1

…If You Silently Slip Away

“I don’t think I should!” Eden laughed hysterically as Harriet was pushed her gently towards the train tracks that ran alongside the back of the house they shared together. Lee and Michael stood to one side, egging her on with encouraging woops. Len stood by the fence that should have kept them all out, watching silently.

“It’ll be hilarious!” Lee told her, his phone ready to record Eden. The plan was for her to lie on the train tracks with hands and feet bound and record the whole thing and put it on youtube.

“No, I’m drunk.” Eden said making a u-turn back towards the boys but Harriet spun her around back towards the tracks with a sinister giggle.

“Don’t be a wimp! The train will be here soon, quick!” Harriet said, clumsily dropping her between the metal tracks. Eden yelped in pain and then burst into giggles as Harriet began to tie her hands. Lee climbed up towards them to tie her legs.

“I’m scared you guys,” Eden whispered, sobering up when Lee pulled the rope too tightly around her ankles.

“Great! It’ll be good for drawing in the audience.” Harriet grinned at her as they backed up and began recording.

Eden let out a nervous breath and looked out into the darkness, the train lights were nowhere to be seen. She tried to calm herself down and got to work on untying her hands but her heart was beating much too fast, her blood was contaminated with too much adrenaline, too much fear.

“It’s too tight!” Eden told them, frowning as she tried to loosen her hands, the panic rising in her.

“Fucking awesome idea Harry.” Michael nudged Harriet as they watched Eden struggling. Eden gasped when she heard the tracks crackle and felt the rumble of the oncoming train. She was running out of time…

“You guys, I can’t do it, the trains coming, help me up!” she called out to them. Harriet laughed and shook her head.

“It’s miles away Eden, just slip your hands out” Lee suggested. Eden groaned and tried to pull her hands free but couldn’t.

“It’s not a joke anymore I need help!” Eden said, feeling the train getting closer, still tugging at the binds. She saw the crackle of electricity coming off the tracks and felt her heart stop. Wide hazel eyes stared at the flood of light that came from the lights of the oncoming train, her limbs froze, her face drained of all its colour and the oxygen didn’t reach past her throat. “GET ME OFF!”

“Eddie! Wake up, we’re almost here!”

Someone shook me back to life. My eyes shot open and my hands flung to my heart. It was just a dream.

“Are you ok?” the same voice said, gently and filled with concern. I nodded and looked up at my little brother slowly. His eyes matched his voice, both where laced with worry that shouldn’t belong to his young face. I let out a breath and hid my shaking hands between my knees. “We’re here!”

I looked out of the window to my right, out at the Arizona desert landscape and squinted against the brightness of the strong sun reflecting off the acres of red and yellow sands, plains and rocky canyons.

Moving to a new place can be distressing for most people, especially if it’s to a whole to new country…a whole new way of life deep in the heart of the oldest surviving Native American population, the Hopi. Distress doesn’t quite cover my feelings. I’m the opposite of distressed. I’m exhilarated. I'm free. I’m still running high on the adrenaline of that flashback.

“We will have T.V. and internet right?” My baby brother Adoni is always so practical and vocal about all our concerns. I saw him exchange a look with my sister Miki, his was sceptical, Miki’s was hopeful. “Kitchen appliances? Running water?”

“Not right away Doni,” My Dad said, calm voice mellowing through the jittery aura in the car. “We’re going to live like the traditionalists for a couple of days first-” Doni grunted.

My parents are cultural anthropologists, they’ve spent their whole careers working together to try to figure out some of the most elusive and obscure cultures and tribes in the world. This study was no different from any of the others bar the location; it was on the small group of Hopi that still chose to live without electricity or plumbing, for religious purposes.

Dad smiled before continuing “Bathing in the spring doesn’t sound fun?”

“Really Dad?” Miki was shocked, why she couldn’t ever pick up the sarcasm in my dad’s voice is beyond me.

“This isn’t the end of the earth you know? Of course there is running water, electricity and all that modern triviality,”

“Internet Dad!” Doni was deadly serious. I bit my lip to stop from smiling.

