The Tao of Nookomis Read online

  Even as she was walking down the aisle of the church, with her half-drunken father holding her arm, she thought of her sister, of the smatter of blood and broken glass and then of her sister lying in a coffin wrapped in the hand-sewn quilt their mother had so lovingly made.

  She thought these things even as she looked Eddie in the eyes and told him she would love him forever, in sickness and in health, until death. Even when he whispered in her ear, “Weedjeewaugun” (my companion in the path of life). She felt great joy and great sadness at the same time. That was her path, her way.

  After the wedding they took a long boat ride out into the blue of the lake and green of hills and islands in Eddie’s family fish trawler. They were in love, and this woman who wore the burden of joy and sadness sang to her husband what would forever become their song, “La vie en Rose.”

  Des yeux qui font baisser les miens

  Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche

  Voilà le portrait sans retouche

  De l’homme auquel j’appartiens

  Quand il me prend dans ses bra

  Il me parle tout bas

  Je vois la vie en rose

  (With eyes which make mine lower,

  A smile which is lost on his lips,

  That’s the unembellished portrait

  Of the man to whom I belong.

  When he takes me in his arms

  He speaks to me in a low voice,

  I see life as if it were rose-tinted)

  THEY MOVED INTO a small house Eddie had built with green lumber that stood in a clearing of clover and sumac up in the hills that overlooked Lake Superior. He worked long hours fishing commercially with his father. She was a housewife, and her days were filled with making quilts and canning and tending a garden and scrubbing floors down on her hands and knees. They dreamed of children. Her marriage to Eddie seemed to be an escape from her unhappy years of growing up. Although she missed her mother, as well the fields and woods of Frog Bay, she was quietly happy living with a man whose life didn’t revolve around the episodes inherent to drinking binges. In the early years of their marriage, Eddie never drank anything stronger than coffee.

  Sara desperately tried to give Eddie sons and daughters. She knew his fondness for children in the way he cared for her younger brothers and sisters, his cousins’ children, and later in Eddie’s younger brother’s son, Ronnie. At first she just thought her inability to bear children was simply bad timing or bad luck. Later they would go to doctors in Washburn, and then to Duluth, where they would be told as they sat in a waiting room with Eddie holding her hand that they would never have a child. Her body had betrayed her. And she looked long in desperation into her husband’s eyes, pleading for his forgiveness. He in his gentle way, his kind eyes and soft voice, his thin breath in her ear. His tears.

  “K’zaugin.” I love you.

  Sometimes there is a shame that cannot be swept aside and forgotten, that cannot be neatly folded and put away in cedar chests, cannot be given away in the confessionals at church. Sara would wear her shame through the remaining days of her life, its damp and cold embrace cloaked around her like a dark shawl. A vision unfulfilled.

  So as the years passed and she sat alone in that small house while her husband worked out on the lake, she found herself moving into darker corners. At first just a drink of whiskey to take away the pain and allow her to face the day. And soon Eddie would come home to her wild-horse eyes.

  “You’ve been drinking again,” he would say quietly, as he made his own dinner and cleaned up the messes she had long given up on. “Why are you doing this?” His voice would trail off. He would say nothing else to her.

  “Chrissakes, I only had one,” she would say. She would look right through him when she said that, angry and defiant, still vulnerable.

  What would be one day a month would become one day a week would become every day. Sometimes her drinking would keep Eddie away long into the evening. He didn’t want to see his wife that way. And sometimes when he could no longer keep working on his boat or visiting relatives or working outside, he would come home to drink with her, and for a time his loneliness and anger and pain would leave him, too.

  He remembered one time he came home and found her sober. They sat and reminisced of happier days and life events and things that would never be. He could not stop looking at her that day. Touching her, he was so overwhelmed with the love he felt. Just for a moment it seemed life returned to her eyes. Just for a moment that little girl he had met long ago at a wild rice boat landing was there in that room with him. But the next day when he came home she was drunk and sitting in a chair listening to the radio, and when he said something to her she called him a son of a bitch and slapped him, and slapped him again and again until he walked outside to get away and sat on the steps while she locked the door and drank until she passed out and he had to bust in the door of his own house so he could sleep with his drunken and unconscious wife.

  And one Thanksgiving she spent sitting drunk in a dark corner of their house and Eddie went to his younger brother’s for dinner, where an especially nosey cousin asked why he was there without Sara.

  “She’s not feeling well.” He lied. But there was that look in his eyes, and a recognition of his brother’s part, a look long recognized by the two brothers.

  There were other times he would return home from the lake to find her gone, and on those times he would sit long into the night awaiting her return from the bars. Eventually, a car would sneak its way down the driveway at some odd hour of the night, and she would emerge drunk and laughing. He would climb into their bed and pretend he was asleep, but sleep would rarely come on nights like that. And there would be other times she would not return until the next day, or the day after. He would be unable to go to work and become frantic, thinking what fate might have come of her. Waiting for a sheriff’s car to pull into his drive and tell him they had found his wife dead in a ditch somewhere, or twisted around a light pole, or beaten to death outside a bar. But mostly he would wonder with whom she was sleeping, who her lovers were.

