Hannah & the Spindle Whorl (13 page)

Our laughter is cut short when Nutsa suddenly appears on the bank above the shore, calling for her sister. I’m not sure what she says but all of the colour drains from Yisella’s face. She leaps up and then races toward the longhouse, kicking up sand in every direction. Jack leaves his perch on the rock near the water and flaps his wings furiously, trying to catch up. I’m quick to follow, although I’m really scared of what might be waiting for her. After Yisella disappears inside the entrance, women begin to cry and chant. Yisella’s father appears a moment later, his arms around both of his daughters. His face is strained and his eyes are filled with tears. I feel myself stiffen and I hold my breath, everything becoming real very fast. My whole body goes hot, then cold. I know that my nightmare has come true. Skeepla is gone.

Yisella’s grandmother embraces her and says something in a very quiet voice. With a solemn face, Yisella translates: Skeepla is now among the people who have gone to the dead. It sounds creepy to say something like that, but Yisella says this is what happens when somebody dies. And that we have to be careful of what we do in the next few hours, so we don’t lead Skeepla’s soul back to us. If she’s not ready to go, she could return and try to take someone she loves with her to keep her company on her journey. I look over at Yisella and wonder if she’s scared but, as usual, she looks like she can handle anything. For sure, I don’t want her to know how scared I am.

There’s so much sadness in the longhouse. No one understands this awful sickness that has taken Skeepla and so many others in the neighbouring villages. There’s a lot of talk about people dying in places across the water too. I can’t take my eyes off Skeepla’s still small body lying on her sleeping platform. She looks peaceful, as if, without the pain, she can finally rest. Yisella and Nutsa sit quietly by her side, ready to do whatever is needed. Even Nutsa has lost her usual faraway expression and she looks alert and determined. Yisella’s great-grandmother begins to apply thick red and black streaks on Skeepla’s cheeks, talking quietly to her great-granddaughters while she works.

“Great-grandmother says that death is part of life,” Yisella explains. “When one of us leaves, we make room for another one to be born.”

I can’t stop the tear that slides down my cheek. I’m not a fan of death. I brush my arm quickly across my face and give her a weak smile. Her words make sense and I really want to believe them. More than anything. I wonder if my mom believed that? Our family was never much into church or anything, and no one ever really talks about what happens after you die. All I know is that it isn’t fair that my mother was taken away from me so early, and I feel the sting of her absence all over again. Then Yisella says something to her sister, and together they look over to Skeepla’s blanket and nod to each other.

I go outside and sit on the beach, giving Yisella and her family some privacy. I wish I didn’t, but I know exactly what she’s feeling. I remember everything about the day Mom died. It was sunny and warm, a day like this one. I remember Dad trying to be calm and strong while he struggled to find the right words to tell me about Mom’s car accident. I could hear people laughing by the roadside up at the Salty Dog Café and I remember wondering how they could be so carefree and happy? How could they be going out for a fish and chip dinner today? How could they act like it was just another stupid regular day? For a while after that I never felt anything at all. It was like I was some kind of robot.

I look back at Yisella’s family as Jack flaps up from the ground and settles comfortably a few feet away from me. We stare at each other for a bit, and he cocks his head to one side.

“Jack?” I say. “What’s the deal here? Why do I have to be here for this and feel sad all over again?” For a brief second I wonder if he’ll actually say something to me. I mean, why not? Anything seems possible now. But he just ruffles his feathers and gives me one of his quizzical looks.

I sit there thinking about how everyone has been pretty nice to me since I arrived — everyone except Nutsa, that is. I’m okay being alone, except for Jack, ’cause I know that there are some things that I just can’t be a part of. Stuff I can’t possibly begin to know or understand. Like that gross yarrow stuff. I mean, my knee has already formed a big ugly scab, which is pretty quick, considering how much it was bleeding before.

So, not knowing what else to do, I sit in the sun on the beach with Jack. He picks away at one of his feet with his shiny beak while I try hard not to pick at my scab.

THE NEWS OF
Skeepla’s death travels and soon people from the neighbouring villages near the Cowichan and Koksilah rivers come to pay their respects. It’s obvious that Skeepla was admired, that she’ll be missed for a long time to come. Nutsa and Yisella greet the visitors with brave smiles even though I can tell it is a struggle. Then, with help from the elders, they carefully arrange their mother in a gentle crouching position inside a sturdy cedar plank box. Everyone has a job to do; everyone except me, that is.

