by Rose Christo
17
Willow
I was exhausted when I walked through the front door. I wanted nothing more than to run upstairs and sleep for a thousand years.
Mickey had other plans.
"You're back!" she said. She placed Mini on the floor and shook me by the shoulders. Or tried to. She was too little; she couldn't reach. "Hurry, hurry! Let's go!"
"Where are we going?" I asked, dumbfounded, while she raced around the front room and tried to find her discarded sneakers.
Mickey tossed me an impatient, impetuous look. "November is the marriage month, dummy," she said. What is it with kids these days and their sassy mouths? "And Zeke's getting married. Rafael said!"
"Where is Rafael?" I wondered, and looked around.
"Here," I heard his gruff voice call out, and then he stomped down the stairs after us like a lazy elephant. Mickey giggled.
"What?" he demanded.
"You're worse than Nicholas after he found out Tesla's been dead since 1943. Can we go already?"
"Yeah, yeah," Rafael said, and threw a shrewd look my way, as though to say, "When did she take charge of the house?"
I tied Mickey's shoes and we left the house, the four of us, Mini darting furtive, blue-eyed glances my way. Little did she know I was too tired to commence the battle this afternoon.
"Rafael gave me a hunting knife," Mickey said. "Want to see it?"
"Maybe later," I said, mortified.
We headed north to the badlands. Mickey took Mini into her arms; Rafael and I took Mickey by her shoulders. I don't trust the slippery clay out there for anything.
On the trek down the blue-gray terrain we met up with Lila and Joseph Little Hawk. Lila looked insanely bored.
What's the matter? I signed.
She says marriage is an outdated institution, Joseph signed back.
I'm leading the way to a revolution, Lila signed.
We hiked out to the promontory, the tallest point in the badlands. A few families had already gathered atop the cliffside. With them was Immaculata Quick, in plain white elk pelt, looking very loopy, and only a little authoritative. Zeke and Holly showed up some seconds later. The ceremony began.
"What's she saying?" Mickey whispered to me.
"She's speaking Shoshone," I whispered back. "She's telling them to be good and kind to one another."
"Don't think those words are in Holly's vocabulary," Rafael murmured.
Daisy At Dawn jeered and threw lilacs at her sister's head--a naughty joke, because lilacs in Shoshone society have always represented virginity. "When was I ever a virgin?" Holly wanted to know. Luke Owns Forty cut strips of hair from his son and daughter-in-laws' heads and tied them together, a very emotional smile on his face. Later on he would hide them in a safe place. The couple could only divorce by finding the locks and untying them again.
"Allen must be pissed," Rafael said, and tried and failed to smother his grin.
"Why's that?" Mickey asked.
"He wants to do the wedding ceremonies. He thinks everyone should get married Christian."
"That's dumb."
Zeke came toward us just then, swinging his arms. He looked happy in a way I'd seldom seen him look before: content. He smiles a lot, Zeke, don't get me wrong, but usually it's a frantic smile.
"Wanna sign your adoption papers now?" he asked.
I felt Mickey stiffen at my side with anticipation. I smiled. "Later on," I said. "First we have to mourn the end of your free days."
"Free days? I haven't had a free day since I started dating her! I--oh," he said, because here she came now.
"Rumor has it there's a grotto in the woods," Holly said. As long as I've known her, she's been a very dour, dramatic girl. In her youth, she bickered with Zeke all the time; and I'm half-convinced they only married so they could go on bickering in closer, easier proximity. Today, on the other hand...today, she almost looked friendly. "Is there a reason I'm not allowed to see it?"
"The grotto," Rafael said. "Damn. I haven't been there in years. Don't know whether I even remember the way."
"I do," Annie sang. And she was by our side in seconds; Aubrey behind her, the babies on his back. "I suppose we can share it with outsiders, just this once. After all," and she winked, "it's a special occasion."
We climbed down the promontory together, careful, attentive to the unstable terrain. Mickey scratched Mini behind her ears. I could feel Mickey's curious gaze traveling between my face and Rafael's. I reached sideways and ruffled her hair.
Annie led the way into the woods. Aubrey followed her, and Leon tagged after him while singing Rabbit Guts, a delightful little round dance ditty. Occasionally Leon lunged and swung his fists at the weeds standing on either side of the dirt road. Nicholas dragged his feet across the ground, his head bent, and mopped at the back of his neck. His hair's darker than his parents'; dark attracts sunlight. Poor kid must have been heating up. That's okay, I thought. He'll be nice and cool once we reach the grotto.
