Shell Shaker

by LeAnne Howe

  I put my head on Haya’s shoulder. We have been through this before. All the reasons have been discussed. I try to comfort her. I tell her that she must understand she cannot stop what is coming. “If I do what you ask, what will your uncle or your father think of me?” I say. “I gave you life, now I must go first. Anoleta and Neshoba and your aunts will look after you. You will never be alone.”

  I motion for my second daughter Neshoba to come. “Quick, quickly, while I still have strength.” When she reaches us, I give Grandmother’s stone to Neshoba. “Take Haya into the forest,” I say, “and do not to return until night has come.” Then I kneel down and cradle my baby. Although Haya is no longer an infant, I still think of her that way because she is my youngest. I push the hair out of her eyes and kiss her again, inhaling her innocent breath. Then I give her to Neshoba. Haya begins to weep, but her sister takes her by the hand and I watch them disappear through a canebrake. I want to run after them, touch them one more time—but I don’t dare. I might yield. What I am, my essence, will live inside my daughters.

  Next, I speak softly with Anoleta. I tell her to use all the skills I have taught her. “Ask our friend, Jean Baptiste Bienville, to fight Red Shoes and the Inkilish okla. Bienville hates them as much as we do.” I hold her for the longest time and she promises to fulfill her obligations. Finally, I enter my cabin to remove my sticky work dress and prepare myself. I massage the swell of pockmarks on my sagging breasts. My arms are full of flesh and heavy as porous wood. The epidemic has chewed me to pieces. After today, I will be through with pain. I pull on my white deerskin dress and fasten the black and white porcupine sash across my shoulder like a shield.

  I rub my fingers over the threads and feel strangely calm. At last I understand why Onatima was so angry at me all those years ago. I was born into the peace clan, but in my heart I’ve always chosen a weapon. It is the reason I was attracted to the warrior Ilapintabi, and tried to imitate his war dance. The reason why my first instincts were to wipe out the Inkilish okla for bringing us a disease. Why I now seek revenge.

  I decide that as a final gesture I will show the people my true self. After all, I am a descendant of two powerful ancestors, Grandmother of Birds and Tuscalusa. I dig around in my basket and find a pot of vermilion. Plunging two fingers in the paint, I mark my cheeks and spread the vermilion over my chin and down my neck the old-fashioned way Ilapintabi once stained his face. When I finish I whoop tushka panya, a warrior’s death cry. Then I hiss the words, “Grandmother, do you see me? I will make the peace for you, but in my heart I want a war!”

  When I walk out of my cabin some of the Inholahta women put on a face of stone to hide their surprise. Others look down and squint at their hands, but clearly they understand. Dressed in white with my face painted red, I have split myself in two. My message to my people is that we must fight to survive.

  Next, I address the Red Fox clan in my yard. Out of the corner of my eye I see Koi Chitto standing next to my brother. So, he could not stay away. Like a warrior controlling my fear, I sing my last song.

  Head man of the horseflies, my face is painted so you cannot see me. You’ll see my tracks and cry. Too late. Head man of the horseflies, my face is painted so you cannot see me. Too late, head man, you cannot stop what is coming.

  The Choctaws of Yanàbi Town erupt in laughter at my insulting song. No one from the Red Fox village smiles. I look at Koi Chitto and he beams with affection. Nods his approval, and I continue.

  Head man of the horseflies, my face is painted so you cannot see me. I am the Shell Shaker, a descendant of Grandmother of Birds and Tuscalusa. The actions I take honor them both. I am standing in for my first daughter, Anoleta, to make the peace. Itilauichi, Autumnal Equinox, on your day when I sing this song you will make things even.

  The Red Fox politely accept my death in exchange for Anoleta’s life and agree that there will be no war between the Choctaws and Chickasaws. In the presence of my family and all the people gathered in my yard, I stretch out on a log, face down, close my eyes, and pray for courage.

  As is the custom, a relative of the Red Fox victim carries out the execution. A one-eyed elder named Imayatabe steps forward slowly with his war club. For the longest time I hear him speak gentle words to the people, asking that the path be wiped clean between our two tribes.

  Then there is silence.

