Wabanaki Blues (3 page)

My ears sting. My blood turns to ice. I thought missing graduation and digging up bear bones in Russia was the ultimate disaster. Now I know I was wrong. I will be spending the next month alone with my widowed grandfather, Grumps, somewhere in the New Hampshire wilderness. I've never visited his cabin. Until now, Mom insisted it was best for us to stay away. Now she's forcing me to live in a place she always avoided because of some stupid law that says I need some adult to look after me until I'm eighteen.

If Bilki was still alive, this might be tolerable. I loved my grandmother's annual Christmas visits to our home. We had so much in common. Sure Grumps came along, but we all tried to ignore him. Now, I'm spending a month alone with him! All this because of my unfortunate July birthday. Until then, I'm seventeen and a miserable minor. Summer birthdays suck!

Millicent Dibble reads my mind. The corners of her wrinkled red lips jolt upward in a wicked grin. “It's such a shame that Mona will miss her graduation. But I'm sure this experience will do her good. The least I can do is release her from school early today, so she has sufficient time to pack.”

This is the final blow! Packing for the worst trip of my life is not my idea of a good way to celebrate the end of high school. Not that I planned to do anything new. I wanted to celebrate like I did junior year, when I jammed with Shankdaddy, the old blues man whose sweet music drew me to the other end of Manburn Street. I found him sitting on a worn-out stool on the metallic steps in front of Celine's fortune-telling parlor, beside a mangy cat. (What's up with me and cats?) His eyes whirled smoky gray, begging me to come closer. I sat beside him and admired his music, his chiseled cheekbones, and his lean muscles. His music hurt sweetly, like a caramel-coated toothache, and his cheekbones stood so high and mighty, you'd swear they'd been carved in granite. This man was ageless and omnipotent, like the God of Blues.

Once I started playing guitar with him, Celine stepped outside to listen, along with a few other curious neighbors. It must have sounded pretty damn good. After we finished jamming, I was shaking from the power of his mighty blues. I told Shankdaddy I was dropping out of school to hit the road and become a musician. He laughed cruelly, showing the raw pink tops of his gums beyond his big white teeth. He pressed his face into mine, challenging me, letting me know that he could always do me one gritty one better—whether it was bending notes on a guitar or bending the rules in life. Of course, I understood all that. I endured his test of will because he was the Master, a man who didn't just sing about hard times but conveyed them in a preternatural way. His music told me things about the universe that I'd have been better off not knowing—like how people who kill for love turn into ugly fiery angels that burn everything in their path, especially those who make beautiful music. When I didn't flinch at his tale, he decided I was worth a shiny pearl of gutbucket wisdom.

“Guitar Girl,” he said, rising to the full extent of his impressive height. “What you don't understand is that you need to
become
the blues. You gotta let the blues fill you up so that every note hurts enough to make you double over and groan.”

I reminisce about this amazing man while I trudge up the school basement stairs, trailing behind my parents. Knowing I'm leaving Colt High for the last time, it occurs to me that while I can't be with Shankdaddy today, I can make him a promise. I swear in my heart that I'll play the kind of blues he admires, or die trying. Step one in the right direction is avoiding banishment to the musical desert of New Hampshire. Maybe I'll run away to Toronto, where Lizzy lives. There are plenty of hot blues venues there. Greyhound has cheap bus tickets. I might be able to sneak onto an Amtrak train. I've read that tribal IDs can work as passports for the Canadian border-crossing. I've got one of those, thanks to Mom putting me on the Mohegan tribal rolls. I've often wondered why I'm not on Bilki's Abenaki tribal rolls. Mom probably kept me off them to spite The Inveigler, even though she claims the United States Government forced her to pick a single tribe. Mohegans or Abenakis. Hatfields or McCoys. Crips or Bloods.

I hear Bilki whisper inside my head, “Go to New Hampshire. It will be fine because I'm watching over you.”

