Read Online The Girl with Braided Hair (A Wind River Reservation Myste) by Margaret Coel - Free Book Online

started after him along shelves stacked with candy bars and breath mints and chips. He had thick buttocks that swayed from side to side, and he kept glancing back at her, making sure she wasn’t helping herself to any candy bars, as if she wanted any of his stinking candy. She stroked the round back of Luna’s head; the damp black hair clung to her palm, like corn silk.
    “Here you go,” the man said, waving one hand over a shelf of baby formula.
    Liz stared at the price tag fixed below the cans and jiggled the baby in an effort to calm her. She could buy two cans and still get a few gallons of gas. She picked up the first, stuffed it in the crook of her arm next to the baby, and grabbed the second. “That’s all I need,” she said, the falseness of it clanging in her ears.
    “Okeydokey,” he said, ushering her ahead, not about to repeat the mistake he’d made when he let her walk behind.
    “What’re you doin’ in these parts anyway?” He swung his bulk around the end of the counter and waited for Liz to set down the cans, which he picked up one by one as he pressed the keys on the register.
    “What?” Luna was wailing now, tossing her head back, blinking up into the fluorescent lights. “Buying stuff. I need gas.”
    “What, the convenience store on the rez run dry?”
    “I’m visiting a friend,” she managed. Her throat felt dry and tight, her cheeks warm with anger. Why was she slipping into the role he expected of her? Indian girl with no rights—no rights to exist.
    “How much?”
    “What?” she said again.
    “You got somethin’ wrong with your hearing? How much gas you gonna put on your bill? You owe me a dollar fifty for the formula.”
    Liz pulled the coins and crumpled bills out of her jeans pocket and spread them on the counter with one hand. She pushed a bill and two quarters toward the register. That left two dollars and some change. She pushed the bills toward the others.
    “Two dollars,” she said, patting Luna’s back. She dropped her face and kissed the top of the baby’s head. “It’s okay, okay,” she whispered.
    “Your friend better be close by.” The white man jabbed at the keys. The register made a series of clanking noises before the drawer popped open. He stuffed the money into the narrow compartments, slammed the drawer shut and tore off the white receipt that had popped out of the top.
    “You got two bucks on number two,” he said, nodding toward the red and yellow lights blinking in the plate glass window. “You know how to pump gas?” His fingers were working the receipt into a ball. “Don’t want nothing busted up out there.”
    Liz picked up the cans of formula and, pressing them against her, pushed the glass door open with her foot and hurried back to the car. She set the baby into the cardboard box and crawled in alongside. It took a moment to locate the baby bottle wrapped in the diapers in her bag, pull the tab on one of the cans, and fill the bottle. All the while, Luna was screaming, arms and legs flailing. Liz picked her up and squeezed a drop of milk out of the nipple onto the baby’s pink tongue. A look of surprise came into Luna’s black eyes, then she latched onto the nipple, making loud slurping noises.
    Liz settled against the backseat watching the shadows and light move across the tiny face and the hungry way the little pink mouth worked at the nipple. For a moment, the fear and worry gave way to a sense of hope. “Baby, baby,” she sang. “We’re on the train to happiness now. See the light shining ahead for us. You got that light in your eyes, baby. I see it shining there for us, just for us…”
    She shut her own eyes and there was Jake Tallfeathers, watching her from across the room at the meeting, his fist knocking the countertop—tap, tap, tap. Her eyes snapped open. The white man was leaning down, tapping on the window.
    “Get your gas and move on,” he yelled. “Can’t have no loitering around here.”
    Liz pulled the