Wabanaki Blues (19 page)

Fifteen

Secret Doors

It's early September and the leaves look the same as they did when I first arrived in June. But everything else has changed. I can't smell Grumps' musty blue jeans or hear him calling me City Gal like it's the worst name on earth. I can't drive with him in his mismatched Ford pickup to his useless excuse for a general store and listen to him bicker with his idiot friends. I can't hear him call my crazy snake of a great aunt “a witch,” or argue with me about whether or not ghosts are real. I miss all that.

Overgrown vines seal the front door to Grumps' cabin. Mom gives the door handle a few useless yanks. I ponder the purpose of these impenetrable plants. Are they protecting the cabin from us, or us from the cabin? I consider this to be a warning from the woods and take it to heart. Mom doesn't; she scoots around to the back door and barges in. I pause beside Grumps' woodpile, sensing a peaceful, out-of-body stillness. The woods are in mourning. A silent robin redbreast rests on a split log with its head bowed. I wonder what this robin charm on my bracelet meant to Bilki. A sign of spring perhaps? A southwest wind rustles the maples, and their leaves wave gently, fanning my sorrow.

Mom shouts my name like I'm a tardy student. I tiptoe inside the muggy cabin, not wanting to disturb the dust in the air. It contains microscopic bits of Grumps. A small pile of carved antlers lies on the floor, and my throat closes. I picture Grumps carving them, antler bits flying into his bundled white hair. None of them shows a hockey-playing bear or a bear riding a snowmobile. Those fantastical ones sold out first. All that remain are antlers carved with scenes from the real woods. A mother bear leading her baby toward a loaded blueberry bush. Two young bears playing in a pile of fall leaves. I don't see any antlers depicting an ancient bear with flabby haunches, a cracked bulbous nose, and rows of loose, sloppy flesh drooping beneath his eyes. That's because The Great Bear isn't real.

Dust mutes everything inside the cabin. The strawberry and mustard rocking chairs have dulled to rust and putty. The animals on the woodland dinner plates appear stuffed and forgotten. Even the Bob Marley oil lamp I remembered as cerise and lime now appears bloody and putrid. Color and life are synonymous. One can't survive without the other.

I touch Grumps' favorite photo of Bilki on the wall—just as he used to do. It was silly for me to worry about his mental health when he made this loving gesture. Now I see it as a natural thing to do, a way of saying “I remember.” The door to his bedroom is ajar but I won't go in. It's still his private place,
his
bedroom. I peek inside and find the bed is made. I wonder if he left it that way or if his mysterious lady friend, Sadie, tidied up after he died. Did she find his lifeless body? Was it Will who found him? I say a silent prayer.
Oh, please don't let it be Del.

A gruff grandfatherly voice says, “Go on in, City Gal.”

I push open Grumps' door and step into his pumpkin-colored room. Mom calls my name a second time but she can wait. I kiss the corner of his chenille bedspread. The moment lingers. I hold that bedspread to my cheek, squeezing it hard inside my fist, wrinkling it, welding it into my palm, not wanting to let go. Then, for an instant—so swift I can't be sure it happened—I feel someone squeeze back.

I drift back into the main room where Mom sits cross-legged in front of several opened doors in the wall, with a handful of skeleton keys dangling from the ring in her hand.

“Wherever is that paper?” she mutters, tossing things about.

She's already flung open two hidden doors, located at different heights in the knotty pine-paneled wall. They remind me of flaps on a Christmas Advent calendar, opened carelessly by an impatient kid who can't wait to claim her prizes. On the floor lies the dreary domestic contents of the doors she's opened: old plates, bowls, cups, and saucers. She tries another wall opening near the ground and pulls out a set of narrow velvet-lined drawers, like you'd find at a jewelers, filled with Indian children's toys, including a game made from a stick and corncobs, and turkey wishbone dolls dressed in buckskin. These things remind me of something Bilki once said: “Indians make treasures from things that most people consider junk, things that come from the earth.”

“Dad, what have you done with it?” Mom mutters to herself, fumbling a new lock. She opens a door that is tall and narrow and yanks out easels, canvases, rag paper, paintbrushes, tubes, powders, colored chalks, and pencils. A fiery fall landscape covers one of the canvases. She holds it up and mumbles something about giving this painting to Will Pyne. I feel my blood rise.

