Ivory and the Horn (46 page)

“Do you think Tommy would like it if I gave him this painting when it’s done?” she said.

Maisie shrugged. “It’s hard to say. When I said he likes pictures, it’s mostly stuff from magazines. He has me cut out the people in the pictures and then he uses them as dolls to make up little stories. He’s never had a painting before, so I don’t know what he’d do with it.”

Jilly decided that she would give Tommy a painting, except it would be one of him and his sister and their dogs. She had a good enough memory that she knew she’d be able to do it back in her studio without their needing to sit for it. ! “That was an odd story,” Maisie said.

“What there was of it,” Jilly said.

Her companion gave her a considering look. “If I didn’t know better,” she said, “I’d think that Angel had set this up—sort of a morality play, you know?”

Jilly shook her head.

“Well, she’s always telling me I’ve got to get a life for myself—meet people, maybe get a boyfriend, that kind of thing. I can’t seem to get her to understand that being with Tommy and the dogs is what I
want
to do.”

“But she’s got a point.”

“And that is?”

“If you lose sight of yourself, then what’ve you got to offer Tommy and the dogs? You’ll be as bad as my ghost, giving of yourself until there’s nothing left to give and you simply fade away. You’ll end up stuck in the same limbo.” J. “You don’t get it either. I
want
to be with them.”

Jilly sighed. “I do get it. But maybe it’d be good for them to have some other input as well. I’m not saying Tommy can be self-sufficient—I don’t know him well enough, what his limitations might be. But if you’re always there doing things for him, how’s he supposed to learn to do anything for himself?”

“But that’s how I found him. He was like that. He’s not my brother, I just kind of adopted him. He got dumped on the streets because nobody else wanted him and let me tell you, without me, he wouldn’t have survived.”

“I believe you. But maybe whoever he was with before wasn’t giving him any slack either.” Jilly held up her hand to forestall Maisie’s protest. “Look, I’m not saying you’re right or wrong, just that you might want to think about it—for Tommy, if not for yourself. Maybe you need Tommy as much as he needs you. I don’t know. It’s not for me to say, is it?”

“That’s right. It’s not for you to say.”

Jilly sighed. “Now you think I’m trying to tell you how to take care of Tommy.”

“Aren’t you? You’re beginning to sound the same as everyone else I meet—you all know better.”

“No, I don’t,” Jilly said. “The only thing I know about Tommy is that I intend to treat him like anybody else know. I don’t have some hidden agenda; I was talking about you. Maybe you know how to take care of Tommy and the dogs, but do you know how to take care of yourself? I’m no talking about making a living or going back to school, on any of that. I’m talking about what goes on in here—” she touched a hand between her breasts “—in your heart.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s like my painting,” Jilly said. “I’m out here on the streets with this pochade box because I was overloading my work with detail—so much so that while all the various part of a painting would be good, the excessive details made the final painting way too busy. I was losing sight of what I was trying to say with each painting in the first place.”

“So?”

“I’ve done the same thing with my life. Concentrated so much on the details, that I would lose sight of the overall direction of where I was going—of the fact that I even wanted to go somewhere in the first place. I’ve got friend who work with people with special needs. I’ve even done some volunteer work myself. The thing is, it’s so easy to wrap your whole life around the details of theirs, that you become invisible in the process. People like Tommy can’t help needing so much from us. But we’ve got to have some thing to give them, and if we spend all our time wrapped up in what we see as our responsibility, our relationships with them end up becoming burdens instead of gifts.”

At first Maisie looked angry, and Jilly thought she’d gone too far. She didn’t know anything about either Maisie or Tommy beyond what she’d picked up in the past hour, so who was she to be blithely handing our advice the way she was? But then Maisie’s features softened and she gave an other one of her sighs.

“Am I that transparent?” Maisie asked.

Jilly shook her head. “Only if you know what to look for. You seem really tired, almost worn out.”

“I am. But what I said was true. I don’t resent the time I spend with Tommy. I like being with him, but sometimes it gets to be too much, trying to juggle school and work and time with him–-” Her gaze met Jilly’s. “But I can’t not do it. And I don’t want to just foist Tommy off somewhere so that I can have some time to myself.”

“Because you think Tommy would feel hurt?”

“Partly. But I also get scared that if it looks like I can’t take care of him properly, somebody’ll try to take him away from me.”

Jilly nodded understandingly. “Maybe you’re looking at this from the wrong angle, losing the overall picture for the details. Instead of thinking of it as foisting Tommy off on other people, you should think of it as allowing Tommy to enrich their lives and for Tommy to get some different takes on the world than the way he sees it when he’s only with you.”

Maisie looked down the pavement to where Tommy was talking excitedly with the vendor as he waited for his pretzel.

“People don’t think of time with Tommy as being enriching,” she said. “I mean, even my landlady—she looks after him when I’m working or at school, and she’s crazy about him—even she doesn’t give me the impression that she gets anything out of the relationship.”

“Have you ever asked her?”

Maisie shook her head.

“I’d like to see Tommy again,” Jilly said. “I think I could learn a lot from him. And I’m sure if you talked to Angel she could help you work things out so that there’d be other people to lend you a hand without anyone thinking that you’re not fit to be taking care of Tommy anymore.”

“It’s hard,” Maisie said. “Always asking, always standing there with your hand out.”