Yes, most people find this distressing, I find it a welcome relief. I jumped at the chance to accompany my family here despite being 19 and more than capable of staying at home in Melbourne alone. It’s not a case of needing to hold Mummy and Daddy’s hand, despite what it might look like and ignoring the fact that they’ve never gone on a study without taking me with them...I just needed to get away from the city, the people there and the memories I’d gathered over the past year, memories bad enough to make me want to escape my hometown. Memories that I don’t want to remember, that I can’t remember for fear of slipping away from everything I know but that still haunt me at every opportunity.

No mates here and the only family I’ve got here all fit in this off-roader we’re in. Mum and Dad will be consumed in observing and learning from the Natives, work that’ll keep them busy the whole year we’re staying here. Miki will be starting up at the high school here in a couple of days and Doni’s going to the elementary school. Grade 6, it makes me wonder when he grew up. Probably when I blinked.

My plan for this year? Peace and solitude, a chance for some spiritual cleansing and to regain some mental stability. Ignoring it hasn’t worked so now, I’m going to have to figure out what on earth is wrong with me…yeah, I’m not your ordinary, average, run-of-the-mill girl…not yet anyway. Not until I figure out how to get rid of it.

“End of the week, alright kids?” Dad announced to my sibling’s relief.

“Oh thank God!” Doni was practically jumping in his seat. He turned towards me excitedly “We won’t miss our mates too much if we speak to them on the net, right Eden?”

I nodded at him and returned my gaze to the desert outside my window. 'Mates' are the quickest way to turn a good person bad, a sane person crazy, and a trusting person cynical. It’s funny how you can be so sure of someone and then in an instant it all slips away. Friendships are fickle. I won’t make the same mistakes here.

“Are you missing your City friends Eddie?” Mum asked me and when I turned to face her I saw she was watching me intently, turned around completely in her front seat. She may be a mother first and foremost but she’s still got that sociologist lurking beneath her, and not buried very far. She wanted to find out the reason I’d taken a sabbatical from University, the reason I’d been so busy at the start of my first year, so excited and driven only to come home before the end of the year and depressed. She was intrigued by the haziness of my silent slip away from the life I’d chosen to pursue, from Melbourne City.

“Did you have a leaving do?” she asked, not waiting for me to reply because she knew I wouldn’t. I shook my head and saw her eyes harden as she tried to calculate all the theories why.

“The Rats had an extra long jam in Ed’s honour.” Miki took over and my mother nodded and smiled. Completely forced, of course. It’s not like she wasn’t pleased that I’m with them here but my education was important to her and she was worried more than anything that I would never get round to finishing it. The fact that only my closest childhood friends, in fact the only friends I have left, marked my departure with a band jam session that we already did weekly was the cherry on top of the Eden’s Mysteries Give Me Headaches sundae.

I lie to my family everyday. I hide who I fear I am. I hide how broken I was inside, how terribly derelict my body had become now that my soul had left me. I hide from them what had made my Uni ‘friends’ run in the opposite direction in worry that they’d follow suit. Sometimes I thought that they could see it but whether it was paranoia or not, I wouldn’t divulge the small details that would give away the oddness of Eden Isaac, no, Silence was best, silence was what made me me. It couldn’t be any other way.

My gaze returned to the window, the terrain seemed a little redder now, a little dryer, the air was hotter than in Flagstaff, where we’d landed. It was the peak of winter, January, and yet we were all in light jackets or shirts. Sam would’ve written a song about it already. Jonah would’ve had the guitar tabs already figured out and Niley would be practising scales, giving me a long look of patience. I was definitely the dawdler of our small friendship group, the dreamer, the rope that holds them back but they still stuck with me. Niley I could understand, she was my cousin after all, my only one at that but the others?

“Can you see that hill?” My mum pulled me out of my reverie.

All three of us in the back leaned forward and dropped our jaws at the wondrous sight before us. The hill was hardly that, it was much larger than any ‘hill’ I’d seen before and the sides where so steep that it looked like a giant stone rectangular table, all jagged-edged and red hues with one side sloping up to it, or down from it, it depends on how you want to look at it. “They call them Mesas which means table after the shape of it, you see? That’s our village for the next year!”

“Cool Mum!” Doni bit his lip, his eyebrows all furrowed and eyes distant and unfocussed with a small smile crawling up his face.

