Sisters of Grass by Theresa Kishkan Page A

knowing what to expect. That drinking tube was buried with a girl, probably there’s a digging stick, too, somewhere, still underground — the graves weren’t deep then — and her shoes, some beads, a little food. Sometimes even a dog would be buried with its owner. And there are so many reasons why she might have died young.”
    Margaret was quiet, thinking of the girl beneath the ground on the ridge above Lauder’s Creek. Not lying on her back, as though sleeping, but with her knees drawn up to her chin, bound there with bark twine. Had the girl seen the coyote pups leaping and rolling in the dry grass when they first left the den, did she watch the eagles on Hamilton Mountain before it was called that and wonder how it must feel to hang in the air so high and still, did she bury her face in blossoming sage, sneezing as she inhaled the tiny flies that sucked at the nectar? Most of all, was she related to Margaret, through blood down all the generations? And was she afraid to die and leave the world? The Indians at Douglas Lake had believed that the souls lived in a western world, underground. Now that most of them were Christians, it was heaven where the soul went, taken upward on wings, as though by eagles. But Grandmother Jackson still read the stars like an old storybook, saying, “We think of those stars as the children of Black Bear, and we call that the grey trail, the tracks of the dead.” When Margaret visited, they’d stand outside the cabin after dark to listen for loons, and Grandmother pointed out the stories of the tribe written across the sky. The moon and his sister, shadows and smoke, the dog following the cluster of stars that William called the Pleiades. When the two women, young and old, stood in the darkness, Margaret thought that she never wanted to leave. She wanted to learn to make baskets and medicines and stay in her grandmother’s house forever. Yet it was not quite home.
    Margaret’s young sisters, Jane and Mary, favoured their father in appearance, having reddish lights in their brown hair and fair skin. Jane’s eyes were blue, Mary’s a clear grey. When William Stuart’s mother and sister from Astoria came to visit, the younger girls hung about them constantly, asking for stories, watching Elizabeth patiently cut and sew the bright calico she had brought into pretty dresses for them, and letting her style their hair into ringlets with rags and an iron rod she heated on the woodstove. Margaret felt shy with the ladies, felt the contrast between their creamy skin and her own darker colouring; she was also wary of their expectations of woman-hood. “A lady never rides astride.” “A lady never allows the sun to ruddy her complexion.” “Keep your voice soft and low, and always wait to be spoken to.” But no matter what Aunt Elizabeth said, you could not ride sidesaddle when you were rounding up cattle. It was important to be able to crouch low when your horse cut out sharply, to grip with your knees, to balance yourself with your stirrups at a lope. And how could you do it in a skirt?
    She knew this but felt uncomfortable contradicting her aunt. After all, she knew about the flowers of Grasse and had brushed Margaret’s hair so lovingly that the girl had leaned into her and felt the warm glow of family love wash over her along with the scent of lavender. Sometimes she thought of herself as two people, moving between two homes, two families, often under the same roof. She had dreamed of the Astoria ladies for many weeks after they’d left, seeing herself ride with Aunt Elizabeth in a strange saddle that must have been a gift from her aunt, wearing a long divided skirt and pretty black boots. Her hair had been braided and wrapped around her head in a coronet, satin ribbons woven among the dark strands. Waking, she felt a loss so deep she cried into her pillow. She wondered about the girl in the dream, not quite