Like so many other times here, I feel useless. I’m not sure if I should try to help or just stay in the background. After seeing the looks I get from the visiting villagers, as though I smell bad or something, I decide to stay in the background. It could be my imagination, but I’m sure that some of them are bugged by my being here. Do they think that it’s my fault that Skeepla died? Because I’m
hwunitum
? Do they think that I brought smallpox here? I avoid them by playing with Poos a lot.

There’s no way that I want to pester Yisella about any of this. She and Nutsa are so preoccupied. They don’t smile but they aren’t crying either. I think they might be feeling like robots just the way I did. So I just hang around by the wall of the longhouse and watch with Poos … and Jack. If I wasn’t sure before that Jack was different, somehow special, I definitely am now. No other raven would sit with a little cat — unless that cat was dinner!

I want to be capable like Yisella, but I’m not. I miss Dad and Aunt Maddie, and even the way Chuck chewed on my eyebrow. I feel like the worst friend there is for thinking about myself at a time like this, but all I really want to do is disappear and get back home, now. Poos rubs his body along the side of my leg, as if he senses my distress. I’m so grateful for his company the past few days. I have really grown to love the little cat.

Later on, Yisella and her family perform a solemn dance, chanting in low tones, their feet stamping the hard earth of the longhouse floor. The dance is long and everyone is quiet when it ends, even the smallest children. I watch from a corner, wanting desperately to be invisible. I don’t have any right to be watching something so ancient and important and private — I feel like a spy. I’m grateful that Jack is with me, watching.

The village men lift the box that now holds Skeepla’s body and carry it out of the longhouse. They walk with it carefully down to the beach and along the shoreline, chanting as they go. The rest of the villagers follow in a line, climbing over the rocks, over the logs, and around the point, as the sun disappears behind Swuqus, the Quw’utsun’ name for what I know as Mount Prevost. I remember lying in my bed, watching a satellite travel over the mountain not long after I found the spindle whorl, wondering if it was taking pictures of me and Chuck. That seems like years ago, and not just a couple of weeks. As I gaze at the sky, I know for sure that there won’t be any satellites passing over my head tonight.

By the time we finally stop near a stand of trees, the first few stars are visible in the sky and the air is noticeably cooler. Skeepla’s box is raised on leather straps, up into the branches of the tallest tree. When it rests between two of the sturdier branches, several men shimmy effortlessly up the tree and lash the box to the limbs, so that it will remain there in all kinds of weather. And, just like that, Skeepla is put to rest once and for all. There’s more chanting, and when we’re back in the village I hear the beginnings of a steady drum-beat coming from the stand of trees. The drumming continues through the night, long after everyone else has gone to bed. I’m not sure who the drummer is, but the beat doesn’t stop, even for a moment.

I am numb and sad, and I can’t sleep. I am also really homesick, but I try not to think about that because I know that Yisella feels as though she’s walking around in a bad dream. At least, that’s how I felt knowing I’d never see my mother again. I can’t help thinking how different everything was today. Different from my mom’s funeral, where everyone sat so still and listened to people tell happy and bittersweet stories about her.

Afterwards, at Grandma’s house in Parksville, I had to comfort my Aunt Laura by giving her neck rubs and some Tylenol. I put up with a lot of hugging from a bunch of sobbing relatives who I’d never even met — telling me to be strong and saying how much I looked like Mom. Eventually Dad came to my rescue and we went off for a walk, just the two of us, along the beach. We didn’t come back until it was dark and all the cars were gone from the driveway. Grandma was really mad, but Dad didn’t care.

When we got back home the next night, Dad asked me if I wanted to watch old home movies with him but I said no. I couldn’t. So we ended up watching a Bugs Bunny cartoon marathon until we both fell asleep in the living room. In the days that followed, some of the houseboaters dropped off casseroles and cookies and stuff, but some people avoided us too. Dad said it was because they just didn’t know the right things to say. I guess people just don’t get it until they lose someone they love.

I grab my backpack from under the platform and pull out my journal, pen and my key-chain flashlight. My pen is one of those hokey ones you get at cheesy souvenir shops; a killer whale “swims” back and forth when you tip the pen up, then down. I’ve had it forever but I watch the tiny orca float in different directions for a long time before I start to write.

