Celia's Song

by Lee Maracle

  “That’s a chilly point of view. Did that mountain freeze your blood, boy?” Ned stomps out his cigarette.

  “As a matter of fact she warmed me, Grandpa. She warmed me.”

  “These women seem to mean to do this.” Steve lets the words go, careful not to be too arrogant. “Maybe we ought to be figuring out what our responsibility is here?”

  “To figure out how we are to live with it,” Ned answers. “But I don’t believe we have ever done a burning to scorch the insides of a boy’s father before.” He spits. He does not like the direction this conversation is travelling in.

  “I don’t believe we ever had a father in this family who refused to face fatherhood before. For sure we never had a suicide because of it.” Jacob drops this plain and simple, as if it’s the morning news.

  Ned shakes his head. What happened on that mountain? Ned takes a good look. Jacob looks settled in the manner of a man who has made a decision that has settled the direction his life will take. It makes Ned suspicious and just a bit nervous, because it includes burning pictures of his cousin. Jim shrugs when he sees that the die has been cast, and that all that is left is for him to get in line. He adds, “I think we ought to have both dads at the funeral then. The one Jimmy thought was his dad is just as responsible as the one who wouldn’t claim him.”

  “How is our little girl?” Jacob asks.

  “She’s all right, but her mom shot herself. She’s still in there. She’ll live. Probably her arm will work fine too. Damn if this isn’t the craziest time to live.”

  INSIDE JIM’S HOUSE, ESTHER tries to persuade Celia that vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.

  “Esther, honey,” Celia says in the warmest tones her voice can muster, “we love you. Your God knows my brother loves you, but I am not up to your Christ or your God today. I need to hear something old. I need to know that the way my poppa looks at my momma is still my birthright. I need to know that the men here are not going to get all twisted up into the hungry side of that old serpent and eat us alive, tormenting us every step of the way. I need to know that someplace deep inside them they really don’t want to do this. The only way I can know that is to do this burning in this way.”

  LATE THAT NIGHT, STACEY repeats her sister’s words to Steve. He believes he understands and says so to Stacey.

  “Explain to me this vengeance of Celia’s,” she barks.

  “It isn’t about revenge. You can’t love your son unless you know how to love a woman; unless you truly love a woman, you can’t truly love your children. I think I know, because I was relieved when my daughter finally grew up — maybe too relieved. I didn’t desert her, but I’m not sure my staying was much more than duty.”

  “Now I feel like I’m standing on the white side of the bridge,” Stacey says.

  “It’s about consequences. Every society has rules; you break them, and there are consequences. My side of the bridge has one set of rules and the consequences match. This side has another. You can’t have it both ways. If you aren’t going to call the cops on whoever did that to that child and make him endure our consequences, white town consequences, then you have to live with yours. Celia means to bring the consequences to bear on the man who deserted her son. If she is wrong, then someone in this village better figure out what the old consequences would be and tell her that. Meantime, I was told that I had to come here and live your way. Ned told me that the responsibility of men is to figure out how to live with decisions made by women and that’s what I am going to do.”

  “Well, I don’t have to go along with it, unless Momma says I do.”

  “Up to you.” Steve gathers her up in his arms to sleep.

  NED, JACOB, AND JIM appear at Melvin’s house early, dressed in their best black suits. Jim is the one who asks him to get dressed up in a suit and come to the cemetery. The looks of the men tell him they are not giving him any choice, so he finds his funeral clothes, gets dressed, and follows them out the door.

  IN BOSTON BAR, AN old man makes ready to build a longhouse. He knows he has to do this burning. But this isn’t the main reason he is heading for Celia’s village. He heard the longhouse calling him. That longhouse wants to be built and he is curious to know how she will shape herself.

  JACOB SITS IN THE car, singing songs Ned recognizes as belonging to Momma. When had she found the time to sing to this boy? Jim sings along. They sing every song Jacob and Jim know on the trip back home. Ned isn’t up to singing with them at first, but the sound of the songs catches him and pretty soon they are all singing and tapping. As he sings, Ned begins to realize that he doesn’t agree much with his wife or her family, but he goes along with her because he doesn’t know any other way to be. She is his personal hurricane, stirring up the dust inside him, whirling him this way and that. The boys don’t seem bothered by what they are doing; they seem to be a whole lot happier than he is.

