Wabanaki Blues (2 page)

“Bilki, where are you?” I jingle the silver charm bracelet my grandmother gave me. It usually calls her right away.

But there's no reply.

I try her full name, “Bilkimizi!”

Still nothing.

I can't believe that didn't work. Speaking her name is the closest thing I know to an incantation. Bilkimizi means “maple tree” in the Abenaki language. Her Indian mother—my great-grandmother—gave it to her because she had a vision of a crimson autumn maple as she pushed her daughter out into the world. It was a perfectly prophetic vision and naming. Bilki grew up to paint New England fall landscape murals, in gorgeous shades of fox russet, golden flint corn, flaming crimson, and squash blossom. She finished each painting with a circular vortex of paint droplets, creating a focal point of swirling leaves that suggested a magical escape portal into another universe. I wish I could step through one of my grandmother's painted leaf portals, right now, and get the hell out of here.

The picture inside the toppled frame on Dibble's card-table desk catches my eye. It shows a much younger Dibble leaning against a classic Coupe de Ville in the arms of a hot guitarist in a stylish straw hat. It would appear that Millicent Dibble is a music lover. Perhaps this is a photo of Mr. Dibble, but I doubt it. I've never seen her wear a wedding ring.

Overhead, thunderous footsteps signal that the opening bell has rung. I imagine my fellow seniors, texting one another about where they'll hang out after school and party to celebrate surviving their last Mia Delaney Day, not to mention four years at Colt High. Meanwhile, I'm isolated on the last day of my senior year, maybe even forgotten, just like Mia. My thoughts roll downhill, dangerously close to the murky bottom. Mom's shrink warned me not to let this happen. “Keep your mind on the mountaintop or you'll wind up like your mom, at the base of the valley.”

Everybody in America has some dumb theory about depression. Bilki says working on her murals was her way of fighting it. I imagine painting sloppy crimson graffiti on these walls with my bloody finger. I enjoy imagining that because I know Mom would hate it. She'd prefer these walls remain blank because she says blank colorless spaces help her think. She hates the woods because they're too cluttered. Some Mohegan and Abenaki Indian she is.

Mom inherited neither her family's artistry, nor their love of trees. She has nothing in common with Bilki. She calls her mother's fall foliage murals “inveigling,” claiming they draw people in against their will. Granted, my ex-best friend Lizzy sprained her wrist trying to stick her hand through the mural Bilki painted on my bedroom wall. But Mom has no right to talk about inveigling people. With her beauty, she inveigles by simply walking into a room.

My heart races at the sight of a pile of messy dark curls on the floor by the sink. They say Mia had dark curly hair. I tell myself I'm seeing things and close my eyes. I refocus, and reopen them. Sure enough, it's only a dirty rag mop. I still don't like it. I edge as far away from it as possible and pretend to be somewhere happier—frying trout with Bilki in our kitchen, jamming with Lizzy at her brownstone next door, locking lips with Beetle on Rocky Neck Beach. Don't laugh at that last one. It could happen. He's a fanatic fledgling guitarist. You should see the expression on his face when he watches me play Rosalita. It's so beautiful that I almost forget the horrible things he did to me—like his Halloween Facebook posting that read, “Do you like horror?” next to a picture of a vampire, Frankenstein, and me. Beetle swore he was only mocking the Black Fang band tee shirt I was wearing with the salivating red-eyed dog on the front. But I'm not that gullible.

The day of that Halloween posting, I contemplated jumping off the roof of City Place, the tallest building in Hartford. I texted my ex-best friend Lizzy, “Wanna die, yeah, wanna die,” borrowing a line from the Beatles'
Yer Blues
. She instantly wrote back, “take a sad song and make it better.” You see, we text Beatles lyrics to one another when something powerful happens. We started doing it to make fun of Beetle's obsession with the Beatles, as his almost-namesake. Right after his toxic Halloween post about me, she showed up at my doorstep−bursting with her usual frizzled blond Cherry Coke cheerfulness−and shoved a lit cigarette and a flask of maple whiskey at me. The smoke burned my throat, but the whiskey was worse. It tasted like someone spilled Tabasco sauce on my pancakes. After the third big gulp, I didn't care about the taste.

