Ragina
Rent from DeepDyve- Ragina
What was she doing out of context . . . the story, history, the fact, fact that Native women did not marry those pinked faced pinched noses for any reason . . . surely not in love especially as he was just off the boat she was not even a captive like her extra-great-grandmother Eunice West taken by force in 1711 and held in stout arms of some handsome Mohawk . . . the very thing romance is made from.
She found a ticket to the New America with a slightly Irish brogue. And here we are . . . a brood, For his name shall die and her name shall cease to be and only the mewl of a scraggly cat will be heard in the night mixing with his death rattle which rose and gurgled for nine dark nights and nine dark days until the nurse placed a pillow gently on his face and handed his gold watch to the sweated palm. Ah history, you’re the scoundrel where the blame has come to rest, where the sins [End Page 92] of omission and the sins of action dwell in the heart and hide in the spirit.
She crossed into the New America blameless and innocent and March came down with fury and the blizzard covered the footprints as he strode from his raw cabin to her lodge with not a single flower tight in his hand (neither plastic nor newly sprung). Did she have a choice! Questionable. Bad times there were: no work, no work, no work for Indian man or child, woman, or girl. And so she said with bent head yes I will and suddenly or what seemed suddenly there stood Cecilia, Julia and the boy child Andrew Anthony as red of skin as brown was his mother. She never forgot to sing lullabies, told them stories of brother wolf and cowardly thrush and breathed a million years into his young lungs, breathed health, and as much wisdom as she might summon in her song. Story after story fell from her lips as though they were Sky Woman falling from the Spirit World through the vast nest of stars to Turtle’s back clutching a strawberry vine in one fist. And this is how his world commenced
Like all little boys he came head first screaming, kicking the sides of her womb thrashing and begging for independence. Hairless, toothless monster of a day old already knew where he was going and where he had just come from. But really not anything [End Page 93] different from any other newborn. Probably not, except there seemed an extra sense of defiance, will, a strength of scream few lads brought into this world at birth. He would never need to struggle, fight for strength . . . in a sense it was God Given, or thrust upon him by the will of the Creator as though he was the first born, the twins of Sky Woman, extra special, composed of good and bad: he would carry the tooth of wolverine and the scent of the wood lily until death. An auspicious beginning: a ferocious March storm dragged him screaming into his mother’s arms to nestle there in warmth under sisters’ eyes and a gruff father’s voice to the day she would no longer be his protection. [End Page 94]
Maurice Kenny, born in Watertown, New York, in 1929, is one of the most celebrated Native American poets of all time. He has published over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and essays. His Mama Poems, an extended elegy, won the American Book Award in 1984, and his books Blackrobe, Isaac Jogues, and Between Two Rivers were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. He considers his most important work to be Tekonwatonti, Molly Brant, 1735–1795, a historical poetry journey in many voices that honors the Mohawk figure Molly Brant and explores an important time in American history when the British, French, Iroquois, and colonists were engaged in a monumental collision of cultures. Calling him “a master lyricist,” Joseph Bruchac writes: “Kenny is the creator of a new form of dramatic monologue in his creations of the voices and time of Isaac Jogues and Molly Brant...
