The Love That Split the World(82)

I close my eyes and try to grasp at the fragments of song drifting through my mind.

I feel nothing. Hear nothing.



“There once were four ghosts,” Grandmother said, “and they lived in four houses beneath the ground, each one deeper than the last.

“There was a woman from a nearby tribe, whose father had died, and she went to his grave and lay on it and wept for four days. But on the fourth day, she heard a voice from below the earth. ‘Crying woman,’ the voice said, ‘Come downward.’

“So she jumped up and followed the voice of the ghost downward through the earth until she reached a house called Hemlock-Leaves-on-Back. She went inside and saw there an old woman in the corner, near the fire. The old woman said, ‘Sit down and eat.’ Then she passed the crying woman dried salmon.

“But before the crying woman could take the food, another person came in and led her to the next house below, Maggots-on-Bark-on-Ground. Here again she saw an old woman beside a fire, who appeared identical to the woman in the first house. This old woman also offered the crying woman something to eat, and again, before the crying woman could take it, another guide appeared and said, ‘Come to the house of the Place-of-Mouth-Showing-on-Ground,’ and the crying woman followed.

“As before, she saw an identical old woman preparing meat beside the fire. As before, the crying woman was interrupted by another guide before she could take the food. ‘Come to Place-of-Never-Return,’ the guide said, and led the crying woman deeper into the earth and to the next house.

“When she entered this time, though, the crying woman saw her father sitting beside the fire, and he became angry at the sight of her. ‘Why have you come here?’ he shouted at her. ‘Whoever enters the first three houses may return, but from this place there is no return! Do not accept the food of the ghosts, and return home at once! We will sing, so the tribe will hear and come for you.’

“Her father called to the guide who had brought the crying woman there and begged that he return her at once to the land of the living. And so the guide carried her back up to the grave tree on a board, where she lay like one dead, and he sang as her father had said, and the tribe heard the song and came to the tree where the man was buried. But though they saw the board and heard the singing voice, the people could not see the girl lying beneath the tree.”

I waited for a long time, though by then, I was fifteen and knew one of Grandmother’s endings when I heard one. “That’s it?” I said finally.

“That’s it,” she told me.

I sat in bed, turning the story over in my mind, trying to make sense of it. Several times I thought I’d caught the meaning, but then it would slip away again. “Sometimes,” I told her, “when you tell these stories, I feel them.”

“How so?” she asked, narrowing her dark eyes.

“Like, I almost remember them. Like they happened to me. Like they’re more real than my actual life, only I can’t quite pin them down. Does that make any sense?”

“No,” she said bluntly. “But I know what you mean. I feel that too.”

“The world doesn’t feel right,” I said, yawning. Sleep was overtaking me, and my mind began to chatter half-formed thoughts, things I couldn’t fully understand.

“We’re hostages, Natalie,” Grandmother said softly.

“Hostages?”

“We’re living on our own land, but it’ll never be ours again. We answer to a government that doesn’t acknowledge that we’re many nations—nations they bought from people who had no right to the land in the first place. We’re surrounded by people who forget we exist except when they read about our downfall in their history books, as if we aren’t still here, occupied, waiting for an ending that, after five hundred years, we know will never come. Trying to learn how to live in and belong to two worlds at once. There’s a separation between us and everything around us. We can’t get close enough to it, no matter how hard we try. You and I, we feel that distance every moment of every day. In a way, we’re ghosts already. These stories are the thread that connects us to the world that came before us, a world we’ll never see but always dream about.”

“Well, that’s a cheery outlook.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes the most beautiful moments in our lives are things that hurt badly at the time. We only see them for what they really were when we stand at the very end and look back.”

“You’re particularly cryptic tonight,” I said.

“I feel particularly old tonight, Natalie. Age makes one think.”

“About?”

After a long pause, she said, “Regret.”

I watched her eyes glaze over in thought. “Grandmother?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you know my mother?” I asked. “My biological one, I mean.”

“Of course,” she said. “I know everyone you know, and many people you don’t.”

I steeled myself before asking, “Do you know . . . why?”

Grandmother fixed her eyes on me and rubbed at her chin. “Why she left you?”

I nodded.

“I understand her decision as well as she does, but these things are rarely simple.”

“She was young.”

Grandmother nodded. “And poor.”