Jilly nodded. “That’s one way of looking at it. But you know, the best thing I ever learned from Angel is that there’s nothing wrong with asking for help. If we’re not here to look out for each other, then what are we doing here?”

“Living in limbo,” Maisie said.

“Exactly. Just like my ghost.”

“So what do you think I should do?”

“Well, for a start, what’s Tommy doing tomorrow?”

Maisie’s brow furrowed. “Let’s see. I’ve got to work until two, but after that I think—”

“Not you,” Jilly told her. “Just Tommy. Do you think he’d like to come with me and see Geordie while he’s busking?”

Maisie hesitated for a long moment. She looked back at the pretzel vendor to see that Tommy was on his way back, pretzel in hand, dogs running around him, hoping he’d drop a piece of it.

“I don’t know,” she said./’Why don’t we ask him?”

9

—Since you brought up Monet earlier, maybe you should remember what he’s supposed to have told Georges Clem-enceau when Clemenceau was visiting him at Giverny.

—Refresh my memory.

—’Your mistake is to want to reduce the world to your measure, whereas by enlarging your knowledge of things, you will find your knowledge of self is enlarged.’

—I see. And where did a woman as young as yourself gain such wisdom?

—From making mistakes.. I make a lot of them. The trick is not making excuses for them, or trying to pretend they never happened, but learning from them.

—You see the world without shades of grey.

—Hardly.

—Then how can you make it sound so effortless?

—Are you kidding? Life’s like art. You have to work hard to keep it simple and still have meaning. It’s so much easier just to deal with everything in how it relates to yourself. You have to really concentrate to keep an open mind, to pay attention to the broader view, to stay aware of what’s going on outside your own skin.

—And if you don’t?

—Think of all you’ve got to lose.

C
OYOTE
S
TORIES

Four directions blow the sacred winds

We are standing at the center

Every morning wakes another chance

To make our lives a little better

—Kiya Heartwood, from “Wishing Well”

This day Coyote is feeling pretty thirsty, so he goes into Joey’s Bar, you know, on the corner of Palm and Grasso, across from the Men’s Mission, and he lays a nugget of gold down on the counter, but Joey he won’t serve him.

“So you don’t serve skins no more?” Coyote he asks him.

“Last time you gave me gold, it turned to shit on me,” is what Joey says. He points to the Rolex on Coyote’s wrist. “But I’ll take that. Give you change and everything.”

Coyote scratches his muzzle and pretends he has to think about it. “Cost me twenty-five dollars,” he says. “It looks better than the real thing.”

“I’ll give you fifteen, cash, and a beer.”

“How about a bottle of whiskey?”

So Coyote comes out of Joey’s Bar and he’s missing his Rolex now, but he’s got a bottle of Jack in his hand and that’s when he sees Albert, just around the corner, sitting on the ground with his back against the brick wall and his legs stuck out across the sidewalk so you have to step over them, you want to get by.

“Hey, Albert,” Coyote says. “What’s your problem?”

“Joey won’t serve me no more.”

“That because you’re indigenous?”

“Naw. I got no money.”

So Coyote offers him some of his whiskey. “Have yourself a swallow,” he says, feeling generous, because he only paid two dollars for the Rolex and it never worked anyway.

“Thanks, but I don’t think so,” is what Albert tells him. “Seems to me I’ve been given a sign. Got no money means I should stop drinking.”

Coyote shakes his head and takes a sip of his Jack. “You are one crazy skin,” he says.

That Coyote he likes his whiskey. It goes down smooth and puts a gleam in his eye. Maybe, he drinks enough, he’ll remember some good time and smile, maybe he’ll get mean and pick himself a fight with a lamppost like he’s done before. But one thing he knows, whether he’s got money or not’s got nothing to do with omens. Not for him, anyway.

But a lack of money isn’t really an omen for Albert either; it’s a way of life. Albert, he’s like the rest of us skins. Left the reserve, and we don’t know why. Come to the city, and we don’t know why. Still alive, and we don’t know why. But Albert, he remembers it being different. He used to listen to his grandmother’s stories, soaked them up like the dirt will rain, thirsty after a long drought. And he tells stories himself, too, or pieces of stories, talk to you all night long if you want to listen to him.

It’s always Coyote in Albert’s stories, doesn’t matter if he’s making them up or just passing along gossip. Sometimes Coyote’s himself, sometimes he’s Albert, sometimes he’s somebody else. Like it wasn’t Coyote sold his Rolex and ran into him outside Joey’s Bar that day, it was Billy Yazhie. Maybe ten years ago now, Billy he’s standing under a turquoise sky beside Spider Rock one day, looking up, looking up for a long time, before he turns away and walks to the nearest highway, sticks out his thumb and he doesn’t look back till it’s too late. Wakes up one morning and everything he knew is gone and he can’t find his way back.

Oh that Billy he’s a dark skin, he’s like leather. You shake his hand and it’s like you took hold of a cowboy boot. He knows some of the old songs and he’s got himself a good voice, strong, ask anyone. He used to drum for the dancers back home, but his hands shake too much now, he says. He doesn’t sing much anymore, either. He’s got to be like the rest of us, hanging out in Fitzhenry Park, walking the streets, sleeping in an alleyway because the Men’s Mission it’s out of beds. We’ve got the stoic faces down real good, but you look in our eyes, maybe catch us off guard, you’ll see we don’t forget anything. It’s just most times we don’t want to remember.