The Gathering

FOUR

IT TOOK US FIVE minutes to get out of Salmon Creek. Without exceeding the speed limit. When I tell people that I live in a place with fewer than two hundred people, they don’t really get what that means. They say things like, “Oh, I’m in a small town, too,” and I look up theirs to see it has a population of six thousand.

Two hundred people means Salmon Creek doesn’t get on most maps. It’s not even a town—it’s a hamlet, with only six streets—the downtown strip and five courts of about ten houses each.

There are three shops downtown. There’s a decent grocery, but if my mom needs anything more exotic than white mushrooms and dried herbs, she has to grow it in our greenhouse. There’s a hardware store, but if you want something unusual, it has to be ordered from the city. Then there’s the Blender, our only restaurant, owned and run by Hayley’s dad. Good food but don’t expect sushi.

Kids in other small towns complain about needing to go to the city to find a mall. We can’t even buy clothing here. Well, we can, but it’s carried by the hardware store; and unless your fashion sense runs to coveralls and rubber boots, you’d better plan a trip to Nanaimo.

The last building we passed on the way out of town was the medical research facility. That might sound like a huge hospital-sized place, with helicopters landing on the roof at all hours, but it’s just a boring-looking building, two stories tall, about the size of a small office complex. It looks innocent enough, like you could walk right through the front doors. And you could … you just wouldn’t get much farther.

Security is supertight in there. Every door has a key card lock and some have access codes, too. I know because I’ve been in it. Everyone has. One problem with running a top-secret facility is that it makes people curious. So every year there’s an open house. Most of us kids stopped going as soon as our parents let us. It’s an afternoon of hearing talks on their drug research and being toured around labs full of computers and test tubes. Drug research may be big business—big enough to build a town to protect it—but it’s killer dull.

I’d be a lot more interested—in a negative way—if they were doing animal testing. If they are, it isn’t here. Same with subject groups; they don’t ever visit Salmon Creek. The helipad on the roof is only for flying in other doctors—like Dr. Davidoff and his group—and corporate bigwigs from the St. Cloud company, who want to keep tabs on where their money is going.

So Salmon Creek is a small, quiet place. Maybe I’d be itching to get out if I remembered living somewhere else. But most kids are fine with Salmon Creek. We get used to driving an hour to the city. Our parents have carpooled monthly trips for us since we were young. Almost all of us plan to go off to college or university, and not many intend to return, but we’re happy enough living here until then.

When we finally got to Nanaimo, we parked at the harbor front. There’s a ferry up the coast that will take you over to Vancouver across the Strait of Georgia. You’d be able to see the city from the harbor if there weren’t islands in the way. Well, in theory you could, though at this time of year we usually get fog, and sometimes you can’t see even those nearby islands, despite them being close enough to swim to if you’re really good. Serena swam out to Protection Island once and we—

I shook off the memory.

Canada might be famous for its winters, but that doesn’t apply here. Vancouver Island is temperate rain forest. We get rain, not snow. This year, our dry summer was holding on, and the occasional memo about small wildfires in the interior was making Dad nervous. Nobody else was complaining, that was for sure, and it was nice to look out and see all the islands, not a curtain of fog.

We walked along the marina docks. It was a gorgeous afternoon, the sun shining off the water, boats lined up at the floating Petro-Can station to fill up before heading out to sea. An engine whined as a seaplane took off.

We crossed Front, then cut along a tiny street before coming out on Commercial. I scanned the street, a mix of local and tourist shops, about half of them devoted to food.

“Can we get a snack before we shop?” I asked. “I’m starving.”

Mom shook her head. “You can grab a chocolate bar, but we need to be someplace before five.”

“No, that’s okay,” Dad said. “Go ahead.” When Mom gave him a look, he said, “If she’d rather get something to eat, let her. There’s always next year. Or the year after that …”

I stopped walking. “Okay, what’s up?”

When neither said a word, I peered down the street of shops and saw a sign that caught my eye: Sacred Ink.

“Oh my God,” I said. “Seriously?” I grinned and grabbed Mom’s arm. “Seriously?”

