Prayers for the Dead -- ii

Bea gets a friendly Christmas-season call from Char, her daughter and friend, who has her warm and seasonal aspirations on Christmas Eve.

"We just thought we'd call, Mom," Char said. "We just opened presents and the kids are all busy by the tree. I thought I'd wish you a Merry Christmas."

"You didn't have to do that," she told her daughter.

"Dad's gone, I suppose?" Char asked.

"He's on the sleigh. It's something he's got to do now, whether or not he wants to," she said. "His men expect it."

"You mean he didn't want to go?"

"You know your father," she told her, "the damned fool."

''I'll get Randy to run you over here," Charlotte said. "I don't like the idea of you sitting there alone on Christmas Eve again. What are you doing anyway?"

She looked back at the putty-knife stuck beneath the linoleum. "I'm watching TV," she said. "Don't worry about me. If you pick me up, your father won't know up from down when he steps in the front door. You know how he gets."

"He shouldn't drive, Mom," she said.

"Sure," she said, "of course, he shouldn't drive."

'Tm serious," Char told her.

"And so am I." She twirled the cord in her fingers. "He thinks every Santa Claus gets a Rudolph or who-knows-what other kind of grace to get him home safely."

"I think you shouldn't be alone, not on Christmas Eve."

"Been that way for years," Bea said.

In the background she could hear the children buzzing and carols, the kind of Christmas music she'd expect from Char now that the whole family had found Jesus, all of them baptized.

"You're welcome to come to church with us tomorrow, Mom," Char said, "on Christmas Day."

“I know what day it is.”

"I just thought I'd mention it."

"I have my crossword puzzles and there's a Bob Hope special com­ing up. You just get back to your family." She looked up at the clock above the tool rack. "He'll be back--"

"It's early," Char said. "I just wish he wouldn't drink."

"Keep your nose out of his business, Charlotte."

"Randy can be there in fifteen minutes, Mom. You should see Brandon--he's sitting here on the floor already building all kinds of things, and Sarah's dressed up--"

"I got Myron to tend to--"

"Tomorrow, then?"

"Tomorrow what?"

"Tomorrow church."

"Tomorrow he's got a headache. Maybe we'll stop over in the afternoon once he sleeps it off."

"They're your grandchildren--the only ones you have. They love you too." Char stopped for just a second, took a breath. "Listen, I won't let you do to them what you did to me-and your mother."

Bea let that line alone.

"Did you hear me?" Char said.

"What's that?"

"I said I won't let you do what you did to me--and what you did to your mother,” she repeated.

“What was that again?”

"You know damn well, Mother." Her voice abruptly lost that Christmas-y tone. "I never had a grandma," Char said. “That’s what.”

Bea looked at the phone, then laid it back on the hook. “What she'd done,” she thought, “what she'd done.” Char ought to know sometime what nine months in the basement of the school was like-right beside the washtub's leaky faucets. What it felt like to be a kid scared to death of rats, just seven years old--a boarding student. How she'd cry on Mon­days when her father would get her up in the mornings so early the sun was barely set from the day before, get her and Peter up to take them to Split Rock mission school, how she'd be there all week long until her sometimes-father drove back to pick them up. "Did you have a good week at school?" he'd say, and then his mind would wander out into the desert, some hogan. By third grade--no more--she quit answering his polite questions.

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Just a word about the "ins" here, the quickly told stories Bea doesn't tell her daughter but relives herself are, of course, back story, a reflection of the past she can't help going through because of what her daughter has said--"what she'd done." Fifty years ago, missionaries most always brought their children to the Mission School while doing their evangelism all around the reservation. My friend told me he felt abused and abandoned--he was five and staying with another kid in some basement "apartment." What Bea remembers here is all taken from the experiences told me by the other youth leader at the retreat. We talked--he talked--late into the night. He had much to say.