Lacey and the African Grandmothers

by Sue Farrell Holler

  Steam was rising from the boiling water and clattering the lid. I jumped up to grab it, then sat at the table again with my sister.

  “Look at me, Angel, and promise. Promise me you won’t do anything yet.”

  “I don’t think I can promise.” Her head was down, and her voice was choked. “Kelvin keeps pressuring me, and he’s stronger than me, you know?”

  “You’re wrong. You’re stronger, Angel. You’re smarter, too.”

  “You would say that.” She smiled her sad, crooked smile, but tears were streaming down her face. “You’re my best sister and my best friend.”

  “But it’s true. Look at how well you do in school when you have time to study. You’re a lot smarter than Kelvin, and you’re loving, too. Kahasi says there’s a lot of strength in loving. It’s stronger than steel.”

  I reached out to take her hand. Kayden slapped her tiny hand on top as if we were players on a team, getting ready to win. I hoped that Angel could win. And that I could help her. But how? How could I convince Angel that she is not powerless – that none of us is?

  Chapter 4

  Grannies and Babies

  The wind blew snow across the prairie like a cloud lifting from the ground. It flung arrows of ice that pierced my eardrums as I walked from my school to Sequoia, and made my long hair dance and twist into knots that would hurt to take out. As soon as I came inside, my glasses fogged up and made me blind. My fingers and nose were so frozen that they burned as if they were on fire. I was cold and tired, and just wanted to curl up and sleep like the babies dozing on the mats and in the playpens.

  The weather seemed to be a little mixed up. It was supposed to be getting warmer, not colder. I wished the snow would melt, and the prairie grasses would begin to grow. But instead, we had more snow, and winds as fierce as a hungry bear. It was a good thing my little seeds were warm and safe inside.

  “Lacey, guess what?” Angel asked me. Her brown eyes were sparkling with happiness, and she looked as if she wanted to jump around. She took my cold hands in her warm ones. “Brrrr! Did you forget to use your pockets?”

  “I’m OK. What did you want to tell me?”

  “My math test! I passed! I passed math. Isn’t that the greatest news? And I not only passed, I got 82 percent!”

  “I’m so proud of you, my smart sister. I knew you could do it!” I gave her a high-five.

  “I’m proud of me too. When Mrs. B. gave me back the test, I gave her a hug and a big kiss. I think that surprised her.”

  “How about Kelvin?” I asked. I looked around the room, but he wasn’t there. “Did he pass?”

  Her face lost its glow. “No,” she said. “He didn’t make it. I think he’s mad at me because I passed and he didn’t. But I studied and worked hard. He should have done that too, instead of watching TV and going to parties.”

  After I watered the dirt in the little containers, I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, sat with the babies, and stayed quiet. I’ve learned that it’s often best to be quiet, especially if I don’t want to go outside. When I’m quiet, sometimes I’m also invisible, and no one gives extra work to people they can’t see. I had enough work already with my dad and my older brothers gone away to sing. Mum wasn’t feeling well enough to do everything herself, so for Angel and me it meant lots of cooking, cleaning, laundry, and looking after noisy little brothers. I was starting to think Mum should go have that operation.

  Kayden stood in a play saucer on the floor beside Angel. I crept across the floor to her and tried to make her laugh by playing peek-a-boo and batting the toys attached to the play saucer. I like it when she laughs. She makes a happy sound deep in her throat that turns into a high-pitched squeal, and she flaps her arms and tries to jump up and down. Even her hair laughs. It’s just like Angel’s hair, and swings in little curls that bounce like a spring. Watching her laugh always makes me laugh, too, but I am careful to laugh quietly, without opening my mouth. If I have a big laugh, I have to make sure to cover my mouth to keep the sound inside and to hide my crooked teeth.

