Finding Casey: A Novel

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  Frances said, “There’s a curandera in town. Maybe you should go see her.”

  But neither Frances nor I had a phone to call one, only Seth did, a cell phone for emergencies and we weren’t allowed to use it. I put on my clay-covered overalls because I had to feed the animals, so I wore my dirty clothes for that. It was wash day, so after the animals were fed, I’d put the overalls into the laundry and dress in the skirt I’m supposed to wear. I went looking for Seth and found him in the main house, where he was eating breakfast, an egg burrito with cheese, bacon, and green chile. He was our Elder, so he had to eat flesh to keep up his strength. The rest of us got oatmeal and picked the bugs out before we cooked it. I waited until he was finished and then I begged him to please drive us to the curandera. “No,” he said. “I have a group coming at ten for a drumming weekend and a sweat. The Farm needs the money.”

  “I’d drive if you let me learn how,” I said under my breath and the minute I said it I knew I shouldn’t have. He grabbed my arm hard and gave me one of those looks that meant after the group was gone I was in for it. “I’m sorry,” I said. I shut my eyes and put the word curandera in my mind. It was filled up with secrets: dread, read, run, curt, card, dare, and lots of smaller words.

  “She’ll be fine,” he said, and let my arm go. It throbbed hard before it hurt. “She always is. Go do your chores.”

  My chores were cleaning the kitchen and the bathrooms, taking care of the chickens and feeding Brown Horse. If there was a big mail order, I worked in the hoop house, helping Caleb and old St. John. In my leftover time, which was hardly ever, I’d take Aspen on walks to see nature. We’d collect rocks. There’s quartz near the Farm, and rocks made smooth by the river. We’d watch spiders spin their delicate webs, and if we were quiet enough, sometimes we saw deer or a bobcat drinking at the river. Once we were riding double on Brown Horse and we met Louella Cata and her horse, Lil Sweetheart. They lived a mile down the road. Louella was digging in the mud and when I asked what for, she told me it wasn’t mud, it was clay from Mother Earth. She made pottery from the clay. I wanted to see that, but I was afraid to go because Seth liked to know where I was at all times. I invited her to try the café we had that summer, but she never came. I worked in the café, too, but we only ran it that one summer because it didn’t make enough money. In the winter it stayed locked up and empty, even though it would have been nice to sleep inside a place with real walls. Instead, Frances, Aspen, and I stayed in the yurt, which wasn’t very warm. We pulled our sleeping bags close together, with Aspen in the middle. That helped, but Aspen got sick anyway.

  But this morning all I did was feed the animals, and then I went back to the yurt to check on Aspen. She was still sleeping. Still hot. I shook her shoulder a little, but she didn’t wake up. I counted twenty of her breaths in one minute and mine were only twelve. I tracked Frances down in the main house where she was making meals for the drummers. This was the only time when she cooked meat, and I could smell the roast in the oven and it made my mouth water. I begged her to drive me to the curandera, but she said no, Seth forbid it, but that she’d pray for Aspen. Then I went into the greenhouse where Caleb and old St. John were sorting seeds for mail orders. Caleb was twenty-seven years old and he had already done eight years in prison for hitting his son that he wasn’t allowed to see anymore. He had a chain tattooed around his neck that made it look dirty.

  “Would you drive us?” I asked, and he looked at old St. John who shook his head no.

  “Try rubbing a hen’s egg over her body,” Caleb said.

  “What for?”

  “A freshly laid hen’s egg will draw the illness out. It works, I swear. My grandma used it on me.”

  Old St. John didn’t even wait for me to ask him. He said, “If you find the right stones and place them on her chakras that’ll balance everything.”

  “All I need is a ride,” I told them. “Seth doesn’t have to know.”

  But neither of them would go against Seth even though there were cars with keys right there. If only I could drive. But Seth said there was no reason for me to learn. So I did what a mother should do, something I hadn’t done for seven years. I waited until Seth was all involved with the group retreat and then I took Aspen in my arms and started walking toward town. It was so cold out that my face went numb, but I thought maybe the cold would help lower Aspen’s fever.

