There Was a Wise Woman Who Talked to the Fish

The sun was just starting to set behind the hill, and the lightning bugs and mosquitos were rising from the grass. Magic and mayhem, delights and bites, coming at you all at the same time. Nature’s reflection of the day I’ve had, I laugh to myself as I stub out my cigarette and put the butt back in the almost-empty pack.

The little kids are running everywhere, chasing the fireflies and each other. The middle boys are sitting on the steps, hunched over each other’s preferred device. Older “boys” in lawn chairs are gathered around the fire pit, passing the bottle when the wives and kids aren’t lookin’.

Like nobody knows, I think to myself.

I start to head back to the house to help finish the cleanup from the BBQ when I spot Sora sitting alone at a picnic table, the picture of tweeness. A mixture of disgust and despair—a level of boredom not seen in any other creature. Someone I can amuse and annoy.

“Sora! What’s shaken? What’s up? You look miserable!” I cry.

“I am! My phone’s dead! ONE of the dogs ate my charger.” She gestures around the yard at a few of the many. “And my brother and those boys claim they’re using theirs.” Major eye roll.

“Don’t worry, hon. I’ll get you a new one when I go to town for cigs. In the meantime, let me show you something cool.”

I take off walking back behind the house toward the woods, with Sora trailing behind.

I’m sure she’s wondering what I’m up to as I walk over to a sapling, cut off a branch, and start skinning its leaves.

“Let me show you something Granny Annie showed me,” I say.

Sora laughs and says, “Dad hates it when you call her that.”

“Yep,” I say with a laugh, “but I do kinda get his point. Anara Lestari. Too amazing of a name to be shortened to Granny Annie. It’s the reason I’m Annabelle and your dad’s name is Lester,” I add with a chuckle.

“What about me and Rhys?” she asks, referring to her twin brother.

“Your mom’s just weird,” I laugh and say. “Ask her. But I’m pretty sure your name is of Indonesian origin, like Grandma’s.”

“Okay, get over here and hold this stick.”

I show her how to hold each fork, palms facing up, the tip of the stick facing down.

“Now walk straight to that tree,” I tell her.

“Why?” she demands, looking at me like I’m senile.

“To find water,” I say, leaning into my role as eccentric aunt.

“And later we can rub it together with another stick and make fire?” she says, her words dripping with sarcasm.

I love this child, I think to myself.

To her I say, “Shut up and walk. Hold the stick loosely. Take a deep breath, clear your mind, and feel. Feel your way through each step.”

After a couple of yards, she settles down, and in a couple more the tip dives down.

“What the hell…heck…was that!” she yells.

“You found water,” I exclaim as I pat her on the back.

She stammers, “Yeah, the stick went down, but maybe my hand slipped or… how do you even know there’s water under there?”

I cock my finger to the left and say, “The well’s right over there,” and trace my finger along and over to our right, to where the house is.

She looks at me, half mad, half laughing, and says, “You tricked me!”

“No,” I say. “I set you up! Big difference.”

I laugh and ask her, “Did you feel the stick tip pull down?”

She nods.

“All I did was make sure you were near water. Granny Annie did the same to me. Different well, same house though. I was younger than you. Somewhere around five to seven when she died. “

No one knows how old she was. She was mid-teens, maybe, when she was brought to this country. This was her last stop, but she talked of many countries she had been to.”

“Why do you think she stayed here?” Sora asks.

“She said the people were the same here. Completely different culture, but the same respect for the land and for each other.”

“The ‘explorers’ she was a servant girl for, came to this farm wanting to dig in those little mounds we have to look for Native artifacts. Your very great grandfather told them they didn’t belong to him, but they were on his land, and he felt an obligation to preserve them.

“They offered him a lot of money to dig. He turned them down.

“They offered him Grandma, and he politely pointed out that we had just fought a war over that, so no.

“But he said he was willing to hire her to help his wife if she wanted to stay. She did.

“The explorers were going to put up a fight until Grandpa pointed out that he could always make another mound, so they went away.” I laughed.

