Vanishing Acts

  "What's it like?"

  "A lot of work. You have to pay the groom's family back for the robes, with plaques that you weave and food you prepare." Ruthann grins. "Four days before my wedding, I went to live with my mother-in-law. I fasted, but I had to cook for her and her family--a test, you know, to see if you're worthy of her son, even though I'd been married to him by law for three years already. There's a tradition that the groom's paternal aunts come over and throw mud at the groom's maternal aunts, while each side complains about the bride and the groom, but it's all a big joke, like those crazy bachelor parties pahanas have. And then, on the day of, I put on one of the white robes Eldin's uncles had made me. It was beautiful--there were tassels hanging down, each one smaller than the next, like the canes I would use as I got older, getting closer and closer to the earth until my forehead touched it."

  "What's the second robe for?"

  "You wear it the day you die. You stand on the edge of the Grand Canyon, spread out the robe, step onto it, and rise into the sky as a cloud." Ruthann looks down at her left hand, on which she still wears a gold band. "You pahanas have all these rehearsals for your wedding day ... to us, the wedding day is the rehearsal for the rest of our lives."

  "When did Eldin die?" I ask.

  "In the middle of a drought, in 1989." Ruthann shakes her head. "I think the spirits picked him on purpose, someone larger than life, because they knew he'd be able to bring us rain. On the night he came back, I stood outside this very house," she says. "I tilted back my head and I opened my mouth and I tried to swallow as much of him as I could."

  I stare at the smoke, curling out of the chimney of the house. "Do you know who lives here now?" I ask.

  "Not us," she says, and she turns and starts walking slowly up the path.

  Greta and I sit at the edge of Second Mesa as the sun goes down. Dear Mami, I write on the back of a grocery bag.

  Do you know that when you are in elementary school, every teacher celebrates Mother's Day? And because they all felt bad for me, I didn't have to make the bath salts or the woven paper basket or the card.

  Do you know that the first time I went to buy a bra, I waited in the lingerie department until I saw a woman walk in with a little girl, and I asked her to help me?

  Do you know that when I was ten, I tried to be Catholic, so I could light a candle to you that you'd see from Heaven?

  Do you know that I used to wish I'd die, so I could meet you?

  I glance up, staring out at the pancake landscape in the distance. For someone who can't remember very much, there seems to be a lot I can't forget.

  I know you're sorry, I write. I just don't know if that's good enough.

  When I put down the pencil, it rolls over the edge of the cliff. Even in this utter quiet, I can hear my mother apologizing for her actions; I can hear my father justifying his. You would think it would be simpler, having them both in close proximity, but instead it makes it easier for them to tear me apart. They are both pleading for my vote; so loud that I can hardly make up my own mind.

  Again.

  I love my father, and I know that he was right to take me. But I am a mother, and I can't imagine having my child stolen away. The problem is that this isn't a case of either/or.

  My mother and father are both right.

  And at the same time, they were both wrong.

  When Ruthann walks up behind me, I nearly jump out of my skin. "You scared me," I say.

  She looks tired, and lowers herself slowly to the ground. "I used to come here a lot," she says. "When I needed to think."

  I draw up my knees. "What are you thinking about now?"

  "What it feels like to come home," Ruthann says, turning to the San Francisco peaks in the distance. "I'm glad you bullied me into bringing you."

  I grin. "Thanks. I think."

  She shields her eyes against the red glare of the sunset. "What are you thinking about?" she asks.

  I stand up and tear the paper into pieces. "The same thing," I say, and together we watch the wind take them away.

  Before dawn the next morning, the plaza is already crowded with people. Some sit on metal folding chairs, others crouch on the roofs of the houses. Ruthann follows Wilma to a spot at the edge of the square, under the overhang of a building. There is no sun yet, but this dance will go on all day; and by then, it will be scorching.

  Sophie is quiet. Perched on my hip, she rubs her eyes. She looks at the golden eagle still tethered to one roof, which beats its wings every few minutes, and sometimes cries.

