The Search for Joyful Read online

  Elk Girl came in. She had dropped out of school. I hadn’t seen her in almost a year. She put money on the counter before uttering a word.

  “I’ll have a banana split with everything on it,” she said as though we had parted that morning.

  “How’ve you been, Elk Girl?” I asked as I sliced a banana, added three scoops of different ice creams and three sauces, sprinkled on nuts, and finished with a dollop of whipped cream and a maraschino cherry.

  She followed these preparations with an eagle eye, then put her question to me. “Have you ever eaten one?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “That’s what I thought. You fix ’em, but you don’t eat ’em.”

  I felt uncomfortable. How did she know that, since the Depression, banana splits were considered too expensive around our house?

  With great deliberation Elk Girl took out a pack of Old Golds and offered me one.

  “No, I don’t smoke.” I was horrified that she did.

  She contemplated me with the look that had disconcerted me since I was seven. “You should smoke, you know. Smoke is holy. Bet you didn’t know that.”

  “Who says it’s holy?”

  “The Creator.” She laughed at my expression. “Can’t go higher than that.” With concentration she blew a smoke ring in my direction.

  I brushed it away.

  “Won’t your white mama let you smoke?”

  I pretended to be busy counting out paper napkins and filling containers.

  “Oh-Be-Joyful understood smoke.”

  This pronouncement shook me. What did she know about my mother?

  “I live with a power woman. Sarah is very very old. She is a wind shifter and she knew Mamanowatum.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Your mother, Oh-Be-Joyful. Mamanowatum is the way it’s said in Cree. Sarah, the woman I live with, knew her, she knew Jonathan, she knew about you being born . . . and she knew what would happen.”

  “How? By divination? By magic?”

  Elk Girl said complacently, “She looks into smoke and it shows her things.”

  “What things?” I couldn’t help asking.

  “Herself.”

  I frowned over the answer.

  “You have to know yourself first, before you can know anything else; that just stands to reason. By the way, how do you get on with your pawakam?”

  “My what?”

  “Your wolf tail.”

  “I still have it, if that’s what you mean.”

  She seemed pleased with this answer. “You make a good split.” She carried her sundae to one of the tables and proceeded to eat with obvious relish, making sure to get every bit.

  “There ought to be a law,” one of the girls from school whispered in a voice meant to carry, “no ice cream for You-know-who above the fiftieth parallel.”

  This raised a laugh from her friends, but Elk Girl did not choose to hear. She had not come for ice cream. I knew enough about magic from my brother to know that. Georges was fascinated by things that appeared to be one thing and were in fact quite different. “The science of misdirection,” he called it. Elk Girl had come because of the pawakam.

  ELK GIRL WAS my only link with my Indian self. My only link to Oh-Be-Joyful’s Daughter. She seemed to know a lot about me. I knew nothing about her, not even where she lived, except it was with a wind shifter called Sarah. Elk Girl had always been aloof, distant, and unknowable, like my Indian heritage. I decided to make her a friendship bracelet. I’d made one for Connie’s birthday. It involved a lot of rummaging—tiny glass beads, seed pearls from a pair of outworn gloves, covered buttons from a torn jacket, segments of a broken watch band, strung together. I was still thinking about the possibilities of a second bracelet as I walked home from school. I wondered if I could find enough items.

  Because I lived farther out than most of the kids I generally walked home alone. I turned at the sound of my name.

  “Kathy!” It was Phil Dunway on his bike. Phil Dunway was the boy at school that I liked. I’d liked him since fifth grade when he stood up for me on the playground. He was a senior now, and after graduation I wouldn’t see him again.

  Phil caught up to me, got off and walked his bicycle. “Kathy,” he said again, “I’m going your way.”

  I was surprised at his friendliness. At school we didn’t speak. “Fine,” I said. Neither of us could think of anything further to say, then we spoke at once. I laughed and took a breath. “Are you visiting someone?” I asked, because he’d never taken this route before.

  “No.” There was a short pause. “I just thought maybe you wouldn’t mind.”

