Winter Solstice. The night-shrouded city and its bedroom suburbs wrapped in tentacles of ice—the spin-off from a frigid squall. Around the house on Summit Avenue, demonic whirlwinds pummel four resilient walls. The solid, old house creaks and moans, cold seeps under the doors, frozen branches thwack the window panes. The night-lights flicker ... dim, as Jenny climbs the stairs. A shiver rakes her spine. Daniel hunkers under blankets, sleeping.
She didn’t know were Austin was; concern and dread consume her thoughts. This hellish night, extra covers needed with no mate to keep her warm. She spreads the clan quilt, climbs into bed. Her work day, though productive, had been harried. Weary, body and mind, she curls up, closes her eyes. Against her will, she drifts into a troubled state of sleep. … Only to awaken sometime later by a presence in the room.
Opening her eyes to darkness, she senses a figure at the foot of the bed. “Austin?”
“Yeah!” A shoe drops, then another.
The sound of his voice calms the leap her heart takes. She turns over, her voice hushed, “The roads must be awful.”
“Gul assss.” Sess hiss like snakes about to strike a helpless victim, alerting Jenny.
He peels off the last of his cloths. Foul odors reach her nostrils, pungent fumes fill her head. Strong aversions to alcohol and stale smoke turn her stomach. Suddenly queasy, a hand over her mouth, she tosses back the covers, swings her legs over the side of the bed. Nauseous, she comes to her feet, dashing for the door.
He lunges as she rushes past, grabbing a handful of nightgown. In forward flight, she strains against his grip, throwing her back, wrenching her spine; the snap of vertebra, a ripping sound, her nightgown shredding in his hands.
Trapped, she freezes, pain and panic taking hold of her naked body; she swallows throat- burning bile. Sucking air, a bitter taste, she retches … gasps for breath and sanity; his hands frigid, feral on her flesh. Cold fear strikes, a lightning bolt of disbelief. Who is this man? Escape flashes through her brain. Willing her damaged body to flee, she cannot find strength.
Airborne, one ferocious burst of bone and muscle, they land across the bed, he pins her under him. Grasping her arms, her thighs, brute strength of his hands too powerful to resist. Trapped, she struggles to break free. “Don’t do this … please,” she pleads, for him to hear, not Daniel. If she cried out, their son would come to her defense only to discover … She couldn’t let that happen.
As though he didn’t hear or care, he holds her down; the weight of his body crushing, spurring her will to resist. Planting her feet against his groin, she flexes her knees, a mighty shove against hard tissue, “Stop!”
He loosens his grip one fleeting moment … topples to the floor.
Wrapped in the clan quilt, she startles awake, numb, mind and body, afraid to open her eyes until she could be sure she was alone. Crumpled on the guest room bed, she’d dropped into a troubled trance. Now she trembled, her throat afire, sharp twinges in her lower back brought flashbacks of the night before. Belief, disbelief flipping back and forth, she felt sick, and dirty.
Opening her eyes, she was painfully aware the flashbacks had been real. “Nooo,” she moaned, choking back the anguish that stuck in her throat. Helpless as a child, his strength overpowering, a desperate shove to his groin enough to catch him of balance; she squirmed out of his grasp. Had she cried out, Daniel would have come to her defense. He couldn’t know what had happened.
A cold, gray light crept around the edges of the window shades; beyond, a wretched drizzle. Time? No clock in this room. She listened for the morning sounds her house made: warm air blowing through the ducts. From the kitchen below, dishes clinking, the fridge opened … closed; Austin’s voice, and Daniel’s.
Aching, her thoughts in turmoil, Jenny eased to the edge of the bed. The room spun, her back hurt and her head throbbed. Massaging her temples, unsteady, she stood on drafty carpet. A disheveled robe her only covering, bruises on her arms and legs, the imprints of his fingers clearly visible. Hurting and outraged, she flared. Daniel mustn’t see her like this. She pulled the robe around her, tied the sash, headed for the bathroom.
