A Thousand Voices

by Lisa Wingate

  “Dell,” he said softly, his hand sliding into my hair and turning my face so that finally our eyes met. Leaning into his fingers, I felt the painful tug of hope, of need and desire. I wanted him to say, Come back. Come back when you’ve taken care of things at home, and I’ll be here. “I’m sorry I started something with you. It was the wrong thing to do. You need to be out in the world discovering life and what you want from it. You don’t need a man who’s ten years older, tied to a small town in the middle of nowhere, with two kids to raise and no time for anything else.” His thumb brushed away a tear, and he stood for a long moment looking into my face, as if, in spite of everything he’d said, he still felt the connection between us and was as confused by it as I was. “Two years ago you could have been one of my students.”

  My hopes crashed painfully, a small, tight ball bearing the razor-sharp edges of reality. “I’m not one of your students.” I tried to pull away, but his fingers tightened slightly, forcing me to look at him.

  “I know you’re not.” His eyes were dark, tormented mirrors of everything I felt. “I know you’re not, but the facts still are what they are. Dell, you’re incredible. You’re beautiful, you’re talented, you have an amazing way with people. When you look at someone, your heart’s in your eyes.” He smoothed a strand of hair from my cheek, tucked it behind my ear. In the distance, the drum had started, and I could feel us falling into the dance. “They’re beautiful eyes,” he whispered against my lips, then kissed me, and I felt it in every part of my body. My senses swirled as he pulled back, and I caught the tree behind me, waited a moment to look at him. “Good-bye, Dell. I wish things were different,” he said, then turned and walked away, his shoulders stiff, as if he were willing himself not to look back.

  Below on the lawn, Autumn watched as her dad approached the play area. When he stopped to talk to her, she swiveled toward me. I wondered what he was saying, if he was explaining things to her, and how he would. There was so much more than she could understand, more than I could understand, myself.

  Her gaze remained fixed on me, as if she were willing me to come down the hill and step back into their incomplete picture.

  I could love her, I thought. I could love her the way I loved Angelo when he was a baby. I could be the one to comb her hair and listen to her secret thoughts. I could settle down, like Shasta, have the future planned out. No more uncertainty. No more questions, only the love of a family, my own family.

  The yearning was too painful to bear.

  “Well, that was all very dramatic.” Lana’s voice sliced through the fog, and I turned to find her stepping out from behind the corner of the building. Crossing her arms under her breasts, she inclined her head to one side in a false show of sympathy. “You poor little thing. I tried to warn you.”

  “Leave me alone, Lana.” The idea of her listening to my conversation with Jace was both humiliating and sickening.

  Her lips curved downward in a pretend pout as she paused to adjust the strap on her halter top. “Now, don’t take it personally, sweetie. I know your feelings must be hurt, but it’s okay. You’re not the first. All the girls get high school crushes on Mr. Reid. He’s so good about setting you kids straight without breaking your little hearts. You know, young girls make the mistake of thinking a man’s interested when really he’s just trying to be helpful. Jace understands that y’all just don’t know any better. It’s okay, hon. Don’t be embarrassed.”

  Anger flared inside me, hot and bitter, filling my mouth with venom. “You know what, Lana. I’m not embarrassed—why should I be? I’m not the one hiding around the corner eavesdropping on people. What’s between Jace and me is just that—between Jace and me. What would really be embarrassing is if I were thirty-something and so desperate I couldn’t tell when a man wasn’t interested.” Without waiting for an answer, I hurried into the building, pushed the door closed behind me, and stood with my back to the cool wood. The corridor was empty except for paintings and framed photographs waiting to be returned to their owners. Here and there, brightly colored award ribbons had been attached to various works.

  Silent faces watched me from portraits of famous chiefs and nameless powwow dancers as I started down the hallway toward the back door, where I could exit without having to see Jace and Autumn again, without having to watch Lana gloat as I walked away. From the back of the building, I could walk up the road to the parking area, avoiding the crowds of happy tourists, the soulful flute music in the craft booths, the Reids’ display, the memory of Jace and me laughing and joking about his CD, of Autumn asking me to comb her hair.

