Love Charms

by Multiple

  I headed back for the pig farm, not knowing what to expect. Eventually I saw my uncle, a kerosene lantern casting him in its harsh light as he stood waiting for me on the porch. I wondered how much he remembered of his role, or if a part of him had really there at all.

  “You did well, Boy,” he said. His body language was saying something else. “You sure have your own style. Let’s hope the Spirit People can survive you.” OK, so I guess he had been around for at least part of it. “I’m sorry, Boy. This should be a time to celebrate, but I just got word your brother has died—drowned. Turns out he was born with a heart defect and when he went swimming in the River, he was lost. They had to drag the bottom for his body.”

  “Which one?” I knew. I always felt his heart wasn’t quite right. I stopped myself. Being angry at him for dying wasn’t the most useful reaction. I would have time to grieve.

  “The One Who Would Bury,” he said, changing the verb form to indicate he would not be burying anyone. How awful it would be if they had never recovered the body of One Who Buries. I wouldn’t even know how to interpret that. I wasn’t as close to Scorpio as I was some of my other siblings, but he would leave a painfully large emptiness in our family.

  “The police came by to let us know. Get your things together and we’ll head out.”

  “Is the funeral going on?” I had no idea how long I had been in the Spiritual World. We bury on the dawn of the fourth day after death, but I didn’t know how long it had taken them to discover the body. I hated the fact Uncle Feeney didn’t have a phone any more than he had electricity or running water. Of course, if I were deaf, owning a phone would not have been much of a priority. How could he even recharge it?

  He was watching me intensely. I had always been so self-centered I had never really thought about how Uncle Feeney knew what was going on around him. Was he reading my lips? Was he responding to the context? Did he depend on a Twatee sense of things? “Put your moccasins and things on so you can join in for the last of the worship dancing as soon as we arrive at the Longhouse.” I nodded and went inside. I wondered if he had actually answered my question or had just told me what to do. I realized I was still in shock and doing my best to distract myself. It would be a long ride back home. His wife hugged me, tears trailing down her worn face. Daisy patiently waited her turn to do the same. She had no tears. Her permanent smile was safely in place.

  On the long drive home I wasn’t able to keep my eyes open. I dozed off. “Wake up, I need your help,” Scorpio yelled in my ear.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  He looked the same. I would hate for him to appear to me as he must have looked torn from the River bottom. “Why me? I’m not One Who Buries. You should talk to Aunt Pork or Aunt Dizzy.”

  “My interest isn’t in burial. Your new Spirit Power is what I need.”

  “Moth?”

  “You were always so dense. You receive a Moth Song and you don’t even know how to use it. Think—what is a Moth all about?”

  All I could think about was how moths had damaged a Pendleton blanket my grandmother had put away. I thought back on how I had first encountered Moth. She was about to die. Echo had told me a story that involved death would honor Moth. “What does a Moth have to do with death?”

  “The answer is about what a Moth has to do with life.”

  “Oh, right—cocoon—rebirth. Wait—you’re not talking about the whole walking into the light thing. You’d use Aunt Pork for that. Sweet Jesus, you’re talking about coming back, aren’t you?”

  “Wake up!” Daisy laughed. “Talking in your sleep. Keeping me awake.” I was disoriented and looked around but there was no sign or scent of Scorpio. In our tradition the dead retraced the footsteps taken in life during the four days before the burial took place. If you saw the dead person during this time, it was considered a blessing—a way the dead had of saying good bye. I don’t remember any stories of the dead wanting a refund. There were rituals using ghost medicine made from juniper to release an uneasy spirit, but that would only be used after the four day period. You had to truly let go and mourn, or you’d keep a part of the dead tied to you and they would not be able to move on. I didn’t know a single legend where the dead clung to the living. It was always the other way around.

