Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [142]
A cowhide bag hung from the tree outside their door. It was not one of theirs; her mother’s stitching was much neater. Sundance opened the bag. Inside were a bright yellow cloak and a collection of necklaces, bracelets and anklets made of cowry shells and animal bone. The cloak was made of the best deerhide and little silvery bells hung from the hem. The bell in the middle had a strawberry carved on it.
Sundance held the cloak against herself tightly. It was just the kind of cloak she liked. The little bells shook themselves free and jingled cheerfully in the morning air. It was not the first time Sundance had seen gifts like these. She’d turned fourteen this New Year and since then, a series of gifts had begun to appear outside her home. She knew which family this bag had come from, and she also knew that if she accepted it, a man would turn up one evening, walk proudly into her house and sit down at the hearth. Then he would lead her by the hand to another home.
Sundance gazed longingly at the gifts. She had no intention of accepting them because she did not want to move to anyone’s house just yet. She wanted to be left in peace to enjoy the pleasures of being fourteen. She sighed regretfully, then folded the cloak and put it back in the bag. Provided she did not take the bag into her house, it would be retrieved by its owner by the following morning. And when he and she bumped into each other in the future, they would smile and greet each other as if nothing had happened.
Waterfowl skimmed the surface of the river, the sounds of their beating wings echoing in the still air of the village. It was Sunday and most of the tribe were in church. Her mother and younger brothers and sisters had gone too. The priest was a White man. When he first arrived, none of the tribe members wanted to convert to the White man’s religion, but after the Chief was converted, the others had followed suit. It happened like this: one day his wife became possessed by demons; she rolled around on the floor of their house, foaming at the mouth, and bit off half her tongue. The tribe’s healer and the shaman tried to rid her of the demons without success. The priest then brought out a little bottle, poured a spoonful of pink liquid and forced it between her lips. Her fits stopped immediately. “What’s that magic bottle that chased the demons out of her?” asked the Chief. “It’s not the bottle that expelled her demons,” replied the priest. “It’s a spirit called Jesus.” And so the Chief was converted.
Sundance was waiting for her father to come home. That was why she had not gone to church with the others. She would help him tie up the boat and unload the things he had bought. He paddled into town to barter dried salmon and reed mats for rice and charcoal. Last year, great shoals of salmon beached themselves in the shallows. Sundance and her mother spent days drying the fish on a rock at the riverbank. The fish hung in strips from the ceiling, as crowded as dancers at a powwow. Her father had gone two days ago, and was expected back today. Sundance and her mother had asked him to buy them each a little black hat with a brim, of the sort that fashionable White women wore in the city.
The priest knew perfectly well that waiting for her father was just an excuse. Sundance did not want to spend a warm, sunny Sunday listening to the priest’s dry sermons about God. To Sundance, God was as free as the wind and the clouds and did not like being cooped up inside. She knew she was more likely to find God in a bird’s wing than in church. When she made her excuses, the priest did not try to force her; he knew that she could trounce his arguments with a single pronouncement, ready to trip off her tongue when the need arose. So the priest treated her with some caution.