  There was music coming from a CD – the sound of drums and the voices of men singing ancient songs. Kayden bounced to the beat of the drums. The music made me think of sitting around a fire, and it made me feel warmer. Two of the little kids were making long blue snakes out of the play clay that Lila had mixed. Some of the older kids were drawing, working on the computers, reading, and writing things in their binders. Everyone was quietly busy inside because no one wanted to go outside. The babies didn’t know enough to be quiet, so some were crying or babbling. A few were banging on toys. I picked up one of the babies who was crying and jiggled him up and down as I walked around the room.

  My sister was using the side of her pencil to add shading to a picture she’d drawn of an old woman sewing. The shading made the woman look real.

  “That’s beautiful, Angel,” I heard Mrs. Buchanan say. “She looks so loving and kind, and you’ve got her eyes just right. You can see her wisdom in her eyes.” Angel didn’t say anything; she just kept drawing. I wondered if she was still mad at Kelvin for not making her a Valentine’s Day gift yesterday. She pretended it didn’t bother her, but I knew it did.

  “Your portrait reminds me of the women in some photos I saw when I was in Calgary last week,” Mrs. B continued, as she watched Angel sketch. “I heard about a remarkable program that involves grandmothers in Canada helping grandmothers in Africa by sewing purses.”

  “How could purses help them?” asked Angel.

  “The Canadian grandmothers sell the purses here and send the money to the African grandmothers to help them raise their grandchildren. Millions and millions of people in Africa – especially in southern Africa are infected with HIV. You know, that disease connected with AIDS? Many young adults – some who are mothers and fathers with small children – are dying.”

  “Why don’t they just go to the clinic and take medicine?” asked Trisha, who was working at the same table as Angel. Trisha wore glasses like me, but she had short hair and a belly shaped like a big watermelon. Her baby hadn’t been born yet.

  “That’s part of the problem. So far, the medicines for controlling HIV and AIDS are still very expensive and only easy to get in rich countries like Canada. They are very difficult to get in Africa,” said Mrs. B. “Maybe two out of a hundred Africans with these diseases get the medicines they need.”

  “But what does that have to do with the grandmothers?” Angel asked.

  “In some ways, Africa is like Siksika,” explained Mrs. B. “Families are close, and often large. Many communities are isolated, and it’s difficult to get from place to place. At Siksika, when something happens to parents, the rest of the family steps in to help – often the aunties and uncles, who have children of their own, take in the orphaned children. But in Africa the aunties and uncles may be ill or dying, too. They can’t look after anyone else’s children. Maybe they can’t even look after their own. So, who is going to take care of all these kids? The grandmothers – because there isn’t anyone else to do it. What makes it even harder is that some of the children are also infected with HIV.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Trisha. She was leaning back in her chair now, stroking her round, pregnant tummy as if it were a kitten. “How can little kids get infected?”

  “They get the disease from their mothers, sometimes while they are being born and sometimes from breast milk.”

  “You’re kidding!” said Trisha. “If I had HIV, I’d do something before the baby was born. Get tested or something.”

  “Would you? What if there was no clinic? Or what if you could be tested, but there was no medicine? Would you choose not to feed your baby, just in case it got sick? Would you let your baby die of starvation, just in case it caught the disease?”

  “I’d think of something.”

  “Like what?” Mrs. B. challenged.

  “I’d move to Canada,” Trisha announced triumphantly, and everyone laughed.

  Mrs. B. smil
ed. “Anyway, that’s where the Canadian grandmothers come in. They make purses and sell them, and send the money to the African grandmothers, who spend it on food, housing, school fees – whatever is needed. In this simple way, ordinary grandmothers here are helping to save lives there. But what’s just as important is that they are giving hope to the African grandmothers, and to the children.”

  “We have a lot of grandmothers. Maybe they should do something like that,” said Angel.

  “Maybe so,” said Mrs. B. “Maybe so.” She left the little group and walked slowly around the classroom, talking quietly with students and checking whether they needed help.

  I thought about what I’d heard. I liked the sound of people helping other people. That’s the way the Sequoia Outreach School works. Sometimes the elders need help cleaning or shoveling snow, and the students help. Sometimes the people in town grow too much in their gardens, so they bring the extra food to the school for everyone to share. We make salads and maybe some cookies or cakes that we can share with them. It’s a circle of everyone helping everyone. I like that kind of circle.

