A Rainbow in Paradise (17 page)

"No problem!" the woman answered, so cheerily
it made Eden's teeth ache.

No problem
. Her home, and it could be
nothing more than a scrap of paper in her file box in a matter of
weeks—days, if Liz Corbin had her way. Feeling desultory sadness,
Eden wandered through the empty house.

The rooms were filled with memories: the time
Robbie spilled grape soda on the living room carpet and they'd both
scrubbed like charwomen to keep it from showing when their dad got
home; the day the neighbor's cat had slipped in through an open
window to give birth to five kittens in the bottom of Eden's
closet; the overnights she'd had in her room with Sarah; the time
her mother had taught her to bake snickerdoodles in their kitchen.
Mixed in with all of them were recent memories of Logan
Redhorse.

He had spent almost all day Saturday with
her, despite commitments to his family, already involved in Celia's
kinaalda
. They had finished the painting together—some
touch-up in the kitchen and on the back porch, plus fresh paint in
the master bath—and had even taken some time to work in the
backyard for a while, Logan pruning the trees and shrubbery while
Eden ran the mower. He had been a lighthearted companion, a willing
worker, and a steady friend. She didn't want to think about how
much she would miss him.

But what if he could have overcome those
commitments to his generations
? she found herself wondering.
What about your own fears of commitment? If he came to you as a
free man, would you welcome him? Or would you find some excuse to
distance yourself from him, the way you always have?

"I don't know," she answered aloud. "How can
I know when it's not possible?"

You know,
her little voice answered
within her.

She looked at her watch and sighed
.
He'll be here in just a few hours,
she thought, her heart
picking up speed.
We'll spend tomorrow at Celia's ceremony, and
after that...

After that, they had no plans to see each
other again. She'd load up her little car and drive back to her
business and her Phoenix apartment, and Logan would find the woman
of his dreams, the one who would become the mother of his already
honored children. The thought made her long to sit right down and
cry.

* * * * *

The alarm went off at 2:30 Tuesday morning
and Eden groaned and rolled over, certain she must have set it
wrong.
But it seems like I barely went to sleep
, she
thought, noting the time and realizing she was right.

Fighting to open her eyes, she remembered why
she was getting up at this horrific hour and argued herself awake.
She showered, dressed quickly, did her hair and makeup, and then,
unable to eat in the middle of the night, she simply waited for
Logan.

Remembering how she had felt when she was
Celia's age, she wondered if she would not have benefited from
having this kind of warm attention as she sat at the dawn of
womanhood. That had been a rough time in her life—wasn't it a rough
time in any kid's life?—and she couldn't help but feel this kind of
caring would have done worlds of good. Just how much caring, she
really had no idea, but she began to realize an hour and a half
later as she and Logan pulled into the dooryard of Ella's
rancheria
and had to hunt to find space to park. She counted
more than thirty trucks and cars as they walked, hand in hand,
toward the hogan.

"Who are all these people?" she asked in
hushed tones.

"Relatives, clan members, the singers, and
some who came with them." Logan nodded toward a place where a group
of children had gathered on the hill. "Guessing from the number of
kids here, I'd say we probably have over a hundred people
altogether."

"A hundred!" Eden had a hard time imagining
where her family would have found a hundred people willing to
celebrate with her when she was Celia's age. It astounded her,
especially when she realized that many of these people had given up
much of this week to share with Celia.

"Come on," Logan said, taking her hand as he
ducked his head to enter the hogan. She entered behind him, her
eyes quickly adjusting to the light of a couple of kerosene
lanterns. Opposite them, at the western side of the hogan, sat a
traditional Navajo blanket.

The space against the west wall, behind the
blanket, was empty. To its left sat Celia—looking not at all like
the modern teenager Eden remembered, her hair bound up in a bun,
her body clothed in a rich red satin skirt and purple velveteen
blouse, draped with the most exquisite turquoise squash-blossom
necklace Eden had ever seen. Beside Celia sat her grandmother, Ella
Begay Redhorse, who barely looked up as Logan and Eden entered,
apparently too caught up in her ceremonial role as the “ideal
woman” to give the
belagaana
much thought.

