Kathy Little Bird (2 page)

She’d told me the story though, many times. My father was interned as a prisoner of war. He was an officer on a German U-boat we’d sunk. He was fished out of the water, badly wounded. Mum was a nurse, and he was her patient. She nursed him back to health. They fell in love and married.
But, the way Mum tells it, they came from different worlds, and at war’s end he went back to Europe. He never knew about me, never knew I was born….

Why couldn’t I have a real father in a real way? Why was I stuck with a word I hated—“adopted”? Mum told me over and over that “adopted” meant chosen. But I knew it meant I didn’t belong.

“Daddy Jellet chose us, because he loved us.”

I’d heard that all my life, but I didn’t believe it. And I don’t think she believed it either. That’s why I’d get angry. Mum would take me on her lap then and whisper that she understood. She too was adopted.

Her face would soften in a gentle smile, and I’d hear once more the story of Mrs. Mike, Katherine Mary Flannigan, the person I, like my mum, was named for.

I walked along the road, kicking up dust. It had been sprayed with oil, but not recently, probably because it was the road to the res.

The First Nation Reserve was strictly off limits to me. They weren’t “our kind” either, but a very particular friend of mine lived there. Elk Woman’s government-built house was at the extreme edge of the compound. Outside it looked like all the others; inside there were herb bundles and bones hanging on the walls, and a large moose skull with dried tendons dangling from it. Elk Woman never closed the door and I could see the dark interior and Elk Woman herself, dimly. She had torn off a strand of tendon, which she used as thread. Her needle was a tin key saved from a can of beef and hammered out.

I stayed outside the door and announced myself by singing. Elk Woman liked it when I sang. She particularly liked the Mennonite song that was my favorite too. I threw back my head and sang into the room.

“Is it you, Skayo Little Bird?” She gave me a scrutinizing look as I entered, made her assessment and scowled. “Are you fighting with yourself again?”

“I guess so.”

She pushed a ginger root toward me; there was a small pile of them on the table. She chewed on them for a while herself before spitting them out. I watched her work up a new supply of saliva and moisten the moose tendon again in preparation for rethreading. “What are you making?”

“I had this old horse blanket wasn’t doing nobody any good, so I’m making a jacket out of it.”

I nodded. Everyone made things out of other things. My dresses were stitched from pillowcases with holes in them, and an occasional flour sack in the same condition. “Waste not, want not” had been dinned into me since I was born.

Elk Woman yawned and put her sewing in a basket with an apron destined to become a dishtowel. She stretched, took out her cob pipe, and lit up. I watched as she puffed.

“Can I try?”

Without a word she handed the pipe across to me. It had a well-chewed stem. I went out on the porch to spit the
last of the ginger root before placing the pipe between my teeth.

Elk Woman joined me, sitting on the step beside me, and nodded approval as I inhaled. For a while we passed the pipe back and forth in a companionable manner. “Now you tell me why you come, Little Bird. That stepfather of yours making problems again?”

“I hate him.”

Elk Woman considered this, rocking back and forth communing with herself. Then she said, “Don’t step on his shadow and he won’t step on yours.”

“I hate his shadow too.”

“That’s because you’re at war with yourself. Don’t be at war with yourself, Little Bird.”

“I can’t help it.” I got up. How could I explain to her that I didn’t want to be cured of hating him? I wanted to hate him, so I just said, “I got to be going.” Then I remembered and sat down. Elk Woman looked at me, her question on her face.

“I was going to visit Abram, but I can’t. I’m mad at him.”

“Him too?”

“Yep.”

“You need to make a study of shadows, Little Bird.”

“Why? Are they magic?”

“Everything that is older than time is magic.”

“What kinds of magic do the Cree have?”

“Let’s see.” She blew a smoke ring into space. We sat and watched, and then she blew another. “Well, there is singing. Singing is
older even than speaking. Before there were people, wind sang, thunder sang, grass whistled, owls called, wolves howled, and birds warbled just like you. Come to our ceremonies sometime, and you’ll hear how we listen to the singing world, and sing back.”

“Can anything be sung?”

“Anything.”

“Anyone?”

“Anyone.”

“Even a person?”

“Especially a person.”

“Even me? Can you sing me?”

“I can sing you head to toe, and it will be a true singing. But because it’s true you won’t like it.”

“I don’t care. Sing it anyway.”

I was so excited that I got up and sat on her lap so I could feel the breath of the song as it came out of her.

Elk Woman closed her eyes. She drummed with her fingers on the arms of the chair, at first softly and steadily, then in sudden bursts of hard raps. Her song lay far back in her throat, with lots of sobbing and a rolling, pounding beat. Spurts of angry notes got in the way of a pretty little tune, blocked it off at every turn.

“No, no,” I cried. “That’s not me.” I took a giant breath and began to sing the tune the way it should go. I sang at the top of my voice so as to drown out the cries and shouts that were wrecking it. I took a giant breath.

Elk Woman’s eyes brightened and she sang her version
stubbornly back at me. I jumped off her lap and faced her, so I could outsing her.

And I did. I sang her into the ground. Elk Woman became quiet, and my song rang out, pure and beautiful. It filled the room. That was me, that was the way I should be sung.

When I stopped, Elk Woman examined her pipe and relit it. “You’re right, Little Bird, that’s how you could be, how you were meant to be. But you’re not there yet. Not by a long shot.”

I
LEFT
for choir practice. Officially it was choir practice for the Mennonites. But I had my own place outside the window by the soprano section. We practiced every Wednesday afternoon and Sunday mornings before the service and after Sunday school. That’s how I met Abram. He was the P.K., preacher’s kid. He liked to duck out and miss as many Bible lessons as he could.

