(novel except)<\/i><\/p>\n
My grandmother stood differently after she saw the world end. Those who remember say before, my grandmother looked as though she were a fairy merely alit upon the earth who might be blown away by the next breeze. Only one foot would anchor her \u2013 the other seemed always to be drawing patterns in the dirt. Her fingers even fluttered a little as they hung at her sides as though the wind had the power to stir them.<\/p>\n
But since then, she stands solidly in place, both feet flat against the ground, both hands at her hips, her head always raised; eyes watching the horizon. She looks to the distance then looks at me, looks off to the wayfaring sun then back at me, considers the quickening moon and studies my face. For sixteen years, I\u2019ve grown up watching her gaze move fluidly from tender, when I\u2019m its subject, to fiercely alert when she looks off into tomorrow.<\/p>\n
She presses her fingertips more firmly into her pelvic bones, wrinkling the symbols woven into her robe, and looks down to where I am kneeling on the forest floor in my farm plot. I have intercropped twenty plants, and I seek the last sown. They await me under sallow gold nightbloomers clenched tightly as sullen mouths against the evening light. They have risen, their slender stems a green barely more opaque than the iris of an eye, covered with fine hair like mammalian skin. Mbuya\u2019s Flower. They are named for my other grandmother, my Grandmother Nour\u2019s slain co-wife, who created them. Unaltered, they spring up a mass of sharp double-triangle petaled flowers, fair blue diamonds that look like the stretched open mouths of baby birds. You see them and think you hear cries. I\u2019ve always imagined a series of \u201cwhys?\u201d But these here in my plot are my transformed version of her creation, hybridized until six times the original amount of petals form a circle around the calyx. My flowers suggest sound, too: a revelation\u2019s \u201coh.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brewed into tea, Mbuya\u2019s Flower gives you an energy slow to kindle, slow to fade like a melody laboriously fixed in the memory and hard filtered from it. I\u2019m trying to create a version whose effects are concentrated within the span of a day. I push the nightbloomers farther back, so Grandmother can see. She nods down at me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s good, Yaa. They came up. That\u2019s the first thing, little girl. Now you\u2019ll just have to test them and see if they work the way you want and if they\u2019ll reproduce.\u201d She turns her attention from me back to the far off.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you,\u201d I whisper to the forest, hooking my index finger around the stems of several close grown plants and snapping them free.<\/p>\n
I go with Grandmother out of the woods back to her home. I live with my parents but am often three houses down in our family compound with Grandmother. She is twice widowed, having survived both my grandfather and my other grandmother, and death seems to render stark and over-bright the round, white-resined, earthen walls of her one-room home. The white has a merciless purity, is under-tarnished. The hard dirt floor is swept rarely, its smooth darkness little troubled by footprints. There is an expectancy within her eight-hundred-year-old walls as though the air is poised for a call and a reply. Grandmother opens her carved ebony door, and I prepare to build a fire for the experimental tea. I lay the flowers on the floor. Too casually gathered to be a bouquet, they seem like wilted sky fallen through the smoke hole of her thatched roof. Grandmother looks at them for a moment, then goes to retrieve a portrait from where it lies face down on a small hibiscus wood table.<\/p>\n
My grandmother holds the photograph of my other grandmother delicately, without touching the surface, the fingertips of each hand pressed against the edges of the portrait. \u201cShe would have loved you,\u201d my grandmother always says of her to me, and the assurance of her love has always summoned the reciprocation of my own. In the picture, she is robed with keen simplicity. Her hair is in squash blossoms, bordered with cornrows, glinting with gold chains fine enough to have been spun by spiders. The photograph is sepia. Loss seems intrinsic to sepia to me. I imagine if you looked at a sepia photograph of someone still living, it would seem marked by the past perfect tense.<\/p>\n
<\/i>There is a riddle to photographs. Some make their subjects look as though they are caught behind glass, inaccessible and silenced. Others render their people suspended, stilled as though waiting to be hailed like a saint statue in a shrine, listening for your call, ripe for weeping for you. It is not the photographer who determines on which side of the dichotomy the subject falls. It is not the sitter \u2013 or the captured \u2013 either. Something within the subject dictates which type of picture she will be, and it\u2019s something intrinsic and beyond her power to disguise or alter. The wonder of pictures is this \u2013 some people look as though they are alive forever in them, as though when you turn away they turn as well and return to their business in a world to be found within, beyond the paper, and when you turn back, they turn back, smiling at you, waiting to be retrieved. Some people in pictures can be summoned. But my other grandmother \u2013 like a hand raised too quickly for the shutter to capture or the blurred beating of wings \u2013 she looks as though she is already gone.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Grandmother replaces the photograph on the table as the water comes to boil. \u201cShe has her eyes almost squinted shut in that picture, you know?\u201d she asks me as she returns her hands to her hips. \u201cIt\u2019s as though she could see what was coming, could see it was too terrible to be borne\u2026\u201d She moves across the room and pushes open the door to stare out from the frame. I tear the blossoms from their stalks and drop them in the pot.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrandmother,\u201d I whisper. \u201cI know you miss her the most this time of year.