What had happened had been savagely intense, yet loveless, like nothing she had ever known with him. An assault not a dance. She splashed cold water on her face and ran a brush through disheveled hair. Within minutes, Daniel left the house. Austin footsteps mounting the stairs set her pulses racing.
She couldn’t dismiss what had happened as though it were a nightmare. She had to confront him. Ramrod straight, she padded down the hall and into their bedroom. The walls closed in, trapping her as she’d been trapped the night before. The frightened girl within her would have fled the scene; an outraged, female spirit willed her to stand and fight.
Watching from the corner of his eye, while avoiding her direct gaze, Austin hung a suit, some ties inside his garment bag. He was fleeing.
She scooped up the tattered nightgown from the floor, laying it at the foot of the bed, before she turned to face him. “What happened here last night was crude.”
His shaving kit, some socks he stuffed into the pocket of his travel bag. “I recall a time,” he related coldly, “you wanted to have sex with me. I wasn’t in the mood, but I gave you what you wanted.” The look that crossed his face brittle, “I’d say last night was pay-back.”
The erotic dream. Could he possibly have felt as violated then as she felt now? “Are we keeping score?”
“We have an agreement.”
“An accommodation!” she shot back, hot blood surging through her body. She made no effort to conceal indignation, the bruises on her arms and thighs fire-branded. “You tried to force me.”
He scoffed. “I have never forced you.”
“I told you to stop.”
“You didn’t mean that.” In one exaggerated motion, he drew the zipper on his garment bag from the bottom to the top, flipped the bag across the bed—as though it were a lifeless body—snapped the ends together. “I have never, would never, force you.”
Could he have been too drunk to remember what he’d done, she wondered. Full sleeves on the robe she wore pushed up past the elbows revealing welts in shades of red turning purple. “My thighs are the same.”
He focused on her bruises, winced, abruptly turned away. “We’ve had rough sex before,” he said as if to nullify the evidence of assault.
“That was passion,” she retorted. “Last night was … rage!”
Hurling his bag ahead of him through the hall, he fled down the stairs and out the back door, his car roaring from the driveway.
Trembling, Jenny fled the room where walls closed in around her, the guest room her refuge. There she slumped into the bed, pulled the quilt around her like a shield. She’d wounded him, pierced the shield he’d thrown up to protect himself from her. But at what cost?
Tears would be the remedy she sought; tears wouldn’t come, indignation overriding hurt. She would not let him use her.
That afternoon while she was out Austin left a message on the tape: he’d be in Charlestown overnight, he’d call. He didn’t call. Messages on the tape couldn’t replace the intimacy of so many late-night contacts. Just as well, they needed distance.
This blow-up had been building from the moment Austin learned that Daniel was adopted by the Deer clan. Assault was retribution—pay-back. He’d turned against her. She could do nothing that would please him. Still, pay-back was an ugly game she couldn’t allow to play out.
They went to the Tracys’ Christmas Eve—keeping up appearances; the holiday subdued and strained. Christmas night while Daniel was out of the room, Austin told her he’d be going to State College for a few days—personal business—and he’d be taking Daniel with him. Reeling off the clothes she was to pack for Daniel, methodically, he paced the room, while pangs of terror gripped her heart.
She shook her head, interrupting Austin. “No! I can’t let him go with you.”
He swung around abruptly, his eyes blazing. “What!”
“You drink too much.” Words burst from the pain she felt. “I’m afraid for him.”
“You can’t keep my son and me apart,” he flared.
“I can,” she asserted. “And I will. It would be irresponsible of me to let you take him.”
“Ohhhh, and all of a sudden, you are the Mother of the Year. Ha!”
No longer would she continue this ugliness. She left him there and walked away. She told Daniel she was against him going on this trip for her own reasons. Though he searched her face with a strange, confused expression, he accepted her decision.
If Austin pushed the issue, Daniel would be torn.
All that night she wouldn’t close her eyes, the fire of anger in her belly, and a fear that they would steal off in the darkness. She’d taken a stand against Austin in order to protect their son. She had to see this through.
In the turmoil of that night she had a revelation: The checkmate they had come to wasn’t Austin’s drinking or a trip to State College. Power was the impasse. She wanted it; he had it. Could she find a way to take it from him? Not without a fight.
