Hannah & the Spindle Whorl (12 page)

Yisella and her sister talk a mile a minute. Their voices swirl around inside my head. I recognize the emotions even though I can’t understand the words. Anger. Fear. Concern. That reminds me … where’s Jack? I thought I saw him earlier, sitting in a tree.

And what about Nutsa? Do I tell Yisella? Do I tell her that I’m pretty sure her sister pushed me into the river? That I think she tried to kill me? Or am I imagining that? Did I just have a dizzy spell and fall? Was Nutsa worried for my life? Is that why she has appeared on the riverbank?

I’m still a little dazed, and my legs buckle. I sit down on the gravel bank, grateful to take the weight off my injured knee. Yisella sees my ripped jeans, and the blood oozing from the gash on my knee. “Wait here,” she orders, and darts off into the woods. Wait here? I don’t really have a choice but I don’t want to be stuck beside a raging river with Nutsa, who is staring at me again.

“You pushed me, didn’t you!” I accuse, knowing that she can’t answer me. I don’t care; I need to say it out loud anyway. She doesn’t even try to answer. She doesn’t even bother to look confused.

“Why? Why do you hate me so much?” I’m actually yelling and there are tears of frustration in my eyes. “What did I ever do to you?”

Nutsa just stands there, looking smug. I want to slap her.

Suddenly out of nowhere, Jack returns, flapping and hopping around frantically beside us. Before I can say anything more, Yisella bursts through the trees.

“Here, put this on your knee.” She opens both her hands to reveal a pulpy wet greenish-grey mess of … I don’t know what.

“Ew. What is that?” It looks like something Nell’s dog, Quincy, could have upchucked.

“Yarrow,” she says, slapping the disgusting mess over the top of my knee.

“Ow!” I wince at the sting and squeal in protest as she pulls on my ankle to stretch out my leg.

“Don’t worry,” she says, “this will stop the bleeding. I just need to wrap it in this.” She picks up a strip of cedar bark and wraps it around my knee, making sure the oatmeal-like sludge is covering the wound.

“Doesn’t look like yarrow to me,” I say, thinking of the lacy flowerlike weed that grows almost everywhere in summer.

“Not anymore,” Yisella smiles, “not now that I’ve chewed all the flowers up.”

“What? My knee is covered in your spit?”

She finishes tying the cedar strip on my leg and when she’s sure it’s good and tight, she looks up at me and says, “Yes. That’s right.”

“Gross.”

“Gross? I don’t know this word.” She looks so earnest that I laugh out loud and forget, for a moment, about Nutsa. I’ll make sure she walks well ahead of us on our way back to Tl’ulpalus. I want to keep my eye on her. I wish I could tell Yisella my suspicions about her sister, but she’s got enough to deal with right now, so I keep my mouth shut. I just want to get back to the warmth of the fire and dry out.

We have barely started back when Yisella stops dead in her tracks.

“What?” I say, when she just stands there staring at the ground.

She looks up at me, her eyes huge, and points to the ground. I look down and there, in broad daylight, are two of the biggest footprints I have ever seen in my whole entire life. They look human, only they’re at least twice the size of any human foot I’ve ever seen.

That was no bear I saw on the riverbank.

WE DON’T TELL
anyone what happened in the woods. And no one questions why I am wet or walking with a limp. Skeepla is worse, and that is all any of us care about now.

Nothing seems to help her. People are trying all kinds of stuff, and all I can do is watch. I hate feeling like this. I’m not the sort of person who likes to sit around and watch other people work. I like to get in there. This sucks. I can feel the tension in the air. Everyone is silent, casting worried looks over to the sleeping platform where Skeepla moans quietly, her hair damp and lifeless. Yisella’s grandmother is kneeling beside her, chanting softly in a deep steady voice as she sweeps the air above Skeepla with a thick cedar bough. No one interrupts her or joins in. She is left alone, sweeping the air for what seems like hours and hours. You can feel the sadness inside the longhouse. What’s worse for me is knowing that I’ve seen all this before. I remember in one of my dreams that I saw Skeepla and this old woman with the cedar bough. I heard the chanting and I saw the beads of sweat on Skeepla’s face. But in my dream, Skeepla doesn’t get better because, in my dream, she is dying. I really hope it is one dream that doesn’t come true.

It isn’t long before Yisella’s mother breaks out in a rash that spreads over her face and hands, and soon her whole body is covered with strange red bumps. Skeepla drifts in and out of her fever, not able to eat any food at all. I try to help as much as I can but, when the rash turns into big angry blisters, there seems to be little that I, or the people of Tl’ulpalus, can do for her.

The villagers are really scared of this illness. They have heard stories about other people dying up and down the island — how none of their medicines could save them. Men, women and children are powerless against it. I feel totally crappy because I know that this sickness has to be smallpox, the awful disease that wiped out so many of the first peoples on the west coast of Canada. We learned about it in social studies class. There were huge epidemics happening everywhere and there was a major one on Vancouver Island in 1862. Is this the start? Have I really travelled back almost one hundred and fifty years? And am I going to stay here forever? What is the point of all this?