\u201d Grandmother comes out of the doorway and turns to me with a smile so artificial she only succeeds in crafting a fraction of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m all right, little girl,\u201d she says as she sits. \u201cGo on, and get the cups for our tea.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe I should have altered a plant somebody else made,\u201d I say as I ladle. \u201cLike your sister\u2019s hypergrain \u2013 I\u2019ve been thinking of trying for a version that boils more quickly…\u201d Grandmother stares into her tea. Brewed lightly, it\u2019s the color of twilight; the longer you steep it, the more it approaches dusk.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou did right. Your other grandmother would have been so proud.\u201d She inhales the scent, closing her eyes and drawing in her breath slowly as though the fragrance might have come from my other grandmother\u2019s wrists or nape. \u201cI was thinking \u2013 if we start our Telling now and have the energy to stay awake until morning to finish it, we\u2019ll know your flowers work. That\u2019s all we can do until you replant to test for fertility.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is a knock at the door, and Grandmother gets up to answer it. On the other side is a couple a generation older than she with traveling bags at their feet. Both the man and the woman have long hair that same rare white that tends towards neither blue nor ivory, but the woman\u2019s is pulled back in elegantly arranged dreadlocks while the man\u2019s is as flat as undisturbed water. Grandmother reaches out her hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWelcome, Auntie. Welcome, Uncle,\u201d she says. I rise to shake the strangers\u2019 hands as well before setting out some groundnut cakes. I glance at the old woman\u2019s earrings. Threaded wampum seashells the soot-violet of procrastinating thunderclouds drift just above her shoulders telling me she comes from a village set on a river. The seashells don\u2019t start until inches beneath her lobes though, clicking mildly against each other from under the strung porcupine quills that come from the north. The floating quills and wampum descend from disks made of interwoven small, round, bone beads. Every other bead on the perimeter is coated with ochre. Red Creek Village.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve come a long way,\u201d I tell her in the Red Creek language. \u201cWill you and Uncle stay with us tonight?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMay we?\u201d she asks my grandmother. \u201cWe still have another day and a half\u2019s traveling before we get to our oldest daughter\u2019s family. Going to stay with them for the Ghost Homecoming.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are welcome,\u201d my grandmother replies. While the old couple eats, my grandmother reads their robes.<\/p>\n
In the beginning, she was walking the road alone \u2013 there, over in the Far Continent. She was a merchant, on her way to do business, and they kidnapped her from the road\u2026 Her grandson worked in the mines. The first time he talked back, they pulled all of his teeth. The second time he talked back, they impaled him on a metal hook and left him to die. His dying lasted many days\u2026 In the beginning, the Forest Grandmother was running on her way to become trees. She tripped over a large stone and bled into the water turning the creek red\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n
<\/i> We, on this island Where There Are Many Shells, are a people who were once two peoples. The island is one of our homelands. The Far Continent is our other. Half of our ancestors were made, in the beginning, from this earth, and it is on this ground they were colonized five hundred years ago by people who came from beyond the sea. The conquistadors stole our land and exterminated most of the people it belonged to, driving those who survived into the west, and they stole our other ancestors from the Far Continent to work as their slaves. We rebelled as one people before we became one people, and we drove the Sea People away. They stayed gone for centuries until my grandmother\u2019s lifetime.<\/p>\n
Like their ancestors, that new generation of pink folk stole our gold mines with a haste bordering on instinct. They forced our men to excavate them until they emerged from the earth dusty and shining like the resurrected. We learned their language Macaulay because their whips could not distinguish between noncompliance due to incomprehension and defiance. The words for our island were \u201cterra nullius,\u201d unused land belonging to no one. Once more we managed to send them back. But they shattered our world like a dropped mirror before they left it.<\/p>\n
Our antipodal ancestries are why we are all the browns and blacks of wood, of metal, of earth, why our hair may or may not consent to curl around your finger, accept and hold a braid, or part at the behest of a fine tooth comb. And each of us has a story of how, within our own lineage, those from there and those from here became one. The symbols in our robes make legible our blood.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u201cYou staying here for the Ghost Homecoming or going to visit family?\u201d the old man asks.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stay here in Strong Medicine City,\u201d Grandmother says. \u201cMy co-wife, our husband, our sixteen children \u2013 their spirits return to this compound for Homecoming.\u201d The old man lowers his plate, and Grandmother senses the manufacturing of an appropriate condolence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re doing our Telling tonight,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you\u2019ve done yours, we won\u2019t mind if you go ahead and sleep, but if you haven\u2019t, you\u2019re welcome to join us.\u201d The old man looks at his wife.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe would be honored to join your Telling,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cGood,\u201d my grandmother replies. \u201cYaa, go and get some blankets. I\u2019ll pour our guests some tea.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Origin Telling may be shared only once a year, during the week that precedes the night of the Ghost Homecoming. Before we call the dead back to earth, we acknowledge that there was an earth before us, and we remember the time of the first people \u2013 folk who might have found themselves vulnerable to or willing to engage in transformation but who never died. I extend a woven blanket the grim turquoise and blacksmith\u2019s orange of sunset to the old couple before kneeling on the floor beside Grandmother and wrapping us up. Grandmother begins to speak, and the old couple and I close our eyes. You listen to a story, but you dream a Telling. It\u2019s not enough just to hear it \u2013 as with a hymn, you must fit it to your soul\u2019s own understanding.<\/p>\n
