Kathy Little Bird Read online

  “Is it worth going to all that trouble?”

  “You better believe it.”

  “If you do things like that, Abram, how do you ever expect to receive the call?”

  “I don’t. I gave up on it.” He said this in a blustery way, but I could tell he was worried because he added an explanation. “Giving testimony, having everybody pray over me…no way I’m going to do that.”

  I considered this. “I suppose you have to be super good before you receive an altar call.”

  Abram nodded. “For a while I made an effort, but in one of my father’s sermons it slipped out that holy scripture contains six hundred and thirteen commandments. That’s when I gave up.”

  “Well, if you’re not going to believe in the Mennonite way—try Elk Woman’s and trade shadows with me.”

  He hesitated. “Do you know how to do it?”

  “I know you have to believe.”

  “What exactly?”

  “That’s easy, that when our shadows blend together we are made one. Kind of like blood brothers, only we don’t have to cut ourselves.”

  “So let’s do it. My shadow is right here, stretched out on the pavement.”

  “Don’t move!” In three hops I was beside him; hopping gave it more emphasis, more importance. “Watch this!” With a final leap I landed almost on top of him and our shadows merged. “Now SING!”

  In the blood, blood, blood,

  We are one, one, one!

  “That isn’t Indian,” he objected, recognizing it.

  “I haven’t finished.” I closed my eyes. “I call on the spirit of all things, flowers, plants, animals, mountains, and waters to witness.” I peered through my lashes and lo and behold—a spinning world of dazzling colors, its brightness so intense it blinded me.

  I seized Abram’s arm. “Look at the sun with your eyes closed.”

  “Make up your mind, do I close my eyes or look at the sun?”

  “Both. Quick, while the magic is jiggling around. Do you see it? A bright wheel of pure light and splashes of color. Do you, Abram?”

  “Praise the Lord,” he said.

  The rapture increased and the brightness. The Great Manitou by this token acknowledged our two shadows as one. I began to dance, and Abram, throwing his arms wide, started singing psalms.

  A deep, resonant strain of music flowed from the magic wheel, overpowering his voice. It was a second before I realized it came from the church.

  The peal of the organ and the thunder of the choir reached us through the open window. I knew the routine by heart. The congregation knelt for the prayers and stood for the blessing. They were standing now.

  Worship service was over and the girls were lining up on their side of the chapel. I stood straight and prepared to sing. Nothing could compare with singing, not even Abram, or trading shadows, or the scooter I saw in the hardware store window. Sounds came together in my head, wonderful, soaring, pulling me out of myself. The sound was often there even when I was quiet, and then I just listened to it. But it was best when I threw back my head and let the melody into the world, carrying me with it.

  In the hour of pain and anguish,

  In the hour when death is near,

  Suffer not my soul to languish,

  Suffer not my soul to fear.

  I am washed in the blood,

  I am saved, saved, saved.

  I lived for this hour of choir practice twice weekly. It didn’t matter to me that I stood outside. The only thing that mattered was the music.

  Chapter Two

  TIME collided, years of it, and the spring I was fifteen Mum wasn’t well. The chores I had assisted at were now mainly my responsibility. Home schooling was pretty much a thing of the past, although we made a pretense of it. Mum still went over the papers I wrote, correcting spelling and punctuation. She claimed I was a wild speller. I put in all the letters, but not always in the right order. I was better at mathematics, but Mum was a whiz. She had been at the top of her class in nursing school. While she told me stories of the hospital, my hands were busy with mason jars, paraffin tops, and the wide rubber ring that went around the rims.

  Sometimes it was fun. I liked straining blackberries though muslin. Once they were sugared, the boys couldn’t wait for it to turn into preserves, but pestered me for a taste.

  Jason at thirteen took after Mum; he always asked if he could have some. Morrie didn’t ask, he took. If he was caught, he lied. If the lie was found out, he sulked.

