Page 26 of Freedom's Kiss
Winnie feared their future as much as she had her past, but as she watched both familiar and new faces smile and laugh and fill their mouths with food, she began to feel as if she were the only one. Everyone else seemed to live in the present. Accept each moment as it came as a gift, neither borrowing nor hoarding up troubles upon themselves. How did they do it? Could she?
Those were the thoughts that kept her company throughout the rest of the night and greeted her bright and early the next morning.
The sun had already crested the horizon by the time she arose. The settlement buzzed like a hive, a contagious anticipation moving about until Winnie herself felt affected by it.
She blinked the sleep out of her eyes and ran a hand down the back of her head. She’d braided her hair in neat rows the night before and was pleased to find it still intact. With a hint of reservation that held her and an equal amount of curiosity that drove her forward, she fell into step with the others and headed in the direction of the ceremonial grounds.
Sometime during the night or early morning, four brush-covered arbors had been erected, one in each of the sacred directions. A group of women huddled off to the side snagged Winnie’s attention. They were bent over, attaching turtle shell rattles to their legs. When they straightened, she saw sticks with ribbons tied to the ends in their hands.
Winnie stepped closer, realizing the landscape of the grounds had changed more than a first glance had witnessed. In the center lay four logs crosswise.
Warmth seeped into her arms and she turned her head, finding Asa and Isaac on one side of her and Martha on the other. All around the grounds people stood, creating a unified circle. No laughter or whispered words carried on the light breeze this morning. Faces, some grim, some at rest, but all serious, stared straight ahead.
Winnie’s thoughts and questions that had interrupted her sleep and awoken her like the crow of a rooster, stilled. A voice other than her own stirred her heart and admonished,Listen and learn.
The same knower that had offered the prayer of thanksgiving the night before stepped into the center of the grounds beside the crisscrossed logs and knelt. With head bowed, he lit a fire under the logs, the small flames growing until they cast an orange hue across hisskin. He stood and untied a pouch at his waist, bringing out corn, beans, squash, and meat—the firstfruits of the new crops. The items fell from his hand and into the fire, an offering for their sins.
Winnie watched as women approached the fire with bundles of their own, flinging them into the flames.
Martha leaned over. “They’ve swept out their cook fires and homes. Collected their old clothing and any filth or repulsive thing from their lives and are burnin’ it now. They’ll collect coals from this fire to relight theirs at home. This is their time to begin anew, fresh, without any of the ugliness they’d lived with the past year infectin’ their future.”
Winnie didn’t move, but she pictured herself in that line, in her hands a sack that carried all the revolting things in her heart. The pain and the scars that had so twisted over the last year as to produce anger and hatred enough to murder. She envisioned herself throwing that sack into the flames that wound and danced their way to the sky, the heat eating and purifying until they lifted like ash on the wind and were blown away.
Winnie’s spirit was constantly prodded and pushed for renewal. After the burning of the things of the last year the women wished to cleanse themselves from, they danced the Ribbon Dance—circling the fire, drawing the old year to a close, cutting off the outside world and issuing all into a state of spiritual reflection. The men drankpassv, a medicinal tea that purged their systems to prepare them for a new year.
On the third day, men danced the Feather Dance to heal the community. Their fast ended that night, and they washed themselves in the lake Nokosi had found Winnie wading in only two days earlier. Once clean, everyone joined in a stomp dance ceremony, shuffling their feet and moving to the rhythm of the man calling out the song and the woman behind him with shakers on her legs. As each verse around the fire was sung, more and more people joined, stomping their feet as they shuffled forward, answering the singers’ call. Winnie found herself among the dancers, caught up in the swell of community around her, feeling for the first time a kinship to people who, for the last year, had called hersister.
Day four opened with friendship dances at dawn and then games. Winnie declined to participate but reveled in watching a riveting game of stickball played by the men. Isaac and Nokosi were on a team, the two foot-long sticks with racketing on the end an extension of their arms as they ran and tossed a deer-skinned ball stuffed with squirrel hair between themselves and their teammates. After scoring the winning point, Nokosi’s eyes managed to find and trap hers across the three-hundred-foot field. She smiled, hoping he saw that all of her tomorrows wouldnotbe like all of her yesterdays.