  I felt clammy. I stared into the distance and wasn’t able to fall asleep again. Daisy and her mother slept soundly and Uncle Feeney drove onward. I hummed the Moth Song. My brother. The Voodoo Queen. Crap. This was a lot worse than channeling the dead. We eventually passed the sign that welcomed us to the reservation. I had wanted to come home so much, but the last reason I would have anticipated was for a funeral.

  Uncle Feeney pulled into the Agency Longhouse parking lot. It was filled with cars and pickups. I opened the car door and ran in through the kitchen doorway on the side. The cooks, including Aunt Beans, let out a terrible keening and hugged me. My eyes stayed dry. After a few minutes, Aunt Beans pulled me into the dining area, passing by the inner dance floor where I glanced at the pine box draped in a Pendleton blanket and surrounded by candles and small objects. If you were rode horses they would put small horse figures on your grave. I wasn’t sure what they would leave on the grave of One Who Buries. A group of dancers spun by—the worship dance song called to me. Seven times seven dances would be done for the funeral, but I had no idea what time it was or how many more dances were left.

  “Your mother is taking this very hard,” Aunt Beans said quickly. “She spent the entire time by the River as they looked for his body. Finally they hired a deep sea diver with a helmet and a hose that fed him air. He eventually found him—his foot had gotten stuck in an outcrop of rock.” She looked at me and then away again. “Things had been eating at him.” She moved aside and I saw my mother lying on a pile of blankets. She looked pale and drained. She looked old. Aunt Beans smiled at me and moved aside to let me take her place. She went back into the worship area where I heard her start a new song for the next dance.

  My mother’s eyes were red and swollen. She sat up and began the same ear-splitting cry of the other women in the kitchen. She clung to me as if I was the parent and she was the child. I held her as she sobbed and I didn’t know what to say. I was never good at comforting. I had never felt so helpless. I wanted so much to take her pain away, but it isn’t permitted during the time of the funeral. If you don’t express the pain, it makes things worse later on. Or you could keep part of the spirit of the dead from going on their spirit journey.

  “If only I could have him back,” she said. “I miss him so.” She tried to say more, but she broke into a wheezing cough and I suddenly worried she might also fall ill and die. The thought was enough to allow a single tear to fall from my eye. I patted her lightly on the back and then stopped because I was treating her like a startled horse. I forced myself to stop and used my hand to make small circles on her back. I’d do anything to help her. I looked up and saw Scorpio standing in the doorway. I’d do anything. Except that. I kissed my mother on the forehead and went outside. I walked by some of the kids from school who were passing around a cigarette. I saw our station wagon and I crawled into the back.

  “No,” I said.

  “You’ve seen how she’s suffering,” Scorpio said. I studied his face, vaguely wondering what parts of him had been eaten while he was pinned by the rocks. But he looked the same way he always did. Spooky, indeed.

  “I’ve thought about it the whole drive back. There are legends about Coyote and others who try to go into a ghost village, or the Land of the Dead. They all follow the same basic pattern. There’s a lot of detail that describe the difference between this world and the Land of the Dead. Things are usually the opposite, so you have to whisper to be heard. In some stories, the seeker will wake up and the ghosts are gone. He has to wait and then when the sun goes down, the ghosts reappear. In the Coyote stories, he’s given specific instructions, like not to touch his wife or look at her until they return home.” I looked at my hands. Life on a pig farm
had been hard on them.

  “But he never succeeds,” I said. “He always fails and the spirit of his wife disappears forever. There are other stories that say Coyote was the one who decided death would be part of the world, because if people lived forever, they would overpopulate the planet. No matter how much those grieving would beg him, he would not give permission for the dead to return.” I looked back at him. He looked back. “That’s the irony. He always refused others because he understood death was part of the Harmony. But when the loss was his own he broke the rules.”

  “Sounds like part of your job description,” Scorpio grinned. Then he grew serious. “I know what the dead know. I knew before the River took me. I want to come back. I need to come back!” I couldn’t look him in the eye. I just shook my head. “There are no legends for this because this is the first time one of us is One Who Buries and the other has Moth Power. Hell, Pisces, when have you ever heard of anyone who had Moth Power?”

