It happened one evening after a trip to town, when he came home waving a brown envelope.
“Look at this!” Papa Dick said while my family gathered around. “We can thank our old friend Wanda in Los Gatos for forwarding this to us.” He held the envelope out in front of him and kissed it. All the women laughed. “A check from Uncle Sam! Just wait till I tell the visitors about it.”
From my mother’s arms, I looked at Papa Dick questioningly. “Uncle Sam?” I repeated. “Isn’t he in the metal hospital?”
Everyone fell silent.
“Mental,” Jessie said finally. “No, honey. That’s your Uncle Dane.”
“Oh,” I said. When no one offered anything further, I finally went off to play. I didn’t know much about my Uncle Dane, other than that he was in a place for people with head problems. Mom called it “the loony bin” when no one else was around, and to me it sounded fascinating. I wondered why everyone seemed more interested in talking about a dumb old piece of paper than they did my crazy uncle. One time, I asked Mom if I would ever get to meet him, but she just looked away and told me I already had.
OF THIS SECOND SUMMER, nearly all my memories are beautiful. I remember a feeling of lightness and freedom that seemed to expand around my heart as I ran across our meadow. I remember the taste of grouse meat, the sound of Fleetwood Mac and the Beatles on the tape deck, the feel of my stick horses between my legs as I galloped them through pink fireweed and orange tiger lilies, and the childish, outlined pictures in my Illustrated Treasury of Children’s Literature, which I called the Big Blue Book. I remember riding high and bareback on Apache, the Indians’ favorite horse, with Randall leading her. And I remember other children floating through our camp, brought along by their visiting parents.
I found the kids from the city intriguing. They had pale skin, covered themselves in swimsuits instead of going nude, and wore clothing made from slippery, shiny fabrics. They refused to eat our food and asked their parents for things I had never heard of, like Cheezies and Twinkies and Cap’n Crunch cereal. They talked about the Road Runner and Bugs Bunny, which they watched at home on a thing called a television. They brought toys with them, dump trucks and little plastic men holding machine guns and Lite-Brites made useless by our lack of electricity. But I had never wanted anything the town kids had until one of the visitor’s daughters showed me the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was still in its box, visible only through a plastic window. I almost hyperventilated with excitement when I saw it, but the girl cruelly held it out of my reach. When I asked if I could play with it, she shook her head and swiftly stuffed it back under her sleeping bag. “Mine!” she said firmly, but it wasn’t enough to put an end to my desire.
Taken on the Kootenay Plains, this was always Papa Dick’s favorite photo of me because I look truly at home in nature.
The next morning, I snuck into the girl’s tent and removed the doll from its box. Stroking her silky golden hair with the palm of my hand, I gazed down at her in adoration. Barbie was wearing a pink dress, a silver tiara and tiny shoes with pointy heels. I hid her under my shirt and ran to my tipi. Later that day, the girl discovered her missing treasure and knew exactly where to look for it. But her relief at finding her doll soon turned to shrieks. I crouched on my bed as she cried, wondering why on earth she was so upset. In my mind, I had done her a favor; since Barbie had no twat under her dress, I had drawn one on with a felt pen.
JUST AS COMMERCIALISM WAS entering my life in the shape of a Barbie doll, the visitors’ enchantment with our lifestyle was coming to an end. By early that fall, almost all of them had returned to their lives in the city. And the one family who stayed behind to create their own wilderness existence would meet an unfortunate fate. While crossing a river to save his pot crop from a storm, the father got his shoelace tangled in a fallen tree and was dragged underwater, leaving his wife widowed and his two young children fatherless. Years later, when Mom tried to tell me that pot was harmless, I would repeat this story back to her.
Chapter Seven
My family was always good at celebrating my birthday. Grandma Jeanne would make my favorite meal, fried bear meat with wild mushrooms, and there would be either a wheat germ or carob cake for dessert. There weren’t any candles or presents, but I didn’t know there were supposed to be. The first birthday I clearly remember is my fourth. I spent it sitting on a bearskin outside the Indians’ sweatlodge, licking maple-syrup frosting off a piece of cake. It was late November, so the air was well below freezing, but since it was a special occasion I had insisted on wearing a buckskin dress sewn for me by one of the native women. My teeth were chattering, and snow crunched under my rear end as I shifted on the ground. I could have gone to the cooking tent to warm up, of course, but on that night I wanted to be close to my family. And they were inside the sweatlodge, smoking from a pipe and listening to the Indians tell stories.
