If Not a Heartbeat
I step out of a jeep and cedar fills my nostrils with sticky sweetness. I am fourteen years old and there is one hour before the opening ceremony. My sisters and I wander into the corner of Nohkom’s acreage, tracing the paths in the forest like the lines on our palms. We crawl into a clearing filled with old wicker chairs riddled with pine needles and weathered from the rain. I search for long abandoned thumbtacks in evergreen trunks—ones I used to place at my highest climbs. I admire the ferocity of the evergreens: the one snapped in half, struck by lightning years ago, falling the other direction, instead of on top of our trailer. The trees are somehow smaller than the last time I stared up at them. Slightly to the right are massive boulders my father used to build me a flower garden, where I planted wildflowers. Bluebells and alpine forget-me-nots. The flowers are now deadened stems, remnants of times forgotten—a husk of a memory, colour merely wheat.
We are called to join the ceremony.
The first step is the opening smudge. We stand in a circle and pray, holding hands and only break when elder Mae Louise stands in front of us with smoky, sweet sage. The smoke carries our prayers to Creator. We sit in a large circle with the fire as our center—us women; some young, some old, but all with our own wounds. Our skin makes up a rainbow of tones—deep as the soil, mild like the bark from trees, and pale as the moonlight. Mae Louise begins the smudge. She smudges the drum, herself, and walks around the circle until all have wafted the sacred sage to our hands, our eyes, our mouth, our nose, our ears, down the backside of our bodies, our legs, arms, and then finally—the heart. Hiy-hiy. Creator’s grace permeates throughout my core until it radiates upwards, shooting through the crown of my head, leaving a tingling sensation in its wake. Mae Louise beats the drum and sings. Her voice spirals, circling toward the spirit realm.
I was nine years old, staring at the Batoche sky while the bonfire sparked and the aurora danced along at midnight, spreading their red, yellow, and green wings as they flew across the moonlit abyss, flapping and gracefully swooping. The powwow thumped in the background, the lifeline of the weekend ceremony steadily beating as the eagle-shaped northern lights flew across the sky. My aunt and her friend howled at the star-studded sky and asked me to make them a drink. I poured two Red Solo Cups three quarters full with vodka and splashed them with Pepsi. They grimaced as they sipped it. I stared at the sky.
The second step is cutting the hide. Many skins lay on the grass and we examine them, touch them, look for imperfections that will work for the shape of our drums. We plunge the skins into water and soak overnight. The water cannot be hot, and a lake nearby will work well. The water must be cold, otherwise it will break the skin down too much, rendering it unusable. The pond dried up years ago so instead we use basins. I let my fingers linger in the water with the hide until I feel a slimy sensation. We sit around the fire and tell stories and teachings. It crackles.
I was fourteen and the splitting of my head was met with chants coming from pounding powwow music my mother blasted upstairs. Her footprints stomped and the clangor of dishes clanked in and out of the sink. “If you’re gonna party all night you’re gonna get up early and clean all day!” Her yelling mixed with bellowing voices of the singers as my eyes reluctantly opened. I watched a spider crawl through its web to retrieve its breakfast. The beat from the music panged my heart. I rolled over until my head hung over the edge of the bed and heaved.
The third step is when the sun rises and we smudge. Mae Louise wafts the sacred smoke over each child of Creator. We share stories, take turns speaking about what brought us here. I hold the talking drumstick but I know I am too young and too hungover to speak about locked bedrooms, broken walls, and my father in an orange jumpsuit. Instead, I share what I hope to learn. Others share what they want to release, or sometimes, we say nothing at all. Silence with tears. Silence with heaviness. Silence with acceptance. Sometimes the greatest power lies in the things that remain unsaid.
I was seven and the slice of my fathers cheekbones quelled all voices except that of the spitting kindle. He brought his drum to his heart and began his beating. “I’m going to tell you a story from a long, long, long time ago. Before man walked Mother Earth and Grandfather Moon carried all his wounds. It was a time when animals still spoke the ancient language understood by all living creatures. It’s a story of the trickster, Wîsahkêcâhk.” I stoked the flames as they crackled and the gravity of my father’s voice brought heat to the winter air. I watched the ember glow illuminating his high cheekbones, casting a shadow under his buffalo eyes. My buffalo eyes. His chestnut curls framed his face and cascaded all the way down, past his shoulders. The beating of his voice was the beating of his heart and the beating of my ears and the pulse of my heart. The blood in my blood.