  Even though most adults in Red Cliff knew of Sara, they remained for the most part nonjudgmental of her. That was the way of so many Indian people, an acknowledgment that each carried their own unique burden, their own pain. Eddie was well respected in the community. He had a way about him, an ancient way, a gentle way. There was depth in his words. People listened to him and respected him.

  Because of the esteem in which he was held, he was often asked to speak to groups. There was a particular time he spoke at an honor luncheon for the high school graduates from the village of Red Cliff. He remembered telling them about living their lives in a certain way, of the importance of giving back, of being humble and respectful, and about not allowing themselves to be controlled by anger, or by alcohol. But when he returned home from his speech, he found his wife passed out drunk in a lawn chair in the yard. He walked past her into the house and sat on the couch and put his hands to his face and wept for all the anger and humiliation and despair of his life.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” he pleaded with his Creator. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  But for all of the challenges the Creator had put before him, none was to be a greater burden than the time of an early winter morning visit from his younger brother, whose hesitant tapping on the door would shake him from a ragged dream with a start, and he would open the door to find his brother standing before him. That look in his eyes, a recognition. That day his brother had to tell him of the police finding Sara frozen to death in the back seat of someone’s car. And just for an instant, upon hearing the words of that forever-horrible moment, a flood of memory rushed before him. Of a little hazel-eyed girl in a faded blue flower-print dress.

  Although Sara was given a Catholic burial service, Eddie grieved for her in the old way. He offered food to her spirit and built a mourning fire near the cleave of woods by the cemetery, which he tended for four days until Sara’s spirit reached t
he land of souls. He would no longer live in the house he had built for them because everywhere were the reminders of Sara. Some people so define a place that without them these places lose their spirit, their meaning. And one night in the depths of his grief he poured gasoline on what was their home and burned it. He drank hard and laughed too loud and too easily.

  The pain was so bad his laughter could be heard for miles.

  SEVERAL DAYS AFTER RONNIE had been expelled from summer school on Madeline Island, Eddie came into his brother’s house and found the boy sitting in front of the television set, glued to it. Hypnotized by it so much so his hand would sometimes altogether miss the bag of Cheetos he was feasting on. His brother and sister-in-law were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and separating grocery coupons. Teasing each other. Eddie went to the counter and helped himself to a cup of coffee. He poured in too much sugar and cream and stirred it with a butter knife.

  They talked, all of them realizing how precious these talks were in the course of their lives. And among the adults, there was recognition that Eddie had a purpose for being there that day. There were reasons for each word, each inflection of voice, each gesture. His stories had deeper meaning. He began.

  “You remember when I was a drunk?” he said to his younger brother. “I was drunk for a couple of years and didn’t work and didn’t bathe and didn’t give a shit and—”

  “Chrissakes, for a while you lived in that old shed out there.” His brother pointed with his lips outside the door to a sagging shed slowly sinking into the swamp that surrounded their yard. They laughed.

  Ronnie sat in the other room, his eyes glued to the television set. Munching on Cheetos.

  “I’ve been sober now for ten years.” Eddie showed the adults his sobriety pin.

  “Thanks to me.” his brother.

  “Me, too.” His sister-in-law. They all laughed again.

  They told all the drunk stories that day. This went on for a long time. Their conversations were a litany of car accidents and long-dead cousins, bar fights, ugly girlfriends, near misses from beer bottles and knives and bullets, glancing blows and fate and timing and luck and circumstance. Just loud enough to echo into the living room. Just loud enough for Ronnie to hear. They talked this way until Ronnie’s parents stood up and excused themselves.

  “We need to go grocery shopping.” They were lying.

  When they left, Eddie went into the living room and sat on the couch opposite his nephew.

  “How you doing, Nephew?”

  “Uhhhhmm.” Chewing. Staring at the television set. MTV.

  “Did you hear us telling our drunk stories? I’m glad I don’t do that anymore.”

  No response.

  “I heard about what happened over at Madeline.” Ronnie’s eyes looked down to the floor. He set down his Cheetos and turned down the television set. He listened to his uncle.

  “Look at me.” An uncle. His voice was shaking with emotion.

  And that day an uncle told his nephew about how we should live our lives, and give honor to it by the way we live. About honoring others and being kind, and humble. The gentle way.

  “There is a path we need to all try to follow. It is hard, I know. I have been there. I’ve failed many times. I know. My uncles used to tell me this. There is a certain way to live.”

  The story went on for the longest time.

  And then it was over.

  “What kind of music are you listening to?” An uncle.

  “Hip hop. You like it?”

  “It’s okay, I guess. You ever hear what we used to listen to when we were young?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll go get some.” Eddie got up and went outside to his old truck, returning with a cassette tape.

  “How do you work this thing?” Eddie with his butt way up in the air on his hands and knees as he tried to load the tape into the tape deck and adjust the controls.

  “This is something I can teach you, Uncle.” A boy laughing.

  The music began.

  “La vie en Rose.”