  When the sun is a fist on the horizon, the katsinas arrive in a single file, up from the kivas where they have been preparing. They carry armloads of gifts, which they pile in the plaza. Because it didn't rain last night, they have not been allowed to drink this morning, and they will not, no matter how hot it gets.

  There are almost fifty of them--Hoote katsinas, I am told--all dressed alike. They wear white skirts with red sashes, and loincloths with different patterns. Their arms are decorated with cuffs, their chests are bare. On their left ankles are bells; on the right, rattles. They hold rattles in their right hands, and juniper--womapi--in the left. A necklace with a shell hangs down between each set of shoulder blades; a foxtail swishes between every pair of legs. Their bodies are covered with red ochre paint and a dusting of cornmeal, but the most imposing part of their costumes are the masks--a crown of feathers spiking up from the back of an enormous black wooden head, dog's snout, bared teeth, bug-eyes.

  Sophie buries her face in my neck, as they begin to chant. The song is deep, guttural, building to a crescendo. The katsinas turn to the beat of the music in pairs as an old man weaves between them, sprinkling cornmeal and urging them to dance harder.

  Ruthann pats Sophie on the back. "Ssh, Siwa," she says. "They're not here to hurt you. They keep you safe."

  When they stop dancing an hour or so later, they jangle toward the heaps of gifts they've carried up from the kivas. They toss baked loaves of bread to the people sitting on the roofs. They pass out watermelons and grapes, popcorn balls, peaches. They hand out bowls of fruit, squash, corn, Little Debbie cakes. Wilma, a recent widow, is given one of the biggest baskets.

  Finally, they pass out presents to the children. For the boys, there are bows and arrows wrapped with cattails and cornstalks. For the girls, katsina dolls tied with boughs of juniper. One dancer, perspiration pouring down his arms and sides, sweeps across the plaza to the spot where we are sitting. He holds two katsina dolls, their painted faces glazed by the sun. He hands one to Wilma's daughter, and then kneels in front of Sophie. She shrinks away, cowed by the vivid flecks of his mask and the clean sharp smell of his sweat. He shakes his carved head, and after a moment her fingers close around the doll.

  The agility with which this particular katsina moves, and the long lines of his body, are familiar. I marvel at his footwork and wonder if, underneath the mask, this might not be Derek, the hoop dancer we met in Phoenix, Ruthann's nephew.

  "Isn't that--"

  "No, it's not," Ruthann says. "Not today."

  The katsinas, ready for a short break, split into two lines that fold back upon each other and march out of the plaza, down the mesa in a long, undulating line toward the kiva. The clouds seem to follow them.

  Ruthann reaches for Sophie, who is holding her new doll tight. She rests her cheek to the crown of my daughter's head and watches the katsinas go. "Good-bye," she says.

  The next morning when I wake up, Ruthann is gone and Sophie is still fast asleep beside Greta. I tiptoe outside in time to see a man climb to the roof where the golden eagle is tied, watching the ceremonies. The bird beats its wings, but a tether around its foot keeps it from flying away. The man talks softly to the bird as he moves closer, finally wrapping the eagle in a blanket.

  When a woman comes out of the house beside me, I turn to her, alarmed. "Is he trying to steal the bird?" I ask. "Should we do something?"

  She shakes her head. "That eagle, Talatawi, he's been
watching us since May, to see that we've done all the ceremonies well. Now it's time for him to go." She tells me that her son was the one who captured Talatawi, as his father lowered him by rope down a cliff to an eagle's nest. That the eagle's name means Song to the Rising Sun; and that since they've named it, the bird is a member of their family.

  I wait for her husband to untie the bird, to see it fly off. But as I watch, the man wraps the blanket more tightly around the eagle. He holds it while the bird fights to breathe, and finally it goes limp. "He's killing it?"

  The woman wipes her eyes. The eagle, she tells me, is smothered in cornmeal. All of his feathers will be removed except for a few, to be used in pahos and ceremonial objects that will bless the people of Sipaulovi. Talatawi's body will be buried with gifts from the katsinas, and will journey to tell the spirits that the Hopi deserve rain. "It's all for good," she says, her voice shaking, "but that doesn't make it any easier to let go."

