Birdie (20 page)

HOME COMING/COMING HOME

Kiwehtahiwew
: s/he takes people home with him/her

She stood beside the sweat and bent at the waist. The entryway, much like the scenery in Hollywood movie sets, was made to appear small from a distance. As she drew nearer to it she saw that the entrance was not becoming proportionally wider. The door stayed the same size, even though the lodge itself grew larger as she approached.

As she drew closer to the hole, she instinctively knew (as she knows when she sees a dress too small for her on a perfectly sized mannequin) that she would not fit in the entry.

She didn’t want to but knows that she must attempt to enter. She squeezed herself in to the depth of her armpits, the ring of the doorway cutting into her like a too-tight casing on a sausage.

Womanly hands grab her, smooth her belly with lambda olive oil and she is pulled into the lodge like a reverse birth.

S
HE IS DYING, THEY THINK.
None of the three says anything about it, there is no reluctant or covert admission. Last night Val had lain in the same bed as her niece and whispered to her all night. Then she sang to the light she saw passing from her un/natural daughter. She had warbled lullabies, sweet walking songs, and finally “Blood is Thicker than Water” by Andy Gibb. Through it all, Bernice lay motionless (no one says “lifeless” but everyone thinks it) beside her, wrapped in blankets. This morning, when Freda came up to check on them, words passed between Val and herself in one look. She had walked down the stairs, quietly in her baker’s shoes, picked up the phone and started dialing. That should have been a harder decision, but Freda just called everyone in the family and left it to them to make their own minds up about coming.

When she was done, she walked to Lola and they hugged, little fierce trees, withstanding the wind.

Val sits beside her niece, on the floor, staring at her for most of the morning. Love falls like thistle seeds and lands gently on top of, around, near, beside Bernice. If she is aware of Val, her love, the seedlings or her dire circumstance, she gives no indication.

Late last night, when Val had told her, “It’s okay, Birdie, you do what you have to do; you go where you have to go,” Bernice did just that.

And. What she had to do was find the space where her memory could live peaceably with her body. She could not take her body with her, so she willed herself to leave.

She found herself freed, in a way she had never been when
she did the change on the streets of Edmonton. Light, in a way she had never felt when she left her body in the room under the stairs. She finds herself, this morning, unconfined by the agitation and nervousness that she always has. She had no coyote’s wariness. Found that she does not possess the cunning of a wolf. In truth, she feels rather like a bird. Her body below her shines with some invisible and barely perceptible light. Her auntie kneels beside her, praying like a nun. Bernice sees versions of younger Val, wilder Val, crazier Val. And feels such love for them all.

Taking care to hold her feelings with her, she inhales sharply and flies. She doesn’t know if it is through the window, through place or through time. But she is able.

She flies home. To the place where she learned to love and the place where she learned fear. Home. Where her youth mixed with her experience in a strange alchemy, leaving her self split like oil and vinegar.

Lola cannot stop moving. If she does, she is afraid she will run upstairs again to see The Kid. And she can’t do that. That big girl, formerly big girl, fermenting like an ale in her attic and no one is going to do a thing about it. God help her if she gets into trouble with them two around.

She looks at a clearly distressed Freda and is flooded with emotion. Some she understands. Some she does not. That little brown woman looks like she is carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders. And the aunt? Good lord, the
aunt is all “She will do what she has to” this and “Let’s just wait awhile” that. Lola wants to throttle her today.

The Kid herself looks … well, it is hard to put it into words. Certainly there is some sort of … “Melting.” Lola says her thought out loud.

“What?” Freda looks up sharply.

“Nothing, hon, you go about yer business,” Lola says gently.

Yes, The Kid looks like she is melting. Dimming. Half gone. But. There is something else, too. Goddamn her for thinking it, but The Kid looks gorgeous. Pale, sickly, too skinny and certainly anything but robust. But. She also looks lovely.
Like her body fits her spirit
, Lola thinks and then chases that thought away.

