Where the Broken Heart Still Beats (8 page)

She is less cooperative about Prairie Flower, though, believing, I suppose, that it is important for the child to learn Comanche ways. She may be right (no one else here would agree with me), because although the little girl is quite pretty, she does look Indian, and Mama says she may not be accepted by white society. Nevertheless, I do concede that we cannot let her continue in her heathenish ways, no matter whether she looks Indian or white.

Nearly every day now Mrs. Bigelow or Mrs. Brown or Mrs. Raymond comes by to drill the two of them in their Edible verses. Prairie Flower is only beginning to talk, but she sits obediently by her mother's side while Cynthia Ann repeats the verses, mimicking the ladies. They are working on the Beatitudes—"the Blesseds," as Papa calls them. I especially think of Cynthia Ann when I hear the second one, "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted," for I am sure the poor thing does still mourn for her husband and sons. I am not certain she understands the words they want her to repeat over and over until she can say them from memory, but Mama insists that just
saying
the words is good for her and will soften her heart.

What I do not have the courage to tell Cynthia Ann is that no matter how many Bible verses she learns, she may not be able to visit her people for some time. We have learned that we are now engaged in a civil war, the South against the North. It was Jedediah who brought the news.

As Grandfather has explained it, when we were in Austin, Texas voted to join the other Southern states to form the Confederacy and has seceded from the Union. Jedediah has warned us that federal troops have been withdrawn from Fort Cooper as well as other frontier forts, and there is no one left to help fight the Indians. We are on our own now and, he says, in great danger. Also according to Jed, fighting has already begun in South Carolina, at the entrance to Charleston Harbor.

Martha spends much time weeping, for although Jed has not said so, she is afraid that he will go off to fight. We all pray that this war will end quickly.

Sinty-ann rose from her buffalo robe spread on the cabin floor, and, to humor Anna, poured water from a pitcher into a basin kept out on the gallery, washed her face and hands with a bit of soap, and dried them on a clean blue cloth. This was the kind of thing that seemed so important to this white family and meant nothing at all to her.

The People rarely bathed, although after her monthly period a woman always immersed herself in a river or creek to take away her uncleanness, even in the winter when the water was frozen over and she had to break through the ice. Strangely, this was not something these white women did. They seemed to have no customs regarding their women's blood.

A woman of the People stayed in a separate tipi during those times, away from the men. That made sense: a woman's blood could take away a man's power, his medicine. When she was in her period, she was not permitted to carry her husband's shield or to go anywhere near him until she had bathed. Here, no one seemed to pay attention to such matters.

For instance, the boy, Ben, still lived in the house with the rest of the family. A boy like him would have moved into his own separate tipi long ago, to keep him away from the grease of the cooking pots, which everyone knew could contaminate him and was dangerous to his power. And this Ben spent far too much time around Martha and Lucy. No boy of the People would have been allowed anywhere near his sisters, would not have been permitted to touch them or even to speak to them. It seemed very odd to Sinty-ann—things that were important to the People had no importance to these white people, and the other way around.

Now that the white people's speech was coming back to her, she sometimes talked about such things with Lucy. Lucy was curious; she seemed to want to know about the People. At first Sinty-ann did not want to talk to her, afraid she would be like the others, despising the ways of the People. She had heard Uncle and Lucy's parents and brother Ben talking about the People, about Sinty-ann's husband and sons and family and friends. Although she did not always understand their words, she certainly understood their tone when they spoke with voices that rung with hatred, harsh laughter, and lack of respect.

But Lucy, although young, was different from the others in her family. She was of an age to be Sinty-ann's daughter, yet she seemed truly interested in Sinty-ann's life, her experiences. One day the women built a big fire in the yard and set over it a huge iron kettle of cooking grease and lard they had been saving up in buckets. When the fat had been melted and strained until it was clear, they stirred in liquid, water that had been allowed to drip through a trough full of wood ashes. Lye, Lucy called it.

For hours they took turns cooking and stirring the mess, until it turned white and creamy. Then they poured this into a box to cool and harden, and later they cut it into chunks. They called it soap and used it to wash their clothes and their own bodies. Such a lot of work to make this useless thing!

