38

After that evening I told the story, the tribe seemed less awed by Bear Necklace. They seemed to welcome me more. Maybe actually like me.

One afternoon, when Súmáí and I returned from hunting, unsuccessful, his mother sat, as she often did, on a log, legs crossed, stitching beads onto a lap-sized piece of elk skin. She eyed the cloudless sky. “The Great Spirit is angry. No game. No rain.”

I realized then that it hadn’t rained but for a sprinkle since I’d arrived. I remembered the yellow snap of the grass beneath my slippers as Súmáí and I had descended the mountainside.

“You should travel through the trees to hunt again.”

Súmáí shot her a look.

His mom eyed me. “She will be fine here without you.”

He shook his head. “I do not know the way of the trees about this. We are here, now. I will not gamble.”

She sighed and said to me, “I will teach you to bead?”

I must have looked stunned, because Súmáí nodded like It’ll be okay. Not wanting to add to his mother’s resentment, I settled beside her on the log and crossed my legs. She eyed the cloudless sky once more and handed me a piece of fine thread and a needle made from a porcupine quill. She passed me a hand-sized scrap of elk skin with a grid traced in charcoal.

She took a chunk of wax and said, “Do this.” She held a piece of thread down against the wax with her thumb and pulled the thread across it. “It makes the thread strong.”

I watched Súmáí walk to our tepee, longing to follow. I took the wax from her and mirrored her movement. It released a fresh, sweet scent. She threaded her needle, so I threaded my needle.

“Make a knot in the end.” She demonstrated how to twist and tie off the thread. “Begin at one corner, and then slide on the beads you desire.” She modeled this, pushing the needle through a piece of rawhide and then dipping it into a bowl of tiny orangey-red beads and loading it full. “Draw the needle back through.” She returned the needle through the rawhide. “Take a second needle and thread”—she waxed and threaded a second needle—“and stitch down the beads.” With the second needle, she moved horizontally, stitching down the string every two beads.

“For a pattern, you must plan. You can draw it in the dirt first.”

I repressed a laugh. Fully formed patterns and equations cluttered my head. I stared at the grid on the elk skin and it seemed like a gateway. What did I want to create? Alternating colors? A diamond shape? I surveyed the beads to choose from: white, blue, orangy-red, and purply-black. A robin swooped down and pecked at the dry ground. I pictured the cover of Angelou’s book, that blackbird flying straight up in silhouette.

I loaded the needle with red beads for the border. Súmáí’s mom watched me, leaning in, the closest we’d ever been since she’d dressed me that first night. I bit my lip at how it conjured Mom leaning close to pat my leg.

Súmáí’s mom nodded when I completed the first row. For the next row, I loaded one red, then filled the needle with blue beads for the sky. Nine beads in, I loaded a white one as outline and mirrored the rest back out to the other border. On the next row, the white beads moved out in a narrow triangle, two black beads between for the beak. When I started on the bird’s wings, Súmáí’s mom watched closer.

My stitches were tight and the image clear. I felt proud, but my brain was also running full-tilt, happy to be turned loose in the task. I finished the spread wings and moved down the silhouette to the tail. I finished off a last row of all-red border along the bottom as the day’s light began to fade and Súmáí returned.

“You have been working long.” He crouched beside me at the log’s end. “You like beadwork?” We still spoke Spanish since I was better at it.

“Once I start a thing, I get into it.” I tied off the last bead, cut the thread with a knife, and smoothed the scrap on my knee.

“I have sharpened your knife and arrows, and—” He ran his finger down the bird. “You made this?”

I shrugged.

“I have never seen its like.” He looked at his mother, who had long since gotten up and started cooking dinner.

“Right,” I said, sarcastic.

He eyed me with a puzzled expression. “You have not learned beadwork before?”

“No. Why?”

His mother came to stand behind me and looked down at the scrap resting on my leg. “She has a gift,” she said.

“Gift? ” I said, sarcastic again. But I did have to admit that it had turned out cool. The relaxed way my brain felt was even better.

“Thank you for teaching me. It is only good because you made the lines,” I said to her.

She smiled then and touched my head. It’s hard to explain how that touch felt. The closest I can come is her touch + looking at that beaded bird = forgiveness for killing Mom.

“It will become a tobacco pouch for your father,” she said.

