Fall from Grace (21 page)

“Someone like you, who probably never lived on or visited a reserve, isn’t truly native because even if your life was hard for whatever reasons, you haven’t endured the typical native suffering.

“But both attitudes are flawed because if you ignore a wound, it just festers and will only kill you in the end if you leave it too long. And if you keep poking at the wound, never allowing it to heal, it will also kill you in the end. The trick, of course, is to find a balance between the two, to realize that there is a wound, to accept that the wound is bad, almost a mortal one, but to also realize that the wound can and should be healed so you can move forward. And when the wound is healed, you must never forget it.”

“That’s it? As simple as that?” I asked. It was typical pop psychology, probably true in a sense, because no one could deny the suffering that Aboriginals around the world had been through. But it was also some of the same language that I had heard when I sat through those Gamblers Anonymous sessions so many years ago.

I also knew that usually when people talk like this to someone they’ve just met they are doing one of two things:
(1)
trying to convert me to their way of thinking, or
(2)
using the lecture as a roundabout way of telling me something else. I figured the first choice because despite what he said earlier, I would bet that Francis wasn’t as completely happy with my story as he claimed. He was one of those who hoped for more positive stories about urban natives and no doubt he would have liked to have been the topic of one of those stories. I didn’t fault him for that; it was a normal reaction. Everyone believes their story is important enough for the newspaper or that they know of a story that is.

“No, it’s not that simple,” Francis continued. “Not everyone is as fluent in language as you or me, and even if they are, they lack the emotional awareness of themselves. They lack the language to describe what they are feeling and the emotional capacity to change their lives. People like those natives who live on the street, like those drunk Indians everyone complains about, like those girls who end up dead in a field outside the city, people like … Oh, here we are.”

It was a small acreage on the west end of the city, just near the outskirts, an area where the suburban sprawl was starting to eat away at the outlying wilderness of the city. There were a few other trucks and an old camping trailer set near a clump of trees and he parked next to them. He shut off the engine, and before he climbed out, he turned to me and smiled. “Come on. I think you’re going to like this.”

I climbed out, curious to see what I had been invited to. I could hear voices quietly speaking somewhere in the trees, but instead of heading toward them, we went into the trailer. Francis handed me an old bathrobe and I stared at it for several seconds.

“What’s this for?” I asked.

“I know it’s a bit unusual but for this ceremony it’s suitable to remove all our clothes and wear this,” he said. “However, since it’s your first time, no one will mind if you want to keep your underwear.”

He then turned and started to remove his clothes. By then I had a fair idea of what was ahead and started to get undressed. And though I was keen and intrigued about attending my first sweat, I couldn’t help but replay the last part of our conversation. He never got to finish the sentence but I knew what he had been about to say: “People like you.”

26

There were five men, all around Francis’s age and dressed in similar robes, gathered around a fire pit.

“Hey, fellas, sorry we’re late,” Francis said with a laugh. “Traffic was a bitch.”

They turned at the sound of Francis’s voice and he introduced me to the first man, Noah. He was one of the older ones, tall, with salt-and-pepper hair tied into two long braids and an expansive stomach that Buddha would have been proud of. I really didn’t want to reach out, open my robe, and expose my almost naked body in order to shake the proffered hand, a mammoth callused paw that should have belonged to a bear, but I had no choice since he was also offering something in the other hand: something wrapped in a bit of yellow cloth. I hesitated, looking at Francis in confusion.

“Tobacco and cloth. It’s the standard offering. Normally they would give them to me since I’m going to be leading the sweat, but since it’s your first, they wanted to give ’em to you. Go ahead, take them. This time, it’s bad form if you refuse.”

Shocked that I might be insulting this elder, I quickly reached out, one hand to shake and the other for the gift, but he enveloped both of my hands in his, a warm and welcoming vise. I was shivering in the crisp fall air, but he looked as comfortable as if this were a warm summer afternoon. “Thank you, Leo, for joining us for this sweat.” Noah said, his voice deep and rich. “We promise to be gentle.” There was a soft chuckle from the group and a bit of a grin as Noah squeezed my hands a bit tighter.

