The Taste of Ashes

by Sheila Peters

  He sees the priest in the line-up and knows he should return the car keys. Instead, he locks the door and walks away from the food across to the booths set up beside the weed-strewn lot where the residential school used to be. A couple of power lines and thistles. A water tank. Scapulars and rosaries. Abortion is murder T-shirts. Small paintings of Christ. Two little girls dance around the long blue-jeaned legs of their mother — she is bent over the beads. Butterfly barrettes in their hair.

  Inside a picket fence, the graveyard. Marguerite Jeanne Coudbert-Chabanet. Born March 13, 1866, in Augerolles France. Died Oct. 11, 1940, in Smithers. And all his Oblate brothers. RP Nicolaus Coccola. Corsica 1854. Smithers 1943. Rev. Jean Donze. Odil de Keyzer. At the far corner, women kneel beside the fence around the grave of Rose Prince, the Carrier Rose. She first came to the Indian Residential School at LeJac in 1922 as a student. She stayed there until her death in 1949 and was buried there. When the graves were moved to this spot, her casket broke open. Her body was intact, a smile still upon her face, a withered bouquet on her chest. The smell of flowers filled the air. What started as a small gathering has grown to attract hundreds of pilgrims. Rosaries and lockets are draped over the headstone. The women pray for miracles; some bend to scoop dirt from the grave into margarine tubs and plastic bags.

  From a loudspeaker set up in a big marquee, flags fluttering from its peak, a woman speaks of the sacred symbol of the feather. Its central line bridges our humanness and our divineness, she says. It bridges our Christian faith as Catholics and our faith as Native people. Álvaro is drawn to her voice and her calm certainty. Outside the open back of the tent, people sprawl in beach chairs, bottles of water or cans of pop stuffed into the pockets in the arms. Wraparound sunglasses and braids. A shaved head and jean jacket with a wolf embroidered on the back. A man in his sixties tips his hat to Álvaro as if he recognizes him. He’s slim through the hips, a Leatherman tidy at his belt of silver coins, cowboy boots, jeans, a shirt well cut for his broad chest, and a scapular dangling off the back of his collar. His brown face is weathered. Álvaro follows him to sit on one of the hard benches under the cover of the tent just as the speaker sits down.

  In his black jeans and T-shirt, the sneakers that roll his feet outward, his Indian face, his scars, and the black toque so warm on his head and soothing the jangling nerves, Álvaro knows he looks like he belongs here. He can sit alone on a bench under the tent where a man now talks of losing his family to cocaine, about giving it all up to God, and the long way back, and feel part of the pain visible all around him. The people in wheelchairs, the people leaning on canes. The old woman shivering in the heat, bundled in her long purple woollen coat, her head covered with a flowered scarf, her eyes blurred behind thick glasses. The plump women and the skittering kids bringing up their bottles of water and oil for the priest to bless. The bags of holy dirt piled in front of the altar. We must give up shame, the man says. He is a big man, his beaded leather vest spread wide across his white shirt. He wears sunglasses and his thin grey hair is braided down his back. We must not bend under the responsibility for that which has been done to us, this is not our cross to bear. Those who have abused us, those who have stolen our land, those who have stolen our children. We must call for justice.

  A little boy is brought in and laid down, curled up, on a blanket. Beside him, a girl sits, ripping open the Velcro on her pink running shoes, pressing the tabs together, ripping them apart again. Her face is bent to one side of her brown bony knees, her eyes intent.

  But we are not victims, the speaker says. We must give up self-pity. We must accept responsibility for our own actions and atone for our own past. Resolve to not carry this pain forward into our children’s lives, their children’s lives. We must live inside our own lives and accept the help God will give us. To look around and see what we can do right now.

  The man sits down and some prairie Indians sing, I saw the light, yes, I saw the light. No more darkness. No more night. Flatten the hills and Álvaro is in Manitoba. Angle them a little more steeply, add a few more straw hats and brighten up the women’s clothing and he’s at a re-dedication in the highlands of Guatemala. The rustling dryness of the corn, the small puff of dust where a foot hits the path. The same stocky Indian bodies, though the fat sits heavier on them here. The thin ones, gaunt.

  He looks like he belongs because he does. His pain and sorrow is no more or less than anyone else’s. He is made of more than his pain, but it will be with him as long as he’s alive. Lucía Madriela, he says. Ana Elisabeth. Moises Osorio. Armand Guzman. Emilia Estuardo, Marta Barilla. Juan Tzul.

  Trevor ushers Soryada to a bench on the far side of the tent and Álvaro feels a pang of fear for them. Fear and the old anger. That it will all begin again with the child in Soryada’s belly, a child linked to him by the blood that Trevor and Janna share. The infinitesimal and infinite branching of capillaries that link the floating child to Clara and Vinicio, Vinicio as much a part of him as Janna is and it’s almost more than he can bear, his tiny juncture in the great branching out and out into the world, the huge gnarled trunks of the cottonwoods, the tracery of their leaves overhead, the leaves turning in the breeze generated by the waters of the lake.