  I could get in my car, and drive away, and pretend I’d never come.

  But deep inside I knew there would always be questions left unanswered, desires unfulfilled. If life had taught me anything it was that unanswered questions, unsatisfied yearnings didn’t wither away over time, dry up, turn to dust, and disappear like last year’s leaves. Instead, they remained rooted like the trees themselves, growing each season until they cast a long shadow over everything.

  For me, there would always be shadows here.

  I glanced over my shoulder momentarily as the front door opened. For an instant, I imagined that the figure silhouetted against the bright sunlight was Jace coming back to say that good-bye wasn’t good-bye after all. But the man in the doorway was only a maintenance worker with a pull cart. Parking it in the hall, he began carefully loading paintings between sheets of cardboard.

  I turned to go, but something stopped me. A flash of color. Blue eyes. A face. A smile. A small painting in a frame of rough-hewn lumber, resting on an easel between two larger works in intricate frames.

  My heart stopped in my throat.

  I knew that image from my memories, from the past, from my dreams. From a hundred feet away, amid a thousand other paintings, I would have recognized it.

  CHAPTER 23

  I stood mesmerized, staring into the eyes of my mother—paint on canvas, yet so real it seemed that any minute she would speak. She was sitting by a river, the water diamond-tipped and clear, the artist’s brushstrokes so fluid I could hear the current moving. Her body was loosely wrapped in a Navajo blanket in shades of blue, her shoulders bare, knees curled against her chest. Long strands of auburn hair fell over her shoulders, catching the sunlight. She’d rested her head on her knees, glanced sideways at the painter. Wildflowers blanketed the ground around her, yet the first fall leaves were drifting by on the water. Her smile was wistful, as if she knew that summer was waning and winter pressing in.

  “Mama.” The word echoed into the silent hall, and maintenance man stopped to look at me.

  “Ma’am?” After slipping a framed photo collage onto his cart, he took a few steps closer.

  “This painting.” I searched for a signature at the bottom near the frame, but there was none. “Who painted it? Where did it come from?” The artist must have known my mother long ago. In the image, she was young, just a teenager. Her skin was supple and smooth in the soft light, not dry and leathery, hanging over her bones the way I remembered. Her face was full and slightly blushed, rather than hollow and gaunt like the face of a refugee who’d seen too much and been hungry too long.

  Compared to the girl in the picture, the Mama I knew was just a shadow. But still, this was her. I’d been haunted by her too long not to know.

  The maintenance man crossed the hall, scooped up a blue ribbon that had fallen on the floor, and tucked it in the corner of the frame. “It’s an award winner,” he commented cheerfully, picking up the painting and reading something on the back. As the canvas moved, the water seemed to flow, as blue as Mama’s eyes. “First place, portrait in traditional media. Entry form here calls it Jesse in Blue.”

  “Jesse.” My mother’s name trembled upward from somewhere deep inside me. “Who…?” Pressing my fingers to my lips, I tried to regain my senses. The building, the maintenance man, the other paintings, the rhythmic beating of the drum seemed far away. The moment felt dreamlike, a
iry and surreal, as if in an instant I would awaken and find myself back home in my room. “Who painted it? Who’s the artist?”

  The man squinted at the entry form. “T. Clay, booth 103, aisle D. It don’t say if this one’s for sale or—” He stopped in midsentence as I turned and ran for the door.

  “Thank you!” I called back, then burst from the building and flew down the hill, my heart pounding. The park was nearly empty. Over the loud speaker, the master of ceremonies was announcing that a special presentation and Gourd Dance, honoring veterans, would begin in five minutes. Merchants were asked to close their booths during the ceremony out of respect. Dancers, veterans, active-duty soldiers, and spectators should proceed to the capitol lawn. In the vendor area, vendors were shutting down their booths as tourists made last-minute purchases and headed toward the dance circle. The woman weaving the bracelets had just finished taking money from a mother with twin toddlers in tow.

