Counting Coup, page 2
part #1 of The Benediction of Paul Series
As Rebecca slept on a bench in a waiting room, a hand shook her.
“Becca,” Marie exclaimed, her joyful face was two inches from Rebecca’s nose.
Rebecca smiled and then frowned. Marie had a bruise on her cheek. Rebecca placed her hands on her hips and shot a sour look at her older brother, Jimmy.
Why hadn’t he… no he was only ten. He could not stop Endow.
She touched her sister’s cheek.
“Jimmy said I have to be a better quacker.”
She hadn’t ducked when their father, Endow, took to beating Judith. Guilt shadowed Rebecca’s mind. If only she had been home. Had her mother tried to use Marie as a shield? So many times, after a beating, Judith would rock and cuddle Marie. The child wore Judith’s blood like war paint.
“We have a brother,” Rebecca said as Marie climbed into her lap. She hugged her little sister.
“No. The baby is gone. Basahke told me so,” Marie said. “I’m the baby.”
Jimmy crossed his arms.
“I’m still the baby.” Marie pouted as she squirmed to the floor.
“We have a new…”
Jimmy punched Rebecca’s arm.
Four-year-old Marie crossed her arms and stomped her foot.
“Yes, you are the baby,” Rebecca said, rubbing her arm.
Marie hopped about, pleased that her place was secure.
“You can’t continue doing this, you’re just a little girl. Come home.”
“Not until our brother comes home.”
“He doesn’t need you. Marie needs you.”
Rebecca flinched and pushed her tears back. This was her fault. They all knew to keep quiet and hidden when Endow’s fist flew.
“How are you eating? Sleeping?”
“There are food trays in the hallway. I go for a walk and collect. It’s enough.”
Jimmy grunted. They always took care of each other. Money was a luxury and Endow drank most of it away. The little clan had survived.
The sun struggled to rise, making the sky a peachy gray. Jimmy looked out the window.
“Come home. You know nothing about babies.”
Jimmy hadn’t seen her helping their brother survive. He was growing strong.
“He needs me.”
Marie skipped around the room, touching the chairs as she went. Jimmy handed Rebecca a backpack.
“We need you. He will die. It will make you sad.”
She was already sad. Nobody wants him, not Momma, not Marie, not even Jimmy.
“No. You’re wrong.”
“I’ve seen signs. They’re dark. Come home.” Jimmy tossed his head as his braid whipped the air.
Rebecca’s stomach twisted. Jimmy’s signs. Sometimes he was right, but often he missed the message. She thought his guide would be a turkey, not a hawk, as he often boasted.
“What signs? He’s a baby, we can help him.” Did he know? Had the ancestors sent him a message? She studied him as his foot rubbed the carpet. No. He was telling tall tales. This baby was special. She couldn’t tell him that their brother had blue eyes. He would make her leave. There was time for the truth later.
“Come home.”
His repeated words filled her with guilt and made her chest hurt.
“Stop saying that.”
Marie pushed her way between them, holding the casing of a snake.
“Jimmy found a snake skin. See.”
Rebecca shivered in the warm sun of the room. Snakes should be asleep. It was too cold for snakes. Rebecca didn’t like snakes but admitted that brother snake had once sprung at her as she walked a path, forcing her to take a different route. That led her to a lost little girl. Maybe a snake in winter meant survival, a sign of hope.
“Come home.”
“Is there mud in your ears? No, I will stay to the end.” Someone had to be there. We take care of our own.
Jimmy shrugged and then hugged her.
Marie squeezed into the embrace. Rebecca hugged them harder, wishing they wouldn’t leave, knowing they would.
Jimmy lifted Marie up to carry her back to the trailer at the end of the dirt road next to the open field five miles away from Mary, Mother of Perpetual Help Hospital.
Rebecca was as silent as an owl as she studied the nurses’ routines around the preemies.
One evening, as she snatched a roll from a tray, she overheard a couple talking about names. She watched them filling out papers. The tribe would give him a name if he stayed.
