Memoir of a Reluctant Shaman (A Story of Native American Magical Realism)

Chapter One

My grandmother's song would make her wooden dolls dance without strings, something I have sought to do in my own relationships without much success. Perhaps my song is not strong enough, or perhaps I would be better off with stiffer relationships than the blood and bone-based lovers I've chosen—or that have chosen me.

Living in cities that are so bright they blot out the stars at night, my lovers have had skin washed pale as fish bellies back home, and I have never quite figured out how to explain to them what happens on our reservation, where stars look new and are strong enough to burn our bodies brown. How do I explain to my vegetarian significant other that he can buy a t-shirt in the tribal store that reads, Vegetarian is an Indian word for poor hunter. How do those for whom meat is something wrapped in plastic you use plastic to buy, make sense of my siblings hacking meat off a still-warm carcass? Do they really understand that the smooth hardness of the drums of mine they touch and admire is the flesh of the animal scraped clean?

Like the hide, I think I have been scrapped smooth—but it wasn't with the obsidian knives of my grandmother, their glassy blackness glittering against the brown fur—no, I've been scraped by the sharper knives of indifference and indulgence.

I was born in the Month of the Singing Frogs, when the wreckage of winter is overgrown by the timid leaves of spring—when the falling snow melts to soft rain and mist that leaves you wet without realization. My mother was in labor for longer than she would care to be—but that, I'm sure, is the attitude of all mothers, no matter how easily children pop out. I was the oldest boy, Pisces of twelve children, with my Aries sister preceding me—alas, she also preceded me in death, (alas? Given the choice I am sure I wouldn't have liked to have been the first of the family through that dark doorway—alas is not the right word). Three of our family have marched through that doorway, two lubed through with alcohol and one who fell in a manner considerably heavier and more permanently than the rains of my birth month. Scorpio, Virgo, and Aries were removed from the calender, in a way Pope Julian would have admired.

I grew up on our reservation, three hours away from anything one would recognize as a city, and five hours' drive from an airport where anything bigger than a crop-duster would take off. At night, the smell of juniper pervades the air. Perhaps the geographic isolation has allowed us to keep our old ways more pristine, but I suspect our attitude is a far better barrier than the simplicity of miles.

Jokiyah would be the one to take Aries, Pisces and Taurus out to bathe in the river and the first rays of dawn, the scent of cedar strong and sharp—we would obediently file into the water, often having to break the ice on its surface to dip our heads under, turning in the four directions. Sometimes ice would form on my braids as I would walk back to the rocky shore. I have such vivid memories of how the water would turn to steam from our body heat in the bitter cold, and bathe us a second time in the whitest of vapors that would lift up to join the clouds. Jokiyah was never permitted to offer us towels to dry off. It was all a ritual (as all is a ritual) to toughen us with skin of stone and to prevent our getting sick. Today, I don't get sick, but I suspect it is my heart that has petrified, while my skin, according to my lovers, is frighteningly soft and smooth as stone.

Jokiyah would be the one to take Aries, Pisces, and Taurus out to bathe in the river and the first rays of dawn, the scent of cedar strong and sharp—we would obediently file into the water, often having to break the ice on its surface to dip our heads under, turning in the four directions. Sometimes ice would form on my braids as I would walk back to the rocky shore. I have such vivid memories of how the water would turn to steam from our body heat in the bitter cold, and bathe us a second time in the whitest of vapors that would lift up to join the clouds. Jokiyah was never permitted to offer us towels to dry off...it was all a ritual (as all is a ritual) to toughen us with skin of stone and to prevent our getting sick. Today I don't get sick, but I suspect it is my heart that has petrified, while my skin, according to my lovers, is frighteningly soft and smooth as stone...

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My hair is touched with blue highlights, like the rest of my family, except for Libra, whose hair is an odd brown, rather than a true black, and whose eyes are coyote like, rather than the dark discs of midnight, torn from a starless sky that the rest of us have—pupils impossible to see.

My hair brushes against the top of my belt, and I use it as a whip against the bone white skin of my lovers, tracing its inkiness slowly, outlining their bumps and curves and traces of bone underneath, until I begin to excite them and my hair begins to strike at them.

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When I brought the first of my white lovers home, Jokiyah was by then an old man. He looked at the blond man behind me and began to cry. I had never seen him weep before, even at the inevitable funerals.

What? I hissed.

He whispered, When the axe came to the woods, the trees said, 'Look, the handle is one of us.'

Chapter Two

When I was fourteen, our family went to New Orleans, officially on vacation but to also visit an uncle who for some reason, had moved to this city of unusual smells (or at least that was my first impression—smells have always been what I notice first, and what I always remember). We went on a bus tour that took us to see the cities of the dead in the St. Louis cemetery. The dead are placed in crypts and elaborate mausoleums because the ground soaks so with water, buried bodies would bob up again like apples.  An interesting place, but one that required our family to undergo a purification ritual, since our people have a death taboo against touching the dead or the things of the dead (oh, of course, except for my Aunt Pork and Scorpio, the sibling who is being apprenticed to take over the role of One Who Buries). Do you feel it? Scorpio asked me, his eyes unfocused.

