Dawnland Voices: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing from New England

Suzanne S. Rancourt

344 Suzanne S. Rancourt (b. 1959) Rancourt’s Billboard in the Clouds was the 2001 recipient of the Native Writers First Book Award. She holds a master of fine arts in poetry from Vermont College, a master of science degree in educational psychology from suny, Albany, and a certificate of advanced graduate studies in expressive arts: therapy, education, and consulting from the European Graduate School, Switzerland. Rancourt is also a certified facilitator and affiliate of Amherst Writers and Artists. She teaches writing to a variety of special populations: victims of domestic violence, women veterans, mental health patients, women in homeless shelters, incarcerated women and men, learning disabled, and others. She is ranked in aikido and iaido and is an armed services veteran. Currently she is the program development consultant for Next Step Fine Arts Program for adult traumatic brain injury survivors in Ballston Spa, New York. Take From My Hair—Memories of Change today a rake drags across my forehead— it is August. we used to migrate down the coast and up through the central mountains— a many-tined people, we’d “j” our way to the foot of Katahdin— a wind-ribbon of people, we’d scoop our sustenance into ash baskets that tourists preferred to buy unstained and without blueberries— the times changed our men bent as willows, our women strapped with foresight why now do i look for blueberries? Suzanne S. Rancourt 345 i strain to hear my language among the leathery leaves among the trees and trails that my grandmothers and grandfathers walked i keep thinking that i see them walking toward me, i keep thinking that i feel them touching me when my back is burdened sore or when my rake swings sluggish there in the fields of rhythmic silence i have time to think and remember what i think i recall when i’d rather look for a shadow to become one with a stone wall and low shrubs on steep hills among ledge outcrops moss sundried but at sunrise there is dew, by noon everyone has gathered pounds of purple berries that stay remarkably cool as the cases of jostled soda trucked over rutted roads in the back of rusted-out pickups creaking through fields and fields of time and hunched, brown backs one arm braced on a knee the other combs for berries and we’d sway—elephant heartbeat— as slow as the sound of dew-soaked pantlegs walking toward us no one liked to be the first in the fields no one wanted to tell the bears a bigger beast now walks the land 346 abenaki Thunderbeings While gazing through a window for a split-atomic second, my grandmother, was struck and killed by lightening. Her left finger touching one of the four brass posters as gently as one touches the cheeks of newborns as though she had pressed a doorbell, a button on an elevator—ascend please— then the lightning arched and she crossed over leaving a fingerprint and a strong smell of uric acid. Her name was Dorothy, an artist taught by the nuns. She painted in oils the light and dark of all things— ships full sail on calm oceans— I could not reach them, hanging on the wall, so I’d pull a chair under these two paintings one new moon dark, the other full moon light— I would press my finger on each brush stroke, each sail wondering where these ships were sailing in my Memere’s head. Her name was Dorothy, a Parisienne farm woman, I was told, who on bad days when the horse and carriage couldn’t make the hard scrabble to Mass would open up the parlor and hold her own, chanting Hail Marys. The next year the lightning came back, took the barn, took the horses. The bed, where my cooling Memere had lain the year before was removed from the house, stored in the shed until forty years later when I polished for days the spokes and posters. A brass lamp of sorts illuminated images of a woman I never knew. I rubbed until the chalky, thunderhead blue dissolved and the metal shone lightening yellow. For years I slept in this bed, Suzanne S. Rancourt 347 and often heard her still humming in the brass. Fanning Fire Damn. I knew I should have vacuumed. My mother always vacuumed Despite five kids who always had five friends, A couple...