She pulls out the boxes of food that the three of them had been bringing home each week, intending to throw them out – Lola has never had the resolve that Freda has or the faith of Val. Those boxes sit in her kitchen, frustrating her with their uselessness. Instead of trashing them, she reads the lid of the first box:
Wattleseed
Masala powder
chiba (wormwood leaf)
Dried cloudberry
Caraway
Aniseed
Chrysanthemum pollen
bitter orange
Angelica root
lemon
myrtle sprinkle
bergamot leaves
Epazote leaves
Lavender
Jalap root
Tasmanian pepper berries
Cheezies
Skinny Freda had driven Lola’s car to Vancouver to get most of it. Lola and Valene had gathered the rest from the land or had sent for it from Little Loon. In the walk-in freezer there is another box with wild game, gut, bones, noses. Everything but the kitchen sink, she thinksnipes.
What on earth had they been thinking? Lola wonders. All of this stuff, just sitting here going to waste. She goes to throw it out at the curb. After sitting and having a smoke, she thinks better of it and goes to fetch it back. When she reaches the door, Freda meets her there and grabs the door from her, marching into the room with another box piled high in her brown arms.
She is crying when Lola takes the box from her. “There, there, sugar. It’s okay. Let’s just make some work to keep our hands busy, eh?” the old woman says, grabbing some stationery and starting to label the exotic contents of the box.
Freda goes out for a smoke behind the bakery. And. Weeps like she has lost her best friend.
Valene is growing impatient with Lola and Freda. They are acting like two teenagers who are in the blush of first love. They think that Val can’t see how they look at each other. Smitten. Lusty. It has been all she could do to pry them apart to get them to listen to her. After hearing Bernice’s sleeptalking about Pimatisewin, she sat the two women down to talk about the tree and its illness, not really sure why she was doing it. She sensed it was important, though, and told them a story about the tree of life and how some crazy Sechelt woman thinks she has found one of the four about an hour from Gibsons.
“Are you trying to tell me that The Kid is here because she heard a tree call her?” Lola had cackled.
Pressing her nails into Lola’s knee, Skinny Freda said, “Stranger things have happened. Birdie is tapped into something, always has been. May as well be the tree.”
So, they now sit in the kitchen, all of their heads pregnant with thoughts too big to speak – each of them fearful the grandness of the lexicon would choke them if they should utter a word.
There is a knock at the door. The relatives are arriving.
acimowin
At the top
of her lungs,
the owl hoots hoots hoots
as he soars over a shiny spot on the ground below her.
Circling the shine, her black eyes reflect the shine flickering off what she thinks, at first, is a very small pool of water.
Beneath the owl,
the sun on the bald man’s head
reflects
and dances as he walks
towards a very small and crooked tree.
14
CEREMONY – WHAT SHE MUST DO
iskwew: woman
pawatamowin
She has left the lodge, crossed through the tall grass, steam lifting to the night air.
She goes home to her room, and looks – surprised – to find that the TV has been placed on the desk. The screen shines blue from the glow of the bad reception.
There are scenes from old Westerns, Chief Dan George, Jay Silverheels and Burt Reynolds flicker against the wall. Finally the Frugal Gourmet (well, it looks like him but he’s wearing a white hat) comes on. She looks at the television intently and realizes he is cooking in her mom’s kitchen.
She wanders down the stairs and into the coolness of Lola’s kitchen, the tiles feel soft and giving. She opens the swinging door between the living room and the kitchen. And sees him. There.
He has pots and pans scattered about him where he sits on the floor. He is drumming, she recognizes the song as an old women’s song, and as he begins to drum she reads his soiled recipe card.
1 pinch tarragon
2 cups baby bok choy
2 tsp. Chilean red bean (dried)
1 pinch sifted bean meal
3 cups kangaroo tallow
IN HER ROOM, Bernice’s eyes open.
Bernice sits up, no longer a bird and claiming her human form. Writes the ingredients down on the list she has pulled from the roll of loose flesh on her belly, and rises shakily to her feet.
And realizes. She is on her time.
15
THE SHIFT – WHO SHE HAS BECOME
otâcimow: a Storyteller, one who tells legends
pawatamowin
In her dreams, and there were four days’ worth of dreams, she is an owl.
Flying over
The Tree of Life.
She keeps carrying
twigs and leaves
to the Tree
in order to
nest there.
She carries berries and food to her nest and knows she is
Feeding herself from the Tree.
Feeding her life to the Tree.
In another dream, she is afraid
to ask Pimatisewin
to kill the wolves.
She knows it will not, but still wants to ask it.
“Not all wolves are bad,” she hears.
The sick wolves leave the pack, she knows.
On the fourth day of her moons,
on the fourth day of feeding the Tree,
on the fourth day of dreaming
she dreams of feasts
feasts and feasts and feasts
She dreams of going home
She dreams that she is loved.
“I CAN’T BELIEVE WE ARE DOING THIS,” Skinny Freda grunts as she takes an armload of pine boughs from Valene off the back of the rented Ram.