I watched as the door to the lodge flew open and a row of naked brown and white bodies streamed outside. Hooting and hollering, they threw themselves in the snow and started rolling around. Mom’s voice was high and breathy, the way it always got when she smoked joints. I set my cake down, pulled the bearskin around my shoulders and walked over to her. She was lying beside Randall, screaming playfully as he rubbed snow on her nipples. Mom had spent her summer nights in some of the visitors’ tents, but a little while ago she and Randall had rekindled their affair.
“Mommy,” I said loudly.
“Cea! My beautiful girl! Come here, sweetheart.”
I smiled and fell into her arms. Her skin was freezing against my cheek, but I didn’t mind. I liked it when Mom smoked joints, because it seemed like she couldn’t give me enough hugs and kisses, and she loved to tell everyone how beautiful I was.
“I’m cold,” I said.
“Why don’t you come into the sweatlodge with us? It’s nice and warm.”
“No. I don’t want to.”
“Okay. But I’m going to go back in for a little while, all right?” She nudged Randall’s arm. “Look at her, Randall. Isn’t she just the most gorgeous thing you’ve ever seen?”
Randall nodded and gave me a little smile. He didn’t talk much. I tried not to stare at his wiener, which was dangling on his thigh as he lay on his side. Mom reached out and stroked my hair.
“We’re going to have to fight the men off of her someday. You know, darling, I was thirteen the first time I had sex—”
“—and smoked pot,” I finished with her, and she giggled. For some reason, Mom really liked to tell me that story.
“Yeah,” she continued. “And you’re so gorgeous, it’ll probably happen really young for you too. But . . .”—she circled her arm around me—“I’ll be right here with you. You can always tell me anything, okay?”
“Yeah. Okay.” I nodded, then looked up at the dark sky and pointed. “Mommy, look!”
She followed my eyes and laughed delightedly. “The Sagittarius archer! Oh, honey, isn’t it wonderful? Consider that your birthday present.”
I nodded happily, and together we gazed up at the starry sky. Mom always said Sagittarius was the most resilient of all signs, and she had even read to me what the word meant from the dictionary. Resilient. My mother sure did love that word.
I SAT ON MY bed, coughing and hacking as Mom patted me uselessly on the back. I doubled over, unable to stop, and finally spit a wad of blood and saliva into the basin. When the coughing finally settled, I flopped back onto my bearskin like an abandoned marionette.
“Open your mouth,” Mom said, unscrewing the lid from a small brown bottle, and I obeyed. One, two, three drops of Rescue Remedy landed under my tongue. Mom loved Rescue Remedy, because it was made from flowers and she said it cured everything from head colds to bad moods. I closed my mouth as Mom turned to my grandparents.
“It’s been weeks now,” she said to them quietly, shaking her head. “The juniper berry steam isn’t working. Neither is the raw garlic. She . . . she can barely leave t
he bed. And she’s so pale . . .”
Papa Dick nodded. “I’ll go get Randall,” he said. “I guess we should have done this a while ago.”
He stood to leave, but I rolled over and reached for his hand. I was rarely ill, but when I was it was usually my grandfather I wanted.
“I’ll go,” Grandma Jeanne said, and ducked out of the tipi.
Papa Dick sat on the tree stump stool beside my bed while Mom stroked my face. Her palm felt cool against my warm cheek.
“Now,” Papa Dick said, patting my hand, “I can think of one thing that might make you feel a little better.”
I turned on my side to face him. “What?”
“Maybe . . . a childhood story?”
I smiled. I had probably heard all of his stories by then, but I could have listened to them a hundred times.
“Okay, let’s see,” he began, adjusting his hat. “Hmm. Did I ever tell you the one about the snake?”
“No,” I said with a grin. It was my favorite.
