The Religion of Loss
Spring sunlight trembled slenderly down the sides of rough trunks. Scratching in the underbrush. What . . .
“Quick! Get your pail!” Along the scant deer trail my mother’s urgent voice sped.
“But you can’t put light in a pail!” I was six years old, running after.
In wet spring leaves at a maple’s base, she brushed unruly hair behind her ears, scuffed at the moist mat of last autumn’s leaf fall, startled and pointed. A thin beam of sun graced a faded cross leaning into old bark where an Ojibwa man died, poisoned by his lover for loving Morel mushrooms more than her. they poked up from his body, curled and succulent to the tongue, o-da-naw-naw, brown buttery, paw-gay-son, soft as plums in my mother’s hand. From death to live, this is what she told me:
“The Morel mushroom looks like it has a brain which doesn’t attach to its head.”
I clapped my hands to my head to see if my brain were attached.
“But the poisonous mushroom, its brain cap does attach to its head. See? Ack! Poisonous.” She mock-frowned, squatted, dug a hole in the rich damp earth, dropped the bad mushroom in, stood up, tamped the soil with her toe.
Scratching with fingernails in the clumped earth, I quickly dug it out, trembling, fearful. Peering around, I saw she had disappeared. I jumped up, crying shrilly, stumbling on the path, unable to see her shape through the trees. If she didn’t want my brain attached to my head, I didn’t know how to get it off.
Sometimes when I’m remembering, I hear her say, very clearly, my Ojibwa father’s name when she buried the poisonous mushroom. I have an extraordinary ear for musical sound. I remember the tenor and tone, the cant and rhythm of my mother’s voice. But I have no ear for her actual words and have to refill her tones to cover for those words about my father that passed out of memory the moment they were spoken and placed me at her peril instead. So it could be, everything I say is a lie, but if it is, it’s born from a gift and an unknowing.
It is not intentional. And you must forgive me. I was only six at the time.
Halting so quickly, I smacked into the seat of her pants, pressing my fingers on her clothes. This was an action that as a child I did often, touching to make sure the parent was still where she said she was.
Hovering like horseflies, we teetered blinking on the high hill of a sunny meadow. Bees rang out in rich harmony, grasshoppers sang “whir-click-ee!” A measureless wind lay the long grass down so flat, the steeple of the Presbyterian Church below the slope appeared and disappeared with each sharp gust. Bells rang out with perilous intent, and chimed shut.
My mother lifted her head, sniffed the afternoon air. One hair loosened, curled and tendrilled. Like a mare spring-loosed to pasture, she lifted one skinny leg up, tossed both arms over her head and danced out into the sun. She bounded her long thin legs high above the tall grass, while round her head that wild red mane flung itself free. A frolicking baby colt, I hopped out after, loose-limbed and splay-legged, until she dropped into a low squat and lay flat as if to sun herself, yanking me down so quickly, I fell face-first into the dirt.
Out of the path through the woods a man came limping, shifting from his bad leg to his good, so that the effect was that of a shuffle-run. He was tall, taller than my mother who seemed as tall as the sky to me, and slender as he was tall. I recognized the white collar, the long nose, the hogshead chest, the lidded eyes of the Reverend Peter Tandoor. As it flapped down the aisle to the pulpit every Sunday, the sole of his shoe flapped now with a sad slap-slap against the earth.
My mother did not spring up as he tramped past, though we were going the same way. And he merely glanced at us, his eyes wandering over my mother, and went on across the meadow, seeds of grass trailing from him in the heated, lingering air.
My mother sat up, sucked a passing seed from his coat onto her tongue, and swallowed it whole. Resting her finger to her lips with a smile and taking my hand, she set off after him in the same kind of limping shuffle as he.
Down onto flat ground, he crossed the gravel road in front of the church, stepped up onto a stone step and up again. He trod quickly the sagging gray porch boards of the parsonage and let slam the screen door behind.
We leapt down the embankment, but instead of turning toward the parsonage, we spun round, crossed the road and entered the church.
The heavy wooden door swung in with effort, an old door scraping against the dull wood floor.
