Wild Indigo

by Sandi Ault

  I threw up my arms. “Okay, stop it, stop it! I’m tired of all this spell stuff, and these cryptic messages and strange objects. Have you seen the Taos paper? Do you know what’s really going on? They’re practically calling me a murderer, and everyone in town is going to read that, if they haven’t already.”

  Tecolote rose and took hold of my forearm, her gnarled fingernails digging deeply into my flesh. “Calm yourself, Mirasol. Do as your teacher says and sit here with us for a while. We have brought you some things to help.” She pushed me back toward the park bench until I sat down.

  At this, Momma Anna rose from her seat and reached beneath her shirt and drew out her jish. She untied the deerskin thong that held it closed and rummaged inside the bag for a chunk of brownish root, which she placed in my palm. She closed my fingers over it and said, “Burn half with red chile and salt. Carry other half next to heart.” She thumped her chest and then held up her medicine pouch. “Like this. Then, after: take nachi that spring by you house, back where we find flower, wild spinach that next other time. Plant in wet mud, leave there. Make offering, cornmeal. Back away, don’t turn back on it, keep face to nachi, okay? Do at noon, big light. No witch come out at noon. Tomorrow. Don’t wait. Then, nighttime, you come pueblo for feast, bonfire. Serena pick you up, Hunter say you come.”

  Both women looked down at me. Tecolote spoke now: “Take these.” She reached into the pocket of her dress and brought out a tied knot of brown cloth. “Together, it is a tea—put it all in the kettle, even the seeds. Boil it a little, then let it cool and drink. And you must close your curtains, Mirasol, lock your door. Sweep out any ashes from the fireplace. Put San Cirilio on the hearth, he protects you. I will ask an arbulario to lift the spell in a little time—perhaps three, four days, after all this is done.”

  Without another word, they turned from the park bench and walked across the street to a nearby alley. Momma Anna adjusted her blanket over her head, and the two women locked arms and disappeared down the narrow passage and into the haze of the ensuing twilight.

  25

  Yellow Hawk

  The only time I had ever talked with Yellow Hawk was back at the beginning of the summer, on the evening of the big bake, the night before Momma Anna’s grandson’s wedding. A huge feast was held at Frank and Lupé’s home, a ramshackle HUD house identical to the hundred or so around the outskirts of the old, walled village of the pueblo. The home, like most of the others, was built square in the middle of once-rich farm fields, now idle due to government subsidies that paid the Tanoah not to plant corn, after centuries of growing the sacred maize and centering their culture around its bounty.

  As I drove up the long, deeply rutted dirt road through the field, I could see cars and pickups parked everywhere. Serena waved her hands wildly as she came down the lane toward me. “Wait! Wait! Park down at the end. Lupé will come get you when you can come up to the house.”

  I parked where she said and got out with a basket of gifts. Serena held her hands up and pushed away, gesturing for me to wait right by the car, so I did. She left me there and went back up toward the house.

  It was nearly seven in the evening, and the blue sky was beginning to flatten in color. A faint pink glow began to hum on the horizon, telling of Father Sun’s fatigue and willingness to perhaps surrender to the Moon another day of pueblo life. Horses flicked their tails in the nearby pasture, and dogs barked at the next house over, where elk antlers hung in clumps from the two posts marking the dirt drive. It was the time the Tanoah called Kapnákoyapana, Corn Tassel Coming Out Moon—roughly the same time we knew as the month of June. A magpie dropped to a nearby fence post and inspected me with suspicion. Momma Anna once told me the magpie was the consort of the Corn Girls, two sisters who—in a jealous struggle over his affections—ended up separating, and one went to the hole into the underworld that is at the mouth of the Indigo Falls. This beautiful planting/fertility myth told of Blue Corn Girl going after her sister Yellow Corn Girl, into the home of the ancestors, the House of the Dead. And then, just as Magpie came to find them, the two rose from beneath the waters again as yellow and blue corn ears, and spilled from the falls and down over the land to feed the People. It was symbolic of the journey the corn makes as it must offer its own life, in the form of its seed, to the underworld, thence to come up again to be in this life.