I guess I fell asleep because I wake up the next morning with my journal on my chest. I put it away and sit up, not knowing what to expect today. I see that some people are just now getting up, moving around; others are coming and going in and out of the longhouse, carrying baskets, boxes and bundles lashed together with cedar cords. The sombre mood of the previous day is gone, replaced now with busyness. Only Yisella is sitting quietly in the corner by her mother’s weaving loom. She’s carefully combing fibres out with her fingers and rolling them on her leg. She offers me a weak smile when I sit down beside her.

“Sometimes I prepare wool for Mother,” she says. She reaches into a different basket and pulls out what looks like cottony fireweed fibres. She adds the plant bits to the goat wool, mixes them together, and then rolls the mass out onto her leg again.

“Yisella, who’s going to finish your mother’s blanket?” I’m thinking about the potlatch her village is supposed to have when they get back.

“I don’t know. Nutsa isn’t ready. Maybe it’ll never be finished. There isn’t any other person in the village with the same gift as Mother’s.”

“Do you think I could try?” The words are out before I even have time to think. I reach out and run my fingers over the smooth burnished surface of Skeepla’s spindle whorl. It’s cool to the touch and I feel an electric jolt in my fingertips as I trace the carved salmon around the hole in the centre. “Will you show me how to use this?”

Yisella gives me an odd questioning look, but nods anyway. “I’m not very good but I’ll show you what I know,” she says, and gestures for me to hand her the whorl. She then grabs the spindle, a smooth three-foot cedar pole with a notch in it, and pushes it through the hole in the centre of the whorl. The whorl stops about a third of the way down the spindle. It will act like a flywheel, to steady the rotation of the spindle, and spool the yarn on top.

Yisella ties the rolled fleece to the tip of the spindle and when she is satisfied that it is secure, she spins the pole against her thigh. The whorl spins and the salmon swim in a circle, jumping before my eyes. As my head begins to buzz and prickle, I tear my eyes away from the whorl and watch Yisella work. She continues to work the spindle and I’m fascinated by how quickly the yarn spools on top of the whorl.

I watch until she stops and says, “Now I’ll try and show you how to weave. The part at the edges is hard and the pattern makes my head hurt. If I don’t watch what I’m doing, I’ll lose my place. But I’ll show you what I know.”

She sits in front of the two-bar loom, focusing on the tight off-white weave of the blanket: where it ends and where the thin vertical warp strands begin. Yisella attaches the new yarn and, using a kind of paddle, she weaves it over and under the warp strands: over two, then under two, then over, then under. She reaches the edge, where the deep red and dark brown pattern borders the blanket, and hesitates. Now she works with three different strands, carefully twisting and counting the warp and the weaving threads before and after each pass she makes.

I can see that it takes a lot of concentration. Just one strand too many or one less would totally change the perfect geometric design. When Yisella reaches the end, she rests the paddle against the side of the loom. She returns to the spindle and whorl to make more yarn for the main portion of the blanket. But just as she begins to turn the spindle, the salmon barely merging together, Yisella breaks her concentration and says, “Okay, Hannah. You try it now.”

My fingers are literally itching to try as she moves aside so I can take her spot, and it’s all I can do to sit still. When she passes me the spindle and whorl, I get that funny electric feeling in my fingertips again. I grab a handful of fleece from the basket and my hand feels all warm and tingly. That’s bizarre. I adjust the whorl the way I saw Yisella do it, and the craziest thing happens! It’s like my fingers belong to somebody else.

My right hand turns the spindle, naturally and quickly, spinning the whorl faster and faster. I control the fleece with my other hand, separating it and feeding it along in perfect time with the turning of the spindle. The salmon start to swim again and blur together.

I can’t shift my eyes, and even when my fingers feel tired, I don’t break the rhythm. My pulse quickens and I can’t stop even if I wanted to. Yep. It’s the same feeling that came over me when I first saw the spindle whorl. I focus, mesmerized, thinking of nothing else. I am acting like a well-oiled machine. That’s what Dad says when he watches the hockey play-offs. “That team plays like a well-oiled machine!” Which is funny because he’s not a huge sports fan, so how would he even know?

Just when my fingers are beginning to cramp up, everything slows down, coming to a full stop. I blink for a minute, look over at Yisella, and see her staring at me with her mouth hanging open. And she’s not the only one. A group of villagers are standing near the door watching in disbelief. Jack is calmly perched on the edge of the main fire pit, observing everything. He’s the only one who doesn’t look surprised, not that I even know what a surprised raven might look like.

I look down at the basket on the ground beside me. What was full is now empty. I look at the whorl sitting on the spindle. What was empty is now full, and the new yarn is even and strong.