I SHIFTED and tried ever so slowly to stand. She opened her eyes, looked at me with irises like honey in the sunlight and stretched her long limbs, flexing the full span of her broad feet. She yawned and I heard her voice squeak and saw the truth of her teeth set in the hard pink gums. I felt the breeze as she shook her head and stood and looked me over and turned and padded away, looking back a few times as if she expected me to follow her. When at last I turned around I saw the long yellow carcass of a cougar with an opened throat lying in its own blood behind me.
I WEPT and wept over my horse. The physical pain of that grief startled me, the way it ran down my arms and legs, the way it tightened and flexed and heated and chilled inside me. Around me the signs in the landscape seemed to unravel as if I were looking at a map in a dream with nothing written on it. I was afraid to move for fear I would step farther away from real people. But I was more afraid, I was most afraid, of disappointing my father.
AS THE night came on I observed the time and the distance of the sun and moon’s nearest limbs. I found myself making lists, reducing everything in me and around me to lists just to force myself to stay with the present, keep sane, keep hold of my thoughts, which were slippery in my loneliness.
MEASURED THE width of the river from the point across to the point of view. Measured the curve of the flow around the rocks. Measured how white the foam is on the banks. Measured the height and width of reeds. Measured the length of time I need. Measured my grief at losing my horse. Measured her body with my memory. Measured the hours passed measuring. Measured the likelihood of wolves. Measured the length of the grass in the shade and in the sun. Measured the shadows from clouds. Measured the undertow based on daisy-heads thrown into the water and when they are pulled under the surface. Measured the reasons for continuing. Measured the wound on my head. Measured how much I love my father. Measured how much I still hate her. Measured the limbs of the sun overhead. Measured the shimmers of heat in the air. Measured the motes of pollen. Measured the missing stirrups. Measured the horn of my lost saddle. Measured the supplies uneaten. Measured the guilt I might feel. Measured the relief from completion. Measured how much I can believe anyone. Measured how long I have been away. Measured the cascading water. Measured the space between stars. Measured how sticky the cottonweed. Measured the smell of clover and columbine. Measured the days I spent reading the Bible. Measured the number of things I remember. Measured the length of his black robe. Measured how small he was after death. Measured the drops of water administered. Measured the rise of the moon. Measured the loudness of my stomach growling. Measured the comets. Measured the streaks of colour. Measured the shock from watching the spirals. Measured the collapse of the universe. Measured the nut of fear in my chest. Measured the strength of my tearducts. Measured the maps unopened, unread. Measured the depths of my resignation.
I BUILT a fire and found a good knife in my pack under the collapsed lean-to and I hacked away at the warm skin of the cougar, and then at the meat on the shoulders. I was awkward and the cuts were ragged. Memories of Blackfoot hunters offered only weak guidance to my hands. By the time I finished my hands and arms felt bruised. But the cooked cougar meat was sweet and rich like some deeper angrier venison.
I stared into the fire feeling my eyeballs shrink and dry and my skin heat. Sweat sprung up on my lip and neck. I closed my eyes and saw the afterimage of the flames. When I opened my eyes night had fallen and the Hag was sitting across from me, her gaunt face illuminated.
She cocked her head and stared at me. She sat like a dog, squatting with her backside suspended just over the ground, her arms straight, hands between her feet, braced. Her small eyes glistened over her cheekbones, one of which looked flat as if it had been broken at some point and healed. She wore the black dress, which was torn and ragged so that one white shoulder and her upper arm were exposed. Her feet were bare and filthy. I felt contempt.
What do you want? I asked her.
Every morning I woke up waiting for him. I had fantasies about him coming back for me. It must have been like that for you too. You must have dreamt of your mother returning to embrace you, to wash your face with kisses, promising to never leave you again. Didn’t you?
Sometimes, I said. I looked at the moon and the stars that were nestled in its halo.
Nights around here are filled with ghosts, she said. As soon as it gets dark they come out of the ground. The streets of all the little towns are teeming with spirits on parade. There are hordes of spirits, all the longing, unforgiven souls, wandering in purgatory. There are too many ghosts even to pray for. And because we cannot pray for them we are reminded of our own sins and errors. I begged your father to marry me. I said, The bishop will pardon us, release us from shame. He said, I can’t be released from shame. I told him, I can’t live without you. He said, Then live alone. I tried to tell him that life had herded us together. It was not our fault. We had to find each other because we were the two loneliest people on Earth. We were the same and so we had to be together. He pushed me into a chair and he broke my door when he left.
She sat across the fire from me with her head lowered, flexing her feet and rolling her hands in the dirt. Her white hair fell forward, obscuring her face. She moaned softly, persistently, until the low sound became almost musical. She rolled her head back and forth and rocked on her heels.
I tell you this so that you know I understand, she said. I understand what it is to be rejected. I understand what it is to spend years imagining someone’s return.