Her words loosen my tightened muscles and allow me to exhale. Somehow, I believe her. When I was a kid, she would point to the constellations of The Hunter and The Great Bear and tell me how people turn into stars after they die. I know she's there, among those starry constellations. Whenever she speaks to me, I feel a connection to them.

I raise my head to the heavens and ask my starry grandmother to save me from my looming summer nightmare. Bilki doesn't respond exactly but I experience a woozy rush as we emerge onto the main floor of Colt High. Through the old-school sepia light, I spot a pretty girl smiling at me. She's wearing a retro Rush band tee shirt featuring a rabbit coming out of a hat. Her wide emerald eyes, heavy dark curls, and huge silver hoop earrings carved with the word “LOVE” across the center make her look more like a Rosalita than my guitar. Her shirt shows half her stomach, which is a clear violation of school policy 14 E. Her manicured fingernails flash electric blue as she scribbles something on the wall in front of us. Despite the fact that graffiti is a breach of every school rule on the planet, Dibble strolls by her without a word. It's ridiculous what pretty girls can get away with.

I dip Rosalita's neck at the girl, respectfully, because we know one another, sort of. We met last year when I was hanging around Celine's fortune-telling parlor with Shankdaddy. She and I never actually spoke. But she'd smiled at me that day, too, in a way that told me we were sharing the music at a deeper level, and pretty girls don't normally share intense moments with me.

The second period bell rings. Beetle spills out into the hallway, sporting a peach sherbet polo. I fast finger some delta blues on Rosalita, struggling to keep calm.

“Whoo-hoo, Mo-na! Nice tee shirt!” he calls, tossing back his butterscotch bangs and flashing his switchblade smirk.

I glance at Mom to see if she's catching this miracle moment. I want her to feel extra guilty about forcing me to leave town, just as the school's most popular guy decides to talk to me. But no. She's caught up in Millicent Dibble's rant about how the school board is too cheap to replace the faulty wiring in her upstairs office so she's stuck in the janitor's basement closet until they demolish our school in the fall.

I lift my head from my guitar and catch Beetle's licorice eyes focusing, not on my fingers, but on my tee shirt. My brain turns to strawberry slush.

“Hey, bad girl,” he says, pointing at my chest. “I'm guessing this tee shirt earned you a ticket to our cat-loving principal's basement luxury suite. I didn't know you were a fellow Dead Kittens fan. I saw them perform in Stadt. It's my favorite city.”

I keep playing in order not to scream. Beetle is acting like we're old friends. I can't believe he loves The Dead Kittens. I've never heard of Stadt. I have to get out of Hartford. There are so many great cities I need to see. If only I could take him with me.

He tugs my sleeve, “Did you see our resident ghost down there? It
is
the last day of school.”

I don't understand how he can speak so casually about Mia Delaney. He sticks his hands in front of my face and wiggles his fingertips spookily. I remain mum.

“Mia Delaney was my dad's high school girlfriend, you know,” he prods.

This remark irritates me because I know he's lying, like he's lied to me before. I slump, in the cool bluesy way Shankdaddy taught me, and say, “Everyone knows Mia left school on her last day with a guy on a Harley with green flames. Your dad doesn't strike me as the biker type.”

“No.” He moves in dangerously close. “But Mia was the type of girl who had more than one boyfriend. She was a bad girl.” He winks.

“Right. I doubt that. Your story sounds like a tabloid headline: Bad and Beautiful Juliet Slain by Wicked Romeo.” I clutch my chest. “They were young lovers so they had to die.” I shoot him my muddiest glare. “It's a tired tale.”

He smirks. “True enough. It is the cliché moral our parents tattoo to our souls: teenage sex always equals death.”

I lift my mudwood eyes to meet his delicious licorice stare.

“Mona!” calls Mom, storming toward us, scowling at Beetle like she wants him to die. She must have been eavesdropping and heard the word “sex.” If she were listening, it would be the first time she's tuned into one of my conversations in as long as I can remember.