“Grandma married his oldest son, and here we stand today, with our Balinese-inspired terraced orchards and our oh-so-slightly Asian looks.”

“Rhys wants to be an anime character,” sighs Sora.

I shake my head in agreement and say, “I could see that.”

Sora smiles and says, “It is unusual to have an Asian lady as your family matriarch living in WV.”

“Certainly ups us on the coolness scale,” I say. “We could just be the usual admixture of the region, but we were blessed with somebody special.

“Don’t get me wrong, Grandpa’s side had its share of characters. And rumor had it that some of our ancestors liked to ‘mingle’ with the Native settlement that was close to where the family first settled in the 1600s.”

“Has anyone done Ancestry dot com?” Sora asks.

“And ruin our best stories?” I say. “Hell no. And if you want to, wait until after I die. I’m happy with a little mystery.”

We walk over to where the middle boys sit.

I remind them, “Grandma always said to remember that we don’t live in the mountains, we live with them.”

“Yeah” “Uh-huh” they say without looking up from their games. Sora sighs as sparks rise in the now darkened sky as a fresh log is added to the fire pit, joining the lightning bugs on their upward flight.

Sora sighs again “I wish we had more information about Granny Annie’s life before she got here.”

“Well, she did leave a trunk full of stuff in the attic. Go on up and take a look. By the laughter coming from the fire pit, I don’t think you’re going anywhere soon.”

“There’s a trunk!” Sora exclaims excitedly as she heads into the house.

“You guys want to go look?” I ask the boys.

They ignore me, so I head inside. The living room is vacant and my favorite chair was calling to me. I put my feet up. I close my eyes for a minute, listening to the family sounds outside.

————————————

“Annnnabelle. Annnnabell”

A ghostly voice rouses me from my slumber. I blink against the light, my neck hurts from where I had slumped over in my chair.

“Annnaaabelle! I’m the ghost of fire pits past and we’ve come to say good night!” My brother says with a laugh.

I look up and he’s got Bella in his arms , her head on his shoulder. “She wore herself out chasing ghosts. What about you?”

“I wore myself out trying to talk myself out of what I’d talked myself into.” I chuckle.

“Do that a lot don’t you?” says Lester grinning ear to ear.

“I don’t know if I like this new funny side of yours,” I say grinning too. “Where’s Sora? She had gone to the attic to find Granny Annie’s ghost.”

“Sounds like we’ve got ghosts everywhere,” laughs Lester. “ Last I saw she was sitting on the front porch. Let her know we’re loading the car.”

I head outside and see Sora sitting on the porch swing.

“Hey sweetie, your dad and sis are headed for the car. Did you find anything in the attic?”

Sora roused herself and handed me a beautiful scarf embroidered with birds.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” Sora said “I love it. I didn’t notice before how much Granny Annie liked birds. All different kinds, all of her stationery. Her diary. Clothes.” Sora says.

“She said they shared the same bones. As she got older she’d spend her days sitting out here singing with the birds. She knew all kinds of calls. You’d swear they were having a conversation.”

“I’d like to talk to the birds,” Sora wistfully says.

“Well maybe you can,” I tell her “You have the same bones. The older you get the more you look like her. You carry yourself the same.”

“Her family worked for an American ornithologist. They traveled all over Indonesia. She said he was amazed when he came across her village because her native tongue incorporated sounds that closely resemble bird calls. Most villagers could call the birds. I read where linguists studied the region's dialects and noted the similarities.

“It was that ability to mimic that made it very easy for her to learn languages. I don’t know how many she knew. Five or six easily. That’s what drew the interest of the fortune hunters that brought her here.”

“I found a really old picture in her diary.” Sora says “It must’ve been where she was from, it had a temple in the background. She was with two men. I guess that’s them. They looked very familiar for people who have been dead for a century.

“When I looked at that picture I saw myself. Not the fact that I look like her, but that it was me. It felt like me. Like the memory of that picture is inside me somewhere but I just can’t find it. It’s…” Sora paused.

