We had talked about the “arc of the story” -- how it starts by setting the scene and characters, how it continues with a rising pattern of problems until there is a climax, a crisis, and the pattern is broken or relaxed to a conclusion. So was the death of Che’s mother the climax? Couldn’t be. (Too much of the school year left. We needed more story.) Would have to be something more added to the rising action. First we would get Che’s mother buried.
This was a time when a lot of people from the reservation were in treatment and treatment concepts were circulating among us. Che would be a good illustration of “denial.” He never reflected on anything -- pretended nothing was wrong. Heather was certainly “co-dependent” and maybe “enabling.” “Co-dependent” meant that she so needed to be taken care of that she took care of other needy people, like Che. “Enabling” didn’t quite fit since there wasn’t a lot Heather could do that would keep Che in that needy place so she could keep on comforting him. She didn’t buy him alcohol or excuse his drinking. The problem was that in some ways we didn’t know enough.
And we wanted some hope -- so many people thought that drunks were hopeless, that Indians were hopeless, that reservations themselves were hopeless. We didn’t like that. Thus far, we hadn’t had any characters who were “old-timey” Indians. Maybe that’s where the hope was. So we planted that for a hook at the end of the chapter.
Chapter VII
COMING CLOSER
Whenever Che had had a loss in his life--and there had been many losses -- he just shut out whatever it was that hurt him. When his dad had left, when they had moved from a place he liked to live in, when someone took a toy, when his dog was run over-- whatever it was, Che just sealed that part of himself off inside and tried never to think of it again. But his mother was hard to seal off. For one thing, he kept having to walk through all the social things that people seemed to demand: a wake, a rosary, the funeral... it all seemed to go on and on. People kept coming up to him and saying things to him that he tried not to hear. They seemed to want him to say something in return, but he didn't know what to say, so he just ducked his head and mumbled and hoped they would accept that. After looking at him funny, they went away.
The wake and rosary were at his aunt's house. The kitchen was full of food. Every other room was full of people. There were relatives who hadn't seen each other for a long time; people who had left the reservation during the relocation years; people who had refused to speak to each other since some half-forgotten feud years ago. The coffin was in the middle of the front room and there was barely enough room for all the chairs and people around it. Plastic flowers mixed with real ones, all different kinds and colors..
People moved from one cluster to another, sometimes looking sad and other times remembering funny things from long ago and stifling laughter. The windows had to be opened because of all the body heat and every now and then a puff of wind would sweep through and ruffle whatever was loose. The men kept slipping outside to stand around the pickups, leaning on the outsides with their fingers interwoven and dangling over the insides. Che wandered, letting people grab him and pump his hand, say things he couldn't hear because he didn't want to. Finally he drifted outside among the pickups. One of the men guided him along behind the pickups and slipped him a bottle in a paper bag. After that Che still wandered, but he felt warmer. He didn't care so much. He could keep from asking questions about the future.
Heather was determined to get to the rosary for Che's mother. She felt she owed it to Che somehow to participate in the ceremonies of death. But she was wary of going by herself. Finally she remembered that her father's cousin was somehow related to Che's aunt's husband. When she called, the cousin said Heather was welcome to go along with her.
Stepping into Che's aunt's house, Heather felt self-conscious, though she recognized most of the people there. The smells of food and the hot air were almost overwhelming. They were a tiny bit late, so the rosary had already begun. People repeated together the old words, some with high voices and some with low. Father gave prayers for absolution, not wearing robes, but in his ordinary dressed-up clothes and that strip of cloth around his neck. It seemed to go on forever, which was lucky, because that gave her time to get oriented and spot Che in the back of the room near the kitchen door. As soon as the rosary ended, she worked her way through the shifting bodies to get to him. When she got to where he had been, he was gone, but she caught sight of the kitchen door to the outside just closing and followed.
"Che! Che, wait for me!" She gave a quick tug to her black leatherette skirt and smoothed down her silky blouse. It was red and she knew she looked good in it, but she tried not to think about her clothes. She knew that was improper. It was dark outside, but she could see well enough by the light from the doors and windows, the streetlights and the car headlights. "CHE!"
Like a zombie he turned slowly and stared at her without recognition. She came alongside him and put her hand on her arm. "Are you all right?"
"Sure."
"It's so crowded in there."
"Been like that all day."
"We could walk around a little. It would do you good." She felt maternal, as though he were a small boy with an upset stomach. She tried to think what it was a person did for someone who was grieving, but the only things that came to mind were from stories and they didn't fit. She linked her arm through his, just as a half-dozen little kids ran by shrieking and almost bumped into them.
"The casket is really pretty, Che."
"I guess so."
"And the flowers are real nice. A lot of people are here. Your mom must have had a lot of relatives and friends."
That got through to Che. "Where were they when she needed help? They didn't know us then, oh, no." His head suddenly crowded with images of times there was not even money for milk to put on the dry cereal they ate for supper when there was nothing else left. Some of the places they lived smelled moldy from being cold and damp and dirty. Or rancid from smoke because the stoves used for heating didn't have tight stove-pipes. They were sticky, greasy places with bugs and mice. He remembered being cold and left all alone and having nothing to wear and being ashamed of his life, his mom... And then he managed to go numb again. He might go crazy to think of all that. He might do something drastic.
