Can you tell me?
Mrs. Cigarette sighed. Only that I knew it was more than one thing. Some of the sickness came from stirring up old ghosts. But the voices told me that the old man hadn’t told me everything. She paused, her eyes blank with the glaze of glaucoma, and her face grim and sad. The voices told me that what had happened had cut into his heart. There was no way to cure it. The Mountain Way sing was the right one because the sickness came from the spoiling of holy things, and the Black Rain because a taboo had been broken. But the old mans heart was cut in half. And there was no sing anymore that would restore him to beauty.
Something very bad had happened, Leaphorn said, urging her on.
I don’t think he wanted to live anymore, Margaret Cigarette said. I think he wanted his grandson to come, and then he wanted to die.
The fire was blazing all across the fire pit now and there was a sudden outburst of shouting and more laughter from those waiting around the hogan. The girl was coming running across the sagebrush flat at the head of a straggling line. One of the Endischees was hanging a blanket across the hogan doorway, signifying that the ceremonial would be resumed inside.
I have to go inside now, Mrs. Cigarette said. There’s no more to say. When someone wants to die, they die.
Inside, a big man sat against the hogan wall and sang with his eyes closed, the voice rising, falling and changing cadence in a pattern as old as the People.
She is preparing her child, the big man sang. She is preparing her child.
White Shell Girl, she is preparing her,
With white shell moccasins, she is
preparing her,
With white shell leggings, she is
preparing her,
With jewelry of white shells, she is
preparing her.
The big man sat to Leaphorns left, his legs folded in front of him, among the men who lined the south side of the hogan. Across from them, the women sat. The hogan floor had been cleared. A small pile of earth covered the fire pit under the smoke hole in the center.
A blanket was spread against the west wall and on it were arranged the hard goods brought to this affair to be blessed by the beauty it would generate. Beside the blanket, one of the aunts of Eileen Endischee was giving the girls hair its ceremonial brushing. She was a pretty girl, her face pale and fatigued now, but also somehow serene.
White Shell Girl with pollen is preparing her, the big man sang.
With the pollen of soft goods placed in her mouth, she will speak.
With the pollen of soft goods she is
preparing her.
With the pollen of soft goods she is
blessing her.
She is preparing her.
She is preparing her.
She is preparing her child to live in beauty.
She is preparing her for a long life in
beauty.
With beauty before her, White Shell Girl
prepares her.
With beauty behind her, White Shell Girl
prepares her.
With beauty above her, White Shell Girl
prepares her.
Leaphorn found himself, as he had since childhood, caught up in the hypnotic repetition of pattern which blended meaning, rhythm and sound in something more than the total of all of them. By the blanket, the aunt of the Endischee girl was tying up the child’s hair.
Other voices around the hogan wall joined the big man in the singing.
With beauty all around her, she prepares her.
A girl becoming a woman, and her people celebrating this addition to the Dinee with joy and reverence. Leaphorn found himself singing, too. The anger he had brought despite all the taboos-to this ceremonial had been overcome. Leaphorn felt restored in harmony.
He had a loud, clear voice, and he used it. With beauty before her, White Shell Girl prepares her.
The big man glanced at him, a friendly look. Across the hogan, Leaphorn noticed, two of the women were smiling at him. He was a stranger, a policeman who had arrested one of them, a man from another clan, perhaps even a witch, but he was accepted with the natural hospitality of the Dinee. He felt a fierce pride in his people, and in this celebration of womanhood. The Dinee had always respected the female equally with the male giving her equality in property, in metaphysics and in clan recognizing the mothers role in the footsteps of Changing Woman as the preserver of the Navajo Way. Leaphorn remembered what his mother had told him when he had asked how Changing Woman could have prescribed a Kinaalda cake a shovel handle wide and garnished with raisins when the Dinee had neither shovels nor grapes. When you are a man, she had said, you will understand that she was