  I set my basket on the roof of my Jeep and then leaned against it, drinking in the beauty of the evening. A half hour later, I had shifted positions enough times that my legs were tired of standing, so I opened the rear hatch and sat in the cargo area, which was coated with Mountain’s hair, the windows smeared with his drool and painted with nose prints. He’d chewed away one of the net accessory holders meant for small items one might normally carry in the trunk. A host of bones, beef knuckles, and toys in various states of decomposition surrounded the big covered foam pad that was his car seat. Somehow I was comforted by all this, and I felt his presence in it. I missed my companion. I dangled my legs over the rear bumper and swung them back and forth like a child. It was cooling down, a beautiful evening.

  After twenty more minutes, I wondered if I should just start the car and go home—no one could possibly miss me, as I had never truly arrived. And it was even feasible that Serena had failed to tell Lupé I was there. But it might be seen as an offense if I left; yet it was also unthinkable for me to approach the house when I’d been asked to wait. I finally decided to surrender to the fact that I’d be covered with wolf hair, and I pulled my legs up into the Jeep, turned to lean my back against the spare tire, and tried to get comfortable while I assessed the situation.

  Lupé stuck her head under the back hatch and said, “Well, are you ready, White Girl?”

  I straightened, started brushing fur off my dress, and stood up, banging my head into the raised hatch. I put a hand to my crown, winced, and stepped out of danger. “Ready?” I said.

  “Yes. The elders got to talk with you, see if you can come to the feast.”

  I followed her up toward the porch on the front of the house, a narrow band of cement furnished with a long bench. Four old men sat smoking cigarettes, wrapped in their blankets. I recognized Momma Anna’s brother Yellow Hawk as one of them. He held up a hand and waved for me to come closer. Lupé asked, “Do you have any tobacco?”

  I stopped walking. “In the glove box of my Jeep, there’s a medicine pouch. It has sage, cornmeal, and tobacco.”

  “Is it real tobacco, Indun tobacco?”

  “Yes, that’s the kind Momma Anna taught me to use.”

  “You go ’head,” she said. “I’ll get it and bring it to you.”

  I approached the elders with my basket. They all looked at me without speaking. I stood in front of them for what seemed an eternity, afraid to break the silence myself, in case it was some sort of tribal taboo for me to do so. Lupé reappeared and slid the bag of tobacco discreetly into my hand. She took the basket from me and went in the house, slamming the screen door behind her. I smelled coffee, chili, and stew, and maybe even barbecue coming from the kitchen door. I also smelled the sharp scent of burning cedar.

  Yellow Hawk held up his hand. “How are you?”

  “I’m good. Fine. I’m fine. And you?”

  He nodded.

  I offered the bag of tobacco. Lujan took it and held it up to examine it briefly. The others looked at it also, and two of them nodded. Yellow Hawk tucked the offering under his blanket. “Sit down, sit down,” he said.

  I looked around—then, for lack of a better option that I could see—sat down cross-legged in the dirt, carefully arranging my long dress modestly over my legs.

  The elders nodded, clearly approving my choice of seating.

  Yellow Hawk said, “Why you want be Indun?”

  Stunned, I opened my mouth, but could not think of a thing to say. Finally, I recovered enough to mutter, “I don’t want to be an Indian.”

  Grunts, nods, then silence from the old men.

  A few min
utes passed.

  “We don’t tell white people our ways. What we speak of, lose power. Our ways, our power. We don’t talk about it.”

  It was my turn to nod my head.

  A small, wiry man at the opposite end of the bench from Yellow Hawk spoke in Tiwa. They all grunted and nodded their heads in agreement.

  Yellow Hawk smiled. “We speak Tiwa, this doin’.”

  I nodded again.

  Yellow Hawk kept bobbing his head, his eyes fixed on me. Then he raised a hand and gestured to the others. In unison, they rose and went into the house. When the screen door closed, he said to me, “I am old. Anna old. We old now.”

  “No, you’re not old.” I smiled. “Grandma Bird and Grandpa Nazario are old. You are their son.”

