by Lee Maracle
No one knows what to say. They stare dumbly at Martha. “Don’t talk crazy, Martha,” Celia says. Steve figures they can’t take Stella to the hospital unless Martha agrees to it. He shudders to think that one generation of women has so much power over the next. He cauterizes the wound and stitches her skin as best he can. He prays Martha will be brought to her senses. Ned and Jim lean into the wall, their minds blank as they wait for the outcome of this mad chatter to emerge.
Sam arrives before it does.
Celia holds Martha. Martha stares at Celia. She is about to relent. Sam, gun in hand, goes to his daughter. He takes her in his arms. “No. If she is to die, she will die here in my arms.”
“No, Poppa, we can’t do that,” Momma tells her uncle. “Keeping the child here is one thing, but not this, not this.”
Poppa has the gun. He threatens them. Steve freezes. “This is making me crazy,” he tells Stacey. Jim tries to soothe Sam. Not even his voice, buttery and assuring, can change the old man’s mind.
“Don’t we have some of them rigs the boys stole during that flu epidemic?” Celia asks.
“What rigs?”
“Blood transfusion rigs,” Stacey answers.
“You have blood transfusion rigs?”
“They’re in the back house,” Momma says.
“But we have no idea what blood type Stella is.” Judy throws water on the fire of hope sparking itself up in the room.
“Sure we do. Same as mine,” says Martha.
“Okay,” Steve hears himself bellow. “Let me try then, just let me move around this fucking room without that gawdamned barrel pointing at me.”
Ned is out back with Jim, digging around for those rigs. Momma puts more water on to boil. Rena goes home to get more alcohol. Celia fetches bandages. Judy grabs syringes from Steve’s bag. Ned and Jim return with the rigs and a box of the intravenous bags. Steve cannot believe what he’s seeing. He recalls the theft; he’d read about it in the papers when he was a kid. These women are either insane or have very large brass balls hidden somewhere inside them. Sam backs up, but now aims the barrel at Momma. Steve gasps. Stacey sinks into the wall and slides to the floor. Celia moves toward her mother.
“She dies if anybody moves, Celia.” Sam cocks the gun.
“You die right after, if you shoot her,” Ned says, straightening up.
“Settle down, Ned.” Momma smiles at Sam. Momma nods at him, calm as she can be. She’s known him for a long time. Martha was her gramma’s youngest. She was younger than Momma by a decade. She had met this man late in life, married him, and given Momma an uncle. She doesn’t for a minute think he would kill her.
“Don’t fuckin’ anybody move.” Steve does not know this man; it’s the first time he’s seen him. It is also the first time he’s seen anything like this. So he hollers and gets down to work with Judy.
Ned believes anything could happen, a dish could fall, someone could sneeze or cough and this man would mistake it for traitorous movement. He squares off in the room, teeth grinding and fists clenched. The very moment that gun goes off, he will leap for the man’s throat. He slows his breathing so he will be ready.
Jim wonders if the white people in the room will be able to fix this woman. He wonders if the old man is serious. He wonders if he could survive seeing his Momma, his hard-working, all-giving, tired Momma shot right before his eyes. He decides he can’t. He decides he will jump in front of her. He stands stock still, aiming his eyes at the old man’s trigger finger. As she and Steve are patching Stella up, Judy keeps mumbling, “Ain’t this some shit, ain’t this some shit.”
Momma watches Sam. Celia stares at her fingers as the humming in her mind returns.
The humming takes her to the top of Jacob’s mountain.
Rena is close enough to move the barrel, but something keeps her locked still; it’s familiar, she knows this stillness better than she knows anything else.
Celia sees Jacob sitting next to Alice. They are planning something for the parched man.
Momma recognizes the tired in the old man’s eyes.
The snake is running loose. He needs water. No water, there cannot be any water.
He’s tired of losing.
The snake will consume us all. Only a pure-hearted man can kill him. She can too. Clean out your mind, your body, and your heart; the ceremony will clean your spirit.
He has fought so many battles and lost. He is aiming the gun at losing.