  When I came to Pueblo Pottery, a mile down the road, I was tired. I knocked on the door of the trailer home. The people at the Farm are my family, but only Louella is my friend. She never asked about my neck scar or why my voice sounds so awful. She gave me coffee with condensed milk when I visited, food when she had some, and she showed me how to make pots from that clay she digs up. My hands couldn’t do what hers did, pinching, pulling, making a cup shape, so she showed me another way, to put the clay on a potter’s wheel and pull at it while it spins. While Aspen looked at the books in her bookcase, or had a lollipop leftover from Halloween candy Louella gave out, I learned to throw pots.

  Any free time I had, I climbed over the fence to watch her. Clay is a holy gift from Mother Earth, she always said. You only dig for it in the spring or fall. The other seasons, Mother Earth gets to rest. You only take as much as you need, and before you work, you thank Mother Earth for giving you the clay. Louella let me use the potter’s wheel whenever I wanted, which was why my overalls were always so dirty. I meant to wash them later, after the curandera fixed Aspen. But after I was done feeding the animals this morning I didn’t think to change clothes, only to get Aspen into town. I stood on the steps to Louella’s front door knocking for a long time, because Louella also worked nights at the casino, and slept for part of the day.

  “Good morning, Louella,” I said when she opened the door. “Can I use your phone?”

  “Phone company shut it off,” she said. “I didn’t have enough money to pay the bill last month. You want to come in for coffee?”

  “No, thanks. Aspen had a seizure yesterday, and today she has a fever and won’t wake up. I was hoping to call a taxi to take me to the curandera.”

  “Why can’t Seth give you a ride? It’s not far.”

  “He’s busy with the drummers.”

  “What a freak.”

  “No, Louella,” I said. “He’s our prophet. He knows so much.”

  She made a disgusted sound. “Prophet, my ass. What about Prune Face or the criminals? Can’t one of them drive you?”

  These were her names for Frances and the others. “They won’t go against Seth.”

  “Those people are nuts, Laurel! Why don’t you leave that place? You can stay here until you find somewhere else to live. They’re always hiring cleaning crews at the casino.”

  I felt ashamed trying to explain to her that I loved my family, even when they told me no. “Louella, I took ten dollars from the kitchen jar. Is that enough for a taxi?”

  “No, it’ll probably cost more than that just to get the taxi to come out here.” Then she called Seth a “bastard” and a “liar,” and another name I wasn’t allowed to say out loud.

  I said, “Then I better start walking.”

  “Wait. Billy,” she called, waking up her brother from his bed on the couch. “Drive Laurel to the cura, please.”

  “Yeah, okay. Give me a minute.”

  He stumbled off to the bathroom carrying his boots. Billy worked on road crews up and down the state, patching the holes that big trucks cause. They’re bad for the environment in so many ways. Carbon footprint, smog, fossil fuels, ruining the roads, noise pollution. Inside the word pollution are a poll and pill, lint and tin. It weighs a ton. Sometimes I wouldn’t see Billy for three months. But he was home today and that was luck, a simple word, nothing hiding inside.

  Seth says Indians are lazy bums, but Louella and Billy worked as hard as anyone I knew. Billy’s radio got stolen out of his truck so he sang while we drove. Billy’s tribe does the Butterfly Dance in the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo plaza on Feast Days. I’m not a
llowed to go, but once I climbed to the barn roof and I could see them from a distance. They paint their faces, wear headpieces with feathers, and on their arms they wear wings, not real butterfly wings, but when they lift their arms and dance you can see the butterfly spirit rise up in them. Aspen loves butterflies, and butterflies sometimes would land on her hands. She can stand so still that the butterfly would stay there for the longest while, like maybe it loved her.

  Billy’s voice was giving me shivers.

  The curandera’s place had a “Closed” sign in the window and that made me cry a little. Aspen was hot and heavy in my arms. Billy rubbed my shoulder until I stopped crying and then he drove me to a place called Urgent Care, just a little ways down the road from that big hospital.

  “You got money to pay?”

  “I have ten dollars.”

  “That might be enough for a co-pay,” he said. “Be sure you tell them you don’t have a job,” he said, and yawned. “They give sliding-scale prices for the unemployed. Too bad you’re not Indian.”

