( I have a few posts written but Aunt Lina isn't allowing me on-line. So I've found a way around it. I take a flash-drive to school. Carl has figured a way around the "parental controls" that DSW uses, so I can e-mail myself each post, while supposedly "transferring homework". Then during lunch, if I go outside & stand by the teacher's lounge/media center, I can get a wi-fi signal & post to my blog. Sneaky, but it works. )
The night that we put together the artificial tree (a first for us – we usually just cut one down at the farm), Aunt Lina had a glass of wine. She usually doesn’t partake of adult beverages, because our people have a low tolerance for the stuff. It’s ruined the lives of many Native families. Aunt Lina keeps the stuff around for cooking – it’s one of the “secret ingredients” for her spaghetti sauce (the other is ground venison –it’s not such a big secret, it’s just that some people object to eating ground Bambi). Red wine’s also great form making mushroom chicken & zabaglione, a really fabulous dessert--but I’m getting off track here.
Because of the wine, Aunt Lina actually began to talk a little about her past. It’s not a subject she talks about easily. She had already told me that she’s been to every state in the US except Hawaii. She talked of some really impossible stuff, like seeing Buffalo hunts and wars with the white invaders, and how that temporarily limited her access to the Spiritworld.
I asked her why we were Christian, if she knew there was a Spiritworld. She explained that the Spiritworld held all possibilities, and that there were places there that those from this world could only cross once. Perhaps the Heaven of the Christians was there. She only could say that the few times she’d been near that edge, she’d pulled back. Aunt Lina was not ready for that, even though so many people that had been in her life had gone that route.
In the early years of the 20th Century, Aunt Lina had lived in Alaska, mentoring young Eklutnan shifters (arctic fox and polar bear). The natives were Orthodox Christians, and she was baptized while in Alaska. My godmother Anastasia is Inuit and Eklutnan; Aunt Lina had befriended Ana’s grandmother while in Alaska, although Anastasia thought that it was Aunt Lina’s mother, and not Aunt Lina herself. Aunt Lina was actually Anastasia’s godmother, but she’d had to come up with a fictitious “parent” in order to explain why she hadn’t aged.
Aunt Lina talked quite a bit as we put lights and ornaments on the tree. Almost all of the ornaments were hand-made, carved or crafted treasures that Aunt Lina had saved over her lifetime. Each one had a story or memory for her; a carved walnut shell seemed to be very precious, as was a crocheted angel, a beaded eggshell, and a painted scallop. She told me stories of the clans in winter, how various tricksters managed to survive, and how the Spiritworld was starting to manifest in various cities, as people had become conscious of the damage that had been done to the animal population of the world. A surprising number of big cities were becoming home to reintroduced species, like the hawk, falcon, coyote, fox, and owl. As the animals relocated, so did some shifters. Aunt Lina herself had lived in San Francisco during the 1960’s, and been in New York during the Depression. It was almost incomprehensible, to think that this woman had experienced that much history in her life.
As I put the last ornament, a plastic fairy that I’d bought in Philadelphia last year, on the tree, I caught Aunt Lina looking at me oddly.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
She just shook her head, smiling an odd smile. Another memory of the past?
“I know you’re busy with school, and probably aren’t thinking about it, but don’t even think of shifting this week, ok?”
The next day at school, I understood what she meant. I thought I had an upset stomach, but it turned out to be my introduction to cramps. Lovely. Thank goodness that Amelia had some supplies in her locker!
When I got home, Aunt Lina had a cup of herbal tea for me. I was surprised that she wasn’t working in the back room – her “studio”. I hadn’t told anyone at school what had happened, yet she was ready for me.
As we sipped tea, Aunt Lina explained that shifting during my period could make cramps worse, at least for now. Last night she’d had a feeling that I would start bleeding this week, and wanted to make sure I didn’t suffer pain making a change in my first week. For most girl shifters, the first shift happens around the first menstruation. Boys start later in the teen years. Shifting as an infant is truly unusual; I’d been told that so long ago, I forgot when I first heard it.
For a few days, everything at school seemed to irritate me. It was so irrational. In Math, the teacher had us work on some problems “in teams” and I found it so frustrating to wait for everyone to catch up – I could have done the stupid problems in a few minutes instead of wasting two days on it. Carl had to calm me down several times when this one kid kept insisting that things be done his way… His name is Byron Knight. Apparently the kid feels entitled because his family owns several bars and shops along the main drag, as well as an apartment complex. His motto is “My way or the highway, baby.” I’m serious.
At the end of class on the first day of the assignment, I went to the teacher, Mr. Wellman, and handed him a paper with my calculations. I asked if I could just be my own team. I told him that as the only girl on Byron’s team, I was being ignored, and that Carl wasn’t allowed any input as well. Mr. Wellman told me that I had to do things with the team, and take the grade the team received, but that he was going to use the paper I’d given him as extra credit. That was good, but at the end of the assignment, he proclaimed my team as the quintessential example of how not to run a team. He didn’t use Byron’s name, but explained that the team leader had overlooked contributions from a team member that could have gotten the team an A grade; instead the team had earned a C. He said that the team leader, while attempting to keep his leadership role, had actually bullied his team into the lower grade. He held up my paper to prove that we could have gotten a better grade, and done it faster, if they had listened to all people in the group while “brainstorming”. Unfortunately, I write big, and everyone in the front row could see my name. By the end of the class, I’d earned the reputation of a brown-nosing bitch.
Thank God for Christmas. This happened a few days before the holiday break. I had hoped that everyone would forget by the time school re-opened. For the most part, that was true. The exception was Byron Knight. I’d been in White Cedars less than three months, and I had managed to piss off one of the more popular kids at DS Whitstone (and the most influential kid in town, besides his older brother Jordan).
Naturally, I came back to school in January as a social pariah. But I’ve always been that, hanging out with Carl, Dor, Ruby, & Amelia. It’s just that I used to be an unknown pariah, now I’m the girl that pissed off Byron Knight.
Until my next post….
Randi
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