Disposition of Remains

by Laura T. Emery

Wilbur and I spent the next couple of days hiking around the other waterfalls of Havasupai. First, we made the treacherous hike to Mooney Falls. It was named after a miner, Daniel “James” Mooney, whose rope snapped during a valiant attempt to rescue his friend. He fell to his death onto the rocks at the bottom, and was found ten months later covered in a thin layer of travertine. This story Wilbur thankfully shared with me after we’d reached the bottom of the sheer-face descent.

  We spent some time swimming with a few visitors from Quebec, and sunbathing on the small island in the middle of the pool before moving on.

  Beyond Mooney Falls, we spotted the even-more-difficult-to-reach Beaver Falls. Beaver Falls appeared to be a congregation of smaller waterfalls situated closely together, flowing over a staircase structure of rocks. We traversed a rough and rugged area to get to its base, and climbed an eight-foot rope to reach its summit. Whatever physical effort Wilbur had saved me by flying us down into the Canyon by helicopter, he made up for tenfold over those two days.

  The next day we hiked to the New Navajo Falls. A few years back, a flood destroyed the original Navajo Falls, named after an old Supai chief. After several days of rain, the Redlands Dam on Havasu Creek burst, causing a huge mudslide. Some four hundred fifty stranded people had to be airlifted to safety from the threat of the rising floodwaters. The old Navajo Falls, which had been the largest of the four, eventually dried up, and the diverted floodwaters created the “New” Navajo Falls.

  Each of the falls was distinctly lovely and unique, but I found there to be something special about Havasu Falls. I was mysteriously drawn to it, and sensed that somehow, it had always been a part of my life.

  The powwow was to occur on this, our third evening at Havasupai. Natives from many different North American tribes began arriving to the area. Wilbur and I hiked into the village to grab an early dinner before the festivities began.

  Over those few days, most of the locals waved to Wilbur when we passed by, but never really engaged either of us in conversation. It was surprising when one of the Native women approached us as we were leaving the café. An eerie feeling descended upon me when our eyes met: an unsettling déjà vu.

  “Hello, Wilbur. Who’s your friend?” the squat little woman asked.

  “Irma, this is Stacia.”

  “What tribe are you from, Stacia?”

  I looked at Wilbur before cautiously answering, “I’m Havasupai. But…”

  She gave me an exaggerated look of confusion.

  “This is my first time here,” I continued hesitantly, “but my mother was born here. Her name was Nova Uqualla.”

  Irma hesitated for a moment, stared at both of us blankly, and then said to me, “Why don’t we get you dressed for the powwow?”

  Before I knew it, I had left Wilbur behind as Irma whisked me off to her living quarters. She rummaged around in her closet for a bit and eventually emerged holding several incredibly colorful outfits, which she called “regalia.”

  She held up a blue beaded and feathered outfit and announced, “This is the one. It will match your eyes.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked, timidly.

  “What? You would rather have the yellow?”

  “No, I mean, it’s beautiful. Are you sure I can borrow it?”

  “Yes,” she replied tersely as she began to help me into it.

  Irma looked to be about sixty years old, only slightly older than my mother would have been, had she lived.

  “Irma, did you know my mother?”

  “Yes,” Irma admitted with no expression whatsoever, then left the room. When she returned, she was carrying a cedar box. She opened the box, revealing the ceremonial feathers inside.

  “These are for your hair, but we have to braid it first.”

  Irma braided one side as I did the other. I had a thousand questions for her but she gave no indication that she would be willing to answer any. She raised her eyes to the window when the sound of drumming began.

  “We must go. Don’t want to miss the contest.”

  She grabbed my arm and practically dragged me back to the village. An arena had been set up, and everyone we had crossed paths with in the few days prior had gathered in the small area. Wilbur approached me with a magnificent toothy smile on his face and threw his muscular arms about my shoulders in an unexpected hug.

  “You look…great.”

  “Thanks. It’s a little weird,” I admitted.

