Gives Light(Gives Light Series) (9 page)

I think you've been amorous since the end of June
, I signed.  Annie decided to act as though I hadn't said anything.  "Of course, we Plains People have been on the slow decline since the whites came to America, but take a look around you--there are only a few hundred of us living in Nettlebush.  We have to marry outside our tribe sometimes," she said firmly.  "You don't want us marrying our brothers and sisters, do you?"

I definitely didn't want that.  I grinned.  Annie rolled her eyes at me and we went outside to wash our hands at the water pump.

"It's a shame Mom can't be here," she said somberly.  "Mom loves the pauwaus--that's how she met Daddy, as a matter of fact.  She's originally Kiowa."

I squeezed Annie's shoulder.  She flashed me a smile.

Sighing, Lila trudged over to the water pump.  "I'm not ready for love," she told us.  She batted her eyelashes at me.  "Unless it's you, baby."

I grasped my hand to my heart.

"Well, you're much too little for that," Annie said dismissively.  "Now please go to the Stouts' house and ask for my dance shawl, I'm positive Siobhan had it last."

"Stop oppressing me," Lila said, but trundled away.

You're going to dance?
I asked Annie.

"A shawl dance, yes," Annie said.  She looked at me thoughtfully.  "Maybe Joseph could teach you to grass dance..."

Are you going to dance with Aubrey?
I asked--partially to tease her and partially to get her off the topic of me dancing with her little brother.

Annie turned pink and suddenly had somewhere else to be.

A pauwau, I took it, was a kind of meet and greet.  How many men and women had met their spouses that way?  I wondered, briefly, how Dad and Mom had met, but tried not to linger very long on the fruitless sentiment.

The weirdest thing of all was that Rafael seemed just as psyched as the rest of the reservation.

"Why shouldn't I be?" he said defensively at dinner that night.  "I get to meet a bunch of strangers who don't know anything about my dad."

Dinner was interrupted that night by a light, brief rainfall that saw most of us running indoors with our pots and pans.  Maybe the sky was preparing itself for the approaching monsoon season.  Granny, who hated the rain, asked me to play her a few pieces on the plains flute.  I started playing Ring of Fire, but I don't think she found it funny.  She spent the rest of the evening teaching me to play the Song of the Fallen Warrior, mostly by singing aloud and waiting for me to figure out the accompanying notes.  Every Plains boy needed to know the Song of the Fallen Warrior, she said.  I hadn't realized she saw me as a Plains boy.

When we had finished, Granny scrutinized me in silence.

"Wait here," Granny said.

I sat on the floor, cross-legged, intrigued, and watched her shuffle off to her bedroom.  She returned holding a heavy-looking outfit in alternating pale and dark greens; she looked like she was struggling not to drop it.  I hurried to relieve her of the burden.

"This was your father's," she told me.  "Naturally it hasn't seen much use over the years.  You will wear it to the pauwau.  I won't have you sticking out like a sore thumb."

I brushed the dyed brocade with my fingertips.  It was soft and heavy; I thought it was deerhide, but I couldn't be sure.  The regalia consisted of a weighted overcoat and matching breechclout and trousers.  The dark green seams running up the sides told a story of interrupted terrain.  I saw, too, that there was a decorative piece that draped across the throat.

To have my hands on something my dad had owned...  My heart tightened with longing.  Every passing day meant that I missed him more and more.

Granny's eyes were on my throat, on the scars on my neck.  She stifled a sigh.

"I liked Christine," she said.

Christine was my mother's name.

I think it occurred to me for the first time that night that I wasn't the only person trying and failing to navigate my mom's constant absence.  Granny made to move past me, but I stopped her with a light hand on her shoulder.  She looked puzzled.  I laid Dad's regalia down on the rocking chair and wrapped her in a hug. 

I felt her hand on my back, tremulous and warm.  I wondered which of my parents she was thinking about just then: the friend she had lost, or her errant son.

