Where the Broken Heart Still Beats (11 page)

I thought it would be difficult to get Prairie Flower awake and talking, but it was not. The child was born to be on a horse! She seemed delighted to wake up and find herself riding through the woods, and soon she was chattering merrily, as though this were the most ordinary thing in the world to do.

I had not had the presence of mind to fetch along any food or water, and soon Prairie Flower began to whimper. I myself grew weary as the night wore on, as well as hungry and thirsty. I began to realize how foolish I had been.

Never have I defied my parents and done that which they have strictly forbidden me to do. But what they did not know, they could not forbid, I told myself, knowing I would never have been given permission for this undertaking. I trusted Boots to find our way back, although I had no idea where we were, but I did not want to return without Cynthia Ann. And so we plodded on, forcing our way through the thick growth. Branches slapped at our faces. The darkness began to fade to a grayish light.

Presently Prairie Flower ceased whimpering and began to wail. We reached a small clearing and stopped to rest. I had begun to think we must turn back defeated when I made out a bedraggled figure stumbling toward us. Overjoyed, I prepared to call out, "Cynthia Ann! Here we are!" But the words stuck in my throat, for at that moment I saw, stalking silently behind her, a panther, black as Satan's heart. He seemed in no hurry to attack, taking his time.

Boots sensed the danger and stopped short, ears flattened back. For a moment we stared at each other, I at the panther, the panther at the horse, the child, and the foolish girl. Cynthia Ann kept on walking slowly toward us, unaware of the danger.

I am a fair shot. Papa saw to that, teaching all of us to handle a rifle as soon as we were big enough to hold one. Martha is excellent and before she met Jedediah liked to hunt squirrels and rabbits with Ben, who does quite well with his one good arm. They did not like to take me with them because I was "too young." But then Martha got to be "too old," I guess. She is much different now that she is about to become somebody's wife, and she no longer wants to go hunting with her brother. Martha could have dropped the panther easily. And so could I, but I had not thought to bring Papa's gun.

And then, from somewhere behind me, or off to the side, a rifle cracked, and the beautiful but deadly creature dropped in its tracks. I spun around and saw my brother Ben, sitting on his horse. He made no move to come to us, but I slid down from Boots and ran eagerly toward Cynthia Ann, pulling her little girl after me, happy to see her again and certain that she would be grateful that Ben had saved her life.

Instead, she turned her face away from me and covered it with her hands. Perhaps, I thought, she is distraught from her ordeal—tired, hungry, thirsty, tormented by insects. But she lowered her hands and stared at the dead animal. Then she turned to me with stark, haunted eyes. "
Puha,
" she said. "He did not mean to, Lucy, but he has killed my
puha.
"

I did not understand, still do not, and had no idea what to say and so I said nothing. She was weak and trembling, and after a time she accepted my offer to ride back on Boots. It astounds me, the grace with which she can mount a horse, even when she is exhausted! And then I handed up to her the tired and grumpy Prairie Flower, who curled up in her mother's arms and promptly fell asleep.

When I turned around again, Ben was gone. Our small procession, Boots with her two riders and I, made its way back to the cabin. I was certain the worst for me was yet to come: facing Mama and Papa. But there was no chastisement; they were too busy to take much notice, for Mama's time had come.

As I write this, her labor pains have begun and Papa has ridden off to fetch Mrs. Bigelow to help. Martha is with her now, and she has told me, in that way my sister has now that she is about to be married, that I must stay with the children because I have, once again, behaved like one.

"You go," Sinty-ann said firmly. "I stay with your mama."

Martha glared at Sinty-ann. "I'm staying until Mrs. Bigelow gets here. That's who Mama wants to be with her. She doesn't want you, Sinty-ann. It's not your place." She sounded nervous and upset.

"Not
your
place," Sinty-ann replied calmly. "I have borne children; you have not. It is the place of mothers to help each other."

She could see that Martha didn't really want to be there with her mother. Anna Parker had been in labor since before sunrise; not long for a young, strong woman, but a long time for a woman Anna's age, the same as Sinty-ann's. Martha was frightened; she was not used to birthing. They had sent the wrong one away, Sinty-ann thought; young as she was, Lucy would not be nervous. If she was frightened, she would not show it. She would be calm and do whatever had to be done.

