Lacey and the African Grandmothers

by Sue Farrell Holler

  Chapter 2

  Lessons from Kahasi

  I could feel the strength of the deer when I lifted the thick hide to my face. I breathed deeply and filled my nose with the smell of the smoke that was used to cure the hide. Kahasi (CAW-a-see) told me the smoke would make my moccasins strong and waterproof.

  “Quit sniffing the hide. I need it to measure your foot,” Kahasi said. She is an elder, one of the senior members of our community. She is a grandmother with nice wrinkles around her eyes and mouth. She is also my grandmother, my father’s mother.

  “But it smells so good. I like the smell better than flowers.” Still, I did as I was told. I cleared a patch on the floor where I could lay the hide.

  “You like the smell of the smoke? Don’t worry. That will last a long time,” she said, in her slow, soft voice.

  Kahasi traced the shape of my foot on the hide so the moccasins would fit just right. She said it didn’t matter that my foot would grow because the leather would stretch as my foot did. She said that by the time the moccasins were too small, they’d be worn out anyway. She used her sharpest scissors to cut out the soles of the moccasins. Kahasi was going to sew the pieces together, but first I was going to sew a pattern with beads to decorate the upper.

  The blue tin that says “Danish Butter Cookies” on the lid and on the side is Kahasi’s beading box, with sewing needles and small separate containers of shiny beads inside. I wanted to shake the containers and hold the beads, but I knew I must not until she said I could. She saw me looking at the beads, and knew I wanted to play with them like a little kid.

  “You’ll have to learn to bead on some cloth,” she said. “I’ll show you how to make a simple pattern first. Do you know what you would like to make?”

  “I want to make a pink flower with white in the middle,” I said. Of all the colors in the world, pink is the happiest color, and it’s my favorite. “With green leaves, of course.”

  “That would be good for your moccasins, but first I’ll show you how to make a simple diamond pattern. You can think about what colors to use and how you want it to look.” Her scissors crunched through the deer hide, making the sound of walking on snow. “Did you know that sometimes, instead of beads, the Slavey women use moose hair to make pictures?” I remembered that the Slavey people live far to the north of us. “I am not sure how they do it,” Kahasi continued, “but I have seen it some places. I think they dye the hairs different colors, then pick up a tuft with their fingers and stitch it sideways. Then they use small scissors to shape it. They make pictures of flowers mostly, and sometimes birds.”

  “I think I would rather use beads,” I said. Though my grandmother hadn’t yet given me permission, I reached across the table and touched the tiny beads. They were red, blue, green, white, yellow, and clear. The beads were so small that the hole where the needle went was almost as big as the bead. “Will you show me today?” I asked.

  “Yes, today I will show you, but you have to be more patient, ah?”

  Kahasi always tells me to be more patient. I am very patient, but she doesn’t think so. I like it when I do things and make other things happen, like spraying the dirt with water so seeds will grow into flowers, and chopping vegetables to make soup. She says this part is good – wanting to see things happen – but I shouldn’t expect things to change quickly.

  “We are an ancient people,” she says. “Things change slowly. Besides, you don’t live a long time if you are always hurrying up.”

  She finished cutting out the shape of each of my feet. One sole was a little bigger than the other. “They don’t match,” I said.

  “Your feet don’t match either. Nothing in nature is perfect. Nothing is exactly the same as anything else, not even your feet. Many times things look the same, but when you look carefully, you can find little differences,” she said.

  I looked at my feet closely. Except that my right foot has a mole near the ankle, they look exactly the same. But when I press my soles together, the big toe on my left foot stretches just a little bit higher than the one on my right foot. “I never noticed that before,” I said. “My left foot is bigger.”

  “You see, there is a lot to learn by paying close attention to small things. Small things can make big differences.” She laid her big scissors and the cut-out pieces in her basket, then turned to me. “OK. Now you can choose three colors. I guess, me, I should show you before you lose all the beads on the floor.”

