Wild Indigo (15 page)

Both women looked down at me. Tecolote spoke now: “Take these.” She reached into the pocket of her dress and brought out a tied knot of brown cloth. “Together, it is a tea—put it all in the kettle, even the seeds. Boil it a little, then let it cool and drink. And you must close your curtains, Mirasol, lock your door. Sweep out any ashes from the fireplace. Put San Cirilio on the hearth, he protects you. I will ask an
arbulario
to lift the spell in a little time—perhaps three, four days, after all this is done.”

Without another word, they turned from the park bench and walked across the street to a nearby alley. Momma Anna adjusted her blanket over her head, and the two women locked arms and disappeared down the narrow passage and into the haze of the ensuing twilight.

The only time I had ever talked with Yellow Hawk was back at the beginning of the summer, on the evening of the big bake, the night before Momma Anna's grandson's wedding. A huge feast was held at Frank and Lupé's home, a ramshackle HUD house identical to the hundred or so around the outskirts of the old, walled village of the pueblo. The home, like most of the others, was built square in the middle of once-rich farm fields, now idle due to government subsidies that paid the Tanoah
not
to plant corn, after centuries of growing the sacred maize and centering their culture around its bounty.

As I drove up the long, deeply rutted dirt road through the field, I could see cars and pickups parked everywhere. Serena waved her hands wildly as she came down the lane toward me. “Wait! Wait! Park down at the end. Lupé will come get you when you can come up to the house.”

I parked where she said and got out with a basket of gifts. Serena held her hands up and pushed away, gesturing for me to wait right by the car, so I did. She left me there and went back up toward the house.

It was nearly seven in the evening, and the blue sky was beginning to flatten in color. A faint pink glow began to hum on the horizon, telling of Father Sun's fatigue and willingness to perhaps surrender to the Moon another day of pueblo life. Horses flicked their tails in the nearby pasture, and dogs barked at the next house over, where elk antlers hung in clumps from the two posts marking the dirt drive. It was the time the Tanoah called Kapnákoyapana, Corn Tassel Coming Out Moon—roughly the same time we knew as the month of June. A magpie dropped to a nearby fence post and inspected me with suspicion. Momma Anna once told me the magpie was the consort of the Corn Girls, two sisters who—in a jealous struggle over his affections—ended up separating, and one went to the hole into the underworld that is at the mouth of the Indigo Falls. This beautiful planting/fertility myth told of Blue Corn Girl going after her sister Yellow Corn Girl, into the home of the ancestors, the House of the Dead. And then, just as Magpie came to find them, the two rose from beneath the waters again as yellow and blue corn ears, and spilled from the falls and down over the land to feed the People. It was symbolic of the journey the corn makes as it must offer its own life, in the form of its seed, to the underworld, thence to come up again to be in this life.

I set my basket on the roof of my Jeep and then leaned against it, drinking in the beauty of the evening. A half hour later, I had shifted positions enough times that my legs were tired of standing, so I opened the rear hatch and sat in the cargo area, which was coated with Mountain's hair, the windows smeared with his drool and painted with nose prints. He'd chewed away one of the net accessory holders meant for small items one might normally carry in the trunk. A host of bones, beef knuckles, and toys in various states of decomposition surrounded the big covered foam pad that was his car seat. Somehow I was comforted by all this, and I felt his presence in it. I missed my companion. I dangled my legs over the rear bumper and swung them back and forth like a child. It was cooling down, a beautiful evening.

After twenty more minutes, I wondered if I should just start the car and go home—no one could possibly miss me, as I had never truly arrived. And it was even feasible that Serena had failed to tell Lupé I was there. But it might be seen as an offense if I left; yet it was also unthinkable for me to approach the house when I'd been asked to wait. I finally decided to surrender to the fact that I'd be covered with wolf hair, and I pulled my legs up into the Jeep, turned to lean my back against the spare tire, and tried to get comfortable while I assessed the situation.

Lupé stuck her head under the back hatch and said, “Well, are you ready, White Girl?”

I straightened, started brushing fur off my dress, and stood up, banging my head into the raised hatch. I put a hand to my crown, winced, and stepped out of danger. “Ready?” I said.

“Yes. The elders got to talk with you, see if you can come to the feast.”

I followed her up toward the porch on the front of the house, a narrow band of cement furnished with a long bench. Four old men sat smoking cigarettes, wrapped in their blankets. I recognized Momma Anna's brother Yellow Hawk as one of them. He held up a hand and waved for me to come closer. Lupé asked, “Do you have any tobacco?”

