"Sky doesn't got a ceremonial name," I told Mary.
"Oh, shit," Mary said. "Really?"
Mary told us to wait. She galloped up the staircase at a record, breakneck speed. She returned to us with a handful of necklaces, sacred corn beads in navy blue and blood red and black.
"Where'd you get those?" I asked, suspicious.
"Ask no questions and I'll tell no lies. Go get the peyote rattle."
I went into the entry hall and found Grandma's peyote rattle on the eastern shelf. It didn't look much like a rattle proper, just a feathered stick with a little drum on the end. I brought it back to Mary, but she didn't take it from me. She surprised me when she started singing a peyote song.
I'm gonna be honest with you: Neither Mary nor I could sing for shit. Our mom had been a damn good singer, but then she'd also been the black sheep of the family. Mary's voice was reedy and nasal; I wanted to cover my ears. Sky showed no signs of unease. He smiled kindly, because he was crazy enough to smile at attempted murderers and even forgive the real ones.
"Dombina so'winna," Mary sang. "Kaiva so'winna."
She put the corn bead necklaces around Sky's neck. She made me shake the peyote rattle every time she removed one. Sometimes she rearranged the beads on the strings, or sometimes she double-looped the necklaces. I had no idea what she was doing. Poor Sky looked as hapless as that deer we'd rescued on the highway, but there's one thing I have to say in Mary's favor: She was gentle. She handled the necklaces like Sky weighed the same as a feather, with all the consistency of fresh glass. She never touched the scars on his throat, not with her long and skinny fingers, not with her sharp and painted nails; not even by accident. I noticed Sky's eyes lingering on those nails. I wondered whether their proximity evoked unwanted memories. Sky looked at Mary like he was going to understand her, this girl who wanted to take his only parent away, this girl who only existed because his mom's murderer existed. And how did he see this girl? As Dad's daughter? As my sister? I should have known that the answer was neither. When Sky looked at you, he didn't let his memories color his judgment. He looked at you and he saw you for the very first time. It was like being reborn.
"Nuuttuhai," Mary said. "How's that for a ceremonial name?"
I looked at her. "You're asking me?"
"No, I'm asking the rocking chair."
I looked at Sky. "Nuuttuhai means Sweet-Talker."
Sky broke into a bashful grin. Sky rolled his shoulders in a compliant shrug. I felt a surge of affection for Mary I can't really explain. Apparently Mary was just as aware of Sky's voice as I was.
"How did you know to do all that?" I asked Mary. "The singing and stuff?"
"Pulled it out of my ass," Mary said. "Let's eat! I'm starving!"
That night Caleb fried okra for dinner. Grandma didn't eat with us because she was entertaining a friend, an elderly black woman with whom she was suspiciously touchy. Sky's fever receded a little, but not enough that either one of us felt comfortable going back outside. We holed ourselves up in the basement, soaking in the humid heat from the steam boiler. I didn't even mind when Mary came with us. That was a first.
"Okay," Mary said to Sky. "But which video game's your favorite?"
Sky took my pencil and my sketchbook. Mary took the other pencil stub. Sky found a page crowded with unfinished scribbles. He wrote, "The Krion Conquest," at the bottom.
"I've never even heard of that title," Mary said. "You're not one of those weirdos who haunts the super obscure 99¢ bin at GameStop, are you?"
Sky raised his hand in an oath to the contrary. It wasn't a convincing one.
"Video games are stupid," I said.
Sky gave me a patient look. Mary pretended she was gonna stuff me in the boiler.
"I like Ivan Aivazovsky," I said. "All he paints are oceans. He's so freaking awesome."
Draw an ocean! Sky said, shoving my sketchbook at me.
It was rare that I drew the ocean. Except for Sky, I seldom drew the things I loved; if I messed them up I'd never forgive myself. I took the pencil from his hand and sketched two lines. I sketched a circle. I felt the saltwater filling the basement, filling the space between my temples with a giddy dizziness.
Something hard and spongy smacked me across the face. I started. I looked down at my sketchbook. Mary had scribbled a phallus in the margin.
"You don't even like those!" I protested.