He needs a name. A name was important. Her babies were Girl Lane and Boy Knows the Song and Boy Johnson. Those were not names. She went to Elanna and asked her for help.
“What name should he have?” Rebecca asked, even though it might be unwise to name the child so early. She hoped that having a name would make him stay longer.
“Knows the Song. That is your family name.”
Rebecca took a deep breath and flexed her hands. Elanna was not getting it.
“No. A name for the papers. I read the tag, Baby Boy, but that is not a name.”
“You mean a birth certificate? Your parents will give him his name.”
Rebecca gave her an incredulous stare.
“You’re right. They will not. But your grandmother, and the gifts…” Elanna paused.
“Grandma can give him his Apsáalooke name. I’ll give him his white name. A strong one, for the papers, for the outside world. Everyone needs a name and so they belong. You get more than one name. Grandma told me. So, he’ll have more than most.”
Elanna nodded. “We have a book of names that moms look at. It’s all European names.” She brought a worn book of names, and Rebecca combed through A to Z, settling on Karl, because it meant a strong, free man. She also looked up her name and was satisfied with its meaning; the one that binds. She named the other two infants. The boy was Boney and the little girl, Blue.
Rebecca sat for hours, watching her brother. When the nurses were not around, she took him out of the box, tucked him under her shirt, and held him close to her chest. She watched the other mothers cry at the door, fearful. They rarely came in to see their babies. Why should they? Rebecca had overheard the nurses say these infants were disposable. She didn’t see that. She saw life. Her only worry was Karl’s blue eyes. He should have dark ones. He had a head full of black hair, his skin was the right color. But his eyes startled her every time he looked at her. Blue eyes. How can he be ours? There were no blue-eyed Crows. She remembered stories of Howls in the Winter. She was not sure. Was there a blue-eyed Apsáalooke woman? Or was it a tall tale to keep children from wandering into the hills alone?
The doorway was crowded with curious aides and nurses. Rebecca was glad they had stopped trying to tell her to go home. She was also happy they hadn’t found the bundle she had placed under her brother.
“Why are you letting her stay?” an aide asked. “She’s a kid. Where are her parents?”
Orange rolled her eyes. Rebecca held her breath.
“She’s here because that’s her brother. Besides, it’s not like she can do any harm. Since she has been here, the alarms are less frequent,” Elanna said.
“I take care of myself,” Rebecca muttered.
“What about germs and stuff?” a young girl in a striped uniform asked.
“They are disposable babies. The mothers no longer visit, they’ve been told to go home. They’re just waiting for the day.”
“The doctors will have our heads.”
Nurse Orange shook her head. “They only come to sign the death certificate.”
“They’re in a utility closet, for Christ’s sake. It’s where we store the leftover equipment and supplies.”
“That’s kind of funny, babies in the supply room.”
That explained the lack of light and space, thought Rebecca. This wasn’t a room for healing. It was a room for dying.
“It just costs too much. We’re lucky to have these old incubators and Doctor Whitmire who let us use them.”
“Yeah, Whitmire has a heart. Pity. Other doctors send them to the morgue, hoping they die before they get there.”
“You can’t blame them. These kids are underdeveloped. They’ll never be like the ones born on time.”
Rebecca put her hands to her ears. She didn’t want to hear this. She hummed loudly to drown out their bad spirit talk and rubbed her hands with the smelly oil and then rubbed Karl’s body slowly.
“What’s she doing now?”
“It smells like lavender,” Orange said.
“He’ll be slippery.”
Rebecca’s hands were still oily, so she moved to box two and rubbed Boney, too.
All three needed frequent feedings. Blue always seemed to gurgle and struggle, which triggered the alarm and upset Boney. One day, Rebecca took the eye dropper she fed Karl with and propped Blue up like a dish towel. She glided from baby to baby, like a mother bird, dropping thick milk into each one’s mouth.
“What are you doing?” Elanna asked when she came in to feed the infants.
“I was just trying to help. That girl doesn’t swallow good, it comes back out.”
“Good observation and clever solution.” Elanna left and returned with droppers for all the infants. “Where are you sleeping?”