Beetle's carrot-topped, perennially stoned best friend, Brick Rodman, ponies up and drags him away to class before I can ask Mom what her problem is. Beetle waves good-bye to me. I imagine I see a look of regret on his face. I never asked him where he's going to college. I want to ditch Mom and tell him that we should jam together sometime soon. But the truth is, I won't see Barrington Dill ever again. High school is over for me. Beetle is over for me.

Rasima's mom and dad trudge toward Millicent Dibble, arms wrapped around their limping daughter with the bag of ice tied to her foot. I can't afford to get dragged into a discussion about the cause of Rasima's injury, so I tell my parents I need to grab some stuff from my locker. From behind the metal door, I text Lizzy to cue her into the miracle that just happened between Beetle and me.

I write, “Help! I Need Somebody!”

“Let It Be,” she replies.

Lizzy is right, of course. I need to settle down. Nothing really happened between Beetle and me. Nothing ever does. He likes to think of me as his artsy musical acquaintance. Everybody has one. Nobody dates them.

I head back to the main hallway and note with relief that the Jones family has departed. Naturally, Beetle is heading in the direction of the graffiti girl with the LOVE earrings. He is smirking worse than ever. It's easy to imagine what will happen next. The whole school knows the effect he has on women. Rasima said it best in our school blog,
The Weekly Stinger
, “Beetle's smirk is like a solid gold mirror with a crack in it: something that you must stare at, even though you know it will bring you years of bad luck.” I don't agree with Rasima on much but she was dead-on about that one.

Beetle passes right by the graffiti girl and opens his arms to hug Dibble. What a suck up! He must be bucking for the Principal's Prize at graduation. I strain to listen to what he has to say to her.

“Thanks for everything, Principal Dibble.” Beetle hugs her.

Dibble rasps, “I know you and some of your friends are headed to your family cottage on Lake Winnipesaukee for a few weeks after graduation. Enjoy yourselves.” She sighs. “Oh, how I love New Hampshire.”

The universe spins like I've fallen into a vortex in one of Bilki's murals. Beetle is going to New Hampshire. I'm going to New Hampshire. I've overheard tales, from girls with good hair, about endless summer parties there with boys who smell like cocoa butter. Up until now, that lake has been an imaginary place, never mind one I might visit. I live in the real world, where family discussions center on how to pay rent and utilities, not how much money to blow on long summer vacations. The kids in my neighborhood are lucky if their parents take them on an annual day trip to Mystic Seaport, Roger Williams Zoo, or Fenway Park. A month of lounging by some New Hampshire party lake is an unimaginable fantasy. Yet I'm on my way to that dreamland. Bilki must have a hand in this. This is one day when I truly appreciate both the living and the dead.

Overhead, the hallway lights flicker with a sparkling galactic majesty, offering all the possibilities of a glittering newborn universe. Through the hall windows, the summer sun beams down on me with the pure, glorious, healing white light of a loving cosmos. The hint of a first smile tugs at the left corner of my mouth. My heart is beating so hard that I swear it pumps life back into the dead kittens on my tee shirt. I glance down and see them dancing in a circle on my cupcake-pink chest. From now on, I know things will be different. I lift the collar of my shirt and kiss it. I'll wash it on the gentle cycle. It's my new good luck charm.

Two

Light-years from Lake Winnipesaukee

Dad's famously mobile eyes sprint from me to the front door of our apartment. “I can't believe you're still in your room, wearing a towel. We can't miss our flight. This research trip is going to prove a link between ancient bear sacrifices, worldwide.”

A monstrous bear claw necklace—from some creature that I hope to God lives where he's going—dangles from a leather rope around his wrinkled neck. I want to yank it off and tell him I'll take my bloody time because no one cares about his stupid bear rituals, his necklace looks ridiculous, and he lives in a delusional world of his own. Yet I say none of this. I'm still in shock from pulling up the Google map that says it's a three-and-a-half-hour drive from where I'll be staying in Indian Stream to where Beetle is vacationing on Lake Winnipesaukee. My Dead Kittens shirt now lies inside my bedroom trash can.

