The Mask That Sang (11 page)

Authors: Susan Currie

BOOK: The Mask That Sang

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chapter twenty-five

Mom opened the door a little, peering around it into the wet evening. Cass sat at the kitchen table, half-expecting it to be the people who had written the letter.

But instead she heard Degan's low voice.

“Hello, is Cass home?”

Mom opened the door a little wider. “Yes. Pleaseâcome in.”

She stood aside while Degan stepped into the kitchen. He was sopping wet, water dripping down him and onto the floor. He noticed and stepped backward apologetically. In so doing, he banged into another person behind him.

“No, don't worry about the floor,” Mom said. “I'll get you a towel.”

So Degan stepped forward again, and the person behind him did too.

It was Ellis, looking like a drowned weasel.

“What are you doing here?” Cass said tightly.

Degan held his hand up. “No, wait. He sneaked out and followed me home, and we've been talking. My aunt said we could come over here. He has something to tell you, and you should listen.”

“Why should I?”

She felt as though she was done with bullies, could not tolerate another. And here he was in her own kitchen. In the kitchen of her grandmother, who had suffered bullies too. She did not feel like forgiving just now.

Degan poked Ellis. “Go ahead.”

Ellis cleared his throat.

“I bought the mask toâto give it to you. I was trying to figure out a way to do it.”

His face flushed brighter pink than usual.

“Why?” Cass said flatly.

Ellis shook his head to get the wet hair out of his eyes, and water sprayed everywhere. “Because you hate me. You called me a bully. I wanted to show you I wasn't.”

Cass was opening her mouth to let Ellis know exactly the many ways he was a bully. But Degan raised his hand to hush her.

“Go on and tell her the rest, the way you told me.”

Ellis said quietly, “I had it in my desk all day today, but I couldn't get up the nerve to give it to you. I never meant to keep it for myself.”

Cass roared, “You had it in your
desk
?”

He couldn't meet her eye. He started playing with one of the toggles on his rain jacket, knotting it into figure eights. “I took it home after school. I was going to try again to give it to you tomorrow. But then you came over, and Dad barged in, and it was bad.” He paused. “Asâyou know.”

Then his voice came faster.

“When I heard him talking to you, I heard it. What you were talking about. Those horrible things he said.
He
is a racist! And he's a bully.”

Bitterly, he yanked the string of the raincoat.

“He only has respect for one kind of kid. Good at sports, a tough guy, interested in making money one day. Which I'm not. Not any of those things. And my mom wants me to be the best in the class, so she can brag to her stupid friends about all my test results. And I never am best in the class, so I can't please her either.”

Now he was knotting the two bottom strings with the toggle on the raincoat pocket, twisting and crumpling the fabric. “I'm just like he says. Only good at making stupid things. Building stuff, and not even useful stuff. Dumb little robots, animals, houses, planes. It's all I want to do, though. I just want to make things.”

He glanced over at Degan.

“And you're sketching all the time. I guessâI guess I thought we were kind of the same that way. But turns out I couldn't say it right.”

There was a silence as everyone digested this.

“Dirty Indian,” Degan said helpfully. “Doesn't want to pay tax. Going to scalp you. No, I'm not sure you said it exactly right.”

But there was no bitterness in his voice. As if deep down he had known this about Ellis all along.

Ellis shrugged out of his backpack, placed it on the floor, and unzipped it. He looked up at Cass anxiously.

“Anyway, here it is.”

Cass stepped forward, scarcely able to believe what she thought might be inside. With trembling hands, she reached into the backpack. Her fingers met with something soft and matted, masses of it. And there was solid wood, carved into rivulets flowing around a face.

She put loving hands around it, and lifted gently, while the Orenda surged in her, like a mighty singing river.

Mom came in at that moment with a pile of towels. “You must both be freezing. Here, dry off, get your coats off. I was going to make some grilled cheese for me and Cass; we haven't eaten yet. Why don't you stay and have some?”

Mom sounded so confident suddenly, nothing like the mom who was terrified to talk to people. She was different already, different from how she had been before reading the letter, like time was starting to be measured anew after learning the truth about herself. It was like BCE and CE, Otkon and Orenda, the time before and after the letter.

Cass thought back to the stories Mom used to make up for her about being royalty. In a way, the stories had come true. Cass and Mom were part of a line that went back a thousand years. They were not drifting anymore, but had roots binding them to the earth.

Mom started handing towels out. Then she saw the mask. She gave a little cry.

“What? Where did youâ?”

She couldn't touch it at first, just gazed on it. Finally, she ran a hand across it, fingertips lingering in the deep wrinkles of the lopsided face. She looked up at Cass wonderingly.

“Ellis bought it for us,” Cass said. “That's why it wasn't in the pawnshop anymore.”

Ellis shrugged at her. Then he muttered, embarrassed, “Just thirty bucks.”

“You bought this mask?” Mom stared at Ellis.

He shrugged again, looking like he didn't know what else to do.

“You are such a good, good kid,” Mom said, and embraced him. Ellis stood there awkwardly. He didn't look like he was very used to hugs.