"No, but you do! Merry Christmas," Mary said.
Grumbling, I went upstairs to get popcorn; both Mary and Sky were in the mood for it. As soon as I climbed up into the alcove I ran into Caleb. He was talking on a handheld phone, which surprised me. I'd never seen a regular phone in person, let alone a handheld one.
"Ah, damn," Caleb complained, stuffing it into his jacket. "No signal. Dunno if it's the snow or the sticks."
I dragged my feet awkwardly on the floor. "You okay?"
"HEY! WHY WOULDN'T I BE?"
"You're yelling again," I informed him, angry.
Caleb patted his front pockets; but whatever he was looking for, he didn't find it. His face went red with rage. I thought he was kind of like a boil, swelling and swelling until you lanced it and pus exploded everywhere. I shielded myself preemptively.
"Water ya doing?" Caleb demanded.
"Water?" I repeated, dumbfounded.
"You don't speak English now?" Caleb said.
I'd forgotten the popcorn. I shuffled past him and into the kitchenette. It was two steps away, and it didn't have a door. I stared at the engraving of Sacajawea over the crude stove. Caleb noticed.
"Regular ol' Indian princess, that Sacajawea," Caleb said.
I peeked at him, trying to discern whether he knew we were descended from her. His bloody, ornery face betrayed nothing. His aura was bright blue on one side, pale gray on the other; exactly like his eyes, just flipped in the other direction.
"How come you're always hurt?" I asked him.
He narrowed his eyes at me. "That's nunnaya business."
"You're my family," I said.
"What's that mean? The blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb!"
"Forget it," I said, frustrated, confused.
I found a bag of popped blue corn on a shelf above thyme and sage. I tucked it under my arm. Caleb stopped me before I could head back down the stairs.
"My kid wants to end visitation with me," he said.
My shoulders sagged. "I'm sorry."
"People like you an' me," Caleb said. "Maybe we're not meant to make our own families."
I raised my head. "Whaddo you mean?"
He looked at me. He looked at me and the blues and grays of his eyes unwound in threads. The blacks of his pupils pulled me into them, a cosmic abyss. The threads tangled themselves across the darkness like a tree growing in the wrong direction. The blue strings pulsed inside the gray ones, curling closed in ultraviolet knots. The gray strings burst to life in cool evergreen, the ultraviolet knots exploding in white clouds. The limbs of the tree faded slowly, slowly, and the dust from the white clouds spread farther apart, breaking off in clumps of violet. The clumps glowed hot and angry until they were fire-blue spirals, whites at their centers, each revolving around the same axis of nothingness.
Inside of one of the spirals gold clouds danced nervously, yellow trains trailing them. The clouds crashed together, so hot and so bright it hurt to look at. The sun emerged from the resultant soup. The earth emerged from the sun. It wasn't a solid earth. I don't know how I knew. I hurtled onto it. I was standing in Grandma's kitchen in Idaho, and somehow it didn't feel real. The walls were blue. The ceiling was gray.
"People like you an' me," Caleb said. "We see too much."
I saw myself reflected in blue-and-gray eyes. Caleb saw me as the chemicals that banged together inside my cells, the lights in my skull and the DNA chains that said that I was Rafael Gives Light, the son of Susan Gives Light, the daughter of Pearl Gives Light, the granddaughter of Rumilly Gives Light, the great-gran
ddaughter of Sacajawea.
"You see so much," I said, "that you wind up missing stuff. You can't connect to people anymore. You're not sure you could to begin with."
It was lonely. I knew that.
"You're doing better these days," Caleb said. He didn't make a show of it, but I thought he looked sad.
" 'Cause of Sky," I answered. When you're too busy seeing everything to see individual people, and then you meet an individual who happens to be everything, you finally pick up on all the little things you overlooked. Ice cream on a hot summer evening. An elbow digging into your side.
"You're damn lucky, kid," Caleb said.
"You should come back to Nettlebush with us," I said unthinkingly.
Caleb stuffed his hands in his pockets. Caleb stared at me like I was an idiot.