Dad doesn’t smoke, I thought, and then realized she meant Chief Úwápaa. I blurted a laugh, and they both looked at me. I pressed my lips tight to keep from making another noise I’d regret.

Moving to the fire’s far side, Súmáí’s mom bent down to the pot and stirred it. “It is okay to accept a gift.” Her eyes were dark and sure, despite the wavering heat rising from the flames. “You must choose which battles are worth fighting.” Her gaze darted from Súmáí to me with an expression that held years of suffering and loss. But then she smiled, and I saw it held happiness too. “Tomorrow, daughter, I will teach you to make the pouch.”

It took me forever to work up the courage to present the pouch to Chief Úwápaa.

“He can be difficult, but it will be fine,” Súmáí said.

“I know,” I said. “It’s not that. I’m out of practice at … this kind of thing.” Accepting a gift takes a certain strength, but to give one, I was realizing, was much harder. Each day I’d hunt with Súmáí and try to picture myself standing before his village, giving their chief that pouch, and I just couldn’t. Such a simple thing, yet it drove me crazy.

Finally, I said, “Okay, I’ll do it,” because I realized I’d never feel ready. It happened under the third full moon, around the campfire, before the stories began.

“For the kindness you’ve shown me,” I said.

Chief Úwápaa accepted the pouch and stared at it so long that the kids started to squirm. He held it up for the audience, its soaring beak aimed heavenward.

A few people said, “Oh!” A bunch nodded.

“Thank you, daughter,” he said.

I shuffled to the back of the circle, to a seat beside Súmáí. He took my hand and squeezed it. He kept hold of my hand, turned it up, and while his uncle started a story, he ran his fingers across my palm and then across my wrist. I blushed as a few faces turned to us. Súmáí rose and led me away from the fire, through camp, and out its eastern side.

“Where are we going?” I said.

He only smiled back at me.

The moon was a spotlight, and I’d grown used to seeing at night, so walking was no problem. When he crossed over the tributary from Silver Bowl, I guessed we were headed to the pool from my first day here.

We arrived, and Súmáí stripped to just his breechcloth, so I did. We lay our amulet bags together. At the water’s edge, my reflection stared back. Each time I’d filled our water basket, my reflection had lurked, but I’d avoided it. Now I studied it.

After so much time with the Utes, seeing my light hair and skin startled me. I saw myself as Súmáí must, and realized that when we’d first met, I must have been as unappealing to him as he’d been to me. My hair had grown easily three inches since then—the mornings now held crispness, and the Indian paintbrush had given way to late summer’s purple asters. Aspens here and there were yellowing.

I leaned out over the water to view my reflected chest. I went to roll back my shoulders but realized they were already back: I no longer hunched. The bruises had faded, and the scabs had evolved to a necklace of rose-colored scars. I bumped my fingers along them, from one clavicle to the next. I looked back at Súmáí. He watched, his edges lit by the moon.

“Don’t move,” I said. I stood before him and, starting at his feet, traced his outlines. “I want my hands to remember your shape.”

“Remember? I am here. Now.”

“Just let me finish,” I said. I ran my fingers over the muscled curve of his forearm, the knob of bone at his elbow, the undulation in his biceps and into his shoulder. I traced up his Adam’s apple. I put a lock of his hair into my mouth, pulled it out the far side, and kissed him. Though we’d kissed plenty, I’d always stopped things before they went too far. Now I didn’t want to stop the intimacy.

Night’s chill pressed my skin, but his palm against my lower back was warm. Instead of pulling back after the kiss like I usually did, I molded myself against him. His face held surprise and gladness and a tenderness that made me gnaw my lip.

Súmáí rose and moved to the illuminated side of the rock. He picked up the hip pouch he always wore and pulled something pencil-shaped and white from it. He started scraping on the rock with its tip. I stepped behind him, wrapped my arms around his waist, and rested my chin on his shoulder, watching.

“What’s that in your hand?” I said.

“Elk bone.”

His muscles tensed as he pressed hard into the sandstone. It became a figure in pants and a shirt with hair my length. Around its neck, he ground dots.

“That’s me!” I said.

At the end of one sleeve, he ground a knot, and from that started another arm that moved up to become another shirt, pants, and person with even longer hair.

“That’s you!” I kissed the tip of his ear poking through his hair.