The sad truth is I love Beetle and the Beatles, which Lizzy deemed peculiar. She said no respectable blues musician would obsess about a dumb-ass pretty boy and a fifty-year-old British rock band. But I don't care; I know what I like. Take The Dead Kittens. Their lead guitarist, Scratch, is the same age as me. After graduation, I want to go on tour with a band—not the lukewarm mess of a band that Lizzy and I cooked up—I mean a
real
band. Or, I might go solo with my blues act and head for St. Louis. I'm moving far away from here, that much I know.

I once told Bilki my ambitions, and she said, “So you want to be a musician? The creation of art and beauty is fraught with sacrifice. One day, you'll need to decide if you're willing to make the sacrifices necessary to achieve your goals or if those goals are a fantasy.”

I'll admit me hooking up with Beetle is a fantasy. But me touring the world with my music is a certainty. It's only a matter of time. Trust me.

I play a couple lines of Louis Armstrong's “St. Louis Blues.”
I got those St. Louis blues, just as blue as I can be. Oh, my man's got a heart like a rock cast in the sea…

My face almost slips into a fluffy teen magazine cover grin at the thought of traveling west to the great city of St. Louis with Rosalita, when a shadow crosses my feet. It's Mia, for sure, and I doubt she'll be as friendly as my dead grandmother. I keep strumming in the hopes I can wish away my fate. But it's no use. They say Mia takes revenge on the naïve and vulnerable. And look at me: I'm a senior who's never been kissed, locked in a cinderblock basement cell playing a woebegone tune. I glue my eyes to Rosalita, hoping not to see anything that might be construed as the specter of a dead teenage girl. I don't dare look up—at first, anyway. But curiosity kicks in. I have to take a small peek. I raise my head and see…nothing. What I thought I saw must have been the shadow of some woman on the street, courtesy of the light streaming through the lunchbox-sized window overhead.

Imprisonment is making me crazy. I rush to the locked metal door and hammer my palms against it. My pounding sounds muffled and stuffy, like your hearing does after an airplane flight or inside a nightmare. I need to apply more force. I lift my foot to kick that door but pause when the lock starts to rattle and the door cracks open. I drop my leg. Crooked old fingers appear, winding around the door jam. Millicent Dibble reenters, her raunchy red lipstick neatly reapplied.

“I hope you've had enough time to reflect on your misguided clothing choice, Ms. LaPierre.”

Footsteps thump down the stairs behind her. Mom appears and freezes in the doorway, her endless dark hair flowing past the narrow waistband of her yoga pants. She made it here in record time because she didn't bother to change. Fantastic. Mom stares at the dirty mop head in the corner of the room, precisely as I did. Like everyone else in town, she knows the legend of Mia Delaney, although she didn't grow up here. Mom moved to Connecticut from Hicksville, New Hampshire, to attend Yale University. Dad came from a similarly backwater town in French Canada. My parents met at a Yale conference called “Ancient Rituals in The Modern World.” That was appropriate, as they both like outdated things. Dad had already been teaching at Twain College for a decade when they met. My guess is their connection landed Mom her job at Twain. Or, should I say,
former
job. I wonder if my parents liked each other back then. Now Dad finds every excuse to fly to remote parts of Russia on archaeological expeditions with his team of adoring graduate students. Mom never travels with him. She loves downtown Hartford and hates everything about everywhere else in New England, especially places that have too much fall foliage. She says it wears on her. What's up with that? She is a psychologist's dream. The only thing she doesn't complain about is our neighborhood on Manburn Street. She insists it has a good vibe—which is pretty funny. Our apartment building is a former cattle slaughterhouse wedged between a former funeral parlor and a former orphanage. My grandmother, Bilki, says places carry spirits, which suggests the sidewalks of my neighborhood creak under a heavy load.

Mom continues to zone out on the mop, her facial muscles limp, like she's correcting freshmen midterms. Clearly, this mop has triggered one of her depressions. They always begin like this. Some photo, or story, or random object elicits an unpleasant memory, and she goes on a mental vacation for days, forgetting all of her responsibilities. I should have reminded her to take her pills last night. On the bright side, whenever she freezes, she instantly transforms into a lovely Land O' Lakes American Indian butter girl.