By the time I got there, Pentateuch class was over and Early Prophets just begun, because there was Abram throwing his buck knife so the blade hit and shivered in the dirt. Nimety-peg, I was good at it too. “Can I have a turn?” I asked, coming up to him.

He squinted at me, blond hair in his eyes. “I thought you were mad at me.”

“That was yesterday.”

“Praise the Lord.” He said that so many times he didn’t know he was saying it.

“Elk Woman sang me today.”

“She what?”

“You know, sang me. Sang how I am. I’ve got too many yells and ugly notes. But I can cure it with shadows.”

“Shadows? That’s crazy. You shouldn’t put any faith in that stuff. My father says Indian beliefs are nothing but errant superstition.”

“Not when they’re Elk Woman’s beliefs.”

He scoffed at that. “You can’t put an Indian up against an anointed preacher.”

“You can if it’s Elk Woman, she talks to the wind.” I pulled the knife out of the dirt and threw it left-handed. It didn’t stick, but fell over. I tried again, same deal. At home I got my knuckles slapped whenever I used my left hand. They were changing me into a right-handed person. I wondered who this person who didn’t have a temper and who did everything with her right hand would be. I wondered if I’d like her. “Are those your books?” I asked. There were two of them lying on the ground. “Hymnbooks?” I picked them up and saw right away they weren’t.

“They’re Bibles. One is the regular Bible and the other is the version they hand out to us kids.”

“What’s the difference?”

“One’s got all the juicy stuff deleted out of it. So I’m looking up those parts they left out.”

“Is it worth going to all that trouble?”

“You better believe it.”

“If you do things like that, Abram, how do you ever expect to receive the call?”

“I don’t. I gave up on it.” He said this in a blustery way,
but I could tell he was worried because he added an explanation. “Giving testimony, having everybody pray over me…no way I’m going to do that.”

I considered this. “I suppose you have to be super good before you receive an altar call.”

Abram nodded. “For a while I made an effort, but in one of my father’s sermons it slipped out that holy scripture contains six hundred and thirteen commandments. That’s when I gave up.”

“Well, if you’re not going to believe in the Mennonite way—try Elk Woman’s and trade shadows with me.”

He hesitated. “Do you know how to do it?”

“I know you have to believe.”

“What exactly?”

“That’s easy, that when our shadows blend together we are made one. Kind of like blood brothers, only we don’t have to cut ourselves.”

“So let’s do it. My shadow is right here, stretched out on the pavement.”

“Don’t move!” In three hops I was beside him; hopping gave it more emphasis, more importance. “Watch this!” With a final leap I landed almost on top of him and our shadows merged. “Now SING!”

“That isn’t Indian,” he objected, recognizing it.

“I haven’t finished.” I closed my eyes. “I call on the spirit
of all things, flowers, plants, animals, mountains, and waters to witness.” I peered through my lashes and lo and behold—a spinning world of dazzling colors, its brightness so intense it blinded me.

I seized Abram’s arm. “Look at the sun with your eyes closed.”

“Make up your mind, do I close my eyes or look at the sun?”

“Both. Quick, while the magic is jiggling around. Do you see it? A bright wheel of pure light and splashes of color. Do you, Abram?”

“Praise the Lord,” he said.

The rapture increased and the brightness. The Great Manitou by this token acknowledged our two shadows as one. I began to dance, and Abram, throwing his arms wide, started singing psalms.

A deep, resonant strain of music flowed from the magic wheel, overpowering his voice. It was a second before I realized it came from the church.

The peal of the organ and the thunder of the choir reached us through the open window. I knew the routine by heart. The congregation knelt for the prayers and stood for the blessing. They were standing now.

Worship service was over and the girls were lining up on their side of the chapel. I stood straight and prepared to sing. Nothing could compare with singing, not even Abram, or trading shadows, or the scooter I saw in the hardware store window. Sounds came together in my head, wonderful, soaring, pulling me out of myself. The sound was often there
even when I was quiet, and then I just listened to it. But it was best when I threw back my head and let the melody into the world, carrying me with it.

I lived for this hour of choir practice twice weekly. It didn’t matter to me that I stood outside. The only thing that mattered was the music.

T
IME
collided, years of it, and the spring I was fifteen Mum wasn’t well. The chores I had assisted at were now mainly my responsibility. Home schooling was pretty much a thing of the past, although we made a pretense of it. Mum still went over the papers I wrote, correcting spelling and punctuation. She claimed I was a wild speller. I put in all the letters, but not always in the right order. I was better at mathematics, but Mum was a whiz. She had been at the top of her class in nursing school. While she told me stories of the hospital, my hands were busy with mason jars, paraffin tops, and the wide rubber ring that went around the rims.

Sometimes it was fun. I liked straining blackberries though muslin. Once they were sugared, the boys couldn’t wait for it to turn into preserves, but pestered me for a taste.

Jason at thirteen took after Mum; he always asked if he could have some. Morrie didn’t ask, he took. If he was caught, he lied. If the lie was found out, he sulked.

Morrie was a Jellet. He got his handsome Cree looks from Mum, but he was mostly Jellet. He had some good traits, though. When he took things from the larder, he always shared with Jason. And when I was at my wits’ end what to do about him, he’d bring me presents of stuff he’d pinched.

My work didn’t end with straining blackberries. There was the wash to do and meals to help with. The wash was done on a waffle scrub board with lumps of homemade carbolic soap. The boys tended the goat and pulled weeds in the vegetable garden. Jellet slept all day and after supper went off to the pub. He kept telling Jason it would pass to him some day, just as Jellet himself had inherited it from his father. The Eight Bells gave him a chance to get away. I don’t think he was fond of any of us, not even Mum, because, as he said over and over, she’d saddled him with us kids. The pub, that’s where his life was.