“Never! You’re this gorgeous lady out of a fashion magazine. Kathy was just a kid in jeans. Here, let me put on the light.” He stepped behind the counter and switched it on. “Gee horse-a-feathers, Kathy!” He caught me up in a great bear hug, then extended a hand to Abram. “And Abram. It’s great to see you.”
“You too,” Abram said, as the two shook hands and drew each other into a back-slapping embrace.
“So how the hell are you, Kathy?”
“Jellet’s dead, then, if you’re running the place?”
“That’s right. Four years ago. Morrie’s been dead eight years last January.”
“Morrie’s dead?” The wind was knocked out of me. I felt as though I’d taken a body blow. Mum was at my shoulder. I’d let her down. I should have been here—maybe then…but I’d been too ashamed. Too ashamed to contact either of my brothers. I had, to tell them they were uncles—but that was in a dream. When I actually sent Jas a letter, it came back. That must have been before he returned to run the Eight Bells.
Jas was officiating, playing the host. “Sit down, both of you, I’ll get you a beer. Here you go. Must have been a thirsty drive.”
“Thanks.” But I couldn’t shake death out of my head. “What happened?”
“He was discouraged. No job, no prospects. He drank more than was good for him. Me? I wouldn’t sell him drinks. But others did. He walked into the big light.” He broke off to exclaim, “I can’t believe I’m talking to you.”
“And you, Jas—a big kid trying to hide your sweetness. And now, a big guy—also not letting anyone know you. Are you married?”
“Well, not what you could call married. Polly and I were together six or seven years—it felt like a marriage. Then one day out of the blue, she ups and elopes with a customer.”
“What a shame.”
“I don’t know, I miss the customer more than her.”
“Oh Jas, it’s terrible about Morrie. I ran off and left you both. I was such an unthinking girl, and I doubt I’m much better now.”
“Your being here wouldn’t have made a difference. Morrie was always brooding, shut up in himself.”
“At least you’re here, Jas.”
“We’re all that’s left.”
He sounded so downhearted that before I knew it I was telling him—really telling him this time, about Kathy.
“You have a daughter?”
“Yes. You’re an uncle.”
“Well, what do you know?”
He became silent when I told him I hadn’t raised her. He was my brother; I had to tell him the truth.
“So she thinks you’re dead?”
“And she has to go on thinking that. Because when she thinks of me, at least she won’t hate me.”
All this time he hadn’t known I was the Little Bird on his jukebox. I went over to the machine, punched up one of my songs, and sang along with it.
Jas was dumbfounded. I think he’d read about the scandal the papers made of the hearing and deportation, because he hadn’t much to say on the subject.
As we were leaving he gave me another hug. “I’m mighty glad you finally came to your senses, Kathy, and hooked up with Abram. He’ll look after you good and proper, although I don’t see you making a Mennonite out of her,” he added over my shoulder. Abram wrote out our Montreal address, and they exchanged phone numbers. Abram invited him to visit us over Thanksgiving or Christmas.
It was hard to let go of my big-little brother now that I’d found him. I gave him a last kiss. “And don’t wipe that one off.”
He grinned as we remembered.
We went back to the motel and were up early and on the pitted old road to the res. It was, like most Indian reservations, a place that time forgot.
I drove because I knew just where her house was, a bit past the others and…sure enough with its door open.
Abram stayed with the car; I jumped out, went up the porch steps, and looked in. Elk Woman had a bowl in her lap and was spooning a batter. I threw back my head and began to sing.
I am washed, washed, washed,
In the blood, blood blood…
The motion of her hands slowed and she cocked her head. After while she said, “That you, Skayo, Little Bird?”
I flew in and threw my arms around her. It was almost as though I were hugging Mum. I was hugging those times and those days.
“Come out on the back steps and have a smoke,” she suggested.
I followed her out and watched as she produced the old pipe and paper matches from her pocket. She lit up, drew in a long aromatic puff, and handed the pipe to me. “There aren’t many days left we can sit outside like this. Autumn will be here in colored feathers.”