  He was not impressed with my attempt to win him over with flattery. “They ancient,” he said, and chuckled. “I am old.”

  I started to speak again, but he held up a hand to stop me.

  “Every age has its people. And each time, there some thing the people must do, each age.” He stopped to take out his tobacco pouch and roll a cigarette. The light was fading, and his dark skin under the shadow of the porch looked like worn leather.

  Yellow Hawk lit his smoke and inhaled deeply, turning his head upward. He exhaled a long stream of sweet-smelling smoke. Then he looked down at me. “We not know, long time, what we need to do. I play as boy, do good thing I get smile, do bad thing I get whip. I learn do good thing that way.” He smiled. “I ride horse, help my father plant, hunt, make drum, cut wood, dance, run race, run many mile every day. I learn as I do, while I grow.”

  From inside the house, quiet murmurs and whispers were accented only by the occasional ringing of a pot lid as a woman checked the consistency of the stew or gave the posole a stir. Gas lamps hissed, and the window and doorway began to glow golden against the twilight.

  Yellow Hawk said, “One time, we not live outside wall. All the People live inside wall, in village—not like this house. We come out to field, here, like this, plant corn, every color corn. Blue corn for sky, white corn for cloud, yellow corn for sun, even red corn for earth. We not wear shoe with heel in village, only moccasin, show respect that way. Every baby wash first day in river, whole tribe come to welcome. Every death, whole tribe come to send spirit home. We speak only Tiwa, not white or Spanish. We live in house made of earth, our earth, Nah-meh-neh, our life, this Mother Earth. We bring wood from mountain, make viga, get water from river, mix straw with earth to make a home. We hunt, plant, go up mountain to many place, visit our ancestors, our gods, our shrines.”

  He waved his hand. “All that mountain up there our land, not just little bit like today. We have sacred place all over that mountain, gods, place make offering, do spirit work, place of old ones. Different place for different work, make different offering, ask different blessing, each one for different moon. Our way, our life—that our religion. We do all together, we share, we take care everyone. We don’t have church, or wait for heaven, or even know sin. Our religion this earth, this village, the corn, our ways. Our language, Tiwa, that our religion, too. We keep our way sacred with our language.”

  Momma Anna stuck her head out the screen door, looked at me on the ground, and scowled. She spoke sharply to her brother in Tiwa, then closed the door.

  “Our way always give, always share. Everything, share. When Spanish come, we say, ‘Here, this land good, we share.’ They take everything, make our people slaves, take our women and children, say we not speak Tiwa no more, have dance, ceremony. They take our ways. We hold on, keep dance in secret, hide our children. We tell them, ‘Run! If enemy come, run to place where old ones live, hide and wait!’ Those times, we speak Tiwa in quiet whisper, teach to children at night, in sleep.

  “Now, today, when people come village, we still share, we say, ‘Come, sit, eat.’ Many time, they still try steal our ways, take picture of sacred dance, walk in house, no knock, ask question, very rude. Our way, no question. One thing now, we not share sacred tradition. No one tell these thing. Our doin’s, we speak Tiwa. We speak these things outside, to others, they lose power, our ways die. Then we die. Already, our ways dying. No more living inside wall, in village. Everybody got car, job, drink water out a pipe, no planting corn, squash. No more go where old ones live, make offering, fast, pray. Not even our land up there, gov’ment take away. I’m old. I still not know what our people must do, this age. Maybe we just die, some not know, some not care. I try keep our ways alive.”

  He pinched out his cigarette with two tobacco-stained fingers. He held up the remaining bit and began to chant softly under his breath in Tiwa. He stopped after a minute or two, then was quiet for a time. He got up from the bench.

  I rose, too, brushing the dirt off the back of my dress.

  “Our language last vein our life’s blood, last thing keep us alive, last thing sacred not taken from us. You come inside. We speak Tiwa. I ask respect.”

  He opened the screen door and held it for me to go inside. “They say you live with a wolf.”

  “Yes, he’s a real challenge. But I love him.”

  “Maybe you Indun, time before.”