  I suck in my breath. I feel an icy hot explosion in my head. Deafening. Blood gurgles from my mouth. My hands spring to my head involuntarily, blood is seeping out of my head and flecks of bone are strewn through my hair. My arms jerk wildly, like a wounded bird trying to fly away, as the old man hits me again. I sense movement all around. Maybe Koi Chitto angrily knocks the man away? I feel my body twitch, perhaps someone turns me over. I can no longer see, my head is unraveling.

  In that last moment, I have the burning desire to live and cling to the body. It is lean and compact... Koi Chitto... Hah! ... he is here. I can feel him saying, give it up. I gasp for air and have no fear.

  I feel myself growing younger in this place. I grieve for my daughters when I hear their rhythmic wailings. I grieve for the red-raw faces, teeth, eyes, cheeks, and black-haired people. I grieve for the Seven Grandmothers dancing in the distance as they shrink to almost nothing, then reappear as a flock of multicolored birds, just beyond my reach.

  An unknown language floats around me. Each word is in Old Code that I must decipher. Suddenly there are streaks of white and the delicious scent of tobacco fills the air as the spirit of an animal appears. Big Mother Porcupine walks into view and takes me by the hand. I open my mouth to speak but my thoughts escape into the wind.

  2 | The Will To Power

  DURANT, OKLAHOMA

  SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1991

  AUTUMNAL EQUINOX

  Auda Billy sits on the side of her twin bed in the small upstairs bedroom of the house where she was born. At four A.M., the house is warm as wool and peopled with aunts and uncles, rabbits, ghosts of rabbits, and other relatives.

  The house was built over a century ago on the edge of the town, the area now known as Old Durant. Old Durant stopped narrating to the Choctaws after the whites took over the town in 1907. Statehood for Oklahoma. The spirits moved away, shed their skin that bound land and people together. Now they’ve returned, pulling stars down from the sky, causing a fifty-mile-long prairie fire. From the Mineral Bayou Bridge in Durant to the outskirts of Hugo, Oklahoma, all the land along Highway 70 is seared black like a piece of burnt toast.

  It’s a sign. They’ve come back to pick a fight.

  Auda’s family knows nothing of the red fires that rage across the town, barely missing them. They can’t hear the tormented cries of the farmers and merchants who are watching their properties go up in flames. They don’t know about the Bokchito minister who chokes to death on smoke and soot, trying to save his church named “Radiance Is Accomplished.” They’ve been rocked to sleep along with all the other Indians by the powerful medicine of Itilauichi. It happens that way sometimes. When the earth shifts, and day and night are in perfect balance, Indians have all the luck.

  But Auda doesn’t feel lucky. After working all day Saturday, she rushed home and locked herself in her bedroom. At midnight she showered. Two hours later she showered, again. At four A.M. she’s given up her ceaseless to-ing and fro-ing. Her chronic hunger for water. She isn’t sick. She isn’t mad. Dazed, she eats the room with her stare until the furniture, her clothes, even the cool silver and turquoise dots of her bedroom wallpaper are consumed. She’s been waiting for something to happen. At last it does. Out of the nothingness a spirit emerges. A Shell Shaker appears for Auda.

  Shoosh! Shoosh! Shoosh! Shoosh!

  Auda watches the spirit woman with turtle shells strapped to her ankles. She’s big-breasted and wears a deerskin dress, bloodied at the neck and hem. Smoke rises from the turtle shells and forms a constellation on the ceiling. Auda knows the dance. Every spring she shakes shells with other Indian women in
Southeastern Oklahoma. Although most women now recycle evaporated milk cans in place of turtle shells, the dance still spiritually reconnects the earth and Indian people during Green Corn time. But this Shell Shaker’s song is different, it stirs an older memory coming to life inside her.

  Shoosh! Shoosh! Shoosh! Shoosh!

  Auda sees herself with hundreds of Shell Shakers around an ancient fire. A small woman with a scar on her cheek, whom she believes to be her younger sister, is next to her. She laughs and gossips with her sister between dances. Suddenly they grab the hands of a warrior making mud pies on top of the Nanih Waiya. They lead the warrior around the fire like a prize, smiling and cajoling, but, finally, they push him into the blistering flames.

