He grabbed the plate and wafted it in front of her face, teasing her. “I’ll save the biggest sausages for you, mujer.”
“Please do,” Calliope joked back, plastering an overzealous smile to her face. “You know how much I love them.”
“You know how much I love you,” he countered, his voice cracking where it should have been playful.
Eunjoo watched them, a curious expression on her face, as she’d done each day for the past several months. Calliope never asked if she understood. She was sure Eunjoo understood much more than even Calliope did. She must have, for she never brought up Andres, and when Malia had asked her who Phoenix was, she said her imaginary friend, which had nearly gutted Calliope, but she’d nodded along, agreeing what an imaginative child Eunjoo was, and that imaginary friends might well be Spirits nearby, protecting the young ones, answering the corn blessing and turquoise prayers.
“I’ll be in our room cleaning this messy corn girl.”
Eunjoo asked, “Can I go outside and play with Nastacio?” Chance’s little nephew, a year older than Eunjoo, who had turned seven in January. It must have been almost Phoenix’s seventh birthday. Calliope’s heart pelted each time she thought about it—about missing it.
“Yes, but come in when it’s time to set the table. You know how Malia hates when you’re late for chores.”
The first time Eunjoo had disregarded chores, Nala had warned her that the Suuke would snatch her away in its basket and take her to the peach orchards. Eunjoo had paled, but her reaction was nothing compared with Malia’s, who had raised her voice louder than Calliope had ever heard her speak, the birds of her hands flying toward Nala’s face this time instead of her own. Chance had calmed his mother, but no one ever mentioned the Suuke in Malia’s house again. And Eunjoo never missed her chores.
After she cleaned the baby, Calliope wandered outside with the corn girl, free of her cradleboard, which she’d resisted using around five months old, fighting to release her arms from the constraints of swaddling. Malia had suggested strapping her in but allowing her the use of her arms to play with a rattling drum that Chance had made her, but even that less constrictive position the corn girl disliked. No, her daughter would not be strapped down, which was just as well. Her head was flat enough. Calliope had been frustrated at first that they’d flattened her daughter’s head, but eventually laughed as she’d rubbed the flat spot beneath the shining black waves on the back of Chance’s head like polishing a table. “It’s a family trait,” he’d said, before either of them had realized it couldn’t have been true. Miwe e’le wasn’t his.
The black pudding sausages when broiled were not any more appealing than raw, and the stench of the blood roasting on the grill nearly made Calliope gag. She waved at Chance as she walked quickly past, burying her nose in the milky folds of the corn girl’s neck, the sweetly curdled smell of breastmilk still strong on her skin.
She wondered what Chance needed to talk about. Had there been another development? If their hypothesis was correct, then it was almost time. The bridge that had brought her across was opening again. She didn’t know if she could believe it. But she had to hope. It was all she had left. Besides the family she’d built—here—beyond the waffle gardens surrounding the honeycomb structures of the clan-connected houses where Calliope had been living for almost six months, the pueblo stretching miles onward. Throughout the winter the land had remained warm; the brief freeze they’d encountered had cleared the earth for new growth, and the weather had remained temperate since. She’d known New Mexico to venture below freezing most nights and many days from November through March. But this winter she’d spent in Zuni had shown the land itself to be the real trickster, and the pueblo was overflowing.
The sheep and goats were grazing far beyond their previous limits, farther even than before the US government had usurped Zuni land in the 1870s, first for Anglo homesteaders then for the logging companies depleting Zuni forests of millions of board feet of timber for the railroads. They’d left Zuni land completely denuded.
But now the sheep had multiplied.
There hadn’t been so many sheep since the 1930s, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs had built a fence around what was left of the reservation and prevented Zunis from both farming and herding outside their boundaries and instead implementing a sheep reduction program, rounding up thousands of animals, sold to Anglos in Gallup or slaughtered and dumped in pits, where they were left to rot.