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I'm trying to sort through the smells. It's not so much the smell of death but the smell of decay. The scent of mold is everywhere. There's a dampness that doesn't seem to ebb but overflows from the crypts. I waved my hand in front of his eyes but he didn't seem to notice. What are you feeling?

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There's a brief time after a true death, he said, his voice now flat. Crap, I hoped he wouldn't start channeling a dead person. Not many things creeped me out, but that was one of them. Aunt Dizzy would sometimes do that. The spirit body is not completely separated from the soul body. The decision needed to be made as to what eventually happens to a person isn't yet finalized.  I feel a lot of that here.  I feel—layers of that.  There was a reason at school he was called Spooky behind his back. It was also telling that no one had ever tried picking on him. Most people had a inherent fear of him.

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He suddenly turned to the left and walked quickly forward without hesitation.  We neared a tomb that had crude dark X's scrawled across it in a sort of mono-graffiti. It was a small and narrow place, a fraction of the size of the storage unit our family locked our heirlooms and valuables in after methheads on the rez started breaking into people's homes. A metal plate screwed to the door identified it as the resting place of someone named Marie Laveau. I had never heard of her. I was bored and wished we were out of this place. Let Scorpio have the cities of the dead. I was destined for the cities of the wicked.

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There are so many little burial places like this, I said, looking around. How many coffins can they put away in these? Our bodies were buried in plain pine boxes that were designed to return our unpreserved bodies to Mother Earth to feed Her hunger.  These cities of the dead went against all of our beliefs.

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Scorpio seemed to be looking for something. In the heat, these mausoleums act like ovens, and bake the bones into dust. After a year, family members come and break the bones and push them into the lower parts of the tomb. Just so, a burial place like this one can hold many individuals.

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Is that what you meant by saying 'layers' of stuff? By this time he was at the rear of the tomb and bent down to pick up a dark chalky stone.  He rapped his knuckles four times on the east wall of the burial place and quickly drew four symbols, but they were symmetrical crosses, rather than the many X's already scattered on the walls of the tomb. To our eyes he  had drawn a medicine wheel four times, designed to represent the four directions. It always felt incomplete to see three used as a sacred number by itself.  We would always use three in combination with four. It added the directions up, center, and down to the cardinal directions, so it provided your precise location in the physical world. It is one of the reasons we call our place of worship the Longhouse of the Seven Drums.

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He looked at his contribution and took a quarter out of his pocket and put it beneath the stone he had just used and returned it to where he had picked it up. That feels better, he said, sounding normal again. Now, wish for something.

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Why? You did all the work. Scorpio being generous should always arouse suspicion.

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It's your birthday month. This saves me getting you a regular present. Because we were such a large extended family, it was rare someone's birthday was celebrated on their actual day of birth. A single date was chosen and then everyone who was born that month would celebrate on that day. It would be nearly two more decades before I would have someone provide me a birthday party on my actual day. I was touched. Not much, but I had appreciated the effort and thought. He put his hand on my shoulder and his braids were caught by a stray sunbeam that lit up the blue highlights in his hair. He was a very beautiful young man. Almost as beautiful as I was. But he had a way of looking at you that made you forget how attractive he actually was. There was a reason his future was entwined with the dead. Wish for anything.

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Are we praying to this Marie Laveau person? I used the word in our language that hinted at to summon as much as to pray. When it comes to spirituality, we are an extremely pragmatic people. And who was Marie Laveau?

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Let's just say she was someone a lot like me. I could hear the sound track in his head. You knew it was just a matter of time before he would single-handedly bring back Goth. So she must have been a local flavor of One Who Buries. In the wrong hands, that could mean some really nasty business. But here she was in the middle of what most people believed to be sacred ground, so she must have been OK. Or hadn't gotten caught.

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"Oh, and by the way, she was never buried here. But so many generations of strangers have come to this place with their beliefs, something has been well fed and continues to grow. Better not to ask for anyone to be hurt—that usually comes back in a way that can hurt you. Best to ask for something of a positive nature."

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What the hell, I smiled. I would have preferred a new CD, but this was probably the best I could hope for from him.  I wish for an adventure.  A strong breeze brought a stink to me that made me squint. I looked at the stone Scorpio had replaced and noticed the quarter was gone.

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We heard our uncle calling us and headed back in the direction of his voice.  In the future, Scorpio said as we got back on the bus, remember it's always useful to put a reference point in time when you make a wish. By leaving it open-ended, it means it might come true in five minutes or fifty years. Many people never realize the wish they made so long ago was granted years later.

Chapter Three

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We walked among the smell of their form of fry bread that was called a bignet—small and greasy and coated with a fine white dusting of powdered sugar. Everywhere were tourists outrageously dressed in mismatched colors. A few streets over was Bourbon Street where many people were sloppy and drunk even though it was still early in the day. They held large plastic glasses that smelled sticky sweet.

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Once when I visited the house of a teacher who was leaving for a new job, I noticed an odd plastic object that hung from the eves. She explained it was a hummingbird feeder. It smelled like those glasses.  I smiled as we