She pulls out the boxes of food that the three of them had been bringing home each week, intending to throw them out – Lola has never had the resolve that Freda has or the faith of Val. Those boxes sit in her kitchen, frustrating her with their uselessness. Instead of trashing them, she reads the lid of the first box:

Skinny Freda had driven Lola’s car to Vancouver to get most of it. Lola and Valene had gathered the rest from the land or had sent for it from Little Loon. In the walk-in freezer there is another box with wild game, gut, bones, noses.
Everything but the kitchen sink,
she thinksnipes.

What on earth had they been thinking? Lola wonders. All of this stuff, just sitting here going to waste. She goes to throw it out at the curb. After sitting and having a smoke, she thinks better of it and goes to fetch it back. When she reaches the door, Freda meets her there and grabs the door from her, marching into the room with another box piled high in her brown arms.

She is crying when Lola takes the box from her. “There, there, sugar. It’s okay. Let’s just make some work to keep our hands busy, eh?” the old woman says, grabbing some stationery and starting to label the exotic contents of the box.

Freda goes out for a smoke behind the bakery. And. Weeps like she has lost her best friend.

Valene is growing impatient with Lola and Freda. They are acting like two teenagers who are in the blush of first love. They think that Val can’t see how they look at each other. Smitten. Lusty. It has been all she could do to pry them apart to get them to listen to her. After hearing Bernice’s sleeptalking about
Pimatisewin,
she sat the two women down to talk about the tree and its illness, not really sure why she was doing it. She sensed it was important, though, and told them a story about the tree of life and how some crazy Sechelt woman thinks she has found one of the four about an hour from Gibsons.

“Are you trying to tell me that The Kid is here because she heard a tree call her?” Lola had cackled.

Pressing her nails into Lola’s knee, Skinny Freda said, “Stranger things have happened. Birdie is tapped into something, always has been. May as well be the tree.”

So, they now sit in the kitchen, all of their heads pregnant with thoughts too big to speak – each of them fearful the grandness of the lexicon would choke them if they should utter a word.

There is a knock at the door. The relatives are arriving.

CEREMONY – WHAT SHE MUST DO

iskwew
: woman

She has left the lodge, crossed through the tall grass, steam lifting to the night air.

She goes home to her room, and looks – surprised – to find that the TV has been placed on the desk. The screen shines blue from the glow of the bad reception.

There are scenes from old Westerns, Chief Dan George, Jay Silverheels and Burt Reynolds flicker against the wall. Finally the Frugal Gourmet (well, it looks like him but he’s wearing a white hat) comes on. She looks at the television intently and realizes he is cooking in her mom’s kitchen.

She wanders down the stairs and into the coolness of Lola’s kitchen, the tiles feel soft and giving. She opens the swinging door between the living room and the kitchen. And sees him. There.

He has pots and pans scattered about him where he sits on the floor. He is drumming, she recognizes the song as an old women’s song, and as he begins to drum she reads his soiled recipe card.

I
N HER ROOM,
Bernice’s eyes open.

Bernice sits up, no longer a bird and claiming her human form. Writes the ingredients down on the list she has pulled from the roll of loose flesh on her belly, and rises shakily to her feet.

And realizes. She is on her time.

THE SHIFT – WHO SHE HAS BECOME

otâcimow
: a Storyteller, one who tells legends

In her dreams, and there were four days’ worth of dreams, she is an owl.

Flying over

The Tree of Life.

She keeps carrying

twigs and leaves

to the Tree

in order to

nest there.

She carries berries and food to her nest and knows she is

Feeding herself from the Tree.

Feeding her life to the Tree.

In another dream, she is afraid

to ask
Pimatisewin

to kill the wolves.

She knows it will not, but still wants to ask it.

“Not all wolves are bad,” she hears.

The sick wolves leave the pack,
she knows.

On the fourth day of her moons,

on the fourth day of feeding the Tree,

on the fourth day of dreaming

she dreams of feasts

feasts and feasts and feasts

She dreams of going home

She dreams that she is loved.