\u2026It was still upon them: the memory of being dust. A moment ago, they had been else: earth and then earth quickening, earth and then earth breathing. They rose from the ground a marvel of fingerprint and footprint, swallowing and blinking, but they could still recall before \u2013 their dusthood. They were the First Man and the First Woman, then, before summer had come twice to establish itself as a season, the First Father and the First Mother\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n
\u2026Every day the First Father went hunting with his spear, every day, until he was a Grandfather and a Great-grandfather and a Great-great-grandfather. Then, one evening, when he was running after a stag, the creature stopped and turned and stared at him. <\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cWe are no longer enough to feed all of you,\u201d the stag said\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n
\u2026That evening, the First Grandfather repeated the stag\u2019s words to the First Grandmother. She looked down at her hands; then she looked up at him.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d he told her. But she didn\u2019t lower or change her gaze\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n
\u2026That night, they lay down beside each other, but when morning came, the First Grandmother was gone. The First Grandfather whirled outside searching for her until he saw her, far, far away, at the other end of the island. She stood tall, her feet flat on the ground, her arms outstretched.<\/i><\/p>\n
\u201cStay,\u201d he called to her. \u201cStay, and be human with me.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
But she said, \u201cI\u2019m not changing. I am life and the giving of life. From now on our daughters will have wombs within them and within the earth. I will become plants, and our daughters and granddaughters will tend me. They will bring life, birthing it from themselves and raising crops from the earth and drawing water from the rivers. We will care for each other and go on.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Dust to flesh, now wood. That was all. And everything that grows from the earth \u2013 vegetable and fungi, tree and vine, bush and grass \u2013 those are beings that came after that moment, from her.<\/i><\/p>\n
Grandmother\u2019s arms remain outstretched like tree branches after she finishes the story of the Forest Grandmother. Her head is thrown back, and her face, animated by neither wariness nor adoration, looks hardly human. She could be either woman or wood, and I resist an urge to call her back to me from what seems an impending metamorphosis. Finally, she lowers her arms and looks at me. She smiles.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou did it, little girl. You got us through the night.\u201d She turns to the old couple who are both still awake and raises her empty cup. \u201cThis tea came from my granddaughter\u2019s first hybrid. She bred it from my co-wife\u2019s plant Mbuya\u2019s Flower.\u201d<\/p>\n
The old woman leans towards Grandmother and looks at her. She takes the cup from Grandmother\u2019s hand and squeezes her emptied fingers. She glances back at her husband.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou should have told us you were Mbuya\u2019s family — we would have stayed in another home. The week leading up to the Ghost Homecoming must be almost more than you can bear\u2026 My husband and I would have understood if you had turned us away \u2013 we lost a daughter and a son in the Massacre.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grandmother pulls her hand away. The old couple looks at each other and stands, and Grandmother goes to open a gold urn that stands by my other grandmother\u2019s picture.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere,\u201d she says, offering them a handful of dried original Mbuya\u2019s Flowers faded to the blue of canine eyes. \u201cChewed, these should keep you on your feet until you get to your daughter\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
The old man shoulders their bags, while the old woman pours the flowers into a pocket of her robe with grave care as though they were gunpowder or stardust.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you,\u201d they tell her. The old woman grasps my hand with discrete urgency. \u201cYou look out for your grandmother, hear?\u201d<\/p>\n
I nod as Grandmother looks on. She appears to be watching after the old people as they leave our compound, but she\u2019s not. She\u2019s vigilantly inspecting the morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Place beneath Falling Stars (novel except) My grandmother stood differently after she saw the world end. Those who remember say before, my grandmother looked as though she were a fairy merely alit upon the earth who might be blown away by the next breeze. Only one foot would anchor […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1863,"parent":148,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1461","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1983,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1461\/revisions\/1983"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue17\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}