“ For many seasons, the men had given away more of the
people’s hunting grounds, their fishing places, their settlement lands, while
singing and drinking with the white ones, while making fools of themselves,
dancing with broomsticks and with tin buckets on their heads. At each session, Big Waters and the other
women were expected to stand off along the wall, to wait to carry the goods, and
to be quiet. They had been silent so
often that many children had died from hunger.
The next season, Big Waters simply stepped forward among the men at the
long table at the fort and said, ‘ I would like to read that paper before these
fools put their marks on it. ’
That was the end
of her time among her people.
Though she’d saved her people from giving away another
parcel of place, from agreeing to remain confined in a bare space with no
animals or water, she’d insulted the men, her husband in particular, and he had
declared her banished.
The next day, he had a new wife. In the same way her mother had disappeared
all those years before, Big Waters then walked into the tall grasses.
Her children were directed to turn their backs to her as she
left. Her own children did this.
The one Big Waters had nursed until he could ride a
horse. The one she had tended to night
and day for many months while he lay crying and recovering from burns suffered
in foolish play, in dares of manhood made by one child to another. Had he forgotten how she had held him in the
cold river water day and night? Or how
she held her hand over his mouth so the other boys would not hear his crying
and think him a coward? Even her only
girl, the one who was betrothed to a Spanish brute with a withered arm until
Big Waters begged on her behalf to her father, saving her from the bad
marriage, even she turned her back to Big Waters. She from whom Big Waters later pulled the
upside–down baby after three days of pain and delirium, saving both their
lives, also turned her back. She who had
been stolen by the enemies for a slave and whose return Big Waters had
negotiated by trading her own fine beadwork and tunics, she turned her
back. Even the two she had taken into
her own heart as her own after their mother succumbed to disease. The all turned their backs to her. Never to call her mother again.
These were the events Big Waters could not speak of to
anyone except the small baby in her arms, the one whose little ear was so near
her lips. She would be a good mother to
Clement, and he would be an obedient son.
Big Waters introduced Clement to the finicky horse, left her
by the girl who had birthed the twins.
The beast snorted at the baby’s scent.
The baby sneezed at the horse’s.
Big Waters let the animal sniff the child again, then laid Clement in
the straw while she worked; but she didn’t take her eyes off that horse. He showed her his teeth but didn’t try to bite
her this time. The warm, stewy air of
the barn entered Clement’s lungs. He
breathed deeply in a way that swelled his chest, like a river about to
overflow. He slept soundly and
snored. When he woke, Big Waters mixed
milk with molasses and sugar and let him suck.
She tried to make peace with the horse and offered it a bit of sugar
too, but it snapped at her finger, and she kicked its leg.
This horse had a bad spirit.
Big Waters called him Hole–in–the–Day, after her husband. But Hole–in–the–Day’s spirit wasn’t as bad as
her husband’s. Whereas his breath had
smelled of throat fire and bile, the horse’s smelled mealy and grassy, and only
occasionally of stomach odor. Even then,
its breath worked magic on Clement.
While the boy slept beneath the horse’s nose, he grew and
strengthened. The vapor healed whatever
ailed the baby.”
----- pp 136 – 137,
Stillwater by Mz Nicole Helget, y2014
