Shell Shaker

by LeAnne Howe

Dovie laughs conspiratorially. “Did you see how he looks at Adair when he thinks no one’s watching?”

  “Ladies, please,” says Delores, giving her sister the eye.

  Dovie turns to Tema. “Wanna sing our song, it’ll make us all feel better.”

  “Sure.”

  “Still remember the words?”

  “Of course.”

  ’Mid the wild and woolly prairies lived an Indian maid

  Arrah Wanna, Queen of fairies of her tribe

  Each night came an Irish laddie with a wedding ring

  He would sit outside her tent and with his bagpipes loudly sing

  Arrah Wanna on my honor.

  “You remember!”

  “How could I forget? Every summer you made me practice it on the piano until I could play it in my sleep.”

  “You said you wanted to learn our theme song,” says Dovie, carefully choosing a perfectly crisp wing to pull apart and devour.

  “I was afraid you wouldn’t let me watch Saturday morning cartoons if I didn’t.”

  “Now you’re pulling my leg.”

  “A little,” says Tema, glancing first at Delores, then Dovie. “But I loved looking at all those old pictures of you two when you were in Hollywood. You’re the reason I decided to become an actress. I wish you could have seen my dance as Nora Helmer. I imagined I was a bird.”

  Delores’ eyes float in tears. Tema was the daughter she never had. She tries to imagine an Indian playing Nora Helmer, soaring above the audience like a giant eagle during the Tarantella scene. She’s so proud. Of course, she adores Adair and Auda, but Tema is special.

  Delores smiles weakly. She can’t shake the feeling that something terrible is going to happen.

  Tema continues singing.

  I’ll be kind and true

  we can love and bill and coo

  in a wigwam built of shamrocks green,

  we’ll make those red men smile

  when you’re Misses Barney-heap-much-Carney

  from Killarney’s Isle.

  “Did you or Delores choose that song because of the money the Choctaws sent to Ireland in 1847?” asks Tema.

  “Naw,” says Dovie, picking up another chicken wing. “Joe Miller picked out that song for us. We didn’t know anything about that. The first time I heard about the Choctaw saving the Irish was sometime in the mid-seventies. Isn’t that right, Delores?”

  “Sounds right,” she replies, deciding to hammer the dough again.

  Tema picks up the skillet and pours the excess grease into a tin can. “Terrible lyrics, though. Why would red men smile if Indian women married white men?”

  “Glad to be rid of us!” laughs Dovie.

  “Then why does Uncle Isaac give me that pinched look, like his undershorts are too tight, every time I mention Borden’s name?” asks Tema.

  “Ignore him,” says Dovie, “Isaac has a thing about the English.”

  “Why?”

  “Who knows,” snorts her sister.

  “Because he was jealous of Delores and Ronald Colman?”

  “How did you know about that?” asks Dovie.

  “Once I overheard him telling Mother that he hated sissy English actors with thin mustaches, and all their films, so I put two and two together.”

  Delores is more than a little irked to hear her sister and favorite niece blather away as if she wasn’t there. It does no good to chide Dovie for gossiping—sometimes it has the opposite effect.

  “Isaac was just a teenager when he came to work for us,” says Dovie. “Of course, by Indian standards of the day he was considered a grown-up.”

  “It’s funny to think of my uncle that way. A boy with a crush.”

  “We were all young once,” says Dovie, smoothing the pleats of her black dress. “Besides, it was boarding school that messed him up.”

  Delores hates it when Dovie brings up the subject of Indian boarding school. She’s tried most of her life not to think about it. Though at times—it’s impossible to say when or why—she will remember a child’s muffled night sobs, the smell of urine in her bed, a teacher’s taunting sing-song.

  Delores is a dirty bird, she’s wet her pants again.

  Ahah achi, aholabi. No, liar. Okay, okay, it’s time to speak English, just don’t call me that. It wasn’t true, she hadn’t wet the bed, but the teacher wouldn’t listen. For a second night in a row Delores had curled herself around the little Ponca girl, trying to give warmth to the dying child. If only her mother had been there. Elizabeth Love would know how to cure the girl’s hacking coughs. She could set broken legs and pull bad teeth. Once when Delores had a bellyache her mother built a hot fire in the oven and heated a stove lid. When it was red hot, she wrapped it up in a blanket and put it on Delores’ stomach. It not only cured her belly, but branded her. A week later she was still walking stooped over to keep her shirt from touching her burned skin.