I tasted salt on my lips and realized that tears were pouring out of my eyes.
I scratched my nails in the dirt, grabbed a rock and threw it at her, not to hurt her but because I did not believe she could be real. The rock hit her shoulder and rolled down the length of her arm into her hand. She squeezed it and looked at me. She tossed the stone back to me and I caught it.
If you want to throw stones at someone you can throw them at me, she said softly. She stood up; the skirt of the dress was torn off at the knee and I saw the thin bones of her shins shining under her pale skin. Then she stepped around the fire until she was almost at my side. She moved back a few paces so that there were five or six feet between us.
Throw the stone.
I squeezed it and then I threw it. I winged it at her face with all my strength. She ducked and smiled. She leaned over and picked up another stone and tossed it to me.
Again.
I aimed the second stone at her eye, which suddenly seemed brilliant and yellow over her cheek. She turned her head and it flew past her lips. She tossed me another stone. I yelled when I threw the third stone, some unintelligible accusation. It grazed her temple but left no mark. She didn’t even wince. Then I was scrabbling in the dirt, grabbing and throwing stones and handfuls of sod and grass and animal hair and she was weaving and spinning. She was whirling, ecstatic at the precipice of another world I could not see. I couldn’t hit her. I heard my own voice grow louder, echoing in the darkness. I heard myself screaming, Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me?
Suddenly I was tired. My echo faded in the distance. We were face to face, each in our loneliness. Suddenly she stood still.
I like you, she said. Good luck. I hope you reach her in time.
A fine line of bright blood ran down her forehead.
I’m sorry, I said, shocked that I had hit her. There was a shudder of a small earthquake beneath my feet and a human-sounding rumble and then it was daylight again. The ground where she stood was empty.
IT WAS not quite dawn when I woke and began to walk. My feet clove the sandy earth. My hat had begun to smell and so I tied it upside down on my head with some twine to let the sun bake out the soggy bell of it. An intermittent breeze shook the tree branches overhead loosing sprays of dew. Birds shook their wings. As the clouds retreated, rising higher in the sky and becoming white, the sun lit up the new spaces of blue. I stared up imagining red kites with tails that whipped behind. I could feel the burning tug of
the cord on my finger. My father laughing, tucked his robes into his pants so that he could run with me. The wind in my ears.
OH, FATHER, I love you. I could hardly hear your laugh but I could see your lovely teeth. You told me once that to be a good priest, to be a man of God, to do God’s work, did not require simply the ability to love but the ability to fall in love endlessly with every person, with humanity.
Let out more string.
It’s pulling on me.
It’s very high. Let’s run.
We ran in the long grass; the dandelions stained my legs and the cuffs of his trousers; the kite and I tugged at each other. When we stopped running we stood side by side breathing fast. My father put a finger beneath his collar to wipe away sweat. I scrunched up my eyes because the sun was so compelling. My arm was stretched out long. The kite waited in the sky. A hawk veered to avoid us.
I’ll help you study your Latin after dinner.
Can I grind chocolate for dessert?
There’s no more chocolate, but there is some honeycomb. I have letters to write. We had best be on our way. Zita is waiting.
Father, I love you, I said.
God loves you, he said touching my hair as if it might break.
ZITA AND my father understood each other’s silences. He steered me to her and she showed me warmth in ways his propriety could not allow. It was Zita who lifted me from my boots and held me when I wept. It was Zita who sang to me when I raged against my outcast state. It was Zita who rubbed my arms and legs when I was sick.
This was before the Indian Act forbade the Indians to leave the reservation without a pass. There were so many children then. They were like herds of deer running up and down and around the coulees and sloping hills. So many children were adopted into families within the reserve it seemed as if there were twenty for every adult. My father reminded me of this often. He told me too that tens of thousands of children across the States were adopted every year. He tried to make me see myself as less alone.
Mighty Miette, he said. So many parts of being who we are start as fictions about belonging. You belong, as much as anyone.
But the children on the reserve were not like me. They had lost parents and siblings and even whole families to illness and war. But they were kept in, whereas I had been pushed out. I watched them play and I wanted to join them. They called to me and gestured invitations but I couldn’t move my legs. I watched them pump their arms and run with wide smooth steps and fall and roll and get up and jump and run some more and I just couldn’t move my legs.
We lived on the border of the reservation. He said this was respect; if we lived on one side or the other we would do so as spies. Truthfully, I think that he did not want to be watched by either side. He was as solitary as he could be and still perform his duties. But if he rejected other clergy, he welcomed the Blackfoot to visit us in our little shack.
Zita helped us to bake bread and make soup to deliver to the poorest homesteaders. The poorest were also the oldest, as if life had been sucked out of them with their wealth.