Early in the morning, a knock came at the guest room door where she’d taken refuge since that awful night. “Yes.”
“Mom,” Daniel called out, “Dad wants to talk to you.”
She pulled on a robe and opened the door to find Daniel, alone, standing in the hall. “Where is your dad?”
“Downstairs.” Daniel went into his room, where an empty suitcase rested open on his bed. He had to know that they were fighting over him; each of them believing they knew what was best for Daniel. Were he to make his own decision, she knew what he would choose. This wasn’t good.
She found Austin gazing through the kitchen window on a cold, clear morning; from his rigid stance, the set of his jaw, anxious to be on his way. She shivered, closed her arms around her belly.
“Danny doesn’t understand why you don’t want him to go with me.” He turned facing her.
He’d turn on the charm in an attempt to win her over. She couldn’t let his magnetism sway her. “Do you want me to tell him the truth?”
“As you see it?” Clearly, his own prospective was what he saw.
“As it is.” Her steady gaze never left his.
He turned back to the window, breaking contact, a full minute. “If it wasn’t for him…” Austin mumbled his jaw clenched. “Okay, Okay. You win. No more boozing.”
Winning was supposed to feel triumphant. This felt hollow. “You’ll give me your word; a solemn promise.”
He turned back to her, looked her in the eye. “You have my word.”
She’d known him to be an honorable man, until … He’d been cruel to her; how could she be certain he wouldn’t take risks with Daniel’s well-being?
The trust she had in him lay damaged, not destroyed. Like a precious keepsake in the bottom of a trunk, it could be resurrected. Her trust rested in a life-force more powerful than Austin, or any mortal man. “I’ll help Daniel get his bag packed,” she said heading for the staircase.
Desolate without them, silver, gold, a lighted tree only made the house on Summit more so. Often in the past, Austin had taken Daniel away on trips with him, for scouts, on golfing expeditions, or games at Penn State. There was something different about this trip. Something secretive and sinister. Or was it melancholia that made her suspicious of Austin’s motives. Jenny couldn’t shake a shocked humiliation, deep despair following that awful night of Winter Solstice.
The week between the holidays, traffic at Creations slowed to a trickle of exchanges and shoppers making purchases for New Year’s Eve. Little remained on the shelves that could be sold. An inventory and re-stocking was in order. And with the help of Peg’s twin girls, Peg and Jenny put the shop in order, completing the year-end financials after a hectic though highly profitable season.
Jenny took a minimal commission on the Native American crafts leaving a sizable portion of sale prices for Aunt Winona to funnel back into the reservation school and at last the clans. With her men away, her home deserted but for one doleful spirit, she saw no reason Aunt Winona shouldn’t have those funds in her possession before the year was out.
Late afternoon light had faded in the western sky when she arrived at the administration building where she left her car. Gramps waited in the shed with his snowmobile in idle. She climbed into a one-piece suit, pulled on boots, warm gloves and tugged a knitted cap down snugly over her ears. Aunt Winona had invited them to share a reservation supper of venison stew, flat bread cheese and wild berry cobbler.
A council had been called. After supper, Jenny and her beloved aunt prepared worn enamel pots of herbal tea and drip-brewed coffee to warn the bellies of clan Mothers and their male escorts. Around seven by snowmobile or pickup, guests began arriving at Aunt Winona’s tidy cabin. Gramps retired with the men to the comfort of the longhouse where they would gather at the fire pit smoking pipes and swapping yarns.
On straight-back chairs, the women, wrapped in native shawls, gathered in a circle close to Aunt Winona’s crackling, woodstove. Jenny sat outside the circle near her great aunt; tribal business the topic of discussion. Aunt Winona reported on the proceeds from the sale of Native crafts; the mothers made suggestions as to how funds could be allotted. Votes were taken in which Jenny took no part.
The council moved on to a subject warming the heart of each woman in attendance. In turn, each clan Mother told of bright-eyed young ones in improving health and welfare who had not only milk and fruit but warm coats, boots, eye glasses, pencils, paper and books; school attendance in a steady climb. Old, gray heads nodded; Native faces, most often stoic, glowed.