  Morrie was a Jellet. He got his handsome Cree looks from Mum, but he was mostly Jellet. He had some good traits, though. When he took things from the larder, he always shared with Jason. And when I was at my wits’ end what to do about him, he’d bring me presents of stuff he’d pinched.

  My work didn’t end with straining blackberries. There was the wash to do and meals to help with. The wash was done on a waffle scrub board with lumps of homemade carbolic soap. The boys tended the goat and pulled weeds in the vegetable garden. Jellet slept all day and after supper went off to the pub. He kept telling Jason it would pass to him some day, just as Jellet himself had inherited it from his father. The Eight Bells gave him a chance to get away. I don’t think he was fond of any of us, not even Mum, because, as he said over and over, she’d saddled him with us kids. The pub, that’s where his life was.

  The Eight Bells was strictly off limits. On the few occasions when I’d walked into town, I plastered my face against the glass and peered in. There was nothing to see, a lot of tables and upended chairs. Jellet didn’t get home until one or two in the morning, and he slept in. The family was careful not to wake him. If that happened he’d come roaring out, and whichever boy he caught got a licking. Being nearly grown by now and a girl, I was immune.

  Once the evening meal was over, Jellet consulted his watch, declared he was late, and left for the pub. Mum took the opportunity to lie down. I’m sure he had no idea there was anything wrong. She didn’t want him to know and he didn’t. She kept the door to her bedroom open so we could talk as I did the dishes.

  Now that I was older Mum told me more about my real father. His name was Erich von Kerll. I’d known that. He was Austrian. I’d known that too, and even looked up Austria on the world map in the library.

  The library was one of Abram’s special places. It wasn’t one of mine. By now I’m sure Abram had read every volume in the library. “Bookworm,” I’d say under my breath. But then he’d tell me some interesting fact. One interesting fact was that Navajos were code-talkers in the signal corps during the war. The Germans never figured out what they were saying. They didn’t know it was a language; they thought it was a new code.

  When Abram took out books on World War II, I looked up wolf pack, U-boat, enemy alien. I worried about my father having been a Nazi, and asked Mum about it. She countered with what it meant to be an officer in the German navy. “He was never a Nazi. He was second in command of the U-186 when it crossed the Atlantic, raided the coast of Nova Scotia, and got all the way up the St. Lawrence to Montreal.”

  I looked at her in amazement; she sounded almost proud.

  She caught my glance and flushed. “Anyway, eventually they were sunk by a British destroyer. I tell you this about your father, Kathy, so you’ll know he was a brave man and a fine officer…”

  “In Hitler’s navy,” I added.

  “Austria itself was overrun and declared a province of the Third Reich. And he came from a naval family. You should have seen him, Kathy; tall, blond, and his eyes were gray.”

  “It’s embarrassing that my father fought on the wrong side.”

  “Please be grown up about this, Kathy. It was that or a firing squad.”

  I plunged my hands deeper into the sudsy water. “I do want to know about him.”

  “He went to sea in forty-one. The U-boats owned the North Atlantic in those days. For months no Allied shipping got through their patrol. It extended all the way to Iceland. Then we started using convoys and there were tremend
ous sea battles. Your father was found floating in waves of oil, holding onto some wreckage. Six hours was the most they lasted in those waters. He was brought in suffering hypothermia and third-degree burns.”

  “And you fell in love,” I said, wiping an already dry bowl.

  “Not straight away. At first he was just a patient. In fact, I didn’t want him assigned to me, being an enemy and all.” Mum coughed and asked for a glass of water. As I handed it to her she motioned toward the old bureau in the corner of the bedroom. “Bottom drawer,” she said hoarsely.

  The bottom drawer was where she kept her Bible. I picked it up and brought it to her. A small scroll of paper had been tucked between the pages, along with several documents. “Our marriage certificate, your birth certificate, and…a copy of the annulment.”

  “What happened? Are you sure it wasn’t because you got pregnant?”

  “I’ve told you that he didn’t know about you. But I think now he should. He belongs to an aristocratic family with wealth and influence. As a daughter you have a claim, it’s your birthright.”