  Was he saying that he took this path deliberately to walk me home? My heart raced with excitement. He liked me. Phil Dunway, the cutest boy in school, liked me.

  The pause between us lengthened, and I searched for something interesting to say, but could only come up with, “Lucky you, you’ll be graduating in a couple of months.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled but had nothing to add.

  “So, do you have something lined up? A summer job?”

  “My dad wants me to go into the contracting business with him, but things are pretty slow just now.”

  “You ought to think about being a Mountie. If I was a man that’s what I’d be.”

  “I’m glad you’re not.”

  “What? A Mountie?”

  “A man.” And he took one hand from the handle of his bike and laid it over mine. The wheel immediately turned, bringing us to an abrupt halt. “Can we maybe sit down somewhere and talk? If you don’t have to get home, that is.”

  “No, I don’t have to be home.”

  There was shade not far off, and we sat with our backs against the large oak. Phil took my hand again. “This is better,” he said.

  I let my hand stay in his.

  “I never see you with any of the fellows at school.” He threw this out tentatively.

  “No. I’m not going with any of them.”

  “That’s what I was hoping because . . .” He leaned over and kissed me. He did it very deliberately as though he had been nerving himself to it. Then he did it once more and this time I cooperated.

  It felt heady. His touch awakened me to new knowledge of myself. In Phil Dunway’s arms I sensed what it was to be a woman. His fingers lightly followed the outline of my cheek, my throat, and, dropping lower, my breasts.

  I drew back frightened that I had allowed so much, afraid I would allow more. “I have to go.”

  “Can I see you again tomorrow?” he asked, getting to his feet. “Right here? Can this be our place?”

  I hesitated. I wanted to, but . . .

  “I’ll be here,” he said persuasively, “right after school. Will you?”

  Words choked in my throat, but I nodded.

  I thought of Phil all night, analyzed every intonation, action, and gesture. In English class I went over it all again. In mathematics I got totally lost, thinking not of square roots but of the soft, waving texture of his hair, remembering my fingers in it.

  While I was still debating whether or not to meet him, I found myself there. Phil was leaning against the old oak and at sight of me his face lighted and he came forward. Without a word we put our arms about each other. This time there was no fumbling, his mouth was deliciously open and his hands sure. He continued where he had left off. He slid his hands under my shirt. I rallied from dreamy acquiescence determined to say no.

  He didn’t ask, just opened my shirt and stared. “I never saw a girl before,” he said.

  I got to my feet, pulling my shirt around me. “You shouldn’t have done that, Phil.”

  “I’m not sorry, Kathy. I should be. And I apologize. Don’t go away sore.” He caught up to me. “How’d you like to go to the senior prom?”

  That stopped me. I’d never been to a school dance or any other kind. No one had ever asked me. The senior prom. I’d fantasized about it forever, Cinderella at the ball.

  “Well?” Phi
l asked. “What do you say?”

  I forgot I hadn’t answered him. I nodded before I could get the yes out.

  “Can I have another look, then?”

  I closed my eyes and stood in front of him, my face burning as he unbuttoned my blouse.

  That night I took down my wolf pawakam. I felt it held the answer to my question. “Guardian,” I whispered, “does he feel what I feel? Does he love me? Really love me?”

  The talisman replied sooner than I expected. Sooner than I wanted. I lived a very short time in my Cinderella dream. After school the girls were whispering to each other, speculating who was taking who to the prom. Some had already been asked, and they preened themselves before the wallflowers.

  I didn’t say anything. Marlene was keeping count at the drinking fountain. She said, “So far, Ev is going with John Boyle, Gwen with Danny Thompson, and Cindy with Phil Dunway . . .”

  She went on, but I didn’t hear. I left her standing there and walked down the hall and out to the ball field where I knew he would be playing lacrosse. It was baseball season, but a bunch of the fellows got up their own lacrosse game so they could charge and block and work out their hostilities.

  “Phil!” I called. “Phil.”

