Now, there was this man. His name was Louquo. He was the first man, and he was lonely, because there were no others like him. He wandered about the world, searching for a companion. He walked along the seashore and the rivers, looking behind the driftwood, and in the caves. And then he searched in the forest, in every thicket and meadow and marsh, and, at last, he climbed high upon the mountain. There was no one there on top of that mountain, but this silk-cotton tree, which I have told you about. So Louquo climbed up into this tree, and he just sat there, contemplating this world, feeling his loneliness, because there was no one to keep him company, except for this tree.
Then, one day, the tree said to him, You know, Missié, this fruit has become too heavy for my branches, and I could use a little bit of pruning. If you would help me to unburden, then perhaps I could do something for you, eh?

    I own only four objects in the world. You might say they are the contents of my medicine bundle. I carry with me a rosary which belonged to my grandmother, Clarinda Thèrése Guilhelmine Mandeville Poncy. Green, as we kids called her, was a short, stocky woman with long braids of hair, who spoke with a Quebecois accent, and walked with a limp inherited from childhood polio. Green kept a little alter of candles, saints and incense. She cooked soft-boiled eggs on Sunday morning, and sometimes she took me with her to Catholic mass, which was an exotic experience for a young protestant girl.
    Then there is a pocket watch from grandpa, whom I only remember as a faded image of an old man, thin and gray-haired, smoking his pipe in a rocking chair, blue wisps curling up around his gaunt face, the sweet smell permeating the living room of their Los Angeles home. Most of Grandpa’s family died in the 1905 eruption of Mt. Pelée, buried in the ashes of St. Pierre. The watch, a reward for his years as a mechanic for Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe, no longer works.
    An old pair of wire-rimmed glasses belonged to my other grandmother. My brother has a photograph of Minnie Thompson as a young woman, wearing these spectacles. In this photo, she is a dark beauty with traces of Cherokee Cheekbones and a mouth pursed in Germanic stoicism.
    Finally there is a fading photograph of my great great great grandmother, Rebecca Tickaneesky Neugin. Rebecca was on the Trail of Tears as a little girl. Some say she lived to be 114 years old, but I think she actually died in 1933 at the age of 98, after she was interviewed by Grant Foreman for the WPA. I’m not sure how I feel about having an ancestor who has achieved fame as a symbol of the perseverance of the Cherokee People. It leaves me humbled and with a feeling of loss I don’t understand.
    I keep these things in an old fringed leather pouch from the sixties, given to me by someone I no longer remember. An old lover, perhaps. This pouch and these items are the objects I set aside one cold February morning when the real estate broker phoned and informed me that my house had sold. Everything else, except for a suitcase full of clothes and traveling necessities I dispatched that day to friends, relatives, and the Salvation Army. My twelve-year old Toyota I gave to a neighbor whose car had broken down. Mona had a four year old son in daycare, and a crap job on the other side of town, so my heart went out to her.
    It’s strange how my medicine bundle shows up at the times in my life when I am standing on the bluff, trembling before the abyss. The day I decided to leave Jerrold and his abuse, I found it in the basement, buried under a stack of forgotten memorabilia. And again, the day I walked out of the hole at Chimney Island, I thought it was gone forever. But the guard who checked me from my cell handed it over to me, as though it were nothing important, as though it were not my life, and I pressed the pouch so tightly to my face, breathing in the familiar smell of suede leather, saturated with the ancient odors of sandalwood, tobacco, and THC. The scent of hope, for one brief moment.

    I don’t know how I’ve come to this place in my life. If you had asked me only a few years ago where I would be today, the answer would not be here, not anywhere close to this country of fear and insanity, peopled with its ghosts and devils and creatures from the other side of The Looking Glass. This America of nightmares.
