The boys found him unmotivated. He would sit by the stove or, if the weather was good, on the back porch, gazing at the western hills all day if someone didn’t tap his shoulder to let him know that a train had come in or that a rancher’s fence needed mending. And he didn’t raise an eyebrow, he wasn’t the least concerned, when Daisy took off by herself for a dance in Colusa. What kind of man is that? the boys asked. What kind of husband? Yanta seemed more interested in the small spotted dog that was always at his side than he was in his own child. The boys gave him the worst jobs, cleaning the outhouse and the storekeeper’s chimney, just to see if they could get a rise out of him, some protest. But nothing. He did the terrible jobs. Until one day he disappeared. He took nothing, none of his clothes, only his hunting rifle and the spotted dog. Four months later, Daisy moved to Colusa to live with a Wintun named Andy Mitchell. She left the baby with Sarah.
The first thing Sarah noticed, even before Daisy left, was that the child was unusually quiet. The little girl was observant enough, her eyes darted about all the time, but otherwise she was still, solemn. The boys thought she would be lazy like her father. Sarah didn’t know what to think. In time, Sarah had her hands full keeping the girl out of mischief, as she would any child. Once little Mabel swallowed kerosene. The white doctor came all the way from Woodland and pumped her stomach. For the longest time, she could only take pureed fruits and vegetables. “Maybe that’s why she’s turning out so strange,” one of the boys suggested. But by then Sarah knew it was something else. She had heard the girl mumble in her sleep, she had seen the long stares, and watched her chase away a poisoner with a piece of meat. She had noticed the girl was thin, far too thin, even before the kerosene accident. No, it was something else, and it wouldn’t stop.
Sarah tried to downplay the situation. “She’s cranky and damaged because of the accident,” she started saying. She told her family that, just as she told it to the Indians in front of the store or in the orchards when they stopped and stared. She told it to the white people who said the little Indian girl looked like she was starving to death. Mabel didn’t grow. She shrunk in, close to the bone, so that her cheekbones and the indentations on the side of her face showed, the way they do on very old or very sick people. Because her body was so thin and undeveloped, her head, even as bony as it was, looked disproportionately large. Something’s wrong with Sarah Taylor’s granddaughter, people began to say.
Wrong. Sarah knew the kinds of things people meant. The boys told her what people were saying. Stories about Lolsel came up. Stories about the white snake poison. Some said Sarah was being punished because she used her poison to charm the white people. Others claimed it was a curse from way back, from the time Sarah’s grandfather sacrificed the snake. Still others thought the girl had a strange disease that might be catching. They did not want their children to go near her. There was an old lady from Cortina, where Anderson was living, who felt the girl was special in a good way. Whatever people said, though, Sarah showed little reaction.
But it was hard. The girl caused quite a stir. Still, Sarah found that going about her public life—washing clothes, harvesting apricots, then peaches, then apples, then pears, then prunes, then almonds—amid people’s curious stares and fast stories was not as difficult finally as the frustration and helplessness she felt at home alone when the girl wouldn’t eat or screamed at the top of her lungs in the middle of the night. She knew what was happening, the girl was Dreaming, and she didn’t know where to turn for help.
At night, Sarah prayed, sang what songs she thought might help Mabel. Each day seemed to bring another challenge. Now federal government officials were rounding up all the Indian children and hauling them away to boarding schools. They checked regularly to see if Mabel was well. Sarah took off Mabel’s dress each time and scared them away. More than once she felt people following her as she went about her work. Still, the nights alone were the worst, and sometimes, exhausted, she found herself saying over and over again, as if the words would make a difference, “If my father was alive, you wouldn’t be this way . . . If my father was alive, you wouldn’t be this way . . .”
Mabel heard Sarah say this, but she didn’t know what Sarah meant. She didn’t know Sarah was thinking of Old Taylor’s powerful medicine, the ways he might help and guide Mabel. Mabel didn’t know too much. She didn’t ask. “You listen to me,” the voice was saying. “I’ll teach you. You don’t tell nobody what I’m telling you. You don’t ask them questions about it. You’re being fixed to be doctor.” “What’s doctor?” Mabel asked. “You’ll know when the time comes.” But what the spirit was showing her did not seem good. She saw blood, poison. Ugliness. People carrying bones from the dead, grinding the remains of the orange-bellied newt, weaving the woodpecker’s red feathers into sun baskets. Bodies swollen and distorted, discolored. Bodies with black growths like roots. Crying. Misery. Hatefulness. She couldn’t trust anything around her. Once while she was sitting by the willows waiting for Sarah to finish her wash, a small colorful bird appeared before her. “Close your eyes and follow me,” it said. And Mabel did as she was told, only to find herself in a dark cave where poison was being ground by an old woman on a red rock. She screamed, as she always did, and waited for Sarah’s arms.
Sarah began to feel desperate. She thought of things. Like the fact Mabel was never blessed, dedicated in the traditional way. She was not given a name in the Roundhouse. But what Roundhouse? The one at Lolsel was closed a long time ago. What Dreamer? What spiritual person? What Lolsel? What people? A lonely old woman in a one-room shack who takes care of white people’s children? The other one who washes clothes in the valley and carries around a sickly grandchild? Lolsel was a dream now, a memory that seemed useless. Richard Taylor had said there would be a new world. So this was it. A world of white people and strangers. New world that was no world. Why, then, this child in a place that was not home? A mean trick played on a woman burdened by enough mean tricks already.
McKinley, who was the only son around on a regular basis, suggested that Sarah move to Cortina. He thought she would feel better up there. He said the Indians were friendly, that they took in strangers, and that they still performed the Hesi and Big Head dances. McKinley danced with the Rumsey Wintun there. He thought the ceremonies would do her good. Maybe someone there might even be able to help Mabel.
In the fall, after the last crops were in, Sarah gave notice and left Rumsey. She wasn’t going to a place where she didn’t know anyone. Her son, Anderson, lived in Cortina, after all, and when Sarah showed up at his door on the small reservation, Anderson’s wife took Sarah and the girl right in. The woman’s name was Rosie. She was a stout, attractive woman who kept a neat house and food on the stove. She was happy her three children had a grandmother and a cousin.
By now Sarah knew enough Wintun so she could converse easily. While Anderson worked, finishing the pruning in the fruit orchards, Sarah and Rosie cooked and visited. Rosie knew everybody, and everything about them. Sarah saw that she was respected and well liked among her people. At times, Sarah felt that she wasn’t contributing enough. The crop harvesting had ended, and there wasn’t a white person around who needed clothes washed. She knew no white people in Cortina. She had to depend on what Anderson brought in. But she didn’t have a lot of time to worry about herself and what she could or couldn’t do just then.
Excitement was everywhere. The old-time dances were on, and people from all over came to dance. People from Sulphur Bank in Lake County. Grindstone people. Colusa. Rumsey Wintun. Pomo. People Sarah hadn’t seen in years. People she had never seen. They came on horseback, piled on wagons, alone on foot, and camped in view of the Round-house, whose roof rose up to a peak in the middle of the open field. The women cooked up black and green pinole and acorn mush. They prepared baskets of fresh clover and pepperwood balls. Old-timers from the valley toasted grasshoppers. Meat was baked in large underground ovens. Everybody had some specialty to offer.
The men who danced wore elaborate and colorful Big Heads,