Something to Hold (9 page)

Mom stops short of the table, holding a pan of oatmeal. We watch the long line of cars and pickups now passing slowly by our house.

"What happened?" I ask.

Standing over by the sink, Dad drinks the last of his coffee. He has his boots on, so he must be headed out to the woods today. "Car accident, honey."

"Was somebody hurt?" I see Mom's eyes meet his.

"That was a hearse," Bill says. "A girl fell out the back of a pickup."

"Oh," I say, putting down my spoon.
She's dead.
I can't eat any more.

Mom puts her hand on my shoulder. "The people in the truck are mourners—they're going with her down to the longhouse. Remember—where we were invited to the service?"

I do. The drumming and singing were so different from what happens in our church, but powerful, too. I hope it helps this little girl. I leave the table to get ready for school.

On the way out the door, Bill lets me catch up with him. "How did you know about the girl?" I ask. I hold my books in one arm, zip up my jacket, and pull the sleeves down over my hands. The December morning is clear and biting. The sunrise glows against the rimrock at the top of the canyon but has not yet touched the bottom.

Bill swings the glove he carries to junior high every day, baseball season or not. "I heard them talking. It came over the radio yesterday. Dad was telling Mom about it."

"Do you know where?"

"I think it was the Simnasho road. The truck skidded on a patch of ice."

"Who was it?"

He shrugs. "Some little kid." He sprints off to catch the bus.

I turn toward the school, crossing the street and stepping over the cable strung between low posts surrounding the campus. The only time I've been in the back of a truck was last summer when Mrs. Queahpama picked us up on Shitike Road. I know it's dangerous to ride in a pickup bed, and I'm glad that my parents want to keep us safe. But it was so much fun. Out there in the dry wind and spicy smell of the sagebrush, I could see everything. Feel each grate on the cattle guard, all the rattles of that gravel road. I can imagine cows and dogs and magpies speaking to me. The cold or heat wrapping me up.

Other kids do it all the time. When I go to McKenzie's store for the mail or some milk, kids are climbing in or out of the backs of trucks. They pass us by in a spray of dust as we pedal our bikes on Shitike Road. Families park their pickups across from our house when they go to the tribal offices next door. Sometimes the grandmas climb down and spread blankets on our grass and wait there with the little kids.

But this little girl fell out of the back, and she died. I'm walking slowly up the sidewalk toward the school, and awful pictures push their way into my head. In slow motion, a child slides toward the side of the truck bed as wheels slip on the ice. She can't hang on. She is flung into the air as the truck skids and slams into the ditch, her dad pounding the brake, her sisters clawing for something to hold on to.

She must have been terrified. In my head, her sisters are screaming. And then suddenly I'm back in Warm Springs on a Thursday morning, late for school.

The halls are quiet when I open the front door and hurry down to the classroom. I ease into my desk as Miss Anthony is taking roll.

Jewel is not in her seat on the far side of the room. Several desks are empty, including Raymond's. I wonder if they know this little girl.

Maybe they were in the cars that followed the hearse and the truck full of mourners this morning, turning at McKenzie's where the road curves down the hill, across Shitike Creek, toward the longhouse.

Miss Anthony clips the attendance sheet to the doorway for one of the office helpers to collect. She picks up her Bible from the chalk tray like she does every morning. "Some of you know that we have had a death in this school," she says. "Today I'm going to read my favorite psalm. Please bow your heads and listen."

I can feel the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and it feels like the steep draws full of juniper and sagebrush on the way to Simnasho. A curvy road that ices up in the winter, and you can't see the danger until you hit it. Where little girls fly up out of pickup beds and don't come back.

***

All morning, we work on poems for the Christmas pageant. Tomorrow night, the parents will crowd into a gym transformed by sparkly lights and tinsel. We'll recite our poems and then go home for the break that is always the next best thing to summer vacation.

I can only pretend to write. My head is full of questions, not Christmas. Did her family have to see her lying in the road? Did she know what was coming? Was she cold?

I imagine yesterday when the radio squawked to life in the hall, the police signing in and telling the story in code.