"It's all right," Anna said to Martha. "You go."

At last Martha left them alone, and Sinty-ann looked down at the woman in the bed. "You will have the baby here, in this cabin?" she asked.

"Certainly," Anna answered wearily. "Where would you have me go?" Her eyes were ringed with dark circles.

A Nerm woman did not have her baby in her tipi. Instead, she went to a hut that she had built of brush with a comfortable bed of moss. Two stakes were driven into the ground beside the bed to hold onto and a pit made for a small fire to heat water. There would have been a supply of sage to burn to purify the hut. There was just room enough inside for a couple of women to attend her. No men were allowed near, although if there were problems with the birth they sent for a medicine man. But Nerm women were strong, and usually all went well.

Sinty-ann pulled up a low stool and sat down beside the bed. There was nothing to be done for now; she could tell that the baby was not ready to be born just yet. Sinty-ann had had nothing to eat for several days; she was hungry and thirsty, as well as tired. But she would stay with Anna now, for Anna needed her.

She stayed by Anna's side, wondering if she dared to sing the doleful, monotonous songs that the women of the People always sang in the birthing huts. She guessed not. As in most everything, these white people had a different way of doing things, even having babies.

Suddenly things changed. She could tell by the difference in the sounds Anna made. "It's coming," Anna whispered.

Sinty-ann nodded and quietly went about helping the baby to slide into the world.

In a little while she held up the baby for his mother to see. "He is a good boy," she said. She cleaned the baby and wrapped him snugly in the white cloths Anna pointed out to her. She tucked the baby in close to his exhausted mother. Then she went out to tell the others the news.

In the distance she could see Isaac coming with Mrs. Bigelow. She smiled to herself; Mrs. Bigelow would have little to do now. She looked around for Uncle, the baby's grandfather. He is the one who should be given the traditional announcement: "It is your close friend." That is how the news of a son was always given. A girl would have been announced more simply, "It is a girl," because boys were of course preferred. And then the women who had been singing the melancholy songs would change to a joyous tune. But there was no telling how these people did such things.

Instead of the grandfather, Lucy was the first one to receive the news. She had been hovering outside the cabin with Sarah and James and Prairie Flower. The little girls had their dolls, and James was—well, it was not clear what James was doing. Teasing them, probably. When her sons were the age of James, they had their own ponies; they were busy playing games that would teach them how to be warriors. They were not hanging around the house, watching girls play with their dolls, and teasing them.

Sinty-ann was glad, for Anna's sake, that the new baby was a boy. As much as she loved Prairie Flower, she believed it was always better to have a boy. Much more attention and affection were lavished on a son than on a daughter. And boys were indulged, allowed to do whatever they wanted.

Now there were six children in Anna's family. Sinty-ann envied her: Anna was fortunate to have so many. The women of the People had few children. Sinty-ann had been much admired in her tribe because she had given her husband three children. Most women were lucky to have two.

Lucy came shyly to the steps of the cabin and gazed up at Sinty-ann, waiting for news. "You have a brother," Sinty-ann told her.

Lucy smiled. "And is he healthy?" she asked. "Mama has lost two infants that were not."

Sinty-ann hesitated. The baby boy had not cried as lustily as she wished, but he seemed all right. "I think he is strong. You come and meet him."

Lucy followed her into the cabin. Martha, who had gone to weed the garden, threw down her hoe and hurried to join them. The younger children tiptoed in and gazed in silent awe at their sleeping mother and the tiny, red-faced bundle next to her.

But then Papa came with Mrs. Bigelow, who bustled in and shooed them all away, including Sinty-ann. Would this woman know to find sage to burn, to purify the room where the birth had taken place? Would she know to take Anna to the creek to bathe, to purify her body after the delivery? Sinty-ann supposed not. These white women seemed to know little about the importance of such things.

