Ghost Woman

GHOST

WOMAN

Books by Lawrence Thornton

Unbodied Hope:

Narcissism and the Modern Novel

Imagining Argentina

Under the Gypsy Moon

Ghost Woman

Naming the Spirits

Tales from the Blue Archives

G H OST WOMAN

Lawrence

Thornton

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

University of California Press

Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

First Paperback Printing 1999

Copyright © 1992 by Lawrence Thornton

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thornton, Lawrence, 1937.

Ghost woman / Lawrence Thornton.

p. cm. — (California fiction)

ISBN: 978-0-520-22068-3

1. Indians of North America—California—Fiction. 2. Indian women—California—Santa Barbara—Fiction 3. Santa Barbara (Calif.)—History—Fiction. I. Title. II. Series.

PS3570.H6678G48 1999

813 *.54—dear 99-19875

CIP

Printed in the United States of America

10 987654321

The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and

totally chlorine-free (TCF). It meets the minimum requirements

of American Standard for Information Sciences—

Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,

ANSI Z39.48-1984. @

To Toni

GHOST

WOMAN

PROLOGUE

Soon after she was born her father entered the hut. Look how beautiful she is, her mother said. Yes, he answered, she is perfect. He ran his hands lightly over her arms and shoulders, and then he looked at her face a long time, searching for clues. After a while he went to the mesa and returned with a handful of herbs, knelt beside the child, and rubbed the ball of his thumb back and forth over the leaves, which left a fine green residue on his fingers. As he held out the fragrant leaves for the child to smell, he named her Sage. The word required a catch in the throat, a glottal stop at the beginning, so that her name burst forth suddenly on her father’s tongue.

In the first winter after she reached the age of understanding, Sage and five other children were sent to the storyteller’s hut to learn about the universe. They had seen the old woman many times in the village. She was thin as a tule reed and her face was a tapestry of wrinkles, but she looked different in her hut. Light fell through the entrance, making an oblong of yellow all the way across the floor, where she sat working her mouth, getting ready to talk. Seated cross-legged on the clean earth, arms hugging her knees as she watched them coming in, she seemed powerful as a shaman.

After they had gathered around her in a circle, she cleared her throat and warned them that they must listen very carefully, because the words of stories were more rich with meaning than those they used every day. There was a special way of telling that lay halfway between speech and song, and they had to pay attention to the rhythms; otherwise they would not learn what they had to know. Listen to what I say, she said. Take it with you and let it seep into the marrow of your bones.

Her eyes mirrored strange and wonderful things when she began to tell the stories. There were three worlds, she said, the one where they lived, the one above, and the one below. Upper World was the home of Sun, Coyote, and Eagle, whose black wings held Upper World in the air. He stretched his wings when he grew tired, and that caused the phases of the moon. If there was an eclipse, it was because his wings covered the silver disc completely.

Middle World, where human beings lived, was supported by two huge snakes whose writhing caused the earth to shake. It was flat and circular, and the island where they lived was at its center. Supernatural beings lived there as well as in the sky, and of them the swordfish were most dangerous. Eight of them hid in a cave beneath the sea, where they hunted whales and ate them raw. Evil as they were, they benefited people by driving whales ashore for them to eat and use their bones for houses.

The storyteller sang that Lower World was the home of the Nunasis, who came out after dark to work their power, and she warned them always to bathe early in the morning before the Nunasis returned from going around the world, for later the water would be steaming because they bathed there too.

One of the Nunasis took the form of a man who put trees and rocks into his mouth and swallowed them without chewing. Another had a broken leg and went hopping around the world, making trouble for human beings. He lived on the mainland, and they could see the smoke of his cooking fire if they looked very hard. His brother made sounds in the trees like a newborn baby. This Nunasis looked like a cat, and whenever he cried, someone was about to die.

She sang of death in a soft, lilting voice, telling them that the soul stayed at the grave three days and visited familiar places one last time before traveling to the Land of the Dead, where it waited to be reborn. On the way across the ocean these souls might be seen as shining balls of light arcing through the sky. The place where they were going could be reached only by crossing a bridge above a dangerous body of water, where they could look down and see the damned undergoing punishment for their sins in life.

Take this knowledge with you, she said, looking at the children before her. Let it seep into the marrow of your bones.