This is not about anger, vengeance, or retaliation, Jacob. It is about the snake. It is about ritual, about ceremony, and about restoring our original direction. It isn’t about her at all. It is not about finding yourself, Jacob. It is about finding your own song, the song that will move you through life. We are not lost. We are travelling in the wrong direction. Song moves us toward our humanity and right now we are moving away from it.
Knowing why Sam stands there with his gun pointed at her soothes Momma. Celia’s humming stops. The picture of Jacob grows still. Celia is back in the room, her eyes focused on Momma. Momma seems so calm — too calm. She is looking at the old man with a small smile on her lips. Celia thinks she is enjoying his rage. Sam’s gun-toting piece of insanity looks like it’s bringing up some kind of pride in Momma. Momma must think that Sam’s gun is motivated by his love for Stella. Celia doubts that. The whole scene is perverse. Momma decides to tell Stella how much her daddy loved her when she comes round. Sam is the first man who has dared to threaten her.
MOMMA’S POPPA COMES INTO view, she sees him standing on a cliff edge, tying her off, complaining about her. She insists on trying to dip into the river to catch a fish. He complains about how precious she has become to him. He complains about seeing her being born, coming through that sweetness of her momma, squealing before her body was all the way through. He saw her tiny face; her small hands all covered in blood and knew his love for her could kill him. Sam is cut from the same cloth.
MOMMA’S FATIGUE NEVER LEFT her after that damn epidemic. She looks over at Celia. As the tired in her dies and her strength returns, she comes to see that she had betrayed her father’s love. She had not bothered to bring Celia home. “Poppa spoiled me,” she says out loud. “He loved me like you love Stella, Sam.”
Sam winces. “Don’t you try weaselin’ me, Momma.”
“I’m not trying to weasel you, Sam. I am just remembering my own poppa.”
Celia keeps her eyes on her mother. She sees the lines around her eyes disappear. Her shoulders, always so slender and sloped, square and drop gently in a nearly sexy posture. The skin on her face loosens and looks brighter. Celia tries to remember the last time her mother looked this good. “You look good, Momma.” Stacey and Rena share a confused look, and then they both shrug.
“SHUT UP!” Steve hollers.
“Relax,” says Judy.
This night will change them all. Momma has no idea how, but she knows it will. Sam has found himself a way to win. She wants to find a way to win too. She will pick her battle more carefully than Sam has. He has been dropped into this battle against his will. She will choose a battle, calmly and coolly, then she will plot her victory. Sam’s battle made him a victim of his love and that renders his attempt a loss. She vows that she will never be a victim; her win will be a triumph.
Her calmness agitates Sam. Sweat appears on his brow. The sweat beads. The old man shifts and a little river of sweat slides from the top of his forehead toward his brow, just above his good eye. Jim sees it; just leak down into that one good eye, he prays, his fingers twitching. Jim gets ready. The sweat slides down and lands in Sam’s good eye, blinding him for just a second. The old man blinks and shakes off the sweat obstructing his vision. The gun in his hand shifts and loses its focus on Momma. Jim leaps. The sight of Jim coming at him through this moving blur confuses the old man. He shifts the gun back and forth, not sure if he wants to re-aim it a
t Momma or aim it at the blur, but it’s too late. Jim whacks the barrel upward, the gun goes off and, for just a second, the room freezes. Momma is still standing when the screams erupt. The child cries. Ned’s leap followed Jim’s by a half second. They rise. Jim has the gun in hand. Ned is about to hit Sam, but Momma smiles. “Don’t, Ned. He didn’t mean me any harm. He’s just tired of losing.”
Everyone stares at Momma; she has lost her mind. Judy starts to say, “Ain’t this some shit.” Rena shouts, “Shut up with that shit business.” Steve looks like he feels he must be the one who is out of his mind committing himself to these people, this family, and this village. Stacey faints. Rena catches her. Celia clears the room of everyone but Steve, herself, and Judy.
Stacey’s faint shocks me; I have not realized how like Momma she is. I lick my paws and pray.