There’s nothing I can do right now except be Yisella’s friend. But I’m still afraid. I’m afraid because now there are others in Tl’ulpalus who are getting sick. Two of the elders and two of the really young kids have the fever and the same rash, and everybody is freaking out. It’s heartbreaking, and terrifying to watch. And what about me? I’m lucky that I don’t get sick very much — I never even get colds. But what if I get this?

These days Yisella barely leaves her mother’s side. She sits and watches, and on the rare occasion that Skeepla is more aware of her surroundings, Yisella sings and talks to her.

A week after Skeepla’s illness first took hold, she wakes and sees Yisella sitting beside her. She takes Yisella’s hand and looks her in the eye. Her grip is serious, strong despite the fact that she has become so frail and weak. They speak in hushed tones for a little while.

Skeepla falls back into an exhausted sleep and Yisella walks quickly out of the longhouse. I’m not sure if I should follow her but Yisella’s grandmother gives me a look as if I should. It’s strange. I’ve only been here in Tl’ulpalus for a little over two weeks, and yet I can often understand everyone instinctively, in a way that’s hard to describe. I can understand and speak only a few Quw’utsun’ words but you can say a lot with your eyes, or in the way you move, and in the gestures that you make with your hands. It makes me think that maybe I talk too much most of the time.

Yisella is sitting on the grass just outside the longhouse. She twirls a long piece of beach grass around her forefinger. I stretch my toes in front of me when I sit down beside her. The rain has stopped and today it is hot and the ocean is flat and calm. I can tell it’s going to be a perfect summer day.

“My mother is worried. She says that summer will soon be over and I need to get ready for another trip across the water with the rest of the village.”

“Why?” I ask. “Where?”

“Our summer camp. Sometimes we make two or three trips. It’s the most important time, when we trade for things like the goat’s wool, remember? It’s harder for the people over there to have enough food during the winter. The Quw’utsun’ people are lucky to have so much here to eat.”

That explains why I’ve seen the villagers checking out the canoes on the beach the past couple of days. The boats are huge and heavy looking, much bigger than any canoes that I’ve ever seen. The large front ends, the bows, are high and each is carved with a ferocious and very intimidating wolf’s head. I see men lashing large planks to the canoes with cedar rope. Yisella says they use them to build summerhouses when they reach the other side of the strait. It’s hard for me to believe that these canoes, as sturdy as they look, can be paddled all the way across the Strait of Georgia! I’ve done the trip tons of times and sometimes it’s pretty rough, even in a humongous ferryboat. I wonder if the Quw’utsun’ people get seasick?

“But someone has to stay here in the village, don’t they?” I ask.

Yisella frowns but doesn’t answer right away. I’m sure that she’s thinking about Skeepla and the others who are sick. “I’m going to stay to finish my mother’s blanket,” she says in a matter-of-fact tone. She stares at the ground when she says this, which is weird because she usually looks you straight in the eye when she talks to you.

“But,” I push, “you said you can’t do it. Weave, I mean. You said you don’t have the spinning gift.”

Yisella blinks slowly. “I don’t. But I think I should stay and try anyway. Nutsa can’t be trusted to finish it. My mother–—” Her voice catches and she stops talking. I recognize the pain in her voice. I know all about that. I just nod like I understand because, well, I do.

Before, when I watched Skeepla working with the spindle whorl, I’d noticed the wooden loom sitting near the baskets of fleece. Two vertical pieces of wood stood straight and tall, supporting two thinner horizontal pieces about six feet long. Over this, was the off-white tightly woven blanket that her mother was working on. It had a deep brown and red geometric design running down both sides.

“I’ve watched enough to know how to make that pattern,” Yisella tells me, looking suddenly composed again. She tells me that the blanket is her mother’s most prized piece of work so far, a present to be given at the potlatch. It is an important potlatch, held at the very end of summer.

Our class had learned a little bit about potlatches from Mrs. Elford. I knew that it was a kind of “giving away” party, where the invited guests received tons of stuff. The more stuff the guests received, the more important the party-givers were. Then the guests would have to give their own potlatch down the road and try to give even more stuff to their guests to prove that they were even more important. So the better the gifts you gave away, the more status your village received. Tl’ulpalus was bound to rate high, partly because of Skeepla’s amazing skill. Yisella says that this blanket is like no other.

“The problem is that Mother won’t want me to stay here,” she continues. “She’ll want me to work hard with the rest of village.”

Poor Yisella. Lately she looks worried all the time, which seems like an awful way for a kid to be. She’s worried about her mother’s health, worried about her sister’s bad attitude, worried about her father and his worry over the villagers’ fascination with the
hwunitum
. Wow … all I ever seem to worry about is getting my homework done on time and trying not to miss the school bus in the morning.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m not sure. If I stay, it will make my mother angry. But if I go, it won’t feel right. I just don’t know what I should do.”