Looking earnestly into Che's face, Heather couldn't really tell what he was thinking. Even if she had known what he was thinking about, it was so much outside her experience that she couldn't have understood. Her life had been safe so far, and though her mother and father worried about money a lot and thought the place they lived wasn't the best it could be, still it was warm and she had enough to eat and nice clothes. She tried to remember how it was when her brother died, but that time was blurry. She had been younger then. Mostly she remembered crying a lot and her father holding her tight. And her mom-- her mom had wailed in the old time way, and for the first time she realized how Indian her mother really was. She thought a lot about God in those days, whether she could trust the church and believe the priest. For a while she wondered about the old ways, but she didn't know enough about them to think about it very much.
"She's not hurting now, Che. She's in heaven and everything is all right. She's not burned in heaven. She's like she was before."
Che said dully, "Just shut up. I don't want to think about it." But his mind showed him the picture of her burning again. "Burning in hell, the bitch." His feelings towards her were now hopelessly mixed between hatred and desperate love. He hated her for not coping, for not being a good mom, for dying. But he loved her, needed her, remembered times when he turned to her for comfort and she... Got to stop even thinking about it. Don't do no good.
Heather trotted along, happy to be quiet so long as she was touching Che, her arm through his arm. She felt important-- needed-- more than just a kid. He was walking swiftly down the street, not stumbling, so she had to hustle and pick her way through the stones and pothholes in her good shoes. A dog ran out to bark at them and Che broke away from her long enough to pick up a rock and swerve it at the dog. As soon as the dog ran yelping away, she recaptured Che's arm.
Dimly he could feel her alongside him. Her arm was warm. It was not a cold evening, but that arm still felt good. Who was this girl? Oh, Heather. He had stopped by her trailer and kissed her plenty good. They were interrupted. But it had felt good. He had forgotten his troubles and forgotten he was powerless. With her, he had power. He knew better. He was the stronger one, the one who knew what to do. Suddenly, he looked down at her and grinned.
She could barely make out the gleam of his grin, but it set her heart to knocking. They were passing a hedge of caraganas, untended and sprawly, and he pulled her into the opening where the concrete walkway to the house went through, so that they were hidden even if a car passed by. There was a step in the walkway and without thinking she stood up on it so that even though she was shorter it was easy to turn up her face and be kissed. This time he was rough and needy, which made her soft motherly side respond, along with something else she really couldn't describe or even recognize. It hadn't happened before.. The two stood clinging together a long time.
A low growling came from below. Che and Heather looked down to barely make out Che's dog growing at Heather. "Jealous, are you?" said Che and felt good because here were two creatures who liked him, no matter what else was going on. "Stop that. She's not hurting me." But the dog was not satisfied and went on growling and even baring her teeth. Che kicked at her, but she didn't go far off and she began to bark an alarm. The secrecy and closeness of the moment was destroyed.
"Spose I'd better go back," said Che. Heather turned obediently. Whatever Che said, she was willing to do.
The funeral mass was also crowded. Father preached on God's infinite forgiveness, his love for his mother, and how even the briefest repentance and a sincere belief in Jesus Christ could save each of us. He even hinted that because she burned at her time of death, she might be spared the fires of purgatory, but he talked carefully for fear of being taken wrongly.. Che thought to himself that so many people came only because she had been burned up in front of them all. They were just curious, that was all.
His aunt was very quiet and her husband stayed close to her. Her children were pale, dressed-up, and careful to do exactly what she told them. Che tried to lean away from them, tried to separate himself from everyone else. But it was useless: they were all mashed together in the pew.
Heather had gotten in trouble when her relative reported that she had disappeared from the rosary and that she must have gone home alone without the relative. Actually the relative was curious to know what connection Heather had with Che and what she knew about the mother-- whether she was drunk that night and what man she was with-- all those things everyone wanted to talk about.
So Heather decided to go to the funeral by herself. She was going to hitch into the bigger town, but then she spotted a carload of friends and they took her along. They weren't going to the funeral and it never occurred to them that she was.
She slipped in past Bill Riddle watching in the doorway of the Church of the Little Flower and sat at the back under the abstract King Kuka windows. The giant crucifix by Gordon Monroe was almost too much for her this time. Could being crucified be as painful as being burned alive? She knelt and prayed sincerely, for Che, for Che's mother, for the family, and for herself. She asked for the strength to be a good helper. When she sat back in the pew, the light was many-colored and the singing comforted her. Surely all would be well. She could see the back of Che's head and to her even that looked exceptionally handsome. She looked curiously at his aunt.
Che's aunt could not stop weeping. How could she have prevented this? She had dreaded it so long, had seen it coming and tried to stop it. Now what was to be done with Che and his little brothers, but especially Che? She glanced sideways at the wrinkled up little old grandmother. She couldn't handle a teenager. The little boys were almost too much for her.
Che's aunt didn't see a tall, gaunt old Indian man come in the double doors at the back, dip his fingers in the holy water, genuflect with great dignity, and slip into the pew beside a little girl in a black leatherette skirt. Around him there was peacefulness.
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