I looked around, and I realized more people had followed us than I'd initially accounted for. Dad and Racine, Dad's face unreadable, Racine's arm around his waist. Zeke and Holly walking side-by-side, Holly trying very hard not to smile. Reuben with his daughter Serafine, Serafine gabbing with Charity, Charity followed by Rosa, Rosa's shoulders wrapped safely in Gabriel's embrace. Peripherally I saw Lila and Joseph signing to one another a mile a minute, and Daisy and Isaac with their grumpy son Ryan and their bashful son Gideon; and I glanced over my shoulder and saw DeShawn struggling to catch up with Autumn Rose, and Jessica and Prairie Rose holding hands like innocent schoolgirls. They're still little girls in my eyes. But don't tell them I said that.
What is this, I wondered with a smile, the reception committee?
"Wow..." Mickey breathed.
The forest opened unto a clear, cascading creek, a creek that wrapped around the base of a sweeping, majestic willow tree. Here the beeches were clustered so closely together that the whole ground was painted in cool, filtered sunlight. Many of the beeches had shed their preliminary autumn foliage; flaming orange and blood-red leaves swam down the creek like children's rafts, leisurely and safe. And on the other side of the creek was the natural rock cave, its mouth painted welcomingly in faded pastel stars.
I tilted my head back. I could hear the windchimes clapping musically from the highest boughs of the drooping willow tree. I could hear the robins and the goldfinches calling to one another from the kaleidoscopic beech trees. The goldfinches had to wander far to get to this place; their home was in the badlands, in the southern oak groves.
The sky skimming the tops of the trees was flushed pink with the dawn of evening. Above the pink aura was a blanket of soft gray.
"This is so cool..." Mickey said.
"I wonder," Annie said, "whether my beads are still in that cave?"
"Really," Aubrey said, "I can't believe it's so long since we've come out here. It doesn't look changed at all."
Aubrey sat by the mouth of the cave with the babies on his lap, their curious little eyes roaming safely from the confines of their cradleboards. Annie drifted into the cave and Nicholas went after her: "Is this cave a limestone deposit? You can get good drinking water that way..." Leon prowled and leapt and hopped on his heels and Serafine caught him in her arms, clucking her tongue. "Swing me around, please!" he begged; and she did. Gabriel and Rosa and Charity laughed over a waddling quail in the distance.
Mickey knelt by the creek and lowered her wrist to the surface. The pilot whale dangling from her wrist lapped in and out of the flowing water.
Kids, I thought, and shook my head, innately warmed.
"Hey," Rafael said, and nudged me. "Look who's back."
A coywolf came edging around the creosote bushes. I recognized him at once, his legs slender and long, his torso stout, his sandy coat flecked with silver. He shook his floppy ears and stalked closer, curious.
"What is that?"
Mickey asked when she looked up. She tucked her hair behind her ear.
"He's a coywolf," I said. "Half wolf, half coyote."
"Like the two halves of God," Mickey said.
I was impressed that she had remembered the story. "This one's name is Tello," I told her.
Tello crept closer, inspecting Mickey with soft yellow eyes. Mickey laid her hands on the ground. She looked toward me nervously. "Is he safe?"
"Very safe," I said. "Coywolves never attack humans."
Tello stuck his head out. He batted his nose against Mickey's.
"Cold!" Mickey exclaimed, laughing.
"That's how he knows he can trust you," Rafael told her. "When they bump noses, they're figuring out whether you're okay."
"Well," Mickey said, "I'm okay."
"Unless there's a bear around," I remarked. Rafael gave me a quick look.
"Why's he called Tello?" Mickey asked. She extended her hand slowly.
"It's short for Pocatello," I told her. Tello calmly sniffed the palm of her hand. "I was very good friends with his dad," I said. "And his dad was kind enough to let me name the both of them."
Mini started hissing. Tello turned his golden head and gazed at her. He could smell Mickey's scent on her. He wouldn't pounce on a common house cat.
"Mini," Mickey scolded.
I touched my hand against the base of Tello's head. He tilted his head, just so, and peered at me. When you look into a coywolf's eyes... I don't know how to explain it. You feel as though you're looking into a human's eyes.
"Check out that willow," Nicholas said suddenly. He emerged from the cave and pointed at the stately tree.
My heart caught in my throat. The trunk of the tree was smooth with weather and age, an indescribably silver-brown. The tendrils hanging from the bent, spread branches were the softest green on earth. They swayed and danced in the wind; they paused in the still air like falling rain.
This was the tree where Uncle Julius had tumbled to his death, Dad powerless to help him. This was the tree I had lain beneath many summers ago, with my friends and with my cousin; with Rafael as we traded our first touches, as we first came to know the world.
The world doesn't really change, does it? We come and we go, and we think we're so important, we can't possibly comprehend how the world doesn't come tumbling down when our lives do. It's so cold, so heartless. So beautiful. It doesn't matter how many of us walk across the surface of the planet. The sun will still rise when we've finished rising with it. The earth is no less warmer for our absence on it.
