Living the Dream (14 page)

“What’s she been saying?” Aunt Jeannie was bewildered.

“Remember the night that -
thing
came slinking round?” Aunt Evalina said in a low voice. “Dolores’ husband just happened to be taking a short cut through our place, coming back late from a party. Now they’re spreading rumours that Cody is a
chiindi
.”

“Just happened to be up to no good, more like!” I’d never seen Aunt Jeannie so angry. “Nobody in their right mind could think that about Cody!”

Aunt Bonita covered her face with her bony hands. “I thought we had more time. I thought once she had her
Kinaalda
people would accept her as one of us…”

I was already furiously scribbling a memo to myself in my notebook, but I actually didn’t need to look it up. I was almost sure I knew what
chiindi
meant.

Like hysterical American colonists in sixteenth-century Salem, people in Ghost Canyon were accusing Cody of being a witch.

Chapter Seventeen

N
ext day, after school, Cody and I went riding out into the canyon with Lily Topaha.

It was a hazy, golden afternoon, the hottest day of the year so far. Lily said the spring never lasted long in Arizona.

“These will be gone in a blink.” She gestured at the tiny wild flowers scattered as far as you could see. “Isn’t that the most beautiful sight?”

“I love it,” Cody admitted. “How my mom talks about it, it always sounded so harsh and scary.”

“It can be,” Lily warned. “Wait till we get one of our famous Arizona storms!”

They rode for a while in friendly silence. You could tell Cody had warmed to Lily since their first meeting. After a while she said tentatively, “Did you mean it, what you said that night? Were you really stolen as a little baby?”

Lily nodded. “But I wasn’t a little baby. I was two years old. My mom and dad were living on welfare. Like a lot of our people in those days we didn’t always get enough to eat. Mom was worried I was too thin, so she took me to the clinic. They said I was very sick and they’d have to rush me to hospital right away. They told my parents not to visit. It would just upset me. But when two weeks went by without a word from the hospital, my mom knew something wasn’t right. We didn’t own a car, so she walked the twelve miles to the hospital and insisted on seeing me, but they said I’d gone. I’d been taken away for adoption.”

“That’s - that’s just unbelievable.” Cody’s voice was shaky.

Lily took a breath.. “It was a lie about me being adopted. I’d been sold.” She briefly closed her eyes. “The couple who bought me were Italian Americans. They were desperate for a child, and I guess I looked like I could almost be Italian.” She pulled a face. “Unfortunately I developed a few behavioural problems.”

“Hello!” said Cody angrily. “What did they expect!”

“After eighteen months of the toddler from hell they decided I wasn’t their dream coffee-coloured cutie after all and put me in a home.” After that Lily said she went to a string of foster homes, so many she lost count.

“How come you’re so, you know,
normal
?” asked Cody. “I was in a home for one night and I felt like, totally abandoned.”

“My mama,” Lily said quietly. “She came to me in dreams every night. I couldn’t remember her face, even in dreams, but I remembered her hands, cooking, weaving, shucking corn, and I knew her voice. Every night I heard her voice saying she loved me.”

Cody swallowed so hard I could literally feel the ache in her throat. “I wish I remembered my dad,” she said huskily. “I kind of remember his boots - I
think
. He’d stand me on top of his big leather boots - I think they had wavy patterns on - and we’d dance.”

They had stopped at a shallow creek, really just a trickle, to let the horses drink. “How did you find your family again after so long?” Cody seemed genuinely shaken by Lily’s story.

Lily laughed. “The Internet, believe it or not! I miraculously graduated from high school, despite all my hang-ups, and while I was at college I started posting messages on Navajo websites.”

Lily said one day she was routinely checking the missing persons websites and found a message from Ann-Marie Topaha saying she thought Lily might be her long-lost sister. Their parents had died years before, but there were three brothers, two more sisters and an entire army of uncles, aunts and cousins.

“Wasn’t it weird seeing them all after so many years?”