I stopped walking. “In the glove box of my Jeep, there's a medicine pouch. It has sage, cornmeal, and tobacco.”

“Is it real tobacco, Indun tobacco?”

“Yes, that's the kind Momma Anna taught me to use.”

“You go 'head,” she said. “I'll get it and bring it to you.”

I approached the elders with my basket. They all looked at me without speaking. I stood in front of them for what seemed an eternity, afraid to break the silence myself, in case it was some sort of tribal taboo for me to do so. Lupé reappeared and slid the bag of tobacco discreetly into my hand. She took the basket from me and went in the house, slamming the screen door behind her. I smelled coffee, chili, and stew, and maybe even barbecue coming from the kitchen door. I also smelled the sharp scent of burning cedar.

Yellow Hawk held up his hand. “How are you?”

“I'm good. Fine. I'm fine. And you?”

He nodded.

I offered the bag of tobacco. Lujan took it and held it up to examine it briefly. The others looked at it also, and two of them nodded. Yellow Hawk tucked the offering under his blanket. “Sit down, sit down,” he said.

I looked around—then, for lack of a better option that I could see—sat down cross-legged in the dirt, carefully arranging my long dress modestly over my legs.

The elders nodded, clearly approving my choice of seating.

Yellow Hawk said, “Why you want be Indun?”

Stunned, I opened my mouth, but could not think of a thing to say. Finally, I recovered enough to mutter, “I don't want to be an Indian.”

Grunts, nods, then silence from the old men.

A few minutes passed.

“We don't tell white people our ways. What we speak of, lose power. Our ways, our power. We don't talk about it.”

It was my turn to nod my head.

A small, wiry man at the opposite end of the bench from Yellow Hawk spoke in Tiwa. They all grunted and nodded their heads in agreement.

Yellow Hawk smiled. “We speak Tiwa, this doin'.”

I nodded again.

Yellow Hawk kept bobbing his head, his eyes fixed on me. Then he raised a hand and gestured to the others. In unison, they rose and went into the house. When the screen door closed, he said to me, “I am old. Anna old. We old now.”

“No, you're not old.” I smiled. “Grandma Bird and Grandpa Nazario are old. You are their son.”

He was not impressed with my attempt to win him over with flattery. “They ancient,” he said, and chuckled. “I am old.”

I started to speak again, but he held up a hand to stop me.

“Every age has its people. And each time, there some thing the people must do, each age.” He stopped to take out his tobacco pouch and roll a cigarette. The light was fading, and his dark skin under the shadow of the porch looked like worn leather.

Yellow Hawk lit his smoke and inhaled deeply, turning his head upward. He exhaled a long stream of sweet-smelling smoke. Then he looked down at me. “We not know, long time, what we need to do. I play as boy, do good thing I get smile, do bad thing I get whip. I learn do good thing that way.” He smiled. “I ride horse, help my father plant, hunt, make drum, cut wood, dance, run race, run many mile every day. I learn as I do, while I grow.”

From inside the house, quiet murmurs and whispers were accented only by the occasional ringing of a pot lid as a woman checked the consistency of the stew or gave the posole a stir. Gas lamps hissed, and the window and doorway began to glow golden against the twilight.

Yellow Hawk said, “One time, we not live outside wall. All the People live inside wall, in village—not like this house. We come out to field, here, like this, plant corn, every color corn. Blue corn for sky, white corn for cloud, yellow corn for sun, even red corn for earth. We not wear shoe with heel in village, only moccasin, show respect that way. Every baby wash first day in river, whole tribe come to welcome. Every death, whole tribe come to send spirit home. We speak only Tiwa, not white or Spanish. We live in house made of earth, our earth, Nah-meh-neh, our life, this Mother Earth. We bring wood from mountain, make viga, get water from river, mix straw with earth to make a home. We hunt, plant, go up mountain to many place, visit our ancestors, our gods, our shrines.”

He waved his hand. “All that mountain up there our land, not just little bit like today. We have sacred place all over that mountain, gods, place make offering, do spirit work, place of old ones. Different place for different work, make different offering, ask different blessing, each one for different moon. Our way, our life—that our religion. We do all together, we share, we take care everyone. We don't have church, or wait for heaven, or even know sin. Our religion this earth, this village, the corn, our ways. Our language, Tiwa, that our religion, too. We keep our way sacred with our language.”

Momma Anna stuck her head out the screen door, looked at me on the ground, and scowled. She spoke sharply to her brother in Tiwa, then closed the door.

