Where the Broken Heart Still Beats (15 page)

Silas is a sober, hardworking man whose patience is tested daily by his bad-tempered wife. (He and Cynthia Ann are the spitting image of one another. Silas is taller and thinner, but they have the same broad faces and stern mouths. It is their way of frowning deeply that particularly strikes me.) None of us escapes the lashings of Mary's sharp tongue—not Silas, nor Silvy, nor Cynthia Ann. Nor me.

Mary insists on calling Prairie Flower "Little Barbarian" and makes it plain that she does not want her young son Samuel or little Rose Ellen to associate with her. How she can resist those bright eyes and the dear smile is beyond me, but to Mary, Prairie Flower is simply another Indian, a savage to be despised. Like Mrs. Bigelow and Mrs. Raymond and our other neighbors in Birdville, Mary has begun a "scriptural cure," making Prairie Flower sit still for long periods each evening while she reads Bible verses to her and tries to make her memorize them.

Twice now since our arrival she has caught Prairie Flower speaking to Cynthia Ann in the Comanche language, calling her mother by her old Indian name, Naduah. Mary became furious, lost her temper, and slapped the little girl. But Silas says nothing or is not here when there is an incident, and it is not my place to interfere.

Cynthia Ann reacted quite calmly, seeming more sad than angry. "Don't hit her," she said both times and led Prairie Flower away. "She can speak however she likes." It is as though she has become resigned to her fate. But I don't know that she truly has.

She does her best to help out, understanding that these are difficult times. Soon after our arrival, Cynthia Ann told Silas, "I can gin and card cotton, spin, weave, sew—all these things. And I can prepare skins, make moccasins, harnesses, whips, everything. I will work hard."

He seemed to think about this, for his tannery makes nothing but boots nowadays, and ordinary citizens cannot buy shoes and must make do with what they have. (Mary frets that she will not have pretty slippers to wear to the fancy dress balls of Tyler if and when she does have a chance to go!) "All right," he said at length. "You can make moccasins for all of us, including the slaves. And help out Mary, if you will, please—do whatever other such work needs doing."

The next day Silas gave her a corner of his shed where he has assembled a few tools for leatherworking. In no time at all word spread to the nearby farms that she is here; everyone knows her story, it seems. The curious come to gawk at her and the child, and the visitors bring their broken harnesses to be mended or place an order for a whip or some other item of leather.

One gentleman drove all the way down from Grand Saline with a couple of deerskins. She set to work immediately and soon had made a buckskin suit, which Aunt Mary bartered to the man for flour and other staples. Cynthia Ann gave me the scraps, from which I have fashioned a pair of work gloves for Uncle Silas, who seemed pleased. I can think of nothing to do for Aunt Mary that would be equally pleasing.

Now I have discovered Cynthia Ann's secret: while she does her leatherwork in the corner of the shed, she is teaching Prairie Flower her Indian ways. I was passing by on the path to the privy, heard quiet voices, and paused to listen. It was Cynthia Ann speaking to Prairie Flower in what I thought must be the Comanche tongue. When Prairie Flower answered in English, her mother corrected her. This interested me, for I have not heard her speak to her little daughter in that language since she made her promise to Grandfather in exchange for
his
promise to take her to her people. All of that is impossible now with the war, and since we came here we have put many more miles between Cynthia Ann and her people.

Over a year has passed since her rescue and return to her family, and I believe that running away is no longer uppermost in her mind. But if she has accepted her life and circumstances
for herself,
I believe strongly that she is preparing Prairie Flower as best she can so that the child can join her people when the time comes, whenever that may be.

And another secret: I have noticed that she and Prairie Flower go for walks in the piney woods nearby when the weather is mild and the work is done. The Negroes are to be guarding her by turns, but they are quite lackadaisical about it, believing, I suppose, that she would not go far for the same reason they do not: someone would surely find her and bring her back.

Yesterday I followed them. Cynthia Ann seemed to know exactly where she was going; it was not an idle stroll. I stepped carefully, keeping a good distance behind her. Presently they came to a little clearing. When they stopped, I crouched among the low growth. From this blind, I watched.