“Your daughter is nowhere near ready,” Dad tells Mom, as he grabs two suitcases and storms toward the car.

Mom enters the room, smelling like fresh apples. She flops onto my “Meet the Beatles” comforter, wearing khaki shorts and a sky-blue blouse, knotted at the waist. Her hair dangles in a shiny braid. A red bandana wraps around her forehead in badass-Apache style, accentuating the two-inch scar on her left cheek. She looks like a Native American superhero. I loathe her.

“Are you here to gloat over my banishment from civilization?” I ask, slumping worse than usual.

“No matter what you may think, Mona, this trip isn't about me wishing you away.” She peers out the door, eyes narrowed, as if she's staring down an invisible foe. “You need to spend some time with Grumps and your Abenaki relatives. There are important lessons they need to teach you.”

“If these Abenaki relatives are so wonderful, then why did you desert them years ago?”

Mom trembles, probably from taking too many pills. “It's not what you think. There's so much I want to tell you about why you need to go north, about why I need to take this trip with your dad.” She slaps her hand over her mouth and hurries out of my room.

This doesn't faze me because I'm accustomed to crazy behavior from my unbalanced Mom. In fact, seeing as how my parents are both crazy, I decide to give lunacy a go. I approach the mural Bilki painted on my wall depicting an autumn woods landscape. A vortex of colorful paint droplets swirls at the center. It looks like a real portal. Now would be the perfect time for me to discover that it's possible to step though it into another universe. I edge forward with my eyes shut, make a wish, drop my towel like Lady Godiva, and lift a leg. My knee whacks the wall, and it throbs like the time I tried out for soccer.
My last-ditch escape plan has failed.

I make one final check of the contents of my duffel bag. I've packed the standard everyday travel junk plus a bunch of tee shirts too loud to wear in Hartford. I yank a caution tape yellow shirt over my head. It shows a picture of the amazing Etta James on the front, under the words “Rage to Survive.” Mom hates yellow. I emerge from my room, triumphant.

“Yellow? Rage to Survive? Really, Mona.” Mom swats at my tee shirt like it's a hornet. “Don't you dare start one of your downhill slides. Not today. Stay on the mountaintop,” she says, quoting our shared shrink.

“Don't worry. I'm headed for the mountains today, whether I like it or not.” I sneer as she grabs her laptop and heads out because I'm thinking of the rare Beatles butchered baby-dolls tee shirt I found on eBay last night. I wonder how she'd like to see me in that? Somehow, I've got to find the money to buy that shirt.

I focus on my silver charm bracelet from Bilki. This bracelet always comforts me. Bilki collected dozens of personal charms for it, including an artist's paintbrush, palette, and easel. It also has a wolf for Grumps, a history book for Mom, and a bunch of stuff that presumably represents her life in New Hampshire: a log cabin, a woodstove, a bear, an eagle, a maple leaf, a powwow drum, an arrowhead, a moccasin, a robin, a trout, a spider's web, a key, a mushroom, and an eight-pointed star. Before she gave it to me, she added two new charms, a guitar and a musical note. Every time I jangle this bracelet, I know Bilki can hear me.

On the ride north, I sleep soundly until my head slams into the car window. I feel like I'm careening down a ski slope. This sensation tells me we must have crossed into mountainous Vermont. I pull myself up and notice a sign pointing east that says “Lake Winnipesaukee — 100 miles.” That's not far. This must be fate. I've never hitchhiked but I'm willing to try it; people do it in old movies all the time. Only in modern films does it result in rape, robbery, or murder. Besides, we're in Nowhere, Vermont. What could possibly happen here?

The silver car-door handle gleams, beckoning me. I contemplate my odds of surviving a jump from a moving Volvo at seventy miles an hour. I picture Beetle by the lake. He's tanned, shirtless, wrapped in a designer beach towel, surrounded by a harem of perfect hair. My fingertips wind around the warm door handle. I put a hand on my already sore head to protect it from impact with the road, and lean in.