  26

  Super Natural

  On the way home from my encounter with the two mujeres, I had to stop for gas, since the dealership had left the CJ’s tank empty and running on fumes. I started the pump and went around to the passenger side of the Jeep. Mountain stood in the seat and held his head out the window, sniffing the evening air. I pressed my face into the long ruff of his neck and nuzzled him. “No more jumping out of cars and running into traffic, okay, buddy?”

  He wagged his tail at me and smiled. Then he pushed his neck against my face again, as if to reassure me. I reached a hand in through the window opening and began stroking his side and the ridge of his long back as far as I could reach. Mountain, even though still a cub, was a large bit of livestock. Pretty soon he would weigh more than I did, and he stood nearly three feet tall on all fours.

  A brace of loud music and big-engine noise interrupted our snuggling. I saw Gilbert Valdez’s slick red Mustang pull up to the other side of the gas pump. The engine purred to a stop and the music died. Because I was on the far side of the car, Valdez couldn’t see me. A woman got out of the Mustang’s shotgun seat, and I saw that it was Madonna Santana. She reached into the back of the car and fetched out a shiny black leather coat and put it on. In defiance of tradition, and despite the fact that she was newly widowed, she wore makeup, her beautiful, long black hair was down and loose, and she was dressed in snug jeans and a cowboy shirt.

  I came around the front of the CJ as Madonna was stamping her feet on the pavement, complaining that it was getting cold. Valdez was pumping gas into his ride. I nodded at the widow, and she looked surprised to see me. “Jamaica! Hi! How are you?” Right away, she noticed the claw marks. “What happened to your face?”

  “Ah, it’s nothing. I’m good, Madonna, I’m good. Listen, I’m sorry for your loss…”

  She closed her mouth and lowered her head, as if ashamed to be caught out like this. “You probably heard that my husband and I weren’t getting along.”

  “No, no, I guess I didn’t know. I’m sorry to hear that. I—”

  By this time Valdez came to join us. “Jamaica! Did you get a new car?”

  “For right now, yes.”

  “Yeah, probably going to need one after what I saw,” he said. “Oooh! Ouch! What did you do to that good-lookin’ face of yours?”

  I gave an exasperated sigh. “It’s nothing, I just got scratched.”

  The three of us stood there in awkward silence.

  “Well,” I said, “I have to be going.” I headed to the pump to take out the nozzle and close up the cap on the tank.

  Valdez went inside the station, but Madonna came up to me and put her arm on my shoulder. “Jamaica, this is not what it looks like,” she said. “We work together at the casino.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “He�
��s just giving me a ride home after work.”

  “Okay.” I put my hands in the back pockets of my jeans.

  “There was trouble in my marriage. A lot of people were talking about me and Gilbert. But it’s not like that. He’s just giving me a ride home.”

  “I thought you were supposed to refrain from driving inside the pueblo during Quiet Time if you possibly could.”

  “We are. But some of us—like Gilbert—get special permission because of what they do. I can’t drive there now because I’m no big shot. But Gilbert runs the casino, so he can drive, as long as he stays out of the old part of the village. He’s giving me a ride home so I don’t have to walk. It’s three miles to my house! It would be dark by the time I got home to Angel.”

  “How’s Angel doing?”

  She frowned. “He’s not so good. He wants to be alone all the time. He won’t even go stay with his grandma Anna when I’m at work. I don’t know what to do.”

  “When I was by the other day, he kept telling me he was a good boy. But he seemed pretty upset.”

  Tears glistened in Madonna’s eyes. “I know.”

  Valdez reemerged from the station with a bottled soft drink. “Well, am I a lucky son of a gun or what? Two of the most beautiful women in New Mexico, right here waiting on me!”

  “Listen, I better go,” I said, and I moved to open my car door.

  But Madonna reached out and put her arms around me. “Just don’t think bad things about me, okay, Jamaica? It’s not like everybody’s saying.”

  I hugged her back, genuinely, and said, “You do the same for me, okay? Don’t believe what they’re saying about me. I hope you’ll give yourself a little time to heal, to grieve. Be good to yourself.”

  “You, too,” she said, and moved away.