He scraped bows over our shoulders and strings across our chests. Beside him, he scraped a tree. In its branches, he ground a round shape with spikes coming out. Beside me, he scraped a bear. He stepped back.

“You’re pretty good,” I said.

He scraped, in the space above our joined hands, the shape of my heaven-bound bird. The whole drawing looked like a first-grader had made it, yet it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

He turned to me. “A wedding gift,” he said.

I literally jumped into his arms and wrapped my legs around his waist. He took two steps forward, pressing me into the drawing. I held up two crossed fingers, and he pressed his head against them.

He carried me to the pool, careful with his footing off the bank into sand that had been submerged in the swollen runoff of early summer. Even in this light, the pool was transparent. I lay back and the stars pressed down. Súmáí’s hands came to my neck and butt, holding me suspended.

From the darkness came the snap of a branch and snuffling.

We waded to the pool’s far side and slunk behind the boulder. I shivered, thankful that the rock still radiated the day’s heat. A bear sauntered out of the forest, nose lifted to the air. It looked toward where we hid and grunted.

I sucked in my breath. My hand came to my scars and traced each healed indentation as the bear moved to the pool’s edge. Above her left eye curved a crescent scar, and I searched for her cub, straining to hear its bark. I willed her to call for it, but she didn’t.

She lapped water from the pool, her tongue rapid and translated gray by the light. She drank for a long time. Súmáí took my hand and squeezed it. She glanced at our movement but returned to drinking. Finished, she stared at us.

“Where’s your baby?” I said.

Her head tilted. She sort of sneezed, yet not a sneeze, more like a furious Uh! She lashed the shore with her claws.

Súmáí stepped back, drawing his knife, but I stayed right there.

She tilted her head to the side and then plopped down like a dog, revealing dried-up teats and a blood-hardened slash, long as my forearm, across her chest.

“Oh, Mom!” I stepped forward. “What happened?” My first English in so long.

“Sovern!” Súmáí said.

The bear lashed out at air, roared drunkenly, and collapsed to her side. I ran above the pool and crossed the creek on three stones.

“Sovern!” Súmáí said.

“It’s Mom!”

He loped above the pool and crossed on the stones.

I reached Mom and kneeled beside her. She grunted but didn’t move. I ran my fingers along the slash on her chest. Up close, it was infected and smelled rancid.

“Súmáí, you stole medicine from my world too. Yes?”

“Medicine? ” he said. “There were things that were not food.”

“Do you still have them?”

“Yes.”

“Can you bring them to me?” I said.

“I will not leave you.”

“Súmáí! This is my mother!”

He bowed his head, no doubt struggling with the thought of leaving me alone with a bear, Mom or not. He crouched beside me and kissed my forehead.

“And a needle and thread,” I said.

He sprinted off.

“You’ll be okay, Mom,” I said. “Where’s your cub? Is she dead?”

I pictured Súmáí the second time we’d met, miming an explosion. I saw how pale Gage had been when Súmáí had visited our world. Suddenly I understood: two Soverns could not exist in the same world. One me had to die, and I’d erased her cub.

I heard Dad say, This is our life. This is what we’ve been dealt. What had I done? I moaned and rocked myself.

After a time, I returned to our clothes on the pool’s other side. I slid on my bra and tied on my leggings. I gathered my shirt, Súmáí’s clothes, and our amulet bags. I hopped across the three stones at the pool’s top. I tied the sleeves of my shirt around my waist and shaped its body into a bowl. Kneeling at the water’s edge, I filled it and shuffled to Mom, emptying it along the slash. Mom whined and weakly lifted a paw.

I returned to the pool and rinsed the slice again. The wound’s edges softened, so I drew my knife from its sheath at my belt and stared at its blade, gathering courage. I hummed “Blackbird” as I scraped, sometimes cut, along the places where the wound had grown infected. I gagged on the smell as I wiped off her infected flesh in the grass.

Mom’s breathing stayed shallow, and she’d grunt or lift her paw, trying to wake, but each time she fell back into unconsciousness.

I filled my shirt and rinsed the scraped-out wound. Coyotes howled—loud and close—and I readied for action, but their eerie yips skirted us and trailed up the mountain. I knelt back down and studied Mom’s face, with her slack lip caught on her fang. I reached out and ran my finger over her crescent scar. “I’m not letting you die this time.”