Valene had the boughs sent from Kelly Lake, even though she didn’t know why. For this, she thinks and gingerly carries them to the Pimatisewin. She ignored Lola’s questions. She never thought she’d say it, but that woman thinks too much.
“You know, in the old days they used to do this all the time.” She stops to breathe. After a minute or two, she resumes. “Old ladies would take the young ones when we had our first moons and put us in a lodge built for it.”
“But it was the first moons,” Skinny Freda starts to argue, then stops when she sees Valene’s face.
“They’d lay down them boughs and we would lay there away from everyone.” Val smiles. “Seems to me I went there at twelve.”
“I know, I understand the whole strong medicine thing, but don’t you think it’s weird for her to be doing this …” Skinny Freda chooses carefully and then says, “Now? She’s too sick to lay there for four days.” She nods over her shoulder at Bernice, who stares straight ahead and who is too weak to lift the boughs, even the little ones.
Valene does not comment and helps her not-so-big-any-more niece from the truck and leads her to the shelter they had built beside the Pimatisewin. “Now you just lay there and make good medicine, my girl.” She hugs her and goes back to wait in the truck. She sits there four days. Lola and Freda try to stagger her off, but it’s her girl and she will hear none of it. She checks on Bernice occasionally and hears her singing. Hears her crying. Hears her praying. On the fourth day, she walks to her daughter, takes her hand, prepares her tea, and takes her home to the bakery to cook.
A few hours ago, they were all sitting in the kitchen when Bernice appeared, like a vision, in the doorway at the foot of the stairs. Wearing a skirt, the shawl Valene had made and her new purple T-shirt, she had a box in her han
ds and the women saw that she had a collection of food, spices, roots and leaves that rivalled the ones they have on the table.
“I need to cook,” she had croaked.
Valene pursed her sizable lips. “Just rest a minute, Birdie, we have time.”
“No, let’s go,” Bernice said with a firmness that no one knew lived within Bernice.
With that, the four women headed to the kitchen, where they have been for hours. Every so often, Bernice walks slowly past the front room of the bakery, which is filled beyond full with relatives and strangers who have gathered for what they thought was a funeral. And a wake. Bernice has so little energy that she merely managed to greet everyone with a smile before she returned to the kitchen. Several female relatives jumped up to help.
“No,” Bernice had croaked. “Just them.” She pointed with her lips to the bedraggled family she had formed in Gibsons. “Just us four.”
That womenfamily, Lola, Val and Skinny Freda, had followed her into the kitchen. They spoke in hushed tones, like they were in a library, and every so often she could hear the plump fullness of Valene’s words and the hard nut of Lola’s as they talk while working in the kitchen. She had given the three women her ingredient list, those ingredients that came to her in her dreamstate, those that had come to them as gifts, and they had set about organizing the kitchen. Intent for hours, she can barely make out their feasttalk. The words are frothy and full. Unintelligible and edible.
“Wasting fasting faking lasting baking.”
Bernice remembers something. “We can only speak kindly while preparing this food.” She shot Lola and Freda independent glances. “And you two, stop mooning over each other and get busy, please.”
She is glad when Skinny Freda offers to help read the ingredients and Bernice even lets her and Val carry out the pots and pans from the pantry to the kitchen. They are too big for her to lift. Her arms rattle with the effort of lifting, they had cramped when she mixed, gone numb as she diced. She gives instructions to her madefamily and the four of them set about making the feast that Bernice has been dreaming about her whole life.
They mix and measure. Sift and sieve.
Whip and pour. Stir and simmer. Chop and dice. Bernice is careful not to touch the pots and pans or even the cutlery with her bare hands. She woke up pained to realize that she seemed to be hypersensitive to touch, smell and sound. Her heightened awareness balks at the sensory feast. She is afraid to find out if this acute bodily response extends to taste.
She lines up the ingredients alphabetically because her vision is cloudy and precision required. At the Rs she realizes that she has forgotten ratroot. As she pulls the ingredients around her, she recognizes the clanking of dishes and muffled tones as her family sets the table in expectation of the feast. Time seems to run out and she hardly knows it is finished until the haze lifted off her vision and she realizes the dishes are done and the remainder of the ingredients put away.
She carefully tucks the medicines in the cupboard and, after a second thought, stores the foods Skinny Freda had brought from the city and those that Val and Lola had bought and gathered and sets them next to her medicines on the shelf. Medicines. Maskihky.
She wonders when they will ever use creamed horseradish and minced ginger.
Once done, she puts the offering together, gets the old pine cradleboard and fastens some of the pots and pans to it carefully and with steady fingers – steadier than they have been in a long time. The smells and the textures of the food no longer delight her, and while she does not feel nauseous, she is still unsure about her reaction to the feast. Mint mingled with moose, acorn with pistachio. Maskihky with pâté.
Valene tells the family, friends and strangers who have come in anticipation of the event waiting in the restaurant dining room to meet them at the Pimatisewin. The hushed room had watched as Bernice fastened the bundle and carried the cradleboard out the door and down the front steps.
