Anna, Like Thunder

by Peggy Herring

  She leaves the other bundle for me.

  Before she gets too far away, I lift my bundle and try to roll it onto my back just as she did. But when I finally do, I can’t reach the headband. How did she do it? I can’t remember which step comes first, which hand goes where, and I also can’t take the time to figure it out or I’ll lose her.

  I lift the bundle of sticks into my arms and crush it against my chest. I can hardly see over it. But if I lose sight of Inessa’s back, I will have much greater trouble.

  Inessa and I make several visits to the same grove in the forest. Each time, she collects and carries back most of the wood; each time, I also manage a little better. I’m very slow compared to her, but she doesn’t stomp on, or throw away, any more of the sticks I gather either. I watch her and figure out the series of moves it takes to successfully get the sticks onto my back.

  When we’re done, Inessa gives me a basket as big as a coal scuttle, takes one for herself, and leads me along a path in a different direction.

  We stop beside a small pond. A flock of ducks takes flight as soon as it sees us, calling krya-krya as the ducks disappear over the trees. Inessa walks into the water, bends, dips her basket in, and as she pulls it up, in a fluid motion, she rolls it along her shoulder and onto her back while slipping the band over her head.

  “You can’t put water in a basket,” I say. I laugh in disbelief. “What are you doing?”

  It’s the basket, not Inessa, that responds. Water runs down its sides and stops. From the way she walks, I can see the weight of her load. When she passes me, standing by the side of the pond, I look inside her basket. It’s full.

  I brush my fingertips over the surface of my tightly woven basket. It seems illogical, but then I think of the woven bowls we used in the Tsar’s village. They were watertight. I just didn’t think you could make such a large basket that wouldn’t leak. I wade into the cold water, just as she did, soaking my skirt to the knees. I fill it, heave it onto my back, and slip the band around my head, all the while trying to imitate Inessa’s movements.

  The full basket pulls at my neck muscles and seems to grow heavier as we get closer to the house. My wet skirt tangles in my legs, forcing me to take tiny steps that slow me down. Back at the house, we pour the water into square wooden buckets, the same size and shape as the cooking boxes. It seems all fresh water is stored in these containers. Then we go back to the pond, once, twice, and after that, I lose count.

  * * *

  26This lyric is from a “Song for delivering brides (or women) to Neah Bay.” It is believed to have been found by Young Doctor, a noted Makah shaman and finder of songs. The words are thought by the Quileutes to be “song syllables” that don’t mean anything—like the “scoobee doobee do” found in several American songs of the 1960s.

  27Come here!

  28We’re leaving! Where are you?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  My days fill with wood and water, water and wood. Whether it pours, or tendrils of mist wrap themselves around the trees, or the sky clears and sunlight mottles the moss cushions scattered on the forest floor, Inessa takes me out, and we return, as reliably as the tide, with water and wood, wood and water.

  We need firewood all the time. The fires here don’t rage as they do in the stone hearths of Petersburg, but still it takes much wood to maintain the intense flames that produce enough heat to warm the stones to cook, as well as to make a modest difference to the temperature inside. The need for water is similar. The women use basket after basket of water to wash for and feed these many people. A near-empty storage box is a disheartening sign that Inessa and I need to make another trip to the pond.

  I’ve never worked so hard, so physically, in all my life. I’m weary at the end of every day, fatigued in a way that’s completely unfamiliar. Responsibilities I understand. I have duties to my husband, as he does to me, to the crew, to the company. Even when I was a girl in Petersburg, my parents would never have allowed me to be idle while they were themselves busy. But I lack the natural inclination needed for this kind of heavy labour. My mind has always been stronger than my body. Perhaps Makee could give me more suitable duties. “Like what?” he’d asked. I still can’t imagine what.

  I’m a prisoner—and I have been since the day of the battle on the river with the Chalat Tsar’s people. I cannot go where I please. I’ve been traded in exchange for food. And now I’m compelled to work. Hard labour.

