“Then Grey Doe. She could do it alone the first time.”
My eyes shot to hers.
“She is moo’a. It is our way.”
Grey Doe! The woman who would not turn her weakened body to face me when she spoke. The woman who felt I kept her from Lukwsh’s place. The moo’a whose words stung with spurning. This one would take me from my girlhood into grown? My mind was as murky as a muddy lake.
But things do not always happen as we plan.
Grey Doe and I counted twenty-five days together set apart from the others.
At first I heard the sounds of laughter and the activity of the festival as though a whip cracked across my back. I expected the memory of what I missed to leave deep scars. I thought my breathing would be small and tight inside a place where I could feel both the roof and walls on my skin as I sat, like being stuck inside a narrow lava cave, curling my knees up in sleep. And when I heard the clatter of birds rising from the lakes, I feared the memory would be knotted with a woman who did not like me, instead of being wrapped with signs of flight and freedom, a way of soaring high above, just like the birds.
But I came to find “another way,” as Lukwsh would say, and looked to lessons I could learn about myself, buried deep in challenge.
I learned that patterns helped my mind make a trail through difficult days, and that when I struggled with uncertainty in my future, I could bring in lessons from my past. In that way, I blended and became strong, like Lukwsh’s water pot.
It took some time before I found the richness in the lessons. With Grey Doe, it felt at first as though my life was meant for mere instruction.
“The sun comes,” Grey Doe announced the first morning. “Gather wood.”
My feet took me along grasses flattened beside the Silvies, and I loaded my arms with branches and twigs, returned and stacked them. I went back one, two times, until I had a pile as tall as myself.
“Go again,” Grey Doe said. “Don’t be stupid. Take cordage with you, to carry on your back. Five stacks are needed,” she said to my surprised eyes.
I had no idea what occurred when girls and women spent their time away but wondered how Lukwsh could find it pleasurable if this was how she spent her day.
Grey Doe performed her duties, though she rarely turned her shoulder in my direction. Sometimes she stood next to me and spoke as though to the tree in front of us. It took some time before I recognized that her words were meant for me. I listened, made many more trips for my five piles, strained my eyes and ears to hear the joy of the flowers feasting on their day.
Afterward, we ate.
Grey Doe made the meal, ground wild rye into flour with her one hand, added water and reed sweets, made a mush. She talked of the power of food and the hands that fixed it. Her voice wore a softness new to my ears.
“Never feed in anger,” the teaching grandmother said, “or those you serve will be sick.”
I watched carefully for signs of her anger, wondered whether she followed her own instruction when my stomach ached and twisted.
More wood gathering followed. I had time to think as I raised up another five stacks. I traveled farther out each time as twigs and branches became more scarce.
The time of gathering marked something new. Perhaps I would have friends, now that I had a family. Maybe a girl besides Wren would share some space with me. I thought of Wuzzie and shuddered. I held Lukwsh in my mind, the courage in her kindness.
Again we ate, a light meal without flesh. Grey Doe told me the meanings of the seeds and teas and I tried not to question her, wanted to believe she told me rightly, wasn’t teasing me for later embarrassment. She showed me how to weave sagebrush and tules into baskets and spikerush into spoons. I even made some sandals from the soft, shiny spikerush stems for when snow covered the ground.
And she let me sleep as needed and even took out the grasses and leaves my body soiled and buried them on her own. Only the wood gathering was required.
Once I winced in pain, but Grey Doe did not scold me. Instead, she rubbed my back with fish oil and a kind of fungus to soften my skin. In the small fire pit near the opening, she burned a showy flower of white and gold that left a fragrant perfume. She offered me a yellow tea she said would ease the pimples from my face when I should have them. Her sudden tenderness tendered caution.
“Sit now. Keep your thoughts clean like new snow,” she said. “I tell you things only women know about men and children.”
I found much of what she said hard to believe, but even in the pale light of the hut, I could see that Grey Doe shared the truth. She spoke without laughter, though some of what she said caused giggles to bubble into my head.