Granny told me stories that night.  We sat up by the hearth, her in her rocking chair, me on the floor, and she told me how Mom had first come by the reservation, a cultural project during her college days; how Dad had been taken with her from first sight; how they'd sneaked around after dark until days turned into weeks, weeks into months into years, and when the time came to leave, Mom stayed.  She told me how Mom had kept turtles for pets, how Dad had built her a house with a garden full of snapdragons and morning glories, how Dad wouldn't take her last name the way men were supposed to in Nettlebush, and they'd argued over that, but mostly, undeniably, they'd been happy.  The embers were burning low when Granny took a look at the little battery clock on her mantelpiece and cried, irate, "I told you to be in bed by eleven o'clock!"  Neither of us had realized it was one in the morning.

Nettlebush worked itself to the bone in the days preceding the pauwau; except during dinner, I don't think I saw Rafael at all during that time.  Annie had Lila and Joseph and me bake dozens of sunflower cakes while she caught rabbits--never in front of me, which was really nice of her--and stuffed bell peppers and sustained a couple of burns.  Joseph ran around for hours on end in his grass dance regalia, a fringed outfit in brilliant blues, until finally he got actual grass stains on his pants.  Annie screamed.  Lila said, "Chill," and fetched the vinegar.  I'm not sure Joseph knew what his crazy sisters were going on about, because he kept signing "Cake" to me.  I thought that deserved a hearty pat on the head.

The eve of the pauwau arrived, and everyone pitched in building a grand bonfire in the windmill field.  Uniformity was amazing, in a way, because no one looked twice at me when we were all wearing the same traditional dress--or maybe it was that the older folks were finally starting to get used to me.  Whatever it was, I was grateful for it.  The fire flared to life, leaping and tall, a bright beacon in the darkness; women and their husbands set up tables and blankets under the starry sky; and the whole field wafted with the scents of sweet potatoes and cactus fruit jelly and strawberries in honey.

A Titan-sized man with a bushy head of hair called for silence.  Everyone drew in a circle around the sweltering flames, a welcome alleviant against the cold night.  We linked arms, and the Titan-man led us in prayer.  He called out to the Great Mystery of the universe and thanked it for the bounty by which we all lived, the generosity of the growing land and of the animals who gave us their lifeblood, and most importantly, he said, the compassion of the human heart.  The prayer, I thought, was profoundly touching, and maybe more meaningful than anything I had ever heard in a church.

The other tribes arrived on the scene one at a time, calling and cheering and carrying eagle standards and flags.  They set their flags and their standards in the ground and immediately started mingling.  I have to say that it was really energizing; with all those smiles and friendly greetings, I don't think anyone could have pulled a sour face for long.  Each tribe seemed to have a select number of people who went out to shake hands first.  Our tribe had four.  I guessed that these were the individual tribal councils.  The days of chieftains were long over.  I was still on that thought when a sudden voice in my ear said, "Don't let the big guy fool you.  Nola Red Clay calls the shots around here."

I hadn't seen much of Rafael lately, so it didn't entirely surprise me that the sound of his voice put an irrepressible grin on my face.  I turned to get a good look at him.  His clothes were a muted, plain gray, but I thought he looked handsome in them; the gray brought out the blue in his eyes with startling clarity.  Rafael was smiling, lopsided but earnest.  That was what surprised me most.  Usually he had to have a specific reason to smile.

"You look...never mind.  C'mon, I'm hungry."

We grabbed plates of sunflower cake and wojapi and sat beneath one of the windmills.  I liked the way the light from the flames would occasionally outreach itself and dip the spinning windmill blades in an aura of red-gold.  Rafael didn't see his dinner as something to eat so much as something to attack; the enthusiasm with which he put away his dessert probably would have been enough to scare a baby black bear into hiding.

Rafael's silence gave me the opportunity to admire the visiting tribes and the attractions they had brought with them.  The Hopi were solemn and intimidating in dark, heavy regalia, their intricate hairstyles bordering on alien.  I wasn't at all sure how they managed to move around while wearing all those layers; I bet they were sweating bullets underneath their clothes.  The Pawnee were by far the simplest dressed, their lightweight summer skins without color or embellishment.  Some of them, I noticed, had even come in t-shirts and jeans.  On the other end of the spectrum were the Navajo, who couldn't have looked showier unless they had dunked their heads in buckets of paint.  They were flashy and foreign in the brightest of clothes, soft silk and shining taffeta, feathered headdresses and beaded headbands and great big mantles hanging from their shoulders like tumbling wings.  I thought they looked mythical, and certainly poetic.

