Wild Sorrow (19 page)

Sevenguns smiled. “You the one talk good, now.” He got up and added some sugar to his coffee and stirred it in. He scooped another spoon of sugar and held it up with a questioning expression.

“No, thanks. This is good like it is.”

“Those FBI, they talk Rule Abeyta three time. Also Sica Blue Cloud, go her house two time. She is lot more feeble than me, but still they go there and go back a next time.”

I looked out the door at the falling snow, then back at Sevenguns. “I have been hearing a lot of stories about the school lately. You told me about being hungry there, and hunting and fishing for the staff. Others have told me about their experiences, too. I would like to know more about the kinds of things that happened at San Pedro de Arbués Indian School.”

“That one get herself killed, now everybody want to know about that place. Another day, nobody want to know about it.”

Again, I waited quietly, glancing between my coffee and the churchyard outside the door.

“You want me to talk about that time, the most sad time my life. You can see I have lot of more thing to be happy about, we can talk about them.” He looked directly at me. “I wonder why you want to know those sad story.”

I raised my eyes to meet his. “I don't know. I feel like I was drawn right into the story of that place myself, when I had to take refuge there to survive that storm.”

He drank the last of his coffee and set the mug down. “It is the same for the children who grew up there. They are forced to be there, so they take refuge in that place so they can survive. Whatever kind of refuge they can find. Those thing that happen there leave us a lot of trouble and pain, even today. Some pain never get heal or feel much better, but we learn how to bring balance when we seek at least that same much joy.”

Just then, the church bell rang, a loud, booming peal that pierced the darkness. The doors to the church opened, and I saw a square of light stretch across the churchyard like a shadow in reverse.

I turned to Sevenguns. “It's time for me to go,” I said, handing him my mug. “Thank you so much for the coffee.”

“Did you catch you a big cat?” he asked, taking the cup.

“Not yet.”

 

As I stood at the gate to the churchyard wall, I watched Sister Florinda Maez and a small, dark-haired boy in a lace collar and black robe emerge from the chapel and stand beside the door in reception. A dozen or so people came out and bid the sister good-bye. Sica Blue Cloud was the last parishioner to come out of the church, limping as she did so, leaning on her nephew Eloy's arm. They stopped to shake the sister's hand and to exchange the compliments of the day. Eloy glanced out into the churchyard as the two women continued to talk, then noticed me, wrapped in my blanket. He leaned his head forward as if he could not make me out, then came down the short path toward the gate. Seeing me, he chuckled a little as he said, “Jamaica? I thought that was you. What are you doing here?”

“I'm waiting on Momma Anna. Why?”

He flagged a hand. “Oh, of course you are. Of course you are. I apologize. I was just surprised to see you on this dark, cold winter morning.”

By this time, Sica had hobbled up to her nephew. She smiled. “Oh, Jamaica, I am so happy I see you. The Holy Family, they are now at my house, stay with me. You must come visit them.”

“Yes, I'll have to bring an offering—”

“But one of our important guest,” she frowned, “they are not there.”

I started to speak, but before I could say a word, Sister Florinda Maez hurried toward us with a hand in the air, her long black tunic and scapular billowing behind her, dusting a path in the snow. “Miss Wild,” she said, “Mrs. Santana is waiting inside the sanctuary. She asked me to tell you that she would like a moment with you.”

When I stepped into the tiny chapel, the flickering flames of candles created firefly silhouettes on the whitewashed adobe walls. Only a few gas lamps hung from the vigas in the ceiling, and the corners were black, in deep shadow. I was aware of the stark contrast between light and darkness in the sanctuary, a place where the most sacred spiritual elements of two very vivid and varying cultures had fused into a host of mythic and iconic hybrids. Momma Anna stood before a bulto at the back of the nave, just a few feet from the entrance. She appeared to be speaking to it as she might a living man. I approached slowly, my blanket over my head as was the custom. My mentor looked up and nodded at me. “This my daughter,” she said to the bulto. She held her open palm in the direction of the statue and said to me, “This San Quarai. Patron saint, Tanoah Pueblo.”

