The Forest Lover Read Free Page A

still here feed us back again.”
    â€œYes. Just what I need.” Emily sat next to her.
    â€œIn Victoria too—nice places?”
    What would Lulu think of the new Provincial Parliament Building, all domes and arches plunked down on what was once forest? Every inch was stone. Not a scrap of wood on it. And what about carriages, rickshaws, bicycles, streetcars with clanging bells? Businessmen in top hats on horseback? Cattle herded through town to Goodacre’s foul-smelling slaughterhouse? Derelict hulks stuck in mud along the waterfront? Saloons on every block? Chinese opium dens?
    â€œDifferent.”
    â€œDoes the Songhees lady wash your clothes now?”
    â€œNo. I do it myself. So do my sisters.”
    â€œHow many people you live with?”
    â€œNo one.”
    â€œNot your family?”
    â€œMy sisters live in Victoria. I live in Vancouver. It’s sixty miles away from Victoria, on the mainland.”
    Lulu scowled. “No one live with you?”
    â€œA bird. He keeps me from being lonely,” she said to answer Lulu’s puzzlement, but how much could a bird do? The irony of it—she had four sisters, yet loneliness still gouged deep.
    â€œI like the way you live, though. Many families together. Nobody lonely. Nobody an outsider.”
    â€œYes,” Lulu said, an exhalation more than speech. She was bending shreds of cedar bark to break their stiffness.
    â€œThat smells nice. What are you making?”
    â€œDiapers for my sister’s baby. And for hisyuu. I pound it. It get real soft.”
    â€œHisyuu?”
    â€œWhen we feel the call of the moon and go to a woman’s hut.”
    Emily gulped. “You mean a little house where you just sit?”
    â€œNo. Not just sit. The old women teach us things.”
    â€œYou stay there the whole time?”
    â€œWe can’t do things some times.”
    â€œLike what?”
    â€œFishing season we can’t step across streams or walk in the sea. Salmon get mad.”
    Lulu’s solemn, unblinking eyes told her she believed in fish fury. A concept so curious, yet so appealing—fish and people interacting. Salmon in a quivering silver frenzy, leaping harum-scarum, tails flapping, eyes bulging, on the verge of speech.
    â€œOur time to hear birds and breezes. Feel day and night. The blood go into hisyuu. We burn it there. Ashes go back into earth. Hishuk ts’awaak. ”
    â€œWhat’s that mean?”
    â€œEverything is one.”
    She mulled over the idea, and wrote it on her drawing pad.
    â€œYour English is so much better now.”
    â€œI learn at the cannery in Ucluelet. English, Chinese, Japanese. Allwords together at the cutting table.” Lulu giggled, and her hands flew in circles near her ears. “But Chinook everybody understand. We talk and talk.”
    â€œWhat did you do on those call-of-the-moon days when you worked at the cannery?”
    Maybe that was too personal. Lulu’s face clouded and she stopped bending the bark.
    â€œSometimes, I went to work. One time I stayed in the hut. When I went back to work, a Chinese girl was in my place. So I don’t work there more.”
    â€œI’m sorry.”
    Some dark thought pulled in Lulu’s lips. “What do Nuu’chah’nulth women in Victoria those times?”
    Emily shook her head and said softly, “I don’t know.”
    Anguish threaded Lulu’s voice. “I know it’s not Christian, the woman’s huts. I told you because you knew, no missionaries, and you came. No one here is Christian same as white people. When the missionaries go, no one does the Our Father prayer. Don’t tell the mission ladies.”
    â€œNo, Lulu. I won’t. It doesn’t matter.”
    But something else did. She had to find that hut again.
    â€¢ • •
    In the afternoon she walked behind the village in the tangle of salal bushes edging the forest to search for it. Stalwart