Past the Coyote clan’s outdoor grill, as she neared the pueblo center, far from the stench of blood iron, another, sweeter smell wafted through the warm evening air. Honeyed pork. Calliope wished she could join whatever clan was cooking that meal for supper instead. The Badger clan, perhaps? She’d met all the clans at the sacred time of fasting and prayer and ritual, masked dancing called Shalako at the winter solstice, following harvest.
She’d made it her business to investigate as much as possible, considering her stay with Chance’s people a kind of anthropological study, but they kept the secrets of their religious ceremonies tightly sealed, and she could not probe much deeper than what Chance had divulged, what he said was too much information anyway—he was already in trouble, and did she want to get him even more punished? He still wouldn’t tell her what atonement ceremony he’d had to withstand or what sacrifice was approaching. It loomed over the bedroom they shared, the nights he slept on the floor beside her bed, and she begged to know if he would be all right. She felt responsible for whatever was going to happen. She couldn’t stand not knowing what or when. So many uncertainties beyond their main concern, her daily, no, hourly objective: how do I find my family? She hadn’t surrendered hope. She’d only had to find a new way of looking at the problem. She was biding her time.
On the porch of a neighboring building, Mara sat with a woman of the Yellow Wood clan, who had been teaching her the past few months since she had healed how to sculpt traditional Zuni pottery. She was crafting a rounded pitcher that Calliope recognized as the Cíbola-style whiteware, Kiatuthlana Black-on-white, patterned with diamonds and triangular mazes centering on two fingerlike projections pointing toward each other, whose original she had seen in archaeological exhibits dating from around 850 AD, ascribed to the Anasazi, though Calliope had corrected the curator: they are not the Ancient Enemy, a Navajo word, but The People or Ancestral Puebloans. Bisabuela had taught her Anasazi was not the correct word for their ancestors, who were a lot of things and not all of them pleasant, but they were not the enemy. Calliope found it compelling that Mara would emulate this ancient pottery style characteristic of the four-corners region, more specifically, Chaco Canyon. Did she think it would help? Or was it a coincidence she was making this particular pitcher?
Mara noticed Calliope watching her and waved her over.
Calliope nearly asked how Mara was feeling, in a voice of sympathetic concern, as she’d done every day since Mara had recovered, but she stopped herself. At this point it only annoyed the older woman, who seemed as spry as ever. Instead, she said, “That pitcher is a beautiful recreation of the original whiteware.”
Mara stopped painting but didn’t smile. Her tone purposeful, as though she hadn’t called Calliope over for chitchat, she said, “I’m taking it with us.”
Calliope narrowed her eyes at the pottery, considering. “Will a replica do any good?”
“We don’t know what will. Might as well try.”
Calliope glanced at the Yellow Wood clanswoman. They shouldn’t have been discussing this in front of her or anyone outside of the kiva Chance went to for help. His deceased wife’s older brother, Arlen Cooeyate, member of the Eagle clan. No one else knew. And for all of their safety, they needed to keep it that way. Arlen was the voice of their religion, a role he’d inherited after his elder brother had died. He was not the Elder she had expected to meet.
Mara broke her trance, said, “Are you busy after dinner? I need to disc
uss something with you.”
Had she and Chance been planning without her? “Chance needs to talk.”
“Then I’ll join you.”
Calliope nodded, and the corn girl threw the rattle drum at Mara, hitting the pitcher. It bounced off and fell to the wooden porch. Mara didn’t look amused. She handed the rattle back to Calliope.
Nala approached, a reddish-brown seed jar balanced atop her head. She was smiling widely, though walking cautiously.
Calliope asked the young woman, “Still practicing?”
“If we’re to live as the Ancients lived, then I want to do it right.”
“You’re doing perfectly.”
Nala was fresh air. Nala was the first bloom on a winter-bare branch. Calliope would miss Nala most.
“Thank you, kyawu.” She called her sister. “Come help me with the soap weed.” Unlike the blood pudding, this work Calliope actually enjoyed. The seed pods of the yucca root were boiled and used for food, though she had helped Nala use the entire plant for various purposes. They’d made the leaves into brushes and given them to the kivas for ceremonial masks and altars. They’d also soaked the leaves in water to soften them and knotted them together for rope. They’d dried the leaves to split and braid for water-carrying head pads and mats. And pounded the peeled roots into suds for washing hair, wool garments, and blankets.