  It was less than an hour ago that he’d felt some peace. He puts his elbows on his knees and drops his head between his hands and tries to recreate the binding together of his spirit.

  He took Walter’s ashes to the place where the lake becomes a river. He crouched there in the long shadows of the aspens. Here it is lake. Here it is river. A riffle of dark water marking the division.

  He lit the braid of sweet grass the priest had given him and hung it from a willow branch bending over the outlet. Its smoke eddied in the currents above the water. He opened a small box and set the first spoonful of Walter’s ashes right inside the line. It exploded in an arc on the surface, spiralling back into the lake before it was pulled into the river’s turbulence, beginning its journey down the long fall to the ocean. It took him a long time, waiting for each spoonful to clear before adding another, sending his prayers into the ash, into the river. His shoes damp in the grass at the edge of the water, the heat of the day rising from the ground all around him. The insects drifting on the surface of the water, floating in the invisible currents of air just above the water, the sun behind him illuminating them in the long lines of early light. A little gust of wind blew ash into his face, into his hair, and into his mouth, his tongue curdling around its bitterness. He splashed water into his mouth, driving out the taste.

  A memory came bubbling up, one so early he wasn’t sure at first that it was his. He sat back on his heels, his mouth wet, the water drying on his face, trying to find the shape of what he was feeling. It was as if he’d dipped something out of the water, something that came from a time before memory, a time when he was simply in the world and never out of reach of his mother. He is making his way over uneven rocks and can feel the teetering difficulty of it in his small legs. He drops to his hands and knees to bridge the distance to the small dish the women dipped their clothes into before scrubbing them on the river stones, the insects floating like this, the sun slanting across his back. His mother’s angry chatter explodes at the same moment the bitter taste of the ash explodes in his mouth, his tongue trying to push it out, his fingers clotted with it, smearing it across his face. Her worried scrubbing as she tries to get him clean, the women gathering around, talking to him, touching his face, saying his name over and over.

  This was the moment she had talked about. The day the river first tried to snatch his spirit. The reason she was always looking into his eyes and saying his name. The ceremonies. The incense and the calling of his name. Come back, come back, she’d say when he was standing right there beside her.

  Álvaro pulled off his hat and ducked his head into the water, the cold a shock of jangling nerves. He scrubbed himself clean of Walter’s ashes, scrubbed his toque in the cold water, and dried his hands on the small napkin he’d brou
ght with the kit the priest had lent him. He set out the implements of the mass. The small chalice, the box with the host, and the cloth spread on the grass. As he said the words he’d said thousands of times, he was a child again standing in the rocks at the water’s edge, smoke rising from the incense and the candles, hearing his mother’s voice call out his name. He was making room for that little boy inside of him, her son, making room, too, for the brother, the father and the priest, making a place where all of the currents that ran through him joined into one.

  A hand on his shoulder brings him back. It is the priest in his robe and the tent is all but empty. Álvaro stands to return the car keys and follows him outside into the heat of the full afternoon sun. He is stopped short by what he sees. Big wooden Stations of the Cross curve around the edge of the top field. Beneath each cross, a priest arrayed in all the splendour of his office sits on a lawn chair, the long white robes luminous against the green of the grass, the blue of the lake, and the bright sky. Some wear sun hats, some wear ball caps, some have bare heads, but all of the hair he sees is white.

  What will become of us, he wonders, watching the men, each knee to knee in earnest conversation with a person come to make confession. A discreet distance away, penitents line up in the sun. Their patience is something beautiful.

  Hunger stirs in his stomach and he turns back toward the cook shack. But the priest touches his arm and points toward one priest sitting bare-headed in the sun, his head sunk deep between his shoulders, a woman kneeling in front of him. He is the old man who’d asked Álvaro if he had a picture of Janna. The one, he remembers now, who offered to hear his confession.

  “There are many more people here than we expected,” the priest says. “Father John is exhausting himself. Perhaps if you offered to relieve him?”

  Álvaro looks at the people waiting. Each person, each encounter, full of possibilities. Each moment as transient as his moment of being knit together down beside the river. When the woman gets up from her knees, is blessed, and leaves, Álvaro helps John out of his vestments, turning him into a small grey man in tan slacks, running shoes, and a green polo shirt. The skin on his hand as soft as a baby’s. Álvaro’s eyes fill with tears as he fastens the robe over his T-shirt and jeans and become a reflector of light in this bright place. Yes, he thinks. This is something I can do. Who he is — his pain, his mistakes, his faith — is immaterial. When he puts on the robes he becomes something that can be useful.

  A tall woman waits for him. Two little girls skitter around her legs, giggling and shaking their long dark hair, the butterfly barrettes holding it out of their eyes. The woman’s face has none of their joy; it is rigid with pain and worry, the hair reddened with dye or ill-health, the fierce resolve a strong light in her eyes. He looks at her and nods. She bends to the girls and they run toward a man standing alone, looking out over the lake. She comes toward him and he empties himself, prepares to receive this woman’s story with his full attention. It doesn’t matter where God is in all of this. This is, simply, something he can do.

