The Lilac Bush Is Blooming

by Jan Surasky

  As Carrie and I looked for Bessie and Luther, who were very good at hiding, Uncle John and Uncle Elbert straggled in, much the worse for the several shots of whiskey they had already enjoyed while discussing how to repair the farm. Georgie followed, quite puffed up by the all-masculine company he was allowed to join.

  As we rounded up the kids, taking baby Emma from her crib, Mama walked into the dining room, proudly carrying the beautifully browned turkey set perfectly on the platter decorated with turkeys and pumpkins, acorns and fall foliage, which she displayed the rest of the year in her prized corner curio cabinet.

  Mama gave Georgie all of the honors for carving, setting the turkey at the head of the table where Uncle John could keep an eye on him. Georgie was pleased as all eyes were on him, using his whittling skills that Will had taught him to carefully separate the wings and the thighs and the legs everyone would inevitably fight over. Sailor watched him, tail wagging, trying not to drool at the aroma which wafted through the dining room.

  “Who wants the wing?” Mama asked, as the little ones all yelled their choices. Mama tried to be fair, even remembering who had what last year. I marveled at how she could use such wisdom while remembering what went into the best sweet potato casserole she made every year from scratch. Carrie got the wishbone and shared it with Georgie. As they pulled and fought about who got the larger half, I found myself wishing as well. I wished that both their wishes would come true.

  As Uncle Elbert tried not to snore and Uncle John’s head kept nodding, I looked at Sailor asleep in the corner, full of the scraps everyone kept sneaking to him when they thought no one else was looking. As everyone ate, I made up my Thanksgiving poem in my head. I knew I would need the extra time to give those little ones sleigh rides after the dishes were washed and dried so they could tire themselves out before the long ride home.

  Chapter Nine

  As I looked at the heavy snowflakes through the frosted window of the bedroom I shared with Carrie, I knew that it was time to visit the pile of journals so lovingly placed in the attic but so forgotten over time. It was now my private stash and each new surprise that awaited me brought goose bumps as my curiosity mounted.

  It was Christmas vacation but there were many school projects that needed tending to. Georgie had a shop project and he named me sole provider of the proper tools to make it with. He had picked a small round-seated stool with three legs to create, and I was down at the hardware shop in town every Saturday since he began talking to Norm Stafford who had promised early on to help us. I became an expert in sanding and staining, as well as turning wooden legs for just about any piece of furniture you could name.

  My own project was simpler. We had to write a book report on Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” but then we had to write a Christmas story of our own. As Scrooge and Tiny Tim took their place in my head, at least for a while, I contemplated the impact of the ghost of Christmas past and the plight of Tiny Tim and Scrooge’s eventual transformation.

  In this book there was absolute proof that ghosts could have an impact. I was certain they could, because I knew Mama thought about her own Mama and Papa every day and often told us stories her own parents had told her about ancestors she had never known. She often regaled us with these stories when she had a moment or when we were doing our kitchen chores together.

  I left the old door that Georgie had cut in half and carefully shellacked, setting it on four big logs from the maple tree that had sadly gone down in a frightening thunder storm, complete with the rapid lightening that narrowly missed our kitchen, that I now called my desk, and headed for the attic. Carrie was at Lizzie’s in town, most likely chattering non-stop about boys, and Georgie was busy completing his homework so that Will, who still looked after Georgie despite his busy schedule, could check it over when he got a free moment. Mama was busy at the kitchen table, checking her Christmas card list and the gift list she always kept in a secret place.

  The attic, though unheated, was cozy. The pile of journals still lay in the corner, untouched since I had opened the first one. I pulled the second one out, gingerly untying the heavy red twine that held its old pages together. I settled against the beams that held the roof up, pulling an old Navaho blanket around me that had only a few large holes and found a pillow to sit on. I began to read.

  Dear Rosie,

  Though you are only seven, I am penning the tale of one of your ancestors, your great-great grandmother on your father’s side, whose name was Aiyanna, so you will always know where you came from.

