Free Celia's Song by Lee Maracle Page B

kitchen with a wood stove or a white one with matching plates.”
    â€œYeah,” Madeline pipes in. “Right now it’s an old half-breed.”
    â€œA Métis, a jigger,” Rena says, doing a little dance.
    It occurs to me I could not be any kind of a half-breed. Humans can do that, mix it up with others, adapt, but us minks can’t. Maybe that’s Celia’s problem, she’s like me. Can’t mix it up and survive.
    â€œNo,” Momma says, “It’d be a Métis if everything matched, because we’re in it.”
    The laughter dissipates the tension in the room. It loosens the tongues of the women in the direction of who’s up to what. Sweet gossip, the kind that rolls off the tongue and reminds you of how many loved ones fill the room you’re in. Somehow the soft gossip, the joy of the women, brings the warm glow of Gramma’s bedroom into this room, despite the glare of the uncovered light bulb, despite the absence of old fire flicks, and despite the moonless night. They float down the rivers of their stories, impressing themselves with the sheer numbers of people they are curious about. They laugh about Tony’s old car, coo over the new babies, and chuckle about the secret romances — except for Stacey’s. It makes them feel like everything is going to be all right because they still have so many folks to care to talk about.
    The laughter enlivens the frond in Jacob’s hand. Jacob does not see the humour in all this, but he feels the warmth in the room go up a notch. It warms him enough to cause him to ponder the unity of feeling between his hand and this frond. He thinks he hears the cedar say something. He is lost in the sensation, too lost to see the humour in the banter of the women, but not lost enough to commit to the words he is hearing from cedar. He rocks the frond.
    Jacob is like Celia, like me, like those old bones, the ones that cannot be happy in their new state.
    â€œIt worries me some,” Momma says. The laughter stops dead. No one knows what the “it” is that is worrying Momma. They are half-afraid to ask.
    â€œWhy is that?” Stacey asks. The women in the room make mental notes to themselves: Stacey knows what Momma is talking about. They let the story unfold between Momma and Stacey, hoping to get clued in as it does.
    â€œSometimes memory gets stuck in some sort of soup inside my mind and only the right scent will dislodge it. Stirring the soup can help you recall the story, the teaching that is going to solve this trouble, this terrible moment, and now those smells are gone. The smells are gone from the roadside, the hillside, and the houses, and I just can’t remember anymore. I just can’t bring myself to the place where my memory sits comfortably. Sometimes I get so tired, trying to remember. Maybe if I could have remembered …” Her voice trails off, the sentence unfinished.
    Rena sits up.
    She is heading straight for Jimmy’s suicide .
    â€œDon’t go there,” Rena whispers, just the smallest hint of threat in her voice.
    â€œI know. But you know?” Momma slides from her chair, reaches over for a short stack of coloured cloth, pulls open a kitchen drawer, pulls out some fusible backing and a pair of scissors. She holds the scissors up, challenging them to recall what it is they all knew.
    Stacey, Judy, and Rena nod. Celia wants to know what Momma was about to make, so she watches. The conversation rolls out.
    â€œYeah, I know. They even changed the smell of our world. Nothing like oolichan grease to spark up a long trail of salmon stories. You know, you just know that the smell is going to tell you what you need to know next.”
    Rena picks at the corner of the kitchen counter where the Arborite edging is loose. Momma fuses the stiffener to the cloth and begins cutting.
    How in the world can you change the smells of someone else’s world?
    Cedar moves of its own