“Let’s take the Ram, it’ll be faster,” Lola says, walking past her ancient Malibu.
They load the cradleboard and Bernice into the back and journey through the night to the Pimatisewin, a convoy of would-be mourners and now celebrants.
During the trip, her body aches, but Bernice refuses to sleep, listening to her family talk in the background. She knows now that Pimatisewin had been waiting for her. For all of them: Valene, Skinny Freda and Lola, the people who came from home, the people her friend Lettie and her old man brought from Sechelt. It was waiting to be fed, to have nations unite in one place.
The colours of the night sky stripe and smudge across the windowpane of the cab and out of her vision. It is not a full moon, but it was a clear evening.
Bernice’s stomach rumbles pleasantly.
When they get to the tree, several people have already arrived and set up smudges and a fire. They are gathered in a circle around it.
The four women gingerly unpack the feast offering, and place it at the base of the tree, giving the earth thanks for all that they have, for the clarity to be able to see it and for having been given the gift to survive. Taking care not to spill anything they feed their relative. The earth around Pimatisewin soaks up the exotic and the sacred, taking the food to its roots, its branches and its bark.
Having left Bernice at the tree to make her offering, Valene and Freda seem not to be able to speak her name.
They sit in silence, smoke filling the cab.
“She gonna be okay, Auntie?” Skinny Freda doesn’t know about comfortable silence, Valene thinks.
She purses her ample lips. Thinks about it for a few minutes. “She’ll be better off, no matter what.” Thinks better of it when she sees Freda’s fists fearfully clenched and adds with sureness, “She’d better be. She’s got a kitchen to run and people to feed when she’s done here.”
acimowin
That owl?
She changed herself.
And she become little enough to fly
Faster and higher than any birds
In the bush
She take with her the crow, the raven and the eagle.
They fly in a line all the way to
The special tree.
They had to take care of that
Special tree
You know.
All four of them had to fly up!
Up! Up! Up!
And closer
And closer
to the special tree.
On the ground before her, the food they have made for Pimatisewin has leeched into the soil and has disappeared. She feels some energy in her limbs, as if she has eaten the food herself, and stands up, the Cree on her tongue having flowed to the tree. Without a word, Valene, Lola and Freda return and take their places beside her, help her up and walk her to the truck.
“We gotta feast to go back to,” she croaks to the wimmin.
“Yup,” Lola says. “You gotta house full of friends and relatives waiting to be fed.” She says it almost giddily; she didn’t know how much she loved having people around until they came. She doesn’t quite understand the offering, and the feast even less, but Lola sparkles with richness from being a part of it all.
Freda helps Bernice up into the back of the cab and then gets in the front door to sit by Lola. Valene pops in the back row of the cab, careful to bring the cradleboard with her. The sun, just coming up, lights their way.
“That tree looks bigger already!” Lola says, gazing out the back window as they drive away.
“How you feeling?” Val says to her niece, concerned about the days before the four-day fast and what it cost Bernice to come out of that.
“I am feeling like I have a story to tell you,” Bernice says.
acimowin
One time there was an owl
And that owl, you know what she did?
She flew home and decided to
Clean up her house.
She took all of the medicines she could hold
In her beak, gathered all of her bird friends and
family
And told them she was going to make
A ceremony.
When the wolves come,
She scared ‘em away with owl medicine.
She decided to ask
for a special thing – she wanted
The wolves to go away.
But, the wolf was a trickman
And instead of taking the life in the wolves
He put new life in her.
So, yeah, the owl was happy too.
That’s the thing about the owl,
She’s not like udder birds.
That one, she will sit there
And eyes open or closed
You know that one knows you are there.
They say she don’t sleep,
But we know better.
She always looking out for animals –
Don’t mess with her house.
Epilogue
WHERE SHE BEGINS – WHEN MAGGIE MADE TWO JOURNEYS
ati-itohtew: s/he begins going along
pawatamowin
Maggie sees herself: young and pretty. She is holding Bernice’s hand and helping her through the muskeg. They sit on some moss and dry their feet and legs; Kohkom talks to them in Cree and the young girl listens raptly. Valene comes up into the muskeg, and she knows it’s a dream now, because Birdie’s hands are brown and bear no trace of the ravages of the fire.
She smells them before she sees them. They smell like your sharpest fear. Heads down, shoulders hunched, they smell women and are excited – almost unable to contain their gait. She holds Bernice to her and makes a grab for Freda but is quite unable to hold them. They are gelatin and she keeps grabbing them but can’t keep a grip.
Valene takes them and puts them under her belly flap. Kohkom is still as can be. Maggie feels something in her bones. Lets go of her girl. And walks towards the wolves.
MAGGIE
SHE WAS SITTING on a bus. In the window, she saw the pain etched deep into her face. And. Something else. Her reflection showed her a mososkwew.* Someone with no love. No children. That ache that used to occupy the gash of removal was now more like a bruise. It only hurt when she touched it. So. She didn’t.
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