  “I don’t want anything that’s his.”

  “Don’t be so quick to judge, Kathy. You already have one gift from him.”

  I looked at her questioningly.

  “Your music. Music was part of him too. He had a sweet warm baritone. Many of the songs I sang when you were little—remember? ‘Wenn i komm.’ And ‘Die Lorelei.’ I learned them from Erich.”

  This shook me. But I wouldn’t give up the resentment I felt. “If it wasn’t me that made him leave, what was it?”

  “I wouldn’t go back to Austria with him. It was that simple.”

  “But why? Why wouldn’t you?”

  Mum turned this over in her mind before answering. “The war did strange things. It made you grab what life held out to you. And that’s what I did without thinking too much about it. Then when peace came it brought a different reality. His family owned a chateau on the Bodensee. They entertained, held soirees, gave elaborate dinners. An Indian wife, Kathy?”

  “Why not?”

  She smiled. “Maybe now, in this generation. But I doubt it. Europe is not as egalitarian as we are on this continent, and even here—”

  “Maybe I will show up on his doorstep sometime. It might be fun.” With my blond hair and fair complexion no one would suspect I was almost half Cree. I did have my Mum’s eyes, though; they didn’t go with my face, they were coal black and stormy. They held a hint. They told a tale.

  WHEN summer came Mum was better, and I wasn’t needed around the house much. There was a stream by Abram’s house, and we spent a lot of time on our bellies shooting at tin cans floating down. We took turns with Jellet’s BB gun. He kept it in the hall closet and the pellets in the top drawer of the chiffonier. At first Abram regarded the gun with true Mennonite horror, but once he got used to the kick it gave your shoulder he broke as many bottles and pinged as many cans as I did.

  But there were long stretches of time when nothing floated down the stream. And these were the times Abram brought to my attention the odd bits of knowledge he delighted in. For instance, the Sargasso Sea. I didn’t know there was such a sea. “It’s a body of water that lies like a huge lake in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean where the Gulf Stream flows into the colder waters coming from the north. It gets the name Sargasso from the grass that covers the surface of the water. But in spite of this kelplike covering, the area is a desert.”

  “How can water be a desert?” I objected.

  “A desert is where life is extinguished. There are no fish, no seals, no crustacea, no birdlife.”

  “A desert of water,” I marveled.

  “Right. And this desert is seven miles deep.”

  “Seven miles of watery desert,” I echoed, imagining seven miles of straight-down misery.

  That very night Jellet was waylaid by a couple of toughs he had thrown out of his bar, and given a bad beating. He looked awful, like something from the bottom of the Sargasso. He asked Mum to manage the bar for one night. I went along in case she needed backup, and as a result soon had an exciting story to tell Abram.

  The patrons were Eight Bells regulars, a rough-and-ready sort. Because they were regulars and knew I was the owner’s daughter, they tended, after their first amazement at seeing females on the premises, to be respectful. Mum was Mrs. Jellet and I was Missy. They kept their raucous stories low key and their feet off the tables. There were First Nation guys too, but they sat by themselves, and were serious drinkers. Mum served at the bar and I brought orders to the tables.

  It was a different experience for me, stepping into an all-male world of booming laughs and guttural curses I couldn’t quite hear. It was an atmosphere of high good humor and companionship. Something a solitary girl like myself knew nothing of. One of the men stopped me as I went by his table. “Aren’t you the kid that stands outside the Mennonite church singing?”

  “Yes, sometimes.” I was embarrassed to admit it.

  “Well, how about you giving us a tune?”

  “You mean now…here?” I was flustered, but my heart beat wildly at the prospect. I glanced at Mum; fortunately she was busy. So standing where I was, without any additional encouragement, I launched into:

  I am washed in the blood,

  I am saved, saved, saved.