“
I
CAN’T BELIEVE WE ARE DOING THIS,”
Skinny Freda grunts as she takes an armload of pine boughs from Valene off the back of the rented Ram.

Valene had the boughs sent from Kelly Lake, even though she didn’t know why.
For this,
she thinks and gingerly carries them to the
Pimatisewin.
She ignored Lola’s questions. She never thought she’d say it, but that woman thinks too much.

“You know, in the old days they used to do this all the time.” She stops to breathe. After a minute or two, she resumes. “Old ladies would take the young ones when we had our first moons and put us in a lodge built for it.”

“But it was the first moons,” Skinny Freda starts to argue, then stops when she sees Valene’s face.

“They’d lay down them boughs and we would lay there away from everyone.” Val smiles. “Seems to me I went there at twelve.”

“I know, I understand the whole strong medicine thing, but don’t you think it’s weird for her to be doing this …” Skinny Freda chooses carefully and then says, “Now? She’s too sick to lay there for four days.” She nods over her shoulder at Bernice, who stares straight ahead and who is too weak to lift the boughs, even the little ones.

Valene does not comment and helps her not-so-big-any-more niece from the truck and leads her to the shelter they had built beside the
Pimatisewin.
“Now you just lay there and make good medicine, my girl.” She hugs her and goes back to wait in the truck. She sits there four days. Lola and Freda try to stagger her off, but it’s her girl and she will hear none of
it. She checks on Bernice occasionally and hears her singing. Hears her crying. Hears her praying. On the fourth day, she walks to her daughter, takes her hand, prepares her tea, and takes her home to the bakery to cook.

A few hours ago, they were all sitting in the kitchen when Bernice appeared, like a vision, in the doorway at the foot of the stairs. Wearing a skirt, the shawl Valene had made and her new purple T-shirt, she had a box in her hands and the women saw that she had a collection of food, spices, roots and leaves that rivalled the ones they have on the table.

“I need to cook,” she had croaked.

Valene pursed her sizable lips. “Just rest a minute, Birdie, we have time.”

“No, let’s go,” Bernice said with a firmness that no one knew lived within Bernice.

With that, the four women headed to the kitchen, where they have been for hours. Every so often, Bernice walks slowly past the front room of the bakery, which is filled beyond full with relatives and strangers who have gathered for what they thought was a funeral. And a wake. Bernice has so little energy that she merely managed to greet everyone with a smile before she returned to the kitchen. Several female relatives jumped up to help.

“No,” Bernice had croaked. “Just them.” She pointed with her lips to the bedraggled family she had formed in Gibsons. “Just us four.”

That womenfamily, Lola, Val and Skinny Freda, had followed her into the kitchen. They spoke in hushed tones, like they were in a library, and every so often she could hear the plump fullness of Valene’s words and the hard nut of Lola’s as they talk while working in the kitchen. She had given the three women her ingredient list, those ingredients that came to her in her dreamstate, those that had come to them as gifts, and they had set about organizing the kitchen. Intent for hours, she can barely make out their feasttalk. The words are frothy and full. Unintelligible and edible.

“Wasting fasting faking lasting baking.”

Bernice remembers something. “We can only speak kindly while preparing this food.” She shot Lola and Freda independent glances. “And you two, stop mooning over each other and get busy, please.”

She is glad when Skinny Freda offers to help read the ingredients and Bernice even lets her and Val carry out the pots and pans from the pantry to the kitchen. They are too big for her to lift. Her arms rattle with the effort of lifting, they had cramped when she mixed, gone numb as she diced. She gives instructions to her madefamily and the four of them set about making the feast that Bernice has been dreaming about her whole life.

They mix and measure. Sift and sieve.

Whip and pour. Stir and simmer. Chop and dice. Bernice is careful not to touch the pots and pans or even the cutlery with her bare hands. She woke up pained to realize that she seemed to be hypersensitive to touch, smell and sound. Her heightened awareness balks at the sensory feast. She is afraid to find out if this acute bodily response extends to taste.

