Authors: Multiple
“The police came by to let us know. Get your things together and
we'll head out.”
“Is the funeral going on?” I had no idea how long I had been in
the Spiritual World. We bury on the dawn of the fourth day after death, but I
didn't know how long it had taken them to discover the body. I hated the fact
Uncle Feeney didn't have a phone any more than he had electricity or running
water. Of course, if I were deaf, owning a phone would not have been much of a
priority. How could he even recharge it?
He was watching me intensely. I had always been so self-centered I
had never really thought about how Uncle Feeney knew what was going on around
him. Was he reading my lips? Was he responding to the context? Did he depend on
a
Twatee
sense of things? “Put your moccasins and things on so you can
join in for the last of the worship dancing as soon as we arrive at the
Longhouse.” I nodded and went inside. I wondered if he had actually answered my
question or had just told me what to do. I realized I was still in shock and
doing my best to distract myself. It would be a long ride back home. His wife
hugged me, tears trailing down her worn face. Daisy patiently waited her turn
to do the same. She had no tears. Her permanent smile was safely in place.
On the long drive home I wasn't able to keep my eyes open. I dozed
off. “Wake up, I need your help,” Scorpio yelled in my ear.
Chapter Twenty-One
He looked the same. I would hate for him to appear to me as he
must have looked torn from the River bottom. “Why me? I'm not One Who Buries.
You should talk to Aunt Pork or Aunt Dizzy.”
“My interest isn't in burial. Your new Spirit Power is what I
need.”
“Moth?”
“You were always so dense. You receive a Moth Song and you don't
even know how to use it. Think—what is a Moth all about?”
All I could think about was how moths had damaged a Pendleton
blanket my grandmother had put away. I thought back on how I had first
encountered Moth. She was about to die. Echo had told me a story that involved
death would honor Moth. “What does a Moth have to do with death?”
“The answer is about what a Moth has to do with life.”
“Oh, right—cocoon—rebirth. Wait—you're not
talking about the whole walking into the light thing. You'd use Aunt Pork for that.
Sweet Jesus, you're talking about coming back, aren't you?”
“Wake up!” Daisy laughed. “Talking in your sleep. Keeping me
awake.” I was disoriented and looked around but there was no sign or scent of
Scorpio. In our tradition the dead retraced the footsteps taken in life during
the four days before the burial took place. If you saw the dead person during
this time, it was considered a blessing—a way the dead had of saying good
bye. I don't remember any stories of the dead wanting a refund. There were
rituals using ghost medicine made from juniper to release an uneasy spirit, but
that would only be used after the four day period. You had to truly let go and
mourn, or you'd keep a part of the dead tied to you and they would not be able
to move on. I didn't know a single legend where the dead clung to the living.
It was always the other way around.
I felt clammy. I stared into the distance and wasn't able to fall
asleep again. Daisy and her mother slept soundly and Uncle Feeney drove onward.
I hummed the Moth Song. My brother. The Voodoo Queen. Crap. This was a lot
worse than channeling the dead. We eventually passed the sign that welcomed us
to the reservation. I had wanted to come home so much, but the last reason I
would have anticipated was for a funeral.
Uncle Feeney pulled into the Agency Longhouse parking lot. It was
filled with cars and pick-ups. I opened the car door and ran in through the
kitchen doorway on the side. The cooks, including Aunt Beans, let out a
terrible keening and hugged me. My eyes stayed dry. After a few minutes, Aunt
Beans pulled me into the dining area, passing by the inner dance floor where I
glanced at the pine box draped in a Pendleton blanket and surrounded by candles
and small objects. If you were rode horses they would put small horse figures
on your grave. I wasn't sure what they would leave on the grave of One Who
Buries. A group of dancers spun by--the worship dance song called to me. Seven
times seven dances would be done for the funeral, but I had no idea what time
it was or how many more dances were left.
“Your mother is taking this very hard,” Aunt Beans said quickly.
“She spent the entire time by the River as they looked for his body. Finally
they hired a deep sea diver with a helmet and a hose that fed him air. He
eventually found him—his foot had gotten stuck in an outcrop of rock.”
She looked at me and then away again. “Things had been eating at him.” She
moved aside and I saw my mother lying on a pile of blankets. She looked pale
and drained. She looked old. Aunt Beans smiled at me and moved aside to let me
take her place. She went back into the worship area where I heard her start a
new song for the next dance.
My mother's eyes were red and swollen. She sat up and began the
same ear-splitting cry of the other women in the kitchen. She clung to me as if
I was the parent and she was the child. I held her as she sobbed and I didn't
know what to say. I was never good at comforting. I had never felt so helpless.
I wanted so much to take her pain away, but it isn't permitted during the time
of the funeral. If you don't express the pain, it makes things worse later on.
Or you could keep part of the spirit of the dead from going on their spirit
journey.
“If only I could have him back,” she said. “I miss him so.” She
tried to say more, but she broke into a wheezing cough and I suddenly worried
she might also fall ill and die. The thought was enough to allow a single tear
to fall from my eye. I patted her lightly on the back and then stopped because
I was treating her like a startled horse. I forced myself to stop and used my
hand to make small circles on her back. I'd do anything to help her. I looked
up and saw Scorpio standing in the doorway. I'd do anything. Except that. I
kissed my mother on the forehead and went outside. I walked by some of the kids
from school who were passing around a cigarette. I saw our station wagon and I
crawled into the back.
“No,” I said.
“You've seen how she's suffering,” Scorpio said. I studied his
face, vaguely wondering what parts of him had been eaten while he was pinned by
the rocks. But he looked the same way he always did. Spooky, indeed.