“Our way always give, always share. Everything, share. When Spanish come, we say, ‘Here, this land good, we share.' They take everything, make our people slaves, take our women and children, say we not speak Tiwa no more, have dance, ceremony. They take our ways. We hold on, keep dance in secret, hide our children. We tell them, ‘Run! If enemy come, run to place where old ones live, hide and wait!' Those times, we speak Tiwa in quiet whisper, teach to children at night, in sleep.

“Now, today, when people come village, we still share, we say, ‘Come, sit, eat.' Many time, they still try steal our ways, take picture of sacred dance, walk in house, no knock, ask question, very rude. Our way, no question. One thing now, we not share sacred tradition. No one tell these thing. Our doin's, we speak Tiwa. We speak these things outside, to others, they lose power, our ways die. Then we die. Already, our ways dying. No more living inside wall, in village. Everybody got car, job, drink water out a pipe, no planting corn, squash. No more go where old ones live, make offering, fast, pray. Not even our land up there, gov'ment take away. I'm old. I still not know what our people must do, this age. Maybe we just die, some not know, some not care. I try keep our ways alive.”

He pinched out his cigarette with two tobacco-stained fingers. He held up the remaining bit and began to chant softly under his breath in Tiwa. He stopped after a minute or two, then was quiet for a time. He got up from the bench.

I rose, too, brushing the dirt off the back of my dress.

“Our language last vein our life's blood, last thing keep us alive, last thing sacred not taken from us. You come inside. We speak Tiwa. I ask respect.”

He opened the screen door and held it for me to go inside. “They say you live with a wolf.”

“Yes, he's a real challenge. But I love him.”

“Maybe you Indun, time before.”

On the way home from my encounter with the two
mujeres,
I had to stop for gas, since the dealership had left the CJ's tank empty and running on fumes. I started the pump and went around to the passenger side of the Jeep. Mountain stood in the seat and held his head out the window, sniffing the evening air. I pressed my face into the long ruff of his neck and nuzzled him. “No more jumping out of cars and running into traffic, okay, buddy?”

He wagged his tail at me and smiled. Then he pushed his neck against my face again, as if to reassure me. I reached a hand in through the window opening and began stroking his side and the ridge of his long back as far as I could reach. Mountain, even though still a cub, was a large bit of livestock. Pretty soon he would weigh more than I did, and he stood nearly three feet tall on all fours.

A brace of loud music and big-engine noise interrupted our snuggling. I saw Gilbert Valdez's slick red Mustang pull up to the other side of the gas pump. The engine purred to a stop and the music died. Because I was on the far side of the car, Valdez couldn't see me. A woman got out of the Mustang's shotgun seat, and I saw that it was Madonna Santana. She reached into the back of the car and fetched out a shiny black leather coat and put it on. In defiance of tradition, and despite the fact that she was newly widowed, she wore makeup, her beautiful, long black hair was down and loose, and she was dressed in snug jeans and a cowboy shirt.

I came around the front of the CJ as Madonna was stamping her feet on the pavement, complaining that it was getting cold. Valdez was pumping gas into his ride. I nodded at the widow, and she looked surprised to see me. “Jamaica! Hi! How are you?” Right away, she noticed the claw marks. “What happened to your face?”

“Ah, it's nothing. I'm good, Madonna, I'm good. Listen, I'm sorry for your loss…”

She closed her mouth and lowered her head, as if ashamed to be caught out like this. “You probably heard that my husband and I weren't getting along.”

“No, no, I guess I didn't know. I'm sorry to hear that. I—”

By this time Valdez came to join us. “Jamaica! Did you get a new car?”

“For right now, yes.”

“Yeah, probably going to need one after what I saw,” he said. “Oooh! Ouch! What did you do to that good-lookin' face of yours?”

I gave an exasperated sigh. “It's nothing, I just got scratched.”

The three of us stood there in awkward silence.

“Well,” I said, “I have to be going.” I headed to the pump to take out the nozzle and close up the cap on the tank.

Valdez went inside the station, but Madonna came up to me and put her arm on my shoulder. “Jamaica, this is not what it looks like,” she said. “We work together at the casino.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“He's just giving me a ride home after work.”

“Okay.” I put my hands in the back pockets of my jeans.

“There was trouble in my marriage. A lot of people were talking about me and Gilbert. But it's not like that. He's just giving me a ride home.”

“I thought you were supposed to refrain from driving inside the pueblo during Quiet Time if you possibly could.”

