Cion (17 page)

The man burst out laughing. He accused me of being in on the whole scheme. My assurances that I was not were all in vain. It was obvious, the man said, that poor Obed was getting all these funny ideas from me. He had heard that I claimed to be some kind of shaman. You know that I never made any such claim.

But in a way the man was right. Obed did view me as a role model and for quite some time he had taken to following me like a puppy everywhere I went. When my body cried for mourning and I went to the graveyard to mourn the dead he would be there, following at a safe distance, observing every move and listening intently to every moan. After that he would have many questions about the profession of mourning. But his focus was always on the financial aspects of it. I told him how I went to funerals and sat on the mound of fresh soil and punctuated the proceedings with my harrowing moans and wails, how the bereaved placed money in my hat for sharing their sorrow and dignifying the ceremony with my presence, making it exceptional, since professional mourning was never part of any of the people’s cultures. I told him how in many instances, especially at the funerals of the higher classes, the bereaved paid me a lot of money to stay away from their funerals, for they had come to view me as an embarrassment. Obed was fascinated by all this, and he told me that one day he would go back to his own past to retrieve from it elements of mysticism. At the time I did not take him seriously, especially because after a few days he seemed to forget about it all and to continue with his wanton life in Athens.

I don’t know how Obed found the belt. No one had even told him that I was going to hide a belt. His powers were genuine, he told me. He discovered them in his dreams. His biggest strength as a hand trembler, he added, was in the interpretation of dreams. People could report their dreams to him and he could forestall their consequences.

That day I left Obed at the Federal and went to while away time with the women at the Center.

Obed continued with his hand trembling for a few weeks, and people reported that he was producing results, especially in the interpretation of dreams. They claimed he had forestalled many disasters, including a tornado as big as the one that destroyed every building except the concrete block store in Kilvert in 1937.

But many citizens of Kilvert were skeptical and therefore he could not sustain his business for long. There can only be so many paying believers in a hamlet like Kilvert. Perhaps if he had given word-of-mouth a chance to spread he would have got customers from the neighboring villages as well, but Ruth got on his nerves by preaching daily sermons from Deuteronomy 18:10–11:
Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritualist or who consults the dead.

“What about Toloki?” asked Obed. “You don’t say nothing about him. He’s a professional mourner.”

“Todoloo!” said Ruth, tapping her forehead. “Toloki ain’t no son of mine.”

“And I don’t consult the dead,” I added. “I mourn them.”

Obed tried valiantly to defend his practice. “Them Indians gonna take us out of poverty, Mama,” he argued. The people of Kilvert must exploit their heritage. What good was it to be people of the future, as Ruth usually boasted, if they continued to live in poverty today? What was the point of depending on food pantries while they were surrounded by all the wealth of their heritage? People who did not have a single drop of Native American blood in them were getting rich from aspects of the Native American heritage. Selling artifacts. Adopting his people’s totems as mascots. Looting his people’s culture. Why shouldn’t he, a true descendant of the great tribes, benefit from what was truly his?

But Ruth was not going to be swayed by any sophistry. She knew what the Bible said, and that was all that mattered.

“Go out there and find a real job like Nathan,” she said.

One day Obed packed his tent, and did not return to the creek for hand trembling again.

Orpah’s drawings. I come across them again in a trash can in the living room. I have been helping Ruth since early morning with her spring cleaning. There are no Asian bugs this time, so the work only takes us up to midday. When we are done she makes us both cups of steaming Swiss Miss and we sit at her quilting table. We talk about the vicious winter weather, and I know sooner or later she will somehow find a way of linking it with the conspiracies of politicians or the laziness of her children. She is grateful that I am always there to help when her own kids always find an excuse to shirk their obligations.

The radio from Orpah’s room is blaring country music. And then the one o’clock news. Something about Lynndie England’s court martial next month for her abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. It must be a West Virginia station because the commentator seems to take it personally that Specialist England is from that state. He, however, consoles his listeners by reminding them that as far as female soldiers go the state has produced a great heroine and role model in the form of Private Jessica Lynch who was held prisoner by Iraqis and was the first prisoner of war to be rescued by American forces since the Second World War. The state therefore knows the glory and the ignominy of women in the military.

The persecution of poor Lynndie England infuriates Ruth and she wonders aloud why they don’t want to let the matter rest. They have been on about the Iraqi prisoners from the time the scandal was exposed seven months ago, as if nothing else of importance has happened in the world since then. “Why they make all that noise about them prisoners in Iraq? The Iraqis would’ve done the same to American prisoners.”

Again it is one of those moments when I’d rather not voice a contrary opinion. But Ruth is very clever. She can sense that I don’t quite share her sympathies with Specialist England. “Todoloo!” she says. “Enemy prisoners are enemy prisoners. Even God drowned Pharaoh’s soldiers to save Moses and the Israelites.”

I shift uncomfortably on my chair. Through the window I can see Mahlon on the porch. He is standing on a chair and is polishing the wind chimes. Ruth yells at Orpah to shut the darn radio off or at least lower the volume. She opts for switching it off. After a brief moment I see her standing next to Mahlon, looking up at him and telling him something that makes him stop his work and climb down from the chair. He embraces Orpah and she breaks out into sobs that visibly shake her body. The two walk together to the swing and sit on it and it begins to sway in a slow rhythm.

Ruth is watching them too. She shakes her head pityingly. Then she tells me as she walks to the kitchen that she is going to make some dandelion salad. Orpah loves dandelion salad. She will forget about her silliness when she tastes the salad.