She waited a little while until she was certain that her words had taken hold, and then she began again, her voice pitched higher, as she explained that the universe was an orderly but uncertain place ruled by supernatural beings. It was they who made the seasons come and go, commanded rain to fall, and allowed plants to grow in all their greenness. The happiness and sorrow of human beings, their lives and deaths, depended on old man Sun, who lived above the sky and followed a trail around the world wearing nothing but a feathered headband, so proud was he of his naked power. Every night he returned to a crystal house filled with animals that walked and crawled and flew at his bidding. The crystal house was many times larger than the chiefs lodge, and its walls and ceiling and floor were thicker than the trunk of the stoutest tree. Think of the brightness of the midday sun, the storyteller said, and then imagine the whole sky like that, and you still would not know the power of this light, which is so strong that you might look into the eyes of any of the creatures living there and see into their skulls.

Then she said that the crystal house was the badge of the power of the sun. It was there that Sun decided their fate in a gambling game, theirs and that of all their families and of their ancestors who had gone before. After Sun went home with the light of the world, he called the other supernaturais to him. Sun and Eagle sat across the crystal floor from Coyote and Morning Star, and Moon hovered outside, looking down as referee. From a shiny box Sun removed a pair of dice like those their fathers used in games, and then he removed the counters. When they thought that they heard thunder, it was the sound of dice on the crystal floor.

The supernaturais played throughout the nights of every year and finally, at the time of the winter solstice, Moon spoke through the ceiling and said that now they must decide who won. The counters were arrayed in stacks, and when the winner was declared, there was a great rejoicing. If Coyote won, there would be plenty of rain in Middle World, and the rain would bring more than enough to eat. But if Sun emerged the victor, the debt to him was paid in misery and human lives.

She looked at each of the children in turn before dismissing them with a gesture of her hand.

Take it with you, she said. Let it seep into the marrow of your bones.

One

THE SACRED

EXPEDITION

1

Living as they did at the center of the world, Sage’s ancestors had no way to know that a pair of earthly dice had been tossed across a table in Mexico City three days before Christmas in 1769 when the visitador-general in New Spain dispatched a band of friars and soldiers on a sacred expedition into Alta California. But they heard the rumble of thunder over the next twenty years as the missions sprang to life and the friars lured their brothers on the mainland into the compounds with gifts of colored cloth and strings of beads, playing on their love of beauty. Once the villages surrounding the mission of Santa Barbara were emptied, the friars set their hearts on the salvation of the islanders, and there was a great commotion in the sky. Soon a deputation accompanied by a Chumash translator sailed to San Nicolas, and shortly after returning with a small group of Indians, Captain Walter Stafford, owner of a schooner called the Enterprise, was commissioned to remove the remaining members of the tribe.

On the day of the ship’s departure clouds hovered low on the horizon to the north. A storm was brewing, and the Enterprise made good progress on its winds, dropping anchor in a bay called Dutch Harbor an hour earlier than Captain Stafford had calculated. He did not like the look of the sky and quickly ordered the crew to lower the longboats and make for shore, where the Indians waited, unaware that in the crystal house Sun was already raking in his winnings.

While it was still dark that morning six men lit pitch torches from the cooking fires and everyone in the village set off for the ridge that ran the length of the island. Sage, her husband, and daughter walked in the middle of the procession, but the sputtering torches frightened the child, who did not stop crying until her father lifted her onto his shoulders. Once the girl was quiet, Sage deliberately fell behind as the flames moved up the hillside, wavering left and right with the bearers’ steps. It seemed important to watch her people make their way to the cliff where they would wait for the first sight of the ship, but their shadowy figures quickly merged with the darkness until nothing remained except moving flames. She felt herself floating in the darkness, alone with the gods whose shapes were held in arrays of fading stars. She had not been afraid since the fighting ended, but she uttered a little cry because of the loneliness, quickened her pace, and hurried up the path until she once again saw familiar figures outlined by the flames and heard her husband’s labored breathing.

After they reached the cliff, the six men sank the sharp ends of their torches into the ground, and the flames bronzed their faces as they gazed toward the still-dark channel. A stiff breeze bit at the otter skins everyone wore against the morning chill. It blew the torch flames into dancing shapes. When the eastern sky reddened, sea elephants in the cove below slithered from their caves to flat rocks above the sea, and soon the great males were roaring in disputes over territory. Gulls rose from their nesting places and wheeled in pink light before swooping down for remnants of fish abandoned by the sea elephants, whose barking echoed from the cove as the people waited for the ship coming from the thin blue line of the mainland. Children fretted, parents admonished, mothers nursed infants, and Sage waited for someone to speak. She wanted words for the same reason she had fallen behind in the procession — because she needed to understand this momentous day. Yet the silence did not surprise her. Over the last few years they had used up their tongues in talk of fighting, exhausted what remained of their words weeks before, when the ship had glided through the black rocks to the cove below their village and anchored close to shore. White men in longboats came to them, and among them was a man from a strange tribe who understood their language. He said that the white men’s priests would give them a home in a place surrounded by fields where all manner of food grew in abundance, said that there would be more to eat than they could find on the island now that the traders had killed all the otters.