Wait! I know what you're thinking and you're right. Calling my ex-professor mom a butter girl
sounds like a sexist, racist stereotype. She would kill me for even thinking it. But I can't help it; it's true. That's the way she looks—minus the ridiculous butter girl outfit.

Dad's mildewed book, stale coffee scent enters the room ahead of him. Sweat drips from his weedy gray ponytail, and he wears only one argyle sock. After removing his fogged up glasses, he rolls his eyes backwards, way up into his head. He can't help doing this disturbing thing because he has a photographic memory. Faced with any tough situation, he focuses upward, searching the books in his brain for helpful information. Right now, he's probably researching advice on childrearing. I hope he is flipping through some friendly ancient guidebook like
Baby and Child Care
and not one of those nasty parenting texts like
Dare to Discipline
.

Dad's weird eye motions explain why freshman attendance in his Introduction to Archaeology classes has always sucked. He does better with the upper level undergraduates, and his graduate classes are always packed. The more educated a student becomes, the more they think his eccentricities demonstrate brilliance. Now you see why I'm determined to go on tour with my music and skip college.

Millicent Dibble ignores Dad and addresses Mom. “Lila Elmwood, I realize Mona must have left home dressed in this vile shirt without your notice. I know how much you respect innocent animals. All of your people do.”

Your people.
Who says that to an Indian? Mom says nothing in response to Dibble's bigoted statement. She's still staring stupidly at the mop in the corner. I don't know much about the technical aspects of clinical depression, but personal experience suggests this is a bad sign. In the good old days before she lost her job teaching Native American history at Twain College, Mom would have rifled back at Dibble's remark with words hot enough to burn her ears off. I miss the old Mom with the Red Power picket signs. Down with Columbus Day! No More Native American Mascots! Save American Indian Burial Grounds! Now she is a mute, frozen butter girl, eyes fixed on a rag mop in the corner of a stuffy basement closet. Dad also stays silent, but for a different reason. His academic field of study is ancient Russian archaeology. Nothing in twenty-first-century America remotely interests him. That includes Mom and me. My parents share one true love, and it's their work. That's why it hit them so hard when Twain College made its cuts.

Millicent Dibble shakes her head at Mom, clearly vexed at her lack of response. She shouts, “Does the girl have a job lined up after graduation? Dr. Elmwood, your daughter needs discipline!”

My ears perk up at her mention of a job because this is a sore point. I
had
scored a great paid internship with the Twain College music department. But the budget cuts that eliminated Mom's job also killed mine. I got the bad news last week. I expect Mom to explain this last-minute hitch in my employment plans. But she retains her lifeless butter girl pose. Millicent Dibble purses her lips, as if she pities me for having such an unstable mom.

“Dr. Elmwood!” she bellows, rattling Mom back into consciousness.

“Principal Dibble!” Mom barks back, abruptly coming to. “I agree that Mona needs a firmer hand! That is exactly what she is about to experience. This morning, Bryer and I accepted summer jobs on an archaeological field crew in Russia.” Mom turns her back on me. “We will be working there for a month to investigate the site of an ancient bear sacrifice. We leave tomorrow.”

My brain has trouble processing Mom's words. Surely she's speaking an alien language. What I think I heard can't be true. Or worse, what she said
is
true, which explains why she can't face me. Graduation is a week away. She can't possibly expect me to miss it. Never mind that it's inconceivable for my animal-loving mom to dig up bear bones and force me to spend a month doing that, too. This is the worst idea she's ever had. My guess is she's telling herself that working on her hubby's project will save her rocky marriage.

Millicent Dibble holds her hand to her ear in the universal symbol, asking Mom to speak up. She obviously thinks she misheard her. After all, what mother forces her child to miss their high school graduation? Admittedly, most teenage girls would have a friend's house to crash at if their parents decided to abruptly leave town. But my ex-best friend Lizzy moved to Toronto last year and my antisocial behavior since has backfired on me. I have no money and nowhere to go. Mom has no other choice but to drag me with her to Russia—something neither of us wants.

Mom lowers her voice making me strain to hear her. “Mona won't be coming with us. As she is still a minor, she will be leaving tomorrow for her grandfather's cabin in Indian Stream, New Hampshire, where she will be in firm hands.”