“Disconcerting?”

“Yeah, that’s the word,” Sora says.

“I get similar feelings whenever I look through that trunk. Certain items mainly but sometimes different ones.” I say.

“She and I looked through it together and she would hand me things and tell me to hold them gently and close my eyes. Not to think but to feel. That everything has vibrations and we can feel them in our bones. She said that’s the family gift, that’s our discernment. We will always know the truth if we choose to listen.”

“Did she tell you anything else about her village? Any customs? Beliefs?”asked Sora.

“I don’t know about any formal religion or customs. But their creation story is framed and on the wall in the dining room.

“There was a Wise Woman who talked to the birds

She is the one whose tales you have heard

She gave them the seeds she wanted sown

To grow flowers for bees for their honeycombs

There was a Wise Woman who talked to the clouds

They talked of rain to nourish the ground

There was a Wise Woman who talked to the plants

And with the help of the breeze she taught them to dance

There was a Wise Woman who talked to the fruits

She talked to the vegetables, the fungi, the roots

There was a Wise Woman who talked to the earth

She thanked it for its blessings and all its hard work

There was a Wise Woman who talked to her God

Her world is at peace and rests in her arms

There was a Wise Woman who talked to the stars

They gathered up dust that had scattered from far

There was a Wise Woman who said bring it here

She gathered it to her as she shed a tear

There was a Wise Woman who cradled it near

She bathed it in wisdom, she relieved it of fear

There was a Wise Woman who taught it to cope

She instilled it with reason, compassion and hope

There was a Wise Woman who taught it to love

That truth comes from within, not from above

There was a Wise Woman who gave the call

With a spark from Creator she enlivened us all

There was a Wise Woman who holds us dear

Her love and her strength is forever near.”

“Now I remember! It’s beautiful. That was one of my favorite bedtime stories.”

Sora said.

“Your mom used it as a bedtime story? I didn’t know that.” I say. “Granny Annie would love that.”

“Wonder why she chose to stay?”

“There’s a few reasons but my mom says that when her employers came here trying to get your great great great grandfather to let them dig in the mounds, things got heated. That’s when his son came walking up with a shovel slung across his shoulder and I guess Granny Annie thought he was hot.” I say laughing.

“She said she knew him the moment she laid eyes on him and that she was home.

“She also talked about the care of the land. She could tell how well the fields were tended. How the house looked like it had been crafted instead of just built.

“But mainly she said that where she’s from the mountains are considered conscious. Their spirit inhabits the land. She could feel the spirits here too.

“The land remembers what we forget, and here what she could feel was grief. The land needed healing. It had been horribly plundered. Desecrated.

“And this was land that was considered so sacred to the indigenous people in the area that they built a huge ceremonial center in the valley. Aligned with the cosmos. Processional roads connecting sacred geometry. 50 mounds. Holy land.

“Then more Europeans arrived. By the time she got here a lot of the mounds had been flattened to use for farming. They cut off the top of the largest mound for a judges platform and built a racetrack around it. When she visited the site the spirits' cries vibrated in her bones.

“Then the Smithsonian showed up in the early 1880’s. They dug into the mound and what they found should have stopped them.

“It was obviously the resting place of a highly honored man. Good lord, the mound is well over 30 feet tall. They found eleven skeletons . A large central one, the others arranged in a spoke. Copper adornments. Shells from the coast.

“When they packed up the bones and took them away. The vibrations in her bones turned into wails. She was afraid they were going to shatter.

“And then it stopped. Just like that. The spirits left the land. The protectors were gone.”

“Wow,” said Sora “That’s powerful. I haven’t heard these stories before.”

“But wait, there’s more.” I said with a chuckle, “These are stories told only for the girls. The future Wise Women. We have a responsibility to the land.

“But we’ll save those stories for another time.”

“Come on Sora,” Lester yells “We don’t want Bella waking up and crying all the way home.”

Sora stood and gave me a hug.

“I’m glad we share the same bones.”

“Me too sweetie, me too.”