Using a tree branch as a broom, she swept off a place that seemed already smoothed. Then she marked a circle on the ground with a stick and drew other figures inside the circle that I could not make out. Meanwhile, Prairie Flower was sent to gather twigs and moss. I held my breath when she came in my direction, but she moved on without seeing me.

With a flint Cynthia Ann started a fire, so small that the smoke was unlikely to be noticed. From inside her shirt she drew something—a man's pipe!—and filled it with what I took to be tobacco, or perhaps a kind of herb, which she lit with a piece of kindling from the fire.
Where had she gotten the pipe? The tobacco? What was she doing?

Having neglected to bring my warm shawl, I shivered with cold in my hiding place, my teeth chattering, but was too fascinated to leave. Cynthia Ann went on with her ritual, puffing on the pipe and blowing smoke this way and that. Then the two began singing softly, a sorrowful tune that tugged at my heart.

When it seemed they had finished, I slipped away quickly, returning to the cabin by a roundabout way. I had much to ponder. All of us believed that Cynthia Ann had truly found her way back to our ways and was bringing up the little Indian Prairie Flower to behave like a white child, but she is, in fact, doing the opposite. How long has this been going on? I ask myself if I should tell Uncle Silas about the scene I have witnessed. And what good would it do? Perhaps he will discover it for himself. And I can only imagine the ruckus it will cause when Aunt Mary finds out!

All through the warm, damp days of spring, Cynthia Ann listened to them argue. Her brother Silas, a kindly, gentle man, was married to an angry, complaining wife who took him to task for everything that was not as she wished it, and that was a great deal.

"Why, oh, why," Mary would begin in a voice as sharp as a needle, "has it become my lot in life to live with this strange woman you claim is your long-lost sister and that little barbarian of hers?"

"Now, Mary," Silas would reply soothingly. "Please don't take on so. It's bound to get better, I promise you. It just takes some getting used to, some patience on both sides."

"Patience!" Mary would snort. "The good Lord has apparently left me well short of that!"

Cynthia Ann pretended not to hear their arguments. Mary sometimes yelled loudly and once hurled one of her delicate china cups—the ones she kept on the high shelf and used only for guests, the ones she would not allow Cynthia Ann to touch—against the cabin wall. When she saw the shattered blue-and-white fragments on the floor, Mary threw herself onto the bed and sobbed as though her heart were breaking. All over a china cup.

At these times Prairie Flower would stop whatever she was doing and run to hide in the privy. On the day that the china cup was smashed, the little girl fled to her hiding place and refused to come out, turning the wooden block nailed inside the door so it could not be opened from the outside.

"No!" she shouted when Cynthia Ann tried to coax her out.

"She will come out when she wants to," Cynthia Ann told the others, secretly pleased at her daughter's stubborn determination. But hours passed, and Prairie Flower stayed locked in the privy. Cynthia Ann went to talk to her again.

First she spoke in the white man's language. "Come out now," she said. "Not nice to stay in there."

"No," Prairie Flower said. "Stay here."

Then Cynthia Ann switched to the Nerm language, explaining that no one was going to hurt her. "Aunt Mary hit," Prairie Flower said. Cynthia Ann promised that she would not allow anyone to hit her, although she was not sure she could prevent it if Mary flew into one of her rages.

Prairie Flower began to cry.

"Open the door," Cynthia Ann begged. But she had only Prairie Flower's sobs as a response. Finally she turned to Silas. "We must do it," she said.

Without a word Silas brought an iron bar and pried open the door, which then had to be taken down and repaired and put back up again. Prairie Flower crept out cautiously, looked around, and ran headlong into her mother's arms. Cynthia Ann soothed her, stroking her hair, whispering to her, and carried her to the corner of the shed where she felt secure.

That night Cynthia Ann heard them arguing again.

"I can't send them away," Silas said to his furious wife, whose belly was beginning to show another child. "They're kin. And besides, Mary," he added, "the legislature has made me her guardian. The hundred dollars a year comes to us now instead of to Uncle Isaac."

"I don't give
that
for the money," Mary stormed, snapping her fingers. "And as for being kin, I say they're not! After what she's done with those filthy Indians, she's not even white anymore—I don't care what you say! And look at that child! If ever there was a savage, it's that girl! People like them give up their right to be called kin, Silas. I can't believe you'd allow such people around your own children, and around me in my condition!" Then the rage gave way to tears.

