Gold Mountain Blues - Ling Zhang [143]
“My grandfather was baptized before your father was even born” was what she might say—but did not.
Sundance’s grandfather was English. He had arrived by ship several decades before, sent by the Hudson’s Bay Company to open up a trading post in the Fraser River valley. He bartered goods like matches, kerosene, bedding, needles, thread and pipe tobacco with the local Indian tribes for skins and pelts. He was not the first White man to have come to the West coast to trade with the Indians. His predecessors had had dealings with the Indians too. From these White men, the tribes had quickly learned a few business tricks like mixing good and poor-quality goods, price fixing and holding back merchandise to hike up the price. So to ensure a stable supply of goods, Sundance’s grandfather allied himself with a local Indian chief by marrying his daughter, even though he already had a wife in England.
Sundance’s grandfather lived in British Columbia for fifteen years and had seven children with his Indian wife. When the time came for him to retire and return to England, he told her to move to the city so that their children could go to a White school and get the best possible education. The wife did as she was bid, but before many months had passed, she returned to her tribe. She could not settle in the city; the sound of drums beat in her ears day and night and she knew that her ancestors were calling her back home. So back she went.
When Sundance’s grandmother returned to her tribe, after months in the city, and years in a White marriage, she discovered a large number of children who looked very much like her own. They were the children of the White men, conceived as they passed like a whirlwind over Indian territory. The mothers often gathered together to talk about their menfolk on the other side of the ocean. On these occasions, Sundance’s grandmother would say little, and would come home to impress on each of her children that they were not the same as the others. “Your father was sent by the great Hudson’s Bay Company. He once had a personal audience with Queen Victoria.” The marks left on her by fifteen years of marriage could not be erased; although she had returned to her own people, she found herself a stranger among them.
She never remarried. Her English husband had left her quite comfortable and she did not need to go looking for another man, unlike the other women. He never returned once he had left British Columbia. Sundance’s father, the youngest of his children, was only a toddler learning to talk when he left. He had no memory of him. But it became Sundance’s grandmother’s mission to keep her husband present, her words like a hatchet rigorously chipping away until he was permanently carved into her children’s memories.
Those memories trickled gently into the bloodstreams of her grandchildren too. She lived to a great age, and even witnessed the birth of a great-grandchild. Long before that, though, she went through the money left her by her husband, and spent the rest of her life struggling, like the rest of her tribe. Still, she wore a satisfied smile, knowing that she had fulfilled her mission: her children’s children and their children would keep the memories of that man alive a hundred years.
The sun was very bright and Sundance shaded her eyes with her hand. She could see far into the distance to where the redwood trees looked no bigger than a row of nuts. There, around the riverbend at the end of the village, was where her father would emerge. She heard the sharp cry of a bird in the pine tree by her door. Though it was hidden in the gloom of the branches, Sundance knew it was a blue jay. Her father said that her hearing was sharper than an elk’s.
“What are you trying to tell me? Is my dad coming?” Sundance asked, looking upward.
The bird was silent. But the branches rustled a little. Sundance could not help chuckling. Holding her hair to one side, she lay down and pinned her ear to the ground to listen. When the canoe rounded the bend, she would be able to hear the ripple of the water on the paddle.