"We got a ten forty-two on the Simnasho road."
Traffic accident.

"What's your ten-twenty?"
Where are you?

"Milepost eight. At the curve by the river."

"Ten thirty-eight?"
Need an ambulance?

There would be a pause. Then "No ... ten-five the coroner."
Relay message.

"Ten-four. Over and out."

***

I walk home by myself at noon. The trees stretch their bare branches around the campus as if they're begging for spring. From the street, I can see my family through the kitchen window.

"Mary Ann dropped by this morning," Mom is saying to Dad as I come in. "She was on her way to the longhouse for the dressing." Mary Ann is Mrs. Sahme, one of Mom's friends.

"The funeral's tomorrow?" he asks.

Mom nods. "She told me I would be welcome. But I don't think I could go. A child..." She shakes her head and sits down.

Dressing?
I want to ask her about it, but my dad starts talking about work and I stop listening.

A moment later, I realize that they're both waiting for me. "Her cousins?" Mom asks again. "I think they're in your class. Those kids who live at Simnasho but stay at the boarding school."

All those empty desks this morning. Jewel and Raymond. And then I see the small hand reaching over the counter at McKenzie's to offer a last penny that will not be enough.
Tela.
My stomach squeezes tight.

Mom puts her hand over mine on the table. "Did you know her?" she asks gently.

I can only nod, blinking hard to hold the tears in place.

As we walk back to school, Joe chatters about the song his class is rehearsing for the pageant. I know that he is trying to cheer me up, but I can't listen. I'm watching the clouds where a little girl lies still, her arms folded across her chest. God and Jesus and the angels comb her hair. They smooth down the skirt of her dress and pull her knee socks straight. This makes me feel a whole lot better than the Twenty-third Psalm did.

***

After supper, Mom cleans up the kitchen while we kids help Dad finish decorating the Christmas tree he brought from the woods. When we're done, Bill and Joe go brush their teeth. I stay put. I sit close to Dad on the sofa, rest my cheek against the soft sleeve of his shirt. He smells like pipe tobacco and the woods.

I watch him lean over the coffee table to pick up his pipe. He taps the cold ashes into the ashtray and opens the yellow pouch he keeps in his back pocket. He carefully packs new tobacco into the bowl—a steady and calm ritual that has always been a part of my life.

"Dad?"

"Mmm-hmm," he answers, his teeth steadying the pipe for the lighted match.

"What's a dressing?"

He pulls air slowly in as the tobacco catches, then lets the smoke go. The sweet richness settles over me. In the seconds when he doesn't say anything, I imagine him checking through all the conversations he has had today, searching for one that fits my question.

"You mean the funeral?"

"Yes. What Mrs. Sahme said about Tela."

"Oh." He leans back on the sofa and puts his big arm around me. I pull up my feet and tuck myself close to him. "When somebody dies, people go to the longhouse to help get her ready to be buried. Someone close to her will bring new clothes and dress her in them."

Like God and Jesus on the cloud.

He hugs me. "People sit with the family and help them, too."

"Did you do that with Grandpa?"

"No, not quite that way. We took clothes to the funeral home and the undertaker dressed Grandpa."

He puffs quietly, and finally I ask him, "Does it hurt?"

Dad looks at me. His other hand comes over and gently pushes my bangs out of my eyes.

"She didn't feel it, honey," he says quietly. "It was very fast. She didn't even know what was happening."

I can barely make the next words come out. "Was she all by herself ?"

I'm afraid to know, but I have to ask. And my dad says what I need to hear. "Somebody was with her the whole time."

W
HEN
the Christmas vacation is over, most of the kids come back and fill up the desks. Not Raymond and Jewel. I keep watch over their empty seats as the days add up. The school feels heavy in the new year. Quiet settles over the halls and the playground, and we wait.

Miss Anthony carries on with our usual routines, acting as if she doesn't feel the thread of tension pulled tight around the classroom. At the beginning of the second week, she comes up to me as I turn around in my seat for the millionth time to see if Jewel is back yet.

"You have to keep your mind on your work," she says, resting her hand on my shoulder for one brief second.

