Celia's Song (10 page)

“Ned,” she hollers.

He comes running from outside, soaking wet, dripping all over the floor.

“You better take me somewhere, because I can't bear the question anymore. It is much too big for me.”

She faints dead away.

Ned picks her up and carries her to her bedroom. This ends her night with her family.

Celia is right behind Ned, following him into her momma's room. No one in the room thinks this is a good idea, but they shrug and ignore the trio. Jacob's eyes widen. His hands twitch. He is terrified that he has killed his gramma. In the middle of their talk about the times they grew up in, Rena turns to Jacob, sees his consternation, and says flatly, “She always faints when there is some question that is too much for her. Don't you worry, she will dream on it and be answering you by tomorrow. Your gramma is a dreamer, Jacob.”

RESTLESS HAS BECOME OBSESSED
with conquering Celia. He thinks about how to. Loyal knows this. He is anxious that Restless might be successful, and grows determined to protect her.

NED PAUSES AT THE
bedroom door, turns to look at Celia; he catches her determined look. She is too old for him to restrain. He leaves the two women in the bedroom and returns to the fireless living room.

MOMMA'S MEMORY SLIPS INTO
fragments, stringing together bits of story about the newcomers that she had heard from her gramma. She was in her gramma's kitchen listening to her talk about the canoes. There were hundreds of them, loaded and ready to roll down the river to the city. Celia could see them bobbing gently at the river's edge. White people, mostly women with strange languages, scurried about, talking to anyone who would listen. They chattered at different men one by one, their voices anxious in foreign languages. The frantic blond and redheaded women ran about showing boatman after boatman bits of paper marked with destinations like Vancouver, Victoria, and Sardis, but the boatmen could not read them. Undaunted, the women continued to ask questions of them in languages the boatmen did not know, some even fought for the English words that would clarify their questions, the answers to which would quell their fears. None of the would-be listeners knew much English, nor did they care about the women — none of them were relatives or clanswomen.

The strange silence of the boatmen who had brought them here pumped up the women's fear. They would never make their destination. Before traversing the country, the women had spent months on a dirty ship that rocked mercilessly even when there were no storms. They had vomited so much that they thought they were going to die. Some of them did. Those who made it to shore had to spend months on a wagon train crossing an enormous territory of oaks, maples, and wild rice lakes before crossing a thousand miles of prairie. Just before the mountains they stumbled onto an encampment of tall and emaciated brown-skinned people with
forlorn eyes who stared at them but said nothing. They scaled mountain after mountain on foot until they reached the boatmen. They had spent the past ten days walking across rocky terrain with terrifying canyons, steep hills, and sharp twists. They had canoed with these boatmen down this crazy river to this place, where the boatmen emptied them out like cargo.

The entire trip had been bereft of common language between them and their guides. They had been expected to feed themselves and had packed food, but most had run out days into the trip. The hunger, the loneliness, and the hardship of the last length of the journey boiled inside the women. Now these boatmen who had carried their loads through the treacherous Yale gorge and had inspired a feeling of safety and confidence in the women, something like closeness, like comfort, like respect, were packing up to leave. The women wanted more from these men and could not believe that they would just abandon them here.

They pleaded and begged. The boatmen left anyway, left them crying, squawking, feeling betrayed. The women scurried the landing, asking strangers about their destinations. No one answered. Their abandonment spawned fear, then rage, then isolation, and finally surrender before the night was out. Some of them were
found by their future husbands, quaking and quivering with cold and hunger, humiliated into submission. Others were never claimed. They floated from man to man for liquor, food, dance, and sex until, diseased and cast off, they died.

In the beginning of the world, these mountains rose out of the sea, hundreds of them, thousands, pushing up through water that churned with such force it murdered everything inside its wet folds. The water still has the power to rise up angry, to rage at the landscape and suck back villages, slapping the humans' audacity, filling their lungs with salt death, drowning the remnants of their lives. Every now and then it does. Once the raging water destroyed most of the people here; it drowned their baskets, their canoes, their treasured shells, their homes, their burial grounds. It buried what they were and what they might have become. But they began again, despite the flood waters and the massive death of plants and animals and humans — but not before the serpent rose up from the receding waters to swallow their babies.

In one village, a woman stood on the shore pleading with the two heads for her child's life. Screaming women tried to hold her back against the serpent's threats. The bulge in its upper body terrified them. This serpent did not like being ignored. He rose from
the sea, rampant on his tail, and bent both heads as he roared at the women on shore. His heads birthed screams that rang out. The screams from the women grew louder as the small spears that flew from their hands bounced off the beast. The men harpooned him, but the harpoons bounced off too. The men moved closer and one of the serpent's heads darted out and swallowed one of them.