  This is slavery, or, at best, some koliuzhi version of serfdom.

  But then, like my father’s friends in debate, I argue with myself. I’m a prisoner—but I’m not locked up in a cell. I cannot go where I please—but where would I go? I only want to go home and Makee said he’ll arrange it. No one torments me, mistreats me, or withholds food. The work is hard—but who around here is not working hard? I see no idle man or woman, not even an idle child.

  I think that whatever I am here—slave, serf, or a working guest, like a girl hired to be an old woman’s companion—there is no word in Russian to describe it.

  I spend my days with Inessa and yet know so little about her—not even her real name. In the evenings, after our work is done, she eats her meal in a corner with other young women and children. They talk and laugh—who are her friends? What amuses them? Is she married? I think not, but surely she favours somebody. I watch to see if there’s a young man she gazes at, or who gazes at her with that kind of longing.

  Where is Nikolai Isaakovich? Did he get his coat back? Is he missing me, looking for me? I pass the hours walking to and from the forest thinking about the last time I saw him, his beastly beard, without his coat, his thin shirt no shield from the cold, and the way he hung his head, impotent before the men who, only a few weeks before, had obeyed his every command. I am so disappointed for him, and, frankly, disappointed in him. But I know he’s not a coward—not really. Something’s happened with the crew to influence him, but no matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine what it might have been.

  I picture his face when we meet again. How surprised he’ll be if the next time he sees me I’m hailing him from the ship that’s come to rescue all of us. How tightly we’ll embrace one another and how sweet his kisses will be when we’re finally alone again.

  One grey morning, before Inessa and I head into the forest again, Makee calls me.

  “I will show you the garden today,” he says. “Come.”

  We head out along a path that leads away from the sea. Two men, one carrying bow and arrows, the other a spear, accompany us. The path is narrow and muddy, so we walk single file. After a long time and a short time, the sound of the surf vanishes beneath the twittering of birds and the soft breath of the wind in the trees.

  It’s a relief to be in the forest with a purpose other than searching for firewood. I can nearly imagine my parents here, my father off wandering in the underbrush, my mother beginning one of her cautionary tales about the leshii. This forest is so different from the one in the hills that surround Petersburg. I wonder if she’d sense the leshii’s presence here, too.

  At a bend in the path, two tiny birds flutter away when they see us. Startled, the man with the spear lifts his weapon, then lowers it when he sees there’s no danger. Around the corner, right beside the trail, grows a strange tree with a short trunk that splits into many branches that all grow straight into the sky. Together, the branches form a bowl; the tree resembles a chalice.

  “How long did the Spanish live here?” I ask.

  Makee shrugs. “Not long—in the end. But they intended to stay much longer than they did. They constructed houses, sheds for their cattle, and even a building where they made metal things—a whole village. After it was built, they surrounded it with cannon. I was a young boy then, but I remember there were six. All facing outward and pointed at us.”

  “Why? Were you at war?”

  “We should have been. They built it all on top of our houses.”

  “On top? How?”

  “They came when th
e people were away. It was summer and naturally everyone was in the forest and up in the hills. When the people came back, their village was occupied. The Spanish men didn’t care, and they even insisted the people stop trading with everyone else. But the Spanish had almost nothing anybody wanted. No one wished to restrict trading like that.”

  “So what did the people do?”

  “There was no choice. They had to find somewhere else to live. Some of them came to Tsoo-yess—the rest to other villages. That winter, the Spanish suffered a lot and eventually they went back to their country. And when they did, they left everything. So, the people came back to their community. They tore down the Spanish houses. They burnt what they didn’t want, or threw it in the river. The garden is all that’s left.”

  We walk until, in the distance, the horizon brightens, and the sound of the sea returns. Gradually, through the trees, the ocean emerges once again. The men with us hold their weapons more casually, and the hard readiness of their arms melts away.

