Ghost Dance

by Carole Maso

  I grew large and rose above the flames. “Did you think you could kill us just like that, you stupid bastards? Did you think we would just forget?” I laughed. “Did you think we’d be quiet forever?” My voice grew enormous, my body the tremendous body of rage.

  “There is no getting away with it. There is no escape. We will speak and bear witness. You can poison us, you can hack us into little bits, you can burn us in your furnaces, and still we will live. We will never stop speaking. We will glitter in the palms of your hands forever.”

  At some point we must have fallen because when I opened my eyes we were on the ground and covered with snow. All along it was what they had had in mind: Jack on my back with his teeth in my neck, his blue hands like claws curled around mine, my hair stuffed in his mouth, my mouth frozen open, caught forever in the center of a sigh.

  “We’ll die here,” I said, sobbing, crawling from underneath Jack, separating from the beast our bodies made. I stood up and looked at him from what seemed a great distance. “Wake up,” I said to him. “Get up.” The snow seemed to muffle my plea, but he must have heard me because after a few moments he slowly opened his eyes and it seemed to me that he smiled. “I’m OK,” he said. “Go. Run now.” I saw myself again for a moment lying in the snow. “No,” I said, and pulled myself up, out of my mother’s body, which lay motionless in the snow.

  I turned and moved away. I was waist deep in snow. I lifted myself out of her. The pain was terrible. I trudged forward through the snow. I moved as fast as I could but I did not know where I was going.

  My body ached, my heart ached.

  Far off on the horizon I saw something moving through the white on the line of the Hudson. I moved toward it. I gasped. It was beautiful and white and sailing toward me.

  “Daddy!” I cried out as he pulled alongside me and I stretched out my hand, which he grasped, and I helped him ashore. “Daddy.” We stood together there in the snow. His clothes were singed. He held my hand tightly. He must have tried to find her withered hand and hold it, to touch what he sensed was her. “Why?” we said together, looking into the white sky. Why? He had seen the car in his rearview mirror, and it had seemed to float into ours as if in slow motion. “It could not have been going more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour,” he cried. It had entered her slowly and with a certain grace. But it exploded into fire anyway.

  “Why?” we cried into the sky. “Why?” And with our chanting over and over of the word why, I saw Marta again, who had first taught me that impossible word. She had placed it into my mouth before I could possibly have comprehended its full meaning. She had given it to me far in advance, and now she too stood with us there in the snow. “Why?” we asked, the three of us.

  “Where was the sense in it?” Grandma lifted herself from her shallow grave and shook her fist into the blurry air and asked for sense, demanded it. Surely, I reasoned, if we all stood there together and shouted in unison, why, the answer would come clear. Surely we deserved some explanation, something. We might even ask for her back.

  And Sabine, too, stood up, up from the snow and walked out of her dress like she once did long ago and said to the sky, right alongside my grandmother, in her large naked voice, “Dites-moi! Pourquoi?” and certainly such a sad and angry chorus of voices in the middle of the snow, in the middle of the night, would have to be answered—if not in words, then somehow. Surely a streetlight would dim for a minute or brighten. Surely there would be some consolation, some solace, some way into this impossible question. Why? Why?

  Sabine stood next to me and looked around for the missing one. “Fletcher is in New York, too, no?” she asked.

  “No, Sabine,” I said, but, hearing her words again, I moved forward, leaving the small band of angry, demanding people for a moment. I dragged myself through the snow. “Fletcher is in New York, too?” I walked through miles and miles of snow, until I reached the glass booth with its phone book. Turin, I said over and over as I made my way to him. There it was, above my name: Fletcher A., West 18th Street.

  He shakes his head sadly back and forth as I close the book. He looks so sad. He seems so very sad. “Oh, Grandpa!” I cry. “Please don’t look that way.”

  “Try to forgive them,” he whispers.

  I plowed toward him through fields of snow. Whatever was about to happen, there was no changing it now, no stopping it. Now it was inevitable. There was no way to step back. He would be there—had been there for some time.

  She had been a model of courage once.