She lines up the ingredients alphabetically because her vision is cloudy and precision required. At the Rs she realizes that she has forgotten ratroot. As she pulls the ingredients around her, she recognizes the clanking of dishes and muffled tones as her family sets the table in expectation of the feast. Time seems to run out and she hardly knows it is finished until the haze lifted off her vision and she realizes the dishes are done and the remainder of the ingredients put away.

She carefully tucks the medicines in the cupboard and, after a second thought, stores the foods Skinny Freda had brought from the city and those that Val and Lola had bought and gathered and sets them next to her medicines on the shelf. Medicines.
Maskihky.

She wonders when they will ever use creamed horseradish and minced ginger.

Once done, she puts the offering together, gets the old pine cradleboard and fastens some of the pots and pans to it carefully and with steady fingers – steadier than they have been in a long time. The smells and the textures of the food no longer delight her, and while she does not feel nauseous, she is still unsure about her reaction to the feast. Mint mingled with moose, acorn with pistachio.
Maskihky
with pâté.

Valene tells the family, friends and strangers who have come in anticipation of the
event
waiting in the restaurant dining room to meet them at the
Pimatisewin.
The hushed room had watched as Bernice fastened the bundle and carried the cradleboard out the door and down the front steps.

“Let’s take the Ram, it’ll be faster,” Lola says, walking past her ancient Malibu.

They load the cradleboard and Bernice into the back and journey through the night to the
Pimatisewin,
a convoy of would-be mourners and now celebrants.

During the trip, her body aches, but Bernice refuses to sleep, listening to her family talk in the background. She knows now that
Pimatisewin
had been waiting for her. For all of them: Valene, Skinny Freda and Lola, the people who came from home, the people her friend Lettie and her old man brought from Sechelt. It was waiting to be fed, to have nations unite in one place.

The colours of the night sky stripe and smudge across the windowpane of the cab and out of her vision. It is not a full moon, but it was a clear evening.

Bernice’s stomach rumbles pleasantly.

When they get to the tree, several people have already arrived and set up smudges and a fire. They are gathered in a circle around it.

The four women gingerly unpack the feast offering, and place it at the base of the tree, giving the earth thanks for all that they have, for the clarity to be able to see it and for having been given the gift to survive. Taking care not to spill anything they feed their relative. The earth around
Pimatisewin
soaks up the exotic and the sacred, taking the food to its roots, its branches and its bark.

Having left Bernice at the tree to make her offering, Valene and Freda seem not to be able to speak her name.

They sit in silence, smoke filling the cab.

“She gonna be okay, Auntie?” Skinny Freda doesn’t know about comfortable silence, Valene thinks.

She purses her ample lips. Thinks about it for a few minutes. “She’ll be better off, no matter what.” Thinks better of it when she sees Freda’s fists fearfully clenched and adds with sureness, “She’d better be. She’s got a kitchen to run and people to feed when she’s done here.”

On the ground before her, the food they have made for
Pimatisewin
has leeched into the soil and has disappeared. She feels some energy in her limbs, as if she has eaten the food herself, and stands up, the Cree on her tongue having flowed to the tree. Without a word, Valene, Lola and Freda return and take their places beside her, help her up and walk her to the truck.

“We gotta feast to go back to,” she croaks to the wimmin.

“Yup,” Lola says. “You gotta house full of friends and relatives waiting to be fed.” She says it almost giddily; she didn’t know how much she loved having people around until they came. She doesn’t quite understand the offering, and the feast even less, but Lola sparkles with richness from being a part of it all.

Freda helps Bernice up into the back of the cab and then gets in the front door to sit by Lola. Valene pops in the back row of the cab, careful to bring the cradleboard with her. The sun, just coming up, lights their way.

“That tree looks bigger already!” Lola says, gazing out the back window as they drive away.

“How you feeling?” Val says to her niece, concerned about the days before the four-day fast and what it cost Bernice to come out of that.

“I am feeling like I have a story to tell you,” Bernice says.