“It is not enough, Vanessa,” Jack says. “A daughter combing her mother’s long hair, a brother who saves animals—all these sweet memories. They are not enough. This mildness will kill you.”
He hugs me close. “Don’t be afraid,” he says. “Try not to be afraid. There is no wav to stay safe.”
We walked silently on the turning earth with our grandfather. “Look,” he said, pointing to the sky. “Look,” he cried, “over there! Eagles!”
We looked up. I looked at my father’s pained face.
“Those aren’t eagles, Dad,” my father said quietly. “Those are just barn swallows.”
My grandfather’s eves widened. In his sky there were eagles.
“Barn swallows,” my father whispered, “that’s all.”
In the dream the snake entered through White Feather’s ear and came out her mouth. She awoke to a wailing that seemed to rise out of the earth itself. Now she could not help but hear it. It was as clear to her as if it were Dark Horse, lying next to her, who was wailing.
She rose and walked down to the brook where she sat for a while. She felt a pain in her left breast. Her son was not going to come back alive; she could see a man in a blue jacket pressing a bullet into his head. The brook flowed red. The earth’s wailing rose into her mouth and filled it and became her own.
The postcards from Fletcher have stopped coming. My brother has traveled deep into the center of the country where I can no longer touch him, deep into the center of silence.
“Anza-Borrego Desert State Park in California,” the fat man reads, “claims two unusual features: a limitless carpet of wildflowers and elusive bands of bighorn sheep. The wildflowers bloom in spring, drawing thousands of flower-sniffers, as the residents call the springtime tourist invasion. The wild sheep inhabit remote canyons and crags, their buff coloring blending with the landscape and making them difficult to spot.”
“Look, here’s a picture of them!” Christine giggles, passing the newspaper to her mother.
“Where is this?” the mother asks.
“California,” Christine says.
Gershwin, Ives, Cage, Glass.
We could feel great silence moving in, and we spoke little words trying to break it.
“Does the second planting start today, Grandpa? Do you think Maizy will have her kittens soon?”
We were deep in spring and our words got caught in trees thick with bird song, in pockets of billowing clouds. Almost as soon as we spoke them, our words seemed to be absorbed by the plumpness of the vernal earth and all was quiet again. There was no dispelling the silence. Grandpa heard it best of all—it was coming for him.
I tried bigger words, greater ones, to try to break the heart of it.
“Are you dying, Grandpa?” I asked. He had not gotten out of bed for two days. “Are you going to die now?” This would scare death off, I thought—to point a finger at it, to name it.
But it did not dispel it. “Yes, Vanessa,” he said, “I think I am.” And as soon as we heard him say it, we knew it was true.
“Oh, it’s a lovely day to die,” my grandfather said. He hated to see us upset. “The weather is clear, the trip will be easy.” He paused. “A cinch,” he smiled.
“Don’t die today,” Fletcher said. His head was resting on the bedspread. He did not look at my grandfather. “Please don’t die, Grandpa.”
“It is not such a bad day to die,” my grandfather said, turning his head toward the window.
He spoke slowly against the silence and we felt the terrible friction in his voice. It must have weighed down on him hard now. Still his voice rose. “It is not such a bad day to die, Fletcher. Everybody has to die someday.”
“Please don’t,” Fletcher said.
My grandfather smiled weakly. He tried to lift a finger up from the bed to Fletcher but he couldn’t. His fingernails were luminous, white. His hands were a deep brown.
“Don’t forget about the soul, Fletcher,” he whispered. Grandmother walked in. How often she had caught us standing on chairs following the flight of the soul from the body in rehearsal. “Don’t forget the soul,” he said again.
She shook her head. “All right, children. That’s enough. Now let your grandfather get some rest.”
“But, Maria,” he whispered.
“Oh, no,” she said, “it’s time for you to rest now.”
“Please, Maria. Observe a dying man’s last request,” and he smiled slightly.
“Be sensible, Angelo, please.”
“I’m dying,” he whispered.
“Oh, Angelo, do you really think you’re just going to turn over and close your eyes and die? Do you really think it’s that easy?”
“I’m telling you, Maria.” She turned her face away from him toward the bright window and looked at the hay he had just stacked a few days before.