The fourth step we find our stations, which hold hides and a round birch wood frame. Birch is malleable. We are malleable too. It’s time to build. We lay the hide flat, feeling its slippery slickness. We lay the birch frame on top and stretch the hide to make sure it folds up and over the edges, leaving enough room to punch holes for lacing and weaving. There can’t be too much slack, but there also needs to be enough, because once it dries it will tighten to the frame, giving the drum its voice and vibration. If it’s too loose then its voice will not carry. If it’s too tight then the strings will snap and the drum will not sing.
At sixteen I sat in a dome built from birch branches, covered with hides and blankets. Hot rocks splashed with cedar branches dipped in Saskatoon berry water, creating a thick steam. The elder beat down on her drum and she sang the first song. My heart, the drum, the drum, my heart, until both beat the same rhythm. I opened my eyes wide and let the darkness bring me images, let it open me up.
The fifth step is punching the holes. Sixteen sets of two closely positioned for the weaving. We fold the hide in half—fold and punch until sixteen sets cradle the perimeter. I bring my nose up close and take a deep breath—woodsmoke and earth. I like the way it feels against my skin.
I hugged my mother at twenty-six on a sunny day. She squeezed tight and we both sobbed. Her heart walloped in rhythm with mine. I was moving away from my hometown for the first time with a level of permanence—leaving behind my sisters, my mother, my nieces, and a nephew not yet known who was growing inside my older sister’s womb. Six months after I moved, another nephew was conceived in my little sister’s womb. Both sisters with new beating hearts inside of them. My mother said I have my own rhythm, leaving behind my bloodline in pursuit of a new pulse that beats just for me. A beat I would wield into existence.
The sixth step is weaving. We puncture a hole at the tip of the long string and loop it through the first hole set, under and then over and through. This first weaving acts as the anchor. We center the birch frame on top of the hide and stretch the skin up and over the edges, bringing the string across the drum, weaving the hole set across from it and then continue the pattern in a circular motion—braiding until all sixteen sets have been laced up. We leave them out to dry.
After driving across the country I stood at the front door of my new apartment. It was the biggest place I had ever lived in. I noticed each stride that brought me from the front door into the hallway, past the living room, by the dining room, back into my bedroom, then across and into my office—my wooden desk, the biggest I had ever owned, my fancy computer, and then at my bookshelf lined with dozens of books. I took a deep breath. Movement. True movement. I marvelled at the solitude, the courage.
I sat down and wept.
I stood up and made my way through the dining room.
It took me weeks to resist the urge to run from room to room. We had always lived in small places filled with my mother’s knick knacks, my sisters and our friends. Space was always occupied and now there was so much free, vacant. But not a sad vacancy, nor the freedom of a forest. It was more like a clearing, room intentionally made and waiting to be filled. I found the reading nook and saw my drum leaning against the wall. I brought it to my nose and inhaled deeply. For a moment, I pictured a deer bending down to graze dewed grass early in the morning. I watched the deer through voyeuristic eyes, imagining my father behind the scope: his muted breaths, contained within his chest, inaudible to the ears of the prey—the weight on his shoulders as he pressed down, slightly, pausing for a moment to appreciate the beauty of the animal within his sight. CRACK. The deer fell down.
The seventh step is making the drumsticks. We sand our handles and sew a piece of suede into a small pillow, stuffing it with cotton, attaching it to the end, and tying it tight with sinew. The way we use parts of the animal to stitch it back together amazes me—deconstructing it just to reconstruct it with the same bits it had originally, if just slightly different. It reminds me that nothing can be destroyed, not entirely, or that things that appear destroyed can always be rebuilt or evolve into something that renders the act of destruction impossible.
After circling my apartment, I opened my eyes and lowered the drum from my nose and brought it close to my chest. I picked up the drumstick and began my rhythm. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum. I matched the beat of my heart, or perhaps my heartbeat matched the tempo of the drum. My eyes closed as the two of us became connected, each pulsing from the same lifeline.
The eighth step is the closing ceremony. We bring our drums to the flame, holding it to the crackles and release a big scream to the flame as it warms, tightens, and preps the drums’ voices. A brown woman with thick skin lets out the loudest and most painful cry I have ever heard and at this moment I cannot imagine the weight of all she must be carrying. We step back into our places and begin to beat.
The vibration took on new shape, pulling me inside its beat.
I am in a jeep—my mother is driving and Nohkom sits shotgun. Me and my two sisters are in the back. I am fourteen years old and we are driving along the gravel road toward the acreage—where I used to build miniature teepees from sticks and climb swaying trees with thumbtacks placed in the bark.
I stare out the window at the sky.
What is a heartbeat if not a drum.
Photo graciously provided by Chanhee Lee from Unsplash.
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