  But her mother wasn’t there to cure the Ponca girl; all Delores could think to do was keep her warm. She’d only fallen asleep for a moment, or so she thought. When she woke up she was soaked from the waist down. The bed was stone cold and the girl’s face was yellowish-gray, swollen and contorted—her black eyebrows and night shift were all that Delores recognized. She felt the girl’s chest. Still. Her forehead and small hands were cold, and her eyes, half-closed, looked down inside herself.

  Later, after the girl’s funeral, Delores began to bleed, and it was Dovie who knew what to do. Run, Delores, run, I don’t want you to die too. Hurry, you’re bleeding. We gotta get outta here, you shouldn’t have tried to save her. I’ll carry you if you can’t run. You okay, Delores? Answer me.

  Dovie practically dragged her all the way across the blowing wheat fields, toward the main road which led north or south, away from the school. A thrashing Oklahoma wind caused bits of wheat chaff to sting their faces like needles and they had trouble seeing. They leaned forward, trying to offer as little resistance as possible, but it was all they could do to fight their way against the golden dust. Dovie, just thirteen at the time, was determined to save Delores, so she pulled her along screaming, I’m the Miko, leader, now. You have to do what I say. Come on Delores, run.

  From then on, Delores would forever acquiesce to Dovie. It was her sister who’d proven she knew what was best for them, who’d shown she was a thousand times more courageous than Delores ever could be. A few days later the cook at the 101 Ranch, where they had taken refuge, told them it was natural for a girl to bleed when she got her period. No one at school had bothered to educate them on becoming women. Her mother should have been the one to explain what to do with menstrual blood. Because they were Indian girls consigned to a government school, a stranger showed her how to wad a piece of used clothing inside her panties. Delores felt humiliated. It was then she spoke the words she would later regret: “I don’t want to be Indian anymore.”

  “Speaking of boarding school,” says Tema earnestly, “I’ve heard the story from Mother—of how you two got away, but I’d love to hear you tell it.” Delores realizes her niece isn’t asking one of those talk show host questions like, “how did it feel to be abused?” But today, she isn’t up to telling the story.

  Tema looks from Dovie to Delores. Finally, Dovie turns away for a second, as if rehearsing her lines, then she speaks softly, “Nothin’ to it, really. We just hitched a ride on a cattle truck. When he stopped at the 101 Ranch we got out. Chilocco Indian School wasn’t more than an hour or so north of the ranch. Think of it today. Two kids running away from school to join a Wild West show. It doesn’t seem real to me anymore, kind of like a movie script.”

  “You’re leaving out parts,” says Tema, “and that still doesn’t explain why Uncle Isaac hates Borden.”

  “Isaac doesn’t hate anyone!” says Delores, shocked at her own fervor. Lowering her voice, she adds, “It’s just that he holds a grudge for what the English did to the Choctaws, that’s all.”

  Tema runs her fingers through her short punky hair. S
he looks at Delores, trying to gauge how much to say about what she’s been told. “Okay, maybe we’re still pissed off at the English—I just don’t want my family to be mean to the Englishman I sleep with.”

  “My girl,” says Dovie soothingly, taking up where Delores left off. “No one in your family dislikes Borden. Haven’t we always fed him, opened our homes to him? Be assured we are all for you and Hoppy living with Borden,—and I know I’ve told you the story of our escape. Afterwards, Delores sent word to our mother that we had found jobs on the 101. The school never came looking for us, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

  Tema’s tone softens. “There’s a lot more to it and you know it. How will Auda write your biography if you two withhold the juicy stuff? Was Uncle Isaac one of the reasons you stayed in Oklahoma?”

  Dovie looks thoughtful before answering. Now it’s all going to come out, thinks Delores. Finally, no more shadows, or hidden pasts. When her sister begins speaking again, it is with firm determination.