“Lila! Do you know it's already three o'clock?” booms Dad, tapping his vintage Soviet wristwatch.

I jerk my hand back from the door and wilt into the corner of the backseat. In the rearview mirror, the road sign for Lake Winnipesaukee shrinks behind me, along with my hopes for the summer.

“We'll make it on time, Bryer,” she says, while fiddling with the radio knob to locate a station with decent reception.

Dad baritones, “We don't have time to stop and chat with your father.”

Mom holds up both palms, defensively. “Not to worry. None of us wants that.” She connects Dad's phone to the car speakers. “Let's listen to your Mongolian music medley.”

The stampeding drumbeat sets Dad's narrow shoulders bouncing up and down. Frankly, even this is better than endless talk shows on National Public Radio. None of us speak while the Native drums thunder. We all fall into it. Mom and I are accustomed to heavy drumming. We've heard it every summer since I can remember—at the Mohegan Wigwam Festival—her annual pilgrimage to Grumps' traditional territory to remind me of my Native American roots. I've run into a few Abenakis there. But not as many as you might think. Mom says most of Bilki's folks keep to the northern woods, thanks to the colonists offering bounties on Abenaki scalps in New Hampshire. Naturally, that made them wary of outsiders. Of course that was a long time ago. But Mom is a historian and often confuses the past with the present.

Our mighty red Volvo—which I fondly call Red Bully because it either seems to have plenty of energy or refuses to budge—syncs to the beat, rising and falling as it winds around the mountain roads. I feel like I've entered one of Bilki's painted portals, swirling through time and space. My stomach churns from all the swaying. Acid lurches into my throat. Mom pales. That's when it hits me—a memory I'd rather forget. I try and push it out of my mind, hoping Mom and I aren't thinking the same thing.

She turns down the music. “Bryer, don't these winding roads remind you of that awful Goliath hypercoaster we rode when we visited your parents in Montreal?”

Oh, no. We're thinking exactly the same thing. This nauseating drive reminds us both of the day I rode that amusement park ride and threw up all over my French-Canadian grandparents. I was four years old, and we haven't received an invitation from Ma-mère and Pa-père since.

Dad's normally pasty skin turns the color of the evergreens that now line the roads. This is one of those times when I know he's cursing his photographic memory, grimly envisioning every detail of that ill-fated family trip to Montreal. He opens his window. I do the same. The road straightens, and I'm relieved. Yet Dad's nauseated look remains. In fact, it worsens.

“Lila, you should have told my parents the truth about everything, right from the beginning. They had a right to know.”

“When we were first married, you said they wouldn't care.”

This is a mysterious conversation. It sounds like there's more behind my grandparents' rejection of me than kiddy puke. I'm not surprised to hear Mom lied to her in-laws about something. She's never up front about anything. Dad is just as bad. When I asked him why digging up bear pits was more important than my high school graduation, he told me, “because the universe depends on it.” Can you believe it? My parents care about their weird secrets more than anything, certainly more than they care about each other, or me. I have no idea why Mom married Dad. She's half his age, and she doesn't give a hoot about Russian anything.

Dad resumes speaking with forced calm, “I never said my parents wouldn't care, Lila. What I said was—”

“Look out, Dad!” I shout.

A logging truck careens around the corner, on our side of the road. Dad swerves away to a spot where the pavement has eroded, with only a chasm beyond. My body turns cold. Our tire slips into the abyss, tilting the car toward the passenger side. This is it. I tell Bilki I'll be seeing her soon. Rocks grind beneath our churning wheels. We slip lower. I kiss Rosalita good-bye. Dad revs the engine and somehow grinds back out, avoiding disaster. Yay, Dad! Yay, Red Bully!

We, three, remain soundless for the next few hours, until he turns off onto a road plagued with jarring potholes and frost heaves. Mom breaks the silence with a strong series of curses as she cranes her ballerina neck out the window, searching for the turn to Grumps' place. There are no street signs, only a dense skyline of spruce, pine, and hemlock, broken by leafy patches of oak, sugar maple, and white birch.