The newer bones remember this story; they remember their sacrifices on behalf of their descendants. They resent the absence of courage or loyalty in them.

I know why they are terrified. It wasn't the monster that terrified them, it was something intangible, steady, and perverse — an unspeakable horror. I remind myself that I am here to bear witness, not to
try to find remedies or to remind them.

“There is another village downriver. Don't go there. People die in the streets and they just step over you. The women die alone in that village and no one cares. It is as though the breath of the serpent has been swallowed by everyone.” Momma was sitting on her grandfather's lap, toying with the pouch around his neck and the big knuckles of his fingers. She asked the village's name. “Vancouver,” he said. She never wanted to go there.

THREE WOMEN ARE GATHERED
around Gramma Alice and the
things they are supposed to burn, but Momma keeps fainting. She does not feel grown-up enough to do this. If she burns her mother's things, her mother will hurry to the other world. Momma isn't ready for this.

She is awake. Rena is looking at her. Momma's Jim is straddling a log playing with a branch of cedar; every now and then he gives her one of those deep looks that says, “It's okay; faint away; it's okay; we don't really have to do anything; it's okay; we do not have to do this burning today.” It calms her to look at him. The calm invigorates her and so she doesn't want to see him. She doesn't want to be strong enough to do this.

“We'll finish this, Momma.”

This jars her.

“Oh, no. I can't. I don't want to do this.”

“What do you want to do?”

“What I want, no one can give me now.”

“What do you want?”

Momma nearly fainted during Jimmy's funeral. She can't afford to faint now. She is near to gone when she finally lets out what she thinks is a scream.

“Rena?” The word barely makes it out into the room. Momma begins to sway.

“Yes.” Rena turns in her direction, bannock dough dripping from her fingers.

Momma's blood pumps, her lungs shrink, her strength leaks from her legs, her head swims. “I got to sit.” Rena catches her. “Paper bag,” she hollers. Judy throws her one.

“What's that?” Momma hears herself say, and cannot now remember what she saw or heard to spark the question. She tucks her head between her legs and yells, “Rena!” Her voice is louder now.

“Yes.” Rena's hand grabs Momma's neck and holds her head down. Rena's voice barks, “Breathe out. Out, out.” It works. It saves her from fainting.

After that, through the feast, funeral, and burning preparations, Momma would just say “Rena” and Rena would grab a paper bag, curl its edges, hand it to Momma, push her head down between her legs, and bark, “Breathe out. Out, out,” and Momma would be all right.

VIII

INSIDE, THE CANDLELIGHT CURLS
about the faces of the women, painting blotches of honey brown where the light dances and black in the spaces where it does not.

Loyal is becoming more and more disheartened the longer Restless wreaks havoc. He is failing to find someone to honour the serpent and allay Restless's anger.

The new bones have stopped singing. The old bones are getting closer. Soon they will meet. This meeting of the bones has never happened.

I can't say whether their meeting will be good or bad.

The people are in such a state of disarray that Loyal has no idea how to reverse it. It is more than the sickness that has destroyed them, more than poverty. If he could find the key to what malaise holds them, he would choose the right person to bring them back to upholding the original agreement between the serpent and the people.

The old bones rattle louder as they get closer to the new bones. They sing and pray, pushing for the surface as they grow more concerned about the influence of the enraged younger bones. The old bones have no idea what has happened, but they are certain they have the song to fix it.

THE NEWER BONES HAVE
begun to surface. This has sparked excitement among anthropologists, because some of these new bones are only a few hundred years old, epidemic survivors, another field of study. It surprises the anthropologists that these bones so far west suffered epidemic loss more than two hundred years earlier, but it does
not surprise Celia. She knows about the deaths. She knows about the travellers, the indigenous traders who preceded the newcomers, who brought with them the diseases of the east. What surprises Celia is the interest of the indigenous people in anthropology. She worries for them. She is right to worry. The bones have no good intentions for their handlers.

I AM IN THE
tree house. I look down. My paws flutter with fright —
the serpent is out of control. I am weary of witnessing his crazed hunger. I try to get Celia's attention, thinking she might witness with me, but getting her attention proves more difficult than I imagine. I consider shape-shifting back to owl, but this is difficult to do and I want a rest, not more work. Then I hear the bones, the new and the old rattling together, at odds with one another. Shivering, I pray to the bones. The young ones are the first to respond and the response
is not promising. “The serpent will teach them a lesson,” they sing.
They are stuck on vengeance. These words come overtop the deep, gentle prayers of the old bones and my prayers for reason.