“We are. But some of us—like Gilbert—get special permission because of what they do. I can't drive there now because I'm no big shot. But Gilbert runs the casino, so he can drive, as long as he stays out of the old part of the village. He's giving me a ride home so I don't have to walk. It's three miles to my house! It would be dark by the time I got home to Angel.”

“How's Angel doing?”

She frowned. “He's not so good. He wants to be alone all the time. He won't even go stay with his grandma Anna when I'm at work. I don't know what to do.”

“When I was by the other day, he kept telling me he was a good boy. But he seemed pretty upset.”

Tears glistened in Madonna's eyes. “I know.”

Valdez reemerged from the station with a bottled soft drink. “Well, am I a lucky son of a gun or what? Two of the most beautiful women in New Mexico, right here waiting on me!”

“Listen, I better go,” I said, and I moved to open my car door.

But Madonna reached out and put her arms around me. “Just don't think bad things about me, okay, Jamaica? It's not like everybody's saying.”

I hugged her back, genuinely, and said, “You do the same for me, okay? Don't believe what they're saying about me. I hope you'll give yourself a little time to heal, to grieve. Be good to yourself.”

“You, too,” she said, and moved away.

“Hey, did your dog do that?” Gilbert asked, gesturing at his own face in reference to the marks on mine.

I got in the driver's seat. I smiled at Mountain, and he smiled back. “He's not a dog. He's a wolf.”

I drove away.

By the time Mountain and I got home, the sun had almost set, and the shadow of the tall mountains to the west of the property left my cabin in dark shade. I took the wolf for a brief romp through the sage and scrub piñon so he could do his business, then we headed inside. I filled his water and food dishes and put them down for him on the floor, and he began to crunch away at his meat-laced kibble. I hurried to turn on lights in the one big main room, which comprised my living quarters, and even in the pass-through closet and the small bathroom that had been added, shed-style, on the back of the house by the owner some years ago to make it viable as a rental property. I did as Tecolote had told me and covered the windows—which required me to tack up sheets and towels, because I had no curtains. I'd never wanted to hinder my beautiful views, nor had I been concerned about privacy, since I lived in such a remote place, on such a large parcel of land.

After this chore, I swept the ashes out of the woodstove. I covered the metal ash bucket and set it out on a flat stone about ten yards away from the house so any live embers could safely cool before I emptied them on the land. The evening was chilly, so I laid a new fire and lit it. Then I brought San Cirilio into the house, unwrapped his rag coverings, and placed him on the slate tiles near the woodstove, which was as close to a hearth as I had. I realized I didn't know what to do with the nachi until tomorrow, so I left it in the car. After Momma Anna's description of its purpose, I decided it wouldn't help matters to bring it into the house.

As I busied myself with these activities, my mind fretted over my brief encounter with the widow Santana and Gilbert Valdez. Madonna's worry over what I might be thinking of her, the shame and embarrassment she displayed, even her attractive but plainly modern, white woman way of dressing—all of these evoked strong sentiment in me. In eschewing tribal customs and defying societal expectations, she seemed as determined to escape her own life—who she was—as Jerome Santana had been four days ago in the buffalo field. In breaking the strong fence of custom and tradition that may have enclosed and—at times—stifled her, she also destroyed the very thing that protected her. Now she seemed to me like a misguided lamb among the wolves, and Gilbert Valdez was definitely a predator.

For my own part, I longed for something Madonna Santana was eagerly discarding. I could not imagine that anything would be worth more than belonging to an extended family, a tribe.

After I'd prepared the house, I remembered Tecolote's admonition to lock the door. But as it was Kerry's custom to come by for frequent, unannounced visits after his long shifts at the Ranger District in Tres Piedras, I wanted to wait until I was ready for sleep to take this precaution. I turned next to the items the two
mujeres
had given me. I filled a cast-iron kettle with water from the tap and set it atop the woodstove to make the tea using the things Tecolote gave me. While I waited for the water to heat, I turned to Momma Anna's little chunk of root and remembered her voice:
Burn half with red chile and salt. Carry other half next to heart.
I examined the small bit of woody, brown tuber she'd given me. Then I got out my book on native herbs and plants and looked for its likeness among the photos and descriptions. I wasn't sure, but it seemed most like the root described as
cachana,
or “witch root,” which botanists had not identified, and whose source was a carefully guarded secret among Native American shamans, even such that its distribution among native peoples was harshly regulated by them. The author of the book speculated that the rhizome might grow in the Jemez Mountains, a range south and west of my cabin. A caveat in the root's description said the herb should be administered with utmost care because it was extremely dangerous if misused. I gathered the items I would need: a knife and a small cutting board, a large abalone shell I used for burning sage and cedar for smudge, wooden kitchen matches, some red chile seeds, and salt. Momma Anna had given no recipe of proportions, so I decided I would try to use equal amounts of each ingredient. I wiped my abalone shell out and placed a good pinch of the chile seeds and the salt in the center. Then I took my knife and began shaving away at one end of the root, creating short strands of dry, woody fiber. I put these atop the other items in the shell, and then measured out another pinch of seeds and salt, and shaved more of the cachana. Momma Anna had advised me to use half of the root, so I continued in this way until I felt that I had done so. A small heap of debris rose from the shell, like the makings of a tiny ceremonial bonfire.