  Aiyanna, who was born to a Seneca Indian woman named Adoette, a name that means “strong as a tree” in the Seneca language, and a white trader, was a half- breed. Her mother was a full-blooded Indian who lived with her Seneca tribe but lived with the white trader named William in a small cabin near her village when he was not away on business. The Seneca overlooked the intrusion of William into their carefully guarded social traditions because William was a skillful trader and brought into their tribe many wondrous goods for very little wampum.

  Aiyanna, whose name means “forever flowering,” grew strong and beautiful despite the hardships of her gypsy life. When she was with the Seneca, she worked hard with the other children in a communal way. When she was with her mother and William, though she worked hard alongside her mother to fetch water from the well for the few dishes William had provided for them, and to launder the few clothes her mother, who was deft with a needle, had so lovingly crafted, they were free to sit around the cabin at night, the kerosene lamp providing them a dim but eerie light. On those nights, William would play the harmonica, and Aiyanna would dance, often a wild dance as William’s tunes became louder and faster.

  Aiyanna grew like a weed, a beautiful flowering weed, often taller than the other children her own age, and often more spindly. But, when she began to mature, and became part of the Seneca maiden’s rites, it was plain to see that she would grow to be a very beautiful woman.

  Aiyanna would have been married to an Indian chief, either a Seneca, or one of another tribe, if Adoette had not borne her by the white trader William. Adoette was the daughter of a very powerful Iroquois chief who was forever being scolded by the elders for not having been strict enough with his only daughter and allowing her to think she could break the very strict Seneca traditions of marriage.

  Adoette’s father, whose name was Cheveyo, which means spirit warrior, had many sons, very much prized by Indian tradition, but he had always had a soft spot for his only daughter. So, it just seemed natural that he would have one for Aiyanna as well. On the rare visits when she was allowed to visit him in his tent, when he was not in council or leading a party to the hunting grounds, or at war with an enemy tribe, she would sit with him cross-legged as he sat, and they would talk about the healing herbs all about them, or the fields of maize that the Indians grew to reap and pound into a very delicious bread. He would especially tell her the tales of the Indian myths so she would know them, and not forget her heritage. Cheveyo was very proud of Seneca tradition.

  At each visit, he would slip some trinket into her hands for her to keep in the small leather box William had given her when she was ten, for she was not yet allowed to adorn herself as a full-grown woman. Often, when she was away from the Seneca at William’s cabin, and she was tucked into the small bed William had crafted for her, and the moonlight was streaming through the unshuttered windows, she would reach for the leather box and count the trinkets, all covered with the beautiful, colored beads of ancient tradition strung by the skilled hands of Seneca women.

  As Aiyanna grew, she became increasingly restless. Although she adored Cheveyo and was inspired by the ancient teachings of the Indians, she had also great admiration for the rough and tumble ways of William, who survived in a land foreign to him for he had been captured at the age of eleven in his native Ireland and brought to America as an indentured servant. He had escaped his servitude at fifteen and from then supported himself as a very canny trader and a trapper wh
en necessary. William’s skill at trading was sought as far west as there were white men to trade with the Indians.

  William was respected by the white men who sought his trading skills as well as the many different Indian tribes who sought the guns, the tobacco, and the beautiful fabrics of the white settlers. As a result of his travels William was knowledgeable in several different Indian dialects and several native languages of the settlers which he taught Aiyanna as she grew.

  Despite his harsh background, William was very gentle with Aiyanna. He patiently taught her to swim in the old swimming hole out back and he taught her to wield both a gun and a bow and arrow, because Indian women were forbidden the weapons of battle. He patiently whittled her playthings in her early years and more utilitarian objects and adornments as she reached adolescence. She especially prized a doll she had named William even though it was an obvious likeness of her.

  When Aiyanna was seventeen she ran away, unsure of her heritage, and built a cabin far into the woods. Both Cheveyo and William were heartbroken and William vowed to find her but Adoette, understanding her daughter’s torment, convinced him to let her be. There she found a trapper named Abraham who cared for her as best he could. She bore a daughter she named Leotie which means “prairie flower” but lost Abraham to a tree- felling accident. In her grief, and unable to care for her daughter, she gave the baby to a barren woman in town who promised to care for her as her own.