  Kayden patted me with her little hand, wanting attention. I made a circle with my mouth and made the “oooo” sound of an owl, and she waved her arms and legs so hard that I thought she would tip the play saucer over. I grabbed the side of it to keep it upright.

  I thought of how it would be if my sister or my mother passed on because of a bad disease like AIDS. How would it feel to lose people that you love? It hurt a lot when my grandfather died, but at least he had time to live a good long life. It would be even worse to die young. Everything would die with them – their dreams, their hopes, and their futures. And those poor little kids left alone, except for their grandparents. It was the saddest story I’d ever heard.

  I remembered Kahasi telling me that I shouldn’t be so shy, that sometimes women needed to speak up. That was what the grandmothers were doing. By using their sewing, the grandmothers here were speaking up to help the faraway grandmothers. I wanted to speak up, too, but I wanted to speak up quietly, so no one would notice. I kept making silly faces for Kayden, but I kept my eye on Mrs. B. When she sat down at her desk, I decided to speak up. I lifted Kayden into my arms – holding someone smaller made me feel stronger, braver. I stood beside Mrs. B.’s desk and waited until her funny halfway glasses looked up at me.

  “I can sew, and I am learning how to bead. Do you think I’d be allowed to help in Africa?” I asked.

  “Help? Help the grandmothers, you mean?”

  I nodded my head and tried to move Kayden to my hip. She was so big now that her feet reached down to my knees. “Maybe if I could sew some purses, I could help a little.”

  “Hmmm,” said Mrs. Buchanan. She rested her chin on her hand and looked up at the ceiling. Then she said, “Well, you are not a grandmother, but I expect they need all the help they can get to raise those babies. Why don’t you send them a letter and ask?”

  I had learned how to write a letter in grade 4, but I didn’t learn how to write a letter to grandmothers in Africa. Mrs. B. said just to write what was in my heart. I thought about it for a few days, especially when I was sewing with Kahasi. I decided it would be easier to write to the grandmothers in Canada. Their headquarters were in Toronto. This is what I wrote:

  Dear Grandmothers Helping Grandmothers in Africa,

  My name is Lacey Little Bird. I am a grade 7 student at Central Bow Valley School in Gleichen, Alberta, Canada. My sister is a grade 11 student at Sequoia Outreach School because she has a nine-month-old daughter named Kayden.

  Last fall, I helped my grandmother make a jingle dress, and I am learning to do beading. I like to sew, and my grandmother says I am good at traditional art. I’m a member of the Siksika Nation – Blackfoot tribe of Southern Alberta.

  The principal at my sister’s school told us about the “Grandmothers to Grandmothers” program, and I thought that we could make some purses, too. We could invite our grandmothers to help us decorate them. This way, we would form our own Grandmothers to Grandmothers group.

  Would it be OK for us to do this?

  On our reserve, grandmothers are so important. Lots of our young parents suffer because of the effects of poverty, drugs, and alcohol. Even though our lives are sometimes hard, I think they’re not as difficult as the lives of those grandmothers in Africa.

  Please tell me if it would be OK to help.

  Yours truly,

  Lacey Little Bird

  I showed the letter to Mrs. B. She said that it was a fine letter but that I needed to include my mailing address, or an e-mail address, so they could write back to me. We don’t have a car, and it’s hard for my parents to get to the post office to pick up mail. We don’t have a computer either, so I wrote the address for Sequoia at the top. Mrs. B. got the Toronto address from the grandmothers in Calgary, gave me an envelope and a stamp, and promised to mail the letter for me.

  As I licked the gluey flap of the envelope and closed it, I thought about how far my words would travel – all the way to Ontario and that big city of Toronto. I hoped the grandmothers would like my letter, and I hoped they would let me help. I knew Kahasi would be proud of me. And she would teach me what I needed to know; she could sew anything. Maybe my mum could help, too, because she was a grandmother of Kayden. I bet she would like to help the African grandmothers – if she felt well enough – even though she liked sewing about as much as Angel did, which was not at all. If the Canadian grandmothers said yes, maybe even Angel would finally get interested in sewing.