    Years of insufferably protective marriage left me unprepared for survival when it all burst apart. Since then I have had ten years to adjust and find my way. To find that elusive Better Life. To send my kids off to their Bright Future of Happiness and Dreams Fulfilled. These are the kind of prozac lies you tell yourself when you’ve been insulated from the real world. And like most Americans, I have been sheltered since I was a little girl. It’s not that I didn’t know. It’s more that I didn’t want to know. Even before my life with Jerrold ceased so abruptly, I had struggled to live, to feel life unadulterated with the middle-class illusions that afflict nearly everyone I know. But the Little Buddha in me could never compete with the messages being beamed from every quarter. After a while you succumb to the soma of tv and internet and sex. This is the best possible world, they tell you, a husband with a good job, enough shopping to drown in, two brilliant children with Unlimited Choices before them, a minivan with a full tank of gas, and the Endless American Frontier right out there in front of your windshield. Relax and enjoy. And if you are invisible to begin with, invisible to the world, to your husband, even to your children, then the anonymity of middle-class housewifery is as easy as dreaming beside a lazy stream in summertime.
    Now, those years with Jerrold are blurred by the fog of history. You remember the Facts that you were taught in school, like George Washington and the Cherry Tree, while the gritty mundane struggle for food and self-respect is buried beneath the calvary’s blazing hooves. And when you raise yourself from the ground, your mouth full of horse turds, your dignity trampled beyond recognition, only a cloud of dust remains to remind you that a marriage once grew here in this place.
    Of course, there are the kids, now gone off to war, Rebecca in Africa to battle AIDS and starvation, Mark in the Army to fight whomever the government has decided is the Enemy of the Moment.
    Rebecca left home in June, two years ago, just before the sale of the house. Except for a single message on my voicemail, Hi Mom, I’ve landed safely at the Nairobi airport - I’ll email you when I find a connection, I haven’t heard a peep. Apparently neither of them missed me during all of those months in solitary confinement. No words of concern. No letters belatedly forwarded.
    Invisible.
    Who will ever miss me? Michel thinks I am travelling, and even though I promised to email him when I get home, he doesn’t really know me that well. Maybe I’m a flake. Maybe there is nothing to know. And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe you must have some idea of where you belong in the scheme of things to be visible, to have some kind of substance. Maybe I have become too used to this wandering, to this placelessness.
    Being lost in the middle of a large family gets you used to being lost in the world. You can drift around from here to there, and no one stops you, because they don’t see you. Likewise, no one ever hears your cries for help amid the clatter, and you quickly learn to fend for yourself. When, as a young child, my parents sold the farm and moved into town, I became extremely disoriented, school looming overwhelmingly enormous, my tiny voice like a mouse in the alfalfa. Even my teachers didn’t see me. One of those students who slunk down in her chair in the third row from the rear of the class, I opted for the time-tested strategy of Hiding in the Crowd. When I visited home years ago, I ran into Mr. Richards, my sixth grade teacher. Let’s see, he said, I know you. Lisa! No? Therese? Wait a minute, I have it…. I could tell he was trying to reel in one of those tasty catfish like we used to catch up on the Little Deschutes, but all he could snag on the line was a big glump of river moss.
    Rissa, The Invisible One.
    And here I am, still lost somewhere in my middle ages. Just when I think I have glimpsed the faintest of moonbeams, I discover that it’s a reflection on a cold, steel door.
    Even though you come to know the river, sometimes you get caught up in an eddy, and you can go around and around for your whole life before you discover that the river has you in a trap. Then, one day, you realize that you are ready for something or anything to pull you out of the depths of despair.
    When my marriage ended, all those years ago, I tried on a lot of outfits. I hung out with New Age gurus and native shamans. Charlatans, actually. I grooved with Portland hipsters and listened to bad poetry. But it wasn’t until I started pouring over the family history left by Aunt Margie that I began to feel a connection to something that seemed genuine. We are, in part, the history which is passed down to us. We are the recipes and family lore; the affinities and the prejudices which our parents bequeath to us. These people who begat me, are descended from a long line of suffering and misery. Who are we to whine about our lot in life, when we look at what our ancestors went through to arrive at us? So, to help fill the void in my gut, I began to dabble in family research. I went through a number of phases in my journey, beginning with the Cherokees in Oklahoma, and ending with my meeting Michel on the internet. Sweet Michel, riding up like Paul Revere. The Ice Age is coming, the Ice Age is coming.
    Come to Montreal, he said. I would love to meet you. I will introduce you to your long lost relatives. He latched onto me, immediately. I am an American Cousin to Convince, I guess.
And, for a short time, with Michel, I didn’t feel invisible.