  I felt as though I were dressed up for Halloween.

  “You know, it’s very unusual for the Natives to loan out their regalia. In fact, it’s a great honor.”

  “Is Irma normally that generous?”

  “I don’t know. This is the first time she’s ever talked to me.”

  As the dancing began, we found a place to sit and turned our attention to the performers. Irma sat with the rest of the Havasupai on the other side of the arena. I could feel her eyes on me throughout the entire show.

  The Havasupai beat on drums and sang songs to the Creator in a native dialect as the different tribes took turns performing their individual native dances. There were strict rules that no other people were permitted to enter the arena while the tribes performed, but when the occasional dog would stroll through, no one seemed to mind or notice.

  I found a soothing sense of calm in the rhythm of the drums, like a lullaby meant to inspire a peaceful sleep. I felt myself swaying back and forth, entranced by the movement of the dancers.

  One of the Navajo elders performed a storytelling dance called The Hoop Dance, in which he formed several of what looked like my childhood hula hoops into different shapes and formations. The Navajo encore consisted of a group Grass Dance, a style that seemed to me to be the long-lost forefather of break dancing.

  Next up were the Hopi. They danced The Butterfly Dance in colorful regalia while shaking beaded rattles, followed by The Konina Dance in which they swayed smoothly back and forth, further deepening my trance.

  Women and girls of every age and tribe joined together as they performed The Fancy Shawl Dance, which dizzied me as I beheld the blurring array of vibrantly colored spinning shawls. It was reminiscent of the vortex, and a quiet spiritual calm came over me. It was all so foreign, but yet at the same time, oddly familiar—like the experience was somehow etched into my soul.

  The fog rolled in as the Havasupai took the arena, their heads adorned with rams’ horns. They formed a circle and began to chant and dance just as an elderly Native man sauntered through the mist directly in front of me. His eyes were as black as coal, and he spoke with a deep, ominous voice. It was almost how I imagined the voice God would sound, or possibly more like the booming timbre of The Wizard of Oz.

  He stared directly at me with his piercing obsidian eyes. It seemed he was speaking only to me.

  “The Havasupai are the guardians of the Canyon. The bighorn ram is a protector to all those who inhabit the Canyon. The Ram Dance honors our protectors. The ram calls to the animals. The ram calls to the trees. The ram calls to the people and everything in the Canyon.”

  He paused, but continued to stare at me, transfixed. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t look away. The dancers continued behind him, and that’s when I saw her. My mother. She was dancing with her people. I tried to call out to her but I couldn’t speak or move. Then the terrifying man with black eyes demanded, “Why have you come here?”

  The drums began to beat loudly in a different rhythm. I don’t know at what point the tall, muscular Aztec dancers took over the arena, but they spun wildly with their enormous headdresses.

  “The Havasupai consider themselves the guardians of the Grand Canyon,” Wilbur said. “That was the Ram Dance.”

  Either he thought I was deaf or really dense.

  “I know, I know. The ram calls out to the trees, and the animals and stuff.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked, perplexed.

  “The old man,” I retorted brusquely, raising my hands in a what the hell gesture. �
��Did you seriously not hear him?”

  The look Wilbur gave me clearly indicated that he believed I’d been hallucinating. I was terrified at that moment, sure that my cancer had metastasized to my brain. I hadn’t yet come to terms with my body failing, and I definitely wasn’t ready to lose my mind. I assured myself that I must have just nodded off for a moment; it was simply another period of narcolepsy combined with an incredibly vivid dream.

  I shook it off as the tribal announcer asked the spectators to stand. The Aztec dancers formed a semi circle as they turned to face us. They invited us to form a large circle and hold hands for The Friendship Dance. Wilbur explained that this was the one exception in which the Natives were willing to make physical contact with strangers. In other instances, outsiders (non-Natives, especially) could transfer their bad energy to the tribe simply by touch.