"And you had nothing like this?" Lucy asked, her blue eyes wide.

"No. Nothing."

"But how did you wash?"

"No washing. Not important to wash."

"But how did you get yourself clean?"

"Clean? What is clean?"

"It means not dirty."

Sinty-ann thought about it. "Clean, dirty, no difference. Not important."

After a while Lucy stopped asking about washing and cleanliness and turned to a new subject. "What about cooking? How did you cook?"

"Put meat close to fire and it cooks. Sometimes we put meat in a pot. When I was young like you, no pot. Traders did not bring pots, so we cook in skins, in buffalo's belly. But if skins are too close to fire, they burn up! So we put meat and water in buffalo's belly and drop hot stones from fire into meat and water. Stones make water hot and cook meat. Simple."

Lucy always smiled and shook her head when Sinty-ann explained things that way:
simple.

"And was that all you ate? Just buffalo?"

"Mostly buffalo. We kill him and dry meat, make jerky. We dry fruit and pound it, and pound jerky, mix with other things. Pemmican, we call it. All winter, when nothing else comes, we eat jerky and pemmican. Also eat antelope and deer, not as good as buffalo. When animals go someplace else, we look for other things to eat. That is work of women, to gather food."

"What kinds of things did you gather?"

She shrugged. She did not know the names of the nuts they collected or the wild fruits they picked and dried, using the seeds of some of them to form a paste that could be stored for the hungry times. "Nothing like you eat," she said. "I dig things from earth, I grind seeds and mix with what comes from bones of buffalo. Other thing we like is honey. Like you."

It always seemed to please Lucy when Sinty-ann could find something similar in their lives, like honey. But not much was.

"But you didn't have a garden," Lucy would say, almost sadly.

"No garden," Sinty-ann agreed. How could she explain how foolish it seemed to her to spend so much time digging and planting and waiting for things to grow when you could go out and find food wherever you happened to be?

"And what about fish?" Lucy's hands made a swimming motion. "We really enjoy good fish right out of the creek."

Sinty-ann shook her head. "No fish. Bad to eat fish. Bad to eat chickens. And big bird like a chicken, very bad."

"Big bird?" Lucy wondered. "You mean the turkey?"

"Yes, turkey. Men eat turkey and become cowards and run away from their enemy."

"And you don't like pork. Meat from the pig."

"No pig."

"But that's mostly the kind of meat we eat," Lucy said. "They're so easy to raise. And we can preserve the meat by smoking. I think it's a lot easier than making jerky."

"Pig lives in mud and water," Sinty-ann said firmly. "My People do not eat animals that live in mud and water. Not good."

"And you actually ate the buffalo's liver raw?" Lucy asked, shuddering. "It makes me sick to think of it."

"Very good," Sinty-ann told her. "You don't like it because you are not Nermernuh."

"Nermernuh?"

"Our word for the People."

"Not Comanche? You don't call yourselves Comanches?"

"White man call us Comanche. They learn it from other Indians, our enemies. Not our word. I am Nerm," she said proudly. "We are Nermernuh."

Later she heard Lucy explaining this to Isaac and Anna and Ben and Martha.

"Doesn't matter much what she calls them, does it?" Ben asked angrily. "They're still just dirty Indians."

Lucy hushed him. "She'll hear you! She understands!"

It was true. She understood more and more.

These conversations about her life with the People had a mixed effect on Sinty-ann. The memories they brought back were both pleasant and painful. It seemed that she would not be going to see the People now because something had happened, a battle among white men, that prevented Uncle from keeping his promise. When she talked to Lucy about the People, it helped her not to forget.

But she would say nothing about Peta Nocona. Lucy asked shyly, "Will you tell me about your husband? About Peta Nocona? What was he like? Was he good to you?"

"I do not speak of him," Sinty-ann said.

"I'm sorry," Lucy said hurriedly. "I wasn't trying to pry. I was just curious."

"I do not speak of him."

Their lessons had become more formal. Lucy wanted her to learn the names of the months and the days of the week. Sinty-ann had never thought of time being divided up like this, or if she had once known it, she had forgotten.

"When I came here?" Sinty-ann asked.