I trailed over to the willow tree before I even knew what I was doing.
Dad sat beneath the sweeping, elegant boughs. His knees were raised, his arms around them. He looked up when I approached him. He smiled a watery smile.
I sat next to him, my hand on his shoulder. I could feel him relaxing beneath my palm.
Which of these branches had Uncle Julius fallen from? I didn't know. Just like I couldn't remember which branch my cousin Marilu had climbed when she first discovered the mourning cloaks hiding among the bark. Or which tendrils Rafael had chased me through the first time I coaxed him into a race through the woods.
Rafael sat on my other side. His arm was comforting around my waist, his hand warm against my thigh. For a moment I forgot how old we were. For a moment I felt as small as the windchimes hanging from the top of the tree. Beautiful, painted glass butterflies, glass stars in wine red and ocean blue.
Mickey wandered over to the three of us. She invited herself to sit on Dad's other side.
"Do you know," Dad started suddenly, but stopped.
"What?" Mickey asked.
"In Shoshone," Dad said, "the word for 'friends' is the same word for 'family.' Nimaa."
"Nimaa," Mickey repeated, trying it on for size.
I watched Zeke splashing Annie with cold water from the creek. I watched Reuben feeding Tello with dried blue corn kernels from his back pocket.
I tipped my head back and inspected the hanging glass stars. A desert-orange star caught on one of the topmost branches when the wind blew its way. Wedged between the branch and the tree trunk, the star stood still.
"Stop! Stop! Oh, you're mean!" Charity shrieked at Zeke, her pants soaked with creek water.
"I'll bet you didn't know something," Mickey told Dad.
I had to smile. What sort of childlike wisdom was she about to impart on him? What could she possibly know that the rest of us hadn't figured out yet?
"I have two dads," she said.
I could feel it when Dad smiled. Dad doesn't usually smile, you know. I've always thought he must have forgotten how. What is that like? To go through your life, day by day, the same as always, and one day realize you haven't smiled in years? What does it feel like to smile again after all that time has passed?
I don't know. I couldn't tell you. I think I've always been smiling. Hopefully I won't find a reason to stop.
"I wasn't aware," Dad said. "You're a very lucky girl."
* * * * *
Shoshone Glossary
Masukwih! Yuhupippuh! - Screw yourself! Fat man!
Sai Paa Hupia - Boat [and] Water Song
Nai Nukkwi - Girl [Who] Ran
Makan Imaa - Gives Light, Gives Morning
Sape Naha - Looks Over [Her Shoulder]
Pia, hinna punikkatu? - Mother, welcome home. (lit. "Mother, what are you doing here?")
Nian huttsimpia keehinna tokwinna! Tupichi tammattsi, tangku watsingku, puesusu ponaahwa piammutonna... Ma punni, sapan nahnappuh, tuchu pai nian nanumu... Hakanukwitu, Tam Apo, hakanukwitu... - My daughter-in-law is worthless! What a fool, getting the two of us lost, and well past child-bearing age is she... Look, there's the eldest child, a pox upon my family... Why, God, why...
Taipo'o! Dosabitumu kimmatu nian sokowa innuntukkah pinnasu! - The white man! The white devil has come to take my land again!
Kanaakka. Nian ukupinaa tangummu kanaakka, uu wailt pusikwatu'ih... - A black woman. My first lover was a black [man], but they'll never know...
Tuupukkan uma! Takkamah! - Wrathful rain! Beware!
Mutsachi - Little Mountain Sheep (lit. "Mountain Sheep Yearling")
Tsinnahi - Makes Them Laugh
Nihatta! Nian tua nia yaakkin tukuna pauwau, haka tsao suwa pauwau ma'i? Kuttaan nu hupichi, nu kee tunaakasuwanna ma uku tammattsimmuh... - What an insult! My son takes me to a pauwau, what would I want with a pauwau? I am very old, I don't want to spend my time with young fools...
Taipo'o nian tama kappayummuh innuntukkahppuh! Nia punni! - White man stole my teeth and my horses! Just look at me!
Tottsaa - Loaded bread
Tokochi'na kuhmachi, dosabitumu, yuhupukkanna... - My grandson's husband, the white devil, he could lose some weight...
Numu paa kutsapi'kontuih wuchamata huuppiammu. - You will poison our waters and tie up our women.
Kimma! - Come!
Acha Dine! - Wretched Navajo!
Sutummu tukummuinna - To understand each other without speaking the same language
Tsitsaseh kimmayu! - Jesus is coming!
Yepani Hupia - Autumn Song
Bia'isa-soto - Wolf-drag
Tello - Forger, Maker
Pocatello - Middle Road Maker
Nimaa - Friend, family
* * * * *