Dust floated dimly in gray light from the high narrow windows. A sullen red carpet tramped meanly from door to altar. The organ sulked hulking in its corner. The shadowy empty pews held eyes beneath.
My mother’s breath leapt rapid behind me, frantic.
A shadow closed a door in the corner; I shied back. Impatiently, she shoved me forward her hand on my head insistent.
Would she hold me to her?
But no, my mother sat me in a pew in the rear, slipped her hand from mine, pinched one crayon between my two fingers, tugged a church bulletin from the rack. This she laid, with a small wooden flute from her pockets, on the pew. She cautioned me in strict tones not to move and touched her lips to my forehead. The door creased the floor behind her, rasping shut.
Locked into position, my knees drawn up beneath my chin, my arms clasped tightly around my knees, I dared not stir. I knew if I did my mother would never come back. This was simple logic to me, one thing certain upon the other. If I moved, God would pass his scepter over me and hide me from the one person I loved most.
And I fell quickly into an odd sleep, overwhelmed by an exhaustion I could not name.
Between eyelids, dim light from the high windows shimmered dustily, thinned, and vanished into night.
I awoke to nightmare clamoring. It was not an echo; it did not exactly repeat itself. It rang, skipped a measure and rang again.
I placed a hand over my heart. My heart was pounding! But no. The sound was this: a THUMP, and a clanging echo. THUMP-clang, THUMP-clang. Whoever heard of a heart resounding THUMP-clang, THUMP-clang? How small the world becomes in fear! Just me, and my heart! THUMP-clang! Those two drawn-out syllables were rhythmic, coming regularly, one after the other, until I realized, because I understood sounds far better than visions or smells or tastes or words, that it was the same pealing out I heard distantly from home. More distinctly it rang here, a slow, lonely, ringing out from high above. And then silence.
I did not know who rang, or what they rang for.
Sundays, my mother force-marched me to services in this church. We always sat up front in the first pew while behind us people rustled their bulletins. Before us an enormous stained- glass window climbed from floor to ceiling and lit up the pulpit with harsh sunlight.
Precisely at noon, the Reverend Peter Tandoor stepped up to the brightly lit pulpit and that brightly colored light from the window caught him on fire. I do not lie. His long nose seared into flames, his robes blazed at the seams, the outline of his body scorched and burnt at the fraying edges. Maybe if he’d been more monster-sized than he was, he would have burnt more slowly. As it was, fire banished his words and I heard nothing of what he said. I merely trembled in God-given fear, because wasn’t it God who talked through the burning bush; God now talking through the burning minister?
I was not a child who understood words. “Leper!” he roared, and “resurrection!” he bellowed, and “the blood of the body!” he howled. No one had to tell me why he yelled: he was a furnace.
Would he re-appear from the fire drenched in blood, white-scaled like a leper, his palms nailed to the cross on the window prior to resurrection? I prayed for mercy, begged God in my heart not to set fire to me. I didn’t want to die in flames.
My mother, on the other hand, sat rapt. I cringed and cried and clawed at her, until she pierced me with a look. I sobbed not-too-silently into my mother’s arm. Surely he was dead and burnt, a charred critter who would step down to give the blessing and fall to ashes on the floor.
But then . . . out of the sun-drenched pulpit, the Reverend re-appeared – and he did this magic every Sunday – unsinged, unscarred, only slightly pinkish to accept the collecting of tithes during benediction. He didn’t look burnt to me.
I whispered my concern to my mother.
She linked her arm over my shoulders. “You do not need to see to believe,” she patted my hair.
But I did not know what she meant.
Now, in the silence, the church shrank towards me in its darkness. Despite growing shadows, up the steps beside the window, a tiny hanged man began to appear in my vision, tied to a small cross. So this was what was on the wall behind the pulpit on Sundays! I knew who he was; I wouldn’t be fooled.
Drawn to the cross, I risked stepping shakily out of the pew, looking all the while back over my shoulder, thinking: Mama? Did you slip in without my knowing and see if I was sitting where you left me? And leave again? But no, no; I guess not. You’re not there.