  I didn’t know what that meant, but I nodded. “Thanks, Billy,” I said. “You go on home and get more sleep.”

  He grinned and flashed me one of those signs Frances says are gang signs, but Billy doesn’t belong to any gang. He’s just a nice guy.

  At the desk where people asked for help, the woman typing on the computer took one look at Aspen and opened the door wide. “Come on in here,” she said, and called for a doctor, and one came out of a brown painted door that read “Private.” Vat, vet, tear, trip, trap. I laid Aspen down on the doctor table because I didn’t care if it was a trap, I just wanted her to wake up. She’d never slept this long, ever. The doctor felt her neck and took her temperature with this thing that looked like a pen. He ran it across her forehead and said, “That can’t be right.” Then he used a different pen inside her ear and I could tell Aspen didn’t like that because she whined like Brown Horse when she had to be separated from her baby. He talked to her, telling her to wake up, rubbing his knuckles on her chest, but she wouldn’t.

  “How long has she been like this?” he asked me.

  “Since I woke up, around six.”

  “Are you aware her temperature is 104.8?” he said.

  “We don’t have a thermometer, but I could tell it was high.”

  He sighed. “I can’t do anything for her here. Drive straight to the hospital ER. I’ll call ahead so they know to expect you. What’s your name?”

  “Laurel Smith,” I said, just the way Seth had taught me. I am Laurel Smith who is married to Seth White Buffalo Smith and this is our daughter Aspen and I am fine, thank you, I do not need any help. Always be polite. Look for the exits. If someone starts asking too many questions, ask if they know Jesus. That will shut anyone up.

  Even though I didn’t have a car, I made it to the brick hospital by walking fast. It wasn’t that far, but by the time we got there my arms were hurting so bad. I’d never been inside a hospital before and I expected bad men to come out and snatch Aspen so they could perform terrible experiments like Seth said they did, things that took away your mind and implanted computer chips to send messages you had to obey. But when I walked through the glass doors I entered this room made entirely out of windows. It had the tallest ceiling ever. Like a church, but see-through. So tall I couldn’t get my mind to measure it in the usual way, like twice the height of a horse, or five hands stacked, or two doorways wide or five trucks long or whatever. There were chairs all over the place and carpet and padded benches, even trees growing indoors, and rocking chairs I wished I had the time to sit in because Aspen would have liked that. On the walls were pictures of mountains and animals and this one long list of names under a word: Benefactors. There were too many words inside of it. Been, beef, fact, bat, fort, free, except I wasn’t free, I was in fear, another word inside. I belonged at the Farm and to Seth and that would never change, though just being here, I wondered, what would it be like to live Outside? To see a different view through windows, or to meet people who didn’t live on the Farm?

  There were all these desks like at Urgent Care if it cloned itself. Cloning is not only wrong, it’s what the Outside World is coming to, Seth said, and only bad can come of messing with the Creator’s job, like Tsunami Waves, Ice Age, End Times, or a Repeat of Hiroshima, which I was surprised to learn did not contain the word hero at all. Ladies sat at the desks with microphones. “Calling number 485 to desk five,” a loud voice said, and a woman stood up and pushed a man in a wheelchair to desk number five. I wondered where to get a number. The doctor at Urgent Care had said he’d call ahead, that they would know I was coming, so I asked a lady waiting on a bench, “Excuse me, where do you go when they know you are coming?”

  “No Ingles,” she said, and pointed me to another desk I missed the first time, away from the clones where two older ladies sat under a sign that read “Information.” Informant with an i and an o left over. They had on pink jumpers. That seemed funny, older ladies in the color of clothes meant for a child, but I didn’t laugh because maybe they were poor. They told me I was in the wrong place, that I wanted to go to Emergency. Where is Emergency? I said, and one of them got up to show me. She walked with me all the way, even though I didn’t know her. When we got to the doors, she said, “Honey, I hope your daughter feels better soon.” “Me, too,” I said. “She needs medicine.”