Sage remembered everything as she looked across the channel at the mountains running north and south as far as she could see. The land always seemed large, but this morning it was enormous, and she was afraid of going there. She stared hard, as if by effort alone she could see the great lodge where tonight her family would gather around a fire for their first meal in their new home, but all she saw was the endless stretch of land and the sharp ridges of the mountains.

She was so intent upon the land that she did not notice the white speck on the sea until her husband and two women pointed. At first she saw only whitecaps; then the square shapes of sails and the dark hull appeared. The ship did not seem to move for a long time, but suddenly it became larger and rode high on the sea. One of the young hunters who had worried that the white men meant to steal their possessions and leave them to die without weapons or provisions apologized for his fears. She had not been afraid in that way, but the sight of the ship made her feel small, as if she could hold herself in her hand.

When the ship came closer, its whole length became visible. As it sailed parallel to the island everyone remarked on its strength. Men wondered aloud how the white men had built such an enormous thing. While they speculated about the ship, Sage was studying the sky. A steady wind had been blowing since they reached the cliff. Clouds massed low and heavy on the horizon to the northwest, and the wind moaned in the trees. Heavy swells began buffeting the ship, and an elder sitting beside her husband said they should hurry to the cove and be ready for the longboats, for the sea would soon be dangerous.

The burned-out torches stood abandoned on the verge of the cliff. As the people descended the path, the edge of a dark cloud masked the sun so that Sage could look at it without pain in her eyes. She judged the speed of the storm against the veiled sun as gulls flew low overhead, rushing for cover. Beyond the black shapes of the dead torches the roars of the sea elephants were lost in the wind. She wanted to tell her husband that they should slip into the woods behind the village and hide until everyone was gone, but even as the idea formed, she felt like a silly girl who could not accept things as they were.

Four longboats waited at the edge of the beach. White men wearing shiny black capes and hats impatiently helped her people into the boats. They all wanted to be with their families, and there was much confusion because the wind was howling so loudly now that they were forced to shout at one another. Her husband and child disappeared in the crowd. She tried to follow them, but a bearded sailor took her by the arm and guided her to another group, where she found her parents.

It began to rain. Sheets of driving water blew parallel to the sea as the boats set out across the cove, bobbing up and down on the swells and almost disappearing behind a shadow of rain.

In a little while she saw people looking down at her from the ship’s railing. The boat dipped suddenly, and she had to grip the sides to keep from being tossed overboard. Sailors threw down lines, which their companions used to pull the longboat close. One by one, the islanders climbed the rope ladder and were pulled over the side.

She was the last to come aboard. As soon as she felt the deck beneath her bare feet, her husband took hold of her. She welcomed his embrace, but instead of holding her he pushed her away at arm’s length, asking for their child. She answered that she had seen the girl with him on the beach. No, he said. I thought she was with you.

There was no sign of her daughter. Breaking her husband’s grip, she pushed through the crowd toward the bow, where sailors worked the rigging. When she reached them she saw her daughter running up and down on the beach. She screamed her child’s name, grabbed the nearest sailor. As she pointed to the beach, the ship began to turn in a slow, shuddering are. She found the man who knew the white men’s words and begged him to tell the captain to stop the ship. The captain listened, shook his head, spoke quickly, and walked away The man told her that the sea was too dangerous to put a boat ashore. The captain would return for her child the next day when the weather was better.

The ship leaned to the right, jerked level, rose on a huge swell. Across the deck her husband and parents were pointing at the beach. Shouting her daughter’s name, she ran to the railing, mounted, and jumped feet first into the sea. The frigid water struck her calloused soles, forced itself into her nostrils. She went down and down, spread her arms, felt her dress rise over her head and then subside as she lost momentum and rose with flailing arms and kicking feet. When her head broke the surface she drew in a draft of air and struck out blindly, paddling like a dog chasing sticks thrown into the sea. She coughed, gagged, arched her head. A wave loomed, blotting out the island. She felt herself rising, felt the rough vines of the kelp dragging against her arms as she was carried to the crest of the wave; from there she saw her child running up and down. She raised her left hand, shouted the girl’s name, but the water stopped her words as she careened down the face of the wave and a length of kelp twined round her neck as she plunged to darkness.