The Mothers told of women in their respective clans whose lives had been transformed by association with the trading post at the joining where two sacred rivers flow together into one: Reservation speak for Jenny’s shop.
Jenny’s name had not been brought into the conversation. The Mothers would honor Aunt Winona, for the well-spring of improvements on reservation. She sat silent as Clan Mothers recited the oral history of the Iroquois in their sacred homelands. For them, it was predestined that a woman of the Deer clan would lead the way from darkness into light, as a long-ago native woman of the Deer clan led her tribe from the Burning Fields to the safety of the Lake-Where-the-Great-Mud-Turtle-Dwells.
Edna Slow to Walk, Mother of the Turtle clan, was the last to speak. From a basket at her feet, Edna lifted a bundle, wrapped in plain brown paper, tied with thick red yarn. Arthritic knees hindering her progress as she struggled to her feet. Tortoise-like she crossed the room to lay the bundle in Jenny’s lap.
Jenny gazed down at the wrapping. She had so much in material possessions; these women had so little. How could she accept a gift from them? She must; they would be offended. Her hands trembled as she stripped away the simple wrappings, carefully unfolding the bundle: A shawl, the supplest doeskin, woodland birds, vines, wildflowers, exquisite bead work. Similar to the shawls the mothers wore, each one unique, a work of art. Gnarled fingers, skillful hands, creative souls took part in a tribute that deeply touched a wounded heart.
Tears glistened in Jenny’s eyes, her heart expanding as she gazed into each stoic face. Hard lives, these women had known little joy. How often had their hearts been broken? They endured, found wisdom, striving always for the young ones, the survival of blood and traditions.
She spread the shawl across her shoulders, stood erect in the company of these valiant women who honored her as she honored them.
The engine hummed, a headlight pierced the cold unknown as the runners of Gramps’ snowmobile swoooshed over freshly fallen snow along the ancient trail around the Lake-Where-the-Great-Mud-Turtle-Dwells. Astride the seat behind Gramps, Jenny watched the fire glow from the chimneys in the settlement of Tall Elk until light faded into darkness black as ravens’ wings. The warmth of sisterhood remained.
Surrounding her, a vision of the people who had gone before: Buck-skin cape, leggings, snowshoes, staff in hand, the shaman on his healing rounds, bare-chested warriors on a hunt; a leaping stag magnificent in flight, quiescent in descent when an arrow finds its mark. And women with their young ones gathering wood to feed eternal fires, their babes in cradle boards covered in the finest doe skin, exquisite beadwork in the woodland patterns of the shawl she held against her heart.
No smoke billowed from the chimney when they arrived at the lodge. While Gramps guided his snowmobile into the lean two, Jenny added seasoned logs atop ash-coated coals and pumped the bellows. Flames erupted, the lodge coming alive.
“Sarah would say, you’ve learned your lessons well, Granddaughter.” Gramps lit his pipe, pulled up his favorite chair before the crackling fire. Tobacco had a pleasing smell while burning in a pipe or sprinkled on a sacred fire.
She gathered her shawl around her shoulders, dropped down on the footstool next to Gramps. “Gran was an excellent teacher,” she observed. “I’m not sure how well I’ve learned her teachings.”
“Ahhh,” Gramps nodded, a knowing look in kind eyes. “Humility is one you’ve learned well.” He leaned back, resting his steel-gray head against the faded quilt that covered his chair. “And fire-building another,” Amused, a chuckle escaped his throat.
Fire building, second nature to an Iroquois woman. Humility. Jenny pondered. Could she or any woman be humble and at the same time strong? Humility had a host of meanings.
“Am I low and timid, Gramps?” Fondly, she smiled at him.
He laughed. “No. No. You do have a way about you. An unpretentious way, Sarah would approve. That’s what I meant.”
When she was a young one, people said that she had Sarah’s ways. Where her heart rested, Jenny thumped her chest. “Gran is here ... and here,” her fist thumped her head, “I struggle with the different parts of me.”