“Weird, wonderful and completely overwhelming,” Lily admitted. “Us Topahas are all a bit intense, as you might have noticed!”

“I don’t think that now,” Cody said shyly. “You’re quite cool actually, now I know you.”

That night I scrunched myself into Cody’s little wicker chair and tried my best to catch a few Zs. It was no go from the start. There were some REALLY unsettling energies swirling around the canyon.

I briefly went out to take a look and saw a huge full moon riding high above the trailer. Angels are sensitive to these kinds of cosmic influences. The spangly silver moonlight wouldn’t be helping my sleep problem one bit.

Luckily I’d brought the cunning eye mask Lola gave me for missions. It seemed to help. I was almost dozing when I found myself unexpectedly splitting into two: the v. tired angel girl in Cody’s chair and a shimmery second self who floated gently out into the desert.

That’s when I saw the ghosts. I couldn’t even guess at how many there were - thousands and thousands, an endless column winding away into the distance. Over the slow shuffle of moccasins and the desolate cries of babies, I could hear angry yells as soldiers in old-style uniforms rode up and down like cowboys controlling cattle, forcing them to keep moving.

As each ghostly man or woman passed, they turned to look at me, so that I saw each face with dreamlike clarity: a bewildered old man; an exhausted mother with another baby on the way, carrying a shocked, bloodstained toddler on her back; a longhaired warrior bleeding from a neck wound. Behind the warrior walked a dignified little girl whose face was so familiar I almost shouted with surprise. She looked back at me with Cody’s solemn dark eyes, as if she needed me to understand something.

“I’ll take care of her,” I whispered. “I promise.” Then I was just one angel girl again, curled up in the small wicker chair in Cody’s room.

“You look like roadkill!” Aunt Bonita told Cody bluntly next morning. “Sure you’re up to a day out?”

“I’ll be fine,” Cody said, avoiding her eyes. “I’m tired, that’s all.”

Earl and Vickie Brokeshoulder both got out of the car as Cody came shyly out to join them. I hardly recognised Earl out of uniform. Earl’s sister was dressed like a typical American teen in denim jeans and T-shirt, apart from her beaded Navajo earrings.

“My brother wants you to sit up front. He says I keep bugging him!” Vickie told Cody with a grin. “I’d wear my hair short like yours if I didn’t have a big nose,” she added cheerfully as the car jolted down the track.

“You don’t have a big nose!” said Cody in surprise.

“Sure she does,” Earl said with a grin. “She has the Brokeshoulder nose, don’t you, sis?”

Earl’s sister suddenly dropped a bombshell. “You do know your boots are the talk of Ghost Canyon?” she asked matter of factly.

Cody looked dismayed. “You’re kidding. Why?”

Earl gave Vickie a look, but Vickie wasn’t a girl you could easily silence. “Navajo people have big issues about death,” she explained calmly. “Some people think anyone who deliberately puts a death symbol on their clothes must automatically be a witch.”

Cody looked as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “People think I’m a WITCH! Why didn’t the aunts tell me?”

Vickie shrugged. “I guess they didn’t want to upset you.”

“They didn’t want— but Aunt Bonita upsets people all the time!”

“Cody, I don’t think you realise,” Vickie said earnestly. “Having you here after all these years - it’s huge for them. They want you to feel like you belong, that you’re part of our lives.”

Cody was still in shock. “They still should have said.” She glanced at Vickie, seemed to hesitate, then said awkwardly, “When I painted the skulls, it was, you know, quite a bad time in my life.”

Vickie flashed her a grin. “Hey, I should paint some skulls on mine! We’ll tell Dolores we’re starting a cult!”

Earl rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Vickie, that’ll smooth things over!”

Having got the skulls out of the way, the girls chatted like they’d known each other all their lives. Vickie described herself as a total nerd. “It’s sad, but I love studying!” They moved on to music, how the tunes on their iPods were like their diaries, a totally faithful record of their current state of mind. They discussed fave ice cream (they both rated Ben & Jerry’s Brownie Chocolate Chip). Then Vickie asked Cody for her first impressions of the reservation.