“I've thought about it the whole drive back. There are legends
about Coyote and others who try to go into a ghost village, or the Land of the
Dead. They all follow the same basic pattern. There's a lot of detail that
describe the difference between this world and the Land of the Dead. Things are
usually the opposite, so you have to whisper to be heard. In some stories, the
seeker will wake up and the ghosts are gone. He has to wait and then when the
sun goes down, the ghosts reappear. In the Coyote stories, he's given specific
instructions, like not to touch his wife or look at her until they return
home.” I looked at my hands. Life on a pig farm had been hard on them.
“But he never succeeds,” I said. “He always fails and the spirit
of his wife disappears forever. There are other stories that say Coyote was the
one who decided death would be part of the world, because if people lived
forever, they would overpopulate the planet. No matter how much those grieving
would beg him, he would not give permission for the dead to return.” I looked
back at him. He looked back. “That's the irony. He always refused others
because he understood death was part of the Harmony. But when the loss was his
own he broke the rules.”
“Sounds like part of your job description,” Scorpio grinned. Then
he grew serious. “I know what the dead know. I knew before the River took me. I
want to come back. I
need
to come back!” I couldn't look him in the eye.
I just shook my head. “There are no legends for this because this is the first
time one of us is One Who Buries and the other has Moth Power. Hell, Pisces,
when have you ever heard of anyone who had Moth Power?”
“No good can come from this,” I said. “I almost broke the Harmony
with the Doctor's son. You're asking me to crack the Harmony at its center.” I
looked into the blackness of his eyes.
He said, “You know how the Old People talk about the doorway of
life and death. The newly initiated are being reborn into a new life and a
woman who bleeds has not conceived a new life, so they both stand in the same
doorway, but facing in opposite directions.
“This is why ours is a new Story. For the first time a single
person is standing in that doorway. You have just been initiated. You are a
Two-Spirit so that makes you the same as a woman who no longer bleeds—but
it works out as a balance—you have not conceived new life. You and you
alone stand in the middle of that doorway.” His voice was speeding up. “You can
bring me back through the doorway. I can be reborn into a new life, so the
Harmony is restored.”
My head was full. None of this made any sense. It was logical. It
followed the lines of Stories, but then it fell apart for me because all I
could think about involved zombies. We don't have the concept of zombies. I've
only seen them on television. Unless I was looking at one now.
“
Call
Moth,” he said, reaching out but not quite touching
me. In the distance I could hear the ringing of the bell that signaled the next
part of the worship dance. There were stories—not legends—that
talked about certain
Twatees
who would die and then come back to life,
but everyone knew that was a metaphor for them falling into a trance state and
then coming out of it. People didn't come back from the dead. People shouldn't
come back from the dead. I heard the dancers cry out “
Yes”
in our
language and then they finished the next verse of the song. All I could think
of was my mother's suffering and once again I felt completely helpless.
“Why were you gifted with Moth Power if you're not going to use
it?”
“There are no new Stories,” I said defensively.
“Every Story was once new.” I looked at him. I wasn't winning this
argument. I hated him. He never gave anything without expecting something back.
The Old People always told us, “When you give something away, more will be
returned to you.” When the funeral was over at dawn, the people attending would
be fed. Then we would go home and gather things to give away. Not only the
things that belonged to Scorpio, but anything he had ever touched—plates,
silverware, glasses, and towels. Because we are a Chief's family, all of our
furniture would be given away. They would even rip up the carpet and give that
away. In a few hours our home would be stripped bare.
“This is so wrong,” I told him. “I'm the one who'll get in trouble
for this. What are they going to do to you? Kill you?” I just wanted to keep
shaking him until his bones fell out.
In my heart I saw my mother with her swollen eyes and looking
older than her years. Full of anger I began to sing the Moth Song to summon
her. After a few verses I looked around and saw I was at the in-between space.
There were no Longhouse sounds in the distance. Scorpio was not with me and I
wondered if the true Dead were not allowed.
Moth fluttered in front of me once more. She looked the same as
she had when I had last seen her, just as Scorpio had looked the same.
“Child of the water,” she buzzed. “Like water, never the same. Why
do you
Call
me?”
“My dead brother wants to return. He is One Who...” and then I
hesitated. “He is One Who Would Bury.” My eyes felt as if they were on fire,
but they remained dry. “He told me Moth Power can bring him back.”
Moth circled around me four times and then shimmered in much the
way my cedar rope had. Moth set aside her insect form and appeared to me as a
woman who looked disturbingly like Daisy. I wondered if this was some next step
in the latest initiation. Nothing like this had happened with the Eagle or the
Deer Songs. Neither had ever taken on a human shape. Neither held a female
flavor, but had been unquestionably male. Did I get a new power that's female
because I'm Two-Spirit? There are so many times I wish I had been given an
instruction manual for this stuff. When I was younger I would ask questions but
I would be told things were different for different people.
“Our mother's heart is breaking because she wishes he were still
alive. He's insisting he can be raised from the dead.” I looked up at her. “But
I know that's fundamentally wrong—that it would throw the world out of
balance.”
“Oh,” she said, “it happens all the time. You act like it's a big deal.”
“Dead people coming back to life?”
“You're too ethnocentric. Just because your people don't like to
do it doesn't mean other cultures have the same hang-ups. After hundreds of
years surrounded by Christianity and you still can't wrap your head around
resurrection. ”
I sat quietly for a moment, trying to make that fit inside my
head. It was too big. Part of it kept falling out. “And resurrection is part of
Moth Power?”