Celia's Song (15 page)

XIV

“NED. WAKE UP.” MOMMA
squeezes the words out between tense lips. Ned wakes up, sits up, takes one look at his wife's determined and frightened face, and scrambles to the floor. He jumps into his pants, grabs a shirt from the closet, and, putting it on, heads for the door. Momma throws a wet sheet into the freezer. Ned pays no attention to what she does and asks no questions. He heads to the car, where he waits for her. He knows he will find out soon enough what the horror behind Momma's face is all about.

Momma swings into the passenger seat and instructs Ned to stop by Judy's. Momma runs in and comes out with Judy, who is still tying her scarf around her neck and buttoning up her jacket. Rena is standing on the porch, watching. She is going to Momma's house. “This is going to be a long one,” Rena murmurs as she picks up the phone to call Stacey.

After hearing Stacey's sleep-filled grunt, Rena says, “Get your shoes on, Stacey.”

“Whassup?” Stacey drawls, still half asleep.

“I don't know, but your momma came and got Judy. You know she wouldn't wake Judy up unless it was critical. You get ready and pick me up on the way to Momma's.” Rena declines to tell her how horrified Momma had looked.

Momma is aghast. How could this happen? Even in her unconscious state, the child is murmuring, calling out to her mother in whimpers. Martha paces, wanting Momma to work magic.

“Do something.” She wants Momma to relieve her grandchild of the hell she is living. She stops pacing and attacks Stella. Celia separates them, reminding Martha of her grandchild. Momma understands Martha's rage. She feels the same in her own bones; she wants to shout at the child, “Who did this to you?” At Stella, “How could you let this happen?” At the world, “What has happened to my family?” At anyone who will listen, “Are we less than animals?”

Ned stands in front of Momma, terrified by the scene. His shoulders sag, his body almost unable to hold his weight. He has fallen into old age and lost decades all in one moment. When he begins to move he drags himself about the room, doing whatever the women instruct him with no enthusiasm. He hunts his memory for someone to hate, to blame, to help him understand how this could possibly happen. As he hunts his memory, the fire in him begins to drown in the guilt that is being born.

As a young man, Ned had left this village and headed out on the
open road. He learned things on that journey, things about electricity, about positive and negative, about grounding and shorting out. He thinks about it now. It tells him something about humans. Humans are charged or they are not. They are grounded or they are not. They are transmitting or receiving, or they are shorting out. The dust, the gravel, the hard work, the mountain climbing, the fishing, the berry picking, all this keeps the villagers grounded. The hard work and the mountain climbing wore out the charge. Someone had lost connection to his ground wire; two positives had collided, shorted out, and aimed the force of the charge at this child. Ned finds a comfort in seeing all of this in the light of the metaphor of electricity, as he cannot contemplate the level of meanness, the depth of Stella's uncaring numbness, or the intensity of hate that are required to commit this act.

He feels his own charge waning as he looks for water.

“We have to move her,” Celia says. “This place is too filthy.”

“We can't,” Judy argues, her hands and legs shaking violently so that her words jerk. “She needs a doctor.”

“They'll take her away. We will never see her again,” Momma says, wondering if they deserve to ever see this child again.

Martha starts after Stella again. Celia catches her before she gets close enough to haul on any more of her daughter's hair, pummel her, or tear her clothes.

“Momma,” Shelley mutters as she awakes and looks at the face closest to her. Momma finds some kind of confidence in this
girl's waking up and recognizing her. If she can wake up and discern one face from another and call out her name, maybe she has the strength to fight for her life.

“Help me,” Momma says to Celia. “Get me plywood,” she directs Ned. She turns to Judy, “You don't have to do this. I know your people have rules. They mean something to you, but they don't mean anything to me.”

“O God, please help me and forgive me, but I do have to do this,” Judy says.

The women talk about how to move Shelley. When Ned returns, they lay her out on the plywood.