    The Empire Builder from Portland to Chicago travels east along the Washington side of the Columbia River. Sometimes the train rocks so violently that it seems likely it will jump the tracks. When it happens at night it wakes all but the heaviest sleepers. The rails are rough like that most of the way between Portland and St. Paul, until the Empire Builder begins to snake along the Mississippi River. For most of the journey, I wasn’t able to sleep. The view is beautiful going up the Gorge at sunset. It is dark before you traverse the lands of the Yakima and head north into Salish country, and by the time you reach Spokane, it is the middle of the night.
    This is what I’ve learned. The Salish are the native peoples of the Pacific Northwest, who inhabited the Puget Sound and British Columbia coastline, all the way east to Idaho and central Montana. The Spokanes, who speak a dialect of Salish called Npoqinishan, have inhabited this corner of the continent, along the Spokane river, for many centuries, fishing for salmon, hunting, and harvesting wild berries and roots, which grow in abundance in the Spokane valley.
    The Spokanes were considered a relatively peaceful tribe. Like most North American tribes, decisions were made democratically, and the chiefs were chosen for their wisdom, and bravery. Of course, we are mostly talking about the males voting, and brave males running for office.
    The Spokanes, in the day of the buffalo, often joined with other Salish tribes on huge Buffalo hunting excursions east of the Rockies, a territory claimed by the fierce Blackfoot and Crow peoples. They would also raid the Yakimas to the south, stealing horses and women for slaves. Salish boys, before assuming adulthood, had to discover their Sumesh, or animal spirit, by going into the wilderness until the animal revealed itself. These vision quests often lasted for days.
    According to modern day Spokanes, the traditional Salish believed that there are three worlds, one on top of the other. The earth is the middle world. The upper world is ruled by a beneficent supreme being, and the lower world by an evil ruler. If this sounds a lot like Christianity, one must remember that the people who have relayed these so-called traditional stories to us are the ones who have already been converted to Jesus.
    The Cherokee have similarly concocted myths which conveniently incorporate Christianity into their ancient religion, in effect saying that the Cherokee, as a chosen people, actually knew about Jesus before the coming of the Europeans.
    Spokane is often translated as Sun People. This too is controversial, and may have been invented by the first white explorers.
    If you have studied the history of the native people of the Americas, you know that there is very little left of native culture that has not been twisted by the coming of the white people. You also know that the leaders of the European powers stopped at nothing to extend their wealth and empire. And the Americans are no exception to that rule. When gold was discovered on the land of my Cherokee ancestors, even a ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court could not keep the foaming-mouthed settlers of Georgia from ripping out the heart of the Cherokee people. Let the Supreme Court enforce it, said Andy Jackson. Law? What law? The truth is, law only applies to the poor. If they want to lock you up, they will find a way to slam the door shut.
    Deep down, I know these things, and yet, I want to believe that there is justice somewhere. A hope which is becoming very difficult to maintain.

    At St. Paul, the Empire Builder begins to follow the great Mississippi river as it winds its way across Minnesota. As the train left the city, an old black man sat beside me, anxiously awaiting the next cigarette stop. I think that’s the first time I saw him. Cyparis. In one of his incarnations.
    The Mississippi River! he declared, I know this river well. Been travelling up and down her all my life. My kids live in Louisiana, down at the other end.
    Do we follow it for long? I asked him.
    Oh, yes. About 200 miles or so. Down the Wisconsin border until it crosses near the Dells. I used to go fishing along here when I was a kid. Retired now, so I’ll probably be doing a lot more of that again.
    I looked at the river in wonder. Is there any way to untangle this river from Huckleberry Finn and Mark Twain? It is broad and slow and dreamy and it looks like it could carry you away until you aren’t yourself anymore. You know that it is a long snake of a river, that it starts up here in the north country, but it doesn’t end until it hits the Gulf of Mexico where the big water pushes back and the Mississippi spreads her fingers and lays down the silt she has been carrying, giving herself up to the power of the sea. About once every century there is what is called a Hundred-Year Flood. The river can spread out for over a mile into the flat flood plain, depositing a new layer of that silt on the tired ground, renewing the soil and replenishing the ecosystem. Before they built levees and dams for flood control, the river would flip back and forth regularly between channels as it approached the delta country. Sooner or later, it will do so again. The folks who are living there, where the river wants to go, had better get out of the way.
