The Marsh King's Daughter(15)
The party was held at the Pentland Township Hall. Judging by the name I imagined something on the order of a Viking keep: high vaulted ceilings, thick stone walls, slitted windows, straw-covered floor. I pictured chickens and dogs and goats wandering about, a milk cow tied to an iron ring in the corner, a wooden table running the length of the room for the peasants, and private rooms upstairs for the lords and ladies. But this hall turned out to be a big white wooden building with its name on a sign in the front so no one would miss it. Inside there was a dance floor and a small stage on the main level and a dining room and a kitchen in the basement. Not nearly as grand as I had dreamed, but easily the biggest building I had ever seen.
We were the last to arrive. This was mid-April, so beneath the fluffy goose-down jacket somebody had sent me I wore a red sweater trimmed with what looked like white fur but wasn’t and a pair of blue jeans, along with the steel-toed work boots I was wearing when we left the marsh. My grandparents wanted me to wear a yellow-checked dress that belonged to my mother and a pair of tights to hide the tattoos on my legs. The zigzag bands around my calves were the first tattoos my father gave me. In addition to these and a double row of dots across my cheeks, my father tattooed on my right bicep a small deer similar to the ones you see in cave drawings to commemorate my first major kill, and in the middle of my upper back a bear to represent the one I faced down on our porch when I was a child. My spirit animal is mukwa, the bear. After Stephen and I started feeling comfortable with each other, he asked about my tattoos. I told him I got them as part of a tribal initiation ceremony when I was growing up, the daughter of Baptist missionaries on a remote South Pacific island. I’ve noticed that the more outlandish the story you tell, the more inclined people are to believe it. I also told him my parents were tragically murdered on the same island while they were attempting to settle a dispute between warring native tribes in case he ever got the idea that one day he would like to meet them. I suppose now that my secret is out I could tell the truth about my tattoos, but the truth is, I’ve gotten used to telling stories.
The dress my grandparents wanted me to wear to the party reminded me of the kitchen curtains in our cabin, only brighter, and with no rips or holes. I liked the way the material was so loose and floaty; it felt like I wasn’t wearing anything at all. But while I looked like a girl as I stood in front of my grandmother’s tall bedroom mirror, I still sat with my knees spread like a boy, so my grandmother decided it would be better if I stuck with jeans. My mother wore the blue dress and matching hair ribbon from her “Have you seen me?” posters, though my grandmother fussed that the dress was both too tight and too short. Looking back, I’m not sure which was worse: that my grandparents expected my twenty-eight-year-old mother to play the role of the fourteen-year-old daughter they’d lost, or that my mother was willing to go along with it.
As we walked up a wooden ramp that looked like a drawbridge to a castle, my muscles were strung so tight with anticipation, they were practically humming. I felt like I was about to take a shot at a rare wild turkey preening and spreading his tail feathers for a female, and if I so much as twitched I’d scare him off. I’d already met more people than I could have imagined, but this was family.
“They’re here!” someone shouted when they saw us. The music stopped. There was a moment of silence, and then the room exploded with the sound of a hundred people whistling and cheering and clapping. My mother was swept into a river of blonde aunts and uncles and cousins. Relatives swarmed over me like ants. Men shook my hand. Women pulled me into their bosoms, then held me at arm’s length and pinched my cheeks like they couldn’t believe I was really there. Boys and girls peeked out from behind them as wary as foxes. I used to study the street scenes in the Geographics and try to imagine what it would be like to be surrounded by people. Now I knew. It’s noisy. Crowded, hot, and smelly. I loved every second of it.
The People reporter pushed a path for us through the crowd and down the stairs. I think she thought I was frightened by the commotion and the noise. She didn’t yet know this was where I wanted to be. That I had left the marsh by choice.
“Are you hungry?” the reporter asked.
I was. My grandmother wouldn’t let me eat before we came because she said there would be plenty of food to eat later at the party, and she was right about that. The reporter led me to a long table next to the kitchen that was set with more food than I’d seen in my life. More than my father and mother and I could have eaten in a year, possibly two years.
She handed me a plate that was thin as paper. “Dig in.”
I didn’t see a shovel. What’s more, I couldn’t see anything that needed digging. But since I’d left the marsh, I’d learned that whenever I didn’t know what to do, the best thing was to copy other people. So as the reporter started down the length of the table putting food on her plate, I did the same. Some of the dishes were labeled. I could read the names—Meatless Lasagna, Macaroni & Cheese, Cheesy Potatoes, Ambrosia Salad, Green Bean Casserole—but I had no idea what they meant, or if I’d like how they tasted. I put a spoonful of everything on my plate anyway. My grandmother told me I had to eat a few bites from every dish or the women who brought the food would get their feelings hurt. I wasn’t sure how everything was going to fit on one plate. I wondered if I was allowed to take two. But then I saw a woman drop both her plate and the food on it in a big metal can and walk away, so I figured when my plate got full, that’s what I’d do. It seemed an odd custom. In the marsh we never threw food away.