One evening when I was inconsolable over being forced into some promise of better behaviour, Zita held me and rocked me. She hummed and sang and I smelled her warm skin, the tan and the berry and the clean water of her arms. I squeezed her hand and followed the veins of her arm with my finger. I felt love opening like cherry blossoms along the branches of my nervous system. Life drawn so sweet.
Zita, I said, why do I have to keep my promises?
Zita, who was great as a snowy hill, cuddled me and said, Shh, you keep your promises because you are a good girl. I’ll tell you a story about a bad girl. This is the story of a bad girl and a wonderful bird.
There was a young girl who, one day, was walking about among the trees, collecting berries and being happy in the summer heat. She saw something that seemed very strange to her. A little bird, all blue and red, was sitting on the branch of a pine tree. The bird danced back and forth on the branch. Every little while it would make a strange noise, like a whistle, and every time it made this noise its eyes flew out of its head and fastened on a branch of the tree. Then the bird made another sort of noise, like an inhalation, and its eyes flew back to its head. The young girl called out to the bird, Brother, teach me how to do that!
The bird considered her. If I show you how, the bird answered, you must not send your eyes out of your head more than four times in a day. No matter how much you want to see something you must keep this promise to me. If you break your promise and send your eyes out more than four times, you will be sorry.
Brother, whatever you say I will do. It shall be exactly as you say, Little Brother. It is for you to give, and I will listen to what you say.
The young girl knew to respect the bird and she was pleased by his generosity so she intended to keep her promise. The bird taught her how to send her eyes out and she was so excited that she did it four times immediately. She danced back and forth with pleasure. The bird’s gift allowed her to see around trees and watch the bear fishing with its cub. She was able to see over the forest, to follow the bald eagle in flight. She saw the cougar crouch to attack a doe. She saw the worms churn the earth underfoot. Why did that bird tell me to do this only four times? she lamented. He is only a bird; he has no sense. I will do it again. So once more she made her eyes go out, hoping to see the whole earth from the heavens, but now when she called to them they would not come back.
She shouted out to the bird, Brother, help me! Come here, and help me to get back my eyes!
The little bird did not answer; it had flown away. The young girl felt all over the branches of the tree, all over the ground, all over stones and bushes with her hands, but she could not find her eyes. She walked through the rivers letting the water stream between her fingers. She felt along the riverbed, the water filling her mouth and washing her face. But she could not find her eyes. So she went away and wandered over the prairie for a long time, weeping and calling to the animals to help her. Because she was blind, she could only rarely find something to eat, and she began to be very hungry. Her stomach roared and her limbs shook. A wolf came by and teased her, brushing up against her legs and pushing her forward with his nose and holding her hand in his wet mouth. The wolf found this teasing great fun. The wolf brought a piece of buffalo meat close to the young girl’s face.
She said, I smell something dead. I wish I could find it. I am almost starved.
She felt all around for it, felt the wolf’s head and neck. But he had already dropped the meat into the dirt and she could not find it. Finally, when the wolf was doing this, the young girl caught him, and said, Give me your eyes.
The wolf pulled away but he looked at her and when he saw her in pain with hunger he consented and the young girl plucked out one of the wolf’s eyes. She put it in her own head. Then she could see and was able to find her own eyes, but never again could she do the trick the little bird had taught her.
Zita, I said.
Yes.
Can you stay with me? Can you stay all night?
No, little Miette. I have to sleep by my children.
THE NEXT day when Zita came she was so excited she chattered in a mixture of Siksika, English, French and hand gestures, trying to impress upon me the importance of a chief named Crowfoot and Treaty 7.
Crowfoot was the Blackfoot chief and her uncle and he was spending time with her family.
Zita?
Yes, Miette.
Who are those men? I said, gesturing with my elbow towards the window.
Two men in black shirts and dirty pants with ragged hats and sweating dark faces walked towards our house carrying carbines. They walked slowly, with the guns raised and trained on us through the window. Zita grabbed my shoulder and pushed me into the pantry, shushing me as she closed the door. The smell of flour and sugar and dried herbs filled my nose and the dark filled my eyes. After a few minutes I could see shallow lines of light through the boards of the door but I could hear nothing of what was hap
pening outside. I trembled and gulped shallow breaths. The men were dressed in furs and rags. I had seen men like them before and I knew they didn’t like Indians. Once I overheard a fur trader in confession saying that he had spiked homemade liquor with strychnine to kill the Indians he traded with. Zita, I knew, would not hide from them.
I sat on the floor and wrapped my arms around my knees. We didn’t have anything to give them. Around me were cans of beans and jars of chokecherry jam, pickled onions and carrots. My throat ached. I stood and carefully, quietly, opened the pantry door.
When I arrived at the window and peeked out, I saw the men with guns pointed at Zita and I saw my father standing between them with hands raised in apparent surrender. He fell to his knees and Zita stepped in front of him and held out her hands, palms up. I knew we had nothing to give them.
In Calamity's Wake Page 9