  An uncle and his nephew sat in the living room of an old house built with rough lumber, rummage sale windows, and mismatched furniture. The music consumed them and flowed out into the late summer air and around the odd collection of yard junk and blue of sky and smells of late summer, and a flood of memory came to an old man. Of a little girl he had met so many years ago, all hazel-eyed and faded blue flower-print dressed. All four years old of her. For just that moment she came and sat beside him and held his hand.

  “K’zaugin.” I love you. A tear.

  He didn’t even realize he had said it aloud.

  His nephew gave him that look, a recognition, and they said to each other in a way that had been passed down for many thousands of years among the People, in silence.

  “Are you going to be all right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Gekinoo’amaagejig (The Ones Who Teach)

  Once there was a dancer with Down syndrome in full regalia at my reservation’s sobriety pow-wow. At one point the announcer began reading the names of those on the sobriety list, and the length of their sobriety. And they all lined up, those sober for a day and those who had been sober for decades. It didn’t matter. They lined up in the circle of the dance area and he was among them. He was so happy out there, so filled with joy, shaking hands and giving hugs. And when I saw him there, I looked all around to the other dancers and to the crowd sitting in the bleachers. And I was thinking, that is how we should be. We should be filled with the same pure joy. We should put the night behind us and begin a new day

  ~Thomas d. Peacock

  When I go for my walk, Davie’s dog, Niibish, comes with me. He likes to run, though, and sometimes he chases cars and then I have to yell at him.

  “No, Niibs. Those cars are going to get mad at you.” But he don’t listen good. I run out and try to chase him with a stick but I get too tired sometimes.

  I sawed ’Livia, my Gramma Nooko’s friend, on my walk today. She yelled out her window to me.

  “Hey, Deacon, is that dog taking you for a walk again?”

  “Niib’s my bestest dog buddy,” I yelled back to her. And I smiled so big it almost took up my whole face. That ’Livia and Gramma were bestest buddies, too, and when they went for walks, I got to go along. Now that Gramma’s gone, all ’Livia does is sit there in her chair and look out the window.

  I miss my Gramma Nooko. Grampa, too. I hug their pictures when I go to bed at night and I talk to them and I sing “Chocolate Ice Cream Cone” all to myself. Gramma used to sing that song to me every night when she put me down to bed.

  September 8, 2015

  TO: Delores Butterfield, Director

  Pine Bend Tribal Housing Division

  FROM: Philip Larson, M.S.W.

  Family Social Worker

  Tribal Social Services

  RE: Deacon Kingfisher

  As you know, the tribal council granted Social Service’s formal request to allow Deacon to remain in elderly housing despite the fact he does not meet the age criteria set by the Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and reinforced by tribal ordinance. While we concur with you that the decision may cause your office some problems with the regional HUD office, we realize it was the best decision so far as Deacon is concerned. I’m just sorry we had to go to the council to override the decision of the tribal housing board.

  Deacon is certainly capable of living independently, despite his cognitive limitations. To assist him we have assigned a home health aide to pay him visits twice a week to ensure he is maintaining his living unit, as well to make assurance he is getting proper nutrition and attending to his personal hygiene. ENP (Elderly Nutrition Program) will allow him to have lunch at the elderly center just as they would the elders of the reservation. He will be attending independent living training through the Bayfield County Developmental Achievement Center.

  Deacon is making a difficult transition since the death of his
grandparents, who until their deaths cared for him all thirty-six years of his life. We realize there may be issues from time to time because of this. We will work with your office in any way we can to ensure Deacon’s residency in elderly housing is a smooth one for all concerned.

  WE’VE BEEN AT A LOSS here at Pine Bend School ever since the elder Kingfishers were killed at Roy’s Point in an accident with a drunk driver. That idiot drove straight through the stop sign like a bat out of hell and plowed into them sideways. He was a white guy who was shacking up with some Sisseton woman who moved onto our rez a year or so ago and got one of the low-rent units. That asshole lived, of course, but we lost those two precious elders. At least they went quick, the EMTs said.

  You see, Joe and Shanud Kingfisher were our Ojibwe culture and language elder teachers. They came in twice a week and taught the language to our elementary and high school kids. And now, without them, we don’t have anybody to properly teach it and just the thought of it makes me so afraid for our people. Because without the language passing down to the young generation, who is going to say those prayers to our Creator at our gatherings and ceremonies? The prayers can only be done in the language. Who is going to do the pipe ceremonies? That can only be done in the language as well. And who is going to do namings, and teach the young people about the healing plants, or the prayers and songs that go along with the practicing of skills like parching wild rice and making bark baskets and trapping? Joe did namings. He was the only one on our rez who had that gift. Shanud made the most beautiful black ash baskets. Very few people practice that craft anymore. I suppose skills like ricing and making maple syrup and stuff like that will survive in spite of the language, but wouldn’t it be so much richer to know these things within the context of our Ojibwe language? To know the songs and prayers that should be said for the rice, or for the harvest of maple syrup? Without those two elder teachers, our community, our whole future as Native people, is in jeopardy. They were the last two people in our community, as far as I know, who were fluent Ojibwe speakers. At least as far as I am concerned, without our language we are just brown white people.