“How do you do?”

Momma Anna frowned at me. “He
do
just fine. Him not patron saint if not do fine. You listen, not talk.” She pointed at me to enforce this last, then walked away toward the doorway of the church, leaving me in the presence of the bulto.

I looked at San Quarai, who was carved and polished from a thick cedar log, with three distinct waves of color graining through the wood: blond, red, and gray. He was close to three feet tall. His body was bent, curving according to the naturally beautiful shape of the cedar limb from which he was made, making him appear to be leaning to one side in a dancelike pose of rapture. He wore a hooded cloak and held his hands up high in front of him as if to welcome the sun or the moon. He had a broad, smiling face, a small, pointy beard, a thick, protruding brow, and he looked like a Spaniard.

I listened for any message San Quarai might have for me, but all I could hear was the hissing of a nearby candle with a greasy wick. Just in case, I nodded my head slightly to the bulto to show my respect, and then I went to join my medicine teacher.

At the entry, Sister Florinda had dismissed her choirboy and was folding his robe and collar over her arm. Momma Anna was intently watching the rooftops of the main structure of the pueblo. The village priests had climbed from level to level on aspen-pole ladders up to the highest place along the back wall. They were wrapped in white blankets and stood stark against the dark western horizon. The brief snowfall was over. The world was silent, hushed by the newly fallen white blanket.

“The cacique is about to mark the solstice,” the sister said.

As if on cue, one of the priests began to call a singsong chant. Residents of the small, central part of the village opened their doors and came out of their houses onto the snow-covered, packed-earth plaza. They turned to the east and watched the light from behind the shadowy mountains begin to appear over snow-capped peaks.

I had seen a similar observance of the sunrise take place in the summer at the solstice. Of the two, the winter practice was more significant at this pueblo. The cacique, or town chief, created the calendar for ceremonies for the entire year based on the winter solstice. The medicine societies then took the cue from that calendar as to when they could perform important rituals and dances. The rhythms of the tribe were set by this day, the moment of sunrise, and the careful calculations done by the cacique and the leaders of the medicine societies, the tribal priests.

“We go now,” Momma Anna said. She started down the path to the gate in the churchyard wall.

“I'll be right there,” I called after her. I turned to Sister Florinda. “Was the priest here for mass this morning?”

“No. He was at Taos Pueblo conducting the morning mass there.”

“So, do you give communion when the priest is not here?”

“Yes.” Sister Florinda smiled. “The priest consecrates the Eucharist, and I then deliver it to the parishioners.”

“Can you hear confession also, with some predispensation from the priest?”

“No, not technically speaking, although sometimes one of the Tanoah will unburden himself to me and perhaps I can offer some counsel. But I cannot give absolution. And confession is not complete without contrition and absolution.”

Momma Anna stood at the churchyard gate waiting for me. “Come,” she barked, waving her hand for me to come.

“I better go, Sister,” I said. “Just one more thing: did you, by chance, take communion to Cassie Morgan sometimes? Was she involved with this church, maybe through her work at the Indian school?”

For an instant, Sister Florinda seemed to melt inside her habit, her shoulders softening from their square, upright placement, her face drooping, revealing a slight hint of suffering. But then she recovered, speaking in a clipped voice, “I am sure that you are aware that I cannot answer that.”

“Okay, I understand. I was just wondering. Thank you for answering my other questions. I was curious about how all this worked, you being here without a priest.”

“You are full of questions, Miss Wild. We have not uttered two statements between us, it has all been questions. Did you ever hear that curiosity killed the cat?”

 

 

Momma Anna and I hurried to the home of her mother, Grandma Bird Woman Lujan, an elder whose age was reputed to be nearing the century mark. No one was sure about either the year or the day of her birthday, because at the time she was born, birth certificates were not issued for Indian babies on the reservation. She still lived in the old part of the pueblo and was cared for by her two daughters, Momma Anna and her sister, from day to day. The men in the family—old and young—offered help by providing firewood and hunting for meat for their beloved matriarch.