  Out of the corner of my eye I could see Mum’s hands frozen midair. No one else moved either. The expressions on the faces turned toward me ranged from stupefaction to grins of pleasure. My voice soared with melody one second and reverberated with the soul’s sin and suffering the next. A tear rolled down the cheek of one of the drunks at the bar. I had an audience. I’d never had one before. It was intoxicating. I was carried away.

  They were carried away.

  “Sing!” I called out as I came to the chorus.

  Voices joined mine. “Saved, saved, saved,” they sang.

  It was glorious.

  When the hymn was over there was foot-stomping applause, and cries for more. I was about to sing one of Elk Woman’s chants, but Mum found a lot of things for me to do. She shoved a dishtowel into my hands and set me to wiping glasses. “Such an exhibition,” she said under her breath, “I’ve never seen in my life.”

  “But didn’t you think there was something wonderful about it too?”

  “Kathy, Kathy, what am I going to do with you?”

  “Let me sing another song?” I suggested.

  “Certainly not.”

  As we walked back home that night with an escort of three, no two of which would trust the third, she said pointedly, “I wouldn’t mention tonight’s goings-on to your father.”

  THE next day, Sunday, I stationed myself outside the little white church and waited impatiently for Bible class to be over. Abram had to hear of my debut and what a great success I was and how unfair Mum had been.

  “She isn’t going to take me with her tonight,” I complained.

  Abram said mildly that Mum was right. “That’s a rough place, Kathy. You don’t belong there.”

  Two things were wrong with this reply. One was his lecturing tone. The other, he wasn’t as excited as he should have been about my singing. So I answered snappishly. “I belong wherever I want to belong. You’re just a narrow, psalm-singing know-nothing, who has never put the purity of your precious soul in danger by going to a pub and having a pint. So what do you know about anything?” I made a long face at him and pulled down the corners of my eyes.

  Instead of laughing as he usually did when I put on my Mennonite face, he was quiet and seemed full of hurt.

  I was instantly ashamed of acting like a child. “What’s wrong, Abram? You look low-hearted.”

  He didn’t answer at once. When he did, it was to say, “The time came.”

  I thought a moment, “Does that mean…?”

  “Yes.”

  I nodded. Abram had just turned seventeen, the traditional time to come forward, kneel before the altar of God, and offer his soul in His s
ervice.

  “They prayed for me, Kathy, the whole congregation. It was awful. I just sat there. I’ve humiliated my father, and Mother was crying. I’ve gone against their wishes, Kathy. They feel I’ve gone against God’s as well. A preacher’s son always receives the altar call.”

  “Couldn’t you pretend?”

  “About a thing like that?” His tone implied shock that I should suggest such a thing.

  “You’re right,” I said hastily, “it’s not worth risking hellfire for.”

  “One owes a certain integrity to oneself,” he said with dignity, “to who you are.”

  I agreed with him, and put it as fairly as I could. “I think we’ve started to know ourselves, Abram. At least I know what I want to do. Ever since I sang at the Eight Bells, I’ve known. Sing. I want to sing, Abram. Sing to lots of people.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Maybe. But it’s what I want. And you want to ask questions and look for answers. We can’t do that here in St. Alban’s. Oh Abram, there’s a world out there. That’s where we belong.”

  “You’re only fifteen,” he said slowly.

  “But I’m experienced at running away. I ran away all the time when I was a kid.” I remember preparing for my escapades by making myself a large peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It didn’t bother me that the grown-ups watched. I didn’t try to conceal my intentions. I wrapped up my sandwich and put on my sun hat, and letting the screen door bang behind me, walked into the unknown with a light heart.

  I never crossed Macdonald’s field. I wasn’t allowed to.

  Whenever I ran away, I stuck to the road. It was easy to pick me up and take me home.

  Mum reasoned with me. She told me it made her sad when I ran away from her.

  “You can come too,” I told her.

  She laughed and hugged me.

  Jellet didn’t laugh. He got fed up with my running away, and buckled me into the backyard clothesline with a dog leash and padlock. That didn’t stop me from stocking up with another peanut butter and jelly sandwich when the urge for freedom overcame me next.