  I didn’t know I had spilled any, but when I looked closely, I saw little colored dots sprinkled on the floor. I got off my chair to search for them under the table, but my grandma said this was the time for learning, not for picking up. She took a plain piece of fabric from her basket. “What color first?” she asked.

  “Red,” I said – she didn’t have any pink beads. She took a small container of red plastic beads from the cookie tin. I wanted to use glass beads on my moccasins because of how they sparkle in the sunlight, but she gave me plastic ones. It would have been impolite to ask for the glass ones, so I didn’t say anything.

  “Everyone starts beading on fabric first, and with plastic beads,” Kahasi said, as if she could read my mind. She drew a long, straight line on the fabric with a marker, and then three more lines to make a diamond. “Bring your chair over, right beside me.”

  She gave me a long, thin needle with a thread. “I am going to show you the overlay stitch,” she said. “It is the best way to bead. It is harder to learn, but it is the best way. Much stronger, and the beads lie flat, and they won’t fall off easily.”

  She put two different kinds of needles on one piece of thread – one was the long, thin beading needle and the other was a regular sewing needle. Then she doubled the thread and pulled it through the back of the fabric. She slid three beads onto the skinny needle, then pushed it back through the cloth.

  “You have to make it tight. If it’s too loose, the beads or the thread can get caught in something and come off,” she said. She poked the second needle close to the end of the string of three beads and made a quick, tight stitch at the end, then some tiny stitches between the beads. I was amazed that her bent-up hands could do such fine work. Next she pushed the needle up at the end to make another tight loop. “There, that is all there is to it. Simple, ah?”

  Kahasi was sometimes as tricky as a magpie. Beading looks simple when she does it, but I knew it wouldn’t be as simple for me. I tried to copy what she had done. I found it impossible to get the beads perfectly straight, but I practiced my patience without being told.

  “Don’t worry. It will get easier,” she encouraged as she watched me struggle with the threads. “You want to know who is really good at beading?”

  I pulled the thread through the fabric, held it tight with my left hand, and looked at her.

  “Your father.”

  “My father! Dad? Dad can bead?”

  Kahasi chuckled her low laugh. “Don’t be so surprised. He’s really good at beading, ever since he learned when he was about your age. He made many perfect designs. Very smooth. Good enough to sell. He doesn’t do this now that he is a grown man. It is too bad.”

  “Dad?” I repeated. I tried to picture it in my mind, but every time I did, I laughed. I couldn’t imagine him sitting still with tiny beads and sewing needles in his big hands.

  “He can sew, too,” she said. “He’s pretty good at that, but he’s better at beading.”

  “My dad can sew and bead? You must be kidding me.” I searched her face for clues that she was joking, but her eyes weren’t sparkling wickedly, and her mouth wasn’t twitching into a smile.

  “No, I am not kidding. You can ask him sometime. He will tell you.”

  “How about my mum? Can she bead, too?”

  Kahasi laughed. “Your mum can do many things, but beading is not one of them. I don’t think she could even thread a needle. At least, I have never seen her do these things.”

  As I worked the simple pattern, I tried to imagine Dad as a boy
, working at the table with his mother. Maybe the two of them had sat together and beaded and eaten all the Danish butter cookies that had once been in the blue tin.

  Making the beads lie flat – with no lumps or bumps – is part of the art of beading.

  I suppose I shouldn’t have been so surprised about Dad being able to sew. He is happiest when he is making things – country and western music mostly, but he likes to perform traditional dances too, and make paintings. He is happy to be able to earn money making music, but he is sad, too. He is usually away on the weekends, singing and playing his guitar, so he spends less time with us. At least he had his brother with him, my Uncle Douglas. The two of them and my two older brothers, Liland and Jack, have a band called Red Lightning.

  Usually people have music bands when they are young, but not my dad. He waited until he was grown up and had eight children before he started his band. “No one would play with me, so I had to have enough kids to get a band that liked my singing,” he tells strangers. But he is really a great singer. He should be on the radio.