  “No good can come from this,” I said. “I almost broke the Harmony with the Doctor’s son. You’re asking me to crack the Harmony at its center.” I looked into the blackness of his eyes.

  He said, “You know how the Old People talk about the doorway of life and death. The newly initiated are being reborn into a new life and a woman who bleeds has not conceived a new life, so they both stand in the same doorway, but facing in opposite directions.

  “This is why ours is a new Story. For the first time a single person is standing in that doorway. You have just been initiated. You are a Two-Spirit so that makes you the same as a woman who no longer bleeds—but it works out as a balance—you have not conceived new life. You and you alone stand in the middle of that doorway.” His voice was speeding up. “You can bring me back through the doorway. I can be reborn into a new life, so the Harmony is restored.”

  My head was full. None of this made any sense. It was logical. It followed the lines of Stories, but then it fell apart for me because all I could think about involved zombies. We don’t have the concept of zombies. I’ve only seen them on television. Unless I was looking at one now.

  “Call Moth,” he said, reaching out but not quite touching me. In the distance I could hear the ringing of the bell that signaled the next part of the worship dance. There were stories—not legends—that talked about certain Twatees who would die and then come back to life, but everyone knew that was a metaphor for them falling into a trance state and then coming out of it. People didn’t come back from the dead. People shouldn’t come back from the dead. I heard the dancers cry out “Yes” in our language and then they finished the next verse of the song. All I could think of was my mother’s suffering and once again I felt completely helpless.

  “Why were you gifted with Moth Power if you’re not going to use it?”

  “There are no new Stories,” I said defensively.

  “Every Story was once new.” I looked at him. I wasn’t winning this argument. I hated him. He never gave anything without expecting something back. The Old People always told us, “When you give something away, more will be returned to you.” When the funeral was over at dawn, the people attending would be fed. Then we would go home and gather things to give away. Not only the things that belonged to Scorpio, but anything he had ever touched—plates, silverware, glasses, and towels. Because we are a Chief’s family, all of our furniture would be given away. They would even rip up the carpet and give that away. In a few hours our home would be stripped bare.

  “This is so wrong,” I told him. “I’m the one who’ll get in trouble for this. What are they going to do to you? Kill you?” I just wanted to keep shaking him until his bones fell out.

  In my heart I saw my mother with her swollen eyes and looking older than her years. Full of anger I began to sing the Moth Song to summon her. After a few verses I looked around and saw I was at the in-between space. There were no Longhouse sounds in the distance. Scorpio was not with me and I wondered if the true Dead were not allowed.

  Moth fluttered in front of me once more. She looked the same as she had when I had last seen her, just as Scorpio had looked the same.

  “Child of the water,” she buzzed. “Like water, never the same. Why do you Call me?”

  “My dead brother wants to return. He is One Who…” and then I hesitated. “He is One Who Would Bury.” My eyes felt as if they were on fire, but they remained dry. “He told me Moth Power can bring him back.”

  Moth circled around me four times and then shimmered in much the way my cedar rope had. Moth set aside her insect form and appeared to me as a woman who looked disturbingly like Daisy. I wondered if this was some next step in the latest initiation. Nothing like this had happened with the Eagle or the Deer Songs. Neither had ever taken on a human shape. Neither held a female flavor, but had been unquestionably male. Did I get a new power that’s female because I’m Two-Spirit? There are so many times I wish I had been given an instruction manual for this stuff. When I was younger I would ask questions but I would be told things were different for different people.

  “Our mother’s heart is breaking because she wishes he were still alive. He’s insisting he can be raised from the dead.” I looked up at her. “But I know that’s fundamentally wrong—that it would throw the world out of balance.”

  “Oh,” she said, “it happens all the time. You act like it’s a big deal.”

  “Dead people coming back to life?”