  I dragged my aching body through the early morning. I was burning hot. I was freezing cold. I had come a long way to this place. It had taken me so long to get here, to travel these twenty blocks to him.

  I climbed the steps to his apartment on the third floor slowly. I pushed open the door, which was slightly ajar. He stood turned away from me looking out the window into the snow. His back was huge and brown and muscled; he was naked to the waist. His hair was long and straight and hung to the center of that great back. He looked like a strong, strong man. Only his arms dangling at his sides revealed the degree of his surrender.

  He turned to me. His eyes were pale lakes of pain in the dark, rugged landscape of his face.

  “Fletcher,” I whispered.

  “There’s been a terrible accident in the snow,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you, Pale Moon.”

  “I’m here now.”

  “I knew you would come.”

  I nodded.

  Now he moved those massive arms and crossed them at his chest. “They’ve killed our mother,” he said, “and they will die for it.” He stared straight into the exploding fire he still saw before him. “They killed her as if she were a deer or a jackrabbit or a dog.”

  “Fletcher,” I said.

  “You must prepare now,” he said gently, “for the dance.” There was a long pause. He just stared at me. “God, you look so bad, Vanessa,” he whispered, and his blue eyes brimmed and threatened to spill over.

  “Oh, Fletcher!”

  “We will do the Ghost Dance,” he said. “Everything will be all right. There will be sweet grass and fresh water.”

  He was nearly a hundred years away, the century about to turn; he was thousands of miles away.

  He gestured out the window where there was only snow. “The bison and buffalo and elk will return. There will be plenty of food for everyone. The dead will come alive again, and it will be like old times. You remember, Pale Moon.” He smiled and closed his eyes.

  “Yes,” I whispered, “oh, I remember.”

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll help you out of these clothes.” They were frozen to me. “I’ll prepare the steam lodge for you.”

  He ran a hot bath and placed large rocks which he had heated in the oven in the room with me. “Breathe,” he said in a low voice, “please breathe.”

  I lowered myself into the hot water. I watched the dead make their first attempts to rise like steam in a dance of heat. “In case you come back disguised as a stone,” I cried, and placed my hand on top of a flat, gray rock, searing it.

  I settled into the steam. We will see her again, I thought. My heart opened. I was sweating hard. For an hour I lay in the heat.

  I stepped finally from the steaming room wrapped in a towel. “Put this on,” he told me and handed me a beautiful, fringed tunic painted with symbols: sun, moon, stars. Eagle feathers adorned the bottom. “This is your Ghost Shirt,” my brother said. “It is impenetrable to bullets or any weapon. It will protect you from all harm. Go on,” he said, “do as I say.” He held my shoulders and looked directly into my eyes. “They will never hurt us again.”

  He sat in the center of the room and blended the sacred paint. “Red ochre,” he murmured. He dipped his fingers into it and marked my face, then his, with the sacred symbols.

  “Wherever the white man has stepped, the earth aches,” he said. “They killed our mother.” He took a hank of my hair in his large, rough hand, pressed the scissors next
to my skull, and cut—again and again. My hair fell like tears to the floor. He touched my shorn head. “Why?” he cried, as he picked up my hair and brought it to his face. “They killed her like she was a dog or a squirrel.”

  He took the large scissors to his own head next and slowly, in sections, cut his long hair and threw it in the pile with mine. He put on the headdress. Around his waist he tied the pelts of rabbit and skunk. He took out a large sharp knife and cut first into his arms and then into mine and I wailed with pain. “We bleed for you,” he cried. “We bleed. We bleed.”

  On a drum he began to beat out a rhythm. “Your children cry out to you,” he chanted. “Your children call you by name: Brave Ghost, Brave Ghost, Brave Ghost.” His voice started high and slowly descended until he reached the end of his breath and fell silent, then began again. He stood up, still beating the small drum, and I rose too and touched his mangled head. He looked out the window. “Brave Ghost,” he cried, “we bleed for you.”

  “Brave Ghost,” I whispered.