  I had never been much of a dancer, but it proved easy to follow along. I kept looking around, searching faces, expecting to see another apparition of my mother, but the only other Native woman I recognized was Irma. She was dancing on the other side of the circle, continuing to examine me from afar. Something about her was so alluringly mysterious and intriguing, but also seriously intimidating.

  I felt an energy in Havasupai, much more than I’d experienced in Sedona. It was almost like a connection to everything around me. But there was also something a bit unsettling there—a daunting air of unsolved mystery. I kept thinking of what my mother had told me: that there was evil in our past, and I should never look back. But I was in Havasupai to live in the present and I certainly couldn’t focus on the future.

  As we continued to dance, I turned my concentration to Wilbur. He looked incredibly handsome in the light of the full moon and the roaring bonfire nearby. Wilbur and I continued to hold hands after The Friendship Dance was over. We shared our own “friendship dance” as we laughed and spun all the way back to Havasu Falls. The moonlight was shining down on the blue-green pools of water beneath the cascading waterfalls. I felt completely removed from the life I had been living just days before. I even temporarily forgot about my disturbing hallucination.

  I sat close to Wilbur atop a small rock formation, so close that my leg grazed against his. He didn’t pull away. I had momentarily blocked from my mind all of the reasons that I shouldn’t be with Wilbur. Suddenly, I found myself uninhibited, drunk with dance and Native spirit. My overloaded senses had reached a crescendo and I couldn’t help but turn and face him. I leaned in and gazed deeply into his lashy eyes.

  “Is this another joke?” he asked nervously.

  “No,” I murmured, donning the most seductive look I could muster.

  “I’d really like to kiss you right now, but you’re still wearing that ring,” Wilbur responded.

  I had almost forgotten about my wedding ring. With some difficulty, I tugged it off and held it in my palm for a long moment. That ring had defined my life for the last seventeen years. I looked back at Wilbur and smiled, then tossed the ring over my shoulder into the blue-green water below.

  I leaned toward Wilbur again, so close that our noses touched. We were softly breathing the same air. Our lips barely grazed each other’s at first. I felt dizzy with anticipation as he gently stroked my face. When his warm, supple lips finally made contact with mine, it unleashed a pent-up fury of passion.

  I had no idea how intense it could be to be passionately kissed by a man. My only previous experiences had been with a boy and a monster. Evan hadn’t even attempted to kiss me in years and sex had become a chore. Kissing Wilbur was worth whatever amount of guilt and difficulty that would inevitably result.

  Wilbur cradled my face in his hands, and I ran my fingers through his hair. I had been dying to fondle those dark, wavy locks since the moment I first saw him. We continued to kiss for what seemed like hours and only moments at the same time. Finally, Wilbur stopped and looked at me intently.

  “Stacia, I really like you.”

  “I like you too,” I gushed, eager to return to our prior activity. I pulled him back toward me.

  “Wait, Stacia, I just…I really think you should see about getting some treatment.”

  “It was just a dream. I’m really not crazy.”

  “No, no, I mean for your cancer,” Wilbur revealed.

  My heart sank. He had known all along. What had seemed to be the greatest night of my life was nothing more than an illusion based on my assumption that he genuinely wanted to be with me—not that he was trying to rescue me.

  “Misty told you,” I grimaced, horrified.

  “No, Misty told Paul. Paul told me…after you passed out.”

  “So you brought me here because you knew I’m gonna die?”

  “Stacia,” he said trying to hold onto me, “I would have brought you anyway.”

  I pushed him away and began to cry. How naïve could I have been?

  Every negative thought and emotion I had been avoiding so skillfully came swarming back into my gut. The firewall between my fantasy life and my sad truth had been breached. A sudden pain spread across my chest as though I could feel my heart actually breaking. It was the first time I had cried since my appointment with Jerry, maybe because, for the first time, I actually had something to lose. It made my fate seem infinitely more real.

  “Stacia, you are an incredibly beautiful woman who has so much to offer this world. I hate to see you just give up.”