“Oh, Angelo,” she sighed as she had sighed so many times before. “Be sensible.” She put her hand on his cheek. “Please,” she said. “This is no time for games.”
Be sensible, she said, but this time it was Grandma who was not being sensible. In less than an hour, as he had predicted, Grandpa would be dead. She left the room. We listened to her heavy, black shoes going down the hallway—their denial of death.
“Take care of her,” he said, looking to me. “She needs you.”
I nodded.
Fletcher could not stand the formality of this ending. He tried to stop it with the power of his love.
“Grandpa,” he said, “don’t die yet.” He got into the bed next to him and hugged his shrinking body.
“You’re a good boy, Fletcher,” Grandpa said, and he closed his eyes and watched Fletcher grow up there, the growing up he would not be alive to witness. “You’re a fine young man,” he said.
“Remember the shrinking story, Grandpa?” Fletcher said. “Could you tell us that story again?”
“Oh, yes, I remember—the shrinking story.” He spoke slowly. “It’s true. Ask your grandmother someday.” He told this story now once more, for us. He saw the panic in our faces. He saw our fear. He was our friend. He was our ally; he never wanted to scare us. Don’t leave us here alone, I said to myself.
The only times I ever saw my grandfather look like an old man were when he thought about us being alone, when he thought about how our parents ignored us, how strange they were, how silent. This in itself had prolonged his life, I thought. But he could hold on no longer now. His hand was smooth on the bed, a part of it.
“Yes,” he said. “It’s true. I used to be tall, oh, a long time ago, way before you were born. It was even before your father was born. Tall,” he said, and he looked up to the ceiling, “tall as Abraham Lincoln,” and his hand lifted from the bed for the first time. He was only five-foot-six now. “Old people shrink. It’s a fact. We shrink. It’s how everybody else gets used to the idea of us not being around anymore. I’m shrinking right now under the covers,” he whispered.
“I’m afraid,” I said.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of, really,” he said with his kind, kind voice. “It feels good to be so little and light, not so attached to the world anymore and the things we love. It makes it easier for me, too.”
“Tall as Abraham Lincoln?”
“Yep. Ask your grandmother. She’ll remember.”
“It feels good to be so light?”
“Uh-huh.”
“It’s to help us get used to the idea?”
My grandfather nodded.
But my grandfather was wrong about that. Whenever I think of his shrinking story, think of him shrinking into nothingness before my eyes, I do not feel better or miss him less. I have never gotten used to the idea.
We were surrounded by silence and in that silence each of his words stood out: difficult, precious, discrete.
“Is it hard to die, Grandpa?” I asked.
“Look at me, children,” he whispered. “Imagine,” he said slowly, “never to smell the spring again or feel the silky hair of corn, never to hear your sweet voices. Yes,” he said, “it’s very hard.”
Grandma walked into the room and toward the bed and took my grandfather’s hand. They were saying good-bye. He whispered something I had never heard before. I had never seen his mouth form such shapes. It was Italian. He was talking in the forbidden language; the language he had given up in this country now came streaming back. My grandmother squeezed his hand. She talked back to him. He responded again. He looked at her and rubbed his face against her strong but trembling hand.
“It’s got a strange, sweet taste, Maria,” he said finally in Lnglish, “this dying.” And he licked his lips and sucked in the sweetness as if someone had placed candy in his last mouth.
“Take care of her, Vanessa.”
“I will, Grandpa.”
“Don’t forget about the shoebox,” he said to Fletcher. “Don’t forget to do everything I told you. It’s important.”
“I won’t forget, Grandpa.”
“Promise me you won’t forget.”
“We won’t forget.”
“Good,” he smiled. “Good,” he sighed.
It was time now. He looked out the window into the bright sunlight and his eyes grew wide. He pointed to something. “Look,” he sputtered. “Look.” What did he see there in the sun in these last seconds?
“Look!” he gasped. We stared into the sun, then back at him, then into the sun again, and in one moment I saw his look change, in a turn of my head, from wonder to horror. What rushed before him?
Instead of the past, the future must have flashed before his eyes. Instead of his whole life, our lives, the ones yet to come, appeared before him.
“My God,” he gasped. “Dear God.”
“What is it, Grandpa?”
We held onto his hands. “Oh,” he sighed. We were losing him in light.
“My God,” he cried.
“What is it, Grandpa?”
