Ellen's face grew tight again. "I was going to say, that's the scariest thing, but it's not. The way his hand moves when he's asleep-that's the worst."
"What did it do?"
"It did this"-Ellen mimed a beckoning gesture-" and then it kind of spidered around." She made her hand walk along the ground on all five fingers and grope the contours of a rock, then snatched it back as if the sight scared her. Her plump body shuddered involuntarily.
Even in Ellen's imitation of the gestures, Cree couldn't help but see the intentionality of the movements. The hand adapted to what it felt. It seemed to be trying to figure out where it was. There had to be some self-awareness in this ghost, but like everything else about it, it was incomplete, skewed, somehow isolated in the hand and arm of its unwitting host. A blind being lost in time and space. Lost in Tommy's body.
Cree replenished her coffee and poured some into Ellen's cup. "So you folks live up in Burnham now? Eric was telling me."
Ellen looked relieved to put the subject of the hand behind them. "Yes. We lived on the old place with my parents and Tommy's folks until about ten years ago. First we moved the sheep up there, there's better water and road access. Then I got a job, secretary at the grade school. My husband took a job at the El Paso Gas plant. We still keep a few of our own sheep, but we only help out with the big flock when Ray needs extra hands. We've been after my parents to move closer in, but they won't leave the old place."
Cree nodded. "Were you here for the hand trembling?"
"Oh, yeah. Old Hastiin Begaye came up on horseback. Just about killed him, I think, he's eighty-two."
"What do you think of his diagnosis?"
Ellen looked worried again. "All these years, I'd say I didn't believe that stuff but I'd go along. Kind of hedge my bets? And I think the old ceremonies do good for people. But with Tommy this way.. " Clearly, Tommy's possession had erased any doubts Ellen might have had. She whispered, "Hastiin Begaye, he was scared. He said it's the worst he's ever seen. He tried to look like this was business as usual, but I could tell he was glad to get out of here."
"What ceremony did he prescribe?"
"Two ceremonies. The first will be the Evil Way. That's to get rid of the chindi, to give it what it wants, let it have justice. The second we'll do in a month or so. That's the Beauty Way."
"What does that one do?"
"It's to restore Tommy to harmony and unity. Make him healthy and strong after the ghost goes. Hastiin Begaye said Tommy is divided inside, that's what makes him weak and unhappy. He needs to be just one person."
Cree was struck by the insight of the diagnosis. As Joseph had said, he was a boy at odds with himself. Some of it was ordinary teenage stuff-trying to differentiate between himself and his parents or grandparents, loving them yet needing to rebel. But it was amplified by his conflicted sense of what it meant to be Navajo in twenty-first-century America, and by his disconnection from his dead parents, his yearning and resentment, curiosity and confusion. Tommy was divided, not certain which image of his past or future to embrace. Which meant that getting the ghost out was only half the battle. Beauty Way: a way to make him whole. The Hand Trembler must be a very perceptive man. Again, it all came down to who Tommy was.
"Ellen, can I ask you about Tommy?"
"If I know the answer."
Cree tried to think of a way to circle in on it. "Your brother-did he have any other children besides Tommy?"
"No. He and his wife, they got kind of a late start. Then they got killed. You know about that?" Ellen looked away, saddened by the memory.
"Yes."
"Tom, my brother, he was a good guy in a lot of ways, but later on he got to drinking and it made him a little crazy. Funny, because Bernice, his wife, she went the other way-when he first brought her home, she was pretty freewheelin'. But then she settled down and was a good mother. A good sister to me. We still miss them both."
Cree nodded. "Does Tommy look like your brother?"
Ellen turned to look at her closely, troubled by the question. "Why do you ask that?"
"Did they adopt Tommy, or-?"
"No!"
"Are you sure? I mean, could they have-"
Ellen burst into laughter again, shaking her head at the crazy bilagaana and her outlandish questions. "I'm about as sure as I can get! Tommy was born on the old place, right in my brother's house. Bernice looked like she'd swallowed a watermelon for the last three months. When it was time, she came on fast, one minute she's making fry bread and the next she's got contractions five minutes apart. We couldn't chance putting her in the truck to go to the clinic, she'd never make it. I was the one who caught Tommy from between her legs. I rubbed him until he made his first cry, then I cut his cord myself. That sure enough for you?"
Ellen looked at her with brown eyes that were puzzled, amused, and completely candid. There was no doubting the truth of what she said.
So there it was, at last. Tommy was not Julieta's child.
Cree thought of Julieta and her longing for her lost baby and her deep sense of recognition and all the waiting and yearning over the years: a beautiful, intelligent, dynamic woman who lived and worked so hard while struggling to conceal the deep wound so close to her heart. A weight fell on Cree in a heap, not so much the fatigue of the last week as the sorrows of lifetimes. She knew she should probe Ellen for information about Tommy's mother and father, try to learn more about who they were, what they wanted, how they lived. But right now she was too stunned. She realized yet again how much she had relied on Julieta's connection to Tommy as her one handle on the situation. How much she'd trusted it. How much she'd wanted Julieta to have found her child.
The bitter emptiness was all too familiar. The power she'd given Julieta's supposed connection to Tommy said a lot about where Cree Black was in her own life.
"What?" Ellen asked. "What's the matter?" She watched Cree, worried at the sudden change in her odd guest.
"Nothing," Cree said hoarsely. How would she break it to Julieta? "Nothing. Really."
And that about summed up her progress, Cree thought. Now she was left with nothing. As Julieta was.
46
Julieta was halfway to Window Rock when her cell phone rang. She almost drove the truck off the road as she grabbed it and flipped it open. It was Joseph.
"Where are you?" she shouted. "I've been trying to reach you since last night!"
"I'm at home. I was here. I just had a lot to think about."
"I've been so worried! Are you all right?"
He seemed to consider that. "I was hoping you could come up to my place."
"I'm on my way to your place now!"
"See you shortly, then," he said. And he hung up.
Joseph lived in one of the flat-roofed, sandstone-block houses on the hill in the center of Window Rock. He opened his front door before she reached it. He looked bone tired, but he struck her as handsome and fine as he stood there in T-shirt, khakis, bare feet. When she came up the steps, he put his arms around her and she leaned against him. She wanted to bury herself in him, hold him forever, but the hug he gave her was guarded and brief.
He led her into his living room. As always, she liked the feeling of his place, the mix of tastes. The house was small, just a one-story, two-bedroom shoe box, but well built and charmingly decorated. This living-dining room ran from one end to the other, so windows gave light at both ends, one set offering sweeping vistas to the south and the other shorter views uphill to the red pillars and cliffs of the Chuska bluffs. Over the years, Joseph had bartered his services for the splendid Navajo rugs and other artworks that decorated the place, but he had also hung his walls with framed prints of Miro and Chagall. His bookcase was filled with photo collections, medical texts, biographies, and a collection of comic books, and was topped with a collection of cards and gifts that grateful patients had given him. The Formica dining table and chairs looked as if they were left over from his med school days, but he had invested in a nice calfskin couch and oak coffee table.