    The Rockies form a continental divide, the Mississippi creates a different kind of division. What is on the other side of a river? Towns, cities, separated by rivers, try to connect by ferry, by bridge, or not at all. They form cultures distinct from one another. A river that is hard to cross–too deep, too rapid, or like the Mississippi, too wide, makes mythical the other side. Those people on the west bank, those people on the east bank, or the north or the south, depending on the curve of the river, who really knows them? It is not a street we can cross at any corner. Sometimes the river eats away the bank, cuts into some farm or some town and deposits the stolen land on someone else’s doorstep. Maybe it’s witchcraft, maybe it’s bad luck or good. In myth, a river separates one world from another. The one who returns from the other side, returns as hero. You return from the water cleansed, transformed. The dead must cross the River Styx, the River Jordan to reside in the afterlife. Styx, the river of hate, encircles Hades nine times. So the land of the dead is surrounded by hate, not once, but nine times. But you only have to cross it once to get there. It’s coming back that is hard.
    The black man said he was going to Chicago to see his sister. He had retired after thirty years as a long-haul trucker, and he had spent much of his retirement riding Amtrak around the country.
    I say goodbye to him at Chicago, and board the Lakeshore Limited for Rochester, New York, where my rental car waits. There is no sleep again on this leg of the journey. The tracks are impossible, and the train jerks and rattles throughout the night. I am relieved when we finally arrive in Rochester, although bone-tired and miles from the airport car rental.

    The journey to Canada is not like it was in the old days when you could just drive over the border. Now you have to bring along a passport to prove that you are a Legitimate U.S. Citizen, and not a Terrorist Threat. As though those two things are mutually exclusive.
    The young woman at the check station spoke politely, but firmly, when she insisted that I tell her exactly what my plans were in Canada. I am going to Montreal to visit a friend, I said.
    Montreal? Not Quebec City? she asked.
    No, Montreal, I insisted. Of course, I didn’t know that Michel would, in fact, spirit me off to Quebec City.
    The first thing I notice when I arrive in Montreal is the high cost of gasoline. Nearly empty now, the tank on my rented Pontiac had powered me much too far out of my way on the confusing Quebec Province freeways. On my radio, the newscasters spin their lines between glum and glib, as they comment on the endless war in the Middle East, which ever seems about to burst into Syria and Iran. Then, there is the problem of the emerging Bolivarian Alliance in Latin America.. It seems Mexico might join any day. Next comes the Ongoing Terrorist Threat, the stagnant economy; and on and on until I turn it off in frustration. I really don’t understand world events. I don’t know why everyone can’t just Get Along.
    Tucked away in the Quartier Latin, near the University of Quebec, my hotel is one of several low-budget inns which line Rue St. Hubert like overgrown row houses. After I checki in and drag my bags up to my room, exhausted, I collapse on my bed and sleep. When I awake, it’s nearly 6pm. I had planned to call Michel, but the insistent tug of hunger says that Michel can wait until tomorrow. I shower and make myself presentable for dinner. The Pakistani man at the front desk chats with me amicably, maybe a little flirtatiously, but refuses to recommend a food establishment, instead pointing me toward Rue St. Denis, a few blocks to the west, They have everything there, Ma’am, McDonalds, Starbucks, pizza, everything. I am relieved to find, when I arrive, that everything actually includes a number of other choices, as well, and I settle on a restaurant that appears to offer some local cuisine. I didn’t travel all the way to Montreal to eat a Big Mac!
    The food turns out to be quite good, and my pretty, young server so charming and…French…at least my romanticized idea of French. I find myself glancing at my reflection in the window glass, wondering if I look French, if I fit in here, in this foreign place, imagining what life would be like in Montreal. The women on the street and in the cafés all seem so fashion-conscious with their chic hats and scarves and summer dresses. Not at all like comfortable, casual Portland with its hip anti-fashion. It would be hard to get used to that. On the walk back to Rue St. Hubert, I find myself looking at my reflection again and again. Who is this woman walking these foreign streets? I wonder. Where is she going? What is the purpose of her life?
    Michel lives in a small brick, nineteenth century townhouse on the edge of Outremont, in a multicultural milieu of bustling crowds and busy streets, where Hassidic Jews live beside Arabs, Chinese among Thais, Malasians, Vietnamese, East Indians, Africans, speaking dozens of languages. Most speak French. Nearly everyone speaks English.
