Kathy Little Bird (40 page)

I
T
was thrilling to hold our event at Peace Arch, simply to know there was such a place in the world dedicated to people, to peace, and to music. They wheeled me on stage in the dark, a roving spot found me, and the combined audience of Canadians and Americans exploded in applause. It was only minutes since I’d screamed at Abram that I couldn’t possibly do it.

Then this blinding applause. Blinding because tears got in the way of sight. Abram was right, the wheelchair was invisible. A hundred thousand people were telling me they were glad I was back.

They were glad I was here, glad I was going to sing to them. As I faced this blur of humanity, another spot came on, and its rose gelatin wiped out the world.

I had dug out my old wind-band and tied it across my forehead. I was singing for my daughter tonight. And for the Grandmothers who had guided her to me. I sang music drawn from the earth itself, intoned by Elk Woman as she baked bread, soaked hides, and drew stick figures on soft bark.

I began the first number with its low, throbbing notes, a song of shadows, elongated, flickering as though in firelight, but a staccato beat stole in and out of related time. Sung neither in English or in Cree, it was a boy and girl trading shadows. It was the moon, a shimmering resonance, showing its scarred face. It was Mother Earth weeping to her children, rehearsing her wounds—mineshafts and oil wells. The forests laid bare their old growth, dismantled and dead. No one can express betrayal like the Indian.

My voice thundered, cried, laughed, beguiled. Past the endless drift of possibilities I sang the years, I sang death, I sang rebirth, I sang it all. And in singing the spiritual values and the striving of the Indian, I sang my Mum as she’d be today. I sang my grandfather, who was dying even when he came to me. I sang my father, who had claimed me. I sang the AIM warrior, Sam Lone Walker, who I didn’t know, but who my daughter loved. The one person I couldn’t sing was Abram.
The nearest I came was to sing the love that my mind felt and my body was denied—a plaintive, half-frenzied lament.

The audience was startled. They had never heard such weird juxtapositions of chords.

Silence hung over the arch, over the crowd. I couldn’t see them and now I couldn’t hear them. I only knew the audience was absolutely silent.

Spellbound? Captivated? Traumatized?

Was it a silence of resentment?

Then…a rush!

A roar!

I was wrapped in the thunder of a hundred thousand clapping hands, of calls, of shouts. Warriors in ancient lands, in ancient times, ate the heart of a brave enemy to make those qualities their own. The audience did that to me. They took my heart. It was too fierce to be love. And yet it was. They made me theirs.

I was pelted with flowers, bouquets tossed in my lap.

They surged onto the stage. They overwhelmed me. Jim, watching from the wings, saw my panic, as I thought
shoes
—patent leather, wingtips, loafers, workman’s boots.

He hustled me off stage and into the dressing room. He shut the door, but not on everyone. Somehow there were promoters, agents, producers, old friends, and acquaintances all talking at once.

Abram, excited as I’ve ever seen him, swept me into his arms. “You’ve done it, Kathy!”

For an iridescent, soap bubble moment I gloried in it. Gentle too, was quivering, triumphant, on fire. “The music,” he
gasped out. “You and the audience hyped each other in some miraculous way. I’ve never heard you sing like this, Kathy. Do you realize it puts you back on top? It’s as though none of that stuff that happened, happened. You’re bigger than ever, and in the way you want. You did it on your own terms. Not many do it that way.”

“Oh Gentle, I still hear it in my head. You were the one who told me a singer doesn’t hear herself the way other people do but through the bones in her head. Well, the bones in my head are still ringing.”

But it was my daughter’s praise I was tuned to. My mum’s eyes shone through Kathy’s, shone with gratitude.

The moment was right.

If I was going to tell her, this was the time. I had, as I told my father, very good reasons against it. But suppose I came out with it…or would it be better to lead up to it? If I did it carefully, cautiously, taking cues from her reaction—I’d lose my courage. “Grit your teeth,” I told myself, “and simply say, ‘I’m your mother, Kathy.’”

Then what? What did I expect? That she would hug me with newfound joy? That she would thank me for claiming her at last? At last, after eighteen years? More likely she’d look at me, and a stunned, strained silence would set in. “It took you almost twenty years to make me part of your life? You say you’re my mother. I
have
a mother. All I know of you is your albums….”

I was conscious of Abram looking at me with concern. He spoke to Kathy, who came over to say good-bye and thank me once more.

She hugged me, and kissed me.

Kathy was hugging me, kissing me. I was holding my girl. I never dared dream this; I’d been afraid to imagine it. It was only for a moment, but my entire life was in that moment.

I was her friend.

“Lone Walker was too smart to come in. I was right about the police being everywhere,” she whispered.

I squeezed her hand. I had her confidence. This was more than I ever thought to have of Kathy. My daughter was part of my life—if I was careful, if I didn’t mess up. If I didn’t tell her.

Abram still watched me. I put on a smile and introduced her to Erich von Kerll.

“Your father?” She turned to Erich. “You must be so proud.”

He bowed over Kathy’s hand, very European. She was charmed. There was a strong resemblance between grandfather and granddaughter. I was charmed.

The next moment I was also saying good-bye to her.

Goodbye, wonderful redhaired Kathy Mason of Oakdale Street. I promised myself to tell her. I would soon. But not tonight.

Abram escorted her out, arranging to send an accounting of the proceeds of the benefit and meet with the attorney who had undertaken Lone Walker’s case. Good-byes, even happy ones, are hard. What about the other kind? Could I face up to that?

My father was pressing my hand. “That was she? That
lovely young lady? You are to be congratulated she is back in your life.”

“Yes, I believe she is.”

“What a marvelous success tonight. And the offers that I hear discussed at every hand…”

“Stay close to me,” I whispered to my father. I would have liked to rest, but contracts were thrust at me, deals proposed, percentages suggested. Jim Gentle looked at everything, talked to everyone. He was in his element.

Abram looked bewildered.

As for me? I found myself listening.

This was a last chance, one that wouldn’t come again. The offer that appealed to me, that I felt I could make work, that I felt I had the strength for, was a recording deal to do the program I’d sung tonight. It was open-ended, leaving it to me how many I would do. I’d be singing my own songs, songs of the Alberta prairie and of a people that didn’t die and didn’t go away. Their music had been accepted here tonight, received in a spirit of openness. The audience had become part of the dream that Cree music is made of. If I did an album my strange, ethnic music would be another thread in the multihued tapestry of musical America.

As Little Bird I had finally learned how to soar. Now, when my body was broken, when I couldn’t even love my love, I’d soared, my motorized vehicle and I.

Abram had come back in and withdrawn to a corner of the room.

Show time!

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