Pigs in Heaven

“Please don’t panic. I’m only telling you that your adoption papers may not be valid because you didn’t get approval from the tribe. You need that. It might be a good idea to get it.”

“And what if they won’t give it?”

Annawake can’t think of the right answer to that question.

Taylor demands, “How can you possibly think this is in Turtle’s best interest?”

“How can you think it’s good for a tribe to lose its children!” Annawake is startled by her own anger—she has shot without aiming first. Taylor is shaking her head back and forth, back and forth.

“I’m sorry, I can’t understand you. Turtle is my daughter.

If you walked in here and asked me to cut off my hand for a good cause, I might think about it. But you don’t get Turtle.”

“There’s the child’s best interest and the tribe’s best interest, and I’m trying to think of both things.”

“Horseshit.” Taylor turns away, facing the window.

Annawake speaks gently to her back. “Turtle is Cherokee.

She needs to know that.”

“She knows it.”

“Does she know what it means? Do you? I’ll bet she sees Indians on TV and thinks: How. Bows and arrows. That isn’t what we are. We have a written language as subtle as Chinese. We had the first free public school system in the world, did you know that? We have a constitution and laws.”

“Fine,” Taylor says, her eyes wandering over the front yard but catching on nothing. We have a constitution too, she thinks, and it is supposed to prevent terrible unfairness, but all she can remember is a string of words she memorized in eighth grade. “We the people,” she says out loud. She walks over to the sink and picks up a soup ladle, then puts it back down. The voice outside sings, “I can’t feel it. You know they’re stealing it from me.”

Annawake feels an afterimage of her niece’s egg belly under her hands. “I’m sure you’re a good mother,” she says. “I can tell that.”

“How can you tell? You march in here, you…” Taylor falters, waving a hand in the air. “You don’t know the first thing about us.”

“You’re right, I’m assuming. You seem to care about her a lot. But she needs her tribe, too. There are a lot of things she’ll need growing up that you can’t give her.”

“Like what?”

“Where she comes from, who she is. Big things. And little things, like milk, for instance. I’ll bet she won’t drink milk.”

Taylor picks up the ladle again and bangs it against the metal sink, hard, then puts it down again. “You’ve got some Goddamn balls, telling me who my kid is. I’d like to know where you were three years ago when she was on death’s front stoop.”

“I was in law school, trying to learn how to make things better for my nation.”

“We the people, creating a more perfect union.”

Annawake offers no response.

“This here is my nation and I’m asking you to leave it.”

Annawake stands up. “I’m sorry this hasn’t been a more friendly meeting of minds. I hoped it would be. I’d still like to see Turtle.” She leaves her card on the table, a small white rectangle embossed with red letters and the seal of the Cherokee Nation. “I think it would be good for her to talk about her heritage.”

Taylor says nothing.

“Okay. Well, I’m in town till Monday. I’d like to meet her.

Should I come back tomorrow maybe? After dinner?”

Taylor closes her eyes.

“Thanks for the coffee.”

Taylor walks to the front door, holds it open, and watches the visitor pick her way through the fallen fruit in the yard.

Annawake finds the keys in her pocket and stands for a second with her hand on the car door.

Taylor shouts, “She loves milk. We buy it by the gallon.”

Annawake’s rental is a low-slung blue Chrysler that gives her some trouble backing out. It wobbles and crunches its way down the rutted drive, headed back toward town.

Taylor stands on the porch, arms crossed, witnessing the retreat. The words “a more friendly meeting of minds”are smacking like angry pent-up bees against the inside of her head.

High overhead in the apricot branches the taped music has reached its end, and gone quiet. One by one the birds emerge from the desert and come back to claim their tree.

9

THE PIGS IN HEAVEN

UNCLE LEDGER WOULD SAY, “ONCE you have ridden a horse, you should know what a horse is.” So it bothers Annawake that when she stands for the second time in front of the little rock house where Turtle stays she sees things she could swear were not there before. An odd stone tower at the end of the pitched roof, for instance, the kind of thing the white people in storybooks would hold prisoners in, or crazy aunts.