Carole Maso - Ghost Dance

We watch ourselves gather in the dark barn with Grandpa until the thunder passes. Over and over he tells us the stories we love. “This is a wonderful country,” he says. “This is still the best country in the world.” He looks to the sky.

Two dreamy brothers in North Carolina, intent on flight, work day and night. In the same town a minister and his grandchild work through a peaceful Sunday morning.

A girl in Connecticut plays cat’s cradle, knots daisies into chains, makes mud packs of earth and clay.

My father bends his cloudy forehead down and plucks a squash flower from the ground.

Mary picks apples and puts them in her bushel basket.

Migrant workers, so exhausted they seem to sleep as they stand, as they bend over and over in their drowsy, aching dance, cradle each piece of fruit tenderly in their weathered hands, even at day’s end.

A young man catches his fingernail in the heavy machine he operates on the assembly line in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Not wanting to stop the machines, his boss gives no lunch break. The noise is deafening. The man would cover his ears if he could.

My father croons in the dark room with Frank Sinatra.

I look at my mother whose hand I still hold. “How handsome you are, Michael,” she whispers.

Grace Kelly turns to say good night to Cary Grant at her hotel room.

A boy plays his trumpet in a band at a local club and dreams of Louis Armstrong.

“I still have a dream,” the proud angry man says. It is August 1963.

We live in the hands of the family that prays. We live in the hidden valleys folded in hills. We live in the corncrib, in the center of the haystack. We live in the song of the wood thrush. We live in the life of fish, in the trees that lose their hair in winter, in the wildflowers that return year after year after year. We must learn from the land that gives and gives and asks so little in return.

We live in the south and we live in the north; we live in the east and in the west. We live in the past and we live in the present. Let us live in those who wanted only to have a normal lifetime but for whom it was not possible.

“Give me back what you have taken,” the DLS daughter says from her hospital bed.

“Give me back my life,” the Vietnam veteran demands.

“Give me back what you have taken,” Black Hawk repeats, turning the television up louder.

Let us live in the mouths of the men who lie, who deny and deny and deny, who cover up their crimes. Let us change the shape of each word as they speak.

I always tried to believe you, Fletcher: that somehow there would be a way to live side by side with the sorrow. I see a young man walking to a podium. May we not be afraid to ask that those who claim to be responsible act in such a way. May we demand answers from those in the position to give them. “We must reclaim this country,” the young man says. “Take it back.” And that young man is you.

“This is our home, Fletcher. It’s ours now, too.”

I see Grandpa Sarkis in Turkey, Grandma and Grandpa speaking their last words in Italian, Sabine somewhere, far off in France.

“There’s no other place we can feel at home,” I say.

The ocean liner changes its chilly course.

Our mother squeezes our hands. Buildings rise on the land. We see a shimmering beautiful city rise up before our eyes. I gasp as I watch the Lmpire State Building assemble itself, the Statue of Liberty. Chinese step off boats, Japanese, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and move into the great city. “And over there!” I say, pointing to the shining water. “Have you ever seen anything like it before?” Pure and perfect in its form — it is the Brooklyn Bridge.

We travel, still holding Mother’s hands, over the tops of buildings to another city. In that city men in suits sit around a kidney-bean-shaped table in an executive suite and make a decision. “Don’t do it!” Fletcher and I shout, but it’s no use. They can’t hear anything.

Now it begins. The weather grows colder. Our hair blows straight back from our faces. The sky grows dark. I know what will be next. Yes, there are the first flakes of snow.

Now my father wipes inches of snow from the car’s windshield. I hear the motor being started up. And still I do not know why this must be. The toll-booth cannot be too far.

“I have to go now,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. I know it is time.

“Please let me go,” she cries. “Let me go now.” Her tears fall on our shoulders as if from far away.

“I have loved you,” she says, “my whole life.” She is crying very hard now. She looks at us sadly and squeezes our hands. Why must it be this way?

“We must give her back,” I say to Fletcher.

“We could go with her,” Fletcher says. “She’s been calling to us this whole time.”

“No,” I say, shaking my head, knowing what we must do.

“We can’t come yet, Mommy,” I say to her. “We must live.” And she knows it is true.

I pick up the bag of black cornmeal. It is the heaviest thing I will ever hold. I pour it into Fletcher’s left hand, then into mine. We let go of her hands and four times pass the black cornmeal around our heads and then cast it away.

“Now the white,” Fletcher says. We sprinkle it. “Rest now,” we say. “Rest now. Be safe.”

Fletcher lights the pine incense, then walks to the windows. With his massive arms he strains to lift each one. “Open the door,” he says.

I open it wide. “I love you,” I whisper, and I know she can hear me. Fletcher and I hold each other tightly. “Be happy,” we cry. “Good-bye, Mom,” we say, looking up to the ceiling, looking up to the sky. “Good-bye.”