“Oh dear, how could I have forgotten to tell you that one? Well, now. It all started when your Papa was just eight years old. You know how I sometimes killed rabbits and squirrels with my slingshot, right? Well, it wasn’t just for fun. This was during the Depression, you see, and my family needed the food. My mother had six mouths to feed, so she wasn’t picky—grouse, squirrel, whatever I could bring home was always welcome. Anyway, we had this one neighbor, old Mrs. Lagestrom, and she was about as grumpy as they came. She used to scowl at me when I came home with my kills, and call my family mean names because we had to eat such poor food. But the thing was, she wasn’t any better off than us, and we all used to wonder how she didn’t starve to death herself. My mother used to say she was full of foolish pride, but at the time I didn’t really understand what that meant.
“So anyway, this one day I was on my way to the woods with my slingshot when Mrs. Lagestrom comes banging out of her house, going on about what a horrible kid I was, so I decided it was time to get back at her. When I got to the forest, instead of looking for a rabbit or a grouse—”
“—or a porcupine?” I added.
“Right,” Papa Dick said. “Or a porcupine, I decided to look for a snake. I knew where they liked to hang out, and it didn’t take me long to find a nice long green garter. I grabbed my snake, took it back to Mrs. Lagestrom’s house and rang the doorbell. And when she opened up, I pulled out my jackknife and right there in front of her cut the snake in half. So now I’ve got half a snake in each hand and they’re both still wriggling, because that’s what happens with snakes when you do that, and Mrs. Lagestrom is screaming her head off—”
I laughed. It was so funny that I just couldn’t help it, but then I started to cough again. Mom ran to my side, and her and Papa Dick waited until I could breathe.
“So,” Papa Dick continued, carefully wiping the spit from my chin. “My mother hears the racket and comes running over, and finds this scene in front of her. Let me tell you, did I catch hell. She said it didn’t matter how awful Mrs. Lagestrom was, I should never have done such a thing, and also it was really mean to the snake, which I hadn’t even thought of.
“Well. We were having grouse for supper that night, and as my punishment, my mother made me take my portion over to Mrs. Lagestrom, tell her it was chicken and offer it to her. Well, boy oh boy, my mother was some cook, and that grouse smelled so good that I was just about faint with hunger by the time I passed it over to Mrs. Lagestrom. I was just hoping she wouldn’t take it, but she did, right before she slammed the door in my face. Well—”
“The next day . . .” I cut in, for I knew the story by heart.
“Right. The next day, would you believe that Mrs. Lagestrom came over to our house to return our plate, and didn’t she just go on about how good that chicken was. Well, that’s when Mom admitted it was actually grouse, but suddenly Mrs. Lagestrom didn’t seem to mind so much anymore. So after that, I would bring her a grouse every now and then, and we all became much better friends.”
I grinned weakly as Papa Dick stroked my hair from my face. His shirt smelled like wood smoke. Just then the door flap opened, letting in a cold gust of air, and Randall came into the tipi. I barely recognized him. He had traded his usual jeans and flannel shirt for a buckskin robe decorated with eagle feathers, and his hair fell in loose waves over his shoulders. He also seemed larger somehow, and more in control. He pointed to the stove.
“More wood,” he said, even though the room already seemed too hot.
Mom did as he asked and returned to my side as a fresh coughing fit squeezed my lungs. She helped me into a sitting position, and I spat blood and lay back again, catching my breath. I opened my eyes and Randall was above me, staring into my face. His eyes looked as big as planets. I tried to block them out by closing my own, but his irises grew bigger in my mind like a zooming telescope. I felt his hair brushing over my cheek, then his hand on my forehead. After a few minutes, the tipi filled with the smell of sweetgrass. Suddenly, I was so incredibly tired that even though I wanted to open my eyelids, they felt as heavy as if there were rocks on them. And then Randall was making a sound, a sort of chant that I couldn’t understand. I began to sweat. My entire body felt bruised, as if I had taken a tumble down a hillside.
And then, far above me, I heard Randall asking the evil spirits to leave me. I began to shake, and I realized the tipi had gone ice cold.
Randall stopped then, and everything fell silent. That’s when I heard it, like the call of a chickadee, right next to my ear. I turned to look, but nothing was there.
