Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko Page A

bay mare had her colt. A horse colt. Sorrel with a blaze. Sort of crooked down his face, like this.” Robert spoke slowly and softly, indicating the marking on the colt’s forehead by outlining it with a finger on his own face.
    Tayo realized then that as long as Josiah and Rocky had been alive, he had never known Robert except as a quiet man in the house that belonged to old Grandma and Auntie. When Auntie and old Grandma and Josiah used to argue over how many lambs should be sold, or when Auntie and old Grandma scolded Josiah for the scandal of his Mexican girl friend, Robert sat quietly. He had cultivated this deafness for as many years as he had been married to Auntie. His face was calm; he was patient with them because he had nothing to say. The sheep, the horses, and the fields—everything belonged to them, including the good family name. Now Robert had all the things that Josiah had been responsible for. He looked tired.
    “I helped my brother-in-law with our fields. But they don’t expect me to do very much now. They know I’m pretty busy over here.”
    “When I get better, I can help you.”
    Robert smiled and nodded. “That would be nice,” he said softly, “but don’t hurry. You take it easy. Get well.” He stood up. He was a short, slight man with a dark angular face. He put his hand on Tayo’s arm. “I’m glad you are home, Tayo,” he said. “I sure am glad.”
     
    He woke up crying. He had dreamed Josiah had been hugging him close the way he had when Tayo was a child, and in the dream he smelled Josiah’s smell—horses, woodsmoke, and sweat—the smell he had forgotten until the dream; and he was overcome with all the love there was. He cried because he had to wake up to what was left: the dim room, empty beds, and a March dust storm rattling the tin on the roof. He lay there with the feeling that there was no place left for him; he would find no peace in that house where the silence and the emptiness echoed the loss. He wanted to go back to the hospital. Right away. He had to get back where he could merge with the walls and the ceiling, shimmering white, remote from everything. He sat up and pushed off the blankets; he was sweating. He looked at old Grandma sitting in her place beside the stove; he couldn’t tell if she was sleeping or if she was only listening to the wind with her eyes closed. His voice was shaking; he called her. He wanted to tell her they had to take him back to the hospital. He watched her get up slowly, with old bones that were stems of thin glass she shuffled across the linoleum in her cloth slippers, moving cautiously as if she did not trust memory to take her to his bed. She sat down on the edge of the bed and she reached out for him. She held his head in her lap and she cried with him, saying “A’moo’oh, a’moo’ohh” over and over again.
    “I’ve been thinking,” she said, wiping her eyes on the edge of her apron, “all this time, while I was sitting in my chair. Those white doctors haven’t helped you at all. Maybe we had better send for someone else.”
    When Auntie got back from the store, old Grandma told her, “That boy needs a medicine man. Otherwise, he will have to go away. Look at him.” Auntie was standing with a bag full of groceries in her arms. She set the bag down on the table and took off her coat and bandanna; she looked at Tayo. She had a way she looked when she saw trouble; she frowned, getting her answer ready for the old lady.
    “Oh, I don’t know, Mama. You know how they are. You know what people will say if we ask for a medicine man to help him. Someone will say it’s not right. They’ll say, ‘Don’t do it. He’s not full blood anyway.’” She hung up her coat and draped the scarf on top of it.
    “It will start all over again. All that gossip about Josiah and about Little Sister. Girls around here have babies by white men all the time now, and nobody says anything. Men run around with Mexicans and even worse, and