My face turned red with a slight embarrassment but I still managed to respond. “Thank you. It’s all I can ask for.”

The group laughed and Noah smiled, showing all his teeth, many of them black. Then he released me, stepping aside and tapping me on the shoulder. One by one, the other elders were introduced, shaking my hand and offering a pouch of tobacco wrapped in cloth: Jeffrey, like Noah with braids and a large stomach but younger; Louis, short hair, about my height but skinny; Daniel, braids and skinny like Louis but a bit shorter and with a boxer’s nose; and finally Lucas, older and looking a bit like Francis, but white.

Francis also offered me tobacco and cloth but then took all the offerings out of my hand and placed them in a pile near the door of the lodge, next to a small shovel. The lodge was about four feet high, a dome covered with stained blankets and carpet remnants. A long flap of carpet hung over the opening. “Okay, fellas, thanks for coming. We’ll be heading in, Leo will go first since it’s his first, and then I’ll sit next to him and you guys come in whenever you’re ready. Louis, if you don’t mind, will you tend to the grandfathers?”

Louis nodded, and as a group they removed their robes and tossed them over a lawn chair by the fire pit. Francis put his arm around me and shepherded me to the door of the lodge. He flipped the carpet to reveal the opening and made a sweeping motion, left to right, with his hand.

“When you move in the lodge, whether you’re coming in or going out, you have to move in a clockwise direction. Since I’m leading the sweat, I’ll be sitting right across the pit from the door and I want you to sit to the north, which, if you’re facing the door, I’ll be on your right, got that? I want to keep an eye on you during the sweat, make sure you don’t pass out or anything.” He gave my shoulders a squeeze, removed his robe, draped it over his arm, and held the same hand out for mine. “Ready, Leo?”

I didn’t know how to reply. I was a mix of emotions. I was looking forward to this sweat, looking forward to experiencing something totally new, elated at being invited to participate in this spiritual event, but also apprehensive.

I didn’t know what was expected of me, I didn’t know if my presence would temper the celebration, didn’t know how I would react to the heat. I had been in saunas before but I had no idea how hot it would get in a sweat lodge. I hoped my body could handle the heat and that it or I didn’t do anything stupid to spoil the experience, not just for me, but mostly for everybody else. And even though I had made a joke about it, I hoped that I would hold up.

I nodded in response to his question and he smiled. “Everyone who enters the lodge gets a smudge. Takes away the negative energy and brings in the good,” he said, taking a piece of braided sweetgrass from a pouch and lighting the edge with the fire that heated the stones. Then he took the bit of smoldering sweetgrass, flapped it gently so the end glowed brighter and more smoke rose from the tip.

Based on one or two other experiences with Aboriginal ceremonies that I’d seen, I knew I was supposed to pull this smoke toward me, rub it into my hands, over my head, to my heart, and to any other part of me that I felt needed healing.

Francis went first, and when he held the sweetgrass near me, I did what he did. He smiled and then handed the braid of sweetgrass to one of the other elders so they could smudge themselves.

Francis flipped the carpet from the opening, and before he went in, he told me to wait a few seconds before following. As I did, I wondered if someone from the Catholic Church had visited the New World centuries before Columbus. And then, after I figured enough time had passed, I pulled off the robe, tossed it aside, and bent down to crawl through the door.

The ground was hard like concrete, but already the air was pretty hot, my skin tightening and any coldness in my body melting away. There was a moment of blindness as I passed from the outside to the inside but then the light became a soft glow of twilight in the lodge. In the middle of the lodge there was a hole with a single rock glowing red and emanating heat.