Without song wind cannot play inside our bodies. The spirit of our co-creators cannot adore us unless we sing. We cannot feel foreverness without passing air over carefully controlled impassioned vocal cords, uttering sounds that are so beautiful they articulate the soul. Songs are about light. They teach our children to adore the light inside. They tantalize the musculature and restore cellular movement in that easy way that the breath of the four winds has of tantalizing the earth, dragging sound through trees, and haunting the world with the beauty of breath’s power. Breath on vocal cords, rendered melodic and rhythmic, can inspire humans to resist the most terrible tyranny. Breath across vocal cords, uttered softly, can settle the fears of a child. Song’s breath across vocal cords can excite the love of a woman for a man. Song’s breath across vocal cords can restore the peace of the body after the agony of divorce. Song’s breath across vocal cords can urge men to rise to fight, to kill for vague concepts like freedom, nationhood, or revolution, but they can’t always live for them. Song’s breath across vocal cords can heal the sick, raise the dead, and encourage the living to go on in the face of terror.
Without song, the body cannot rest, cannot rise again, cannot face tyranny, cannot look at itself, cannot see, think, or feel. Without song, the body cannot grieve the dead, send them off to another dimension, cannot work or love. Without song, the body cannot recover from loss, from divorce, cannot express its yearning, and cannot dream. Four generations of men and women have not been allowed to sing. Without song, all that is left is the thinnest sense of survival. This spiderweb of survival has snapped from whatever mooring it attached itself to and the silk threads lie all withered and tangled in a heap on the floor of a burned-down longhouse that has not been rebuilt.
Jacob sees the longhouse on that mountain, the one that had fallen face forward, exposing the moulded blankets and the bones — so many of them. He sees a tangled spider’s web and in each silk strand he sees some aspect of the crisis everyone in this village is bound to. He intends to pull at this silk and unravel the whole damned mess. The mountain has brought him a song and the dream of rebuilding the longhouse. This longhouse appeared as the old man who fired a useless shot into the house where Stella lies wounded by the same gun. Suicide is a beast, Jacob decides, and it must be laid to rest. It is one head of sea serpent consuming the other. He means to kill the beast inside him as well, the one that drew him toward the old snake’s shack. He will find the people he needs to make this dream come true. This longhouse will be born again.
From the mountain, Jacob belts out a song. He eats some more, finishes the last of his tobacco, and heads down. Alice and Jacob had sat on that mountain, plotting a response to the snake running rampant through the village. Alice cautions Jacob on the state of cleanliness he has to achieve before he can do this. “You have to be awake, Jacob. So awake that you need only hear this once. You know?” He does. She walks him around the mountain, pointing out the foods he needs to eat. She talks about the medicines too. With every instruction, Jacob swallows. He floats behind Alice, glad to be there on that mountain at that moment.
He smiles as he makes his way down the mountain.
THEY ARE FINISHING HOOKING Stella up to the IV. Martha lies on a cot drained of a pint of blood and fatigued by her vigil. Sam and Momma are outside on the porch. Jim has gone outside with them; he is not about to leave his mother’s side. Stacey has come round and is sitting next to Steve, who is standing in the corner, rubbing his chin and doubting himself and his sanity as well as the sanity of everyone in the room. Rena and Judy are resting. They have had enough for one night. Shelley is awake and moaning. Celia changes the bandages. The child quivers every time Celia touches her body; Celia murmurs, “I am not fit for this child,” her voice full of apology. “I don’t know how to do this without feeling like I am your torturer. I hardly know any encouraging words at all. I spend most of my time imagining life, instead of living it. I am just a very large child.”
The little girl’s lips move. Celia bends down to hear her say it’s all right. She thinks her knees are going to give out and then she hears it, clear as a bell. It’s Jacob, singing his own song.
“You hear that, Shelley?” Celia smiles. Her fingers deftly dress the open wound. Of course, she does not, Celia chuckles; I am the only one who hears things. I hear things. Celia looks at the little girl and tells her, “I hear things.” The little girl smiles and Celia accepts that the simple truth is that she hears things. Steve comes in to examine Shelley before finishing up for the night.