That’s the Ruth I have come to know. Food is her solution to every problem, although I do not know what her problem with Orpah is. Yes, she is a moody woman, but surely she can’t be crying just because her mother demanded that she lower the volume or switch the radio off. And why is Ruth so eager to make amends?

“Ain’t you gonna ask where I get dandelions in winter?” she asks.

“I don’t know anything about dandelions,” I tell her.

“I have my secret ways,” she says in her conspiratorial voice.

In spring when the weed is plentiful she uses the leaves for salad. She also harvests the flowers, wraps them in flour mixed with eggs and deep fries them. She has her own way of drying the flowers so that her family can enjoy this delicacy all year round. It will never be as good as fresh dandelions though, but it is better than no dandelion at all. And it is important to use only yellow dandelion flowers, she stresses, as if I threatened to go get some. White dandelions are bitter. So when she talks of dandelion salad in this case, she is really talking of deep-fried dandelion flowers.

“I always tell them kids,” she says, “don’t kill the dandelion. It’s more than just a weed.”

As Ruth is busy with her delicacy in the kitchen—taking care to make it just as her Orpah likes it—I wander back to the living room. That’s when I see the drawings in the trash can. They are all in pieces. I retrieve them and spread the pieces on Ruth’s quilting table. I try to put them together. It is not easy because some pieces are just too small. But I can make out the usual ghost trees. Usual only in that they are ghost trees. They are all different and each one seems to have a life of its own, with symmetric roots poking through the ground for some distance, then re-entering the earth. From the few pieces I am able to put together I notice that there are human figures this time. Two figures, one white in a black background and the other black in a white background sitting like fetuses in the stylized heart of a ghost tree. The same figures in another picture are ice skating on what is obviously a frozen river. The pose is more like that of the figure skaters that I have seen on television, although these are in silhouette.

At this point Obed arrives and I know immediately that he will have the scheme-of-the-day for me since I haven’t seen him since last night at dinner time.

“What’s up, homey?” he asks. Then he sees the jigsaw puzzle on the table and warns me in a very serious tone: “You don’t wanna mess with those.”

“She’s very talented…Orpah is,” I say.

“Yeah,” says Obed. “And she’s got issues too. It’s because of the mark of the Irishman.”

“What on earth is the mark of the Irishman?”

Obed is suddenly quiet and when I look up I know why. Orpah is standing a few feet away, glaring at us.

“You little shit,” she says to Obed. “You gonna announce to the whole world about the fuckin’ mark of the fuckin’ Irishman?”

This is the first time I hear her voice. She sounds like a younger Ruth. Except for the cussing, of course. I have never heard Ruth use this kind of language.

I break into a friendly smile and look into Orpah’s eyes. Even though the content of her voice is so crude, its texture is gentle. And tired. I am ashamed to tell you that her profanity gives me a hard-on; not, of course, in the way that her sitar did. But every
shit
and
fuckin’
she utters makes my body tingle. I wish I knew more about the mark of the Irishman.

“I was telling your brother that these are wonderful works of art,” I say. “What I don’t understand is why you would want to destroy them like this.”

“I didn’t,” she says. “Ruth did.”

So Ruth is Ruth to her while she is mama to Obed.

“Why would Ruth do such a thing?”

“She hates anything beautiful.”

“But this is wonderful art. Only the Taliban destroys works of art.”

She almost smiles. Her face becomes gentler.

“She is the Taliban in the house,” she says.

Obed laughs. “That’s a good one,” he says, and then in rap style: “Mama is da Taliban in da house!”

That accounts for the drawings in the ghost tree. She was not throwing them away. She was hiding them from Ruth. That’s what she has to do every time Ruth is spring-cleaning. And when Ruth is spring-cleaning she leaves no room unscathed. She cleans mine too, although I am always there, pleading with her to leave it alone since I do clean it on a regular basis. So every time Ruth is in her cleaning mood Orpah must hide her artworks. But sometimes Ruth decides on the spur of the moment to storm through the house cleaning everything in sight because her nostrils have detected an odor that no one else’s nostrils can. Then of course Orpah is caught off guard and has no opportunity to hide her work. Ruth pounces on it and destroys it. Orpah cries because she says she will never be able to repeat those particular designs.

“She should be encouraging this work instead of destroying it,” I say.

I have been careful not to tread on Ruth’s toes. But I think I must take this matter up at the dinner table. Taking advantage of the vulnerability that I have seen in Orpah, and hoping that she now sees me as an ally and not the enemy she must have taken me for, I invite her to join the family for dinner. I think it is important that the matter is discussed openly in her presence. The irony is not lost on me that I, a visitor, am inviting her to dinner in her own home. She turns the invitation down because she will not sit at the same table with her mother until she learns to respect both her art and her privacy.

I am beginning to understand Orpah. I remember how my own father used to despise my artistic attempts as a little boy, and what that used to do to me. He was a blacksmith and used to create metal figurines from dreams. He mocked my creations because they did not come from dreams. He was not impressed even when my painting won a prize and was made into a calendar. Perhaps now I would have been a successful artist if I had not received such early discouragement.

At dinner time I share this memory with the table. But no one responds to it. Mahlon just keeps on smiling and chomping on the deep-fried dandelions. Obed looks at me with a don’t-you-start-now expression and pays close attention to his grits and pork. Ruth looks at me inquiringly for a while, and then urges me to try the dandelions since she can’t wait to hear what I think of them. I try them and like them. I say so. I commend her for her culinary skills, but still I am not prepared to let the matter of Orpah’s works rest.