Celia's Song (7 page)

“I was just wondering what happened to Gramma,” is all she can come up with. She twirls a cedar branch between her thumb and baby finger, knowing full well the answer is inadequate.

“She died,” Rena says as though she thinks Celia is stupid, but she says it with such an endearing flatness that everyone breaks up laughing.

Busted,
Celia thinks to herself, as she picks up the cedar she has just put down. Celia has no clue how to respond to Rena, with her white girl, her Mac shirt, her dry wit, her dramatic performance
of every story told. These are too many masks for Celia. Rena's voice jars Celia and catches her lying. Her words come out wrapped in a sharp-edged mystery, even now when she slops on the endearment. Celia still hears the sharpness. It slices up the possibility of Celia having any kind of relationship with her. It annoys Celia the way it sometimes annoyed her to see the black of the night sky get clouded with an opaque layer of plain blue paint, dimming the stars and ruining the sky's perfect black. Celia squirms, but just barely.

All eyes turn to her. She sniffs at the cedar bough in her hand. The room resumes its chatter after a moment of Celia's silence. Celia withdraws from the room and tries to remember when it was that the houses lost the scent of cedar, yesterday's pie, or Saturday's bread baking. Smells that individuated the women's recipes and defined the very sense of nourishment each woman offered her family. The devotion of the women used to be measured by the scent of their homes, as though the very smell of them marked the caring of the women, detailed the emotion they invested in their children, articulated the special esteem in which they held their
men.

Momma's home was fussy the way Momma was. Momma put cardamom in her pumpkin pie, crimped the edges, and cut tiny v-shaped nicks in the surface of the pumpkin filling after it was done. While the pies cooled on the counter, Momma would hunt all over the house trying to find spare change. If she found it, she would get Jimmy to cycle to town for whipping cream. That was fussy. No one made fussy pumpkin pie like Momma used to. Now the homes smell of cleaning agents and air fresheners. The old smells seemed to end sometime after the
1970
s, about when they got central heating. Celia sniffs the cedar. She closes her eyes.

“My life doesn't smell right anymore,” she says as she lays the cedar out carefully on the coffee table.

Normally, when I hear something as plain and simple as this, I leave. But I got to thinking that something was going to happen, so I stayed. Sometimes it is hard for a mink to hang in there, but I am curious.

Rena thinks Celia might be on to something. Connecting with Celia is a chore for her. The woman dreams beyond her capacity to keep up. It is rare that Rena feels Celia is on ground solid
enough to be engaged in conversation, but this is something she herself has been thinking about. She knows about the loss of aromas in the old kitchens. The old houses were cedar planked — some double-walled, others not, but all of them wood-faced on the inside. The walls soaked up smells, held them, and layered one smell over the next until the smells of the day before and the days after created a unique blend of the family's favourite foods.

“Central heating is lonely,” Rena says.

I begin to get what the agony of their present is all about.

“That's it. It is so lonely,” Celia says, with a satisfaction like she's found her shoe after looking for it all morning and still has time to go to town.

“Smells identify a home. They say something about a woman.” Stacey puts her paddle in the water.

Jacob picks up the cedar his aunt put down and lets the lilt of the women's voices play with the skin on his back. He stares at this branch that had captured his aunt's attention. It had Celia turning the women down a road he knows nothing about but finds himself hungry to see more of. He feels as though they are telling
him something he has always wanted to know but didn't realize till he heard it. His insides are quiet for a moment, pleasantly still, soft-forest-just-before-you-see-a-doe kind of quiet.

“It changed the way we cook. We don't cook with the sun anymore,” Momma says. The glare of the uncased kitchen light bulb emphasizes Momma's eyes. The white light pushes the tired out from the skin around them and puffs them up. The light is stark and cruel; it deepens the sad lines around Momma's mouth and thins her lips so that it is hard to tell she was ever young or beautiful.

“What do you mean, Momma?” Stacey asks, trying not to look too closely at her face.

“Dinner was always early in winter, on time in fall and spring, and late or never in summer,” Momma laughs. “I don't know how many times I heard, ‘Go pick berries, I'm weaving today,' from my Mom or Gramma, and I don't know how many times I said it to
you. ‘Go pick berries …'”

“‘… I'm sewing today.'” They chorus the finish, even German Judy and Rena sing out along with Stacey and Celia.

“Food doesn't taste right on an electric stove. I just can't bring myself to fuss over it.” Momma winces as she speaks.

I cannot imagine having my food source altered, but I sympathize.

“Maybe that's why we don't fuss over cooking anymore,” Celia offers. “No one will visit unless the host fusses over the food.”

Rena doesn't think so. She looks at the electrified house. It's because it's only half like a white woman's house, she tells herself. The design is right: an island for cutting things stands in the middle of the kitchen, an electric stove squats left of centre, kitty-corner from the island, directly across from which sit double sinks. Apart from this, the rightness changes. None of the dishes match. The pots aren't good ones from expensive kitchen stores. Half the women here still use cast-iron or aluminum pots. No CorningWare or environmentally friendly stainless steel pots. Mixed-up plates and odd bits of silverware that is definitely not silver. Half the women have additional electrical appliances, most of which do not work. The other half do not have any at all; it was half-annoying for them
.

It strikes me that it is like waking up to find your forest gone, no trees, no food. No sense of place. No opportunity for survival.

“Maybe matching plates would help. I'm going to get us matching plates, Judy,” Rena says. “The kitchen has got to be an Indian kitchen with a wood stove or a white one with matching plates.”

“Yeah,” Madeline pipes in. “Right now it's an old half-breed.”

“A Métis, a jigger,” Rena says, doing a little dance.