I could see him imagining all sorts of things that are too dangerous and too impossible for a 10 year old to do. I looked back at the Mesa and noticed the power lines first, the disrupted the image somewhat with them leading to square houses that ran along the length of the top of the hill. They looked really small from here but I imagine closer up they’ll be huge. Each one looked different from the other but somehow it looked good like that. Each house has its own uniqueness though they were all essentially the same. Lower down on the Mesa were several cave-style houses, carved into the hill.

“Are those houses?” Miki asked wide eyed, she was obviously looking at the same thing I was.

“Most of the Traditionalists live there” Mum continued. I don’t blame them, it looked like a cool place to live even if it didn’t have electricity or central heating or running water.

“Look the houses up top have aerials and satellites so they must have Cable here too!” Trust Doni to notice that!

“Are we going to live up at the top?” Miki rested her chin on my mother’s chair and looked out of the windscreen.

“Yeah, you’ll get a better look once we’re up there but Walpi is like a table, the side facing us is all homes and we’re going to be living right in the middle of it” My mother stretched her slender finger out to point to it “You can see your school is at the bottom of the hill Doni but Miki, you have to wait until the top”

“Because I have to walk miles until the next Mesa right?” she was grinning and I know she was looking forward to it.

“We’ll see how long your enthusiasm lasts” My mother chuckled warmly.

I wished I could share a part of it. I held back the emotions that threatened to erupt and concentrated on an isolated tree in the distance whose shadow was giving the red earth a brief moment of coolness. It’s hard to believe anything could survive out here but people do, they’ve learned to cope the way these scattered plants have. The Hopi are amazing farmers, they’re able to grow fields of crops in these dry conditions and live off it completely, though I suspect a grocery store must have crept in here somewhere. I can’t imagine anybody not living with toothpaste, toilet paper or ice cream; life’s essentials really. It’s a shame nothing can be done to this lonely tree, it looks like it died years ago. Dead all the way to its core…like me.

My mother snuck a look to my Dad, thinking nobody was watching her. She looks so happy already, she can barely contain it. My Dad held her hand with his, still managing to change the gears smoothly, his creamy white skin contrasting with her light caramel skin and the two looked so beautiful together, it was like a painting. Despite my figurative death my parents keep hope alive for me, if good people like them exist then there are definitely others out there, it’s just that I’m flame to some very unfriendly moths.

The houses here aren’t like our conventional “western” houses back home or even in the rest of America. They are called pueblos and are all multi-storey mainly made of stone which is extremely cooling in this climate and thanks to a wad of government money the Hopi were able to modernise them to keep up with the rest of the world while still maintaining their identity. The pueblo’s are essentially like Lego blocks though, there isn’t access from floor to floor except by ladders that are outside. I guess the fact that it hardly ever rains and the kids never run away or ‘misbehave’ in a way that displeases the elders as it would at home makes it an ideal architectural solution.

As we drove through the village, I looked out at all the houses, three storeys, four, some had ladders leading to different houses. One seemed to capture my attention more than most. It wasn’t the largest but there was something about the second floor room, a small doll hanging by the open window. I caught a glimpse of red as we drove past and stuck my head out to try and see it properly but it was a blur. My heart beat that little bit faster.

Our pueblo is only two storeys high. Living room, kitchen, bathroom, my parents’ and Doni’s room are all downstairs. Sounds squashed but it isn’t in the slightest. My room is up the ladder and on the left, Miki’s is to my right. For all intents and purposes, we were given these rooms so that we’d have privacy and freedom. Mum in particular was worried I’d feel claustrophobic moving back in with the family after living out for a year. She had the right intention but right now, the only thing I can think of is how I will be able to leave my room to go down to breakfast in the morning, a pleasure I usually enjoy in the comfort of my PJs.

Sure, ladders outside the house are quirky and fun but are they practical? The Hopi didn’t think of that did they?

“What are you so annoyed about Ed?” Miki said jumping out of her room and onto the small terrace area outside our rooms, effectively the roof to our living room. “Is it because of the ladders? Is it because you have to get dressed before breakfast?”

Of course she wouldn’t be annoyed about that. Nothing annoys her, she’s the happiest person I know, and I love that about her. Most of the time.

“It’s a good thing I suppose, otherwise you’ll be in PJs all day since you don’t have to get dressed for work or school or anything” sigh. I’d love to be in PJs all day. Even if I did have to work.