“I thought it looked like a total junkheap,” Cody said frankly, then turned bright red. “Sorry, that came out sounding really offensive.”

Vickie shook her head. “No, it’s true. But did you ever think about the rubbish you guys surround yourselves with? Ugly buildings that blot out the light, cars that pollute the air, oil spillages killing the oceans.”

Plastic bags
, I thought, remembering the dying birds.

Cody frowned. “Like, white people are obsessed with having super-tidy homes and gardens, but they don’t mind messing up the planet for future generations?”

“I just think we should all clean up our act,” Vickie said calmly.

For a while both girls looked out at the scenery. Above us a small town literally clung to the side of the canyon. The teeny doll’s houses were painted happy pastel colours, making me think of confetti at a wedding.

Earl gave Vickie a sly look. “Has Bobby forgiven you yet?”

“Excuse me, I should be forgiving
him
!” objected Vickie.

“Bobby Blackhorse patted my little sister’s tail feathers in the cafeteria,” Earl explained.

Vickie giggled. “I emptied a jug of water over him. That soon cooled him down!”

Cody gasped. “The whole jug!”

“Every last little drop,” she said with satisfaction.

I snickered. I was liking Vickie more by the minute.

“It was all over Ghost Canyon by nightfall,” said Earl.

Cody’s smile faded. “I thought Ghost Canyon was just like some random name at first, but it’s really haunted, isn’t it?”

“Why wouldn’t it be? The entire reservation is built on our people’s bones.” Earl sounded unusually edgy.

“Shut up, Earl,” Vickie said irritably. “I want to hear what happened to Cody.”

Cody didn’t seem sure if she should tell them. “It’s just - I had this weird dream. Actually I’m not sure if it was really a dream. I was standing out in the desert. Another girl was with me, about my age. There was so much light around her I couldn’t see her face properly, but she wore similar style clothes to me. Hers were really bright colours though, and her boots had painted butterflies instead of skulls.”

I almost shrieked. I could
not
believe Cody had seen me in her dream. It was like, in some strange, mystical space between dreams and real life, we’d genuinely connected. Cody went on to describe her dream -basically everything I’d seen down to the little Navajo girl who looked like Cody.

Earl seemed shaken. “I think that little girl was your ancestor, the ancestor who sent you that dream. She showed you the Long Walk.”

“We learned about that in school,” Vickie shuddered. “The soldiers shot at everyone who refused to leave. People said the shooting went on all one afternoon. They said the gunfire was so intense it sounded like frying.” She swallowed. “By the time they finished, the cliffs were running red with blood.”

“Don’t!” Cody turned to stare out of the window. This part of the canyon was filled with pure peach orchards. Birds sang. Bees buzzed in the blossom. It was the most peaceful place imaginable, if you didn’t know any Navajo history.

Cody said abruptly, “Does everybody here hate white people?”

Vickie looked shocked. “Cody! What a thing to say!”

“I would if I were you,” she said in a choked voice. “I’m half white and when I’m listening to all these stories, I hate myself.”

“Don’t,” said Earl firmly. “You got born into a real confused world, Cody, that’s all. It’s good to know where you come from, but try not to get stuck there, OK?”

“Stop,
stop
!” Cody screamed. Earl and Vickie looked bewildered. “I
mean
it - stop the car!”

Earl braked with a screech of rubber and Cody jumped out.

Someone had abandoned a sack of rubbish at the side of the road. Cody swiftly untied the knot in the neck of the sack. One after another she pulled out three limp furry bodies. Vickie ran to join her. They looked down at the dead puppies in dismay.

Cody reached into the sack one more time without much hope and dragged out a fourth. She gasped. “This one’s still breathing!”

Vickie quickly glanced about them, getting her bearings. “We’ll take him to Butterfly Woman. She’s just a few miles from here.” Cody scooped up the puppy and they ran back to the car.