After straining and sweating an hour, Kate produced her first weave, a tiny circle of clumsy stitches that nevertheless was recognizable as the beginning of a basket. "Good," Olga said. "Now keep going."
Easy for you to say, Kate thought. "You've got a lot of grass here," she said, nodding at the pile on the kitchen floor. "Looks like enough to keep you weaving until next Christmas."
Olga shook her head and extended her arms in a circle, the tips of her fingers barely touching. "From this much grass, you get this many weavers." She put her right forefinger and thumb around her left wrist.
"That's all?"
"That's all," the old woman confirmed. "That's why it's important to pick the best grass."
"And where is the best grass?"
"Away from the salt water. Grass on the beach is too thick. It gets brittle after curing."
"So you pick in the hills?"
Olga nodded, her face bent over her basket, her expression absorbed as she conjured some especially intricate design out of the rim. "You learn where the good grass grows. If you keep picking in the same place the grass gets better."
"That's why we go back to Anua every year," Becky interpolated.
Kate broke a spoke. "Anua?"
Her voice must have sounded as startled as she felt because Becky cast her a curious glance. "Sure. It's where our family comes from."
"Oh." Kate began the arduous process of threading another spoke into the weaving, running through a mental list of questions to ask. She couldn't afford the appearance of prying or she would lose all the confidence she had gained so far. She recognized the investigator in her superseding the fellow tribal member and was momentarily ashamed of herself.
But two men were missing, and probably dead and she didn't like Harry Gault so she said in a casual voice, "So if you're from Anua, why do you live in Unalaska?"
"It was the war," Becky said. "Tell her the story, Auntie."
"It was the war," Olga said. Her voice dropped into a rhythm, slipping into it so effortlessly and so seamlessly that Kate didn't notice it at once. "The Japanese soldiers came.
"Then the army came.
"The army moved all of the people from the islands.
"They put them in towns and in camps in Cook Inlet and Prince William Sound.
"It was too hot up there for the people.
"Many of the people died.
"After the war, the army brought us back.
"The people that were left wished they had died with the others.
"The houses were gone.
"The villages were gone.
"Even the ones where there had been no Japanese.
"The army said they destroyed them because they couldn't leave the villages for the Japanese to use.
"We couldn't go back.
"There weren't enough of us.
"There was nothing to go back to.
"So now we live in a few villages instead of many.
"That's all."
The room was silent but for the rustle of grass. Kate kept her head bent over her basket. When she could speak, she said, "Do you ever go back to Anua?"
"Sure," Becky said, at the same time Olga said, "No."
The girl's eyes widened. Olga said easily, "Only for the grass. In June or July, when it is ready to pick. But mostly we use Chinaman's grass, raffia, that we buy from Outside. It takes too long to pick and cure the rye grass." The old woman smiled. "And the tourists can't tell the difference."
Kate grinned. Before she could reply, Sasha said suddenly,
"Home."
They all looked at her, seated on the floor, her crippled leg again twisted awkwardly beneath her. She still had the ivory knife, and with it she traced a pattern on the old linoleum floor, the yellowed ivory of the old knife looking odd against the cracked paisley pattern. Her brown eyes were bright and alert, the most alive features in that blunted face, "Kayak. Men. Thunderbird. Men.
Horne."
"That's the same story she was telling on the beach this morning," Becky told Olga. "What does it mean?"
Olga shrugged, and leaned forward to pluck the storyknife from Sasha's now limp fingers. "I don't know. What do any of Sasha's stories mean?"
"But her stories always make sense, Auntie," Becky protested. "Somehow, they always do. You just have to figure them out."
"Thunderbird," Sasha said clearly. "Men. Kayak. Men.
Home."
"See? She knows what we're talking about."
Olga looked at Becky. "The storyknife is just a toy, Becky. It makes Sasha happy to play with it. That's all."
Becky's mouth closed and she bent back over her basket, a tinge of red creeping up into her cheeks.
"Tell me about the storyknife, Auntie," Kate suggested into the uncomfortable silence that followed. "I've never seen one before. It's beautiful."
Olga looked down at the ivory knife she held in her hands. "My grandmother gave it to me. My great-uncle made it for her when she was a little girl. It's a toy. A girl's toy. We use it to draw stories in the sand, and in the snow."
"Where did it come from? The custom, I mean?
Olga shrugged. "Some people say it used to be a real knife. That the Eskimos used it to cut snow into blocks for igloos. All I know is I got this one from my mother.
My mother got it from her mother. Other girls had them when I was a child. It was a custom." She handed the storyknife to Kate.
Kate accepted it in reverent hands. The handle was carved with the stylized likeness of a sea otter floating on his back. In spite of the wear and tear caused by at minimum four pairs of grubby little hands, each individual whisker stood out on his tiny face. He stared up at Kate, expectant. The ivory seemed to grow heavier in her hand. Kate cleared her throat. "Are they always made from ivory?"
"No. Some are made from bone or wood."
"It's a beautiful thing, Auntie," Kate said, handing it back. "And valuable. It should be in a museum."
"And would a museum take it out and play with it?"
Olga demanded, and gave a snort. "Its spirit would die, locked up in a place where it was never touched. Here the girls play with it, and it tells them stories."
Which made it something more than just a toy, Kate thought. She looked down at the rapidly shredding beginning of her basket, and said ruefully, "I don't seem to be doing very well at this, Auntie. I guess I'm just a cultural illiterate."
"Nonsense," Olga said briskly. "It takes practice, like anything else. You will take some grass with you when you leave, so you can work at it on your own."
Wonderful, Kate thought, but said meekly, "Thank you, Auntie."
"And now more tea? And some alodiks?"
"Alodiks?" Kate said.
The old woman looked at her reprovingly. "You have no Aleut?"
Kate shook her head.
"Because your grandmother wanted you to?" Olga guessed shrewdly, and laughed, a loud, cackling laugh, at Kate's expression. Kate was relieved when Olga turned to the stove, and even more relieved when alodiks proved to be nothing more than fried bread.
A few minutes later Olga put a plateful of the stuff in the middle of the table, puffed up and golden brown.
Everyone around the table made a concerted grab, not excepting Kate.
"There were killer whales in the bay this morning, Auntie," one of the girls said around a mouthful of fried bread.
"Ahhhhh," Olga said. "Killer whales in the bay." The smile faded from her face and she shook her head gravely.
"What does it mean?"
"Killer whales in the bay?"
"Yes. Do you know what it means?"
"I know only what everyone knows." Olga worked her next few stitches without speaking. The girls ceased their giggling and whispering, and as the silence gathered and grew, Kate had the feeling of a curtain about to go up.
When she spoke again, Olga's voice fell again into a kind of singsong, with a full-stop pause at the end of each sentence. It was subtle but clear. It wasn't as if Olga banged a drum on the downbeat at the end of every line, but Becky and her sister began nodding their heads slightly to the beat. Kate had noticed a similar kind of cadence to Olga's story of the Aleuts' exile and repatriation during and after World War II, and now consciously scanned the old woman's words for rhythm. She found it, and repetition, and internal rhymes, and alliteration.