  When she blinks, her room returns to normal, a comfort zone where she can retreat from the present. In the bookcase she stores her dissertation copies, history books, family pictures, and a powder blue phonograph stacked with Motown’s Greatest Hits singles, all 45s. She’s even kept the black velvet painting of Elvis she bought at a state fair. Her bed still wears the quilt her aunts, Delores and Dovie Love, made for her. They cross-stitched the usual Choctaw designs: the eye of friendship, the sunburst, and the coiled snake that represents the power of the people to subdue their enemies. All memories she wants to cherish.

  Auda’s hands tremble as she smoothes her tangled wet hair. She coughs and realizes the entire room is filled with smoke. She opens the window. The sky is waking up gray. She sees her uncle Isaac in the backyard talking with a group of Indian men about last night’s fire. So the whole world is smoky? Good, she doesn’t want to be in this alone.

  She crawls into bed. It’s six A.M., Sunday morning. She clings to her pillow and almost sleeps. Outside, an ambulance drowns out the men’s conversation. She tries to focus on what the Shell Shaker said, but instead hears a child’s voice crying inside her, “Chishke apel....Mother help me.” At last, she does remember yesterday—his bulging eyes, his knife at her throat, and her own legs kicking up a storm.

  “Get your ass in my office,” he bellowed, “and don’t leave anything out on your desk.”

  Auda walked into the room. He slammed the door behind her and pushed her face against the wall. He stood behind her, pressing his body into hers, whispering in her ear.

  “Why didn’t you wear the dress I told you to? I’m not trying to talk you into anything. You’ll do what I say or else.”

  Auda tried to turn her head but he held her too tightly. She could only look at him out of the corner of her eye. With his right hand he pulled a knife from his pocket, opened it with his thumb, and held it beside her face. He pushed the blade against her cheek and jabbed his tongue in her ear, then greedily sucked a red welt on her neck.

  She squealed in pain.

  “Hush, I’m not hurting you. I’m marking you, the way you once marked me,” he said, nicking her cheek. Then he put the knife away and casually prowled around her body.

  Auda kicked his shins. He clapped her left temple so hard that her head swam. She smelled his sweat oozing on her blouse. When he unzipped his pants and brought out a swollen penis, Auda breathed in the sick scent of dread.

  The man ran off at the mouth, talked of tight dresses, of shooting off his gun, of pussy. He smacked his lips as if he were munching on something.

  Auda bit the insides of her cheeks. To her he looked more like a Osano, horsefly, than a human being. She remembered what her uncle told her. Some warriors, he said, become Osano. They pass through many changes before learning how to use their killing mouths. Better watch out, he added, they carnage their own when the competition for food is desperate. As the man mashed her into the wall, all she could think of was how to gather her power. She thought of her mother, prayed to be more like her. Called the light. At once a thin web of white entered the room, a protective membrane kneaded together by her mother’s mothers, descended over her and she slipped out of her body. She surrendered nothing to Redford McAlester, seventh Chief of the Oklahoma Choctaws.

  Auda sits up in bed and wipes the tears from her face. She looks at the photograph next to her bed. It’s of Redford McAlester when he was twenty-one. He’s caught in mid-laugh, as if someone has poked him in the ribs. He’s in New Hampshire at his graduation from Dartmouth. His dark lashes curl up around stone-cut cheeks. He is tall and thin for a Choctaw—six feet, three inches. He reminds her of the Choctaw Lighthorsemen from the nineteenth century. Gaunt and mean, but in a good way.

  She studies his picture. Only now does she understand. That’s how he liked to portray himself, poor, with a poor Indian’s good luck. It’s a story she’s heard him tell often. Someone noticed his intelligence. Sent him away to college to learn white man’s ways. Then on to Harvard Law School. He came back, changed for the better. It’s the photograph that comes closest to the way he never was. Ridiculous, she thinks, looking back on his past.

