The Marsh King's Daughter(34)

Later, I wondered what made me miss the nail so badly. It’s possible I glanced away when a squirrel dropped a pinecone. Or I could have been distracted by a red-winged blackbird calling. Possibly I blinked when the wind blew a bit of sawdust into my eye. Whatever the reason, when the hammer smashed my thumb, I yelped so loudly, both my father and mother came running. In seconds my thumb turned fat and purple. My father poked my thumb and turned it this way and that and said it wasn’t broken. My mother went into the cabin and came out with a strip of cloth and tied it around my thumb. I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to do.

I spent the rest of the afternoon on the big rock in our backyard paging one-handed through the Geographics. When the sun sat like an orange ball on top of the marsh grass, my mother went inside to dish up the rabbit stew I’d been smelling for hours. She called out that supper was ready, and my father put down his tools and quiet settled over the marsh once again.

There were three chairs at our kitchen table. I wondered if the people who built our cabin were also a family of three. No one said anything while we ate because my father didn’t like it when we talked with our mouths full.

When my father finished eating, he pushed back his chair and came around the table to stand beside me. “Let me see your thumb.”

I laid my hand on the table with my fingers spread.

He untied the strip of cloth. “Hurts?”

I nodded. In truth, my thumb didn’t hurt anymore unless I touched it, but I liked being the center of my father’s attention.

“It’s not broken, but it could have been. You understand that, don’t you, Helena?”

I nodded again.

“You have to be more careful. You know there’s no room in the marsh for mistakes.”

I nodded a third time and tried to make my expression as serious as his. My father had told me many times to be careful. If I hurt myself, I’d just have to deal with the consequences, because we weren’t going to leave the marsh no matter what. “I’m sorry,” I said in a small voice, because now I really was. I hated when my father was unhappy with me.

“Saying sorry isn’t enough. Accidents always have consequences. I’m not sure how I can teach you to remember that.”

My stomach got hard when he said this, like I’d swallowed a stone. I hoped I wouldn’t have to spend another night in the well. Before I could tell my father that I was truly, truly sorry, and I would remember to be more careful, and I would never hit my thumb with a hammer ever, ever again, he balled his hand into a fist and smashed it down on my thumb. The room exploded with stars. White-hot pain shot up my arm.

I woke up on the floor. My father was kneeling beside me. He picked me up and sat me down in my chair and handed me my spoon. My hand shook as I took it. My thumb hurt worse than when I smashed it with the hammer. I blinked back tears. My father didn’t like it when I cried.

“Eat.”

I felt like I was going to throw up. I dipped my spoon into my bowl and took a bite. The stew stayed down. My father patted my head. “Again.” I took another bite, and another. My father stood beside me until all of my stew was gone.

I understand now that what my father did was wrong. Still, I don’t think my father wanted to hurt me. He only did what he believed he had to do to teach me a lesson I needed to learn.

What I didn’t understand until much later was how my mother could watch the whole episode from across the table, as small and useless as the rabbit she had served for dinner, without lifting a finger to help me. It was a long time before I could forgive her for that.

—

IN OUR NEW SWEAT LODGE that winter, my father told a story. I was sitting between my father and mother on the narrow bench. My mother was wearing her Hello Kitty T-shirt and underpants. Except for the polished Lake Superior agate my father wore constantly on a leather thong around his neck, my father and I were properly naked. I liked when my father took off his clothes because then I could see all of his tattoos. My father tattooed himself the Indian way, using fish-bone needles and soot. My father had promised that when I was nine, he’d start tattooing me.

“One winter, a newly married couple moved with their entire village to new hunting grounds,” my father’s story began. I snuggled closer. I knew this would be a scary story. Scary stories were the only kind my father told. “There they had a child. One day as they were gazing at their son in his cradleboard, the child spoke. ‘Where is that Manitou?’ the baby asked.”

My father paused his story and looked at me.

“Manitou is the Sky Spirit,” I answered.

“Very good,” he said, and continued. “‘They say he is very powerful,’ the baby said. ‘Someday I am going to visit him.’ ‘Hush,’ said the baby’s mother. ‘You must not talk like that.’ After that, the couple fell asleep with the baby in his cradleboard between them. In the middle of the night, the mother discovered that her baby was gone. She woke her husband. The husband made a fire, and the couple looked all over the wigwam, but they couldn’t find their baby. They searched the neighbor’s wigwam as well, then lit birch-bark torches and searched the snow for tracks. At last they found a row of tiny tracks leading to the lake. They followed the tracks until they found the cradleboard. The tracks leading from the cradle to the lake were far bigger than human feet would make. The horrified parents realized their child had turned into a wendigo, the terrible ice monster who eats people.”