After one false alarm, during which Mom gives Dad bad directions that nearly send us off another abyss, she shouts, “This is
definitely
it!”

We turn at a cluster of four white birch trees onto what looks to me like a flooded hiking trail. Mom shrieks. Dad hits the brakes, splattering the windshield with mud. Through the muck, I expect to see another fatal cliff. Instead, I spot a giant charcoal-colored dog, bounding through the sloppy trail ahead of us. Only, he doesn't look quite like a dog, and I catch a whiff of musky honey. Dad and I are speechless at the sight of this huge animal that is gone before we can get a good look.

“That's a female black bear,” Mom explains, as if she's lecturing to one of her idiot freshmen classes. The scar on her cheek reddens. “Bryer, you should drive more carefully or you'll hit one of your research subjects!”

“
I
should drive more carefully? That's pretty funny, coming from you,” he says.

A sudden lump forms in my chest. Dad just broke our family taboo. No one jokes about Mom's poor driving. She had a bad truck accident as a teenager in which she killed an animal—a dog or deer or something. The details are never clear. Bilki said it devastated her. According to Dad, that incident is what kicked off Mom's PETA passion and her depression.

Mom rummages in her pleather purse. “Where is my medication?”

Mom believes her meds are the solution to everything, when in fact there are some simple lifestyle changes that would make her instantly happier. For example, we could move out of our refurbished cattle slaughterhouse apartment. Were that to happen, I might give up vegetarianism. But I doubt that will ever happen because when I once asked her how she could stand living there, considering how much she loves animals, she said she felt compelled to keep the unhappy animal spirits company. No wonder she needs antidepressants.

Dad gestures down a muddy sewage-brown trail through the forest that's barely the width of a single car. “This is it, Mona. Your grandfather's house is right through here. We'll get stuck in the mud if we go any farther.”

“Bryer, you can't expect Mona to walk through these terrible woods alone. I swear you treat her as if…”

He interrupts. “Watch it, Lila. Neither of us wants to get into that discussion right now.”

Mom reburies her head in her purse. “Here it is!” She retrieves a plastic medicine bottle, lifting it into the sunlight like an idol. After fumbling to open the lid, she gags down a pill without water and squeezes my cheeks so I can't look away. “Mona, I have to be back in Hartford for a fund-raiser in mid-July, for International Homeless Animal's Day. We'll see you then.”

I pull her hand off my face. “What about International Homeless Teenager's Day? You can't leave me here.” I jiggle my bear charm in her face. “We just saw a real bear. I'm not getting out of this car.”

Mom is stone-faced. I shake my bracelet harder, hoping to get Bilki's attention. My grandmother needs to witness her daughter's neglect.

“Bears are rare in New England,” scoffs Dad.

My mouth freezes wide open.

Mom pops a second pill.

Dad speaks between clenched teeth. “If you're frightened, Mona, perhaps your mother should stay here with you.”

Mom chews out her words, “Don't you dare start that again, Bryer.”

“I'm serious, Lila. You need to face your demons. We both know you only married me to get away from this place. God knows, you don't want to go on this dig. I'm sure your old hometown buddy, Will, would be happy to let you move in with him.”

“Mom, who is Will?” I ask.

“Your father is talking nonsense, Mona. There was never anything between Will and me.”

Mom whispers something to Dad. They pull apart and lean against opposite car doors, fuming.

I perform a three hundred and sixty-degree scan of my surroundings. “How about we ditch this plan. You can drop me at the nearest train station. I'll find my way home and stay out of trouble. I promise.”

Mom's smile quivers. “Dr. Zee says you shouldn't be alone, Mona. Besides, what would you live on? You don't have a job. We're broke. Remember?”

I doubt Dr. Zee was consulted about my summer banishment. But Mom is definitely right about the money thing. I saw Dad Skype the folks in Russia, last night, begging them for a cash advance.