Carole Maso - Ghost Dance

He sat in the center of the room and blended the sacred paint. “Red ochre,” he murmured. He dipped his fingers into it and marked my face, then his, with the sacred symbols.

“Wherever the white man has stepped, the earth aches,” he said. “They killed our mother.” He took a hank of my hair in his large, rough hand, pressed the scissors next to my skull, and cut — again and again. My hair fell like tears to the floor. He touched my shorn head. “Why?” he cried, as he picked up my hair and brought it to his face. “They killed her like she was a dog or a squirrel.”

He took the large scissors to his own head next and slowly, in sections, cut his long hair and threw it in the pile with mine. He put on the headdress. Around his waist he tied the pelts of rabbit and skunk. He took out a large sharp knife and cut first into his arms and then into mine and I wailed with pain. “We bleed for you,” he cried. “We bleed. We bleed.”

On a drum he began to beat out a rhythm. “Your children cry out to you,” he chanted. “Your children call you by name: Brave Ghost, Brave Ghost, Brave Ghost.” His voice started high and slowly descended until he reached the end of his breath and fell silent, then began again. He stood up, still beating the small drum, and I rose too and touched his mangled head. He looked out the window. “Brave Ghost,” he cried, “we bleed for you.”

“Brave Ghost,” I whispered.

He waved eagle feathers in the air above his head in time to the chant for our mother. I continued the rhythm on the drum. He swayed and waved in the air the aromatic tips of sage.

“We shall live again. We — shall — live — again.”

I took my first tentative steps in the dark. He took my hands. Over the beat of the drum he said, “We entwine our fingers like living vines. We keep the circle.

“We shall live,” he whispered.

The chant began soft and low. I followed my brother as he dipped and swayed, moving one foot forward then the other in a slow, perfect motion: simple and pure. I listened to the drum’s strong and steady beat. I felt my fear slowly drop away.

Songs seemed to arise from the dance, and we did not know what we were going to say until we said it. The obsessive beat of the drum, the step, one foot then the other, our voices like hearts, our hearts like drums. We were dancing toward her.

We swayed. We tipped our bodies like gliders into the west, into the east. “Help us,” we chanted, “help us to live.” Our arms were covered with blood. Tears fell.

“Help us to rise,” we said, doing the motion of the soul escaping from the body that Grandpa had taught us as children. All was rhythm and out of the rhythm our songs came, changing many times through the days and nights. We became drugged by the dance and the patterns of our own desire. I saw Grandpa for a second, standing on a chair and waving the soul up through the ceiling. “Oh, Grandfather,” I said and fell to my knees. “Dreams of Rain!” Fletcher shouted and helped me back up, and we lifted our eagle feathers to the ceiling. “Over here,” he shouted. “Grandpa!” he said, and tears ran down his face.

The sun fell and rose and fell again, I don’t know how many times. Fatigue found a home in my heavy bones. We moved forward, forward, slowly, slowly, one foot then the other, hour after hour, drugged with sorrow. “We will see her again,” Fletcher whispered. I felt as if I would not be able to go on, would not be able to keep standing and dancing. “Help me,” I sighed. “Help. Help me to live.” And with those words I felt myself lift out of my body and rise, leaving it somewhere far behind. I could feel her near me. “Mother,” I cried, “where are you?” I fell to the floor quaking. She was gone. “Do you think you can disappear just like that?” I screamed. It was dark. The blackness surrounded me. I reached for my brother. He took my hand. Blood rushed to my head. At first I saw nothing and I began to cry. “Is there only darkness here, too?” I cried out. Fletcher wailed and wailed with his whole body, as though he would never stop.

“Is there nowhere we can—”

“Look,” I say. A great familiar light fills the room. It is the light of morning, a buttery, pale yellow. I can hear frogs in a faraway pond and I can smell sweet grass and running fresh water and clover. The sky is a high blue.

‘It’s so beautiful here, Fletcher!” I gasp. “It’s so beautiful here!”

A warm breeze caresses our faces. We lift our heads. There are fields and fields of chamomile and wildflowers. Near the lake cattails grow. We reach into the clear water and come up with handfuls of silver fish. We feel the fan-shaped leaves of ferns at our ankles. We take deep breaths. There is such sweetness here. On the horizon are rows of luminous, white birches. They seem to bend toward us. We walk through the cool woods. I touch the dark reddish-brown berries that are deep inside the bramble bush. The woods open up and light floods our vision. Corn grows, acres and acres of corn — brave green V’s — and pumpkins, and the flowers of squash. I see sheep grazing. I look closer and see buffalo, elk, bison, and doe. I hear crickets and the complex song of the mockingbird. And another song — it is exquisitely beautiful, nearly unbearable to listen to. I look up into the bough of a fruit tree.

“Fletcher,” I whisper, not wanting to scare it, “up there.” And I finally see it. I see it perfectly. I do not turn from it and it does not fly away. “The Topaz Bird.” We are nearly blinded by its brilliant, jewel-like light. And, finally, from that brilliant light she steps. Through the tall grass, she moves slowly to us. I am breathing light, and she is so beautiful and she is dressed in white.

“Oh, Mother!” we say. And we see the flowering of all human beauty, the end of all pain and disease, and men walk like brothers on the great land. Her eyes overflow with love — her whole body. And we too overflow. Who can contain such love, such beauty, such peace as this?

We look at her with our pure eyes of light.

“Oh, Mother,” we say finally. “We’ve missed you so much!”

“My sweet, sweet children,” she sighs and pats the tops of our heads.

“My Vanessa,” she says, and she puts her arms around me. “Fletcher! How big you’ve grown!”

She closes her eyes. “Take my hands,” she whispers. “Take my hands now.” I take her right hand, Fletcher takes her left.

A small wind blows up. “Try not to be afraid,” she says. A large white cloud covers the sun momentarily and then passes it. We watch as men and women who have come a long way get off ships. What Drinks Water dreamt will come true. A strange race will weave a spiderweb around the Lakotas. When this happens they shall live in square gray boxes and beside those boxes they will die.

Gray squares now start springing up on the landscape. From the distance men come on horses. Indians lie dead in the snow of South Dakota, bleeding through their Ghost Shirts.

A man falls in the snow. But it is not really snow at all. It collects on the floor of the boiler room. It collects in the lungs of the man.

Tears continue to fall. A mother and father wave to a plane that takes their son to a far-off country from which he will not come back alive.

“There is so much sadness,” Fletcher says.

In the tall president’s face you can see how his heart has been torn by the war.

In the Bronx a child does not dream but turns over and over all night, starving to death in its sleep.

Far away a young soldier ties off his arm and shoots morphine into his vein.

My father drums his finger on a table. He moves the salt shaker forward slightly. He draws a line in the salt.

My grandfather leans over three cows that have mysteriously died overnight. The vet in the white coat wipes his brow, rubs his chin, and shrugs.