Calliope had learned to weave yucca into a linen-like fabric they used for clothing. The central leaves of the yucca plant were gathered and each leaf folded into a strip three inches long then placed in a pot of boiling water together with wood ash. They removed the skin from the leaves and the children chewed them. Eunjoo found this part of the process hilarious. After this, the fibers were separated and straightened, and once they dried, they were soaked in cold water and rubbed between the hands. The softened fibers were then pulled into a fluffy mass and spun and woven like cotton. Eunjoo’s favorite game was mastering this new life, and she played it so well with Nala. Not everything here was ancient; a few modern accoutrements existed. But many Western ways were put aside for the old traditions. If Nala and the other young people missed electronics and those trappings of their modern life before, they never let on. Everyone here seemed content in the present, Nala especially. Her joy was so contagious Calliope wished she too could have built contentment here. And she might have. If she hadn’t already built a life elsewhere.
How would blood sausage have tasted if she’d never known what it was made of? What would Zuni have felt like if it hadn’t been the barrier between Calliope and her son?
THIRTY-ONE
POPPING BUBBLES
Dinner in Zuni was an affair every single night. The woman’s role in the religion was preparing the food, for food wasn’t meant just to be swallowed down like American fast-food culture had made it. Each meal was meant to be savored, slowly enjoyed.
Calliope found it painstakingly slow at first, struggled to adapt to the hours at the table piled high with vegetables from the garden: corn, squash, broccoli, scallions, cilantro, radishes. Clumps of pink salt crystal from Old Lady Salt, which Calliope remembered respectfully each time she sat for a meal at Malia’s table. Jalapeño chiles, spicy carrots. Mutton, pinto bean stew, paperbread made from blue cornmeal. The blood pudding sausages Calliope refused more steadfastly than the corn girl her own mashed food. For dessert, thin wedges of honeydew and watermelon.
It bothered Calliope that the women didn’t have a more active role in the Zuni religious and intellectual life, but she kept telling herself that though she was fond of these people, though their way of life spoke to her spirit, they were not her people. Because she did not fully understand, could never fully understand, she had no right to criticize or judge. So she took a bite of chile, swallowed. A bite of paperbread. A sip of melon juice. A spoonful of stew. A bite of radish. And so forth. Malia smiled approvingly, said aloud that Calliope was a wonderful daughter-in-law, who did wonderfully, the Indian way.
Calliope didn’t tell Malia that her bisabuela was Puebloan, that Calliope had a part of the people coursing through her blood as well, the Ancients residing in her. She knew that Malia meant she was playing her part of an adopted Zuni wife well. She’d been practicing hard, to keep Chance from taking any other risks for her. She was trying to keep him safe. So she just smiled at Malia and took another bite of her spicy chile, the heat prickling at her eyes.
After dinner, Eunjoo ran off again with Nastacio to pick wildflowers. Calliope excused herself to change the baby, and Chance followed her. The rest of the family would wash dishes then gather on the porch as the sun set, gossiping and telling stories, some members smoking or rolling tobacco, a sacred item in Zuni.
None of their usual banter tonight though. Chance’s neck and arms were tense. “We need to leave before sunrise.”
She put the baby in the middle of their bed, on her stomach; the corn girl wasn’t crawling yet. “Why tonight? I thought we had two more days.”
“Arlen gave me a heads-up. Some of the men from my kiva suspect.”
“How?”
Chance smoothed his hair out of his face, clasped his hands behind his head. “Nothing stays hidden on the rez.”
“What will Malia say when she finds we’re gone? And Nala? Wowo łashhi? Can’t we at least say goodbye?”
“I don’t want them to know where we’ve gone. Not for sure. I can’t risk them accidentally telling anyone. It’s bad enough Arlen knows.”