  But, Aiyanna missed the child, grieving for her every night as the sun went down and climbing the hills around her cabin as the moon came up, dancing the wild dances of her childhood and calling Leotie’s name. When Adoette fell ill, William came to fetch Aiyanna, but when they returned to William’s cabin, Adoette had died. Aiyanna grieved for the woman who had given her life and had taught her compassion but returned to her cabin to be closer to her daughter.

  As the years passed, many men came and went in Aiyanna’s cabin, unable to understand or to cope with Aiyanna’s wild ways. When Leotie, now called Lottie, grew to be eighteen she learned of her heritage and visited Aiyanna, now ill and old before her time, but still beautiful. Lottie cared for Aiyanna, bringing her broths she had made and heated them over an open fire, and often a freshly baked bread.

  As Aiyanna lay dying, her tuberculin cough taken hold of her and her body racked with the labors of survival, Lottie stroked her long gray hair, once silky and black as the evening sky, and soothed her weathered face. When she died, Lottie carried her to her adopted family’s graveyard and buried her there.

  Lottie married the only merchant in town and bore eight children. Her husband’s business prospered, buoyed by the fact that, although her hair was a deep and beautiful auburn like her grandfather William, her striking beauty was a carbon copy of the woman known as a half-breed who had given her birth. Settlers traveled from all over to purchase the beautiful fabrics that Lottie’s husband went east to hand-pick, and that Lottie wore so well. Beautiful silks from Spain, woolens from the looms of the Irish, and brightly colored linens and cottons spun from the flax and the plants of the American colonies and dyed the brilliant hues of the roots, the berries, and the wildflowers scattered about.

  And every year, on the anniversary of her birth, Lottie placed a wild rose on the simple grave of Aiyanna.

  Lottie was your Papa’s great-grandmother.

  I gingerly tied the heavy red twine about the old, yellowed pages as they had originally been bound, careful not to disturb the tortured spirit of Aiyanna, the beautiful half-Indian maiden. I was both pleased and stunned that our lineage went back to the Iroquois. The once powerful nation, though depleted in number and its descendants now relegated to a Buffalo reservation, had left its mark. Though they had been run off their lands, and no longer hunted the buffalo, the beautiful and plentiful lakes that had provided them the speckled trout and pink salmon to cook over an open fire and on which they often paddled their dugout, bark canoes, still retained the names they had given them. We had swum in Cayuga, Oneida, and Keuka Lakes. We had once taken a ride on a paddleboat on Lake Ontario. Echoes of the Indian past rode with us, and the same cold, deep waters we swam in had taken the Iroquois to lands far west.

  I felt so much a part of history as I placed the journal’s pages back into place among the pile.

  I walked silently down the attic stairs, the creaks barely noticeable as I placed yet another ancestor into the fabric of our very patchwork family legacy. I decided to check on Georgie. He was fast asleep over his pile of books and half-done homework. I roused him gently and put him into his bed. As I hugged him goodnight, and threw imaginary sand in his eyes to insure the arrival of the sandman who I assured him would put him to sleep immediately, I looked out through the panes of the casement window at the very full moon, the same one that had lit the journeys of our ancestors for millennia before us.

  Chapter Ten

  There were precious few snowflakes on Christmas morn but the frosted window panes we had so lovingly dabbed with thickened soap flakes and a sponge had made up for the eerie lack of Christmas cheer. We had declined an invitation to spend Christmas with Aunt Maybelle and her brood because Carrie was expecting Jamie for a visit the day after Christmas and nothing short of a presidential mandate would convince her to leave the preparations she was making.

  We were all aware that this was the last Christmas we would spend together before Carrie went off to college and there was an unspoken sadness among us. But, we didn’t want to break Carrie’s excitement in choosing a course of study, or her dreams for the future of which she had so many. She would be a great fashion designer someday. Or perhaps the wife of a famous doctor. Or head a great charity and be revered by all the needy.