  “If you want to know private things about your uncle, ask him. All I can say is that Isaac came to work for us shortly after his grandmother died. After he left boarding school he wanted nothing more to do with whites, or Indians who were subservient to whites. One day after he’d been working for us a while—he must have been around seventeen—he threw a fit like a wild animal. He’d found some pictures of Delores with one of her actor boyfriends and then went through the house and ripped up our Wild West costumes, and cursed Delores for being a floozy. I wasn’t home at the time—if I had been, I’d have knocked the stuffing out of him! Imagine him tearing up our costumes. He quit us right then and there. A month or so later he finally came around with his tail between his legs, but only to say good-bye. He’d lied about his age, joined the army, and married WaNima Jefferson, in that order.”

  “Did he love WaNima?” asks Tema.

  “Why do you think he would he marry her if he didn’t?” asks Dovie.

  “I don’t know? Rebound. Obligation. Guilt.”

  “Tema,” says Delores sternly, “have some respect for the dead.”

  “Sorry.”

  “WaNima, poor thing,” says Dovie, pausing. “For years she’d followed Isaac around like a puppy. She died before he came back from the war, but like Delores says, at least he’s honored her memory by staying single.”

  Tema realizes her questions have made Delores tense. She doesn’t mean to be so disrespectful. She smiles at her aunt, “I bet Ronald Colman thought he was in heaven to be with Delores Love. Auntie, you were such a sex kitten back then.”

  “Back then?” says Delores, relaxing a little. “Waddaya mean, back then!”

  “Huh, green teas can’t fix our wrinkly old bodies,” laughs Dovie.

  “No comment,” says Delores, shaking her finger at her sister. “And, you know perfectly well that Isaac loved WaNima.”

  “And two dozen other women in Bryan County.” Dovie winks at Tema. “That’ll get her going.”

  Delores picks up her bowl of dough. It is time she shapes it into dinner rolls. She hears Dovie telling more stories of their years in Hollywood, but she’s no longer able to make sense of what is being said. Faintly uttered words reach her as if through a keyhole. Ohoyo Omishke A numpa tillofashih ish hakloh. Attention woman, listen to my remarks. It is time for you to return to your homeland. You must bury the dead chief there.

  Delores decides that her imagination is playing tricks. Now the words split into two, three, four languages, and more. She hears many voices, everything that is said, and she is aware that she understands them all.

  Ohoyo Omishke A numpa tillofashih ish hakloh. Attention woman, listen to my remarks. The gravediggers are wrong. Not all the ancient burial mounds were stuffed with beloved leaders. Some contain bad people who were given everything in death that they had coveted in life. Shell beads, copper, axes, knives, pottery bowls, baskets, animal skins, blankets. There were times when good people followed the bad ones into the spirit world to care for them. Like the parent of a spoiled child, they were there to give things to the bad ones. Make them comfortable so that they would not want to leave their resting place and harass the living. But when the mounds were opened by grave diggers, these flawed spirits escaped like flesh-eating flies. They passed through many changes. Always becoming predatory. Put your dead chief in a mound so he will be protected from escaping again. Give him everything in death he wanted in life. That way he will never leave it again.

  Delores doesn’t understand. She can feel herself vanishing. She seizes the bowl of pastry and holds on. It’s hot in her hands. The clumps of dough glow red like the coals of a fire. The heat blinds her, but she clings to the bowl anyway. At last her fingers let go and she is pulled away as soundlessly as a shadow.

  She sees herself as she was at thirteen, but things are somehow topsy-turvy. At thirteen she would have been at boarding school, yet she is entering her family’s old farmhouse. The windowpanes are still intact, so are the curtains, the dishes. Even the skeleton key hangs on the hook her father fashioned from a mule’s shoe. Delores lingers among her family relics. In the center of the room is a rosewood dining table that belonged to Elizabeth Love. It’s covered with a fine layer of silt.

  Her mother was very particular with the Queen Anne table. She never let it get dusty because she feared the Oklahoma grit. Said it would destroy the original look of the wood. The table was the only piece of furniture her family bought new. They ordered it from a Sears Roebuck catalogue. It was their first attempt at buying colonial. When it arrived, her mother and father, her brother Orvil, her grandparents, Dovie, and Lola piled into a borrowed truck and hauled it home from the train station in Fort Smith, Arkansas.

