existence from the moment the child first came to Gates Pass, from the time before she had any conscious memory. When Rita Antone died, the day before Lani’s seventh birthday, a part of the child had died as well, but there on the paths of the museum the summer of her sixteenth year—wandering alone among the plants and animals that had populated Nana Dahd’ s stories—Lani was able to recapture those fading strains of stories from her childhood and breathe life into them anew.
And each day at nine o’clock, when she finished up with one shift and had an hour to wait before the next one started, she would make sure she was near the door to the hummingbird enclosure. For it was there, of all the places in the museum, where she felt closest to Nana Dahd . This was where she and Davy had been with Rita on the day Lani Walker first remembered hearing Rita mention the story of Kulani O’oks —the great Medicine Woman of the Tohono O’othham .
“Kulani,” Lani had repeated, running the name over her tongue. “It sounds like my Mil-gahn name.”
And Rita’s warm brown face had beamed down at her in a way that told Lani she had just learned something important. Nana Dahd nodded. “That is why, at the time of your adoption, I asked your parents to make Lani part of your English name. Kulani O’oks and Mualig Siakam are two different names for the same person. And now that you are old enough to understand that, it is time that you heard that story as well.”
Whenever Lani Walker sat in the hummingbird enclosure, all those stories seemed to flow together. Kulani O’oks and Mualig Siakam were one and the same, and so were Dolores Lanita Walker and Clemencia Escalante.
Four different people and four different names, but then Nana Dahd had always taught that all things in nature go in fours.
Fat Crack and Wanda Ortiz, Rita Antone’s nephew and his wife, had stopped by the Walker home in Gates Pass on their way home from Tucson that warm September day. Wanda Ortiz, after years of staying at home with three kids, had gone off to school and earned a degree in social work from the University of Arizona. Her case load focused on “at risk” children on the reservation, and she had ridden into town earlier that day in an ambulance, along with one of her young charges.
“It’s too bad,” Wanda said, visiting easily with her husband’s wheelchair-bound aunt in Diana Walker’s spacious, basket-lined living room. “She has ant bites all over her body. The doctor says she may not make it.”
At seventy-one, Rita Antone could no longer walk, having lost her left leg—from the knee down—to diabetes. She spent her days mostly in the converted cook shack out behind Diana and Brandon Walker’s house. The words “cook shack” hardly applied any longer. The place was cozy and snug. It had been recently renovated, making the whole thing—including a once tiny bathroom—wheelchair-accessible. Evenings Rita spent in the company of Diana and Brandon Walker or with Davy Ladd, the long-legged eleven-year-old she still sometimes called her little Olhoni.
On that particular evening, Brandon had been out investigating a homicide case for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Diana excused herself to go make coffee for the unexpected guests while Davy lay sprawled on the floor, doodling in a notebook and listening to the grown-ups talk rather than doing his homework. Rita sat nearby with her owij— her awl—and the beginnings of a basket in hand. She frowned in concentration as a long strand of bear grass tried to escape its yucca bindings.
“Ant bites?” Rita asked.
Wanda Ortiz nodded. “She was staying with her great-grandmother down in Nolic . Her father’s in jail and her mother ran off last spring. Over the summer, the other kids helped look after the little girl, but they’re all back in school now. Yesterday afternoon, the grandmother fell asleep and the baby got out. She wandered into an ant bed, but her
And each day at nine o’clock, when she finished up with one shift and had an hour to wait before the next one started, she would make sure she was near the door to the hummingbird enclosure. For it was there, of all the places in the museum, where she felt closest to Nana Dahd . This was where she and Davy had been with Rita on the day Lani Walker first remembered hearing Rita mention the story of Kulani O’oks —the great Medicine Woman of the Tohono O’othham .
“Kulani,” Lani had repeated, running the name over her tongue. “It sounds like my Mil-gahn name.”
And Rita’s warm brown face had beamed down at her in a way that told Lani she had just learned something important. Nana Dahd nodded. “That is why, at the time of your adoption, I asked your parents to make Lani part of your English name. Kulani O’oks and Mualig Siakam are two different names for the same person. And now that you are old enough to understand that, it is time that you heard that story as well.”
Whenever Lani Walker sat in the hummingbird enclosure, all those stories seemed to flow together. Kulani O’oks and Mualig Siakam were one and the same, and so were Dolores Lanita Walker and Clemencia Escalante.
Four different people and four different names, but then Nana Dahd had always taught that all things in nature go in fours.
Fat Crack and Wanda Ortiz, Rita Antone’s nephew and his wife, had stopped by the Walker home in Gates Pass on their way home from Tucson that warm September day. Wanda Ortiz, after years of staying at home with three kids, had gone off to school and earned a degree in social work from the University of Arizona. Her case load focused on “at risk” children on the reservation, and she had ridden into town earlier that day in an ambulance, along with one of her young charges.
“It’s too bad,” Wanda said, visiting easily with her husband’s wheelchair-bound aunt in Diana Walker’s spacious, basket-lined living room. “She has ant bites all over her body. The doctor says she may not make it.”
At seventy-one, Rita Antone could no longer walk, having lost her left leg—from the knee down—to diabetes. She spent her days mostly in the converted cook shack out behind Diana and Brandon Walker’s house. The words “cook shack” hardly applied any longer. The place was cozy and snug. It had been recently renovated, making the whole thing—including a once tiny bathroom—wheelchair-accessible. Evenings Rita spent in the company of Diana and Brandon Walker or with Davy Ladd, the long-legged eleven-year-old she still sometimes called her little Olhoni.
On that particular evening, Brandon had been out investigating a homicide case for the Pima County Sheriff’s Department. Diana excused herself to go make coffee for the unexpected guests while Davy lay sprawled on the floor, doodling in a notebook and listening to the grown-ups talk rather than doing his homework. Rita sat nearby with her owij— her awl—and the beginnings of a basket in hand. She frowned in concentration as a long strand of bear grass tried to escape its yucca bindings.
“Ant bites?” Rita asked.
Wanda Ortiz nodded. “She was staying with her great-grandmother down in Nolic . Her father’s in jail and her mother ran off last spring. Over the summer, the other kids helped look after the little girl, but they’re all back in school now. Yesterday afternoon, the grandmother fell asleep and the baby got out. She wandered into an ant bed, but her
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