“Around. I don’t want to leave him alone for too long. He needs me.”
“Edgar and I work different shifts. You could come home with us. Eat and then come back. You need sleep too.”
Rebecca yearned for a long nap. Sleeping in the waiting room on different floors made her cranky.
“Aho, I will consider this.”
Elanna chuckled. “Little sister, you’ll do this. It’ll help.”
Rebecca sighed. It was nice to have an older sister. The babies kept her busy all day, yet she missed Jimmy and Marie. She worried and wondered if they were well. Life at home was an impending thunderstorm. A pattern and one could heed the warning signs. Duck and cover. She recalled too many nights huddled under a mountain of blankets as still as a fox in a field. The noise was always deafening, and sleep evaded her for days afterward. This was their life, her life, and she had survived.
Rebecca sat outside the preemies’ room. She caught the sound of tinkling bells. She held her breath. A tickle of panic rose inside her. What should she tell them?
Grandma Tiama and Grandma Doli appeared in the hall, huffing and puffing. They had climbed the stairs. Orange looked up from her desk, her eyes wide with surprise. There they stood, one tall and one short, both garbed in the old way, a thick leather belt with a big coin purse. Rebecca loved that purse because it always held something special. The hem of their cotton dresses met the top of their leggings as they shuffled to her in their worn moccasins. Each wore a different colored shawl and scarf. She loved the dark blue and pumpkin yellow which Tiama wore and the red and white of Doli. Rebecca rushed to them, and they hugged her as she relished the aroma of wood smoke and cedar.
She felt closest to her maternal grandmother, Tiama. They did so much together. The tribe called her grandmother’s daughter. That is how it was. Marie had become Judith’s favorite; a new baby would not change that. A twinge of sadness touched Rebecca, a longing for that motherly bond.
“We have come,” Doli said as they stood in the hallway.
“I need fresh air,” Rebecca announced. The grandmothers exchanged looks.
“Take the elevator. I’ll meet you outside, in front,” Rebecca said. The old women shook their heads.
“I’m hungry. Why didn’t you come sooner?”
“Balakbia did not tell us,” Tiama said. “But the night he was born, I heard singing.”
“Those were howls from the timber wolves,” Doli said.
“He had arrived. The song said so.”
How did they know?
“Did Jimmy tell you?”
“No Jimmy, no Judith,” Tiama said and glanced at Doli. “No Endow. Just wolves howling in winter. Wolves singing of a birth.”
Jimmy should have told them.
What if they reject him? Blue eyes belonged to white. But he is mine. She would make them understand.
“I’m hungry,” Rebecca said as she moved to a little room. There was a table and some chairs. Rebecca had seen the doctors and nurses meet there.
Tiama reached into her satchel and handed the girl fry bread and pemmican and a package for later. Her mouth watered from the heavy taste of the jerky. She could smell the pungent grease oil she had often carried home for Judith to use on bruises.
“We are here to see. Why can we not look? What are you hiding? What is the secret?” Tiama asked.
Rebecca stopped crunching the dried elk meat, wiping the crumbles from the table. She was no longer hungry.
But what if they don’t want him, either?
“Come,” Rebecca said, taking each grandmother’s hand and leading them to the closet.
Shoulder to shoulder, they stood over Karl.
“So small,” Doli said. “Too small.”
“Alive,” Tiama said. “He breathes.”
Rebecca unplugged the alarm and lifted the lid to the box and oxygen hissed as it escaped. She didn’t want to upset the white shoes. With an icy finger, she touched his twig-like leg. The infant shivered, opened his eyes, and protested with a cry.
Rebecca closed the lid.
Grandma Doli drew in a sharp breath, leaving a nose print on the glass.
“See.” Rebecca’s head fell to her chest. “Something’s wrong with him. I fear he belongs to someone else. I want him to be mine.”
Grandma Tiama chuckled. “Oh, child, he is ours.”
Rebecca looked at Tiama. Had she moved into the land of the ancestors, where the lights dimmed, and voices haunted you? Great-grandma Odina lived in that land. Not recognizing her children and talking to the ancestors.
