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Mama's cheekbones. "But we can go through the motions with water. The Spirit World People
told our ancestors to draw two black lines along the cheekbones, and then put a red circle
through the middle of them, under each eye. Now she will be ready for the Ghost Dance. Go get
her wooden ladle she always liked to use for maple sugar."
She put these things by Mama's feet then stripped the bed around her and wrapped her, like a
baby, in the bottom sheet. "I will say the Mide prayers before the priest gets here. Then he can do
what he wants."
She lit another braid of sweet grass and fanned it over Mama's body with a goose feather. "Delia
whom the Gitchi-Manitou called Mitig'wakik, Spirit Drum, listen to this old Myeengun Clan
healer. You must make for the Northern Lights now. That is where you will find the rest of your
ancestors. Go down river to the narrows and cross there. It will be frozen over by now. Then turn
north. Do not worry about your daughter here, she is among her people. And Anthony, we will
take care of him too even though he is a Wayaabishkiwed and not too smart. Mi'in, That is all I
have to say."
She guided me out of the bedroom, her warm hand gripped my shoulder. There was so much I
wanted to ask her about my Mama and her son who was my true father, my nindede.
She spoke as if she could read my mind. "In the spring, I will tell you what you want to know.
Now I need to tell you something else. Your Mama was a mind-healer woman, like me, only she
looked after Makwa, the Bear Clan, and I look after Myeengun, the Wolf Clan. It is something
that the ancestors pass down from mother to daughter. I only have a son, your nindede, so my
powers got passed down through him. You inherited the power of two healers, Annie. This does
not happen very often, and when it does, it is important. All the people will look to you for
healing, even the Wayaabishkiiwed will seek you out without understanding why. And you must
give them what they want, understand?"
"Yes Nookomis." Her words made little sense through the heavy veil of loss that had descended
over me.
"And the girl-child who comes after you will inherit the power from you. You must teach her how
to use it. You must teach her the ways of The People so that we will survive into the next
generation when she will light the Seventh Fire for us. I am going to go now. I hear the priest and
your Papa coming. I will come back in four days."
They met at the door, shaman woman and priest.
"Dominus vobiscum." He made the sign of the cross over her. She hardly paid him mind, and
instead spoke to Papa. "Send the child over after you're finished, Anthony. I have some
fresh-made manomin."
We went into her room and knelt near the door. The priest opened his black bag and took out a
prayer book, some holy water and oil. He pulled the purple Stole, edged in French lace over his
head, all the time whispering in Latin.
Papa got up and held the cruet as the priest sprinkled Mama's body with holy water. He took the
oil and made the sign of the cross on her forehead, cheeks, and chin where Nookomis had made
her own signs. When all this was done, he knelt in front of us and said prayers in English and
Latin. "Eternal life grant unto her, oh Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in
peace. Oh Lord, you have seen fit to call Delia Graham unto yourself. Have mercy on her and
cleanse her soul of sin so that she may enter the kingdom of Heaven."
"Domine non sum dignus." He spread out his arms. "Pater noster, qui tolis peccata mundi,
Miserare nobis..."
While we said the Beads I could see in my mind's eye, Mama's spirit, young and strong now that it
was free of her diseased body, as it made its way north along the river. She stopped before the
shimmering curtain that led to the other world, and with one look back to me, she parted it and
passed through. She wasn't gone, I kept saying to myself, she had just crossed over to the ancestor
world. I wasn't sad anymore, just relieved that she was free of the pain that had held her to the
earth."
***
The Present: The night was crisp and clear. Freshly fallen snow cast a spell of billowy silence across the
yard and down the sparkling street. Cathleen wiped frozen tears from her stinging cheeks as she looked
into the shimmering blue-black sky northward, to the place where the Aurora Borealis often rippled into
sight. She wrapped Nana's old Siwash sweater around her and stood quietly waiting.
She searched the corridors of her mind for the hazy image of her own mother. It was incomplete; an
archetype more than a person, a series of incidents remembered from the context of a three-year old.
The notion of mother was synonymous with a sick room, with whispered words like cancer, stifled tears
and heads shaking no. If she thought real hard, the woman she remembered had blonde hair at first, thick
and wavy like her own, then no hair at all, vibrant blue eyes with deep black circles underneath, bone
thin, her hug fleeting, like the feel of a feather on the cheek. Her final memory was of her own blue eyes,
downcast, afraid to look inside the shiny coffin lest she be trapped inside it with the waxy effigy of the
bone-thin notion of mother.
"It will come; just give it a moment." Elijah startled her as he drew silently to her side in the crisp, clear
evening. "Some say that the Northern Lights is a curtain that separates this place from the place of the
ancestors."
"Is that what you believe, Elijah?" She looked skyward to the profusion of winking stars.
"Then again, some say the Northern Lights are created by magnetic ions cast earthward by great
explosions and firestorms on the sun's surface." The two smiled at each other in what seemed a perfect
joke.
"Over there." Elijah pointed toward a far-off stand of Douglas Fir. A blue-yellow panel of light rippled
across the sky, traveled toward them and then dissipated into the atmosphere. It burst forth again and
climbed toward the North Star. The two stood motionless, lest their presence disturb the unfolding
miracle.
"The mystery of what we just saw speaks for itself, so what we believe doesn't matter." he said. The cold
made him stamp his feet. "I could use something hot. How about you?." He put his hand on her shoulder
and smiled through frosty breath. They trudged back together using the footfalls they had made in the
other direction.
Chapter Five
Ickwesai'gun (Spinning Stone)
Elijah pulled the old armchair up to the woodstove and perched his feet on the runner. "How are you
making out with Meya's notebook?"
"You know about the notebook?" Cathleen sighed. "I suppose I'm the only one in White Earth that didn't
know about it, or me for that matter."
Elijah shrugged loosely. "Meya told me about it a couple of years ago. I thought it was a good idea."
"Can I ask you something personal, Elijah?"
"Go ahead," he replied.
"When did you find out about Nana being your mother?"
"My father told me everything as soon as I could understand what it meant."
"So no one kept secrets from you." She challenged him. "You were lucky."
"What difference would it have made if you had known this last year or a few years ago, or even when
you were little?"
"A big difference, Elijah. It would have explained a lot of things." She caught herself, her anger. After all,
it wasn't his fault that Nana had decided to keep her in the dark.
"It would have explained things, sure. But what difference would it have made? Would you have been
any more loved or accepted by the people here? Would you have treated us differently? How 'bout your
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