***

This morning, Pinky waits for me at the bottom of the school steps.

"It's time to get things back to normal," she says.

I can see her point. The heavy sadness is hard to live with day after day.

When we walk into the classroom before school, there's Jewel. She stands to the side of Miss Anthony's desk, waiting for our teacher to talk to her. Right away, I see what's different about her. This is not the same fierce girl who kept us from the swimming hole last summer, or who stood up to Mr. Nute.

Jewel stands there with her head down, as if it is too heavy for her neck to hold. Her clothes are rumpled, her blouse pulled out of her skirt. And her hair is held back in a tangled ponytail wrapped with just a rubber band. The beautiful beaded clip is gone.
She's mourning, and nobody is taking care of her.

I back away from the doorway. "We need to let her talk to Miss Anthony," I say quietly. Pinky follows me back outside.

When the morning bell finally rings and everyone jostles into the classroom, Jewel sits alone at her desk. Kids move carefully, quietly, around her. Miss Anthony stands at the blackboard, putting the finishing touches on the daily schedule.

The entire day goes by as if we are mired in quicksand. When the final bell rings, it feels as if I let go the breath I've been holding all day. Kids push out through the doorway.

I keep watching Jewel, who has hardly moved. Her head still down, she tiredly pushes herself away from her desk and stands up slowly. She doesn't take anything with her, just turns for the door.

"Your parents must meet with me," Miss Anthony says. "To explain your absence."

Jewel raises her head. She looks confused.

"Even with the Christmas vacation," Miss Anthony says. "You missed too many days."

I stop near the doorway, fiddling with the zipper on my jacket. Everybody else has gone. Jewel glances at me, then back down at the floor.

I know I have no business getting involved, but Miss Anthony doesn't understand. "There was the funeral," I say. I'm scared but I keep going. "The family needs time to take care of everything."

Miss Anthony's eyes narrow. "Kitty," she says, "you need to get on home now."

Jewel's look says,
Leave me alone.

"I'm sorry, Miss Anthony," I say. "I thought you would want to know." And then I go.

***

Jewel drifts through the days. She stares at her desk most of the time, not even trying to follow what we're doing in class. At lunch and out on the playground, she stays by herself and doesn't talk to anybody. She looks lost and alone. I want to help her, but I don't know how.

Miss Anthony watches too. She keeps glancing over at Jewel's desk like she is about to say something. She never calls Jewel's name or speaks to her, though it might help if she did.

Raymond stays away, and nobody talks about him. Pinky says people often miss a lot of work or school when somebody dies. I wonder if that's what makes Miss Anthony so stern.

When the clock ticks to three and the last bell rings, Jewel is the first one out the door. I have to scratch around inside my desk to find my math book.

Pinky waits for me in the hall, her coat on and buttoned. "Wanna do the homework at my house?" she asks.

I shake my head. "Mom told me to come straight home. She's got chores for me."

When we push through the double doors, I spot Jewel sitting on one of the swings at the far end of the playfield. No coat, no books, just pushing herself slowly back and forth with her toes.

I'm about to use Mom as an excuse to myself for not going over. I won't know what to say. But I can't leave Jewel to go on all by herself.

"Let's go talk to her." I start across the street. "C'mon."

Jewel looks up when we get close. She wipes her nose with the back of her hand, then takes her sleeve and wipes her eyes.

I walk over and sit down in the swing next to her. Pinky stands off to the side, her hand on the cold steel pole. I have no idea what to do now, so I just swing gently.

Then Pinky says quietly over the top of Jewel's head, "I'm so sorry about your cousin."

She said just the right thing. And it's so simple.

Jewel sniffs, then tilts her head down, shutting us out. But she doesn't move or get up to leave. I keep rocking back and forth.

Finally, Jewel looks up. "I miss her," she says simply. And then she sighs from somewhere deep inside. Her voice is so tired and lonely that the sadness surges in my chest, then spreads up through my neck to pulse behind my eyes.

Pinky asks, "And Raymond?"

"He's still with
Káthla.
" Jewel shrugs. "Won't come back to school. Won't get out of bed. Won't talk."