Out on the porch, Momma sings. Stacey goes out to join her. Shortly after, Rena and Judy follow the sound of the singing. Sam moves over, next to Momma. He curls his pudgy fingers into hers and sings as the water rolls from his eyes. Momma places her other hand over the one he’s holding on to. Jim shrugs and joins the singers. They continue to sing while Steve and Celia finish ministering to Shelley. Finished, Steve joins the family on the porch. Celia stays with Shelley. “You hear that, baby? When everyone sings like that it sounds to me like the voice of divinity itself.” Celia is humming what the others are singing. Shelley stops quivering and goes to sleep.
SO MUCH OF THIS night has brought back memories of the epidemic of 1954. The healing circle Celia belongs to are all convinced that suicide and violence were part of a new epidemic. “We just won’t come out of our house,” an old woman visiting from Vancouver Island had said years ago. Celia remembers the days following the battle with the flu. The fatigue on her momma’s face scared her when she was a child. She remembers how she lay awake at night picturing the tall ships, Momma’s fatigue, her gramma’s unrelenting sense of panic, and how she wished she were born in some other time, to some other family.
She and her gramma visited Momma almost daily. Stacey was gone, Jim was busy with Ned, and the house had grown bigger. New windows and curtains had appeared like magic. The driveway was paved, the house painted. Momma had a garden. It was pretty, but so empty that Celia couldn’t be there unless she escaped into her dream world. Momma didn’t seem to see her. Celia would come and go from the house without Momma saying much to her. When the pavers were working on the driveway, Celia had asked her momma if they could build her a swing.
“Honey, don’t sit on Momma’s new cloth. That’s going to pretty up my new windows soon.” Celia had gone outside and plunked herself down on one of the stones edging the new garden, where she watched the men. Her body warmed the stone underneath her. She slipped into hearing an old song full of punch and vigour. After the song ended, she asked the men if they knew how to build a swing.
“I’d build a pretty little girl like you anything,” one of the men said. The other laughed. They scared her. She wanted something cleaner than that. She wanted them to build her a swing because she wanted it, not because they thought she was pretty. She stopped interacting with people after that. She coasted from dream space to dream space until her son was born. She made him her anchor and now she wanted to cut him adrift, not so she could return to her dream world but so she could enter the world of humans again. But she needed something and she could not figure out what it
was. Shelley inspired her re-entry, but she does not want Shelley to become a new reason for her to be.
On her way home, Celia stops at Alice’s.
“Did you see the lights?” Alice pours her a familiar cup of tea.
“Yeah. Did you write something?”
“Yeah.” Alice swings into her chair and begins to read:
Gramma Alice hums a berry-picking song,
Drumming up pictures of white snow, blue snow,
Diamond-backed, glinting, hard, house-building snow
powder snowshoeing snow.
From across the berry bush
while her blue scarf and green-pink-purple-blue paisley dress
bobs up and down, looking like northern relatives dancing
filling the sky with their sound, as Gramma Alice makes love
to sky, to night, to day, to berries, to us.
Memories stretch out over hot days
Of picking at bushes whose fruit becomes a berry pie
declaring Gramma’s love.
“Momma sang too, Alice. Write one about Momma singing.”
“I can’t, Celia. I didn’t hear it. You did. You could. Let me show you.” Alice draws a circle, writes “Momma sang” in the middle, and draws spokes out from the circle. She asks Celia to close her eyes and tell her what she saw when she heard Momma sing.
Dark lines on Momma’s face melt into song
Filtered through her daughters’
nighttime reverence for Northern Lights,
Momma’s song a power breath.
Gathering the weight of the women into a purple ball
that floats on the back of Momma’s song
Rising to the ceiling to be swallowed by the beams.
“Lovely,” Alice says. “That is so lovely.”
“How do you know it’s poetry?” Celia asks, staring in awe at the words her voice made.
“’Cause it’s written on the page different from a story.” Alice leans back and laughs. “I don’t know. Stacey told me that’s how poetry is written.” Alice, still laughing, reaches out to tap Celia’s hand.