. They tell us to remember never to think of ourselves as better than the person who sits in the chair—because one day we will also sit there. It’s a Circle.” She looked up and made sure I was actually listening to her. I often didn’t.

  As I watched the Church members working on him, I switched the way I was looking, using what Aunt Beans had taught me in terms of borrowing someone else’s eyes, but just going partway. While I did this, I could see that they were taking away something that looked like a piece of wood around his hips. Well, they weren’t exactly taking it away—as they sang it began to fade. It became translucent, and then almost transparent, but they didn’t make it disappear.

  “Why did they leave him some of his pain?” I asked her. I knew I wasn’t supposed to talk a lot in situations like this, but I was curious. I mean, I would have taken the whole thing away—that just made sense.

  “Because some Old People need to hold on to part of their pain to help remember who they are.”

  Uncle Feeney came out to greet us. Every time I saw him he looked older. Not a little older, but a lot. There was a story from my dad’s People that said we were not from this World, but from one far away. In that World, we had much we have today—boxes carried people and flew through the air—communication at great distances, and weapons that would destroy entire villages. But the knowledge to do these things was not from The Harmony—it ate things. It always ate more than it nourished. Eventually some of the People wanted to leave that life, so they prayed and followed their hearts and came to this World.

  “Look,” someone called out, “One of the Evil Ones has followed us into this new World where we came to escape evil.”

  “We should kill her,” said another, “So this new World will not know evil.”

  “No,” said an Elder. “The fact you are talking about murdering someone in cold blood means evil has already become part of this World. It would do no good to kill anyone. It is too late.” It was decided there would be a journey of purification, and because all things move in a Circle, the People would eventually return to where they began. The Creator sent Spider Woman to guide them. He told her when She came to the End of the World She would know to start the return. She would know it was the End of the World because in every direction, the snow and ice would be as tall as the tallest person, and the Sun would reject the Earth.

  The People followed Her, until eventually they came to a place where the snow and ice were as tall as the tallest person. Many years later I would be visiting in Barrow, Alaska. When I got off the plane, I looked around and it looked exactly the way the legend had described it. As I watched, the sun began to set. It appeared to touch the surface of the Arctic Ocean, and then it went back up into the sky as if it was rejecting the Earth. This terrified me. I was told I was the first guest of the main hotel (“The Top Of The World”) who requested not to have a room facing the Arctic Ocean. “It is time to go home,” some said.

  “No,” said Spider Woman. “We can go further.” She called forth different Clans, and each one had their own gifts. My father’s Clan called the winds of the South, and the ice and snow began to melt. Another Clan called volcanoes to add their heat and the ice and snow melted more quickly. Each of the Clans used their special Songs, and soon the ice and snow were almost gone.

  Then the Twins of the Creator appeared. “You were told to go n
o further,” said the older one.

  “You don’t realize it,” said his brother, “But by melting the ice and snow here, you are flooding the rest of the World, causing great devastation and death.” They stood between Spider Woman and the People. “You should have known better. As a punishment, the Creator has taken away your eternal youth. You will keep your immortality, but each year you will grow older.”

  They say this happened so long ago the only thing that remains of Spider Woman these days is a dusty voice that speaks from the inside of an ancient basket.

  I thought of Spider Woman every time I would see Uncle Feeney, wondering when he would also only be a dry voice.

  He fed us dinner—pork chops, of course. Then everyone else piled into the old station wagon and returned home, just like the People in my father’s story. Except for me. I watched the station wagon grow smaller in the distance, and I felt my heart shrinking.

  “Boy,” said Uncle Feeney, handing me a filthy bucket. “Go slop the hogs.” In all the years I had known him, Uncle Feeney never called any of us by our names. We were simply “Boy,” or “Girl,” except for Cancer, and he could never seem to quite decide on Cancer’s gender. His wife stood beside him. She was much younger, but was unable to speak. He was deaf and she was mute. They had a daughter several years older than I was. My mom described her as “peculiar,” but later on I found out she was autistic. Her name was Daisy. Poor Uncle Feeney—he healed so many, but nothing seemed to help Daisy.

  She went through life with a smile always on her face. She had some sort of inner peace I never understood. When I was much, much older, I would sometimes think of what it must have felt like to be Uncle Feeney and to know you would leave behind a daughter who would never marry and never be able to live alone. She seemed to have the mental age of a small child, and showed me how to prepare the slop.