by Susan Currie
Degan turned up a driveway that was running with rainwater. They trudged up against the rivulets. They climbed the rounded staircase to the front porch, where two elegant wicker chairs were set out. The chairs looked like they had never been sat in.
Cass and Degan stared at each other, half-panicked and half-determined.
Degan knocked loudly.
It took a long time for someone’s footsteps to approach inside. The outside light switched on, and a man’s face appeared in the decorative glass window of the front door. The man frowned, then unlatched the door.
“Yes? Can I help you?”
He was looking them up and down with profound distrust. Cass realized how unkempt and disheveled they must look, how sodden with rain.
“Is Ellis here?”
“He might be.” The man gazed at Degan’s long hair and the features of his face. “What do you need him for?”
“He has something,” Degan said, “that belongs to us. We want to talk to him about that.”
The man frowned. “What is it?”
“A mask,” Cass said, finding her voice.
“What, a Halloween mask?”
“An Iroquois mask. A false face.” She stood her ground against the condescension in his eyes.
The man began to inch the door closed. “Listen, this isn’t a good time, and whatever you want, we’re not interested. We’re having dinner.”
Behind him, Ellis began to walk slowly down the curving staircase. The man followed the direction of Cass’s eyes, and turned around to see him.
Ellis was moving cautiously, like a cat. Like he expected to have to run suddenly. In his hand he carried the mask, its hair flowing over his arms.
His father said sharply, “What’s that thing? What’s it doing in our house?”
Ellis froze, eyes on his father’s face.
“You’re not putting that piece of garbage in your room,” his father exploded. “You’ve got enough in there already. All those stupid doodads you keep making.”
Ellis stuck his jaw out, but he stayed quiet.
Cass was suddenly embarrassed to be standing there listening to this. Ellis’s face was watchful, as if he expected to be struck.
She knew how that felt.
The last thing she expected was to feel sorry for him. But she did.
“That thing belongs to these kids?” Ellis’s father boomed.
Ellis said dully but stubbornly: “I bought it.”
“But you knew it was mine,” Cass blurted.
“Where did you buy it?” asked the man, ignoring her.
“Pawnshop.”
Ellis’s father shook his head, disgust on his face. “What were you doing in a pawnshop?”
Ellis shrugged.
Degan stepped forward. “Cass’s mother had to pawn it. We were trying to buy it back. Then Ellis went and bought it himself.”
“Ohhh,” said the man. He put his hands in his pockets and nodded. Then he blinked, a kind of mock confusion on his face. He leaned close to Degan’s face. “Pardon me, but are you telling me you’ve come to our house at this time of night because my son bought something, and you don’t like it? Seriously? When do you people get to decide who buys your tribal stuff or whatever?”
He turned to Ellis. “How much was it?”
Face drawn, Ellis muttered, “Thirty bucks.”
The man shook his head some more. “Thirty bucks for that piece of garbage?”
Ellis said nothing.
“We want to buy it from him,” Degan muttered.
Ellis’s father said, “Have you got any money?”
“We have thirty-five dollars.”
Ellis’s father opened the door slightly. “Come here,” he said to Ellis.
Ellis moved forward watchfully, holding the mask tightly as if someone was going to grab it.
His father gazed down at the mask as if it was some dead and rotting thing. He looked at Degan and Cass, dripping with rain.
“Forty,” he said.
“We don’t have forty!” Cass cried, fury bubbling up.
Ellis’s father shrugged. He began to close the door again, this time for good. He turned to Ellis, now out of sight, and said, “Get that thing away from me. Throw it out. It’s not staying here.”
“If you’re throwing it out, why can’t we have it for thirty-five dollars?” Degan asked desperately.
Ellis’s father looked at him impassively. “If your people spent a little more time developing some business skills and less time drinking and carving this kind of stuff”—he gestured to the mask—“they might be a bit higher on everyone’s radar. I don’t mean to be unkind. It’s just a fact. If you want this mask, you’ll do some honest work for it.”
He was forcing them back, toward the rain and the night. The last thing Cass saw, as the door slowly closed, was Ellis’s stricken face on the stairs.
As if he’d wanted to say something quite different but hadn’t had a chance.
chapter twenty-three
Cass could barely hear anything Degan was saying. It wasn’t that she was thinking about something else. She just wasn’t hearing things right, or seeing them right, or something. She was just walking along in the rain, that was all.
“We’ll just get some more money,” Degan repeated. “Five more dollars, and we’ll buy it back.”
Cass looked at him blankly.
“No.”
She would not try to get the mask back anymore. She would not negotiate with that man for something that wasn’t important to him. It would make her too embarrassed and ashamed to buy anything—but especially something that mattered so much—from someone who had no respect for her.
The Orenda was singing inside her, anyway. It had never stopped. The Orenda would keep bubbling and gushing with life in all things, in all places, whether Ellis had Cass’s mask or not.