“Yes. You’re getting your tattoo.”

I threw my arms around Dad’s neck. “Thank you!”

“Hey,” Mom said. “I’m the one who had to persuade him it wasn’t going to turn his little girl into a streetwalker.”

“I never said that,” Dad said.

“No?” I said. “Cool. Cause I’ve decided to skip the paw print. I’m thinking of a tramp stamp with flames that says ‘Hot in Here.’ No, wait. Arrows. For directionally challenged guys.”

Mom grabbed Dad’s shoulders and steered him away from me. “She’ll get exactly what we agreed on. Now go hang out in a guy store and we’ll call when we’re done.”

“This is so cool,” I said loudly as Dad walked away. “Have you met the tattoo artist? Is he hot?”

“He’s a she,” Mom said.

“Is she hot? Cause I’m still young, you know. My sexual identity isn’t fully formed.”

“Your father can’t hear you anymore, Maya.” Mom sighed. “Poor guy. Why can’t you be a normal teenage daughter who’d sooner die than say the words ‘sexual identity’ in front of him?”

“You guys raised me right. You should be proud.”

I picked up my pace, but Mom said, “No need to run. Your appointment isn’t for another twenty minutes.”

I slowed to let her catch up. “So how’d you get Dad to agree? Did you play the cultural card?”

“Of course not. That would be wrong.”

I grinned. “You did, didn’t you?”

Dad’s quick to defer to her on that part of my upbringing. If she’d told him that tattooing was a part of Native culture, he would have backed down.

Mom’s background, though, is as different from mine as English is to Irish. That makes it tough on her. She wants me to be aware of my roots, but she isn’t really sure what they are, so she teaches me what she knows instead.

My Haida grandmother lives in Skidegate on the Queen Charlotte Islands north of us, and we’re really close. She’s a lot more into the traditions than my mom is. I love hanging out with her, working at the cultural center, and helping with the festivals. But sometimes I feel like one of the tourists. I felt the same way when I was twelve and we visited a Navajo reservation. And I felt the same way when we went to visit Dad’s extended family in Dublin. I’m aware of my background, and I’m proud of it, but I don’t really feel attached to it. Maybe that’ll change someday.

I wasn’t surprised when we got close to the tattoo studio and I saw a Haida raven painted on the sign. Inside, I could see more native art … and a shocking lack of skulls, Celtic crosses, and dragons.

“Cool,” I said.

“The owner is a young woman who graduated from Emily Carr,” Mom said. “Not exactly the kind of art they had in mind, I’m sure.”

“Is she Haida?”

Mom shook her head. “I believe she’s a member of the Scots tribe.”

In other words, Caucasian. That could earn her some ill will among Natives if she used their designs in tattoos, but Mom would say it was no different than a Russian tattooing Celtic knot work. As long as she’d studied the art and understood its meaning, Mom would be fine with it. Grandma would disagree. They’d respect each other’s opinions, though, and Mom always said that was the important thing.

Mom continued. “I chose Deena because she specializes in traditional tattooing, which I think would work best for what you want.”

I needed a free-form tattoo, not one done with a stencil. It can be a whole lot harder to find someone who can do one, unless you want it looking like a prison tat. There wasn’t much risk of that here. The studio looked like a combination doctor’s office and art gallery, all clean lines and cool colors.

There was no one in the front room. When Mom opened the door, a woman’s voice called, “Just a minute!”

I walked over to a sign that read TRIBAL TATTOOS. In smaller print, it said, IF YOU DON’T KNOW YOUR TRIBAL TATTOO, PLEASE DON’T ASK ME. THE BEST WAY TO HONOR YOUR HERITAGE IS TO LEARN ABOUT IT YOURSELF.

A voice floated over from the next room, “Nothing worse than getting a Cherokee facial tattoo and discovering your grandmother was really Assiniboine.”

Mom greeted the young woman, who didn’t look a lot older than me. She was about my height, with reddish-brown hair. Freckles dotted her round face. She introduced herself as Deena.

“You get a lot of that?” I asked, pointing at the sign.