A concerned look came into her grandfather’s face. He would hold his tongue no longer. “You and your husband ... there’s trouble between you.”
Only true concern would have prompted Gramps to interfere. “He wants another child. I can’t give him what he wants.” Words stuck in her throat; she pushed them out. “In so many ways, he’s disappointed in me.”
Silence fell between them. The fire sputtered, spit, logs shifted, sparks flew up the chimney. Jenny took the poker from its hook beside the hearth, changed alignment, set a fresh log atop the flaming coals.
Returning to the footstool, the fringe of her shawl brushed Gramps’ open palm. He took the tendrils between his fingers. “The women admire you,” he said thoughtfully. “Sarah was an inspiration; she raised you to follow in her footsteps. You learned that lesson well.”
Gran believed the leaders of her people led best by example, not through haughty proclamations. Aunt Winona carried out her duties in the best traditions of clan Mother. The women looked to her to lead them.
“Ohhh!” Jenny gasped, for the first time, comprehending an obligation resting on her shoulders. “What have I done?”
In the early afternoon on the eve of the New Year, Austin and Daniel returned from State College. The trip, Austin’s words, had gone according to plan. Daniel seemed restless, and unusually subdued. He turned away avoiding Jenny’s eyes; her attempts to draw him out met with silence. A sudden growth spurt resulting in a richer timber to his voice could be the reason for his reticence, she decided. She wouldn’t pry. Yet a sadness she could sense in him concerned her deeply.
In the afternoon of New Year’s Day, Daniel left the house saying he was meeting Robbie at the park. Wearing warn fleece with the Penn State logo he’d brought back from the trip, he tossed a basketball between his fingers. From behind the morning paper, Jenny was aware that her husband and her son exchanged a furtive glance. When Daniel had gone, she folded the paper, lay it on the couch beside her.
Framed in the front bay window, Austin—lost in thought—watched their son jog down the front walk out of sight. There had to be a reason Daniel had left them alone. Gramps’ words that night by the fire came back to haunt her: A man at Austin’s time of life looks back on what he’s done—personally, professionally—adds up the wins and losses, wonders what’s ahead. A wise man ..., her thoughts interrupted when Austin turned to face her, then looked away.
With the toe of a boot on the carpet, he traced leaf patterns. Again, he looked into her face and then away. “You’re not going to make this easy for me,” he began.
“Daniel’s not going to tell me what happened at State College. ... Will you?” She had to know, conjecture served no purpose.
“We had a good talk.” He paced across the room, turned back. “I told Danny, I can’t move up without my MBA. Penn State has a program, an accelerated program,” he amended. “I have corporate approval. I’m enrolled.”
She’d heard him say, not having a degree had held him back professionally. Adding up the score, she thought, at this time in his life. This was leading somewhere. “A leave of absence.”
He laughed. A brittle sound. “They’re saying they can’t spare me for six months. I’ll have the same responsibilities for my region. Things are slow right now ... will be for this quarter at the least.” A distance in his eyes, he drew a breath. “The course work ... that’s an unknown.” His eyes focused out the window.
Now she knew the reason for this trip. Why the secrecy?
“I’ve taken a room near the campus,” he continued, drawing up to his full height while still focused outside. “I’m moving out.”
Incredulous, Jenny murmured, “You’re leaving.” Saying the words made the inconceivable all too real. The room went dim to black. Sight failed her, though she heard with unfailing clarity.
“We don’t want the same things anymore. You don’t want to be my wife.” Pacing, he continued, “We don’t sleep together. It’s all gone sour. I can’t stay here the way things are.”
In paralyzing shock, only Daniel came through clearly. “You’ve told Daniel all this?” Eyes narrowed when she looked at him through a bitter haze, her words an accusation.
“He knows about the program ... and the room,” Austin answered, as curtly as she had spoken to him. “About us, I said, it was grown-up complicated.”
She felt sick. If only she could move, flee this place of pain. This house, a home, where they’d come together with a promise they would work things out.
He would be the one to flee. “I’m going down to pick up Danny.”
Two days into the New Year, he moved out.