Before I could strike a match to this concoction, my kettle began surging steam. I opened Tecolote's small cloth bundle and saw sunflower seeds in a nest of dried herbs, and green and brown and yellow strands of what might have been flower petals, stamen, and pistils. The seeds made me think of the old bruja's nickname for me: Mirasol, which means Sunflower. When she first called me by this moniker, she said it was for the flower that “grows where you grew, tall—like you—with yellow crown.” I lifted the lid on the kettle and threw the contents of the bundle inside. I watched the seeds float and spin in the bubbling water, the herbs take on the liquid and drop to the bottom, and the strands I thought were flower parts disintegrate. The liquid boiled for a minute or two, and then I poured some off into a big coffee mug. The smell of the broth was tantalizing: sharp like citrus, with a woody, mushroomlike undertone. I brought the mug to the table to let it cool, as the curandera had instructed. Then I turned again to my smudge mixture. Holding the abalone conch in one hand, I struck a match with the other and held it to the base of the material piled in the shell. The root took the flame instantly and began to hiss and shrivel, giving off an astonishing amount of smaze for such a little heap of fuel. The chile seeds popped and withered and turned black, and the blend of ingredients danced with green-tinged flame. The smoke was acrid and my eyes began to water and sting. My nose recoiled and I thought I might sneeze. Suddenly, I couldn't breathe.

I wanted to set the conch down; it was burning my hands. Foul vapors obscured my view of everything. I couldn't see the table: I reached out to place the shell on its top but I felt empty space. The heat from the smudge seared my palms. I swung to one side and tried again to find the tabletop, and I released the scorching bowl to spare my hand any further damage. I heard a crash as the abalone shattered against the floor.

Still unable to breathe, and coughing now, I made for the door, or where I thought it should be. Just as I was about to reach for the knob, I felt a blast of both noise and air, and I heard the door slam back hard against the wall, as if something—or someone—had fairly exploded into the room.

Mountain and I were running, only not on the gorge rim as we so often did. This time, we were on the slopes of a sharply escalating ascent. There was a feeling of urgency
—
we had to get somewhere in a hurry, or get away from something. We were not running for joy and pleasure but perhaps for our lives
—
or someone else's. Mountain was out in front of me, but he stopped frequently and turned to encourage me on. His tongue hung several inches out of his mouth from exertion, in spite of the intense cold, and he looked at me with anxious eyes. He turned onto a trail that led farther up the alp. “No, no,” I told him, “not that way. We want to go down. We want to go down the mountain, we want to go home.” The wolf looked torn between his instincts and mine. He reluctantly turned back and took the lower trail, but he didn't run ahead as before, staying just behind me instead.

A cold mix of rain and sleet began to pelt us, and I could hardly see the trail. The ground was wet and slippery, and several times my shoes slid and made my stride erratic. I had to get down the mountain, I had to get both of us down the slope as fast as I could or something unimaginably horrible would happen. I tried to run faster but my legs were cold and unresponsive. My foot lodged on a root and I tripped and fell face-first, downhill into mud and musty detritus, which smelled sharply of orange and also earthy, like mushrooms. I tried to pick myself up but my arms wouldn't move
—
I couldn't raise them from the ground. I cried out in pain. Mountain lay down beside me and nuzzled my neck, his breath heavy and moist. He beckoned me to climb on his back, to take hold of the long ruff of mane at his neck and ride on him. I managed to grasp a fistful of fur. Instantly, I felt him lifting me as he rose, and I was somehow small enough to ride him, to ride on his strong back, his thick coat surrounding me and keeping me warm, my only connection that one handful of hair that bound me to the back of him as he loped effortlessly away from danger, away from the cold, away down the mountain to safety and home.