  “The ceremony is about to start,” she said as I slid to a stop, looking up and down the aisle. “It’s that way.”

  “I know,” I panted. “But I’m looking for booth 103, aisle D. Can you tell me where that is?”

  “Well, let’s see.” She reached into a tote bag and pulled out a photocopied map of the grounds. Tracing a finger along the aisles, she muttered, “D…103 D.” The moment seemed to stretch on forever as vendors around us closed up and headed for the capitol lawn. What if the vendor at booth 103 D was closing up, too? How long would I have to wait for someone to return?

  “That’d be all the way on the far side.” The woman folded up her map and tucked it back into her tote bag, then pointed. “Right side of the building, about two-thirds of the way down. Look for the little metal plates on the posts.” She pointed toward the doorway of her own booth. “Those tell the booth numbers.”

  “Thank you!” I spun around and hurried away.

  “Good luck!” she called after me.

  I waved over my shoulder, then rounded the corner, alternately running and threading my way through groups of spectators headed in the opposite direction.

  By the time I’d reached the other end of the pavilion, the crowd had all but vanished, the booths were closed, and the last of the vendors were disappearing around the far corner. Skidding to a halt, I caught my breath. A silent plea repeated in my head over and over. Please let this be the moment I finally find the truth. Please…

  My legs felt slow and sluggish as I started forward, reading the signs on the booths: 101, 102, 103….

  One step, two steps, three…

  Around me, the world fell into an eerie hush, as if the breeze, the tablecloths, the heavy woven blankets on display, the rows of triangular flags overhead, even the powwow drum were breathless with anticipation.

  Please…please…

  My heart hammered against my chest, my hopes fluttering uncertainly, like a kite struggling to take flight in a fickle breeze.

  Please…

  There was a gate across booth 103 D. The plastic mesh had been stretched loosely and tied to the post with a single leather thong.

  Moving closer, I saw paintings inside—images of warriors on horseback, powwow dancers, Native American women dipping water from a stream, a little boy investigating the wonders of a tiny blue jay feather, his chubby finger running gently along the edge, a hawk taking flight, Black Angus cattle grazing in a pasture. I recognized the houses in the background. That scene had greeted Jace and me as we’d driven through the entranceway at the Clay Ranch.

  My pulse sped up again. Had the woman at the ranch been lying when she said Thomas Clay couldn’t possibly be my father? Why would she invent something so terrible as a hunting accident if it wasn’t true? Tommy’s little girl come by, Audie Senior had said, as if it made perfect sense. If their Thomas was my father, why would that woman, his aunt, deny it and send us away?

  Standing at the booth entrance, I stared at a painting of young powwow dancers preparing to perform as their mothers fussed over them, attaching headdresses, fastening necklaces, braiding hair, painting faces and putting on the finishing touches. The eyes drew me in. They were lifelike, shimmering with the light of individual souls, like my mother’s eyes in Jesse in Blue.

  Next to the painting of the powwow dancers, another small portrait hung unobtrusively. Nearly hidden among larger works of art, it pulled me in, and I stood once again captivated by the face of my mother. Her slim body was draped in a thin white sundress. Morning light shone through the fabric, outlining her breasts, her waist, her legs as she sat on the low-hanging branch of an oak tree, her back resting against the trunk, one leg propped up and the other dangling, her slim foot touching the grass. In her arms, she cradled a sleeping baby, just newborn, with dark, fuzzy hair and smooth skin the color of milky tea.

  Her face was filled with love. In all my life, I couldn’t remember my mother looking at me that way, with tender eyes, the way she gazed at my baby brother in the weeks after he was born, when she was trying to stay clean. Sometimes she sat with Angelo, her face filled with love and wonder, as if he were the most beautiful thing in the world. As much as I loved Angelo, I hated that look in her eyes because she never had that look for me. She never seemed to see me at all. But the baby in the portrait, the one she was watching with adoration and rapture, wasn’t Angelo.

  “That’s me,” I whispered.