It is a marvel to me now that a woman who lived with such distaste of tibos, such fears of how white would wash out the desert brown of her people, could be forced to spend a month with one, isolated and alone, and still share with her the vital information needed to carry on tradition. It must have been the role of moo’a overcoming her human hate.
For Grey Doe soothed and even combed my hair with a rye grass brush and saved the tendrils in a basket, the wisps of wet desert sand twisted tight beneath the cover.
Each afternoon, I began again. I gathered fuel for my stacks, took new paths. My arms bore the stains and slivers of the wood. Fifteen new mounds sat around our lodge by the end of each day. It was good work, and I had done it.
At night I fasted, and she told me, “Wait for songs.”
My dreams were wild with color and movement and faces of strong feelings. I woke to my own hard breathing and aches beneath my belly, the smell of tules and the mountain cedar we sat on scented with my sweat. Grey Doe did not scowl but stirred the fire and heated tea and sang to me in words that entered in my ears but swirled and filled my body like sweet grass smoke surrounds my soul. I eased back into sleep.
As the gathering took longer, I had less time to make things. I worked on a cradle board for a child’s doll; another day, a spikerush brush to scrape ashes from the fire rocks before placing them in soups. Grey Doe went with me once to show me how to thread pine nuts on the trigger of a special deadfall trap, how it could bring a rock down on unsuspecting prey, and how to skin the squirrel we found there, how to cook it, too.
“Hunter’s job,” she told me slicing around the animal’s neck, “but a woman needs to know.”
Knowledge given me not just for how to live among the people, but for how to leave, how to survive, how to take the land and make it friendly as I traveled. These were lessons I had longed for, to make me strong when I slipped away to find my people. Somehow, leaving seemed less important now. I shook away the feeling.
And always, I gathered sticks in a pattern broken only after five days when Grey Doe took me to the lake to bathe.
Even there the old one talked to me about the changes of my body, how to cleanse, be pure, and only once did I do something that threatened the fragile peace we forged there.
My eyes had wandered. I waved in joyful recognition to the familiar figure I saw pushing a boat out into the early mist. I splashed the water, shouted, pleased he had not left yet. I wanted him to turn and look.
The redness where the basket tumpline pulled across Grey Doe’s forehead grew deep.
“Keep your hands to yourself, Shell Flower. You may be two people but mostly you are a woman now, not a small marked child splashing in your bath.” Her words carried the familiar bite.
“I am only pleased he has not left yet,” I told her, eyes lowered.
“He is your brother,” she hissed and then noting she had hit some chord of fear within me she said, “Nothing more. Do not be of two minds about this. If you work to make it different, bad things will happen. To you, to him and all who call themselves the people.”
I did not see myself as having that much power, but she was right about one thing. I did see Shard as one who shared my wickiup as a distant brother and one who also intruded upon my waking thoughts as someone more.
The wood
gathering continued. My meals looked meager the few moments I had to think of them before falling into a deep sleep. To vary the effort, I looked for greasewood bushes that reminded me of shrubs and scrubs on my longer forays, farther out. On the warmest days I found a greasewood worm or two in the roots, dug them out, and stuffed them inside a basket.
The pine groves and marshes offered freedom, housed eagles and hawks to remind me of heights. The song birds and swallows suggested space. But I missed the others, Lukwsh and Shooting Star, who I still thought of as Wren. I wondered what Grey Doe did during my long absences of gathering. I tried to guess if she could tell when I rested my sometimes tired leg by lying in willow stands or on my stomach catching sun beneath the shade of sage, watching insects crawl through grass. I wondered if she knew that I puzzled over Wuzzie’s power and Shooting Star’s new ways. I hoped she did not know I thought of Shard.
The old woman acted pleased when I delivered the greasewood worms to her. She clucked about roasting them later as “flesh.”
On the third bathing day, fifteen sleeps into this sacred time, I again saw Shard from a distance. I did not wave. I stayed low in the water with only my eyes and nose showing, peered out from the mist. He looked my way, his hand above his eyes as if searching, then on his hips, his elbows like arrows in their distinctive ways.