“Try to forgive them,” he whispered.
He shook his head and looked at us.
“Try to forgive them—as I have tried.”
My father walks down the crooked lanes, past squares. In this light the tall, gabled houses, the steeples, look eerie, bizarre. Torches are lit. He can’t bear to look at them—or any fire; he turns away. A fierce wind blows off the bay.
“Try to forgive them,” I whisper to my father, but he’s so far away—Denmark or Sweden, or maybe Norway.
“Fly me to the moon,” my father sings, “and let me swing upon the stars. Let me know what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars. In other words, hold my hand.” The Frank Sinatra record is on. “In other words, darling, kiss me.”
My grandfather’s dream of water was not far away now.
“That fair made him crazy,” my grandmother said. “He snapped there. There was too much rain or excitement or something. There’s no doubt about it.”
My brothers, the Indians, must always be remembered in this land. Out of our languages we have given names to many beautiful things which will always speak of us. Minnehaha will laugh of us, Seneca will shine in our image, Mississippi will murmur our woes. The broad Iowa and the rolling Dakota and the fertile Michigan will whisper our names to the sun that kisses them. The roaring Niagara, the sighing Illinois, the singing Delaware, will chant unceasingly our Dta-wa-e [Death Song].
My brethren, among the legends of my people it is told how a chief, leading the remnant of his people, crossed a great river, and, striking his tepee-stake upon the ground, exclaimed, “A-la-ba-ma!” This in our language means “here we may rest!” But he saw not the future. The white man came: he and his people could not rest there; they were driven out, and in a dark swamp they were thrust down into the slime and killed. The word he spoke has given a name to one of the white man’s states. There is no spot under those stars that now smile upon us, where the Indian can plant his foot and sigh, “A-la-ba-ma.” It may be that Wakada will grant us such a place. But it seems that it will be only at His side.
Eagle Wing
We were restless. We walked deliriously through the landscape of passion, always at the edge of breath. Our desire alone exhausted us. We sleepwalked through our days with uneven breath, hooded eyelids, lusting not only after the absent lover, the lover out of our reach, but after what we sensed was the unavailable in ourselves: the thing we could never call up no matter how diligent or attentive we were, the places we could never reach, the people we could never be.
Jack wiped his face on his sleeve as he came in the door. He was sweating heavily, his shirt was soaked through. I knew not to ask about it. He looked tired. I did not push him. He looked enormous, too large for my apartment; the ceilings were too low, the walls too close. He had to bend over to get in the doorway “You’ve grown,” I said. He laughed and shook his head. The half-refrigerator which he opened looked like a tiny white box next to him. I had accepted it: with Jack I knew that everything would always be out of proportion.
He took the skin off an orange, tore a piece and sucked the juice from it, then ate the pulp, doing this until he finished. I watched him cautiously from the other side of the room. I felt frightened of him, but I did not know why.
“Come to me, Vanessa,” he said quietly, gently, coaxing me as if I were an antelope or a deer and in his hand were food, or kindness, some human security. I moved toward him tentatively, testing the air. It was warm, strange, but the smells reassured me, orange and tea and the salt of his sweat. I could not hear anything but his gentle voice.
“Come now,” he said, “come to me.” And I did after a while, though still I did not trust him entirely.
He laid his hand on my thigh, lifted it slightly, felt its weight. His hand looked swollen, his lips too looked swollen, and his words, though gentle, had a thickness to them not unlike the air. His tongue was heavy, his thoughts slowed, his pulse. He stroked my hair, massaged my neck. I blinked my eyes, stretched my back, pawed the ground with my foot. He moved his hand slowly down my chest, down my belly, then to my leg where he studied its muscles. “My beautiful animal,” he whispered. He caressed my foot, outlining with his lips each toe; he held my ankle between his thumb and forefinger, a giant’s hand. He applied some pressure. I sighed. I felt an aching deep within me. He reached between my legs, they opened with his first movement forward, and slowly he began revolving his hand. The room began to revolve with his slow steady motion. He had led the shy beast into a clearing. I fed from his hand. He watched my breathing change shape. Squares became circles. He moved his mouth up to meet his hand and circled his sweaty head in the same round motion. His hand slipped under my shirt. He circled my full breasts and pressed my nipples between his thick, soft fingers.