  “You don’t understand!” I protested. “I know exactly what’s in store for me, and the outcome will be the same whether I get treatment or not. The only difference is that I can go out on my terms.”

  “I’ll help you,” Wilbur said sincerely, placing the palm of his hand on my cheek and pushing up his thumb to wipe a tear from my eye.

  Part of me wanted to run as fast as I could to get away from him, but there was nowhere to go. The other part wanted to fall into his arms and let him take care of me, but that was not an option either. If I did that, it would mean I had learned nothing from my mistakes and I would die with more regret than I’d started with.

  “Wilbur,” I said, pulling his hand away from my face, “I have to be someone different than I’ve been.”

  Part 2

  Anger

  CHAPTER 10

  Anger will make you do crazy things. People yell and scream, punch, even kill. I had spent so many years being silently resentful, but suddenly I was enraged. I had nothing to logically channel my anger toward. Usually, I would figure out a way to let off enough steam to forestall the inevitable explosion. Until now. Instead, I stewed internally, almost to the point of boiling over.

  I stormed into my tent, stripped off the borrowed regalia, and cast it aside. Make-believe time was over. I violently unbraided my hair, slammed my head down on the pillow, and wrapped the pillow around my head in a childish and vain attempt to block any more thoughts from entering. There I was again, alone with my sad, infuriating truth. There was no need to worry about what crazy dreams might be awaiting me that night, because I didn’t sleep a wink.

  I kept thinking about Wilbur, who was sleeping in the adjacent tent, and yearning to return to that blissful realm of denial. I imagined what the night may have been like if he hadn’t said those words—how we could have made love under the stars. It was just like one of my ridiculous romance novels: pure fiction.

  I felt the fury rise through my chest, thinking about how a bastard like Evan would get to live, and I wouldn’t. Karma is supposed to take care of these things. The universe is supposed to right these wrongs. Why did the universe decide that I was the wrong that needed righting?

  However, even though Evan was a bastard to me, he did contribute to the world at large. He showed up at his law practice every day and did something that mattered. I couldn’t say the same. Maybe I was arrogant to think that the cosmic universe was after me when the simple truth was that the universe didn’t even notice me. Why would my death matter? And to whom?

  I thought about the old man and how he stared
through me with those coal-black eyes. My insomnia was derived partially out of fear that he would infect my dreams again. And my mother. Why had I envisioned her there? I realized I must have been closer than I thought to joining her.

  When I emerged from the tent at dawn, I found Wilbur meditating by the water. I’d intended to wait patiently for him to finish, but he must have sensed my angry presence and turned toward me.

  “I need to leave,” I demanded.

  “Where will you go?”

  “I’m not sure, but I’ll figure it out.”

  I waited, expecting an argument, but I didn’t get one. Arguing is what Evan did, not Wilbur.

  “All right. I understand. I’ll fly you back up.”

  I couldn’t stay there anymore. Something in Havasupai was making me feel as though I was going crazy—sick in mind and body.

  We were silent as we packed up our gear and returned to the lodge what we had borrowed. After that, I knocked on Irma’s door with her regalia in hand. I considered just leaving it at the lodge and asking someone to return it for me; my fight-or-flight instinct was dominating all my actions by that point. But I didn’t want to be rude since she had been unusually generous with me. She opened the door with a clearly uncharacteristic smile.

  “Good morning, Irma,” I managed a faked smile in return. “Thank you so much for loaning this to me.”

  “You are welcome. Will I being seeing you again?”

  “I honestly don’t know. But I have to leave right now.”

  She winked and smiled before slowly closing the door. Her smug expression told me she knew something she wasn’t willing to share. I walked away from her house feeling even more agitated than when I’d arrived.

  After a helicopter flight and car ride, it seemed like it had been an eternity before we arrived at the train station in Grand Canyon National Park. After our silent and awkward journey, the cashier informed me that I could buy a train ticket with cash and without any identification. This would allow me to keep Evan in the dark as to my whereabouts. It was more important to me than ever that I remain elusive.