  “This is it,” Makee says, and we stop before a tangle of vines and overgrown plants that bolted long ago. It’s hardly a garden. It lies just outside the edge of the forest, a short distance from the sea, at one end of a huge bay that’s empty except for a floating flock of black birds. A lone gull glides overhead.

  I kneel and pull aside a desiccated mesh of stalks and vines. Beneath them, life is taking its course: many small plants huddle together. Their stunted leaves are dark but green, so I know they’re alive. Makee squats beside me and pulls the debris even farther back. There, nestled in pale, oversized leaves, is a tiny emerald jewel.

  “Cabbage?”

  “You take it. Nobody wants it—only the insects.”

  The outer leaves have been nibbled at the edges. I fold them back, exposing the core, which the beetles and caterpillars haven’t yet found. I pull it out of the earth, root and all. It smells sweet, like most cabbages when just picked, but a bit sharp, too, like it’s been left in the ground too long.

  Makee shows me where the onions grow. Using a pointed stick, I gouge the earth in a circle around a bulb hoping to make it easier to pull up. Makee and the two men watch.

  When I rise, I fold over my apron and sling into it one cabbage and three onions with their spiky tops bent over. My cheeks feel warm from the wind and the exertion.

  Makee looks overhead to the darkening sky. “Come. The clouds are aching. We should go back.”

  We pass the tree that looks like a chalice, and head along the trail that crosses the forest. The wind picks up and, indeed, each minute, the sky grows darker. The air is heavy with the promise of rain. I pull my vegetable-laden apron a little closer and try to keep up with Makee.

  “I’ll be giving a big feast soon,” Makee says, over his shoulder. “I’m inviting people from the nearby villages but also some people who live much farther away on the coast.”

  “Will there be many guests?”

  “There always are. We’re known to be generous with food, and some even call us by that name: ‘Makah,’ is how they say it. But that word comes from another language, not ours.”

  “So what do you call yourselves?”

  “Qwidiččaa·t.”

  “Kwee-dashch-awt?” I say, trying my best to make the sounds.

  “Kwih-dihch-chuh-aht,” he says, emphasizing the syllables, and gives a short nod.

  “Does it have a meaning?”

  “It means that we are the People of the Cape. That we live among the gulls on this rocky land that extends into the ocean.” He stretches out an arm to take it all in. Many more words are needed to say it in Russian than in Makee’s language.

  “Will I be at the feast?”

  “I insist upon it! My guests will want to see you,” Makee says. “Some have seen a babaid before, but almost no one’s ever seen a babaid woman.”

  “What’s a babathid?”

  “It means you—your people. The Russians and the Spanish and the Americans and all the rest of you. Who only have houses on the water and who float to different places with no particular origin or destination.” Once again, it takes many words to express in Russian. Even still, the idea is mistaken.

  “I have a home,” I say. “In Russia. And another one in Novo-Arkhangelsk. And I am going back.”

  “Of course you are,” Makee says.

  The rain starts to fall while we’re still in the forest. My hair quickly becomes wet but my shoulders, under the cedar cape they gave me, stay dry.

  When we get back to the house, I’m offered a place near the fire to prepare my vegetables. The heat helps dry my hair and the damp hem of my skirt. The women give me a sharp shell knife just like the one Maria used preparing the medicine. I use it awkwardly to cut the cabbage and onion into smaller pieces to hasten the cooking. Then, the women give me a cooking box containing water. They move rocks in and out of it until the water’s steaming. It takes many rotations until the vegetables are soft. I ladle everything into a small tray on top of a chunk of dried white fish and I shake my head, no, when they offer me the usual dollop of grease.

  I eat slowly, alone, thinking of the Spanish and their six cannons, and the taste of my mother’s shchi cabbage soup.

  I’m unprepared for a feast, especially one where people will want to see me. My clothes are dirty and torn; my shoes are disintegrating. My hair needs grooming. Makee tells me his wife will assist. So, when she comes for me one morning, I’m equally relieved to get a reprieve from collecting wood and water, and curious about how she’ll help me prepare for the feast.