  Mum’s most important job is loving us, and she does that the best of anything. She stays home with us most of the time, but lately she has been feeling sick and has to lie down on her bed or on the sofa. The doctor at the clinic says she’ll probably have to have an operation one of these days, but Mum doesn’t like the idea of going to the hospital in Calgary no matter what he says. When Mum isn’t feeling well and Dad is away, that leaves Angel and me to do the cooking and to look after our four little brothers. And now that Angel is busy with her own baby, I usually have to do everything. I love it when I can escape and come to Kahasi’s house.

  “Small, tight stitches,” my grandmother reminded me. “The smaller and neater, the better. I don’t want to see any stitches on top when you are done. And no lumps and bumps. When you run your hand over the top, it should feel smooth, almost like a piece of glass.” I concentrate on getting the beads right. I want to make her proud of me. I want her to say I am as good at beading as my dad.

  Beading is tricky, but at least it is very quiet at Kahasi’s house, and a person doesn’t get mad because of all the noise. Kahasi has been staying alone since my grandfather passed on because her children have houses of their own. Soon she will go to stay with one of her children, or they might come to share her house.

  Our house is the same as Kahasi’s, the same as almost everyone else’s on the reserve. It has six rooms – a kitchen, a living room, three bedrooms, and a bathroom. My parents have one bedroom. My four little brothers have the biggest bedroom, with two sets of bunk beds, so that each of them has his own bed. My two older brothers stay in the basement, where the washing machine is.

  My sister and I have the smallest bedroom, but it’s the best one. The walls are pink with white clouds, and there’s a big unicorn that Dad painted on one wall when we were little. Angel and I still like to look at the unicorn, so we haven’t painted over it. Her baby, Kayden, shares the room with us, and she likes the pink and the unicorn too.

  Sometimes it gets very noisy at our house, especially if the TV is on, which it always is. The little kids like to watch cartoons, Mum likes to watch soap operas, and my older brothers and my dad like to watch sports. My little brothers laugh at the TV, and my dad yells at it: “Come on! Get it! Run, run!” Sometimes he even jumps in the air, as if that will help his team score.

  The worst time is when wrestling is on. All the boys and men like to watch it, and they all have their favorite wrestler. They yell and cheer lots during the show, and afterwards the boys roll around on the floor, practicing their moves. My father likes to play this way, too. They all think they are wrestling stars. It’s crazy, and I can’t think with all that noise. I hate wrestling night.

  At Kahasi’s house, the sounds are different. Usually she doesn’t watch TV or listen to the radio. “It’s just bad news,” she says, “and it makes me feel sad. If it’s something I need to know, someone will tell me.”

  At her house there is just the clock ticking quietly, the kettle coming to a boil, and her soft voice patiently telling me things.

  Chapter 3

  Kelvin the Bully

  My little brothers – Joseph, Colton, Raine, and Davis – were watching cartoons and pretending to be superheroes in the living room while I tried to write a poem for school. It was useless – I need quiet time to write poetry.

  I went to the kitchen to start supper. Mum and Dad were next door. Mum was visiting with Auntie Michelle, and Dad and his brother, Uncle Douglas, were planning a road trip for their band, Red Lightning. The night before, they’d had a big map spread on the table, and they talked about traveling all over southern Alberta in my uncle’s old green van. They were excited about their new idea to drum up some business, instead of just waiting for people to call them. I was kind of mad about the idea. When Dad and my oldest brothers are away, it means more work for me, and they were talking about being gone for two weeks. Red Lightning had been gone for two or three days before, but never for two weeks. That would be far too long.

  When I got to the kitchen, Kelvin was sitting at our kitchen table, holding Kayden on his lap and giving her sips from his can of pop.

  “You shouldn’t give her that. It’s not healthy,” I told him.

  “Ha ha. She loves this,” he said, grinning and shifting the hair from his eyes. “Look how she messes up her face and then wants more.” I just shook my head and gave up. I knew he wouldn’t listen to me.

  I was running water into a pot when Angel came in.“Kelvin! What are you doing? You can’t give her pop! She’s a baby.”