Her eyes flit my way, acknowledging my presence. “Mona, I'm trying to find a drawer that contains a single piece of painted parchment paper. This paper is very dangerous. Grumps has locked everything else in this cabin as a diversion, to conceal this one piece of paper. I need to destroy it.” She turns her back on me and returns to removing things from her latest door. “Tell me as soon as you find it.” She flaps an anxious hand behind her, signaling me to get on with it and check out another door.

I find a key that matches an especially wide door near Grumps' bedroom. Like Mom, I crawl inside to retrieve its contents. Mouse droppings stick to my palms. I pull out three round tin bins, containing reel-to-reel movies, music cassettes, eight track tapes, and vinyl records—all of which are useless, with or without electricity. I read a song title on one of the bricklike 1970s eight-track tapes: “Give It To Me” by J. Giles Band.
And people say today's music is dirty.

She turns to me. “I could use some help with this one, Mona.” She's examining several rusted cabinets inside one of her open doors.

I describe the items inside, as I find them. “There's an Abenaki tribal member roll, handwritten on index cards and a box of legal papers from some twentieth-century land claim case.”

“What's that pile of letters on top?”

I briefly examine one and close it. “They're love letters between Grumps and Bilki.”

“Useless,” she says.

I thumb through the book that's beneath them. “I found your baby book, Mom.”

Instead of putting simple baby snapshots inside, like normal mothers, Bilki included hand-painted watercolor portraits of “Our Lila Sassafras,” inserted between rainbow layers of pastel tissue paper. There's one painting for every year from birth until her spoiled brat turned eighteen
.

She grabs it from me and squeals with delight.

I want my kid to squeal like that over something I've created. But I can't paint. All I can do is write blues songs, and even the best blues songs don't make anybody squeal with delight.

While Mom gets sentimental over Bilki's paintings, I explore another wide-flung door. This one is stuffed with boxes of chipped arrowheads and broken clay pottery. These are archaeological items, the kind of stuff that makes my father rapturous. Why isn't he here when Mom needs him?

I poke Mom with an arrowhead—which dad calls a projectile point, “How is it that Dad missed coming with us? This is the ultimate archaeological dig.”

She doesn't seem to feel the sharp tip jabbing into her arm. She's busy making sour facial expressions at Bilki's painted rendition of one of her 1990s hairstyles with high-rise gelled bangs.

“Why didn't Dad come with us?” I repeat, poking her again, hoping to confirm my suspicions about the defunct status of my parents' marriage.

She tears up a portrait of her, painted by Bilki, with colorful falling leaves fluttering in the background. She rips the torn halves into quarters and groans. I don't know what this behavior is all about. The portrait appears fine, unless she's vainer than I think.

“Bryer knew Grumps wouldn't have wanted him here,” she finally responds to my earlier question.

“Fair enough.” I swallow. “However, I haven't seen my father for months.”

She violently rips the remaining picture bits into confetti.

I take advantage of her distraction to slip in my big question. “Are you divorced?”

“Not yet.”

I push harder. “Why did you and Dad get married?”

She squeezes her lips shut, hoping nothing will escape. But something does. “You remember how your Ma-mère—as you called her—was always rubbing her rosary beads when we were around?”

I say “yes,” three times, for encouragement, because getting Mom to yak long enough to find out anything about our family is like coaxing a UFO to stay still long enough to shoot a clear video.

“She was a religious woman,” Mom declares, scooping her torn-up paper mess into a tin garbage can. “When she found out I was pregnant, she insisted I marry your father.” Staring into the tin can, her beautiful face takes a twisted turn. “Even though my true love was Bear St. Jean.”

My heart thumps to a standstill.

Her eyes gleam with memories. “Not to disrespect your dad. But Bear was an amazing man. His son goes by the same name. Maybe you met him during your summer visit here.”

I collapse into Grumps' rocker. Mom dated Bear's dad. So I
was
almost his tribal sista.