  He waved eagle feathers in the air above his head in time to the chant for our mother. I continued the rhythm on the drum. He swayed and waved in the air the aromatic tips of sage.

  “We shall live again. We—shall—live—again.”

  I took my first tentative steps in the dark. He took my hands. Over the beat of the drum he said, “We entwine our fingers like living vines. We keep the circle.

  “We shall live,” he whispered.

  The chant began soft and low. I followed my brother as he dipped and swayed, moving one foot forward then the other in a slow, perfect motion: simple and pure. I listened to the drum’s strong and steady beat. I felt my fear slowly drop away.

  Songs seemed to arise from the dance, and we did not know what we were going to say until we said it. The obsessive beat of the drum, the step, one foot then the other, our voices like hearts, our hearts like drums. We were dancing toward her.

  We swayed. We tipped our bodies like gliders into the west, into the east. “Help us,” we chanted, “help us to live.” Our arms were covered with blood. Tears fell.

  “Help us to rise,” we said, doing the motion of the soul escaping from the body that Grandpa had taught us as children. All was rhythm and out of the rhythm our songs came, changing many times through the days and nights. We became drugged by the dance and the patterns of our own desire. I saw Grandpa for a second, standing on a chair and waving the soul up through the ceiling. “Oh, Grandfather,” I said and fell to my knees. “Dreams of Rain!” Fletcher shouted and helped me back up, and we lifted our eagle feathers to the ceiling. “Over here,” he shouted. “Grandpa!” he said, and tears ran down his face.

  The sun fell and rose and fell again, I don’t know how many times. Fatigue found a home in my heavy bones. We moved forward, forward, slowly, slowly, one foot then the other, hour after hour, drugged with sorrow. “We will see her again,” Fletcher whispered. I felt as if I would not be able to go on, would not be able to keep standing and dancing. “Help me,” I sighed. “Help. Help me to live.” And with those words I felt myself lift out of my body and rise, leaving it somewhere far behind. I could feel her near me. “Mother,” I cried, “where are you?” I fell to the floor quaking. She was gone. “Do you think you can disappear just like that?” I screamed. It was dark. The blackness surrounded me. I reached for my brother. He took my hand. Blood rushed to my head. At first I saw nothing and I began to cry. “Is there only darkness here, too?” I cried out. Fletcher wailed and wailed with his whole body, as though he would never stop.

  “Is there nowhere we can—”

  “Look,” I say. A great familiar light fills the room. It is the light of morning, a buttery, pale yellow. I can hear frogs in a faraway pond and I can smell sweet grass and running fresh water and clover. The sky is a high blue.

  ‘It’s so beautiful here, Fletcher!” I gasp. “It’s so beautiful here!”

  A warm breeze caresses our faces. We lift our heads. There are fields and fields of chamomile and wildflowers. Near the lake cattails grow. We reach into the clear water and come up with handfuls of silver fish. We feel the fan-shaped leaves of ferns at our ankles. We take deep breaths. There is such sweetness here. On the horizon are rows of luminous, white birches. They seem to bend toward us. We walk through the cool woods. I touch the dark reddish-brown berries that are deep inside the bramble bush. The woods open up and light floods our vision. Corn grows, acres and acres of corn—brave green V’s—and pumpkins, and the flowers of squash. I see sheep grazing. I look closer and see buffalo, elk, bison, and doe. I hear crickets and the complex song of the mockingbird. And another song—it is exquisitely beautiful, nearly unbearable to listen to. I look up into the bough of a fruit tree.

  “Fletcher,” I whisper, not wanting to scare it, “up there.” And I finally see it. I see it perfectly. I do not turn from it and it does not fly away. “The Topaz Bird.” We are nearly blinded by its brilliant, jewel-like light. And, finally, from that brilliant light she steps. Through the tall grass, she moves slowly to us. I am breathing light, and she is so beautiful and she is dressed in white.

  “Oh, Mother!” we say. And we see the flowering of all human beauty, the end of all pain and disease, and men walk like brothers on the great land. Her eyes overflow with love—her whole body. And we too overflow. Who can contain such love, such beauty, such peace as this?