  What is it that has me twisted this way while these guys just shrug, roll up their sleeves, and get busy doing whatever’s necessary to make it happen? He pulls into his wife’s village and looks toward the mountains behind. They seem to be smiling at him. Above the peak closest to the village, an eagle glides. She’s moulting. Damned if he doesn’t see a feather drop. He stops the car just over the bridge and gets out. The feather continues drifting toward the ground. Ned watches it as it lands a few metres from his feet. He runs over to where it has landed and puts out his hand to his son. Jim scrambles for some tobacco. Ned picks up the feather. They all circle around it; even little Jimmy’s stepfather is standing in the circle. Ned looks at him, half-surprised. Melvin gives him a half shrug.

  THE WOMEN ARE GETTING ready for the burning, cooking food that the dead like to eat, when Jacob corners his gramma and tells her that he needs to talk to her. She follows him to the living room.

  “I’m going to ask that old man to build a longhouse.”

  “You want to dance?”

  “Mm-mm, I want to dance someone else in there too. I know who did this to her.” He shifts his look to the little girl who seems to be waking up for longer periods now.

  I am excited, probably too excited, but I can’t help it. Rebuilding the longhouse means restoring the position of the serpent as protector.

  “You want to make a winter dancer out of him?”

  Jacob raises his eyebrows. “This can never happen here again, Gramma.”

  She smiles and touches his shoulder; she knows what he is up to and approves. These are my children: my Celia, my Jim, my Stacey, and my Jacob. She smiles. The tired melts as she dreams up an old song that she had heard Gramma Alice sing just once. It was so pretty.

  Momma takes special care of the food. Stacey thinks she is stepping rather lightly for a woman about to fry a pair of men. Jacob looks different too. Jacob saw Steve step out of the shower and he watched him turn into Stacey’s bedroom without saying a word to either her or to Steve. Steve’s things were everywhere. Jacob saw his razors in the bathroom, his jacket hanging in the closet; he looked at it all and decided they had moved from keeping company to something more permanent. He took a moment to shake Steve’s hand and say, “Welcome home, Pop,” and laugh.

  STACEY IS RESTING ON the porch, and Jacob comes out to join her. He fingers the little stone on her finger and raises his eyebrow.

  “Too many changes for me to swim in,” she tells him, and begins to explain.

  He holds up his hand.

  “Don’t you hold up your hand when I am trying to tell you something.” She grabs his hand as she speaks. “Jacob, do you worry who your daddy is the way Jimmy did? Funny, you can’t feel the love for your son unless some man loves you like Steve does me, like I do him. I am not like Celia. I couldn’t just go on without you.”

  “I worry about it constantly, Mom. I even saw him once. I wanted to walk up to him and say ‘Hey, Pop,’ but some lead got stuck in my butt and I just stood there gapi
ng at him, looking and wishing. I’m not Jimmy, though. I never worried about anything quite like Jimmy did. I wanted a dad like everybody else had across the river. I didn’t want to be some orphan like half the kids on this side. I can’t have that right now. I’m too old, and he won’t have me. Unlike Jimmy, I have to find some way to make my life fine with that piece of information.” He grabs his mother’s hand. “In the middle of all that craziness with that little girl, I told Uncle Jim I couldn’t watch them work with her. He told me that he had climbed the mountains near the village and that I would be able to watch if I climbed them, so I did. Jimmy had the same piece of information, Mom. He chose not to. I don’t know why he took his life. I do know I can’t bring him back. I miss him more than I’ve ever missed anyone, but I can’t just up and leave. I have to find some way to live with all this.”

  “Now you sound like your gramma.”

  “Who’s talking about me?” Momma stands behind Stacey with Celia. “I swear I have seen more water leaking out of this family’s eyes in the last week than all my days before.” Momma takes off her apron and hands it to Stacey.

