Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light. Joy Harjo
SPIRIT HELPER LULLABYE
HO-GO-SUE-GEE IS-TA-GEE, HEATH-LA-SEE, IS-TA-GEE
BEAUTIFUL BABY, BEAUTIFUL CHILD.
THE SKY IS YOUR BLANKET, THE EARTH IS YOUR CRADLE.
YOUR MOTHER ROCKS YOU CLOSE TO HER HEART.
YOUR FATHER HOLDS UP THE SKY.
HO-GO-SUE-GEE IS-TA-GEE, HEATH-LA-SEE, IS-TA-GEE
SCENE 7
REDBIRD: After our father left we didn’t have time for grieving. Our mother worked more jobs.
I had to take care of the babies.
Then a flurry of suitors called on our mother.
We liked the Indian bull rider missing two fingers best.
He taught us how to loop a rope, to throw a lasso.
His heart shined with kindness whenever he walked in with hope.
And when he brought out his country guitar, we all danced silly around the kitchen table.
Marry him, we begged. Please!
No, our mother said. He’s nice but what kind of job is that?
A preacher dressed in black planned to save us with a lash. He had God on his side. Get down on your knees and pray for the sins of your divorced Indian mother, your Indian father, he hissed behind her back.
We helped our mother push him and his angry God out the door.
Three times a charm, she said, when a pretty-eyed man came to call. He was clean. He was overly kind.
He bribed us with sweets and skates.
The yard filled up with poisonous snakes.
Watch out, we tried but couldn’t tell our mother. Our tongues were stuck with taffy in our mouths.
We kids hid beneath the kitchen table.
And watched him unwrap our mother with a charming courting song.
Song: Flute Courting Song
He stung her with a rash of sucker darts.
Then gently wiped away her tears.
The children’s room was barricaded shut from us.
It was there he kept his stacks of coins, his guns, and the piano he would never let us touch.
Our mother went to sleep for several years.
And that’s how she was lost to us.
SCENE 8
Moonlight.
REDBIRD: When everyone else was sleeping, my spirit would leave my body and I’d fly free. One night I flew to the moon.
Spirit Helper met me there.
We didn’t need words to talk.
Together we watched the story unwind through time and space, unraveling like my mother’s spools of threads when I accidentally dropped them.
We saw Monahwee far away on a horse. My grandmother rode behind him with a baby on her back.
We saw a circle of spirit dancers around a starry fire.
A water monster whirled and whirled, punched air with its snout, then dove back down again.
We saw a tribal attorney leaving a meeting with oil companies. Under his arm was a briefcase of money.
We saw my father in his truck by the lake with a case of beer.
My mother dozed on the couch at the television with the baby on her shoulder. The keeper yanked her by the hair and dragged her to the kitchen table. He forced her to hold a gun loaded with one bullet, to her head. He forced her to squeeze the trigger.
Spirit Helper talked quietly to me with her mind:
“Act carefully,” she told me. “You will be tested.”
SCENE 9
REDBIRD: Today he beat the baby with a belt. I can’t sleep for my anger. I want to free us. I go to the kitchen. Moonlight is full and shines a clear path to the drawer of knives. I pick one up, me the one who is afraid to touch knives. It’s the knife our mother uses to cut chicken, to peel apples.
I stand at the door of my mother’s room. She and her keeper are sleeping. Do I pretend I am a breeze as I take his life before he sees me? Or do I wait until the knife is at his heart, his throat, then wake him so my face is the last he sees?
The moon flickers and I feel the answer in my gut.
SCENE 10
I have a fever. My mother prepares a pan of alcohol and water, takes off my shirt. “I’ll take over,” says her keeper. My mother goes to bed. She leaves me there.
“Lay down,” he demands.
Every place he touches I turn rotten. When I am back in the room with my brothers and sisters who are still sleeping, I pull out the killing knife and I begin to cut away the broken.
SCENE 11
Light day.
REDBIRD: I don’t remember anything after that … I lost the ability to fly. I disappeared.
Next thing … my mother and I were embracing at the bus station. Before I boarded the bus for the two-day trip to Indian school with my footlocker of everything I owned, my mother pulled out a stash of coins in a sock, that she had saved from her waitress job. And she also gave me this:
“Inside,” she said, “are tobacco and a song.
There is power in this song.
But, you have to sing to wake the power up.”
REDBIRD sings in response to her mother.
SONG: MOTHER’S PROTECTION SONG
YAY YAY EE YAY, YAY YAY EE YAY YAY.
YAY YAY EE YAY, YAY YAY EE YAY YAY.
I tried to give it back.
“Save yourself.”
“No, baby, it doesn’t work that way.”
She shook her head painfully.
She walked away.
She left me there.
REDBIRD sings.
SONG: NOTHING I CAN SAY HERE
NO EARTH NO SKY
NO WINGS NO WIND
NO MOTHER NO FATHER
NO EVER AFTER OR FOREVER
NOTHING I CAN SAY
NOTHING I CAN DO
BUT WALK AWAY
BE EARTH, BE SKY
SINGS MY SPIRIT
BE WINGS, BE WIND
SINGS MY SOUL
NOTHING I CAN SAY
NOTHING I CAN DO,
I’LL BE EARTH, BE SKY
BE WINGS, BE WIND
SCENE 12
Light day.
REDBIRD drunk.
REDBIRD: I call to order the meeting of girls on restriction at Indian school. We broke the rules. Now we’re