I nodded, handing the pipe back to her.
She inhaled another deep, slow breath. “You been gone a damn long time. Where you been?”
“In big cities.”
Elk Woman gathered her saliva into a neat little ball and spat expertly beside her foot.
“They don’t want me in the U.S. anymore; they threw me out for trying to raise money to get Indian land back.”
Elk Woman looked skeptical. “How’d you propose to do that?”
“Legally, in a court of law.”
Elk Woman shook her head. “They’re white men’s courts, Little Bird.”
“But they ceded the land to us in the Fort Laramie Treaty.”
Surprisingly Elk Woman knew all about that treaty. “Sarah, who was a friend of Mrs. Mike, who taught me medicine and herbs, she talked of Red Cloud. He was the chief who put his print to that treaty. His grandson, named Red Cloud, is alive today. Ninety-three years old, with five children, eighteen grandchildren, and thirty-two great-grandchildren. It would be good if his old eyes could see this thing.”
“It won’t happen, Elk Woman. They wouldn’t let us raise the money.”
“It would take a great deal of money. How did you expect to come by it?”
“I was going to sing.”
She nodded approval. “Singing hasn’t been tried. War has been tried and it failed. Perhaps singing will succeed. There are some among the elders who say the world came into existence through singing.”
“But like I said, it didn’t come off. They stopped us.”
Elk Woman hugged herself and rocked back and forth. “Yes. It’s an old story. Again and again they stop us. But we are still here and the land is still here…”
We smoked a while holding this thought.
“I see a wedding band on your finger.”
“I have a new husband. Abram Willems, the boy I traded shadows with.”
“Then you have stopped fighting yourself?”
“I hope so. Elk Woman, I told my brother, and now I want to tell you that I have a daughter.”
She absorbed this along with a draught of smoke. “But not with this man?”
“No, with my first husband. She is fifteen years old.”
“Is she with you? Bring her to me and I will ask the blessing of the Grandmothers on her life.”
“She doesn’t live with me, Elk Woman; I didn’t bring her up.”
She digested this, and finally said. “But you named her?”
“I named her.”
“She is Kathy, like your mother, like Mrs. Mike, like you?”
“She is Kathy Mason.”
“Naming is everything.” She put her hands over her eyes and muttered something, then cocked her head as though listening to a reply. When she turned to me again it was to say simply, “The Grandmothers will know her.”
“Thank you, Elk Woman.” After a few moments I made ready to leave. “I must go, I want to visit Mum’s grave.”
“Why? She is not there. Better to bring in your second husband; I want to know this Abram.”
Abram came in and we were served tea and bannock.
Elk Woman explained to us that when she was eleven she had given my mum a wolf tail. Apparently this gave her proprietary rights in her life and that of her children and even in my redhe
aded Kathy.
I was amused to see that the unlikely pair, Mennonite husband and old Cree friend, took an instant liking to each other. We stayed late propounding philosophies and putting forth world views. We solved current crises: North Ireland, India and Pakistan, the conflict in the Holy Land. Abram insisted Elk Woman visit us.
“At Thanksgiving or Christmas,” I said mischievously.
Before leaving Alberta we called on Abram’s parents. I recognized them both. I had seen them many times as a child, but we had never spoken. I don’t imagine they read the newspapers, or knew anything about me. I was glad of that; it must have been hard enough to take in a modern young woman wearing heels and lipstick and a stylishly short skirt.
They made a sincere effort, I thought, to be cordial, and I came away with a good opinion of the people Abram came from: decent, God-fearing, hardworking folk. What wild seed sprouted in Abram’s makeup, pricked at him and caused him to question and to search, to be, in fact, Abram?
ON the flight back to Montreal I developed a headache, far worse than those I’d been having. The ache was so intense it seemed to balloon around me until I was just a head with pain. I attributed it to all the excitement. I dug in my purse, found some Tylenol, and the attendant brought me a glass of water. I leaned against Abram, and by the time we landed felt better.