  Acknowledgements

  Many generous people helped me over the years spent researching and writing The Taste of Ashes. Patient Oblate priests in northern BC, Vancouver, and Guatemala welcomed me into their communities to answer my many questions and my Catholic friends tried to enlighten me about some of the more esoteric aspects of the faith. I used, with permission, excerpts from the English translation of The Liturgy of the Hours © 1974, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved. Please note that none of the priests (or any other characters in the novel) are derived in any way from those I spoke to; they are entirely fictional. A special thanks to Vigil Overstall for taking me to the Rose Prince Pilgrimage near Fraser Lake. Thanks also to Ruth Murdoch who showed me some of the possibilities for art therapy. The painting described hanging at the foot of Álvaro’s bed is Little Girl with a Big Head by Paula Scott.

  Thanks to Grahame Russell of Rights Action both for the social justice work he does in Central America and for putting me in touch with Global Exchange Tours. Once I was in Guatemala, Marie Manrique showed me aspects of the country that many visitors never see; namely, the work done by the brave and dedicated Guatemalans who risk their lives every day in the struggle for social and economic justice. Thanks also to Merran Smith and Mike Simpson for telling me stories and sharing films about their work there. And of course, Amnesty International, whose efforts in Guatemala and around the world shine light into dark places.

  Thanks to Bonnie Burnard who first encouraged me to turn Isabel’s story into a novel and to the other mentors at the Banff Writing Studio; to David Bergen for his assistance at the Wired Writing Studio; to Luanne Armstrong who not only housed me in Vancouver, but gave valuable feedback on early versions of the manuscript; to John Harris and Vivien Lougheed for their encouragement and attentive readings; to Gillian Rodgerson for her insights and attentive eye; to Vici Johnstone of Caitlin for believing in this story; to Morty Mint for his enthusiasm and support; and, of course, to my friends and family who remind me, from time to time, to go outside and play.

  Resources

  The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? by Francisco Goldman. Grove Press, New York, 2007.

  The Blindfold’s Eye: My Journey from Torture to Truth by Sister Dianna Ortiz with Patricia Davis. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY, 2002.

  The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World by Elaine Scarry. Oxford University Press, 1987.

  Guatemala: Eternal Spring, Eternal Tyranny by Jean-Marie Simon. WW Norton, 1987.

  Guatemala: Never Again! Recovery of Historical Memory Project – The Official Report of the Human Rights Office, Archdiocese of Guatemala. Orbis Books, Maryknoll, NY. 1999.

  Guatemalan Journey by Stephen Connely Benz. University of Texas Press, Austin, 1996.

  Liturgy of the Hours. Catholic Book Publishing Co., NY, 1975.

  The Long Night of White Chickens by Francisco Goldman. Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1992.

  Maya Resurgence in Guatemala: Q’eqchi’ Experiences by Richard Wilson. University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.

  The Maya Textile Tradition by Margo Blum Schevill. Harry N. Abrams, 1997.

  The Mirror of Lida Sal: Tales Based on Mayan Myths & Guatemalan Legends by Miguel Angel Asturias, Translated by Gilbert Alter-Gilbert. Latin American Literary Review Press Series: Discoveries, Pittsburgh, PA, 1997.

  Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of Gods and Kings. Revised and Expanded Edition. Translated by Dennis Tedlock. Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996.

  Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala by Daniel Wilkinson. Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2002.

  Textiles from Guatemala by Ann Hecht. University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2001.

  Sheila Peters

  Born and raised in the coastal town of Powell River, Sheila Peters went to Carleton University in Ottawa to study journalism; after graduation, a newspaper job brought her out to Smithers in Northern BC. Her work has appeared in several Canadian literary journals, including Event, Prairie Fire, Grain, the Malahat Review and Descant. She is the author of Canyon Creek: A Script (Creekstone Press 1988) and Tending the Remnant Damage, a collection of linked short stories (Beach Holme Press 2001). Sheila and her husband own and operate Creekstone Press. They have two grown sons and live in Smithers, BC.

  Other books by Sheila Peters

  Canyon Creek: A Script (1998) non-fiction

  Tending the Remnant Damage (2001) fiction

  the weather from the west (2007) poetry

  Copyright © 2012 Sheila Peters

  First print edition © 2012 by Caitlin Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior permission of the publisher or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licenc
e from Access Copyright, the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777, info@accesscopyright.ca.

  Caitlin Press Inc.

  8100 Alderwood Road,

  Halfmoon Bay, BC V0N 1Y1

  www.caitlin-press.com

  Text design by Vici Johnstone.

  Cover design by Vici Johnstone.

  Cover photograph by Alicia Fox.

  Printed in Canada

  Caitlin Press Inc. acknowledges financial support from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts, and from the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publisher’s Tax Credit.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Peters, Sheila, 1953-

  The taste of ashes / Sheila Peters.

  ISBN 978-1-894759-77-9

  I. Title.

  PS8581.E84113T34 2012 C813’.6 C2012-900634-3