Among the Wonderful (21 page)

When the Indians saw me coming, one called out, and the woman with the scars appeared. She followed me to the Martinetti apartment, which was unusually quiet. Mrs. Martinetti the elder was the only one there, and she bustled around, collecting her shawl and her sewing bag, appearing quite excited by the prospect of the class. I delivered them to my apartment and went for the tribesman. He was sitting in the same cross-legged way in the middle of the floor, but there were now cot, desk, chair, and even curtains on the windows of his room. The tribesman wore a new pair of trousers and a shirt and woolen vest and appeared more alert, thankfully, than when I had initially found him.

It was only when I had them sitting in a row in front of me, as I stared down at their three very different heads, that I realized I did not know how I would actually teach them anything.

I would begin with the broadest perspective possible, I decided.

“This,” I began, gesturing to the walls, the floor, “is the museum. We are in the museum.” But they will think
wall
, and
floor
, is
museum
.

I took up pen and paper and drew the building as best I could. I wrote the word underneath the picture and held it up for them.

“Museum,” I repeated. The Indian laughed. Mrs. Martinetti looked over the tops of her spectacles, scrutinizing my face. She reached for her sewing. The tribesman did not move or look at the drawing.

“Museum?” This was ridiculous. I was ridiculous. The Indian was transfixed by the pieces of bright orange fabric that Mrs. Martinetti sewed.

“Sewing,” I declared, pointing at Mrs. Martinetti’s work. I pantomimed the rise and fall of a needle and thread. The Indian woman smiled. This wasn’t working.

The class unraveled. I drew pictures of chairs, of beds. I announced, pointed, and proclaimed everything from shoes and stockings to the sun, moon, and stars. Mrs. Martinetti good-naturedly repeated my phrases and words but seemed entirely more interested in her needlework than the lesson. At first the Indian just laughed at the things I said, whether out of shyness or arrogance I could not say. But soon she just stared at the tribesman.

Even though he sat like the others in his restaurant chair, holding the small stack of paper, the pen, and the inkpot on his lap, and even though he looked in my general direction with his eyes open, the tribesman appeared to have disassociated himself from the present reality. He did not appear to be deranged; he seemed quite lucid in his movements, when he made them. His impassivity was not apathetic, somehow, and I believe that’s what made him interesting to look at. It was as if he was so entirely occupied with other things, my laughable attempt at teaching was simply a collection of noises and images that had nothing to
do with him. It was true, I realized. He was right. And he was humming.

After half an hour I had run out of things to say. I stood there, with the two women staring at me. I was sure the half smiles on their faces expressed contempt in addition to the effect of the comedy I had just performed.

“That’s all, then. That’s the end.” They did not move. They did not understand English. “I’ve done the best I can, and it is obviously not good enough.”

Mrs. Martinetti reached over and tapped the Indian on the arm. “Violetta,” she said, pointing to herself. “Violetta.”

“Kokipapi,” replied the Indian.

Mrs. Martinetti made a hilarious attempt to pronounce the Indian’s name. We all laughed, except the tribesman.

The Indian pointed at me. “Ana.”

“Ana,
sí
,” Mrs. Martinetti agreed.

The Indian rose from her chair and motioned for us to wait. She left the room, and we heard her running down the corridor. I remained at the front of the room while Mrs. Martinetti murmured the Indian’s name until the syllables blended to nonsense.

When she came back, the Indian dragged a boy into the room with her. I had seen him among the others; he was the youngest among them and the only one, besides this woman, with his hair cut above his shoulders. The woman tugged him by the arm, speaking to him rapidly and pointing to us. Looking steadily at her, the boy jerked his arm out of her grasp.

“She is Mary,” he finally said. “She would like you to know this.” The woman looked sharply at the boy and grabbed his arm. She spoke to him in a harsh whisper. The boy extricated himself and turned to go, but the woman’s voice stopped him. He did not turn. She spoke to him in a crooning whisper until he gave up and nodded.

“She says she will tell you her real name. In your language she is called They Are Afraid of Her.”

She smiled at Mrs. Martinetti, pointed to herself, and repeated her name. The scars across her cheekbones folded to
creases, transforming her for a moment into an old woman. Even though Mrs. Martinetti could not understand, she clapped her hands gleefully and repeated, “
Theyarfraiover.”

The boy moved toward the door, shaking his head.

“Wait!” I couldn’t bear to see him, our only bridge, leave us to our fumbling silence again. “Could you tell us something more?” I blurted. “Her scars. What about those? Where did she get them?”

His expression did not change, but when he spoke to They Are Afraid of Her, he was obviously angry. He moved again for the door and made it halfway into the corridor before she caught him again. When he turned back, the boy’s face had transformed from anger to sorrow. He spoke softly to her. She coaxed him back into the room, her voice almost a whisper.

