Cassie pushed her needle through the soft leather, knowing she was inept at something these old women could do skillfully, despite their failing eyesight and arthritis. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.
Rosalynn White Star glanced over her bifocals. “She’s always sorry,” she said.
At that, Dorothea snapped her head up. “Better sorry than stupid,” she said pointedly to Rosalynn. “She’s got other things to think about.”
Cassie heard Dorothea’s words, but she didn’t pay them much attention. It was the end of the Cherry Ripening Moon, the month she called July, and her baby was due in a matter of weeks. Her body seemed too heavy to carry, although this was nothing compared to the weight of her mind. With every kick and tumble of the stranger inside her, Cassie was reminded of Alex, of what he still did not know.
She still missed him. In her dreams, she imagined Alex forgiving her, pulling her close to his side. She saw his face in the deposit line at the bank in Rapid City; in a play of light over the Black Hills; reflected in a rain puddle. She tried to think of the things he would say when she showed him his son or daughter, but that meant seeing herself back in Los Angeles, away from these rolling plains, and this Cassie could not picture at all.
It had become more comfortable than home. She couldn’t deny that she still loved Alex, always would, but neither could she forget that the five months she’d spent in Pine Ridge, she had been free. She hadn’t spent her afternoons guessing Alex’s moods and acting accordingly. She hadn’t awakened in the middle of the night, terrified she had again done something wrong. She hadn’t been beaten, bruised, punched.
Once, when she was in Pine Ridge town, she’d seen an adolescent boy kick a stray dog that had run off with a pack of cigarettes from his back pocket. The dog was old and half blind, probably had mange, but Cassie had run up and thrown herself between the boy and the mongrel.
Some people on the street had pointed, laughing at the pregnant lady bent over a mutt, her belly grazing the earth, her voice screaming at the boy who’d done the damage. “Witkowan,” they had called her.Crazywoman.
But for Cassie it had been instinct. She had re-created the reservation as a sort of neutral ground, a place where safety was guaranteed. She wasn’t willing to let her image be threatened.
These days Will was never around—Cassie felt she saw him even less now that he’d moved back temporarily to Pine Ridge. He spent a great deal of time with Joseph Stands in Sun, and he wouldn’t tell Cassie anything, except that he was finally learning the ways of the People.
Cyrus and Dorothea and everyone else were busy getting ready for thewacipi, the big powwow held at the start of August. With some of the other elders, Cyrus went out looking for the forked cottonwood tree that would be used for a pole during the Sun Dance. Dorothea spent all her free time canning blackberry preserves and gentian root tonics, which she planned to trade at the festivities for the intricate shawls and rough woven rugs that others had crafted. When she had finished packing a large carton with her wares, she told Cassie she was going to Marjorie Two Fists’s lodge to do quilling and beading, and asked Cassie to come to take her mind off her troubles.
So Cassie sat for the third afternoon in a row with a group of old women, feeling less and less adequate as she ruined the beadwork on bracelets and jackets and moccasins. Dorothea laid aside the pouch she’d been embroidering and picked up the edge of Rosalynn’s quilt. “This will make a good trade,” she said. “That’s the best part of the weekend.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Marjorie said. “Even if I’m too old to dance, I like seeing the young ones in their costumes. I like listening to the drums. So loud.”
Dorothea laughed. “Maybe if Cassie stands close enough to the music the baby will come early.”
It was the last thing Cassie wanted to happen. She didn’t know anything about infants; she hadn’t considered the actual facts about this one, like diapering and burping and nursing. She was thinking of the baby more as the means to an end, but there was something about that end—the finality of it—that she didn’t really want to see.
The door swung open, and there, framed by the light summer rain, was Will. Without realizing what she was doing, Cassie stood up, letting the moccasin she’d been working on fall to the floor so that beads scattered and rolled into the cracks of the smooth pine boards. “Oh,”
she gasped, bending down as best she could to collect what had fallen.
“I know, I know,” Marjorie murmured. “You’resorry.”
“Afternoon, ladies,” Will said, grinning. “How’s it coming?”
Dorothea shrugged. “It’ll be done when it’s done,” she said.
Will smiled; that fairly summed up his philosophy of life. He looked at Cassie. “I thought you might want to take a walk or something.”
Marjorie stood up and took the beads from Cassie’s palm. “That’s a great idea,” she said. “Take her before she destroys anything else.”
Dorothea looked from her grandson to Cassie and then back again.
“She’s in a mood,” Dorothea warned. “Maybeyoucan snap her out of it.”
That was exactly what Will had planned to do. He imagined Cassie should be in high spirits these days, knowing that soon she’d be a good thirty pounds lighter, but she seemed to slip further and further away by the minute. Almost as if, Will admitted, she was already making the break.
He had one chance, and it was coming. The day of the big powwow, he would make her understand. But in the meantime, it couldn’t hurt to try to make her smile. “What do you say?” he pressed.
Cassie peered over his shoulder at the open doorway. “It’s raining,” she said.
She shifted her weight to her other foot. She had wanted to see Will for days now; she was restless; she should be jumping at the chance to leave this dreary little tea party—what was her problem? “We’ll get wet,” she said. “We can’t go for a walk.”
Will’s eyes began to shine. “Okay,” he said. “We’ll do something else.” Suddenly he was standing in the circle of women, trying awkwardly to fit his arms around Cassie’s bulk. He started to hum and whirled Cassie around in an offbeat two-step, crushing moccasins and knitting bags under the heels of his cowboy boots. Rosalynn, delighted, began to sing in a high sweet soprano.
Cassie’s face turned bright red. With no sense of balance, she found herself clinging to Will’s shoulders for support. She barely saw Marjorie stand up, grinning, to move her chair out of the way as Will steered them toward the open door.