I feel bad for her. It’s kind of like the time I had to choose between going horseback riding with Gwyneth — something we’d planned for weeks — or helping Nell in the bakery when she broke her arm. I felt sure that Nell would be seriously mad if she learned I’d passed up a party to help her, but I also knew that Gwyneth would be mad if I ditched riding with her. In the end, I helped Nell, and Gwyneth ended up being cool with it. I guess that’s why she was my best friend.

“Come on, Yisella, let’s go walk on the beach. Sometimes walking helps me figure stuff out. Maybe it’ll help you too.”

She nods her head but her mind is somewhere else. Yisella peers through the entrance to the longhouse and gazes over at the unfinished blanket on the rustic loom. I look over to where Skeepla is lying. She’s so weak now that she is no longer even moaning. It’s an awful and frightening sight. Her entire body is covered with the angry blisters, so much so that you can’t see a single patch of smooth skin. Her breathing is rapid and shallow, and her arms are limp at her sides. It’s one thing to read about smallpox, but another to see it up close. It’s like a nightmare.

Yisella’s grandmother continues to sweep the air around Skeepla with the cedar bough, but her movements are different than they were over a week ago. Now they’re almost peaceful. Our eyes meet and I see something in her look that tells me Skeepla won’t be with us much longer. She knows it, I know it; and while I’m pretty sure that Yisella isn’t letting herself think about it, I think she knows it too. I look over and I can tell that she’s worrying again.

“Come on, Yisella,” I say, grabbing her arm and leading her away from the longhouse. “You’ve been sitting here long enough.” As we pass the doorway, I block the sight of her mother’s body with my own.

The morning passes slowly and peacefully. We walk up and down the beach, not talking much, and then we sit on a log, mindlessly drawing pictures in the wet sand. It’s the first time that I’ve seen my friend without something to do and I secretly vow that I will never complain to my dad about the few chores I have. They’re nothing compared to what Yisella has to do.

I tell her a bit more about my home, my Cowichan Bay. How there are many boats, but not like the canoes that she knows. I tell her about our boat that we live on, how we sleep on it, how we can cook on it, and how we have a lot of neighbours who live the same way. I tell her about Nell’s bakery, and the different breads and things that she makes using the flour and sugar that Yisella has only just discovered for her own cooking. She doesn’t really seem that surprised. She just nods her head, as if I’m telling her stuff that she already knows.

And then, for some reason, I just start telling her about my mom. I tell her how much I still miss my mom and that the last thing we talked about on the day that she died was whether or not Chuck could remember what he’d eaten for dinner the day before. I tell her other things too. About how she loved to brush my hair for as long as I would let her, how she used to say that she would “tame” my wild curls, even though she never could.

I laugh as I remember how she would sing to herself when she was super nervous, making up really lame words to songs if she didn’t know the lyrics. How she always smelled like fresh lemons because of the lemon fragrance that she used. She put it on every single day for as long as I could remember. I told Yisella how she knitted heavy wool socks in bright colours — bright reds and flaming oranges — even quicker than it would take to go to the store and buy them. Finally, I tell her that I can’t bear to be near her things. That they’re hidden away in a wooden chest because it hurts too much to look at them.

I haven’t talked this much about Mom since she died, and the funny thing is, it doesn’t feel sad. It feels good. It feels good to remember her this way, all the fun we had and the goofy things that she used to do. Yisella asks me so many things about her. What did she look like? What was her name? Did she laugh a lot? Did she like the ocean? Could I sing any of the dumb songs that she used to sing?

After a long time, when I’ve told her all I can, I actually feel lighter, like I can finally take a whole deep breath. A few weeks after Mom’s accident, Dad made me talk to the school guidance counsellor. I’d thought it was so dumb, and afterwards I’d felt worse, not better.

Now I take a deep breath and give Yisella a big hug. “Thank you,” I say, and laugh when she looks confused.

“What for?”

“I don’t really know.” I smile, looking out at a pair of cormorants that have come to rest on a log floating in the bay. Jack sits on a rock at the shoreline. He’s always nearby when Yisella and I are together, kind of a permanent fixture.

“Thanks for just listening, I guess, and for wanting to know about my mother.”

“We’re friends,” Yisella says, “and our mothers are both special.
Huy chqa
to you too.”

“Huych … oh forget it. You know I can’t pronounce it. I’ve already tried!”

“Huy chqa
!” she says again, and smiles her wide genuine smile. I’ve missed seeing that in the days since her mother got sick.

I repeat the word for “thank you,”
huy chqa
, over and over. It’s pronounced like “hytch kah.” Yisella covers her mouth with her hand and laughs out loud at the way I say it. I get back at her by making her say a tongue twister in English: red leather, yellow leather, red leather, yellow leather, again and again. Then it’s my turn to laugh because she’s hopeless.