The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland

aristocratic.
    â€œHow did it happen?”
    â€œA hard winter. Many die. Margaret Dan . . .” She looked through the open doorway to the woman sitting stiffly beside Sophie in the rust-colored blanket. “She lose a baby too.”
    Margaret Dan must have heard. She gave Emily a cold look. You don’t belong here, her eyes seemed to say. You don’t know what suffering is.
    â€œSome older ones die too.”
    Influenza? Whooping cough? Measles scuttling through the reserve?
    â€œWhat about Sophie’s baby?”
    â€œGone. Not baptized. Sophie thinks she made Ancestor mad when she baptize babies.”
    That child was on Sophie’s back when she paddled home across the inlet at dusk. She should never have let her go home that night.
    â€œThe little one, Sophie held him four days. Touch is medicine. Then Tommy got sick and coughed blood. Sophie had no more touch for Tommy too.”
    If she’d only known, she would have been here, feeding him, keeping him warm, giving him medicine, helping Sophie. “What can I do? Is there anything I can do?”
    â€œNo.”
    Annie Marie waddled into the room dragging a blanket, and snuggled into Sarah’s lap. Sarah stroked her hair, and Annie Marie slumped against her breast and played with her purple fringe. Sarah rested her cheek against the child’s head. Emily held Annie Marie’s bare feet, as cold as if they’d been fished from the sea. She rubbed them until they were warm, and then wrapped them in her skirt.
    â€œA bad spirit come to the reserve,” Sarah whispered. “Don’t say anything. The nipniit fine me in church for say that. Church priests can do that, you know. But I am an old woman. I know spirits. Sophie and Margaret fight. The bad spirit doesn’t like. Margaret’s baby dead. Now Tommy dead too.”
    Wind whistled through the floorboards stirring the odors of damp and sickness and bodies. The keening started again. “Three days going like this here,” Sarah said, “until nipniit come.”
    Sarah gestured toward the door to the main room and they rejoined the circle. The women rocked. Emily rocked too, forward and back, folding herself over her crossed arms. At some cue she couldn’t detect, the women stopped, and Margaret Dan brought the water basket around again but passed her by without pausing. She wished she were invisible. The women clucked their comfort to Sophie as another woman went around the circle and put some small thing into each of their hands. When the woman’s wool skirt brushed Emily’s arm, she felt, pressed into her palm, the cool disc of a quarter. She turned to Sarah, puzzled.
    â€œSophie pay you for witness,” Sarah whispered. “To thank you for cry.”
    Emily puffed out air. “Thank me!”
    Those quarters were harder for Sophie to come by than baskets. Her hand curled around it and held it to her ribs.
    â€œWhat happens next?”
    â€œThe nipniit comes here. Father John. We go to the graveyard. He talks. Tommy’s soul goes to the sunset.”
    Everyone stood up. Emily moved close to Sophie and opened her arms to enfold her when Margaret Dan scowled at her. She hadn’t seen anyone else embrace Sophie. She let her arms drop.
    â€œTommy never cried,” Sophie said.
    Emily nodded.
    â€œIt feel like I lost my Casamin twice. Six babies gone.”
    â€œI’m so, so sorry. Is there anything I can do?”
    â€œMargaret Dan has four now. You see this coffin?” The rough wood, split and warped, was pulling away at one joint and nails showed in the opening. “The coffin maker in North Vancouver, he thinks good enough for Indian baby.” She turned and smiled. Incredibly, she smiled, as genuinely as if she had no sorrow. “Look, Em’ly! Lots of baskets. Tommy’s going to have a big white gravestone with a cross carved, like Margaret Dan’s boy.”
    The door opened and