  They were taking a break, and Phil was showing off, cradling the ball. He looked up. The other boys did too. They were startled and one of them mimicked, “Phil, oh, Phil, Pocahontas wants you.”

  He looked at me. It was a long look. Then he turned his back, laughing.

  The public humiliation pinned me to the spot. I couldn’t walk away from the shame any more than I could walk away from the anger. I wanted to run, but I was chained where I was. I knew I could never tell anyone, not Mama Kathy, not Connie either.

  I had brought this on myself. I had forgotten I was Indian. Remembering released me, gave me strength to walk past my classmates looking neither to the right nor the left, my ears closed to comments.

  At home I got out the wolf tail and stared at it a long time. I hadn’t known who I was. Now I knew. I would braid wolf hairs into the friendship bracelet.

  I DIDN’T GROW up until Papa died. He wasn’t sick. Something broke inside him and we couldn’t get him to a hospital. It had rained for days and the roads had turned to muskeg.

  I heard his voice in muffled cries, hoarse and desperate, from the bedroom.

  When Mama Kathy came out she staggered against the door. I rushed to her, led her to a chair, and pushed her gently into it.

  “The Luminal, Kathy. He asked for it. It’s in a small silver packet in the medicine chest.”

  “Yes, Mama, I’ll get it.”

  “Oh, God, the pain, Kathy. It’s terrible.”

  “I’ll get him the Luminal, Mama. It will be better.”

  She nodded, and I went into the bathroom, found it, and, filling a glass of water, took it to him.

  The covers were knotted into a corner of the bed. Papa’s eyes had glazed over like a sick cat’s, sweat rolled along his face, and his body was rigid. I poured some of the water on a towel and bent over him, wiping his forehead, murmuring as I worked. “I’ve brought you the Luminal, Papa. It will relax you.”

  He was in no condition to swallow anything. A spasm bowed his body and blood gushed, splattering the wall, ejected with the same terrible force that had taken over his body.

  I rushed to the bathroom for a clean towel, passing the door to my room. There, in the closet on the top shelf, was my guardian. I couldn’t see it, but I didn’t need to see it.

  “Help me,” I whispered. “Help him.”

  When I returned, Papa was stretched out on his back, sleeping.

  I stroked his hand, his capable, strong-fingered hand. What good was his strength to him now? What good were dampened towels and Luminal, even if he could swallow it? What was needed was large decisive steps. Something had gone wrong inside. He needed stitching together, he needed an oxygen tent to help him breathe. He needed a hospital equipped to help him.

  His eyes opened. He looked at me and said in a voice that I bent to hear, “You’d make a good nurse, Kathy.”

  Those were his last words to me. Mama Kathy came in. Her red hair was pinned neatly back; she had taken hold. I relinquished my place.

  I went out and sat on the porch steps. Connie and Georges came and sat beside me. No one spoke. Then Connie gave a quavering little laugh. “You know what I was thinking? Do you remember, Kathy, when you were little, about five, I think? You use to spend hours making concoctions of dirt and grass, all mixed up with seeds and baking powder from the kitchen.”

  “I remember that,” Georges said.

  “Do you remember what it was for?” Connie challenged him.

  I knew. It suddenly came back to me. I was making a medicine so Mama Kathy and Papa would live forever. “It didn’t work,” I muttered.

  We learned it was peritonitis that took him, a burst appendix. Sergeant Mike looked after the whole province. If a job needed doing, there was Mike Flannigan of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to do it. He was game warden, inspected traps and settled disputes. He kept illegal drugs out of his territory and was responsible for immigration violation and sabotage. And when he’d time on his hands, he repaired the telephone wires and vaccinated a village. He would turn his hand to anything, help anyone, and in the end no one could do anything for him.

  Elk Girl explained it to me that night. I was exhausted, out of my head with grief, and had thrown myself across the bed without bothering with a cover. Elk Girl came in, covered me, brought the pawakam and laid it beside me, then opened the window and sat there, looking out. She stared up at the stars, and they, serene and wise, looked down on us. Elk Girl didn’t speak. She didn’t say that the stars were where they belonged—but they were.

