Passage I

PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from the novel Power by Linda Hogan (@1998 by Linda Hogan).

Ama Eaton isn't really my aunt. I call her that because it's what my mother called her the first time I came here with my uncles. Ama's about the same age as my mother, and they are cousins in a roundabout way, but Mama calls her that out of respect for what she knows and who she is. Mama respects her and is jealous. Mama's made her choices and they are different. She'd like to learn from the old people, live the way we used to, but she wants it modern, too. Ama says it's not about choices but about heart and heart is what Mama's low on. Because of how Ama lives, she's a woman both admired and ridiculed, sometimes by the same people and in the same moment of time. What she's got is herself, and that's all she has. She has no lights or television or washing machine, but sometimes, even so, I think she's got more than the rest of us because she believes in herself, in what she does. It's the way she lives in this place.

Since the first time I was here, I've kept coming back, but I come alone now. The first time I came was when my uncles sent me to ask her if they could cut some trees nearby. I stood in front of her, a small girl, but not as afraid of her as my uncles were. Her eyes were the color of river mud after the wash of a storm, her neck too bony, her collarbone protruding. I stood here with something like courage, on this very porch, and asked her about the trees.

She looked me over like she was thinking all the same things about me, then asked, "Which trees?"

I could smell fish frying behind her, in her house.

I pointed. "Those ones that are dying out there. We'll bring you back some of the wood," I said. "Uncle Sonny says you could use some."

"All right. Go ahead." And that was all we said. She turned and went back to the fish dinner cooking on the stove. She had a screen door then. I had seen her through the screen. And I saw her older than she is. But when I went back to help take the wood to her, she invited me in and gave me a glass of sweet tea to drink. I sat down with her at the table and we talked, and she looked nice then, her hair shiny and clean around her shoulders, her eyes soft.

"You know my mother," I said, taking in her hair, her hands that looked small and old from hard work. "She's your cousin." And she said, "Yes, I do, and you're nothing like her at all." That was what won me over to Ama.

After that, they told me not to be going out to her place. But I come here anyway and I help her out and no one says much to me about it. I bring her ice sometimes, or sugar for her tea, or other small things I pilfer from my mother's place, a can opener or strainer, perhaps. My mama knows I come and help her out even though she pretends she doesn't.

Ama likes having me here. It's better than being at home. It's like being part of the world. Some days we go out and fish. Fishing has its lessons. It teaches me to be still. And holding still is not something that comes easy to me. I'm learning from Ama how to survive and be friends with this land, and this is a place where a girl can get lost and the swamps and trees would eat her alive. It's a dangerous place with dark corners. On the days when Ama is silent, I learn from her stillness. It's not that she's moody. It's not an empty quiet, either, the way it would be with some people. It's a full silence and I like sitting with it and it's a relief from the chattiness of my sister and mom. I can't say what I learn from it; there's no words for it. Words are such noisy things and silence is something you have to listen to and when you do, it takes you by the hand, it catches bold of you. It tells you how to know things, like how sounds travel, where a certain bird is calling from.

But my feelings about Ama are mixed, I admit. Sometimes I love her, but there are times I don't even like her. I can't account for these feelings, but I think it has to do with how the world catches me up. It's when I've come from school I'm most likely to find her homely and strange. I see her through the eyes of other people and what they'd think of her. Through their eyes she looks wild and crazy. Still, I always want to stay with her. Maybe it's because I am afraid of everything and she's afraid of nothing and I want to Iearn this from her. Foolish, my mama calls her fearlessness, and she says foolish people don't last too long around here. But. I think it's courage more than foolishness that Ama has, and besides, sometimes I feel a longing for the old ways she lives by. And that's why I come here. I feel called.