At least that's a blessing
, Eden
thought with relief. To Celia's right, on the other side of the
ceremonial blanket, sat a series of three older Navajo men. The
most impressively dressed, his white hair bound back with a folded
blue bandanna, spoke as they entered and gestured for them to
sit.

Taking his place on the floor near the
doorway, Logan drew Eden down to sit beside him. "That's Frank
Manypersons, the chief singer," he whispered in low tones. "He says
we have arrived just in time. The
kinaalda
is about to make
her dawn run. They'll start the singing then, and there will be no
one allowed in or out during the singing."

Just as he finished speaking, Celia rose and
moved quickly toward the doorway where she held back the covering
blanket, raised her eyes to the east and mumbled a few words, then
began to run. As she sped into the gathering light, the children
who had gathered on the hillside fell in behind her with joyful
whoops and shouts.

The singing began then, Frank Manypersons
starting with some simple "vocables." He began on a single pitch
with
"heye, nene, ya-na/"
and the other singers, then the
rest of the spectators, joined in. As they sang, Eden watched—and
counted. She wouldn't have thought the small hogan was big enough
to hold so many people, but, emptied of its regular contents, it
now made room for fifty-six adults, herself and Logan included,
sitting around its perimeter.

Frank Manypersons led the group in three
different ceremonial songs—Logan whispered these were called Hogan
Songs, and they recounted the planning and building of the hogan of
Changing Woman—then there was a brief break, with much murmuring
and quiet talk among the guests, while they waited for the lookout
children to shout that the
kinaalda
was returning. At the
shout, Frank Manypersons began the fourth Hogan Song, timing it so
it would end just as Celia entered.

The song finished and everyone rose. The
White Dawn was thick around them as the party filed out into the
dooryard to begin digging the pit for the
'alkaan
. Ella, in
her role as "ideal woman," outlined the circle of the pit in the
earth some thirty yards from her home and softened the earth with a
pickax. Certain of the watchers began helping Ella dig. When Eden
asked Logan why he didn't help, he answered he was not permitted
to. “Many of us, especially those who build fires at Squaw Dances
and the fire dancers who carry torches in the Mountain Chant,
cannot come near the fire pit or help with the digging. If we do,
the cake may not cook, but will stay all mushy." He grinned. "Or so
my grandmother thinks."

"Is there any reason why I can't dig?" she
asked. When Logan answered that he couldn't think of one, Eden
said, "Then hand me that shovel," pointing to one a man had dropped
nearby. Logan gave it to her and she began to work beside Ella
Redhorse, who gave her an odd look, but said nothing, only
motioning to her to stack the free earth on the north side of the
firepit. Several other women, and a few of the men, joined
them.

The pit was more than three feet deep and
almost five feet across when they completed it sometime later. Eden
looked at their accomplishment with pride, stretching muscles that
seemed to have enjoyed their morning workout, although she had no
question they'd be complaining by evening. Albert, in an important
though lesser role as the honored girl's father, brought a
carpenter's level for the bottom of the pit, and then he and Ella
fussed with a shovel and hoe until he pronounced the pit was
kehasdon
(Logan translated the word as "straight") and the
workers left the firepit.

There followed a period of frenzied activity
while some guests harnessed a team of horses to a wagon and went
after a load of firewood and others left in a pickup truck with
several large barrels, heading to the nearby pump station for
water.

“Will you be okay if I leave you here for a
little while?'' Logan asked.

"Sure," Eden answered, despite a sense of
unease. "But can I go with you?"

"You might prefer not to," he answered. "It's
time to butcher the sheep I bought for today."

Eden blanched. "Thanks for the warning. I'll
stay here, thanks."

"Okay, I won't be long." She waved good-bye
as he drove away in his pickup with several other men.

Eden watched with the other women while Ella
Redhorse used a match to light the tinder in the base of the
firepit and added cedar bark for fragrance. Then she went with the
other women into the hogan to change into their finest clothes for
the ceremonies to come. Warned by Logan, she had brought with her a
floral skirt and clean white blouse, hardly the equivalent of the
stunning satins and velvets the Navajo women wore, but more formal
than her jeans and plaid shirt. Glad she'd come prepared, she
dressed in a sense of companionship with the native women, one or
two of whom spoke pleasantly in English, easing away her sense of
"otherness."