I felt warmed despite the cool water. I remembered a time when snow geese settled on the lake, and frogs and crickets serenaded dancers following a huckleberry feast. It had been a long day and my leg ached. I wondered if Shard would dance around the pole or wait until the coming of the rabbit drives in the winter to show his dancing skill, collect some young woman with his courting. He sat contented beside me, leaned back on his elbows, and looked straight ahead at Wren.
“She is your sister,” I ventured.
“All young girls are my sisters,” he said and I could not hear teasing in his voice.
We watched the dancers bend the tall grasses with their moccasins. A girl with flashing black eyes looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. I felt the drums beat like leg throbs. Another dancer whose belly stored many seeds but whose smile eased into straight with unbroken teeth grinned at Shard. She did not notice me, but I remembered the ache I felt when her face lit up and he left me to dance at her side.
When my second flow stopped, twenty-five days had passed, and the moo’a and I left the hut. Like a snake shedding its skin to form a new one, Grey Doe returned to how I remembered her best.
“Don’t forget what happened here,” she warned. “And that you are still only a white woman.”
Behind us rose wood stacks like gopher mounds, sticks to be burned by old people who had no grandchildren or sons to look after them. I stood with some pride at the size of the brown mounds, my ability to give, to gather fuel for the elders.
“Sunmiet left you a gift,” Lukwsh said when I entered her lodge after the passing of one full moon. I wondered if I looked different to her. My eyes searched for Flake. When I did not find him, I assumed Shard had gone.
Lukwsh heated rocks to go into the basket to cook fresh rabbit soup. My mouth watered for flesh.
“It comes with the cedar basket that holds it,” she said of the gift. “For your new name, but mostly for leaving your child-side behind. And missing the festival.”
I did not want to be reminded of what I’d missed.
“She seems a good friend,” I said, pawing through items on the far side of the lodge.
Lukwsh nodded. “We do not see each other often, but it matters little. It is a treasure to know you are held in the mind of another, a sign of no greater love.”
The cedar basket I picked up had a forked-horn’s antler for a handle. Bear grass and choke cherry bark alternated to make a darker then lighter stripe, not unlike the sun streaks of my hair. Inside hid another gift: a barrette beaded with a hummingbird design.
“It is her kasa’s,” Lukwsh said when I showed her. She rubbed her wide thumb over tiny beads. “She made it for me once long ago, but I wished it as a namaka to you and so it is now. From both of us. There is another, too.”
My fingers made tracks around the inside of the lip and felt before seeing a tiny basket, no longer than Lukwsh’s thumb. The same cedar and bear grass as the larger basket formed the smaller one that had a tiny cover as well.
“For your most precious namaka when you find it,” Lukwsh said, “though most of what matters in this world cannot be placed in any basket.” I wondered what thoughts were turning in her mind.
“What was it like?” Wren asked as she burst through the lodge opening, interrupting our words, with no familiar greeting first. Flake bounded at her side, whoo-whooing when he saw me. He lunged toward me as I put the tiny basket back.
“Was Grey Doe crabby?” Wren asked.
My hands reached around to clasp my hair and place the barrette at the back of my neck. I swaddled Flake’s big head with both hands, shook his face into mine, deliberately did not answer.
“What about the festival? That is a better subject,” I said, aware of a strange reluctance to share just when I had something a sister might value.
She turned with a question in her eyes to Lukwsh, and I saw the stuffing of cattail fluff in her ear. Lukwsh repeated “festival,” and Wren turned back.
“Oh, it was more fun than a grass dance or jacks or even the name-giving,” she said. “More fun than anything I have ever had with anyone. Especially you.”
“She was different,” I said, well scolded. “She did not bite as much.”
“Humph,” Wren said, sounding like her moo’a.
“She taught me things for how to survive, like trapping rabbits when I am alone.”
“You plan to go somewhere alone?” Wren asked.