  “Why not? She loves it. Watch.” He held the can to the baby’s lips and tipped it slightly. Kayden squinted her eyes, grimaced, then licked her lips.

  “That’s horrible – it’s bad for her,” said Angel, reaching for Kayden. “I want her to grow up healthy. Pop will rot her teeth.”

  “Ha! She’s only got two teeth. A lot you know.” He gave the baby another sip.

  “Stop it!” cried Angel. “Stop! Now!” She tried to reach for Kayden, but Kelvin held the baby tightly against his body.

  “I’ll give her pop if I want to. I’m the man! I get to decide things. You listen to me!” Kelvin yelled. “That’s how it goes. Remember that in your thick head. Whatever I want to give her is good for her, and that’s that!”

  Kayden doesn’t like loud voices. She started whimpering, then bawling.

  “Here, you take her. I hate it when she yells like that.” Kelvin pushed the baby into Angel’s arms, lifted the pop can to his lips, and drained it. He threw the can across the room and into the sink. On his way out of the kitchen, he grabbed Angel’s chin. The anger was in his eyes. “You remember that I’m the boss,” he snarled.

  I put the pot on the stove and glared at Kelvin, waiting to see what would happen next. I didn’t know what I could do, but I was ready to try anything to help Angel. Kelvin was using his loud voice that meant he wanted to fight. The raised voices brought my little brothers running to the kitchen, and they looked ready to fight, too. Five-year-old Colton was carrying a sword made of wood and black tape, waving it over his head as if he meant to hit Kelvin with it.

  “You remember that, too,” Kelvin said, staring and jabbing his finger at me. “I’m the boss!” I was glad to hear the door slam behind him.

  Angel had tears in her eyes. “You want us to go fight him?” offered Colton, brandishing his sword.

  “Hii-yah!” Seven-year-old Raine kicked his foot high in the air. Little Davis tried a kick too, and fell on his behind.

  “We can do it! We can beat him. We can make him sorry,” said Joseph, who was nine.

  Angel sniffled and shook her head. She gave our brothers a small crooked smile.

  “Maybe you should all go outside and play,” I suggested. “You can make sure there aren’t any wild dogs ready to attack, or any mountain lions. You can keep us safe that way.”

  “Yah!” said Colton. “Come on, Raine.
Let’s save our family from wild animals.”

  “I’m the oldest, so I get to be the mountain lion and chase you. Grrrr,” cried Joseph, running out the door growling.

  Angel sat in the chair where Kelvin had been. I turned back to the stove, added salt to the water, and turned on the burner. “Want to talk?” I asked.

  Angel shook her head, but then she said, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “He’ll cool off. Eventually.” Too bad, though. I wished he’d keep stomping. I wished his anger would take him so far away that he couldn’t get back.

  “It’s not that,” she said. She toyed with some crumbs on the table, using her fingers to brush them into a little pile. “He wants me to move in with his mum and sisters. He says there’s more room there, and we can be together all the time.”

  “But you can’t do that,” I said. I felt panicky at the thought of her going to stay with Kelvin forever.

  She looked at me with sad eyes. “But I’m nearly eighteen, and I have his baby. We’re a family, kind of. He says he loves me, and he wants us to live like a real family, and there’s no room for him here.” She spread the crumbs back across the table, then started gathering them up again. “I’d like us to be a family, too. I don’t want to stay with his family, but I don’t think I have a choice. There is nowhere else for us to go.”

  “But Angel, we are your family too, and we love you and Kayden. Besides, Mum needs you.”

  “I wouldn’t be very far away. I could still come over and help.”

  “But what about school? What about college? What about becoming a nurse so you can really help people?”

  “Kelvin says to forget about college. He says I’m not smart enough to get in, and even if I was smart enough to finish high school and got good enough grades, I’d never survive in the city. He says people there will pick on me because I’m First Nations, and they’ll treat me badly, no matter what I do. He says if I try living in the white world, I’ll be destroyed, the way his father was. Sometimes I think he’s right. I don’t want to go to the city, especially by myself.”