A String of Beads Read Free Page A

seen him in twenty years,
     when he was at my father’s Condolence Council. No, it had to be my mother’s funeral,
     when I was in college. Still a long time.”
    “We want you to find him and bring him back.”
    Jane’s eyes never moved from Ellen’s. “What makes you think I can do something like
     that?”
    “We know it’s something you can do. I’ll leave it at that.”
    “You know that about me?”
    “We’ve never had a good enough reason to speak. Sometimes when a person has a secret,
     just whispering it to yourself can risk her life.”
    “All this time, you’ve been watching me?”
    “We watch and we listen. Years go by, and the sights and sounds add up,” said Ellen.
     “Don’t you think we wanted to see how you turned out? Your mother was an important
     member of the Wolf clan. She gave me the dress I wore to my senior prom, and helped
     me cut it down to fit. She drove me to Bennett High School in Buffalo so I could take
     the SATs and get into college.” Ellen paused. “Then she took me to lunch at the restaurant
     in AM and A’s. She was so beautiful. I can still see her.”
    “Thank you.”
    “For what?”
    “For not making her sound different because she wasn’t born Seneca.”
    “Some people are born where they belong, and some have to find their way there,” said
     Alma Rivers. “There’s no difference after that.”
    Ellen said, “Jimmy needs to be found and persuaded to turn himself in before the police
     find him. They think he’s a murderer, someone who killed a man with a rifle. They’ll
     be afraid of him, and if he resists, they’ll kill him too.”
    “I knew him, and he was a close friend when we were kids,” said Jane. “But that doesn’t
     give me—”
    “We think the one most likely to find him is you.”
    “That can’t be true.”
    “Who, then?” asked Ellen. The eight women stared at her, waiting.
    Jane kept her head up, her eyes meeting Ellen’s, but there was no answer.
    Ellen stood up. “All right, then.” In her hand was a single string of shell beads.
     Each shell was tubular, about a quarter inch long and an eighth of an inch thick,
     some white and some purple, made from the round shell of the quahog, a coastal clam.
    Jane’s eyes widened. The Seneca term was ote-ko-a . The rest of the world called it wampum, its name in the Algonquin languages. Ellen
     placed the string in Jane’s hand. Jane stared at it—two white, two purple, two white,
     two purple, the encoded pattern signifying the Seneca people as a nation. Ote-ko-a
     was often mistaken by the outsiders as a form of money, but ote-ko-a had nothing to
     do with monetary exchange. It was a sacred commemoration, often of a treaty or important
     agreement. Giving a person a single string of ote-ko-a was also the traditional way
     for the clan mothers to appoint him to an office or give him an important task. “Come
     see us soon.”
    “I really don’t know where Jimmy is.” She fingered the single string of shell beads,
     feeling its weight—like a chain.
    “Of course not,” said Alma Rivers. “I’ll let his mother know to expect you. You were
     always a great favorite of hers.”
    Dorothy, Daisy, Alma, and the others all stood up too. One by one, they thanked Jane
     for her hospitality and hugged her. They were all softness and warmth, and together
     they gave off the smells of a whole garden of flowers, some mild and subtle and others
     spicy or boisterous. Senecas were tall people. Most of the older generation of women
     were shorter than Jane, but when the eight clan mothers hugged her they seemed to
     grow and become huge, like the heroes of myths, who only revealed their true size
     at special times.
    In minutes they were gone, driving off in the two cars to the east toward the reservation.
     Jane stood alone in her living room looking down at the single strand of ote-ko-a
     she held in her hand. She tried to set it on the mantel, but that seemed wrong, almost
     a