Something ran across her face.

Torches sailed like arrows through the air, fell on her, burned her flesh.

She heard the rumble of thunder, the screech of gulls.

When she opened her eyes only one let in light. The sun burned straight overhead. She closed her eye against the glare, heard the surf again, the gulls, and also something she did not recognize, a soft and sliding sound.

Later she moved her arms. When she tried to straighten her legs, a sharp pain came from deep inside her bones. She heard the sliding sound again, voices that were not voices, a roar that was not the surf.

She opened her eye. A huge sea elephant stood twenty paces away. Beyond him others crowded together on the rocks. The male’s mouth was open, his head tilted to one side as he watched her. She tried pushing herself away, but when she moved, pain made her cry out and the animal roared and rushed. His large, pointed teeth looked made for killing.

Her arms trembled with fatigue. She was afraid to move, but she knew that she could not sustain her weight much longer. She slowly brought her left arm up to her side, then her right. The animal watched as she rested her weight on her elbows. Then it rushed again, closing the distance between them by three or four paces. When it roared again she wet herself. She felt the warmth against her thighs. She could not move. She willed her body to become a bruised and bloody stone, tried to control her breathing, to move nothing but her one good eye.

In the cave behind him females stared placidly as cubs sucked their teats. She remembered sliding down the wave, the silence, the kelp around her neck, her daughter looking out to sea. She called her daughter’s name, and the dry, croaking syllables were answered by the sea elephant’s roar.

The cove lay many paces from the beach where her daughter was. She imagined the child huddled beneath a tree on the embankment, talked to her, told her to find a place in the sun, told her that she was coming.

She heard the creature breathing. Its black eyes gleamed above scars that ran down its neck and sides, some narrow, some wide and smooth. She remembered how the great males fought, remembered horrible wounds and gushing blood. She imagined the teeth sinking into her neck. Then she had a more terrible thought. Perhaps her daughter had wandered up to the cliff above the cove. If the animal killed her, her child would see it happen. She studied the rim of the diff. Nothing but a clean line against deep blue sky.

She could not think clearly any longer. Her side ached, her arms ached and went numb. She closed her eye, but she still saw the sea elephant and her child. She felt herself slipping to the sand, tried to stiffen her arms, heard the roar.

The animal was eating her child. She sat up screaming, but the cove was empty and so was the cave. All that remained of the animals was the heavy scent of their droppings. She cried with relief that it had only been a dream. She breathed deeply, and as she stood, the pain made the sea blur. Her otter skin dress was stiff from dried salt water, crusted inside and out with sand. She looked at the rocky point. The tide was coming in. She had to go now if she was to escape, because soon the water would cut off her route to the beach where her daughter waited.

Her first step made the pain blaze like a hot ember in her side, but she continued walking through the animals’ tracks. The pain eased by the time she reached the rocks, and when she came down on the for side she saw the northern end of the cove. She had told the child that if she was ever lost, she should stay where she was; someone would find her. She was a good, obedient girl; she would be waiting near the beach. Sage called her name, searched with her good eye. Kelp and tree limbs were scattered everywhere. It had been a terrible storm, and this knowledge made her call again as she went to the place where the girl would be. It was empty. She turned to the channel, hoping to see the boat bearing her husband and family, but the sea was empty and smooth as the inside of an abalone shell. The land where her people had gone was a distant blue shape in the mist.

On the embankment she found a basket of utensils, picked it up, pushed through the undergrowth, ignoring the branches that scratched her arms and the brambles that caught her feet. She stumbled, rose, and plunged on to the village, where she found huts untouched by the storm; the place of worship with its great curved whalebones stood solid and enduring. A wild dog she had befriended appeared from the trees and ran forward, wagging its tail and whining. She burst into tears at the sight of the dog, called to it, knelt down, and scratched its head. As she did, she glanced at her family’s hut. The hide used to cover the entrance was closed; she remembered tying it open the morning they packed their possessions. She rose and ignored the pain in her excitement as she shouted her child’s name and rushed across the clearing, tore the hide away, and saw the girl curled like a dark half-moon.