Momma grabs hold of Martha's face. “You listen to me, now, Martha. If this child is going to make it, she is going to because someone talks her through it, someone encourages her every second in a golden-throated Gramma voice — a voice free of rage and hate. You forget about your anger at that girl over there and you make sure this child makes it or you will never be able to live with yourself. You hear me?”

Judy shivers at the depth of cold in Momma's voice. Martha shakes, but agrees. She closes her eyes and blocks the picture of her daughter out of her mind. She reaches for the memory of her own Gramma's voice and calls out to Shelley, “You hang in there, baby. Gramma's here. You just hold on.” Martha feels forever rising inside. She tells
herself that she can do this; she will find a million different ways to say, “Hang in there, sweet girl. Clutch that thread of life. Cling to it. Don't let it go. Stay with your gramma. I got you. I have you.”

STACEY PREPARES FOR WHATEVER
emergency might have caused Rena to be awakened at two a.m. Sickness, birth, or injury are the only emergencies that would get her mother out of bed this early. She tries to think of any illnesses. There don't seem to be any. She looks at the store of medicines in her cupboard. Some have been there a long time. They are still good. She decides to take a little of just about everything. She shovels them into her bag. She grabs sheets from the closet. Clean white cotton. Maybe it's a birth … but who is pregnant that won't go to the hospital? “Just about anyone,” she answers herself. Birth is a hope. She thinks that anyone with a two a.m. emergency on a Saturday isn't full of hope. She braces herself for shock. Maybe a drunken relative shot another one? She backs away from the closet and steps on Jacob's shoe. The clatter of nearly hitting the deck as she trips, and cursing Jacob as she dances herself upright, wake him up.

“Where are you going?”

“To Momma's. Celia called Momma, and Rena told me to get over. Something has happened.”

“I'm going too,” Jacob says. Stacey does not think this is a good idea. Men are only in the way during medical emergencies. They're so fragile when they are as young as Jacob; but she is too
tired to argue with him.

“You drive,” she says and hands him her keys. She clutches her bundle and remembers she has a pinch of tobacco. “Wait,” she says. “Swing by the river.”

Jacob drives by the river, though he thinks this is an odd request. There is an old cedar there that has escaped logging. It is big and round, and Stacey has taken to talking to it. Jacob stops the car and Stacey gets out. She lays a pinch of tobacco down, mumbling, “We could use some help” to the cedar. Jacob thinks speaking to the tree is even odder than the tobacco stuff; he stares at his mother when she gets back into the passenger seat.

“You do that a lot?” he asks, heaping on the sarcasm.

“No. Not enough, apparently,” she answers.

“Does it help?” This question sounds much more genuine.

“I don't know. It makes me feel … like … well, like I can get through anything. I have a feeling the anything I need to get through tonight is going to be awful. Let's go pick up Rena.”

On the way to Rena's, Jacob prays for Celia.

“Hey,” Rena hollers as they pull up next to where she's standing in the driveway. “Thanks for the ride.” She throws her things in the back seat. She looks at them for a moment, while considering mentioning how horrified Momma had looked. Then, with a “Gawdammit,” she jumps into the car, complaining to Stacey and Jacob, “If I knew what the hell was going on it would help.”

Jacob swings the car out onto the road.

“If you knew what was going on, it wouldn't be so exciting.” A half laugh escapes Jacob. The women let go a quick half laugh too. They need to laugh, but the rest of the laughter won't come. Jacob pulls the car into his gramma's driveway. It is one of three paved driveways on the reserve. He wonders why no one else has bothered to pave over the gravel leading to their homes. He decides it's no use thinking about. He stops the car and the women get out. They enter the house without noticing that Jacob is staying in the car. He reaches into his shirt pocket, unravels a cigarette, and
prays Celia is all right. He gets out of the car and drops the tobacco by a tree.