"Uh," I said, feeling small. "Because maybe you and me ain't meant to have families," I said. "But we've got one. And they're really great. And--"
And I was a dumbass.
"--and they love us, even when we don't deserve to be loved. So come. And...just...just don't feel alone anymore."
Loving people was my only talent, but I didn't really mind.
"I'll think about it, kid," Caleb said.
I didn't know that he would; but I knew I felt better hearing him say it.
Later that night I went into Uncle Gabriel's room, took my shirt off, and changed into an older pair of jeans. I'd decided I was going to sleep on Sky's floor again; but he didn't give me the chance to. He knocked on the door and I said, "Come in," and he walked inside with a pillow and three blankets. He threw them on the floor and he lay on them.
I stared at him. "Don't do that."
He pretended he didn't hear me. It drove me crazy when he did that. I knelt down and shook his shoulder. He peeked at me over his mound of quilts.
"You don't belong on the floor," I said.
He gave me a pointed look. Neither do you.
"Come on, Sky," I said, impatient. "Lay on the bed."
Only if you do.
I felt certain he didn't mean anything by it; but I couldn't help thinking about Tommo and the Corn Maiden. My skin went hot with embarrassment. The only ways I knew to touch Sky were arms around his waist; lips on his forehead; fingers on his heart, where I sometimes felt my own name echoing in his chest. When I didn't get to touch Sky it drove me insane. It was like those torture techniques where they feed you just enough to keep you alive, but not enough to put vigor in your bones. I touched Sky with my hands and my chin and my knees and my mouth because I wasn't eloquent enough to touch him another way. I knew there was another way. I had the feeling that I really existed as a part of Sky, and I was trying to find my way back into him. Sometimes it made me want to rip the skin off my bones, the body off my soul.
I yanked a blanket off Uncle Gabriel's old bed. I lay down on the floor, but kept the lamp on; these days I was afraid of the dark. Sky watched me from a few inches to my left, his fox eyes tiny and scrutinizing and brown. I wanted to pull him into my arms and tuck him under my chin. I didn't dare. Sometimes when I was alone I thought about what it would feel like to touch Sky so deeply he unraveled underneath me. It was a blurry sort of daydream, because nobody had taught me how it was done. When I was eleven the shaman came looking for me and--to my mortification--talked to me about how babies were made. It had been a clinical conversation. It had nothing to do with how to love somebody. It had nothing to do with me.
Sky's gaze fell heavier on me. He'd been looking at me strangely lately, long and intense and a little confused. It started before we ever talked about blue corn, so I didn't think it was related to my own misgivings. I didn't know what it was. I might have asked him about it; but before I knew it my eyes were closing, my body sinking like deadweight into the floorboards. I must have been more tired than I'd thought. I fell asleep.
I knew that I'd fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes, I was in the middle of a dream. It was rare that I woke up in a Weird Dream without preparing first. Of all places, I was standing outside the Nettlebush hospital. A blobby blue pilot whale trinket hung around my hairy wrist. The sky was filled with scraps of swirling paper, pages torn out of what must have been a never-ending book.
"Mary?" I said.
A gray dove came and rested on the "Welcome!" sign beside the wheelchair ramp. The last place I wanted to be welcomed was a hospital. I drew closer anyway. I stroked the dove's downy head with the tip of my finger.
"Mom," I said.
Her wings fluttered. She rose off the signpost and sailed to the hospital entrance. I worried she'd crash right into the doors; but then I noticed that the doors were missing. Smoke and shadows billowed where they were supposed to be.
"Yeah, creepy," I muttered.
I followed Mom inside the hospital, coughing. Wherever she flew the shadows dispersed, fleeing from her elegant wings. She glided past the pediatric wing, down to the adult inpatient corridor. She flitted inside one of the open doors. I crept after her, wary.
Mary was inside the bedroom, Grandma Gives Light's tomahawk in hand. The blinds pulled free from the window, touched her shoulder, and disappeared. The EKG machine rolled off the floor, the shadows of Mary swallowing it whole. Even the colors on the walls tore violently away, vaulted at Mary, and faded, the room black and white without them. I worried about the patient in the hospital bed. I stumbled over. It was Paul Looks Over, his eyes closed; and that was about when I remembered this was a dream, albeit a disturbing one.