“Put your glasses on,” Rebecca said.
“I don’t need my glasses to tell he is ours,” Grandma Tiama snapped as Doli snickered.
“Basahkaale, his eyes are blue,” Rebecca said with a stomp of her foot.
“You are right,” the old woman said. “He has the eyes of Cold Feet. The singing was Sings in the Night.”
“Or cheete howling,” Doli muttered.
Grandma knew the difference between timber wolves and singing.
Cold Feet, the name sounded familiar. Then Rebecca remembered the story about a fur trapper who had lost his furs in a winter storm in the 1700s. A woman named Sings in the Night had found him, nursed him to health, and married him. He was a white man.
“I don’t understand. This can’t be Sings in the Night’s son,” Rebecca said. “That was too long ago.”
Doli snorted and smirked. Karl’s cries were muted under the glass as he turned red.
“My daughter is loyal,” Tiama quipped, giving Doli a sharp glance. “Your line must be tainted. More white than red. My daughter is Endow-bound. Has she not remained even though he has the white man’s disease?”
Rebecca understood the white man’s disease. Many of her clan had caught it. A disease in a brown bottle.
“Our granddaughter is wise,” Doli spoke, biting her words. “She is wise.”
Rebecca noticed Tiama hadn’t argued the last point. She had listened to the murmuring that white blood tainted everyone. She had seen breeding for the color of horses and the eggs of chickens. Did it work that way with people?
“They said a baby’s eye color will change,” Rebecca said over her brother’s mewing cries.
The two Elders stared at the blue-eyed infant, who had stopped crying to stare back at them.
“It will not,” they said together. “No, it will not change.”
“What are we going to do?” Rebecca asked.
“What we always do,” the two replied. “We always move forward.”
They opened the box. Tiama ran a thin crooked finger down Karl’s arm. Doli pushed the bundle back, tucked the thin hospital blanket around the boy, and smiled. Karl’s face puckered.
Tiama swayed. The two women bumped shoulders and then sang. The room filled with their voices. Karl’s thin arms flapped and he grabbed his grandmother’s finger.
“He’s strong for one so tiny,” Tiama said. “Strength in smallness.”
“I’m afraid,” Rebecca said sadly. “Blue eyes are mean.” The only blue-eyed people she met were white and unkind.
“He will make his way. Everyone does. Howls in Winter had blue eyes. She was a powerful healer. Blue eyes are gifted. You will see. What happens, happens,” Tiama said.
Rebecca crossed her arms. “How did this happen? I don’t know what to do.” Tears dripped down Rebecca’s cheeks.
“You know. You’re doing it,” Doli said as she leaned in and placed her wrinkled lips on Karl’s forehead.
“I’m only a little girl.”
“You’re a healer. The grizzly is with you.”
Rebecca frowned as she ran her finger over the lid of the box. These old women talked in riddles.
Wisdom, secrets, silence. She was too young to vision quest. She didn’t have blue eyes.
“I don’t want a grizzly. Everyone avoids them and they sleep half the year.”
Doli clicked her tongue. “And that is bad? Their evidence surrounds you.”
“Are you saying I am stinky?” Rebecca crossed her arms. “They are grumpy and lumpy.”
“The animal picks you, little girl. You don’t pick the animal,” Tiama said. As she extracted her crooked finger from his tight grasp, closing the lid to the box.
“Why aren’t you staying?” Rebecca asked.
“Not our time. He is yours,” Doli said, turning to Tiama. “Teach her. She needs to understand. Show her.”
“She will learn soon enough. Tomorrow comes, and she will learn. All she needs to do is ask.”
“What? What will I learn? Ask what? I’m asking.”
They squeezed her between them. Their scent of burning wood and spice lingered as they left. One took the elevator and one to the stairs.
Tomorrow, it was always tomorrow with the old ones.
Chapter 3
Recessive Gene
When you know who you are; when your mission is clear and you burn with the inner fire of unbreakable will; no cold can touch your heart; no deluge can dampen your purpose. You know that you are alive.