In the living room, Jacob sees his grandpa sitting in the dark. The air surrounding Ned has a dangerous texture to it. It is thick with things Jacob dares not consider. He can barely move through it. He sits next to his grandfather. The women are in the kitchen.

“What happened?” Jacob asks.

Ned knows that Jacob wants a simple answer, but he also knows that there are too many threads to this web that a simple answer is impossible. What happened? How does anything like this ever come to his village, to his family? How could anyone let something this terrible visit someone as heroic and as lovely and as sweet as his wife? What crazy train of thoughts, of madness, travels in the mind of the man who did this to a child? What happened? What happened to drive someone to this kind of deep, hate-filled sense of lust? Ned fights for the simple explanation his grandson hungers for, but he can't find it.

“I don't know. But what you thought you imagined? What we talked about by the river? You saw it. It happened, not when you thought it did, but it happened.”

Jacob's shoulders pull in, then down. He wraps his arms around his upper body. He wants his body to be small. He wants to go back in time, to undo this thing he saw, to un-see it. He wants his cousin Jimmy to rise from death, he wants to trot him off in some innocent direction, free of this grisly memory. Jacob hears the sound of defeat in his grandpa's voice. He shakes with fright. He knows his grandpa is courageous, decisive, and terrible in his determination; but now when he looks at him he sees none of this.
He wants more from him, but his grandpa dismisses him with a wave, then covers his face with the same hand. Jacob moves away before the disgust at his grandpa's weakness can rise up in him. He walks to the periphery of the kitchen, where he can see and listen to the women.

Jacob hears Momma and Judy arguing about getting a doctor. He begins to glean a picture of the emergency from the bits of their argument he can make out.

“One of you has to stop arguing long enough to tell me what to do with this child.” Celia's voice is tight and full of command. This is the second time Jacob has heard her talk like this. Something strange is going on, the world is being upended. Celia is finding the strength to stay in the real world. Momma is arguing, which he has never seen or heard before, and Celia is taking charge, something else he has never seen before. The child he imagined he had seen is real. Jacob wants to escape, but his feet feel nailed to the floor.

The women stop arguing and Celia tells them to get a sheet from the freezer. How did Celia become the centre of solving this mess? He is accustomed to everyone relying on Rena, Stacey, or Momma for help. Celia is a flake. Jacob loves her, but if he were in any kind of trouble she would be the last person in this family he would call upon to get him out of it. He hears Martha's voice, speaking
soft and sweet to the child. It must have been Martha who had called Celia.

They talk about Shelley's burns. “What kind of a thing did that crazy man use?” The question sears Jacob's throat. This must be the same girl. What if he had seen it before it happened? What if he was not some madman, but had been shown something? What if he had seen it in the flesh, the drama unfolding as it happened, and he had done nothing? If any of this is true, he is no better off than if he had imagined it himself out of some perverse hidden desire. His silence may have helped to kill her. If it does, then Ned and Jim are complicit.

“It's too late,” Judy says. “She's not going to make it.”

They might have been able to save her if he had run straight to Momma's with the tale. What if no one had interpreted it that way?
What if they thought like Ned did, that he had made it up? He would have a clear conscience now. His body feels drained of all energy. He leans against the wall and hopes it will hold him up until he recovers. He isn't sure that it's the same girl. He needs to look. He dares not.

Celia curses the indecision of the women who might have a clue as to what this child needs, and runs for the door. Celia comes through the door too fast for Jacob to move and pretend he's doing anything but eavesdropping.

“Jacob,” she clips out as she hustles past.

The door is open. The heat rises. The air lightens. Jacob floats to the entrance; the child's face is aimed at him. It's her. He imagines that she recognizes him and that her eyes accuse him of cowardice. He wonders why he did nothing when he saw her. The accusation he sees in her eyes stills his blood. Jacob shakes. He can't seem to keep his feet on the ground. He hears “Move” and he slides to the left and stumbles as Celia passes him carrying a cold sheet. Jacob sees her covering the child in a cold wet clean sheet.