    Aside from a few easily recoverable wrong turns, I had little trouble finding Michel’s apartment. Once there, I sat in my car for a good ten minutes, wondering if I could follow through on this thing. I had come all this way, and yet…and yet…this is not supposed to be a romantic thing with Michel…he is my cousin…I’m not ready for a relationship…and yet…who am I kidding? These things always end up awkwardly. Still, I had come all this way, and so I pushed my anxiety down into a place where it would not trouble me, screwed up my courage, and marched up to Michel’s door, rapping briskly on the hardwood surface.
    The man who came to the door surprised me. He was short, not any taller than I, with a receding hairline and his longish, black-but-graying hair pulled back in a small ponytail, a slight pot belly, and a beautiful, friendly smile. Not at all what I had expected. If his disarming smile hadn’t immediately put me at ease, I might have been embarrassed at myself, because I realized suddenly how much I had been romanticizing this whole adventure.
    Bonjour, bonjour my American cousin, he said. Come in, come in.

    I thought perhaps, said Michel, that we should go out to a café I know, and get more acquainted over a latte…if you like this idea. And then I will show you some of our little island.
The morning was very warm, and we walked a few blocks to a tiny breakfast establishment with sidewalk tables, where we sipped on iced coffees and chatted, I about Portland and the train trip, Michel about Montreal and his work as a free lance journalist, doing research on oceanography.
    The relatives, said Michel, are excited to meet you. I hope that you do not think it too presumptuous, but they have planned a little dinner for you tonight in Longuil. I’m honored, I said. But, in truth, I was also a little bit scared. What are their expectations? What will they think of me, their cousin from south of the border?
    I looked at Michel as though I were watching myself in a mirror, trying to find the family resemblances, trying to discover this thing I imagined was Frenchness. I thought I saw myself in this mirror, somewhere, indefinably distant. Michel, I decided, looked more like Grandma than anyone else in the family, and yet, there is something about him, an unfamiliar intensity. His dark eyes pierce me sharply when he speaks about things which excite him, particularly his work.
    Would you like to see the old city? he asked me. It is a bit of a tourist trap, but it will give you a small feeling for the Montreal our early ancestors knew.
    Yes, I said, yes, please, and we caught a bus down Rue St. Denis, past the restaurant strip near my hotel, past the University, where the streets begin to narrow, and the ubiquitous black brick takes on the soft roundedness of age.
    When we step off of the bus, the towers of an old cathedral, its rise like some magnificent creature out of a molting skin of plaster storefronts. As we walk through the cobble streets of the old city, I continue to glance at Michel, like a habit, and at my own reflection in the passing store windows. Where do I fit into this place? Into this world? Here I stand amid these ancient bricks which seem to be emerging from the crumbling facade of modernity, and I can’t help but think that this is my life, that somewhere beneath the layers of artificiality, there is something solid, if only I can reach it.
    On the river front Michel showed me a statue commemorating the Great Peace of Montreal, ending the terrible war with the Iroquois in 1702. Someone has written in permanent ink across the names of the French dignitaries, Assassins of the Indigene. The air of this August day had shifted from comfortable to hot, and when I looked at Michel, my gracious tour guide seemed to no longer be enjoying himself.
    Perhaps you could take me to the cemetery on Mont Royal, I suggested. I would like to see the place where they are buried.
Of course, his charming smile beamed at me, To tell you the truth, all of the tourists clamoring around these monuments to our colonial forebears only depresses me.
    I was taken aback, being a tourist myself. I’m sorry, I began to apologize, I didn’t mean…
    No, no, no, Michel interjected, I am the one who should apologize. I wasn’t speaking about you. It is just that the history of this place is such a sad history. The history of all of the Americas is a tragedy, but most of these people do not know it, do not want to know it. Please forgive me, I don’t mean to make your day unhappy.
    I understand, I said, and the subject was put to rest. Michel knows that I have studied Native American history, have Cherokee ancestors, that my people had been on the Trail of Tears. And I knew that Michel had a serious side which quickly becomes somber and pessimistic. It seems to be a family trait. So, apologies made and quickly forgotten, I felt a new level of comfort settle in with my newfound cousin.