Belief without vision, is that what she said; is this what she meant? That I should be able to be here without seeing her? Was that faith?
I tiptoed forward to the next pew, edged the flute out of my pocket, blew a few notes, ran the scales. When in doubt, I trusted the only thing I understood: a hollow stick with a line of holes and the wind running through it. Sliding into the front pew, I sank onto its creaking surface and the song filling my head I did not push away, but let come.
Light outside the high windows gathered up, released the last of its dim glow, lowered its wick, and tamped down into night.
I was ready. Music was a gift I knew I had, and I knew how to use it to calm myself. My mother had taught me many times.
I played the gentle pat-a-pat of warm rain on spring green leaves. I played fresh Morel mushrooms rising from a damp, fertile ground. I played a red-maned mare dancing crazy in a meadow. I played the silver-shiny backs of salmon swimming along the night through the rippled river. I played my father standing poised on the bank with a hundred other men holding pitch forks, stabbing by flashlight into the dark fertile moistness.
I could see him there. And then I could see him fight, but then I couldn’t. I didn’t know. Over what?
I took the flute from my mouth, wiped it off, stood looking around. My heart thumped fearfully. So I lifted the flute again.
I played quietness in the church, shadows growing long from the ceiling, the devil lurking in the dark corner where the back door closed when we came in. I rubbed my cold arms. It was a long way in mind from the meadow to here. I don’t know where that song came from. I didn’t think the devil had horns.
I quick played the Reverend booming from the pulpit, as if the devil and he were with me now.
But that wasn’t true. See, I understood this: God doesn’t come when there’s only one child calling.
I heard rustles at the door; I heard the door creak. Afraid it was not my mother, or worse: that it was, I sat down stiffly.
I would not turn.
She couldn’t make me.
I wasn’t going to show how much I missed her. I was so angry at her for leaving me, I wanted to sit in our pew and sulk until God came down from heaven and told her off. But my eyes started to water, my knees trembled with sudden relief. And in my weakness, I ran silently back alongside the shadowy pews, seeing the dust in the dimly lit air moving before me, hearing my own little feet pounding on the carpet.
And I threw myself into her arms.
“Aieee!” the thing hissed. It grabbed my hand. Yanking furiously, I tried to shake it off. Hoisting me up, it dragged me up the aisle. I fought and screamed and kicked. Squeezed under its bicep, I tried to bite its underarm.
This wasn’t my mother! This was the Devil, yes it was! I moved, didn’t I? I moved when she told me not to. Surely my mother loved me enough to come running if she heard. But she didn’t. I thought all this time, she was just outside the door. Now I knew for a fact she wasn’t anywhere at all.
Maybe, it was just the beginning of what was to come.
A filthy, torn scarf slipped sideways to show a few long white hairs over the large and bony head. A horrible hissing and wheezing whistled between crooked brown teeth. Reeking from torn clothes amidst caked blood and dirt was the rank scent of fish scales, the muddy riverbank, the calluses of a pitchfork red on its hands.
I had heard enough, growing up amidst an inseparable mix of Ojibwa and biblical stories, to know that children and goats were routinely sacrificed at the Presbyterian altar to satisfy an angry God. Surely this was God now! He’d slap my hand in the fire, snap my bones with his two brown teeth, torch my skin with his one red eye! I was going to die in fire. I believe, Mama, I believe!
But at the altar it abruptly turned left, let go of my arm and hurled me into the organ pit. I scuttled back on the bench, rubbing the red imprints where the fingers had gripped, shutting my eyes so tight I saw stars.
“What are you fighting me so hard for?”
Wha . . . ?
The head bowed over the rim of the organ where it held itself up with one hand. The bones stood out, gaunt and sharp-given to corners, the skin of arms reddened with old and fresh welts. Under the ragged eyebrows one good eye blinked, pulling the face down. There seemed to be no place where that sad eye stopped; it sagged on down to the toes, where I thought if I looked his chin would be propped.
He sank into the metal folding chair which the organist used between services. Laying his arms along his thighs and hanging his wrists loosely over his knees, he dangled his hands in the air and lowered his head below his shoulders.