“Well, come on! Our neighbour is downstairs” she told me “Doni’s charming the pants off her”

“You go ahead” Miki grinned at me and disappeared down the ladder. I heard the exchange of excited ‘Hellos’ but the rest of the conversation was too low to hear. I supposed I’d have to meet the neighbours and the rest of the villagers at some point but I can’t bring myself to go down stairs now, I’d rather delay it all for as long as I can.

“EDEN!” my mother called out musically. There goes choice flying out of the window and my feet find the will to follow, descending to the ground floor quickly. My mother was stood beside a woman who looked remarkably similar to her. Darker skin, longer hair but the same round eyes, same button nose and the same slightly rounded figure. They look like they could be sisters, if Mum had a sister. Miki took my hand and I remembered that Miki and I don’t look anything alike and we are sisters.

Miki is 17 and despite the 2 year age gap she is a couple of inches taller than me having inherited Dad’s tall genes. She inherited most of Dad, his fair skin and blonde hair. She has my mother’s brown eyes and that’s the only difference between her and Doni, who is the spitting image of my Dad, right down to the green of his eyes. I, on the other hand, have taken some of my mother’s colouring, the type that comes from a couple of white ancestors in an otherwise pure Aboriginal family tree. She’s light to the Aborigines and thanks to my Dad I’m the lighter version of her, 35% her skin tone 55% my dad’s and 10% Sunned-up-a-bit-bronzer. I have my mother’s features; her small nose although hers is more perfect than anything I’d ever seen before and mine is a bit stumpy, the roundness of my face, my full lips. My just slightly-large round eyes, like the rest of my colouring it is a mix of my parent’s and has ended up a hazel.

“This is your eldest?” Our neighbour asked Mum. Yup, just a regular black sheep.

“Yes, this is Eden”

“I’m Takala, I live right next door” she said, her handshake was comforting.

“Eddie, Takala has two sons and a daughter about your age” My mother informed me with the intention of occupying my days. She was worried that I will be lonely. I am practically itching to be alone but she doesn’t know this, no need to. Keep your face happy Eden.

“But Soyala doesn’t live with me anymore, she’s just recently gotten married”

“Congratulations”

“Thank you” Takala smiled at me as if she were deeply touched. “She’s always running back and forth between her husband, job and here so you’ll bump into her soon I’m sure”

“Quite an achievement to manage all three at my age” I’m impressed.

“She’s a few years older, 22 but yes, I’m very proud of her” Takala grinned, looking every bit as proud as she said “Yas is exactly your age actually, he’s at the potters right now but again, you’ll bump into him”

“And your other son?” Oops, I think I said something wrong because her face just fell. My mother raised her eyebrows at me warningly. “I’m sorry if…” what did I say?

“No, Honaw is away at the moment” her smile had returned, though a little dimmer. I’m smart enough to know not to delve any deeper. Her daughter leaving home hadn’t upset her this much.

“I’m sure I’ll meet him at some point too, right?” She smiled and nodded. Oh dear God! I knew my silence was golden, I should have kept my mouth shut! Escape…please!

“Eden!” Ah, the sound of Dad’s voice never sounded so good. I smiled at Takala hiding the awkwardness I felt but she held my gaze and held up a hand.

“Just a moment” she said, disappearing into her house. Mum gave me a reprimanding look and I pursed my lips in shame just as Takala came out again, holding a doll, just like the one hanging outside the room I couldn’t take my eyes off. “This is a Kachina, you know what that is?”

I shook my head but the look on my mum’s face showed me it was valuable and important to the Hopi.

“Kachina are dancers that represent figures of our legends, they are mainly used to teach religion to our young but the dolls represent different spirits” Takala said, handing it to me, curling my fingers around it with hers. “If you hang this outside your room, it’ll bring you Hope and Peace”

I opened my mouth to refuse such an important gift from a virtual stranger but my mother gave me a discrete shake of her head and instead I hugged the red and blue Kachina to my chest and I nodded graciously.

“Thank you”

Takala smiled at me, the original bright smile before the mention of her son Honaw. My dad called me again but this time I wasn’t so keen on slipping away. I wanted to hear more from her, I wanted to talk. Hope and Peace indeed.