  Makee’s wife and three other women take me to a sediment-filled pond. At its soggy edge, they demonstrate that I will have to, for the first time since the ship ran aground, wash my clothes. The youngest woman gives me a short cedar robe to wear while I’m laundering my skirt and blouse. I keep my chemise on. The robes gape and I feel ashamed that these women might be able to see me unclothed. The women stifle smiles when they see my strange costume, my stained and wrinkled chemise drooping from below the hem of the robe, but Makee’s wife shushes them.

  The oldest woman, who has thin greying hair that falls to her shoulders, shows me some coarse reeds I should use to scrub my clothes. I rub so vigorously, I chafe my fingers, and I worry that my skirt and blouse will come apart. Despite my efforts, some stains won’t wash out.

  After my clothes are as clean as I can get them and have been draped over bushes to dry, I discover that I ought not to have fretted about my modesty. My body is next. The old woman tugs at my cedar robe and then at my chemise.

  29 she says loudly.

  Reluctantly, I turn away and slowly drag each one over my head.

  I’ve never been outdoors and completely unclothed. I fold my arms but there’s no way to hide, no way to stay warm. I enter the pond. My feet sink into the mucky bottom and tiny bubbles creep up my legs. Cold rises over my womanly parts, and then my bosom, until only my shoulders and head remain dry.

  The old peasants fear the rusalki who live in ponds in Russia just like this one, waiting for young men to approach. The rusalki know who’s weak and easily lured by a pretty face, and those young men are never seen again. What if I see a lock of hair, a billowing sleeve, a fingertip through the murk? I’m not a young man but would they want me anyway, want me to become one of them? I know it’s foolish but the muddy water I’ve stirred up makes my imaginings more real.

  I splash a bit of water on my face, and wonder how, with so much sediment, I’ll achieve what they wish. I’ll come out dirtier than I already am. After a long time and a short time of watching my half-hearted effort, the old woman cries out and throws off her robe. She scoops up the coarse reeds I’d been using to scrub my clothes and enters the water. Her breasts are two empty sacks hanging to her waist. I’ve never seen the bare breasts of an old woman before.

  “da·ukwa·čisubaqa·k?”30 she asks as she draws close. Her tone is coaxing. “šuuk, ti·ti·yayikdi·cu.”31 She takes me by the arm and scrubs my skin with
the reeds. Then she turns me and scrubs my other arm. The reeds bite. I feel like a bride being washed for her wedding.

  She splashes water on my back and then I begin to clean other parts of my own body. Finally, she tugs my head back and washes my hair. Her fingers are fierce, and she kneads my scalp like it’s bread. When that’s finished, she leads me by the hand out of the pond.

  We stand dripping before the other women, and she still doesn’t release my hand. With the sweat and dirt washed away at last, my skin tingles. The youngest woman wraps me in the cedar dress again and I begin to warm up.

  Back at the house, I’m given a bone needle threaded with a coarse fibre. I’ll be able to mend the sleeve that was torn so many weeks ago. Being along a seam, the repair is easy. I also sew the hem where it’s coming loose. The faint rusty bloom of a stain remains, my husband’s blood from the day of our battle on the beach.

  Finally, on a clear afternoon when the clouds and mist have vanished, and the blue stretches lazily from one end of the sky to the other, I go to the beach with a bowl of fresh water. There’s one more step to take to prepare for the feast. I must do something about my tarnished silver cross.

  I unclasp the long chain. I hold the cross out and let it twirl in the breeze and sparkle in the sun. Even though it’s badly in need of a polish, it still glitters like a star. I consider that other cross in the sky, Cygnus the Swan, and how she spans the expanse of the Milky Way, and how Mademoiselle Caroline Herschel and her brother counted the stars there, drew the first diagram of our galaxy, and marked our tiny sun’s place among the others. Unlike the pink tourmaline on my cross, we’re not in the centre. My father always reminded me of this and of the ancient men who argued that we were until, one by one, science proved them wrong. “Only a fool knows everything,” he said.