“Play for me,” he whispered. “Anything.”
My father.
He was only a few notes in my head, a short staccato phrase.
I couldn’t play an organ; I didn’t know how to. What was an organ to me, but a big box with yellowed keys and pipes and pulls? I jerked bits of candy from my clothes, the poisonous mushroom, fingerfuls of black dirt. Where was my flute?! His hands were dark on top, splattered with clinging fish scales, opalescent and hard.
“You dropped it,” he nodded. I took it gingerly, careful not to touch him. “Play.”
He knew my gift: that I could play what I could not express in words. But I . . .? Could I play . . . what he . . . ?
I followed the line of that grotesquely dirty and gnarled finger where an untended cut had festered green beneath the nail. From there my eyes leapt to the cross at which he pointed.
Some people say that a gift works in a child like a light bulb going on. But I heard it start distinctly as a small “ping.” It was like a floodgate latch unsprung, with the rush of water tumbling out as both the memory and the music rush in.
I looked at the cross. Closing my eyes, I played what I knew. I heard it Sundays in the sermons, although I did not understand the theme of it in words. I knew only the feel of it, the pull and sense of it, the long and high notes and the low, low deep “C.” I played not my father’s song, whatever it was, but the music that belonged to the man on the cross.
And I can’t say I understood him either.
I played a child’s birth with a doomed legacy, only the sound, the unspoken dark notes of minors and flats. I played a young boy with a voice from God: major C, sweet major G. I played a child who was not afraid to be alone: strong D and D diminished seventh wherein the fear trembled and then was taken up. I played a man who was listened to, because his words were carefully chosen, a tired man whose compassion was spoken: powerful F, soft E flat. I would have played the last supper, but I did not know what betrayal sounded like.
I did not know then how close my own loss was.
The music may have only been noise to my father, but it pealed out from the flute, circled up to the dark cross, wrapped itself around Christ’s body, leapt across the stained glass window, turned and pealed out the open door, where I heard its distant moan and lilt echoing out across the night bay, where Te-bik-ke-zes, the Ojibwa moon, like God, was silent.
My father. Leaning forward, one finger lifted dank black bangs from my face. I scuttled away from him on the organ bench.
”Pe-sen-do-we-shin. Listen to me,” he coughed black spittle onto the floor. His voice crackled hoarse and his face reddened, as if with fever. He lifted his head.
“Ke-gus-kaw-naw-baw-gwe naw?” I asked him if he wanted some water. My father leaned back in the chair and clasped his hands in between his knees and rocked the chair back. I brought him holy water, standing close to his knee, and looking in his face. Placing both hands on the silver bowl, he held the vessel up, and drank silently. Lowering it, he held it out again. I took it from him, replaced it on the altar, empty.
“I was not always like this,” he rasped and spit black phlegm to the floor where it pooled. “It is not your mother’s fault. Ke-gaw-she,” he sighed. “I don’t know what she wants.” He placed an unlaced wet boot over the phlegm.
My father bowed his head to his hands, then peered at me through his fingers, and took his hands from his face and closed them in his lap and leaned back and managed a slight smile.
“I’m sorry I scared you, little one.”
“Papa? Where’d you come from?”
“Fishing for salmon.”
“Fishing?”
“They’re running up the St. Mary’s River to lay eggs.”
“Oh. Did you get any?”
“Three big ones.”
‘How’d you know I was here?”
“I heard your flute.”
“All the way over by the river?”
“All the way over by the river.”
“You mean you could hear it that far?”
“I could hear you if I were on the other side of the world.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“It’s a very good flute. Mummy gave it to me.”
“I know.”
“I think she made it for me.”
“I think she did.”
“Why are you here? Mummy said she’d be back in just a minute.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Oh-h-h, since it was light, I think.”
Since it was . . . ? All night?!”
“Oh no, Daddy. Just a few minutes, I’m sure. I fell asleep because I was scared, but it wasn’t . . . long . . . was it? She said she’d be right back.”
“Do you want to come home with me?”
“I can’t go. If I leave she won’t come back.”
“She tell you that?”
“She said or else.”