"Even asleep?" I murmured.
Dream Mary lowered the tomahawk, whirling around. "What are you doing here?"
"Nothin'," I said. "Where'd Mom go?"
"Didn't see her," Mary said.
"You probably scared her away," I said, annoyed.
"Do you mind?" Mary said.
She raised the tomahawk. I know taipo'o think tomahawks are a throwing weapon, but that's actually not true. She swung the blade against Paul's neck and it crunched bluntly before his throat split open. Paul didn't move, and Paul didn't bleed. This was a dream. Dreams didn't have to make sense.
"Mary," I said, frightened. "You can't cut his fucking throat."
"Why not?" Mary said.
Because our father had cut Sky's throat. Because she was perpetuating that, but she pretended she was rectifying it, and this was so messed up, even in my dreams I wanted to cry.
"Okay," Mary said. "Maybe I did cross a line."
"You think?" I said fiercely.
"Too late now, though," Mary said.
"What do you mean?"
I heard yelling. At first I thought it was a part of the dream, but then it got louder, and the next thing I knew I was jerking awake. A faint winter sun poured in through the window, lighting up Uncle Gabriel's ancient maps.
"Blondie!" Caleb was yelling. "Get down here!"
Sky was a heavy sleeper. I shook him twice before he climbed to his knees, rubbing his eyes. We went downstairs without washing or changing our clothes. I felt like smacking Caleb over the head.
My feelings changed considerably when Caleb covered his handheld phone with his palm. He narrowed his eyes at Sky. "Your old man's had something of an episode," he said. "Your gran asked me to take you home."
"What?" I croaked out.
Sky's face had gone the shade of milk, his eyes silently mad. He reached for the phone, then remembered himself, then dropped his hand at his side. What episode? he wanted to ask. What are you talking about? Why won't you explain anything?
"I'm going with you," I announced.
Mary leaned in the entrance to the alcove, her arms folded, her face expressionless. My hands shook. I couldn't bring myself to look at her for long. I told myself I was being stupid. I told myself dreams didn't really kill people.
I told myself as much; but I didn't believe it.
7
Just Mary
After four days of frost and snow it felt weird to be back in Nettlebush, where the sun scalded the back of my neck
and I couldn't wear a sweater without sweating. I didn't have much time to think about it, because the first thing I did was follow Sky to the reservation's hospital. Paul lay in a bed in the far back wing, unconscious, his eyelids sore and red.
"We think it was a tick bite," said Robert Has Two Enemies, scribbling illegibly on Paul's chart.
I must've had eight different tick bites since I was a kid, and none of them had ever put me in the hospital. I looked at Sky. He grabbed Paul's hand and shook it, pale face tinged sickly green with worry.
"Honey, don't worry," Robert said. He sounded nonchalant, but I wondered if they taught you to talk like that in nursing school. "If this is what I think it is, it's very rarely lethal. He had a bad reaction is all."
Nothing Robert said reassured Sky. Sky planted himself on the edge of Paul's bed. He stared at his dad so intently I swear he didn't blink. His knuckles went white and his lips went thin and I couldn't see the breath passing through his chest.
"You have to get out of the room now," Robert said. "I'm changing his IV. Sorry, kids. Hospital policy."
Sky wouldn't leave the room until I put my hand on his back. He drifted after me into the hallway, a confused specter. I held his hands, my thumbs running across his knuckles. There were times when Sky calmed me down just by touching me. I wished I could do the same for him.
"I just heard about your dad," Aubrey said, racing into the hallway.
Annie and Zeke were fast on Aubrey's heels. Zeke had a comb stuck in his hair. Annie pulled Sky out of my grasp and into her arms, possessive, maternal. I don't think I'd ever realized that about Annie before. She knew Sky didn't have a mother; she was trying to fill the void.
"Don't worry!" Zeke said. "Nobody dies from tick bites! I mean, maybe babies--and old people--and deer--"
I shot him a warning look. He shut up.