  Suddenly, Wilma slams out of the screen door. "Have you seen her?" she asks.

  "Who?"

  "Ruthann. She's gone missing."

  Knowing Ruthann, she's gone to raid the junk piles that dot the reservation. Yesterday, as we were hiking up toward Sipaulovi, she told me that the Hopi believe when something's wrecked or used up, it has to be given back to the earth, which is why trash is left on the ground and garbage in a heap. Eventually, after you die, you'll get back whatever it is that was broken.

  At the time, I'd wondered if this held true for hearts.

  "I'm sure she's fine," I tell Wilma. "She'll be back before you know it."

  But Wilma wrings her hands. "What if she walked too far, and couldn't make it home? I don't know how much strength she's got."

  "Ruthann? She could probably win an Ironman competition."

  "But that was before the chemotherapy."

  "The what?"

  Wilma tells me that when Ruthann found out, she went to see a native healer. But it had spread too far too fast, and she turned to traditional medicine. She told Wilma that I've been driving her to the hospital for her appointments. But I have never taken Ruthann to any doctor; she has never even mentioned having cancer.

  On the roof behind us, the man sings a prayer that's striped with grief, and rocks the body of Talatawi in his arms like an infant.

  "Wilma," I say, "I want you to call the police."

  I don't want anyone coming with me--namely, a tribal police escort--so I surreptitiously scent Greta off a shirt in Ruthann's suitcase. The bloodhound immediately begins to strain at her leash, even before I give the command. With Wilma talking to the cops and Derek babysitting for Sophie and his own little sister, Greta and I sneak away unnoticed.

  We move across yellowed ground split by deep fissures; we step gingerly over slabs of stone that have tumbled from the crests of the mesas. In some places it is easier than others--in the soft layer of dust that coats the earth, there will be a footprint; some of the vegetation has been kicked aside, or crushed. In other places, the only trace left behind of Ruthann is a thread of her scent.

  There are any number of dangers that might befall Ruthann out here--dehydration, sunstroke, snakes, desperation. It is terrifying to think that her recovery might sit squarely in my hands, and at the same time, there is a part of me that's almost relieved to be doing this sort of work again. If I'm actively looking for someone, it must mean that I'm no longer the one who is lost.

  Suddenly Greta stops hard and alerts. She lopes off at a run, as I try to dodge boulders and juniper bushes in an effort to keep up. She turns onto a rutted road made for four-wheel-drive vehicles, and leads me into the bowl of a small canyon.

  We are ringed by sheer rock walls on three sides. Greta edges closer to the cliffs, pushing her nose along the cracked earth. My boots kick over shards of corrugated pottery and broken arrowheads and owl pellets. On the facings of the rock are markings: spirals, sunbursts, snakes, full moons, concentric circles. I trail my fingers over figures with spears and bighorn sheep; over boys holding what looks like a flower over their heads and girls trying to snatch them away; over twins connected by a wavy umbilicus. One entire wall is like a newspaper--hundreds of drawings densely packed into the space. It is amazing how much of the story I can understand, although these must have been hammered into place a thousand years ago.

  I am distracted by one symbol: a stick figure that could only be a parent, holding the hand of what could only be a child.

  "Ruthann!" I call out, and I think I hear an answer.

  Greta sits at the edge of a narrow crevice, whining as her paws scrabble for purchase. "Stay," I command, and I take hold of the edges and hoist myself up to the thin ledge six feet off the ground. From here, I can see another foothold; I start to climb.

  It is when I've worked myself deep into the split of the rock, too far in and too high up to see Greta anymore, that I notice the petroglyph. This artist went to great pains to show this was a woman--she has breasts, and loose hair. She is pointed upside down, and her head is separated from her body by a long, wavy line. On the facing rock are a series of notches, precisely cut. I realize it is a calendar; meant for a solstice. On a particular day, the sun will hit this just right; and a line of light will slice the neck of the falling woman.

  A sacrifice.

  A rain of pebbles from overhead makes me glance up in time to see Ruthann step onto the lip of the cliff, another fifteen feet above me. Her body is wrapped tight in a pure white robe.