A rush of movement and a thump at my side made me flinch. Súmáí stood over two boxes. The top one had a porcupine needle stuck into the cardboard, next to a stick with thread spooled around it. Beside the boxes, he dropped our bows and arrow quivers.

The cardboard and the boxes’ hard rectangular lines seemed so out of place. It brought to mind the Condo. The red “+” sign that labeled all ski-patrol shipments marked their tops. Below that, also in red, Wash had written Sapphire East. I ran my fingers over his writing. Dad – Mom = y. Me + Mom-bear = x. The symmetry of this box being here, now, made variables seem part of some great plan. Probability, one test in fate’s game.

I tore open the top box and found bandages, Band-Aids, aspirin, ibuprofen, and hot-cold packs. I tore open the second box. Among other supplies were two bottles of hydrogen peroxide and two tubes of antibiotic ointment. “Thank you, Wash,” I whispered.

Behind me, Súmáí dressed. He moved to my shoulder as I opened one bottle of hydrogen peroxide.

“Careful,” I said. “This is going to sting.”

I sloshed hydrogen peroxide onto Mom’s wound. It foamed like crazy in her raw flesh. I leapt back as she growled and lashed with her front and back paws. I sloshed it again, and she lashed out again. The third and fourth times, she just rumbled and lifted her lip to feebly bare her fangs.

Súmáí watched, wide-eyed.

“What is that?” he whispered.

“It kills the sickness in her wound.”

“It is magic?”

“No. Just science,” I said.

“Science?”

I sighed, letting the hydrogen peroxide do its work. “It’s one of the things people have figured out about how the world works.”

“In your world, man can stop death?”

I started to say no, but stopped. I considered antibiotics, immunizations, surgeries, chemotherapies, tracheotomies. “Sometimes. We can stop death for a while, but everyone still dies.”

“Sovern,” Súmáí said tenderly. “I saw her once when you were very young.”

I bowed my head and nodded. “I remember. After that, you became the scary monster of my childhood.”

I could feel him brace behind me. “You have known me many years then.”

I blinked, seeing that memory. I saw all of us—Gage, me, Mom, Dad, my ski-patrol family, Súmáí, his mother, Chief Úwápaa, and Túwámúpǘch—caught up in time’s vortex.

Súmáí rested his hand on my shoulder. “I did not see your mother beyond when you were young. Did something happen to her?”

“Uh-huh.” I couldn’t look at Súmáí and say it, so I peered to where the moonlight gave way to darkness. That dead deer, from the first day we’d hunted, was right there with me. So was Súmáí’s mom, gazing over the fire, her eyes sure despite the wavering heat. You must choose which battles are worth fighting. I brought my hand to my stomach, and beneath it my innards calmed in a way that I knew would last. “She died,” I said.

“This is why you came to the tree? Seeking your mo-ther?”

“Uh-huh.”

Súmáí ran his thumb along his jaw. “I sought my brother.”

“Did you find him?”

He thought for a moment. His mouth set, and I knew he’d decided against telling me something.

I wanted to press him for information, but instead I said, “What was your brother like?”

“He laughed often. His smile … ” Súmáí shook his head. “His eyebrow dove and his lip soared—he made me laugh, even when anger took me.”

“You miss him.”

Súmáí looked at me hard. “I live to honor him. To honor all my people who have died.”

I reached for the antibiotic ointment and squeezed the tube’s contents into my palm. I spread it down the wound’s length. Mom had settled into sleep’s even breathing. I grabbed the needle from the box, held it up against the moon’s orb, and threaded it. I tied a knot in one end, like Súmáí’s mother had shown me. I took a deep breath and pressed the wound’s edges together. Mom’s skin was tougher than I’d expected as I pushed the needle through. She moaned but didn’t rouse, and I remembered the night I’d brought Dad to Mom through the recreation path spruce, how my body, strained beyond its limits, had forced me into unconsciousness despite how hard I’d fought it.

I pushed the needle through the other side and tugged the thread tight. I repeated the process forty-six times, careful to space the stitches so the wound could ooze. I tied off the thread at the end and cut it with my knife. I found a bottle of antibacterial soap in the box and washed my hands in the pool.

“We will need to protect her while she sleeps,” Súmáí said.

I nodded.

“A blade made that wound. A blade not from my people. This is not the way of a Ute. In the morning, I must warn my father.”