Deplaning, I staggered and almost fell. Abram steadied me, and I made it into the reception area and into a seat, where I promptly passed out. “As soon as I get you home, you’re seeing a doctor.”
I knew he was right. Probably it was a migraine.
John and Lucinda found us.
Abram quickly explained the situation and John went to find a wheelchair.
I protested only feebly. I was wheeled to a parking lot and gotten into their car. It was not easy to miss. Polished and buffed, it was the most ancient vehicle in evidence, and John Wertheimer’s pride and joy.
Lucinda insisted on sitting beside me in the backseat. She loosened my belt, chafed my hands, and repeatedly told me that I was going to be fine, which made think I was probably quite ill. A strange sensation came over me. Suddenly Lucinda seemed far away, as though I were looking at her through the wrong end of a telescope. Everything seemed to be receding, until it wasn’t there at all.
A LONG time.
I don’t know how I knew it was a long time, but I did.
A long time.
Out of total blackness, streaks of gray differentiated into gradated shades. Sounds came back. They conveyed no meaning, but were made by a human voice.
Time. Empty, passing, slow, painful. No thoughts, but feeling, an elongated, formless feeling…
Shapes.
What were they? I almost knew…Almost. Not quite. Drifting. Time passing. Time passing. Was I here before? Then I realized, I’m lost. Lost inside my head.
There were partial thoughts, fissures in the blankness, lesions through which time passed. Time passed. I could not find even the illusion of self. I was lost.
Who was this I that was used as a reference point? I didn’t know. I couldn’t remember my name and yet I couldn’t force my mind away from the problem of who I was. The effort made me tremble.
Shooting pains in my head. Agony, agony in the back of my neck.
A shape beside my bed.
Shapes shifting, moving…
People! Oh my God, shapes and people were the same thing. That is, the moving shapes were. The rest was furniture. But not always.
To keep from slipping into the void, I let sound into my mind, listening to connected phrases. Over and over, a womb song, soft, protective.
I had no speech and no language and could barely comprehend my own thinking, yet strangely my capacity for feeling was unimpaired, even heightened. Strongest of all was the yearning that overcame me associated with a word. Abram. I didn’t know what that word meant. I didn’t know it was a word. I didn’t know what words were. But the sound “Abram” brought peace.
TALKING was far beyond my powers. I was better at shapes. Some time later I was moved. I didn’t move, I was moved. I grew conscious of myself as inhabiting a large, inert mass. People came and went about it.
Certain things became familiar. What had been rasping, unmusical noises became words. They began to convey meaning, and from that moment I made an effort to extract their sense.
With terrible swiftness the bit of world I occupied was sucked into a black hole, the earth standing on end, like a sinking ship being pulled under.
I started to shriek.
“It’s all right, Kathy. It’s all right.”
The shriek was smashing my eardrums, streaking vapor trails across my brain. I was pushed, shoved, crushed against the floor, stepped on, bones and sinews torn out of place, organs struggling for air that wasn’t there, breaking apart, dying.
Abram, where are you? Abram!
I’m here, Kathy, I’m here.
Abram came back to me. First as a feeling, a good, warm feeling, a feeling that made me feel safe. The rest began filtering in as I tried to get in touch with myself.
I made an effort and moved my right hand. I couldn’t work the fingers. I was better with my left hand; I always had been. I crawled it over to touch my right. When it made contact, I could move that one too.
From then on I concentrated my energy on becoming reacquainted with my body. I blinked my eyes to shut out and readmit light. I gulped air, exhaled it. With tremendous effort I raised my elbows, then let them drop, up, down, up, down, up, down—flapping like a bird.
I was a bird! I was Kathy Little Bird.
My face was wet, I felt tears on my face. That was odd; I was trying to laugh.