So she didn’t need the mask, not really.
Although her insides were sobbing at its loss.
™
They had reached her driveway.
“Good night,” Cass said dully, and turned to walk up toward the door.
“It’ll be okay,” Degan said, his voice tight. “Tomorrow we’ll make a new plan.”
She nodded without agreeing, and turned the knob to enter the kitchen. She closed the door softly behind her, shutting Degan out in the rain.
The kitchen was dark, with only the light over the stove gleaming faintly. At first, Cass could make out very little. Then she realized with a start that Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, her head cradled in her hands.
“Mom?” Cass whispered. “Are you okay?”
Mom looked up. Even in the half-darkness, Cass could see that she had been crying.
“Oh, Mom! What is it?”
Cass tumbled into the chair beside Mom and wrapped her arms around her. Mom sank into Cass’s arms, resting her head on Cass’s shoulder. Not for the first time, Cass felt responsible for Mom, as if Mom were her child.
Cass tried desperately to imagine what could possibly be wrong. Mom had been planning to speak to Mr. Gregor about how to maybe go back to school. Had she found out that was impossible?
“Did—did you talk to Mr. Gregor? Did something go wrong?”
Surely Mr. Gregor wouldn’t have said something unkind?
Mom took a shuddering breath and sat up. She smoothed her hair and wiped under her eyes with the tissue beside her. Then she shook her head the way she did when she wanted to get the unhappiness out, and get on with things. She smiled, suddenly Mom again, though rumpled.
“Oh, yes, I talked to Mr. Gregor.” She gave a short, sharp laugh. “That seems like a million years ago.”
“What did he say?”
“What did he say?” Mom repeated in a faraway voice. “He actua
lly helped me a lot. I can take some courses online to get my GED—that’s my high-school graduation. And he looked at my résumé and said he thought I might be able to do some cooking in his sister’s daycare, because she’s looking for a cook.”
She stared down at her hands like they weren’t hers.
“So then he called his sister. And then I went over to the daycare and met her. And she’s hired me—on probation for a few weeks, but permanent after that if it works out. I’m starting tomorrow. So I can do that in the day and get my GED at night.”
“That’s wonderful!” Cass cried.
“And she gave me an advance of money.” Mom blinked at Cass, with eyes that seemed to only partly see her. “So, I did what I promised you I’d do. I went over to the pawnshop, where I pawned your mask. You know, the one you liked. I promised I would get it for you when I got a job.”
Cass drew her breath in slowly.
Tears filled Mom’s eyes again.
“It was sold.”
Cass nodded.
Mom whispered, “I let you down, honey. You don’t ask for much, but that was something you really wanted. Mother of the year, here, took it away and then couldn’t get it back for you.”
“Oh, Mom. No.”
“So then,” Mom said, “I was sitting here thinking about that mask. And wondering why you felt such a connection to it.” Her voice got low. “And I thought, you know, about that day at the lawyer’s office. Ms. Maracle. Do you remember that she gave me an envelope?”
Cass said softly, “You threw it away.”
The tears were spilling out of Mom’s eyes now, and Cass could feel them as if they were her own. As if they were the tears of lots of people.
“I went out,” Mom said. “Down to the bottom of the yard. It was teeming rain. I crossed the little stream and started picking through all that garbage. I know I threw the envelope there. But I couldn’t find it. Not anywhere.”
She put her head in her hands.
“I ruined everything, didn’t I? Story of my life: I’m my own worst enemy. Who knows what was in that envelope? Could have changed our future.”
The music stirred inside Cass at that moment. It was a single voice this time. It circled ever higher, just as Cass had done around the white pine in her dream. As it flew higher, it grew bigger.
When Cass spoke, her voice was somehow in harmony with that other voice.
“Mom, the envelope isn’t lost.”
Mom looked up at her blankly. As if Cass was talking another language altogether.
“I have something to show you,” Cass and that other voice said.
Then she was scraping her chair back, and running to her room. She ran to the dresser where the mask had been, and where the envelope now was. She yanked open the drawer and grabbed it. Then she held the envelope to her for a minute.
When she returned to the kitchen, she held it out to Mom.
“See? I rescued it.”
Mom took the envelope from Cass with trembling hands. She turned it front to back, and smoothed the paper between her fingers. She began to ease the envelope open.
“Wait!” Cass and the Orenda said.
It was too dark to read. But the overhead lamp would be too bright, too garish for this moment.
Cass took candles from the kitchen drawer and placed them on the table. Mom lit them with matches. The flames made shadows dance on the walls.
It could have been anywhere, any time in history.
It was all times at once.
chapter twenty-four
Mom pulled out the papers and unfolded them. She placed them on the table and slid her hands across the pages to smooth them out. She peered close at the first page and then sat back, putting her hands over it, as if she couldn’t quite handle what might be there.
Cass leaned close and put her hand on Mom’s.