When we arrived at Grandma Bird's house, we went in through the turquoise-washed door and found Grandma sitting on a bench by the fire in the dark. She had risen alone this morning and dressed herself. She was wrapped in a colorful wool blanket, and her long silver hair was gathered into one loose braid down her back. I went to greet her, taking her slender brown hand tenderly as I made a slight bow. “You take me,” she said.

I helped her stand up.

She pointed at a folded blanket on the nearby bed. “Take,” she said.

I picked up the blanket, and Grandma Bird took hold of my arm and clenched it tightly for support. Momma Anna made for the door and held it open. I helped Grandma Bird out the door without knowing where we were going. Anna led us back the way we had come, to the center of the plaza, walking slowly and quietly in front of the thick brown adobe walls of the homes facing onto the square. On we went, past the churchyard and right up to the snow-covered banks of the río that spilled down the slopes of Sacred Mountain and gave the village of Tanoah Pueblo life. All the members of the tribe who had come out to observe the sunrise were now standing in the snow at the river's edge, some of them on each bank. They were clustered in family groups, clutching babies and the hands of small children, quieting adolescents; and many had helped elders to the water's edge just as Momma Anna and I had. Even as we approached, more Tanoah came from their houses toward the river from both sides of the pueblo—individuals, couples, and whole families.

Grandma Bird had shuffled slowly along beside me, holding on to me for support as we came across the plaza. But when we got to the riverbank, she suddenly let go of my arm. She slipped the blanket off of her shoulders and handed it to me. Then, to my surprise, she slipped off her dress, under which she wore nothing. Her body was tiny, brown, and shriveled. Her spine was slightly bent, but there was a lean, sinewy strength to her that seemed to defy age. Her small breasts had shriveled to almost nothing, and her belly made the shape of an empty spoon. Grandma Bird grabbed my arm again and kicked off her moccasinlike boots, then let go and walked right through the snow and into the río at a place where fast-flowing, frigid water surfaced between large floes of ice. Up and down the riverbank, the elders went in first, wherever there was a break in the frozen canopy.

Next, Momma Anna followed suit, heaping her blanket in my arms on top of Grandma Bird's spare blanket and the one she'd been wearing, creating a mound that I had to stretch my neck to look around because I could not see over it. My medicine teacher pulled her dress over her head, then wriggled out of the leggings and undershirt she wore beneath, and into the water she went.

All along the banks of the río, the other Tanoah men and women of her age did the same. They splashed the water over their bodies without complaint, wetting all of their exposed skin with the freezing fluid. And down the line it went, through the generations. Family members took turns holding one another's things as they ritually bathed in the life-giving water that moved through the center of their world. Adults came out and adolescents went in. Then the young children, some holding the hands of their toddler siblings. Finally, parents dipped naked, crying babies into the icy water.

First to go in, Grandma Bird Woman had also been first to come out and up the banks in the snow. She grabbed at the heap of things I was holding, pulling Anna's blanket off the top and throwing it over my head, finally getting to the spare, folded blanket at the bottom that she'd had me bring. When I uncovered my face, I saw the old woman wrapping this toga-style around her chest, shivering as she tucked one corner of the blanket in at the top to hold it in place. She bent over and pulled on her moccasins, then raised up and grabbed the blanket she'd worn for a wrap, which she threw around her shoulders. She took her braid in her two hands and squeezed the water out.

By this time, Anna was dressing. No one had spoken a word, not to me, nor to one another. The sound of toddlers shrieking and babies crying at the shock of the cold water had been the only human sounds. One by one, the Tanoah emerged from their icy baths and wrapped or dressed on the banks.

Grandma Bird faced the east, the sun struggling to rise over the mountains while a mass of thick clouds tried to push it down. Grandma closed her eyes and began to move her lips almost silently in prayer, her voice only a breath, a mere whisper. I watched as the others did the same, up and down the banks of the río. The sun did climb, but it slipped behind the deck of clouds, and so it offered little light. Grandma Bird muttered something aloud in Tiwa, then grabbed my arm and turned back toward her house as if to say,
Let's go.