It occurs to me I could not be any kind of a half-breed. Humans can do that, mix it up with others, adapt, but us minks can't. Maybe that's Celia's problem, she's like me. Can't mix it up and survive.

“No,” Momma says, “It'd be a Métis if everything matched, because we're in it.”

The laughter dissipates the tension in the room. It loosens the tongues of the women in the direction of who's up to what. Sweet gossip, the kind that rolls off the tongue and reminds you of how many loved ones fill the room you're in. Somehow the soft gossip, the joy of the women, brings the warm glow of Gramma's bedroom into this room, despite the glare of the uncovered light bulb, despite the absence of old fire flicks, and despite the moonless night. They float down the rivers of their stories, impressing themselves with the sheer numbers of people they are curious about. They laugh about Tony's old car, coo over the new babies, and chuckle about the secret romances — except for Stacey's. It makes them feel like everything is going to be all right because they still have so many folks to care to talk about.

The laughter enlivens the frond in Jacob's hand. Jacob does not see the humour in all this, but he feels the warmth in the room go up a notch. It warms him enough to cause him to ponder the unity of feeling between his hand and this frond. He thinks he hears the cedar say something. He is lost in the sensation, too lost to see the humour in the banter of the women, but not lost enough to commit to the words he is hearing from cedar. He rocks the frond.

Jacob is like Celia, like me, like those old bones, the ones that cannot be happy in their new state.

“It worries me some,” Momma says. The laughter stops dead. No one knows what the “it” is that is worrying Momma. They are half-afraid to ask.

“Why is that?” Stacey asks. The women in the room make mental notes to themselves: Stacey knows what Momma is talking about. They let the story unfold between Momma and Stacey, hoping to get clued in as it does.

“Sometimes memory gets stuck in some sort of soup inside my mind and only the right scent will dislodge it. Stirring the soup can help you recall the story, the teaching that is going to solve this trouble, this terrible moment, and now those smells are gone. The smells are gone from the roadside, the hillside, and the houses, and I just can't remember anymore. I just can't bring myself to the place where my memory sits comfortably. Sometimes I get so tired, trying to remember. Maybe if I could have remembered …” Her voice trails off, the sentence unfinished.

Rena sits up.

She is heading straight for Jimmy's suicide
.

“Don't go there,” Rena whispers, just the smallest hint of threat in her voice.

“I know. But you know?” Momma slides from her chair, reaches over for a short stack of coloured cloth, pulls open a kitchen drawer, pulls out some fusible backing and a pair of scissors. She
holds the scissors up, challenging them to recall what it is they all knew.

Stacey, Judy, and Rena nod. Celia wants to know what Momma was about to make, so she watches. The conversation rolls out.

“Yeah, I know. They even changed the smell of our world. Nothing like oolichan grease to spark up a long trail of salmon stories. You know, you just know that the smell is going to tell you what you need to know next.”

Rena picks at the corner of the kitchen counter where the Arborite edging is loose. Momma fuses the stiffener to the cloth and begins cutting.

How in the world can you change the smells of someone else's world?

Cedar moves of its own accord in Jacob's hand. This is not good for Jacob, who has no idea what cedar is doing and no context for believing what he is seeing and feeling. Jacob fights cedar, tries to hold it still in his hand, but cedar refuses to be still. He feels panic
rise in his chest.

Celia stops watching Momma and turns to Jacob and the cedar frond. She hears the panic in Jacob's mind. She listens as cedar whispers calming words: “Your song sits at the edge of the mountain. It awaits your voice.” Celia sees Jacob is driving the words away from his consciousness, he is struggling to focus on the women's conversation. Celia's mind urges Jacob to be calm. “Listen, cedar wants to tell you something, listen to cedar.”
Jacob ignores her. Celia decides to let him figure it out for himself; she leans back in her chair and resumes watching Momma.

“Smoked fish?” Jacob blurts out, finding some piece of talk to jump in and get nosy about. Fear still has hold of him; the words come out high-pitched and strained. Celia recognizes the fear; it is the same fear she felt so long ago, behind the woodshed. When she first saw those tall ships.

The old bones grow determined when they recognize that Jacob is like his aunt; they need a young man to help restore balance to the village, mediate the rage of the young bones, and remove the threat of the serpent. They sing harder and rattle with greater will. They pray Jacob will hear them.

“Oh, Jacob, you make me tired already,” Rena starts in on him as she jumps up and pours another coffee for herself and the rest of the women. “Any minute now I'm going to run out and have me a smoke.”

Jacob winces, but Rena was rough around the edges.

“Ah hell, we'll smoke some fish this year so you don't have to ask us what we cannot explain.” She takes a long pull on the hot coffee.

“Ah, Rena, leave him be.” Every head jerks to stare at Celia. She's never been one to say “shit” even when her mouth is full of it.

Rena looks at her intently for a second, a small smile playing on her lips. She lets go a deep breath and laughs out loud. She is proud of Celia. The others chuckle, nervous and confused at the sound of command in Celia's voice and Rena's response. It unnerves them that she is still in the room, listening.

I am licking my paws, enjoying the easy banter of the women as they head for the place they need to be to figure this out. It is easy: the women need to find a way to reconcile the new life with the old story. But, at the same time, it is so complicated. Remembering
is a matter of context and the context has changed. I look up.
Speaking of change, the weather is about to shift. I look for a dry spot with a vantage point. The wheelbarrow will do. Off I scurry to get under it.

CLOUDS DARK, PUFFY, AND
grey sometimes hang on to their rain. They are up in the sky hanging heavy. The grandfathers beyond the moon realize the clouds are not going to let go their earth tears without a push, a shove, and a boom. They rear up and their hollering rolls out, breaking the clouds. Their bellowing rattles the cloud's stillness, making them crash about. Their blue fire breath streaks the earth below with its bent light
.