  WE THOUGHT IT would be a small funeral, just the family and a few friends from the town. But word was carried on the newly extended phone lines and, when these quit, by moccasin telegraph penetrating deep into the woods. People came, white and Indian, from all over the province, people we didn’t know but who had known Sgt. Mike Flannigan.

  The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were well represented, their scarlet dress uniforms punctuating the somber attire of the others. Among the guests was Jonathan Forquet. He came not only for Papa Mike but to stand beside Mama.

  On the day of the funeral she leaned on his arm. He himself was a compelling figure, spare almost to the point of emaciation. His eyes, when he turned them on you, burned with the intensity of a soul about to leave the body, an arrow ready to quit the bow. When the prayers were finished and he spoke I could understand why the Indians regarded him as a holy man.

  “This Mountie we lay to rest today arrested me, kept me jailed for a murder I did not do, refused to give his blessing to my marriage. Yet I am here from across Canada, from Quebec Province. Why? Because when I was starving in body and soul he fed me at his table. He travels now to the west where our people have always traveled. But if he was here he’d laugh in our faces. As he saw it, he did what anybody would do. His own kids died in the diphtheria epidemic, and he was still bringing soup and medicine to people too ill and weak to manage for themselves. But don’t think he wouldn’t go after a trap thief and bring him in, Mountie style. He was there to fight a fire, or pull an abscessed tooth. He entered our lives, one way or another. Look in your heart to see which part of him you carry.”

  Before he left, my father called me to him. He acted as though he had a right to do this, as though he had been here. But it was Papa. Papa was the one to oil my skates, to show me the beaver dam, to explain the migration of birds—it was Papa’s lap that was always there for me.

  Jonathan Forquet never bothered about me, never inquired about me. He was never part of my life. He was off somewhere being holy, preaching to unlettered Indians who were in awe of him.

  Well, I wasn’t in awe of him. I followed him reluctantly, my feet scuffing leaves.

  He walked a little way into the woods, and the musky smell of de
cayed vegetation under loamy earth made me think of the grave.

  He began speaking again in an intimate way, as though I was his daughter. “You have grown up well. Mrs. Mike is right, there is a look of your mother about you. There is also a look of sadness. Not only because of Sergeant Mike’s death, but it has been in you, I think, a long time. It comes from the way you look at life.”

  “Don’t lecture me. Did you find the beaver dam? Did you fix my skates? I don’t even know you. And you don’t know me.”

  “I do know you. I brought you your name.”

  “You show up once. One time in sixteen years. Well, you know what I wish? I wish it was my papa I was standing here with.”

  A slight smile hovered about the corners of his mouth. “And that I was where he is?”

  I turned away.

  “Oh-Be-Joyful’s Daughter—”

  I stopped. I wasn’t used to anyone addressing me by this name.

  He went on in a detached tone, but I felt the urgency behind it. “When I think of you, when I dream you, when I speak your name, you are with me. Far things are just as near. Didn’t you ever feel this?”

  “No. Either someone is here with me, or they’re not.”

  “A namer is never far.”

  “You were. To other people you brought religion and all that, but there was nothing for me. And you can’t start now, I won’t let you.” I was angry to find I was crying.

  He went on as though I hadn’t said anything, “You must remember who you are. You must learn to be joyful.”

  “You haven’t the right to expect anything of me. Go take your good works somewhere else.” I turned and ran. The joyfulness he tried to force on me seemed dreadful. At school I’m not accepted—it doesn’t matter, be joyful. At work I serve sundaes I can’t afford to eat—be joyful. My papa, whom I love more than anything in the world, dies—be joyful.

  We didn’t speak again. I was glad when he left.

  Two

  AFTER PAPA’S DEATH, we tried to be a normal family. We couldn’t talk about Papa at first. We had to and yet we couldn’t. It was Jonathan Forquet Mama Kathy told me about. I didn’t want to listen because I knew I’d been unfair to him. But I couldn’t stop Mama.