  Each summer, home from boarding school, they all took turns polishing the table. They applied a variety of homemade remedies to keep the finish looking like new. Her father even used his handkerchief and his all-purpose oil to shine the table he called “Nam pisa.” Something special.

  Delores fingers the edge of the table. She thinks of her mother, Elizabeth Love, trying to decipher the care instructions aloud in English, her face twisted with concern as if she were in charge of a baby.

  Honoring her mother’s teachings, Delores uses the hem of her black dress to wipe the surface clean, but the dust has turned into layers of dirt. She grabs handfuls of Earth but the more she scrapes off the more there is. She begins filling basket after basket and still the Earth grows higher and spreads like a lake of mud.

  Soon relatives appear out of shadows to help the young girl. Memories dressed in thick bear skins with ice in their hair. Thoughts with gorgets made of mastodon toes around their necks. Voices with long black braids and flint hoes give rise to ancient arguments on how best to move the Earth.

  Not to be outdone, the grandparents of tribes part the clouds with their blow guns and assist the digging crews. Finally a grandmother, always the one with big ideas, calls her grandson. When the famous warrior arrives, he is driving a giant yellow Caterpillar with four wheels the size of houses. Together with a thousand hands they help the warrior open Mother Earth’s beautiful body. Slowly and lovingly Mother Earth turns herself inside out and a gigantic platform mound emerges out of the ground. When this sacred ovulation rises to meet the Sun, a private blush sweeps over Mother Earth and becomes grass. A gift.

  Thoughts, Voices, and Grandparents plant corn on top of the sacred mound and hundreds of years come into view in the dance of Green Corn and tomorrows. Delores marvels at creation and wants to remain forever with her ancestors, but a dust devil the color of a panther wobbles in the wind toward her. It’s time to go. Blurry trees and blurry people float in front of her as she’s carried in the paws of the panther across the sky.

  From above, the Nanih Waiya looks like an emerald city, so lustrous it shimmers. Now she realizes why she was brought here. Why didn’t she understand in the first place?

  While the moon shone down upon them Arrah Wanna sighed, Some great race
must call you Big Chief, then I’ll be your bride.

  Delores is returned to the kitchen as if she never left. Tema is still singing. Adair must have grown tired of flirting with Gore Battiste because she’s standing at the stove sipping a taste of Dovie’s recipe.

  “How is it?”

  “Wonderful. What did you put in it?” asks Adair.

  “Whiskey.”

  “I never thought of putting whiskey in chicken dumplings.”

  “It’s a remarkable ingredient,” says Dovie. “It takes on the flavor of anything you cook with it.”

  Dovie offers her a taste. “Don’t look so pious, Delores, you know we’ve always made chicken dumplings with whiskey.”

  “Come quick, this dough has turned to mud,” says Delores, breathlessly.

  “I told you before, the yeast won’t rise if you overwork it.”

  Delores raises her hands in the air and reveals black sticky fingers.

  Her sister shrieks, sucks in a gulp of air. “Where did that mud come from?”

  “Mississippi.”

  “How did it get in there?”

  “I was taken up into a whirlwind and our ancestors told me to put our dead chief in a mound near the Nanih Waiya.”

  “But I watched you mix up the dough,” says Tema, examining the bowl of mud.

  Dovie stands with her arms folded. Finally, she says, “I’ve seen this kind of thing before.”

  Adair eyes Dovie strangely, but turns to Delores. “What does this mean?”

  “I’m not sure,” answers Delores. She tells them everything that happened in her vision. “I think it means we’ve got to bury McAlester in the soil of Mississippi, close to our Mother Mound. We can protect him by giving him everything he ever wanted, and placate his troubled spirit.”

  Adair is flabbergasted. “Redford McAlester raped my sister and committed a hundred other crimes against Choctaw people. Why should we want to make him happy, or protect him?”

  “So he’ll never return.”

  They stare numbly at her, then peer down at the mud which is beginning to percolate like a pot of coffee on a hot stove.