  We look at her with our pure eyes of light.

  “Oh, Mother,” we say finally. “We’ve missed you so much!”

  “My sweet, sweet children,” she sighs and pats the tops of our heads.

  “My Vanessa,” she says, and she puts her arms around me. “Fletcher! How big you’ve grown!”

  She closes her eyes. “Take my hands,” she whispers. “Take my hands now.” I take her right hand, Fletcher takes her left.

  A small wind blows up. “Try not to be afraid,” she says. A large white cloud covers the sun momentarily and then passes it. We watch as men and women who have come a long way get off ships. What Drinks Water dreamt will come true. A strange race will weave a spiderweb around the Lakotas. When this happens they shall live in square gray boxes and beside those boxes they will die.

  Gray squares now start springing up on the landscape. From the distance men come on horses. Indians lie dead in the snow of South Dakota, bleeding through their Ghost Shirts.

  A man falls in the snow. But it is not really snow at all. It collects on the floor of the boiler room. It collects in the lungs of the man.

  Tears continue to fall. A mother and father wave to a plane that takes their son to a far-off country from which he will not come back alive.

  “There is so much sadness,” Fletcher says.

  In the tall president’s face you can see how his heart has been torn by the war.

  In the Bronx a child does not dream but turns over and over all night, starving to death in its sleep.

  Far away a young soldier ties off his arm and shoots morphine into his vein.

  My father drums his finger on a table. He moves the salt shaker forward slightly. He draws a line in the salt.

  My grandfather leans over three cows that have mysteriously died overnight. The vet in the white coat wipes his brow, rubs his chin, and shrugs.

  We watch ourselves gather in the dark barn with Grandpa until the thunder passes. Over and over he tells us the stories we love. “This is a wonderful country,” he says. “This is still the best country in the world.” He looks to the sky.

  Two dreamy brothers in North Carolina, intent on flight, work day and night. In the same town a minister and his grandchild work through a peaceful Sunday morning.

  A girl in Connecticut plays cat’s cradle, knots daisies into chains, makes mud packs of earth and clay.

  My father bends his cloudy forehead down and plucks a squash flower from the ground.

  Mary picks apples and puts them in her bushel basket.

  Migrant workers, so exhausted they seem to sleep as th
ey stand, as they bend over and over in their drowsy, aching dance, cradle each piece of fruit tenderly in their weathered hands, even at day’s end.

  A young man catches his fingernail in the heavy machine he operates on the assembly line in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Not wanting to stop the machines, his boss gives no lunch break. The noise is deafening. The man would cover his ears if he could.

  My father croons in the dark room with Frank Sinatra.

  I look at my mother whose hand I still hold. “How handsome you are, Michael,” she whispers.

  Grace Kelly turns to say good night to Cary Grant at her hotel room.

  A boy plays his trumpet in a band at a local club and dreams of Louis Armstrong.

  “I still have a dream,” the proud angry man says. It is August 1963.

  We live in the hands of the family that prays. We live in the hidden valleys folded in hills. We live in the corncrib, in the center of the haystack. We live in the song of the wood thrush. We live in the life of fish, in the trees that lose their hair in winter, in the wildflowers that return year after year after year. We must learn from the land that gives and gives and asks so little in return.

  We live in the south and we live in the north; we live in the east and in the west. We live in the past and we live in the present. Let us live in those who wanted only to have a normal lifetime but for whom it was not possible.

  “Give me back what you have taken,” the DLS daughter says from her hospital bed.

  “Give me back my life,” the Vietnam veteran demands.

  “Give me back what you have taken,” Black Hawk repeats, turning the television up louder.

  Let us live in the mouths of the men who lie, who deny and deny and deny, who cover up their crimes. Let us change the shape of each word as they speak.

  I always tried to believe you, Fletcher: that somehow there would be a way to live side by side with the sorrow. I see a young man walking to a podium. May we not be afraid to ask that those who claim to be responsible act in such a way. May we demand answers from those in the position to give them. “We must reclaim this country,” the young man says. “Take it back.” And that young man is you.