Oddly enough, no one asked her where she had gone. With the excitement of the birth, her disappearance seemed to have been forgotten. That night when all had settled down again, Sinty-ann listened to the breathing of the Parker family sleeping on all sides of her and remembered her own children, how they had come into the world, how joyously they had been received, first the two boys, and then many seasons later, her precious Topsannah. She had lost everything else, her husband, her sons, her People, her way of life. But at least she had her Prairie Flower.

She lay there thinking of what had happened to her in the wilderness for the past few days, of the panther that had become her
puha,
but mostly of the memories that had come back to her of her childhood. There was so much to occupy her mind, so many questions. Would her People have done the things that she remembered—to her own family? She knew the answer: she had been with them on raids, she had seen it with her own eyes, she had taken part in it. It was what the People did.

There had never been talk of "right" and "wrong" as there was in this family, where the parents read from a book they called the Bible and insisted that she and Prairie Flower must learn parts to recite:
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness
: ... Then there was the other thing they always wanted her to say:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.... Our Father Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
She turned her mind away from that.

Her People didn't think about right and wrong. They simply lived their lives, hunting buffalo and making war on their enemies. The white settlers were their enemies. They had come onto the land where the People hunted their food. They had cleared away the trees, killed the game, built ugly cabins like this one, surrounded the land with fences so that neither the animals nor those who hunted them could roam freely.

She had heard the old men of the tribe talking: when the white men came, everything changed. They had to be driven out. She had been part of a white family, and the People had taken her away. It had been difficult for a while, but she had become part of them. She still did not understand why the white soldiers had captured her at the camp by the river or why Uncle had brought her here. Maybe that had been a misunderstanding. But why did they not let her go now when they knew she didn't belong here? Why would they not let her return to her People where she belonged?

Uncle had promised she could go, but now there was a war, "the war between the states," Uncle called it. Everyone talked about it, but Sinty-ann did not understand any of it. Something about the right to own slaves, Uncle explained. That much she understood: the People always had slaves. When someone captured someone else, the captives became slaves. She didn't know where Uncle had captured the dark-skinned people who were his slaves and worked in his fields.

She resolved never to speak of what she had remembered in the wilderness. Not even to Lucy. A young girl with much wisdom, she could nevertheless not be expected to understand Sinty-ann's torment, the conflict she felt. The memory was too painful, and she willed herself to forget what had happened long ago and could not be changed.

Ben had killed the panther, meaning to save Sinty-ann's life, or Lucy's. He didn't know that the panther was Sinty-ann's
puha,
her medicine. For a short time she had had medicine, but she was sure it was gone now, gone forever. As the life of the panther left its body, surely the
puha
left hers.

She lay for a long time thinking about these things, and finally she slept.

In the days that followed the family was caught up in the new life that had come to them. They decided to name the baby Daniel. He was a quiet baby and seldom cried, but he was small and needed to be fed often. Sinty-ann had hidden a little bunch of crow feathers under the mattress to ward off the evil spirits that might be troubling him.

"Grandfather built this cradle," Lucy told her one afternoon as they sat on the long, shady gallery. Lucy rocked the cradle with her foot while she sewed. She was working on a cover for Martha's bed, stitching together small pieces of leftover cloth. Sinty-ann recognized scraps of her own calico dress. It was to be a gift when Martha married Jedediah. Sinty-ann was sewing new moccasins for Papa and Uncle.

"All of us have slept in this cradle," Lucy said. She broke off a thread and looked at Sinty-ann. "What did your babies sleep in? Did they have a special bed?"

"Cradleboard," Sinty-ann explained. She liked to tell Lucy about this, because it pleased her to recall the birth of her sons and the pleasant days when they were infants. "I make a bag of buckskin, very soft, and it is fastened to a board in the back. I wrap the baby in rabbit skin with dry moss to catch his mess, and I tie him in the cradleboard with leather thongs. All day he is in his cradleboard, and I carry him on my back or I prop him in a safe place when I do my work. At night I take him out and clean him and put him in his night cradle. It is made of stiff rawhide so that he can sleep in same bed with me, but I will not roll on him and harm him. He is happy. I am happy."