  “Yes, but you know where your family is,” Jim says from behind her.

  “Amen,” Esther says from behind him, completely missing the point. Jim turns, wraps his arms around her waist, and rocks her back and forth.

  The serpent is hungry. He is bestial. He crawls around looking for food. He wants to be swallowed. He lurks in the shadows behind bushes wherever he hears the shrieking sound of rage or desperation. He knows there will be a meal. Once swallowed, he will consume courage; in the night, when the mouth of the beholder hangs slack and open expelling toxic breath, the serpent will escape with whatever he manages to eat. He is crazed. There is so much food here and it makes his blood pump into a frenzy to imagine the banquet that the doubt that corrodes the minds of the villagers presents.

  “What? … Are you sassing me? … What’d you say? … C’mere …” The belt rises along with the desperate screams of the children. The serpent has found a meal. The child whimpers from a closet in the dark and the serpent wraps himself round the child. The child is lonely when he feels the serpent; it feels like someone trying to comfort him. His mouth hangs open, letting whimpers drop. The serpent enters. Tomorrow the child will find a cat, tie a rope to its tail, and hang it over the bridge, smiling as the cat wriggles itself loose of its own tail and plunges to the icy raging water below. The serpent lies in the meadow, satisfied for a while. At night he will awaken and hunt another meal.

  The serpent fears boys with courage. He must swallow them before their first song. He must partner with them before their first dance. He remembers. He wants to find the boy with so much cokscheam. That boy who swallowed the soul of the mountain is his enemy. He hunts for a way to make him let go of that mountain, let go of Cheam. Blowing himself up and stretching himself out, he wraps himself around the house the boy lives in. If he can just find a way to open the door to their dreams, find someone sleeping, their jaw slack; he will loosen those tongues, get their words going in the wrong direction, and slip inside that boy before they burn that cedar and the boy will be all right.

  XXI

  CELIA TAKES GREAT CARE in preparing for the burning. She fusses over her hair, even paints her lips and nails. She fusses in lieu of waiting.

  Alex arrives well before the appointed time. She invites him in with a wickedly nice hello. They exchange niceties. He did not have the good sense to stop bragging about what he had been up to all these years for even five minutes. Celia had left one photograph on the wall: Jimmy looking almost the same as his father, twenty years earlier. Alex is so full of himself that there is no room left in his mind to see that the picture bears so much resemblance to him. She wonders what in the world she had seen in this man. After a while, she asks him if he would like to take a walk. He says he would.

  Celia likes the way the cottonwood line the road, making a pretty, sweet-smelling hallway. Their leafy green dresses fill the space between the trunks, making a nice wind break. Today the green leaves face their silver side up. It’s going to rain, the leaves say. Celia secretly hopes that it will be a good rain — a violent rain. Booming thunder and lightning would be nice.

  Alex walks with his hands in his pockets, prattling on about his life. Halfway to the graveyard, he tells her he wants to see her, and Celia says it would be all right — if he still felt that way at the end of the day. She cautions him not to be in too much of a hurry. He mistakes her meaning. A lone purple iris grows in the ditch on the side of the road. He pulls out a small pocket knife and clips it. Celia wants to laugh. How appropriate: he offers her a ditchplucked flower and thinks it’s romantic. He can put it on his son’s grave. He hands it to her. She tells him to hang on to it. He is disconcerted, but he hangs on to it, twirling it as they stroll.

  A single mass of grey-black cloud scoots in the direction of the sun. Alex checks his watch. Just like a white man, Celia thinks. Alex looks up and points at the cloud. “Just rain,” Celia says and laughs. He says he’s not dressed for it. She assures him he’ll be all right. “No one drowns from rain,” she teases. She feels his resistance. The hand holding the iris wants to be in his pocket. He plays with the coins in his pocket. He casts a sidelong glance at the coming storm and, just as they turn the corner to the graveyard, there’s lightning across the sky. He sees the crowd of people standing under a canopy, by the grave.

  “What’s going on?” He stops dead in his tracks.