  “You’re too ethnocentric. Just because your people don’t like to do it doesn’t mean other cultures have the same hang-ups. After hundreds of years surrounded by Christianity and you still can’t wrap your head around resurrection. ”

  I sat quietly for a moment, trying to make that fit inside my head. It was too big. Part of it kept falling out. “And resurrection is part of Moth Power?”

  “More impressed now than when we first met?”

  “More scared. “

  “You really are learning. Do you know what a Loa is?

  “Is it a boy band?” Based on her look it was apparently not.

  “Ever hear of voudoun?

  “Is that like voodoo? A few years ago I was in New Orleans and met a drag queen who was somehow related to Marie Laveau, the voodoo queen. I never figured out how—I just assumed he had been adopted by the family. There was a very long and boring story about her apprentice, Madame LaLaurie and how she ended up being the devil’s wife in a little town out in the sticks of Louisiana. There was a deformed baby who grew up and murdered the drag queen’s ancestor. Their last name was Winter.” I thought back for a moment. “His name was Martin Winter—Lady Chartreuse.”

  “In New Orleans, they include a Loa named Black Hawk, and much of what they do was learned from the Taino People who were among the first to tie up Columbus’ ship. That was how I became involved—through the Taino. I’ve always been local. I got incorporated into the Loa as part of Ghede Nimbo.”

  “Understood Black Hawk and Columbus, but pretty much all the rest was blah, blah, blah.”

  She exhaled through her nose, and it sounded really, really ugly. “Think of a Loa as the same as what you would call a Tamanawis, or what some of your Coastal relatives would call a skookum. They’re a type of spirit that gets intimately involved with humans.”

  “And this is related to voodoo, how?”

  “I am connected with Ghede Nimbo, who can govern over issues of death and rebirth. Think of me as similar to your Eagle or Deer, who are connected with the Warrior or Lover aspect of your Creator. I play in a different sand box.” She turned away from me. “Usually I just have to tell people like you how I’m simply another Native spirit. None of you ever bother to ask if all of us have lives outside of what we do with you.” She frowned in a way Daisy never would. “You’re all human people—you just express yourself in different ways and we do the best we can trying to keep up.”

  “Why do you need us at all?”

  “You feed us. If you sing our Songs, or keep the rituals alive, you keep us aliv
e.” She looked away from me again. “There are a lot of spirits who starved to death when their Songs stopped being sung.

  I sat back and wondered what sort of conversations I’d have with Eagle or Deer. “Are Eagle and Deer Loas?”

  “Water is water, no matter what language you’re using. I think it would be better if you ask Eagle or Deer directly. I wouldn’t want to have them explain me.”

  “You can bring Scorpio back?”

  “It’s not a situation where I just snap my fingers. It’s ritual—it always comes back to ritual.” She seemed to be listening to something I couldn’t hear. “Martin Winter is a houngan.” When she saw me frown she added in a sigh, “What you’d call a voodoo queen.” She rose and turned in a circle the way we would when we joined in a worship dance. We’re told when we turn in a circle, one of our sins fell off. For a moment I wondered what sins a spirit might have. “Martin Philip Winter—Lady Chartreuse—I Call you.” I felt the temperature plunge and wished I was wearing my coat.

  A bright shimmer appeared in the air and Lady Chartreuse was there. He was several pounds heavier and in full drag the way I had only seen him in the photo stashed in the corner of the mirror in his dressing room. “Shit,” he muttered, “this isn’t about using the white goat instead of the black one is it? They were out of black goats.” Then he looked at me and his eyebrows shot up. “Pocahontas!” he screamed and then grabbed me and swung me around the way he had back in New Orleans. “Girl, you sure turned out pretty!”

  He looked at Moth who was perched on a log and said, “What, you again?”

  “Papa Ghede sends his regards,” she said dryly.

  Lady Chartreuse looked at me and said, “You’ve picked up some heavy hitters since I last saw you.”

  “He needs you to bring back his brother,” Moth stood up and then just wasn’t there. Great.

  “Jesus,” he said, “I hate it when outside spirits get involved in Loa shit. Fill me in fast because I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”