by G. P. Ching
Chapter 23
Earth Mother
The medicine woman beckons him into the village center, to the place he was during the ceremony. Only it isn’t a circle of dancing people this time, but a ring of spiky plants that surround her. Red stones lay between each of the plants and the medicine woman waters each one from a large gourd.
“Where’s my mom?” Jacob yells. “Where is this place that is no place? Tell me, so that I can help her.”
The medicine woman holds a finger to her lips. “Chuh, chuh,” she says.
Under the starlight, the earth around the stones begins to move: to pull together into an increasingly large pile. The earth twists upward, building itself into two legs, an abdomen, chest and arms. When it stops its dusty ascent, an old dwarf woman stands before him, hunched and barely as tall as his waist. The dwarf woman holds out her hand like she is the queen of England rather than the corporeal formation of a swell of dirt. The medicine woman motions for Jacob to kiss the dwarf woman’s hand.
“Yumi aishmag-jangke,” she demands. Jacob has no idea what the words mean.
The dwarf woman is ugly and dirty but he understands that it would be an insult not to obey. He lifts the small hand in his, running his thumb along the gritty backside. Closing his eyes, he brings the shriveled brown offering to his mouth. Rough skin rubs his lips. And then, her fingers melt out of his. The dwarf woman comes apart. As he watches, earth sifts through his knuckles and the red stones scatter to the edges of the circle, back to the places where they’d been before the medicine woman had watered them. All but one. In his hand, under the spot where the dwarf woman’s hand had been when he’d kissed it, one flat red stone shines in the moonlight.
The medicine woman grabs him by the collar and shakes. She points to the stone and says a word in the language he does not know but by some miracle he suddenly understands.
“Window,” she says. She folds his fingers over the stone and grips his fist in both of her hands. “For you.” Then she shoves him soundly in the chest with both hands.
