I dropped my eyes, though Beast pressed her claws into me, painfully. She didn’t like showing submission to anyone, but this was the tabby’s den, the cat a new addition since the last time I’d been inside the house. I smelled her now, over the potpourri. I didn’t enter the room, but stood at the entrance, eyes down. The cat settled slightly, uneasy, and kept her eyes on me.
Aggie stuck her head in from the kitchen. “I see you met the queen. She showed up here a few weeks ago and moved in. Sweetest cat I ever saw. ’Til now.”
“Cats don’t like me,” I said.
Aggie looked at me strangely. “Queenie likes everyone. Even the dogs.” I grunted as Queenie showed me her teeth again. Aggie’s brows went up at the threat from the house cat. “Hmm. My mother is out back on the porch. Come.”
I trailed Aggie, and Queenie dropped heavily to the floor, following us through the house with regal disdain. Her scent came strongly then, heavy with hormones and faintly with blood. I said, “You know she’s pregnant, right?”
Aggie turned back and stared at the cat. “Well, darn. I knew she was getting fat.”
“She’s due soon.” Like today, but I didn’t say that. Queenie was already in early labor, but since I had no way of knowing that, except my extra-good nose, I didn’t say that either.
Aggie made a long-suffering sound, half sigh, half snort, something I remembered from The People, the Tsalagiyi, a sound that was pure Cherokee, and I smiled, relaxing at the familiar noise. On the back porch Uni Lisi was sitting on a deeply upholstered chair, a bowl of bean pods on the table in front of her, shelling them fast, her knobby hands flying through the beans, pinching off the ends and stripping the string down the side of the pods, exposing the plump beans inside, tossing them into a bowl, and dropping the empty shells on the table. It seemed like a lot of work when they could buy beans in a can, but I didn’t say that either. She paused in her shelling and gestured me to the table. “Come. Come, Jane. Sit.” I sat across from her, my little paper bag on my lap.
Aggie placed a glass of sweating tea in front of her mother, a single mint leaf in the bottom; two identical glasses went to the side. One was clearly mine. “Jane says Queenie is going to give us kittens soon.”
“Oh?” Uni Lisi leaned over and studied the cat. “We have to get her a basket and a blanket. That big pink one in the corner of my room. Make her a place on the porch so she doesn’t take the babies off. Good to see you, Jane. Go get the basket, Aggie.” Uni Lisi drank her tea and smacked her lips. I had never heard the old woman so chatty. “Drink,” she commanded. At her gesture I drank too, the tea so sweet it coated the inside of my mouth, good Southern tea, one-third sugar, the rest tea so dark it looked like bayou water. It was delicious. I tried to think of something to say, as the old woman went back to shelling beans. “We gonna have some kittens,” the old woman said, as if I didn’t already know. “You want a kitten?”
“Um, thank you, no,” I said, with my best Christian children’s home manners.
Aggie carried the pink basket back onto the porch. It was really pink—flamingo—with a pink bow on top. The basket was about three feet wide, with a huge hoop handle, the biggest basket I had ever seen, and Aggie placed it at Uni Lisi’s feet. The blanket Aggie set inside was fleece, yellow with red and green polka dots all over it, a color combo that was . . . interesting at best. Queenie walked past, her tail high, and hissed at me, warning me to stay away. She leaped gracefully into the basket and began pawing the blanket into submission, ignoring me totally now. Aggie sat beside me and drank her tea, sighing once as she eyed the cat. “Kittens,” she murmured with disgust.
“I brought you gifts,” I said. I tilted up the paper bag, and two small foil-wrapped packages fell into my hand, each one tied with hemp string. I placed the silver foil–wrapped one in front of Aggie, and the gold foil–wrapped one in front of Uni Lisi. The old woman clapped her hands together like a child and began tearing at the paper. Aggie took hers and untied the string. They both got them open at the same time. Both women made little oohing and aahing sounds as they lifted their necklaces to the light.
“I’d have brought them to you on my last visit, but I didn’t come inside.”
Uni Lisi swatted her daughter’s hand. “You should have brought her inside. She had presents.” Aggie looked at me under her brows and I stifled a grin.
“The amethyst came from a small mine near the Nantahala River,” I said, “on Cherokee land. A Cherokee silver artist named Daniel Running Bear did the silver work. Daniel Yonv Adisi. I found the silver chains online and they probably came from China. They should be long enough to just put over your head,” I finished. I had planned that part carefully, remembering the older woman’s knobby hands, but if I had seen her shelling beans, I’d have just bought her a short chain and let her use the clasp.
Aggie and her mother draped their necklaces over their heads in gestures that looked choreographed, the twin actions of people who had lived together for many years. Aggie looked at me with a smile, the first one I had seen on her face today. “They are beautiful. Thank you, Dalonige i Digadoli.”
“Oh yes. This is pretty. Pretty, pretty!” Uni Lisi patted her amethyst between her shrunken breasts. “I like purple.”
I nodded formally to each of them. “You are welcome, Egini Agayvlge i, Uni Lisi.”
“Mama, you wanted to tell Jane about your dream.”
“Yes.” The old woman nodded, her hands busy once again with the beans. “I have many dreams as I get older. Some are nothing. Some are something. This one was something.” A prickling ran up the back of my neck, as if cobwebs trailed across me. I placed the tea glass on the table, my hands curled around it, wet with condensation, cold from the ice. Uni Lisi drank again, her lips making that smacking sound when she was done. She reached down and stroked the cat, feeling along her belly. Queenie rolled over and let the old woman feel of her stomach. “Fat kittens. I count four. Maybe more.” She looked at me again. “You sure you don’t want a kitten?”
I shook my head, waiting on the dream. The dreams of the elders were important, not to be ignored.
“This dream was strange, even for me. It was about a man hanging over a fire.”
I stilled, slowly dropping my hands into my lap, my tea glass forgotten. “A white man?”
She nodded, returning to the beans. “Dirty. Naked. He had a beard, like he needed to shave. His mustache was longer, like he had it first. Brown hair. Brown hands. He was dead. He had been cooked over a slow fire for many hours.” She looked at me from under her brows. “This was not the way of Tsalagiyi. Not the way of The People. This was the way of the Mohicans, maybe. Or the Creek. Savages. Not Tsalagiyi.” She nodded once, firmly, her hands flying through the beans. “Not Tsalagiyi.”
If I thought it was strange for a member of one tribe to call another tribe savages, I didn’t show it. I kept still, waiting on the rest of the dream. Uni Lisi drank again, smacked again, and said, “There was an old woman standing beside the fire. She was wearing a long dress, blue or gray, and her hair was in braids down her back. She was holding a stick, the end sharpened and black from the fire. She poked the body and it didn’t bleed.” She pointed one knobby finger at me, her black eyes throwing back the light, like faceted stones. “When Aggie takes you to sweat, you will think on this.” She looked at her daughter. “Take her now. I’ll finish the beans and take a nap on the couch with Queenie. We gonna have us some kittens tonight, I think. Go, go.” She shooed us with her hands.