“Unfortunately, yes. That’s the problem with having a shop in the tourist district. People with some Native blood come in here, wanting to recognize that part of their heritage, which is wonderful; but if you aren’t even sure what your heritage is, you’ve got a long way to go before you ink yourself with it.”

“So no Kokopelli for me,” I said. “I guess I’ll have to go with the unicorn.”

Deena laughed. “Yes, your mother tells me she thinks you’re Navajo.”

“She’s not,” said a quavering voice from the back room. An old woman appeared. “That girl is not Navajo.”

“Aunt Jean,” Deena murmured under her breath. “I’m working. Please don’t—”

“You’re not Navajo.” The woman jerked her chin at my mother. “So your daughter isn’t Navajo.”

I could see my mom struggling not to snap back, “You aren’t either.” Mom has issues with the whole “respect for elders” part of her culture. She did raise me to show respect—just not the blind sort she’d grown up with.

“My daughter is adopted,” she said evenly.

“That’s not what I mean. The Diné do not give up their children.”

She was right. The U.S. Indian Child Welfare Act overrode state adoption laws, giving tribes the right to overturn legal adoptions if the new parents weren’t part of their nation.

“This is my great-aunt Jean,” Deena said. “She’s a folklorist. Lived with the Navajo for … how long, Auntie?”

The old woman ignored her and kept staring at me.

“She’s the one who got me interested in native traditions.” A note of desperation crept into Deena’s voice as she hurried on. “I was fascinated by her work, and I’m thrilled that she’s come to live with me as her health declines.”

She emphasized the last words, and Mom nodded, taking this to mean we were seeing signs of dementia. My great-grandfather has that, so we know what it’s like.

“Why didn’t the Diné want her?” the old woman asked.

“I was left at a hospital in Portland,” I said. “I’m obviously Native, but there’s no way of telling what tribe. My grandmother has friends who are Navajo and they said I look Navajo. Doesn’t mean I am, but unless my bio parents come forward, no one’s ever going to know for sure.”

“Your mother didn’t want you either?”

Mom stepped in front of me. “I think we should leave now.”

Deena leaped in with apologies, then turned on her aunt and reminded her that this was her place of business. I could tell Mom wanted to leave, but when the old woman retreated to the back room, she calmed down.

I talked to Deena about my tattoo. Then Mom handed me my bathing suit and I went into a side room to change. I could hear Deena trying to distract Mom by talking about a university friend who’d studied Mom’s work at Emily Carr.

Mom’s an architect who specializes in designing homes that fit into the natural landscape, and she’s well known for it. Talking about her work was a good call, and by the time I came out, she was back to her usual self.

Deena had me stand on a chair so she could get a better look at my birthmark.

“It used to be darker,” Mom said. “It’s faded as she’s gotten older, and she wants to keep it.”

“In other words, make it as natural looking as possible,” Deena said.

I nodded. “Just tattoo over what’s there. I don’t want to change it or make it look more like a paw print or anything.”

“No reason to,” Deena said, her fingers tracing the edges. “It already does. Remarkable.”

“What is that?” came the old woman’s voice, so low I barely heard her. I turned to see her in the doorway staring at me.

“It’s a birthmark, Auntie. Looks like a cat’s paw, doesn’t it?”

The old woman muttered something I didn’t catch. Deena tried to smile, but it was strained. “We don’t speak Navajo, Auntie.”

The old woman’s gaze met mine and in it I saw fear and disgust. “I said, ‘Yee naaldlooshii.’ ” She turned to my mother. “That’s why the Diné didn’t want her. She’s a witch.”

Mom didn’t say a word, just set her jaw like she was locking it shut and handed me my clothing. I hesitated, but one look in her eyes told me not to argue. As I pulled on my clothes over my bathing suit, Deena apologized again and begged her aunt to leave. Neither my mom nor Deena’s aunt paid any attention, Mom fuming, the old woman glowering and mumbling under her breath.

When I was dressed, Mom ushered me to the door. I took one last longing look at a display of tattoos, then followed her out.