I fear a quarrel between the bones. Any quarrel can become war, and the bones could inspire humans to go to war over which
way to turn and that means violence from within. I do not want to witness that.

MOMMA WINCES AS SHE
comes to and realizes that she is in her bedroom. It is dark, but she knows Celia is there. The others are still in the kitchen. She tries to remember what they are doing there. It isn't Sunday. Momma almost says something about why Celia has come into her room without permission, then decides this child hasn't had much of her.

“I think I ought to grow up,” Momma says to Celia, as she starts to rise.

“Are you okay, Momma?”

“No. I am not, but I will be.” She laughs and swings her legs out onto the floor.

The candlelight catches Celia's face at an odd angle.

“You look like your gramma in my first memory of her face. I was five, that would have made her forty — and you are thirty-eight. That would be about right.” She reaches out and puts her hand on Celia's cheek, careful not to change the angle of her perception.

Celia remains motionless, hoping to stretch the moment. It seems like forever since her mother last touched her face, appreciated its lines, its cut. Celia has never as an adult woman heard her mother comment on the nature of her looks. They sit in the quiet, each looking intently at the other. Some wisp of something lingers in Momma's touch. It pulses in the air surrounding them. It teases the sensibility of both women. What is it?

“We had so little time, you and I,” Momma begins.

Celia feels the backwater of years' worth of longing for her momma and Stacey start to rise like a flood in her belly, threatening to destroy the sweetness of this moment. She swallows her tears and holds back the floodwater rather than close the door to this first communion as a woman with her mother.

“I missed you, girl. I missed mothering you. You know what I mean, Celia?”

“Yes,” she lies. Celia knows she has missed being mothered, but she did not know her mother had missed being a mother. They are sitting so close that Celia feels the warm current of Momma's breath. Momma's hands move through Celia's hair as though to render it familiar.

Momma chuckles and this makes Celia smile.

“Can we just sit for a bit, Celia?”

Celia assents wordlessly.

Now Celia is going to get all fuzzy and that will end her witnessing. Don't have a chance of getting out of this.

Two languages run along parallel tracks in Momma's mind, neither of which ever crosses over; she shifts between them as though she is one person in one language and another in the other. She has never felt sure of who she is in either, because the words of both have never come together to speak her memories to her. Her mind preserves her memories in moving pictures unanchored to word-posts that could frame what these memories mean to her. Her emotional being is hungry to have memories translated into words and thoughts before they are transformed into actions. She wants words that will deliver the significance of this child's memory to her.

After the
1954
flu epidemic, their world changed. Automobiles and traffic arrived. Televisions arrived; people would gather at the house of the person in their family who owned one. Momma liked the news. No one talked about race then. No one said “white man” out loud. Then something shifted. Though no one in the village suspected it, the flu reminded them of how little others cared for their survival. The shift began with Rosa Parks and it turned into a movement for civil rights. It finally came to the villages as Aboriginal rights.

That was not the only thing that changed. A half dozen years later highways, sidewalks, and shopping malls began to dominate their lives. If there was no mall, people wished for one. By the end of that decade, nearly every city and town had one. The malls were full of mothers and children. The crowds picked stuff out, some casually fingering this garment or that, some testing toiletries and scents, some languidly sitting on benches examining new purchases. Town folk stared at the Indians who came from the other side of the river. Some stared with interest, some looked with hard blank eyes, and some stared as though they couldn't believe there were still any Indians left.

Momma watches the endless canning kettles boiling on her stove. She watches herself shooing Celia out of the kitchen with a go-playin-the-living-room instruction as though it were one word. She sees Celia trying to catch her attention by saying, “Look Momma, look,”
as she shows her a picture she has drawn. The picture has written words on it. Momma knows they are words, but cannot read them. She cannot tell if they are spelled correctly, so she just grunts at Celia. This picture wants to anchor itself to words and a date.

In the summer of
1954
Stacey had taught Madeline and Momma to read, so it was before then. Celia was seven during the epidemic, so Celia must have been five or six when she learned to read and print. Momma sniffs at her memory to recall what they had been canning. Peaches. Just before fishing, just before learning to read.