    After sandwiches back at Michel’s we walked up the hill through old Outremont, with its stately brick houses and tree-lined streets, toward the twin cemeteries on Mont Royal. Michel doesn’t know the house where the young Mandeville girls lived, I’m not really familiar with this branch of the family, he says. They vanished from the family tree, I guess, until you came along. But as we traverse these streets in the hot sun, I feel something tug at me, walk up this street, it commands, I pull Michel along, but he quickly takes the lead again. Stop here at this house, this thing says, this house of black stone and decaying wood. In the yard three little girls play, speaking to each other in their native Quebecois. The dresses are old, like something from grandma’s closet, dress-up clothes . A pretty, middle-aged woman sticks her head out of the door. Clarinda, Germaine, Berthè, déjeuner! The older girl, about ten, looks at me, Allö, she says, and turns to go inside. She is limping, a brace on her left leg.
    I freeze as a strange sensation passes over me. When it lets go, I continue, haltingly up the street to where Michel waits. Did you see those little girls back there, playing in the yard? Michel shakes his head. I must have imagined it.
    How is it that people disappear so quickly from a place? After a couple of generations there is no trace of the Mandeville sisters in Outremont, nor in Labelle, where they lived at the fin de siecle. Who were these sisters who must have raised eyebrows from Mont Royale to Ontario? I have seen their photos, beautiful and nonchalant on the porch of their Labelle home. I imagine them, spirited and Bohemian at heart, unfamiliar with the concept of decorum nor, some would say, of shame. Beautiful in the way of all healthy young women. If they left a trail of broken hearts, there is no one left to regret. The graceful old stone houses are mostly still there, sitting solidly on the slope, with just the cemetery between them and the top of the mont. You might walk through the back door of one of these houses, into the kitchen. You might casually lean against the counter and inquire of whomever you find there and they will shrug their shoulders. Mandeville? Of course there are Mandeville’s, but no one has ever told them about Clarinda, Berthè, Germaine, Marguerite, Lulubelle, or Frances. Nor is there any memory of Germaine, though of all of them, she is the one you may find in the cemetaire. Yet some of their admirers are no doubt there, quietly corrupting next to their spouses.
    Michel and I enter the protestant Mount Royal cemetery, above Outremont, the entrance to the Notre-Dame-Cote-des-Neiges, Michel explains, is on the other side of the Mont, the English side, how ironic, but I know a shortcut. As we make our journey through the cemetery, Michel tells me about the history of the city, about the conflicts between the English and the French, about the Siege of Montreal.
    It must be humiliating to be French and live under English rule, I say.
    I hope I have not offended you, says Michel with a humored look on his face, speaking disparagingly about the English, I mean.
    I am not English, I say, although I know that, even without English blood, I am connected by language and culture to the people of Britain.
    Yes, and I am not French. I am Quebecois. My ancestors, like yours, have been in this country since the middle of the 17th Century. We have a different culture. We have lived among English-speaking people, and their culture has become a part of our culture. We Americans are a mix of all of these things. That is not to say many Quebecois do not resent the domination of English-speaking Canada, of course.
    I feel humbled, and a little bit foolish. I have never thought that deeply about how someone from Quebec might self-identify. Our media, our history books focus on the French-English divisions. And of course, they are Americans, the Canadians, not Europeans.
    We walk on among the dead, along the well-worn paths of the living, passing tombstones engraved in English, Persian, Arabic, Chinese, Cyrrilic, hundreds of finely manicured graves, some newly filled, some settled by the decades, until we come to a place where the graves line up, in marching formation, a company of identical white stones, split in two by an iron fence. That is the French cemetery, says Michel, pointing to the graves on the other side, the fallen soldiers of The War To End All Wars. Alongside the marching column of dead, there is a small gate to the other side, passage des revenants, says Michel, smiling. They will allow us through, if we are respectful. In the cimetière, the names are French, but also some Italian and Irish. The cemetery, English mostly. Comrades in arms, the soldiers on one side protestant, on the other side catholic, all miserably dead, dead in a horrible war. I see images of mustard gas and try to remember the words of that poem about sweet death that wasn’t in any way sweet. Suddenly my legs are tired and I have lost all enthusiasm for finding the graves of the Mandevilles.