  Things at the Emergency were like Abel used to get when he took drugs, all speeded up, rushing, and yelling. Children were crying. A man with blood running down his arm sat there with his eyes squeezed shut while the blood dripped on the floor, splat, splat, splat. So red. His life dripping out. Another man threw up in a bucket and I remembered the time we all got food poisoning from Frances’s tomato sauce. Seth made her do a three-day sweat and fast, and when she came back to the yurt her skirt had to be pinned at the waist or it would fall right off.

  After lots of questions from a lady at another kind of counter, and me having I guess the right answers, pretty soon we were in another doctor room with a shower curtain around us, and tubes coming from the walls and machines called monitors. Moon, main, rain, not. There was a rolling dresser, and a TV you could switch on from this control thing which you could also use to call for help. TV is Turning Us Into Zombies, so I left that alone. Aspen was still asleep. Medicine that looked like a bag of water dripped into her arm through the tiniest needle, though you can never tell what’s in water, like salmonella, which is invisible. Some doctors came in and talked to each other, and went out and came back in again. The nurses all wore blue clothes. “Why is everyone wearing pajamas?” I asked and the nurse said, “They’re uniforms and we call them scrubs.” Curbs, sub, curs, a bad kind of dog.

  She cleaned Aspen up with soap and a washcloth. “This is one dirty little girl,” she said, and I knew she meant I didn’t wash her right, but I did, just not last night when she felt so sick.

  “You’re a brave one,” she said to Aspen while she and another nurse packed her in an ice bath for her fever. She didn’t even moan now. Aspen is brave, but I don’t want her to be brave because of bad things happening to her like they did to me, which was why I got upset at the pee tube. Things that happen to her like needles and seizures and throw-up, I can’t help it, but nothing else, especially nothing down there where it’s private.

  Then an older woman dressed in Outside clothes—a brown jacket and matching pants, a necklace of very big pearls and a short silver haircut (the Bible says women should have long hair) came into the room and said, “Hello, Mrs. Smith. I’m Ardith Clemmons. I came to see how Aspen is doing.”

  I didn’t know her, and her knowing my name seemed tricky, like she was there to do something bad. “Hello,” I said. “Who are you?” I asked, remembering to smile at the last minute. Always smile.

  “I’m Mrs. Clemmons, dear. I work here at the hospital helping families and children. The nurse told me you might need some help filling out forms.”

  “I can read,” I sa
id, angry they would look at me and think I was that stupid. “There are probably lots of other people who need you more.”

  “That’s thoughtful of you,” she said. “But as it happens, I have some free time right now. May I sit with you? Keep you company?”

  Why? I wondered. I was going to have to pay careful attention. “I was just about to tell Aspen her favorite story,” I said.

  “I love stories. May I listen in?”

  I didn’t know what to do. I smiled, I was polite, I told everyone my name. All that I had left was to bring up Jesus, but was it time for that? Seth said talking about Jesus would make even the nosiest person give up. I didn’t want to do that right now. I was tired and I had to pay attention to Aspen and I might mess up. I could say, “Be my guest,” like the nurse did, but that sounded unkind, and we are Here in This World to Practice Loving Kindness. I guessed it was all right for her to listen. It was just a made-up story.

  So because it wouldn’t hurt, be my guest, and maybe she could hear me, I started to tell Aspen her favorite story, The Princess of Leaves. She loved this story better than any of the other ones I knew, probably because it didn’t come from a book and I could tell it wherever we were, even in the dark, and I could make anything happen in it that I wanted to, and whatever question Aspen might ask me, I could make the story change and twist, just like a river.

  “This is the story of the Princess of Leaves,” I said.

  Once upon a time, long ago …

  How long? Aspen would always say.

  Long enough that everyone has forgotten this story. There lived a princess in a castle near the woods with her parents, the king and queen. Now all princesses are beautiful, but what made her different from other princesses was that she could sing so beautifully that if any bird within one hundred miles of the castle heard her singing, they were compelled to fly near. If she sang long enough, eventually every person in the village would come to the castle. There they’d stand, by the castle’s moat, holding their hats in their hands, looking up to the highest tower, where silver birds perched on the castle walls. They waited for the princess to come out to the balcony so they could catch a glimpse of her.