For several days after that outburst no one spoke, and the cabin was filled with a heavy silence, the way the prairies sometimes got before a tornado whirled across the land ripping up a path of destruction.

Then it was as before. Mary made sure they got the leavings of their meals, serving them lesser portions on the same tin plates the Negroes used. When Silas was away at the tannery supervising the boot making for the army, Mary fed them in the lean-to with the Negroes.

Through all of this, as though she heard nothing, saw nothing, understood nothing, Cynthia Ann kept her face a perfect mask and did her work. She didn't know what would happen to her, and she didn't care. Everything now was for Prairie Flower.

All the white women from the beginning had insisted that Prairie Flower must speak only the white people's language. First it was Anna and Mrs. Raymond and Mrs. Bigelow and Mrs. Brown who made her recite those words from their book. And now Mary, who dared to slap her for using the Nerm language, for calling her mother Naduah.

Cynthia Ann had promised Uncle that she would learn the white people's language and ways in return for his pledge to take her back to her People. But she had promised him nothing about Prairie Flower.
Topsannah.
The child seemed to be forgetting her own name! The war had come, war among white men, a much bigger war than anything the People had ever known, and that kept her from going back. She didn't blame Uncle; she saw that he was truly sorry.

But now she knew that she must get Topsannah ready to return—tomorrow or in another winter or whenever the time came. The child must not forget her language, and already there were signs that she spoke the white man's language even more readily than her own. She must learn to prepare skins so that when she returned to the People she would be able to make clothing for her husband and children and tipi covers for her family, and she must learn to recognize wild plants to feed them when there was no meat.

When Prairie Flower came with her to the shed, she talked softly to her in their language, taking care not to let the others hear. Silas's boy Samuel was always looking for her to come and play, and she knew that Prairie Flower wanted to be off with him, but Cynthia Ann insisted. Every day she would teach her a little, so that she would not forget.

Lucy often came to the shed to work on some gloves. Sometimes Lucy appeared suddenly, and Cynthia Ann recognized by the look on her face that she had overheard them murmuring together. But she knew that Lucy would say nothing, certainly not to Mary, whom she disliked—that much was plain!—and probably not to Silas. Cynthia Ann had come to trust Lucy, young as she was, more than any of the white women she had met. And she was sad to think that Lucy would be leaving soon, returning to her own home, her own mother.

"I can't stay here long," Lucy told her while she stitched, "I came so that you would not be so lonely at first." She looked around. "But I'm afraid...," she trailed off.

"Not lonely," Cynthia Ann tried to reassure her. "I have my little girl."

"I know," Lucy said. Then she took a deep breath, perhaps summoning her courage. "Your son Quanah is distinguishing himself among his people," she said. "You must have been proud to hear the farmer say that."

Cynthia Ann nodded but kept her eyes on her work. "His name means Sweet Fragrance," she said. "Quanah was my name for him. A good name."

"A good name," Lucy agreed, but her voice showed that something troubled her. "But why must he raid our settlements?" she burst out.

"It is what he does," Cynthia Ann explained, but she knew this didn't satisfy Lucy and that nothing would. "He is Nerm."

When a man from somewhere to the north brought deerskins for a buckskin suit, Cynthia Ann managed to speak privately with him before he left.

"Do you have any tobacco?" she asked.

He looked at her oddly, a smile twitching the corner of his lips. "Picked up some bad habits from those Injuns, did you?" he asked.

"Do you have any tobacco?" she repeated as though she had not heard him.

"I'll bring some when I pick up the suit," he said. When he came back to collect his suit, he slipped the little packet of tobacco to Cynthia Ann with a broad wink.

Cynthia Ann hurried to the shed where she had hidden a pipe, one of Silas's, which she hoped he wouldn't miss. One or another of Silas's Negroes was supposed to be watching her, but she had explained to cottony-haired Jim, "No need for you to come. We're going for a walk. We will come back before sunset." The old dark-skinned man seemed relieved and nodded, turning away. Neither of them was free to leave, and both knew it.