  “Pardon?” A voice from somewhere inside the booth startled me, and I jerked my hand away from the plastic mesh gate. Catching my breath, I slowly leaned inward to see around the front table, which was stacked with tall cardboard boxes holding prints for sale. A man sat perched on a stool in the corner, his back toward me, his attention fixed on a nearly blank canvas. He was roughing in the shape of a face in broad, sienna strokes. He was tall and thin, his hair jet-black with the faintest hints of gray, falling in waves around the collar of a button-up Hawaiian shirt that hung loose and wrinkled over faded jeans with holes in the knees.

  “In the painting…that’s me. That’s my mama.” A pulse pounded in my ears. I wanted to throw open the gate, run inside, grab him and make him look at me, shake him and say, Are you my father? Did you know my mother? If I confronted him, would he tell me the truth?

  He nodded without turning around. “Some of the source photos came from last year’s festival.” His reply was pleasant but disinterested, as if chatting with customers wasn’t his forte and he wished I would leave. “Booths are closed during the ceremony today, though. Sorry. New rule. They’ve always got some new rule around here.” Sticking the paintbrush between his teeth, he grabbed a tube of white paint and squeezed some onto his palette, then picked up the brush again. “I’ll be open the rest of the day. My partner handles sales. She’ll be here after the ceremony.” He went back to work, holding a photograph next to the canvas.

  “Did you paint this?” I asked, and he glanced halfway over his shoulder.

  “All of the paintings are my work. The weavings are my partner’s.” Something about him was familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “Like I said, some of the source photos came from the festival last year, so if you see someone you know, that’s probably why.” His brush touched the canvas again, slid over the curved outline of a child’s eye. When he was finished, those eyes would hold the soul of the child in the photo, a young Choctaw boy in a baseball uniform, his face still bearing the paint of a dancer.

  Look at me, I thought. Do you know me? Do you know who I am? “Are you Thomas Clay?”

  He lifted the brush from the canvas and set it in the tray without finishing the stroke. Laying his palette aside, he took a breath, and slowly turned around. I felt his eyes settle first on me, then follow my gaze to the painting of my mother. Neither of us moved.

  “Are you Thomas Clay?” I asked again, but I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t let him see that everything in me was hanging on this moment.

  “I’m not,” he said. “Tommy was my brother. He passed away.”

  The desperate, frightened
girl inside me wanted to turn and run. Maybe I shouldn’t go any further. Maybe I should let the picture of Mama be enough—proof that, at one time, she wasn’t too messed up to love me.

  Gathering my resolve, I faced him. I knew him even before his eyes, dark and deep like midnight, met mine. The passage of years had changed his face, his hair, even his voice, but his eyes were the same. He was the one who started coming around Granny’s house when Angelo was a baby—the one who brought the stuff that messed Mama up and made Angelo’s daddy break up with her. The one who took Mama away to Kansas City and never brought her back.

  “Are you my father?” The question sounded surprisingly calm. Inside, I didn’t know what to feel.

  He shifted uncertainly, stood up, then sat on the corner of the stool again, wringing his hands in his lap. “Hello, Dell,” he said finally, and my emotions, fully prepared for another crash, went limp. I stumbled back against the pole, and the thin leather thong snapped behind me, letting the gate fall open. Perversely, I reached out and caught it, not ready to surrender the safety of a barricade between us. Silence choked the air around me, and I clutched the plastic mesh, struggling to sort through the storm swell of questions.

  “Let it go,” he said softly, motioning to the gate. “It’s all right.”

  I shook my head, not comprehending. “Why does my birth certificate say Thomas Clay if he’s not my father?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “I need to know,” I whispered. Finally, after all these years, I’d found someone who could answer the questions that had burned so long inside me. “Please. I need to know.” Where was I born? Was I ever wanted? Why did Mama go away and leave me behind? Why did you? Didn’t either of you love me at all? “Nobody ever told me…anything. I need to know where I came from. I need to know about my mama.” I had to learn the secrets of this man, who took my mama away, yet all these years later tried to capture her soul in paint on canvas.