  Redford McAlester was campaigning for chief when she met him in 1983. At first, he told her, he’d missed Washington, D.C.—clerking for an Indian law firm, meeting U.S. senators and high-powered businessmen. The parties. She listened. Redford McAlester was his mother’s cake and candy boy. His words. When she asked him to explain, he said that his late mother had wanted him to become a Southern Baptist preacher, but also follow the traditions of his ancestors. “So when I’d go to church, I’d get cake; at Stomp Dances, candy,” he said, grinning. “It only made me fat as a kid.” That made her even more suspicious. But after he lectured to the Choctaws that night, and said he would give all of his time and energy to reuniting the people in Oklahoma and Mississippi, she realized that he was wholly Choctaw. He told the Choctaw people that they owed it to themselves to elect a chief who would fight the federal government for Choctaw sovereignty. He told them that the threads of American history were interwoven in Choctaw history, not the other way around. All this he explained in the fluid language of their people, and it made her proud. Slowly she came to believe that she’d found a leader, someone to believe in.

  Choctaw women don’t cultivate desire. Either it is in the men who arouse them, or not. Either it is there at first glance, or it will never be. It was like that for Auda. From that first night she believed there would never be anyone else but Redford McAlester. To her, his slick black hair glistened like a halo. She resigned from her job as assistant professor of history at Southeastern Oklahoma State University to manage his campaign. This wasn’t unusual; Billy women were leaders in the community. She was following a family tradition.

  Cautiously, her mother agreed to support him for chief, but had long since renounced her support. Both her sisters, Adair and Tema, flew to Oklahoma at different times to meet McAlester. Adair even introduced him at a luncheon of the Choctaw women’s society, the Intek Aliha. He was a hit.

  At times, though, Auda knew he tried too hard to impress the people. He began transliterating from Nietzsche’s The Will To Power. “Feelings About Choctaw Values Are Always Behind the Times.” The words sounded precisely right when he spoke them, although her uncle Isaac complained he couldn’t make any sense of what McAlester was saying. That’s when she decided to write all his campaign speeches. He agreed. “If we’re going to become partners, I should get used to speaking your words.” He winked, and pressed his lips against hers. He had a sensual mouth, his lips were more purple than dark red. He used them softly that day to feel his way down her neck and lingered there long enough to savor her pulse, measure the sweat and blood she would willingly give to his campaign. She memorized him too, the scent of his dark brown skin, the suit coat that perpetually smelled of dry-cleaning fluids mingled with the fresh tobacco he carried in his pockets. How could she know that what he wanted to seem, he seemed. She wanted him to become hers, and he did. For a time.

  She worked frantically to ensure he would be elected. First, she convinced women from the other large families to support him. If you want to get elected in Choctaw Country, you must have the women on your side. And in the end, it was the wom
en—the Choctaw grandmothers, the young mothers, even the little girls—who collectively breathed Redford McAlester into existence as a warrior chief. He won easily. After he appointed Auda to the position of Assistant Chief, the women of the tribe treated him like a child. Gave him everything he wanted at the monthly council meetings. Fed his hunger for power with their support. Whites call these “political victories,” but it is so much more in Indian politics.

  Over the years the dirty tricks of his administration—the lies, the double-dealing with corrupt outsiders—had consumed them all. Sometimes his political enemies died. Other times they moved out of the community. In some instances he had them “de-tribed.” Their voter registration cards were revoked, and the official letter from the tribe bluntly read: “No longer enrolled.” It all looked perfectly normal from the outside, but, in 1991, McAlester’s body was gorged with bad medicine. Beautiful became obese. Even his assistants greeted him by asking, “Chi niah katimi?” “How’s your fat?”

  Her mouth is open against the pillow. She lies, as still as she can, feeling only her nostrils flare. How could she have been so blind? The national news media may have crowned McAlester the “Casino Chief,” the one responsible for bringing his tribe into the twentieth century, but she was responsible for creating his image within the tribe. She sent flowers, in his name, to tribal employees on their birthdays. She sent baskets of food, always in his name, to families who were down on their luck. But over the years, McAlester became harder to handle. Sometimes he’d even refused to attend the funerals of elders unless she could promise him that a newspaper photographer was covering the event. It continued that way until finally she’d given up. Abandoned all hope, like she’d abandoned her struggles to correct history. McAlester was not, nor ever would be, Imataha Chitto, the greatest giver.