“I see that you know him.” she says. “Don't feel bad. I'm content with my choice.” She pats the rocker instead of me. “Marrying your father got me out of these vile woods. Bear St. Jean would have trapped me here forever. That would have been a nightmare. I couldn't take being around my parents. I was a failure to them. I couldn't paint, sing, or play an instrument, like they wanted. You are the one they were waiting for. I never even liked the animals here, or anywhere, until after I killed that bear. That accident changed me. It made me realize how precious animals are. But it still didn't make me love these woods.”

I wonder about this bear she killed. I think of the heartless thoughts that ran through my mind when I first saw Dibble's cat, and then I remember how much I love Damerae. I don't think it's possible to love all animals, any more than it's possible to love all people. Some are simply better friends than others.

Mom reaches for me then pulls back, as though she planned to tell me something earth-shattering, and then changed her mind.

Her voice softens like a hushed lullaby, “Grumps wrote me a letter, telling me how proud he was of you, how he admired your musical talents and your concern for the woods.” She pats my chair in lieu of my arm. “He even remarked on your great dancing at the Winnipesaukee Powwow, not to mention your male admirers.”

“I don't recall seeing this letter from Grumps.”

Mom's dainty nose snivels but her eyes carry no tears. “I'm ashamed to tell you that I burned that letter after you ratted out my friend, Will Pyne, to the police. I was furious at you for that.” She stops rocking me. “Actually, I'm still pissed.”

I gape at the stranger I call Mom. “You burned the last letter about me from Grumps, and you're mad at
me
.”

I need a whole sweetgrass bonfire to burn away the bad spirits growing inside me. I have to settle for lighting the single sweetgrass braid I find lying on the kitchen windowsill. I don't recall seeing it here when I was living at this cabin. The top on this piece is partially burned. My guess is that someone lit it after Grumps died to clear his house of bad spirits. I wonder if Del is the one who did it. He surely learned that Indian custom, growing up with my grandparents. I light what remains of the braid and let it burn over the speckled washbasin. The glowing green stalk quickly disintegrates into ash.

Mom gags on the smoke. I blow harder on the lighted tip to create more.

“What on earth?” She swats away the smoke.

“It gets rid of bad spirits.”

“I know what it's supposed to do! Honestly, Mona. Reality check. Reality check.”

Mom resumes investigating the contents of her open doors. It's clear there will be no more family revelations today. I let the sweetgrass braid burn out.

A growling rumble from the woods suggests Marilynn has arrived. I grab a couple browning bananas from the counter and step out to find her nudging Grumps' woodpile. Tears the size of pennies run down her enormous nose. I toss the bananas to her. Her rounded mitten ears snap back at the sight of me. I cautiously step back. I'm ashamed of my cowardice but I can't bring myself to go any nearer than I already am, a dozen feet away. We will never be close like she is with Del. Still I'm glad she came by to pay her respects, even if I'm hampered by my city gal notion that she might turn and devour me. Marilynn nudges the bananas but doesn't eat them. She blinks her eyes, in a kind of good-bye, before lumbering back into the woods to mourn Grumps' passing in privacy.

“Mona! It's nearly time to visit the lawyer's office. We need to get going before the locals snatch up your grandparents' fortune.”

I wave an arm around the sparse cabin. “I don't think Grumps had much money.”

“Ha! Are you kidding? Do you have any idea what kind of money your grandmother made as a painter?”

I've entered an alternate universe in which Bilki and Grumps were rich. Now I wish I'd made Grumps turn on the generator more often and pick up better groceries.

“If Grumps had a lot of money, why was he such a hermit?”

“He wasn't a hermit when he was young. Have a look in here.” She reaches inside the door that I know contains the trunk with the neon orange Elmwoods' sticker on it.

“This is Grumps' old band trunk. I remember his crazy musician friends: Diz, Goober, Brownie, and Mongo. The Elmwoods travelled across New England when I was young. Bilki didn't like Grumps going too far away. The band toured more distant cities before I came along. Babies are band killers.”

I gape at The Elmwoods' sticker. In my mind, it transforms into a 1970s black light band poster featuring four scraggly-haired seventies dudes wearing silky Qiana shirts and platform-heeled shoes, performing The Hustle.