“Not really,” Ellis said, his voice muffled by Mom's hug. “I've beenâpretty bad, actually.”

Mom stood back, and looked him in the eye.

“A bad kid,” Mom said, “would not have bought our mask back for us. You are the opposite of a bad kid.”

Ellis blushed nearly crimson.

“Maybe he's going to be, anyway,” Cass said.

Then Mom rushed around the kitchen, turning on the oven, putting cheese on bread, heating up milk for hot chocolate. Cass, Degan, and Ellis sat at the table, their faces lit by the candles. The light tied them all together, the boys and Cass and Mom, like they were all parts of the same living thing.

And in the center of the table, its curving smile glimmering in the candlelight, lay the mask. Generations of voices sang that it was home at last.

epilogue

That night, Cass dreamed again.

She was standing in the little backyard of her house. The sun was shining overhead, the blue sky dotted with clouds moving quickly on the breeze. Music was all around, in the waving of wildflowers, the rustling of leaves, the beating of birds' wings overhead. Everything all around, inside and out, was bathed in the same song of life, of wildness, although it took many forms. It was as if Cass's mask had become part of everything living and nonliving.

Mom came up beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. Cass slid an arm around Mom's waist. They stood enjoying the great flow of music and light all around.

“Come on,” Mom said.

They began to walk together through the yard, and then down the little hill toward the river. Shadows darted across the ground from the waving branches overhead. A million different shades of green and gold tossed all about.

As they descended the hill farther, the colors
grew richer and darker, more saturated. Toward the bottom of the hill, Cass could barely see anymore, except for the silhouettes of moving linesâtrees arching, branches bending toward each other in an ancient dance. It didn't seem strange to Cass to see the trees dancing. She suddenly felt they had been dancing all along, but she hadn't seen it. Everything, everyone on Earth and maybe in the universe itself, was part of it.

A dark figure moved amid the trees, swaying to the same melody and rhythm. It wove in and out, as if in an elaborate pattern only it knew.

“Who's that?” Cass said.

“I don't know,” Mom whispered.

The figure disappeared around one trunk and reappeared in front of another. As it grew nearer, Cass could make out some details. The woman's hair fell around her face in living strands, each chiming a note that entered and mingled with the great song. Her face was smooth and calm. As she drew ever closer, though, her eyes were not. They sparkled brown, and somehow the sparkles showered thin chimes over the music.

The lady ran toward them, smiling.

Mom frowned. “Who are you?”

The lady smiled. “Can you guess?”

Mom gazed on the lady's face for a long while, searching and searching. The lady stood and allowed it, making herself very still. It was as if Mom was an animal that was not quite tame, and the lady knew she needed to give Mom all the time in the world to get used to things.

At last Mom gave a little cry, and raised her hands to her mouth.

Then the lady reached out and placed her hands upon Mom's. She drew them away from Mom's face, and clasped them in her own, holding them tight so that she and Mom formed a circle.

And something flowed into Mom's face, something that filled her up inside and made the music all around suddenly charged with a new rhythm and intensity.

The lady turned to Cass.

She let go of one of her hands, so that she and Mom both had a hand free. They held them out to Cass. Falteringly, Cass stepped forward. She reached out and took each of their hands.

Something nearly electric shot through her. She looked from one to the other, and she knew at last who she saw.

In that moment, her grandmother began to pull upon their hands, and the three began to dance together, spinning slowly at first, and then faster. As they spun, they began to change.

Mom's face lost its tired, tight, worried look and smoothed out. It grew lighter, younger. Her hair was growing, flowing around her shoulders. And Mom was getting smaller.

“Mom!” Cass cried.

Mom laughed aloud. “My darling!”

She was a young girl, just Cass's age.

On the other side, there stood another girl. Her hair hung far down her back. Her face was fearless and glad.

“Come on!” she cried.

They ran together, the three of them.

about the author

Susan Currie
is a winner of Second Story Press' Aboriginal Writing Contest, resulting in this, her second book. Her first book was
Basket of Beethoven
, a finalist for the Silver Birch Award, the Manitoba Young Reader's Choice Award, and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children. Susan has an MA in children's literature and an ARCT in piano performance from The Royal Conservatory. For the last 17 years, she has been an elementary teacher with the Peel District School Board, for which she received an Award of Distinction. Prior to teaching, she worked as a piano teacher, music director and accompanist. Susan is an adopted person who made contact with a birth aunt a few years ago and subsequently learned about her Cayuga heritage.
The Mask That Sang
grew out of the experience of discovering those roots, and of learning that her grandmother attended residential school. Susan lives in Brampton, Ontario with her family.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Currie, Susan, 1967-, author

The mask that sang / by Susan Currie.

Issued in print and electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-77260-013-1 (paperback).--ISBN 978-1-77260-014-8 (epub)

I. Title.

PS8555.U743M37 2016 jC813'.6 C2016-903531-X

C2016-903532-8

Cover by Gillian Newland

Editor: Kelly Jones

Designer: Melissa Kaita

Printed and bound in Canada