"January," Lucy said. "But Captain Ross and the other Rangers found you last December. Around Christmastide."

"And now?" Sinty-ann asked. "What is it now?"

"July. You've been here with us for six months. Half a year."

Year? That had to be explained, too, along with how many days there were in each month. To help her remember, Lucy taught her a little spoken song, a poem: "Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November...."

But before any of this made sense, she had to learn numbers and counting. Lucy showed her how to use her fingers, and then showed her signs on paper that stood for numbers.

Next Lucy wanted her to learn to read a clock. She called it "telling time." This seemed pointless to Sinty-ann. Why did anyone need numbers for this? Surely you knew when the sky was brightening before sunrise, and you could watch as the sun moved across the sky, and you could see when it was setting and when night had come. What else did anyone need?

She paid little attention to the lessons on the clock that Uncle wound each night with a key or to the name of each day. This was important to the white people in order to remember a day they called the Sabbath. On that day the men did not work in the fields, the women did less work, and the children were not allowed to play. Instead they prayed together and read from a big book. Was it not enough to watch the moon, to see what the earth produced in each season, to feel the change from cold to warm? But Lucy kept trying.

"Next I'm going to teach you to read," Lucy said determinedly. "Then you'll be able to read our Bible. I can teach you to write, too. And when Prairie Flower is old enough, I'll teach
her.
"

Sinty-ann smiled at that. What would Peta Nocona say when he learned that his wife could read the white man's writing? And write it, too?

Oh, how bitter this is! If something has happened to Cynthia Ann, I can blame only myself, and I am certain everyone else is already blaming me. I am so ashamed at the trouble I have caused, and now there is nothing for me to do but pray.

It all began quite calmly. Every evening, when the sun has set and the air is a little cooler, Cynthia Ann and I have fallen into the habit of walking to my sister's new cabin to see what progress has been made. This has become a time for us to talk together, when there is no chance of anyone overhearing us. What began as "English lessons" has now become real conversation, as Cynthia Ann's mind again grasps the language of her childhood. She speaks in a rather odd, flat accent and her sentences are stiff, like an unused muscle. But the words are mostly there, and they seem to emerge more and more easily. I am quite comfortable with her, and I believe she is with me. Or was. I had even begun to feel that she trusted me.

Yesterday, I shall always remember, Cynthia Ann described exactly how a tipi is made. She insists that the tipis she lived in were much better than our log cabins! "This door does not look toward east," she remarked when she saw the little cabin growing up out of the ground as Papa and Jedediah and Ben, still a help with only one arm, laid each squared-off log in place. "Uncle's door does not look toward east."

Martha, who had come out of her half-finished cabin to greet us, seemed angry at this. "Why, pray tell, do you think they should face east?" she asked.

"All doors must look to where the sun rises."

"Why is that important?" I wanted to know.

"When they wake up, men leave their lodge and bow to the rising sun. Warriors smoke pipes and blow smoke to east."

At that, Martha simply shook her head and walked away, not bothering to explain that we build our cabins facing south in order to catch the breezes that blow in from that direction in summer. And I was more interested in hearing Cynthia Ann's explanation.

"But
why,
Cynthia Ann?"

I am truly curious about her Indian beliefs, how the sun is the source of all living things, and the earth is the mother, and the moon and stars are somehow important, too. I knew that Mama and Papa would not approve of our talking about these pagan ideas, and I was glad that Martha was not there to hear. So I continued to ask questions, and Cynthia Ann answered as best she could.

If they heard her, this would disappoint my parents and Grandfather, who believe that she is giving up her heathen ideas. She might recite the 23rd Psalm word for word when Grandfather asks her to, but when she says "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," it is not our God she is thinking about. It is the Great Spirit, or the sun, or the buffalo, or some such. I hold my tongue and do not tell her that her pagan ideas are sinful, because she seems so innocent! She's like a child, even though I am sure she is as old as Mama! And I shall further hold my tongue and not tell any of my family of our talks about religion, because that would upset them. Grandfather is convinced that Cynthia Ann is forgetting her godless beliefs and is becoming again the Christian she was born. It is not for me to tell him that he is mistaken.