  "Ruthann!" I shout, my voice caroming off the rock walls, an obscenity.

  She looks down at me. Across the distance, our eyes meet.

  "Ruthann, don't," I whisper, but she shakes her head.

  I'm sorry.

  In that half-second, I think about Wilma and Derek and me, all the people who do not want to be left behind, who think we know what is best for her. I think about the doctors and the medicines Ruthann lied about taking. I think about how I could talk her down from that ledge like I have talked down a dozen potential suicide victims. Yet the right thing to do, here, is subjective. Ruthann's family, who wants her alive, will not be the one to lose hair from drugs, to have surgery to remove her breast, to die by degrees. It is easy to say that Ruthann should come down from that cliff, unless you are Ruthann.

  I know better than anyone what it feels like to have someone else make choices for you, when you deserve to be making them yourself.

  I look at Ruthann, and very slowly, I nod.

  She smiles at me, and so I am her witness--as she unwraps the wedding robe from her narrow shoulders and holds it across her back like the wide wings of a hawk. As she steps off the edge of the cliff and rises to the Spirit World. As the owls bear her body to the broken ground.

  As soon as I can get a satellite signal, I call the tribal police and tell them where they can find Ruthann's body. I let Greta off her leash and toss her the stuffed moose, her reward for making a find.

  I won't tell anyone what I saw. I won't tell them that I had a chance to stop her. Instead, I will say that this is how Greta and I found Ruthann. I will tell the police that I must have been minutes too late.

  In fact, I got there just in time.

  I pick up my cell phone again, and dial another number. "Please come get me," I say, when he answers, and it takes me a while to find the rest of the words I need--where I am, where he is, how long it will take to reach me.

  Yesterday morning, before the Home Dance, when the golden eagle was still on the roof waiting for the katsinas, another eagle arrived. The two birds spent the afternoon in quiet company. Ruthann said sometimes that will happen: the eagle's mother visits. And at the end of the day, she flies off, leaving her son behind to do what he has to do.

  I wonder if the mother eagle will come back to the village now, and see that her offspring is missing. I think maybe she won't. I think maybe she knows to look for him in better places.

  Louise Masawistiwa arrives at Sipaulovi that evening. Dressed in a business suit, with her t
hick black hair chopped into a trendy bob, she could not look more different from her mother if she tried.

  She is bent over Wilma's kitchen table, her hands wrapped around a mug of tea, when I meet her. Her eyes are red; her features are Ruthann's. "You must be the one who found her at Tawaki," she says.

  I have since learned that Ruthann committed suicide at a special site, one with petroglyphs dating back to 750 B.C. No one is allowed there without an archaeological permit, and if you walk along the basin opposite the cliffs, you will eventually wind up in Walnut Canyon, and the cliff dwellings. "I'm so sorry," I tell Louise.

  "She never wanted to get treatment. She only said she would because I argued with her about it. I argued with her about everything."

  Louise reaches for a paper napkin from a holder in the center of the table and wipes her eyes, blows her nose. "They found a lump in her breast four months ago. They did surgery that same week. It was a pretty aggressive tumor, but the doctors thought that maybe with some chemo and radiation, they'd be able to keep it under control. I probably could have told them right then and there that no one could ever keep my mother under control."

  "I think," I say carefully, "that Ruthann knew what she wanted."

  Louise stares down at the checkered plastic tablecloth. A handful of pennies are scattered on the red squares, like a makeshift checkerboard. She picks a few up, curls her fist around them. "My mother taught me how to count coins," she says quietly. "I couldn't get it right for the longest time. I thought a dime was a penny, because it was smaller. But my mother wouldn't give up. She told me that if I was going to understand anything in this world, it ought to be change." Louise wipes at her eyes. "I'm sorry. It's just ... it's crazy, isn't it, the way we always say that children belong to their parents, when it's really the other way around?"

  I suddenly remember being very little and being embraced by my father. I would try to put my arms around my father's waist, hug him back. I could never reach the whole way around the equator of his body; although I'd squeeze hard, he was that much larger than life. Then one day, I could do it. I held him, instead of him holding me, and all I wanted at that moment was to have it back the other way.