That night she made a fire in the shallow pit on the floor of the hut and lay down, wrapping her arms and legs around the shivering child, who whimpered her mother’s name once before falling asleep. She pressed herself against the child despite the pain, would have pushed her back inside her womb if she could. In the middle of the night she felt the child trembling, and as she pressed closer she told herself that the ship would return in the morning. She dreamed of the day she bore her child, dreamed of the ship on the sea.

When she woke at dawn the child was shivering more violently. Sage pulled her dress over her head, wrapped it around the child, and whispered that she would return very soon. It was cold under the trees leading down to the beach and she was ashamed that the white men would see her naked body, but all that was important was that the men put her child in some safe place on their ship.

The sun warmed her skin as she waited. When it was overhead and the ship had not come, she went back up the embankment. It would come tomorrow, or later in the day. On the way back she passed a fresh water spring. A stone bowl lay at the edge and she filled it. As she returned to her hut the wild dog came out of the woods and followed.

She raised her daughter’s head and rested it on her lap. She spoke, but the child did not answer. Parting the girl’s lips with the thumb of her left hand, she dipped the fingers of her right hand into the bowl and let drops of water fall into the child’s mouth. The girl coughed, swallowed, twisted away.

That afternoon she coaxed the dog near with the bowl of water. When it began to drink, she struck the animal on the head with a stone and it fell to its side, shivering and making strange sounds. She struck again and again until it no longer moved.

The basket of utensils contained a bone knife, a bone needle, a sea elephant’s tooth, a scraper. She made an incision the length of the dog’s stomach, parted the skin, cut through the muscles, and removed the intestines. She skinned the dog and cut the meat into strips so thin that light shone through when she placed them on the drying rack. She scraped away every bit of flesh from the hide before securing it to the rack and making a small fire beneath it. Then she returned to the hut. From time to time she left the child to test the skin for dryness. That night she wrapped her naked body around the child and fell into a dreamless sleep.

The next day the skin was dry. She removed her dress from the child and put it on. Its warmth astonished her as she carefully wrapped the child in the dog’s skin. She made a fire and cooked a strip of meat, then she chewed a small piece, biting through the tough fibers. After reducing the meat to pulp, she put it between her child’s lips, but the girl did not wake to eat, not even when Sage shook her.

The shivering and sweating stopped. Sage told herself that this was good. She tried not to think of how the child’s skin looked like the belly of a fish, or how her breath was labored and without rhythm. She remembered children who had been ill and how, days later, they had run through the clearing. She imagined her child outside. She saw the ship as it would look coming into the cove. She ate the meat.

The next day she cooked another strip, chewed it to softness, and put a small portion to the child’s lips. When she did not respond, the woman wondered whether she should force the meat into the small mouth, but she was afraid of choking her. Once again she ate the food, telling herself that it was good the little one was resting. The girl’s breath came more regularly now, though it was so shallow that Sage put her hand on the thin chest to relieve a fear that had come upon her when she woke.

She went to the beach, and the sea was blue and the sun sparkled on the water. As she gazed at the emptiness, she realized that her injured eye was letting in light through a narrow slit. She had feared that she was blinded, and now that she could see a sudden happiness came upon her. It was a good omen. Today the ship would come. She sat down, determined to stay until she caught sight of the sails. The mainland was very clear. She could see the veins in the distant mountains and tried to imagine what her people were doing.

The day grew warm, and the sea was motionless except for thin surf. There was no wind, and she told herself that was why she had not seen it. The ship lived on wind. In the afternoon it would come. The wind always sprang up then. Never in her memory had it not.

When she entered the hut she saw her daughter’s open mouth. A fly crawled on the upper lip. She brushed the fly away and sat down, cradling the girl in her arms. All afternoon she never took her eyes off the child’s face. For a long rime the word tried to come, but not until it was dark could she say it. Then she screamed, and wild dogs barked in response.

She carried her child to the burial ground on the ridge above the village. She tried to think of the spirit world, repeated as many rituals as she could remember.

Afterward she set out along the ridge, realizing that this was the first rime in her life she had been alone. The only thing that made her feel alive was grief. If it were not for her grief, she could have been a leaf blown on the wind. The sea and the island had always been her friends, but now they were only things. The power invested in them by the tribe’s beliefe meant nothing. She felt betrayed, and cursed the land and the sea.

At the northern end of the island she descended the ridge to a narrow