"Javelin toss!" someone shouted--someone else laughed--and a group of men and women lined up to see who could throw theirs the farthest.

"Maybe Uncle Gabe'll finally find a girlfriend," Rafael said dubiously.  "He's almost thirty and he's still not married."

Annie had said that pauwaus were often a way to meet your future spouse.  I wondered if Rafael would meet a girl at one of these get togethers someday, maybe even marry her.  I'm not the kind of guy who gets jealous over girls, but thinking about Rafael with a girlfriend...  I couldn't imagine it; and when I tried to, it surprised me how uncomfortable I felt.  Rafael, I reasoned, was a Caliban.  Calibans didn't marry Mirandas.

I saw a Navajo girl glance Rafael's way with interest.  Rafael didn't seem to notice her, but my stomach lurched unpleasantly.

"There," Rafael said.  He tapped my arm and pointed to a large gathered around a big drum.  "Kiowa tribe.  They're the closest to ours.  Except for the Paiute, but they don't come to these things anymore."

The Kiowa danced in place and shook hollow gourds, springing and leaping, praising the red wolf with hallowed chants.  Still--and it was probably bias--I thought our tribe's dances were the best.  I watched Annie spinning beneath the stars, a shawl the color of briar rose tossing about her shoulders and arms, and she was a seismic whirlwind, quick and burning, to rival the strongest of fires.  I watched Joseph dance in light, sprightly steps around his sisters, arms aloft, and the brilliant blue fringe hanging from his elbows and knees tumbled like grass in the spring air.  For a moment, I thought he could hear the music he was dancing to.

I caught sight of Granny on the grass, sitting on a blanket and laughing with a bunch of elderly women I took to be estranged friends of hers.  I grinned and waved.  She caught my eye and gave me a nod.  Some of the younger children were starting a race, Lila looking haughty and confident, when the Navajo girl from before came up to Rafael and me.  My stomach lurched again.  And then she did the most surprising thing of all--she offered her hand to me.

"Dance?" she prompted.

You take one look at Rafael, who's got this untamed, darkly handsome thing going on, and then me and my Little Orphan Annie hair, and it's not difficult to figure out which one's the more attractive of the two.  I think it's natural that I had assumed her interest was in Rafael.  I gestured between the two of us, just to make sure she wasn't confused; she kept pointing at me emphatically.

I didn't know what to say to that--not that I could have said anything.  I think I may have laughed.  I was flattered, but more than a little embarrassed.  I didn't want to leave the girl hanging--she seemed nice--so I looked back at Rafael to see if he minded.  His face was a blank slate.

"Whatever," he dismissed.

Dancing with the Navajo girl turned out to be a lot of fun.  To begin with, she wanted to do the leading, and I was more than happy to let her.  She was almost as quiet as I was--and that's saying something--but I don't think it was shyness so much as the confidence that comes from indisputably knowing your place in life.  She thanked me when we had finished.  I responded by dipping her and she laughed and kissed my cheek.  I waved after her as she walked back to her family, and then I thought:  I wish she had told me her name.  It would have been fun to have a pen pal.

When I went back to Rafael, he looked furious.

I felt cold, and sort of sick.  I'd never been in a situation like this before.  Rafael liked the Navajo girl, and he was mad at me for dancing with her.  I should have known.  I felt like I had completely disregarded his feelings.  I snapped my fingers at him and pointed after her, trying to get him to realize he could go after her; her interest in me had already waned.  He waved my hand away, ignoring me.

Annie came walking over to us, breathless and pleased, tugging Aubrey along by his hand.  "Hello, the both of you," she said, and dropped to a sitting position on the ground.  Aubrey sat with her and beamed at me, but nodded less certainly to Rafael.  Rafael scowled.