Daily I added to the list of those parts of me I recognized. I turned my head, opened and closed my eyes. I coughed.
I learned to swallow and they took the suction tube out of my mouth. I grew dextrous with my fingers, thumb to thumb, index finger to index finger, middle finger to middle finger, fourth and pinky joined in to the tune of “Frere Jacques.” With no past and no future, I was fighting for the present. Frere Jacques, Frere Jacques. Dormez vous? Dormez vous? The song helped me hold to a sense of myself.
Words were still beyond me. People said them over and over, repeating certain ones. I couldn’t hook them up to the pictures of what they were, but I knew I was supposed to make the connection. I knew I had to. I knew the way to survival was remaking connections.
“Kathy” was me. “Abram” was Abram. “Frere Jacques” was song. I started with that. Slowly the things around me found their place in the scheme of things. The chair in the corner had its own name, the bed did, the covers, the window.
I wasn’t prepared for someone kneeling on the floor beside my bed. I wasn’t prepared for a head on the covers near my arm. I wasn’t prepared for sobbing that wasn’t my own.
I listened to strangled sounds. There were words in them. My name—“Kathy, Kathy.” More words…“Love.” That was a word I’d known at one time. Now, it floated away.
More words spilled against the covers.
More tears. This time they were mine.
IT must be another day. Abram was with me. He had shaved off his beard. I knew this was significant, but when I tried to think why he had done it my head began to hurt. He was talking to me. He was talking as though I could understand what he was saying.
It was about the bookstore where we lived. “It has an old-fashioned English look to it. Substantial, built of Queenston and Montreal limestone,” he told me. “The roof slopes at a forty-five-degree angle,” he told me. “The dormer windows fit just under them. That’s where we display the books. Do you remember?”
Static danced in my head as I listened. I recognized most of the words, but had trouble hooking them up.
His voice continued. “Montreal itself is founded on the site of an old Huron village, Hochelaga. It’s an enormous flat plain from which Mount Royal humps up like a dinosaur caught in volcanic ash. The amazing thing, although it’s
a thousand miles from the Atlantic Ocean, it is one of the great seaports. During the war German subs came right up the St. Lawrence. Your father could tell you about that.”
I was beginning to take it in, some of it at any rate. Then in one of those startling flashes it occurred to me that you take in information with your whole body, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, all the different parts of you. And I knew Abram would keep telling me about myself and about the world, and that one of those times I would understand.
He was talking about me now, telling me what had happened. I understood that much, but couldn’t remember how he got from the island of Montreal and the St. Lawrence to me.
The problem was, he wanted me to say something back. He wanted a word to match his words. Abram wouldn’t let me alone. He kept pitching words at me, slowly, articulating exaggeratedly. I turned away and closed my eyes. But I knew he wouldn’t give me any peace until I imitated him and managed the same sound.
My mouth had no idea how to form words. It was exasperatingly difficult, especially as I now had lots of things to say. I could make sounds, but I couldn’t shape them into words.
I knew I should work at it. But how do you start when you don’t know how to begin? I was ready to give up. I did give up. I had sunk to the bottom of that dead water, the Sargasso Sea. What a waste, feeding me, changing my bedding, dumping bedpans, and for what? So I could breathe in and out, match my fingers to their opposite.
Sheaves of thought bumped against each other. An implosion. Like the Big Bang, it all came together. I was born. Like any newborn I let out a cry. Not of pain—pure joy! I was finishing breakfast, chewing on some tasteless, gelatinous muck simply to stay alive, when bang, like a whack on a bass drum, or a baby’s bottom, it came together. Everything. I could taste the food. It was scrambled eggs with strawberry jam. Someone was feeding me with a spoon.
That someone was the girl. I saw she was a pretty girl of about eighteen. This must be Pam.
Oh yes, I remember now. Abram told me about Pam. She was the Wertheimers’ niece, and she was sweet, and helpful, did such a good job cataloguing books, and, I’m sure, was quite marvelous at looking after me.
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