  Celia slips her arm through his and grabs his wrist with her other hand. She holds the sensitive part of his wrist and urges him forward.

  Alex wants to run now. He isn’t as dense as Celia thought. Some feeling of empathy for Alex comes up in Celia, but she shoves it aside and tells her dead son, “This is for you, Jimmy.” In her mind she says to Alex, “This is for your son,” and to Jimmy, “Your daddy is here, here at last.”

  “I want you to meet someone.”

  The singing starts. Alex resists, but Celia has a good grip on him. The more he resists, the more she digs her fingers into his flesh.

  “Hey, girl. You’re hurting me.”

  “We’ll all hurt you, if you don’t keep moving.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “You’ll see when we get there.”

  “I think you ought to let me walk on my own,” he says. “Let go of my wrist.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  He stops resisting and walks with Celia to the grave. In front of it, the men in black funeral suits circle him without saying any kind of hello. The old man starts to talk. The thunder booms out a halloo between the old man’s words and the lightning flashes. Alex figures out what’s going on. There are pictures of a boy sur rounding the grave. Some are under glass in frames, others are loose. Alex’s legs weaken. As each family member takes turns talking to Jimmy, unravelling the story of this fatherless boy, Alex realizes this Jimmy was his son. He leans on Celia, his head shifting from side to side.

  As the last man in Celia’s family finishes, a car pulls up and a group of people from Mission step out. In between a middle-aged couple is a young girl, also dressed in black.

  The men look at Melvin.

  “I’m not asking for forgiveness, Jimmy. I just want you to know I am so sorry.”

  He huffs, then carries on. “I couldn’t let you know that through it all I did love you. You were hard not to love, but some crazy jealousy had a hold of me and pushed my love aside.” He stops.

  The young girl walks over to the photo stack and takes one. Everyone but Alex stares at her, but no one moves to stop her. Celia clenches her fists, not wanting to know that Jimmy had been loved by this girl, but it was obvious who she is. Alex falls to his knees and looks at the photos of the boy who so looked like him. It overwhelms him that he has a son he will never know. He tries to tell himself he that hadn’t known about him — and th
en he remembers the phone calls, his suspicion and his conscious decision not to return the calls. He had known. He tries to assuage his guilt by saying he was young, but nothing worked. He falls to his knees, unable to satisfy himself with lies.

  The family takes the photos to a fire not far from the gravesite — all but the one the young woman still holds. Celia stands in front of her with a menacing look on her face. The young woman clutches the photo, the middle-aged couple move closer to the girl, and Celia backs off. Alex lunges, attempting to stop them from throwing the photos into the fire. He screams, “WAIT!” He is too late; the photos curl at the edges as they are consumed by the fire. As the last photo burns, he utters a pathetic “No!” Celia walks away from him and the fire. She glares at the young woman and swings out, onto the road, back straight, legs strong, her teeth fixed in a wide smile.

  The old man falls in step with Celia and the family follows him. The middle-aged couple join the procession, determined to be a part of what the family is doing to set things right. They leave Alex behind, alone in the rain by the grave of his son.

  The storytellers are at it, pumping up the laughter about Jimmy’s antics. The family is feeling freer than it has for a long time. Steve wraps his arms around Stacey’s waist and whispers, “I think I was wrong about me. I can do this.” She rocks him. “I think so too.” She leans up to kiss him. The young woman with the photo walks toward Celia when the storytelling is in full voice. Jacob is going on about a memory of Jimmy; he ends it with a delicious laugh, which is interrupted by a knock at the door. Jacob, still laughing, opens the door.

  Alex stands there, looking like a crazy man who after months of spending time in a trapper’s cabin has lost his sense of reality. No one expected to see him again, least of all Jacob; seeing him now stops his laughter and he just stares at him. The old man walks to the door and ushers Alex in. He takes Alex’s arm and whispers something to him that covers the crazed look on his face with one of desperation and fear. The young woman whispers in Celia’s ear and she freezes. Alex starts to speak, takes a look at Celia, and decides against it. He fills himself a feast bowl and stands in the corner instead.