“Celia. I like the sound of that name. Wish I knew what it meant.” She stretches the sound of each syllable out, careful not to push too hard on the breath delivering the sound, while she plays with Celia's hair. “You were showing me a picture a long time ago. You kept saying, ‘Look.' I kept saying, ‘I see.' You kept repeating ‘Look' and I kept answering, ‘I am, Celia, now move out the way. These peaches are hot.' You ran out of the house and you never showed me anything after that. Now we don't can together the way my momma and I did with Stacey and your brother Jim. Stacey and I and your brother still can together, but not you. I know I never really looked at your picture then. You knew it, too. Is that why you don't can with us, Celia? Because I never really looked?”

Celia roots about the cellar of her mind, hunting for the same moment, fighting to drag it along.

The steam in the air from the canning kettle is almost drinkable. The smell of peaches consumes every space in the room. The heat is almost unbearable. Momma is busy moving back and forth, hauling jars, emptying them out, washing them. Jim moves the big canning kettle when the peaches are done. When he isn't sitting, waiting for the processing to be done, he is cutting peaches next to Stacey. Every now and then the air is split with their laughter. Celia wishes she was a jar so she could be carefully cradled in her momma's hands and set carefully on the counter or in the water and finally be set in the cupboard. She draws a picture of the canning kettle, her momma standing over it holding a jar up to the light leaking into the kitchen from the little window. Celia trots after Momma with her picture. She has it in her mind that maybe this picture will make her part of them somehow, but it will not. It will separate her more completely. Momma tells her she saw it, but Celia knows she did not really look because she did not recognize herself in it. Celia goes outside, behind the shed, to watch. She rarely draws any pictures to show anybody.

“Mostly I stopped drawing,” she says now, as if this were responsible for the distance between her and her mother.

“I remember the picture,” Momma continues, as though Celia has not really intervened with her terrible guilt. “It was me, holding a jar to the window, to the light, trying to see if it was overcooked. Sometimes with peaches you can't tell how ripe they are — an extra minute can spoil the texture. There was the canning kettle, the stove, my backside, and this jar of peaches. Even the little peaches inside were coloured orange and pink, magenta and almost-yellow. The water was a see-through pale yellow, just like how the water turns colour in the finished jar. The sunlight spot on the glass was there. My faded old apron strings hanging down the middle of my back, even. So many details of colour were in that picture. That picture gave me the idea for my garden.”

Celia stares, incredulous, at her mother. Her mother's memory
is detailed, flawless. It humbles her to know that her mother had cupped this picture in her mind for years in all its detail. Even more humbling was that it had inspired her mother's garden. Tears trickle down Celia's face and onto her knotted hands. She stares at her hands, wondering why her hands had to stop drawing — as though her hands had lost their connection to her mind. Not drawing and not canning with Momma go together like a truck and its load, but Celia cannot explain this to Momma. She has no idea why they go together. She had gone on drawing for a short time after that, but with less and less frequency until finally she stopped. She had kept her drawings secret. She cannot figure out how to tell this to her mother. She decides to talk to Stacey. Stacey will know how to tell Momma.

“Doesn't matter, Momma. I'd like to can with you now.”

Momma reaches over and wraps her arms around her daughter.

Momma watches the tears roll down Celia's face, the face that was Gramma Alice's face. It is heartbreaking to know that she hurt the only child that looks like Gramma Alice. She does not know this woman. She remembers sending her away to Alice's house. This was an extraordinary act on her part. Children ought not to witness dying.

Momma had volunteered to be the caregiver of the village and had battled the flu. Stacey had to help her. Celia did not return. This didn't surprise Momma or strike her as unusual; Gramma wanted to keep her. Celia seemed content to stay with her, so she just let it be. When Celia grew up, she set up housekeeping in her gramma's house after Gramma died. Momma has no way of connecting her sending this child away with Celia's ambivalence toward her
family. She has no way to connect her unfamiliarity with Celia to her sending her away, either, so she searches for something else to hang it on.

In
1954
the death toll would not stop rising. The flu would not stop taking their babies, their old, and their fragile. It kept coming for the villagers like some vengeful beast, forcing person after person to vomit, cough, and burn away their lives. Momma fought for the strength, the tenacity, and the caring to go on in the face of the beast. Every day she woke up and prayed for the will to take the beast on, until finally her caring thinned. She braced herself and rose anyway out of duty; when all else failed, there was duty. Each death thinned the caring out until she didn't seem to have any left.

It was as though caring for the old and the very young in
1954
took what love she had to give. No, it wasn't love that they took; it was the liking, the everyday appreciation for the nonsense of being, of growing, of nodding her head and chuckling at ordinary things. She had grieved at every funeral, but each life that slipped through her fingers took a chunk of her already smaller, less intense
emotions with it. Grieving was enough. Saying goodbye had not been enough.