  I gave the envelope a little kiss before handing it to Mrs. B.

  Every day I bugged Lila about the mail. “Is there a letter from those grandmothers yet?” I asked as soon as I got to Sequoia, and every day Lila said, “No, not today. I’ll let you know as soon as it arrives. Really. I promise. You will be the first to know.”

  It seemed to be taking an awfully long time. Waiting for a letter was as painful as waiting for seeds to turn into plants. I thought it would be nice if the grandmothers could give me an answer right away. If they said yes, I could get started on the sewing. The sooner I started, the more purses I could make, and the more purses I made, the more money the African grandmothers would get for food and shelter and other things for their grandchildren. What could be taking them so long? I decided I didn’t like to wait for letters; an e-mail would have been better. Maybe I should have asked to use the computer at school.

  I sprayed water on the dirt where the seeds were buried every day for six school days before the miracle happened. It was Tuesday afternoon, just after a holiday long weekend, and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I lifted the wet lid from the seed tray. It wasn’t just black dirt anymore. During the weekend, specks of green had pushed up through the dirt in some of the compartments. They looked like bright green butterflies on short stems. The soil and the baby plants smelled like springtime after it rains.

  “Mrs. B.! Mrs. B., look!” I called across the noisy classroom. “The seeds are alive. The flowers are growing.”

  Mrs. Buchanan smiled. “Lacey, shush,” she said, putting one finger to her lips. “Not so loud.” She hoisted Kayden onto one hip and wove her way through the tables covered with books, water bottles, and baby carriers. “I’ll be there in just a minute.”

  She stopped to talk to Kelvin on the way. He had a lot of papers and books spread on the table, and a pen in his hand, but his head was lying on top of the papers. It was hard to tell if he was tired or mad or needed help. Mrs. B. sat beside Kelvin and held Kayden on her lap as she pointed to things in his book and asked him questions. When she left, he was sitting up and writing again.

  I wasn’t smiling what Mrs. B. calls my “shy smile” when she came over. I had the big smile that lets my crooked teeth show. She bent her head to smell the dirt, too. “Excellent. Excellent!” she said. “That’s the soil giving birth to new life. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Will they really grow into flowers?”


  “You just wait and see.”

  “How long will it take?“

  “It will take as long as it needs to take. You just keep watering them every day, and let them surprise you. Oh, this baby smells bad,” she added, wrinkling her nose. “Kelvin, your daughter needs a new diaper.” She handed Kayden to Kelvin and went back to her desk.

  Every time I went to Sequoia to help look after the babies, I looked after the little plants, too. They are called nasturtiums. Mrs. B. told me that they would have flowers the colors of the sun – red, yellow, and orange. She also said that we could eat the plants – the flowers and leaves would taste good in a salad – but if we left the flowers, they would make more seeds for next year. She said some people even ate the seeds, and they tasted spicy.

  When the plants got bigger and stronger, we would move them into bigger containers, and after Easter, when it was warm outside, we would put them on the street so everyone could see them. I just hoped people wouldn’t realize that my flowers were good to eat.

  Chapter 5

  “I Was Going to Need a Lot of Help”

  Let me see what you have there. Your beading is looking good, very neat,” Kahasi said when I went to her house after supper one night. She pulled at the beads I had sewn in the diamond “ pattern, trying to pry them loose with her fingernails. None of the beads came loose.

  “Do you think it’s time to start working on the hide?” she asked.

  I couldn’t believe what my ears were hearing. It was time to do some real beading.

  “First we need to make a paste. Some people draw the design on the hide with a pen, but I like to do things the old way. Sometimes, the old ways are better,” she said. “We must remember the old ways.”

  Kahasi lifted a little bowl from the shelf and scooped a spoonful of flour from the bag. Then she poured in a small stream of water. “Now, you stir it until it is smooth,” she said.