Some time passed in general preparation
before the group sat down to eat breakfast. By then, having been
awake for seven hours already, Eden was hungry enough to eat even
the lamb and hot herb tea Esther passed to her.

Logan sat next to her, patting her knee.
"Good?" he asked.

She nodded, her mouth full. "Mmm," then
swallowed. "It's very good. Or maybe I'm just hungry."

"I expect everyone is about now."

"Logan?" They looked up as Esther joined
them, acknowledging Eden with a nod. "We're going to need some
raisins for the
'alkaan
," she said, and Eden realized she
was using English for her sake. "Why don't you take some of the
boys with you and make a run up to the trading post?"

"Okay," he answered. "Eden, want to go to the
store?"

Esther laid her hand gently on Eden's
shoulder. "Maybe your friend would like to stay here for the mixing
of the batter. It's about to begin."

Logan looked to Eden. "You might like to see
that," he said, "but it's up to you."

Esther smiled. "You will be welcome if you
wish to stay," she said.

"I think I'd like to see how you mix the
batter," Eden answered, and followed Esther as Logan left
again.

She was glad she had, for as it turned out,
the mixing of the
alkaan
batter was a spectacle of its own.
First Ella spread a clean, white sheet on the floor of the hogan in
the west. Then she brought out three large bags of corn meal and
emptied them onto the sheet. It was a massive amount of meal, even
more impressive when a woman near Eden whispered to her that Celia
had ground all this corn herself since the beginning of her
kinaalda
. What's more, she had ground it using an ancient
stone
mano
and
metate
. Eden thought Celia's back must
ache even more than her own was beginning to.

Next Ella took a bundle from her medicine
chest and knelt beside the meal, facing south and rubbing powder on
the
mano
. Rosa, Esther's sister and Celia's aunt, told Eden
the powder represented "mirage," or spirit power. Finally Ella
added corn pollen from a jar, then handed the
mano
to Celia
and ordered her to mix the corn meal from the east, south, west and
north. When Celia had done so, Ella told her to work the meal with
her hands.

When the mixing was finished, Celia began the
ritual of carefully cleaning the
mano
. This began a
cleansing ceremony that also included all the jewelry, new and old,
belonging to the
kinaalda
. As Celia began to remove and
clean each piece of silver-and-turquoise she wore, Eden drew from
the backpack the gift she had purchased for Celia. She whispered to
Rosa, "Should I give this to her now?" and Rosa, clearly impressed,
nodded. Eden went forward with the heavy silver bracelet in her
hands. She presented it to Celia with the words, "A gift for the
kinaalda
." Celia took the proffered bracelet with a gracious
nod and showed it to the other guests, who all oohed and nodded in
appreciation. Even Ella Redhorse gave Eden a more accepting look,
and Eden was glad she had thought to make the gift.

It was early afternoon when the men returned
from the trading post, and Logan helped some of the older boys
carry in a large pot of water that had been set to boil while the
group ate breakfast. Some of the guests helped Ella place five
large pans near the door of the hogan. On top of three of them were
bundles of clean sticks.

"Those are called 'adi'sts," Logan murmured
as he joined Eden among the watchers. In the quiet of the crowd, no
one noticed when he grasped her hand and squeezed it intimately.
"They are short lengths of greasewood that have been cleaned and
stripped of their bark and tied with damp strips of cloth. Celia
will use them as stirring sticks."

Ella brought a pan of boiling water and set
it in front of the sheet which held the mixed corn meal. Celia took
some of the meal and dropped it in the boiling water, using both
hands, then began stirring the mixture with the
'adi'stsiin
.
Another woman brought a second pan of water and Celia began to mix
meal into that one as well, then Esther brought in a pan of
rich-looking, yellow-brown liquid which Logan identified as white
sugar syrup, and a little of this was added to each pan of batter.
Then more pans of boiling water were brought in and soon six women
were mixing.