“She would like me to tell you that her face was cut a very long way away from this place. As punishment for leaving her tribe.”

“Isn’t she part of your tribe?” I asked.

“We took her in. We are all Sioux, but she is from another place.”

Looking shyly at us, They Are Afraid of Her whispered more to the boy.

“She says now this place is her home.”

“Why did you come to this city?”

“She says the past doesn’t matter.”

The boy turned on her then, hissing in her ear and leaving the room without so much as a nod to the rest of us. When he left the room she did not pursue him, and something dark flickered in her eyes as she smoothed her skirt and waited for what would happen next.

Only a full moon gave this much glow. Blue shadows striped the floor and the whole room appeared to be dipped in silver. I did not even need a candle to write by, that’s how bright it was.

I had been awake for hours with my mother-made quilt high at my chin, the squares of all my girlhood dresses turning me into a patchwork behemoth. Had I even slept at all? The night was all-encompassing and inside its long tunnel I was both comforted and disturbed, because it reminded me of the long months I was trapped in bed while my body grew. My published True Life History pamphlet lay on the counter of my booth, but I sat up and found my pencil and the stack of papers anyway. How could I characterize eleven months of chaos ravaging an exquisitely still body?

In the beginning I was a nocturnal creature. When night fell, my mind became more lucid. Not that I was churning out magnificent poetry or insight, not at all. Most nights I read, but in the darkness I could always feel some ethereal charge that alerted me to the silken threads that bound reality together. It was comforting because I was simply part of this graceful web, just one filament of many. Sometimes I’d lie in my bed, staring at the wooden ceiling, and listen to the breath of my parents above. The sound was so beautiful to me, and yet it seemed offensive that they slept through the limpid medium of night. The discovery of my new nocturnal nature was the first revelation of my convalescence. The second was that Evangeline, my beloved cat, knew something strange was happening; for the first
time in her life she would not come near me, no matter how I called to her
.

Even as greater and greater swaths of time were lost to pain, night was still my favorite time. It is the memories of day that are blurred and smeared together, almost entirely lost except for glimpses
.

Once a week, before the morning’s chores began, my mother brewed the laudanum. Through the doorway of my room I watched her pass, first with the pot of well water, then with the wood for the fire. After a while she ground the cinnamon and then the clove, and added sherry wine and opium. As the weeks wore on, the fragrance of that brewing tea became dearer to me than anything else. She hated how I reached for it, but there was no other way, was there? The bones of my wrists grated against each other as they grew, stretching the skin so I thought I would burst. Sometimes I itched so badly I scratched myself bloody. She began brewing laudanum every three days, and watched as I drank it and drowsed, unburdened but drooling, all afternoon. Eventually I took such large quantities that old Garvey, Pictou’s only doctor, didn’t know what to do. I would scream myself awake, certain that my bones had torn through the skin, sweating, unable to focus my eyes, and she would rush in with another cupful, a blurred, warm figure with spidery hands working my clenched jaws open
.

Garvey brought a doctor from Halifax, who brought his colleague from Boston. They spoke with my mother upstairs as I clutched my bed frame, where my hands had worn through the varnish. I had already grown two inches by then; I was horrified, and I wanted to die. Finally they gathered around my bed, three men in black suits, the one from Boston looking rather excited
.

“They’ve brought a stronger medicine, Ana. It’s a new procedure. Would you like to try it now?”

“For God’s sake,” I whispered
.

The Boston doctor opened a small wooden box and produced a lancet
.

“We must pierce your skin, Ana. It may sting.”

I laughed. “Don’t mock me.”

The lancet’s brass handle was engraved with roses on a graceful vine and two doves, symmetrically stretching their wings toward each other. I stared at it as they administered the morphine. I could
not look at the men, not to mention my mother, because the medicine was spreading in a ripening glow that sent tingling splinters directly to my most delicate parts. It aroused my senses so that I blushed and barely suppressed a groan as the morphine spread outward from my center in a great alleviating wave. Even now, thinking of those twining roses, those two birds arched in their languorous stretch, I blush. When I finally looked at her, my mother recoiled. I must have been smiling
.

I can recall nothing but morphine for many weeks of my illness. These are not unpleasant memories, but hopeless to transcribe. Since the growth came in waves I did not always need the medicine, and during the lulls my mother tried her best to keep it from me. I wanted it, though. I still do. But I was ill for so long that the morphine, like the night and the novels I read, like my mother and each of the seasons that passed in front of my eyes, was just one of many companions. It wasn’t until several years later that morphine saved my life, for good or ill
.

My father was the one who was absent. At first he tended to me constantly, thinking this was an ordinary illness, but gradually, as we realized what was happening, he withdrew his care. She said the mackerel season had come earlier, was bigger than any other year; that he’d had to hire two more boys from town to help. The cost of medicine, too, she said. It’s not cheap. He’s upset, she said. I did not blame him
.