“It is always good to know how to feed yourself,” Lukwsh said, “so you do not stay in a bad place waiting for others to keep you alive.”
I looked at her and wondered if she spoke a double meaning, but she found another subject.
“You must give her all your clothing now,” Lukwsh said, “to Grey Doe, since she chose to tend you in your time.”
“She will look strange in what I wear,” I said.
“It is our way,” she said.
“I have some to give her,” Wren said when she understood the discussion, forgiving me for my unwillingness to share.
“It is Shell Flower’s namaka.”
“What will she wear after she gives her clothes away?” Wren asked, my own question.
“We make things, new things, to go with her new person. What is given away will be returned, na? It is the way of our people, the way of our beliefs.”
Perhaps the different clothes did it. Perhaps what Grey Doe taught me or what I learned about myself in the days I gathered wood and we were held together caused the change. Perhaps the change, the ebb and flow of my body, moved into my head. Or maybe it was the passing of the seasons and time.
Whatever, I began to see myself apart from Wren and her hunts, think more on the interests of the women and the young mothers and even the grandmothers and aunties I met in the private hut for five days each month.
Now I saw the joy Lukwsh returned with. No demands from moo’as, no children scampering about, no men to tend or hides to tan. Just five or six women slowly weaving, sharing laughter and understandings collected in an instant with a look or movement of a hand, all gathered in a treasure basket of belonging. No one pointed out my markings. No one called me tibo. All acted as though my presence was expected, and they seemed to like the way I shared my stories, found pleasure in responding to my wonderings of things I did not understand.
Later as we placed burden baskets on our backs, adjusted the tumplines across our heads, and traveled north to pick huckleberries, south for antelope hunts and piñon nuts, I was aware of how my body changed, the tightness of my clothes that pulled across my chest. My waist grew smaller than my hips.
My face, too, looked fuller in the reflection that pee
red out from me at the still lake in high Snow Mountain. My eyes were more noticeably round, my nose thinner and straight. I barely noticed the dark line of my nabawici, and once, as we traded near Canyon City, a storekeeper mistook me for a lighter-skinned Klamath. He bit his words at me and called me “dirty siwash.” I was torn by hating his dislike of who I was but shamefully pleased he thought I belonged with the people he despised.
My wavering worried me.
I had a plan to leave, to learn what I needed so I would succeed. But perhaps Sunmiet was right, perhaps my pursuit of people from a distant wagon offered no future. Without the necklace or name, what hope did I have? And why should I leave to join people who saw me as a “dirty siwash,” a filthy savage? Why should I walk away into uncertainty when Lukwsh had invited me to live with tradition and routine?
The answers moved farther away as I felt the joy of being part of something, knowing my hands could help, hoping someone returned the wonderings of my heart.
In the winter months when stories were told to entertain the children and keep the past of the people ever ready in the mind, I listened, memorized tales of skunk and eagle, of coyote and his troubles. I no longer sat among the children. From my mat near the back of the headman’s wickiup, I noticed instead the ways of the boys whose voices had changed, those with first kills and seconds. When we prepared foods, shook out dusty blankets onto hard snow ground, I paid more attention to the stories of the women and the ways of their search, heard their dreamy wishes, listened for their lessons.
One such woman was Summer Rain, a chubby woman who did not seem to mind the paleness of my skin or my desert hair. She made plans to join with Natchez of a Nevada band in the spring and talked freely of her yearning and her expected woes. She had a twinkle in her eye, a cheek flecked with a dimple. Excitement squeezed out through her pores. She planned tricks on others, sometimes let me belong to her secrets.
Vanilla Leaf pleased, too, as she watched and listened and talked with me in the comfort of the hut or as we ground seeds together, reached for dried tubers, tied cordage into nets. She shared especially her jokes about Stink Bug and another, James, of the same age. She showed interest in Shard, too, hoped to sweeten him, I think. But she did not earn her name. She disliked the cold of the lake for bathing and so carried with her a less than pleasing scent I thought would keep Shard away.