“If it hadn’t been for Arlen, we wouldn’t have known where to go.”
His brother-in-law and he were still close though Chance’s wife had been dead eight years, most of which Chance had spent living in Texas. When the elders of his own kiva had shown their disapproval of Chance’s actions, once he knew there would be retribution for his slaying of the Suuke, he knew he couldn’t go to them for help. He’d confided all of this in Calliope; he had no one else to share it with. It would have been easy enough to let her stay on the rez, to continue pretending they were married, a family. She wouldn’t be in as much danger then. But he was still at risk. And he couldn’t ask her to stay. Not without him. He’d violated too many religious codes. He’d exposed too much. If she wouldn’t stay as his wife, he couldn’t ask her to stay as his widow. He had to get her out. He’d promised to get her back to her family.
Now that it was time, she didn’t know if she was ready. Her stomach twisted. After all these months, she couldn’t imagine what leaving would feel like. What leaving him would mean. She asked, “How far are you coming?”
His voice low, crumpled as dried corn husks, “As far as I can.”
“Will you come all the way across … with me?”
“What are you asking, mujer?”
She didn’t know. She had to get back to Phoenix.
The first night after her healing ceremony, she’d stopped bleeding and could leave the house. Chance had asked Malia to watch the corn girl, lying that he was taking his wife out for the evening. Malia had been so happy for her son she hadn’t noticed or had chosen to ignore the fear in his eyes. He was taking her to Arlen, speaker of their religion, keeper of their way of life, interpreter of the gods, the Elder brother of Zuni, who was also his brother-in-law. Calliope had expected someone much older, with long white hair and a face rutted with wrinkles; a male counterpart to Bisabuela. Instead, Arlen was midforties, barrel-chested, walked with a slight limp, and had scars on his face that suggested he’d survived the streets outside of Zuni; he was leather-worn but handsome, though not compared to Chance, and only slightly shorter, with a rumpled crew cut. His physique was fit with the exception of his mild potbelly.
They’d met in the basement of his house; she wouldn’t have been allowed in his kiva, and there was no other place they were safe from prying ears. On shelves lining the walls, hundreds of ko’ko, carefully carved and colorfully painted statues of their myriad gods. She looked for
the Suuke pair that had almost killed her, that had killed Amy. She couldn’t find them. A tabby cat had followed them down the basement steps and was rubbing itself against Calliope’s legs, purring. She nudged it away but it wouldn’t budge. She needed answers. How could her child have been transformed into a rock inside her belly? How could anyone else have been transformed? What was happening to the land? It made no scientific sense. Chance had told her to trust the stories. Fine. What were the stories?
Arlen had laughed wryly at her demands. He spoke to Chance in Zuni, and Calliope had the distinct impression he was making some joke at her expense. But then he said, “Though we don’t normally share religious secrets with women, that is not our way, I will tell you what I know.” She still didn’t know what Chance said to convince Arlen.
When he first told her what was happening, she thought he was making fun of her again. How could it have been true? But then he had repeated the words from her dream, the words the Spirits had sung the night after she gave birth. He said, “Mother Earth is a protective mother; she shields her people. When her children, our ancestors, first left her four-chambered womb and came to the surface of her body, to this Sky World, she grieved. She wanted them back inside of her, where she could keep them safe. And these millions of years, what destruction people have wrought. What disrespect they’ve shown her sacred flesh. We Zuni have always known that when Mother Earth has had enough, she would shake her troubles off. She would shake her troublemakers off. Our great Mother has all the power she needs.”
She sat on one of several wooden chairs, to keep from wobbling to the floor, and the cat jumped into her lap; it kneaded her dress with its claws, scratching her. She lifted it and set it on the floor. It jumped up again. She petted the damn cat to keep it from scratching her. The Spirits in her afterbirth fever dream had told her she would know when the Earth had used her power. She felt shaky, dizzy. Her voice hoarse, she asked, “But where is everyone else? When my family disappeared, where did they go?”
Trinity Sight Page 25