Francis sat opposite the door, beside a small bucket partly filled with water. He gestured to his right, which I figured was my spot, a place marked with a medium-sized white towel and a water bottle. I crawled around the lodge, in a clockwise direction as Francis had said, stepped over him and sat down, turning to face the door. I settled in, crossing my legs. Francis nodded at me and pointed at the towel.

“Since this is your first time in a sweat, we’re only going to do a few rounds, but even so it’s going to be extremely hot. Some people can handle it, some can’t, and if you feel yourself getting too hot during a round, just wet the towel from the water bottle, drape it over your head, and bend down toward the cooler air.”

The rest of the group entered, circling around the lodge, but Francis kept talking, leaning back to let them pass. I did the same and they sat down just to my right. “We’ll be opening the door after each round and it’s okay, Leo, if you want to step outside and cool off. It’s perfectly normal, a lot of us do that. And drink plenty of water to keep hydrated. You got that?”

I nodded, feeling my body tense up with the unusualness of the experience and the closeness of the space. I resisted the urge to touch the walls in order to test their strength. I occupied my hands by pouring some of the water over the towel. I wanted to be prepared, not fumbling around in the dark for the bottle, interrupting the ceremony with my clumsiness. I closed the bottle and set it underneath my knee for quick access and then placed the towel on my lap, the excess water dripping down my thighs and into my crotch.

Most of the elders had settled in already, one carrying a drum and a wooden stick. The stick had a piece of what might have been suede sewn on one end and the drum was the size of a small tambourine and smelled faintly of rotten meat.

“Just relax and let yourself go,” Francis continued. “I’m not going to say much, but if I do, it’ll be in Cree so don’t worry about it. Don’t think too much or force yourself to try to get something out of this, just experience the moment as it comes. Okay, there’s no goal you have to reach, no vision that has to come, but if something comes then something will come. But most importantly, try to stay in the moment and accept the experience, be it just a physical one or something else.” He gave me a bright smile, his teeth glowing in the light from the door, and winked. “You ready, Leo?” he asked, placing a warm hand on my shoulder.

I took a deep breath and nodded. Francis lifted his hand and shouted toward the door. “Okay, Louis, you can bring in the grandfathers.” A second passed and then Louis came in, carrying one of the rocks with the shovel. He dropped it into the hole and then repeated the act until there were four rocks in the hole.

Francis took the birch branch and shook it twice over the rocks, a spray of water pelting down. It burst into a cloud of steam with a sharp hiss and in an instant the temperature and humidity jumped considerably. Louis sat down with his back to the door, facing Francis. He gave a short nod that Francis returned and then Louis reached behind and pulled the flap over the door, blocking the outside light.

The suddenness and depth of the darkness was so intense that it knocked the wind out of me for several seconds. My eyes blinked rapidly, searching for any sort of reference point. It took a few seconds but I soon found the silhouettes of the elders, the distinctive shape of Francis next to me. But when I heard his voice, the quick dance of Cree, the direction from where his words came and the image of his shadow didn’t correlate. My brain, so keen on finding something in the darkness, had generated false images based on where I thought everybody was supposed to be. When I heard Francis speak again, another blasting hiss, and then the sudden red glow of the rocks from the water, I knew I had been completely wrong about where I had been and was now lost.

The heat from the rocks felt like someone had opened an oven, and it knocked me back enough that I bumped my head on the lodge wall. Beads of sweat gathered across my forehead and started to stream down the side of my face, over my eyebrows, and into my eyes. I blinked my eyes in rapid succession, but was unable to differentiate when my eyes were open or closed.

The heat kept rising, a heavy humidity that crept over me, weighing me down. I breathed through my mouth, almost gasping, the hot air reaching into my mouth to scorch the back of my throat and sear my lungs. The pain spread across my chest, my heart striking against my breastbone. I instinctively moved back to escape the heat, but the farther I leaned back the hotter it became. I stopped breathing and a lightness rose up inside of my head. There was a second when I drifted away, but then Francis spoke again, bringing me back.