“The bird,” I said. “Where—?” But then I needed to throw up.
“Basin,” Randall barked, and Mom shoved it under my chin.
I heaved until my stomach clenched and then fell backward.
Mom said I slept for thirteen hours straight, and that she had to keep prodding me through the night to be sure I was alive.
Two days later, I was well enough to leave my bed. I was still weak, but Mom said a bit of color had crept back into my cheeks. I sat on the floor and made a bird out of feathers and wood.
“Look, Mommy,” I said, holding up my creation, “it’s the bird who came to save me.”
Mom grinned and kissed the top of my head. “It’s beautiful, sweetheart. I heard it too.”
“Where was it? I tried to see it.”
“I know, so did I. Randall . . . he said it was the spirit. The good spirit, the one that helped heal you.”
Later that day, my mother walked me across the log bridge to the Indian camp. I left the bird at the door of Randall’s tipi and hid behind a tree while Mom chatted with one of the Indian women. After a few minutes, Randall came outside with a bridle in his hand. He paused when he saw the bird, and then picked it up and tucked it into his shirt pocket with a smile.
THE ONLY THING I loved more than my birthday was Christmas, and I remember my fourth one well. Since Mom and I didn’t have a stand for our tree, Papa Dick strung it from the tipi poles so it dangled a few feet above our woodstove. My mother and I decorated it with long strings of popcorn that Papa Dick brought from town and little animals that we made from walnuts and mouse fur. On Christmas morning, I awoke to a stocking brimming with oranges, paper, crayons and a vial of colored beads. Squealing with excitement, I made roach clips for everyone in my family, and then Mom and I went over to my grandparents’ tipi so I could present them.
We could hear my aunts yelling at each other long before we saw them. Mom lifted my grandparents’ door flap just in time for us to see Jan hurl a small cardboard box at Jessie’s head.
“Fine. Just take them!” Jan said furiously, her blond hair a tangled mess.
Jessie, who was cowering on the tipi floor, picked up the box and started stuffing tampons back into it. “You don’t need to get so mad, Janny-wan,” she said sulkily, but Jan wasn’t done.
She walked over to the water barrel, picked it up, carried it over to Jessie and dumped it over her head. Jes
sie ran out of the tipi, screaming and crying.
Later, Mom told me that Jan had been using sphagnum moss for her periods for months, and when Papa Dick finally bought her some tampons for Christmas, Jessie had tried to steal them. Out here in the wilderness, with modern conveniences so rare, Mom said it just wasn’t a good idea to mess with certain gifts.
IN MAY OF 1974, our fourth spring in the tipis, my grandfather made a sudden announcement. Our camp had been compromised, he said, and it was time to move on.
“Com . . . promized?” I asked, but he wouldn’t explain. Even Mom didn’t run for the dictionary the way she usually did when I asked about a new word.
But several days later, when my Aunt Jessie and I were at the river fetching water for the weekly baths, I learned the truth.
“So, kiddo,” she said, lowering her yoke to the ground and passing me a bucket. “Do you know why we have to split camp?”
“Yeah,” I said, dipping my bucket into the flow of water. “We got com-promized.”
Jessie nodded. I loved my Aunt Jessie, but sometimes she was hard to look at. Mom said she hadn’t brushed her teeth since we’d moved to the wilderness, and that was when I was just a little baby. I switched my gaze to her eyes, which were green and looked like Mom’s. “Yep. The cops finally found us.”
“The cops?”
“Yeah. Found our pot plants, said we’d better scram or they’d throw us all in jail. It’s illegal, you know.”
I stared back at her. I didn’t even know what “illegal” meant, but I had seen plenty of bears and cougars during our years in the wilderness, and this was the first time I could remember feeling real fear. I wondered where we might be going next, and hoped upon hope that it wouldn’t be to town, a place that loomed huge and mysterious in my mind. I’d never been there, aside from the time I couldn’t remember visiting my dad, but Papa Dick said it had big stores filled with food that would give you every disease under the sun, lots of concrete and calamity, and some sort of jam made out of traffic.
North of Normal- A memoir of my wilderness childhood, my unusual family, and how I survived both Page 5