“Want me to read?”
Mom nodded, closing her eyes.
So Cass hunched over the pages and began to read aloud, in that voice that felt like part herself and part something bigger.
Dear Denise Jane Foster,
I am writing to tell you the story of your mother. This letter is based on conversations we had, before she passed away. She helped so many people during her life, and we, in turn, have tried to help her by finding you at last.
Mom slid a hand around Cass’s shoulders. Her fingers were cold. Cass reached up and took Mom’s hand as if she could thaw it out by holding it.
“Go on,” Mom said softly.
Cass leaned close to the page again.
You may have wondered about your own culture and heritage. You may have felt like you didn’t have any. That is not true. We would like to give them back to you now.
Your mother was born on the—
Cass’s eyes scanned ahead, and she gasped.
“What?” Mom said.
But Cass’s heart was beating so fast, suddenly, that she couldn’t answer. And her heart was like drums, drums that had been waiting for a long time.
Mom gently took the pages.
Your mother was born on the reservation just outside this city. She was Cayuga by birth. You may not know what that means. The Cayuga are one of North America’s first nations. They are Iroquois. They have a long and proud history, and you are part of that. We would like you to know that you have roots going back thousands of years in this place.
“Cayuga?” said Mom, trying the word out in her mouth. “Iroquois? So she was…Native?”
The truth was dawning on Cass, falteringly, like she was just learning to walk.
If Mom’s mom was Cayuga, then that meant—
It meant—
The drums were pounding joy, and the voices were raised now in victory.
Mom and Cass. They were coming back.
Cass took the pages and began to read again.
Your mother lived on the reservation until she was six years old. Her mother had passed away, and her father raised her as best he could, which was not really very well. The trouble was that he had been forced when he was a little boy to go to a terrible place, where he had forgotten what it was like to have a father, so he couldn’t imagine how to be a father. He also tried to find ways to escape his pain, which were not very good ones. That was a very hard thing for everyone.
Then your mother was also taken from her home and sent to one of these nightmare places to live. It was called a residential school. The government said that its purpose was to “take the Indian out of the child.” The government and the churches did not think our culture should be part of the country. They tried to get rid of it by taking it away from the children.
Your mother was beaten there, and starved and tormented. Everything was taken away from her, even the words in her mouth. She was punished if she spoke her own language. She learned that her traditions were bad. She learned that if she was to survive, she must be trained to do jobs that would suit her for being a worker in a white society. She must be trained not to be herself.
Cass was dizzy with all the truths that were suddenly all around her. She thought of her dreams of those terrified children, trapped in that place.
Her grandmother had been one of those children. And her great-grandfather.
That was what the mask had been trying to tell her. It was making sure they weren’t forgotten. It was passing their stories to Cass.
“The bullies!” Cass said, her hands in fists.
It seemed like the whole world was nothing but bullies and victims, and nobody could escape being one or the other. Not her grandmother, not Mom, not Cass, or Degan or Ellis. Not even the government of her own country. Orenda and Otkon, two forces, and Otkon won, over and over.
She continued to read aloud.
When she was seventeen, they finally set your mother free.
B
ut now she did not know anything about herself. She had forgotten how to speak to her family, because she didn’t know her language anymore. She had almost forgotten what a family even was. She did not know how to be a daughter, and she had no idea about what mothers and fathers were supposed to do either. She had learned that white ways were the real ways, that everything else was fake. She had no solid earth under her, and she could barely stand. She was a toddler, staggering in a world that didn’t make any sense.
You can see that this was a terrible thing. It separated her from herself, and she was lost for a very long time. She had nothing to tell her what was right, and like her father before her, she discovered a half-world of drinking and drugs that might help her to not think about herself. She did not respect herself. In fact, she hated herself.
During that time, she found out that she was going to have a baby. She was barely out of her teens. She was living on the city streets now, having left the reservation.
Mom shook her head, hand to her mouth. “Poor girl,” she said.
The drums pounded louder.
Your mother could not look after a baby, living in alleys and on sidewalks, exposing you to so many dark things. And so, after you were born, she took you to the hospital and placed you in an armchair in the lobby, wrapped in a towel. She didn’t leave a note. From there, you were made a ward of the Crown, and you entered a foster home—the first of many for you. We now know about what these places were like for you. We learned, and then we walked them with you in empathy. We have heard you.
“Who’s ‘we’?” Mom said.
Cass shook her head, puzzled. Maybe it was generations of ancestors, reaching out to recover all those who had been lost. Maybe it was all of those voices who had been singing together inside her, ever since the mask had introduced her to the Orenda. Maybe it was the children in those schools.
Or maybe it was something else, something she couldn’t imagine yet.
Your mother was too ashamed to go home, too ashamed to tell anyone what she had done. But when word finally reached her that her father had died, it pierced through the haze she lived in. It shocked her into grieving at last.