He sighed a deep long rasping sigh that ended in a cough. He lowered his head into his hands and I saw his hands shake. But I didn’t know why. I thought to pat his shoulder, and almost did, but then didn’t. I was trembling like a little bird ruffling its wings in the cold.
“You come when you’re ready. I’ll wait for you at the door.”
“No! Don’t go! I don’t’ want you to go! I don’t want to be alone again!”
“I’m not going anywhere except to that door right there to wait for you.”
”Why are you going to wait for me?”
“Because it’s time to go.”
“But Mummy won’t know where I am.”
“Mummy always knows where you are.”
“She doesn’t! She didn’t come back and check on me when I was crying ! She doesn’t know anything. Mummy’s bad!”
“Mummy’s having a hard time right now. She needs to go away.”
“Away? Where!”
“I don’t know.”
“Is she coming back?”
“Come on, it’s time to go now.”
“Will she be mad if I go?”
“No. She’d probably like it if you came home with me.”
“She would?”
“Don’t you think she wants you to be safe?”
“Yes, I think she does. She said that’s why she brought me here. Can I just say goodbye to the church?”
“I’ll wait for you by the door.”
“Bye Papa.”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“Okay.”
He walked to the window behind the pulpit where the fire did not burn, turned on his heel and strode out. I crept out of the organ pit and stood at the front of the church. Looking down the carpet, I watched my father’s silhouette push the big door wide. The rain had begun through the open door, and its spears flashed in the dark like crystal breaking, while wind blew leaves in along the carpet and beneath the pews. I smelled his river odor lingering and trailing to the door.
Turning to the man on the cross, I thought to say something. But I couldn’t think what. And then I remembered, and put my hands together and kneeling below him on the carpet, said: “Dear God, If she comes, tell her I’ve gone with my dad, so she won’t worry.” And I clambered down the one step to the rug. And turned and knelt again: “Amen.” Charging down the aisle and outside, I moved the big door heavily to close it and was startled by the blackness of night. Beside me the figure of my father sunk to the ground and cried.
Racking, heaving gasps ripped from him, river water dripped from him, pooled from his mouth and his eye and his nose. And when he rose slowly and wearily to his feet, he pointed. “I will wait for you right there next to that tree. Please go tell her I’m sorry.” He dropped one large salmon at my feet and hefting the two others over his shoulder, he disappeared up the embankment. I could still see his large shape, standing under the limbs of a large maple, melding into the trunk, darker than shadows.
The rain jabbed me like ice picks, but I had been asked to do this, and I was still a good kid then. Wrapping the gill rope around both fists, I dragged the heavy fish by lunging and yanking and heaving it along he gravel road. It was as long as I was tall, and kept slapping the ground with its tail because it was not dead. Smack, smack, smack. Iridescent scales scraped off on the small stones, and when I turned to look behind, the path gleamed luminescent in the rain.
In the silver drizzle, in the dark night, on the graveled road, the salmon finally was too much for me to pull. I dropped it before I reached the minister’s porch and let it lay.
How did I know where my mother was? Perhaps I was drawn merely by the light; I do not know. In fact, I do not know that she was there at all.
I knocked twice. The Reverend answered, dressed in pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, tucking his shirt into his pants. I said, as any six-year-old would: “I want my mother.”
But he did not reply. And she did not come. Instead, looking out at the road, he stepped out onto the porch, down the stone step and strode to the gravel road with the rain beating on him. Reaching down, he picked up the gill rope and he picked up the salmon whose tail slapped the ground a weak slap. He walked back with it in his arms, and stepping up onto the step, turned into the parsonage door and closed the door with the great fish in his arms, until only a thin light shown from the window, and even that seemed scant enough to see by.
Like rain sprung loose and falling, I shook, until remembering, I turned and made my way to the tree. My father picked me up and hugged me close, carried me all the way through the dark woods, over the moonlit meadow, along the slender path through the trees and back into my mother’s house, where she no longer stepped.
And I lived with him there until the music my mother had taught me ceased to play in my head, and I learned that life with my father began with the sound of one fish slapping the dark wet fertile ground.