  I went into our shared bedroom to find Carrie painting her nails and looking about as blue as she could be.

  “Hey, Squirrel,” I said, as compassionately as I could so as not to startle her, “why the long face?”

  “I don’t know, Annie May. I’m happy that Jamie is coming to spend the rest of the holiday with us. I have been looking forward to it since the fall semester.

  “But, I’m worried as well. I don’t know what he’s coming to tell me. He starts Harvard in the fall, and I know a girl like me from the boonies won’t stack up to the sophisticated girls he’ll meet in Boston.

  “And, I have my own conflicts as well. I know I’ll meet a lot of boys myself and I’m so undecided in a career. I just don’t know what to think.”

  “Well, worrying about it won’t help. But, if there’s anything I can do to help you get ready for Jamie, I will. I’ll even go shopping with you in town and help you pick out anything you want me to. I saw a really great crimson scarf with tiny roses and anemones on it on sale in Mr. Harter’s window that would set off your snow jacket and make any boy take notice. Maybe if you take him sledding up on Strawberry Hill and ice skating on the pond out back he’ll melt enough to tell you what he’s thinking.

  “You know, Squirrel, sometimes the future takes care of itself. With a little bit of wisdom, and a certain amount of faith, sometimes it will show its hand in ways you couldn’t have imagined. And, if you’re open to it, it might be worth waiting for.”

  Carrie just stared straight ahead, but her glum demeanor lifted and the bright Carrie I once knew, full of sunshine and the love of life, reappeared. She got up and gave me a hug and it was then I knew that Carrie had been divided too. Her whole life ahead of her, and the excitement that went along with it, had been marred by the same sadness that had plagued the rest of us. It was she who would be the first to be torn from the cradle of security. She had been afraid to crack that plucky and rebellious façade of hers for fear of seeming weak or a coward.

  “Gee, Squirrel, we’ll be right behind you. You know Georgie won’t let you go because he needs you. You’re the only one who can do all his art projects with him. And, who can I trust with my deepest secrets but you?”

  Carrie sat down again to dry her nails and apply a third coat of polish.
The sun burst through the windows and into the room with a vengeance, drying Carrie’s nail polish but ruining Georgie’s plans for a Christmas snowman. Nevertheless, I decided to scoop up all the remaining snow that had fallen in a pile behind the barn in the shade of the overhang and bring it to him on the sled to fashion a small Santa Claus.

  As we sat, our private thoughts of the future plaguing us silently, Georgie burst into the room, his face a picture of panic and consternation.

  “Carrie, can you draw me a picture of a car? We need to tell how to fix the brakes and where they are for shop. I know how because Uncle John showed me. But, I can’t draw it. And, we have to have it done by the first day of school after vacation.”

  “Of course I will, Georgie, but first I have to let my nails dry. Why don’t you take a look at the new art book I bought. You might find some cars in there.”

  As Georgie occupied himself with Carrie’s new art book and a look of relief replaced the look of panic, I tiptoed out to make my way down to the kitchen where I knew Mama was bustling around to prepare what she knew were Jamie’s favorite foods. I didn’t know how she had done it, but Carrie had somehow managed to have Jamie work his way into Mama’s favor without her knowing it. And, Mama was hardly a soft touch.

  When I arrived in the kitchen, Mama had several bowls and a casserole for Jamie’s favorite stew. “How about I mix up the lime Jell-O for the pineapple and cottage cheese mold, Mama,” I offered.

  “Very good, Annie May, and we can put you to work doing the slaw as well. I think I’ll put a batch of fried chicken in the deep freeze out back in case anyone gets hungry later.

  “And, if you get to it, you can mix up some chocolate for a thermos of hot cocoa and dig up the marshmallows to go with it.

  “We’ll need to set up a cot in the parlor, as your Aunt Maybelle calls it. Jamie needs his privacy.”