Killing Cynthia Ann

4 Victory Dance at Birdville

II Victory Dance at Birdville N audah woke when Bess opened the door and found them asleep on the rug. "Goodness!" exclaimed Bess. "You'll catch your death! Aren't you cold?" She hugged her own shoulders and shivered. "Tengo frio," Naudah admitted. Bess put a few shavings on the embers in the fireplace, puffed and fanned until they caught fire, then piled on kindling, and finally firewood. The friendly crackle of the fire quickly filled the room. "Bueno, bueno," said Naudah, crowding up close with Toh-TseeAh to catch the heat. "Would you like some hot coffee?" asked Bess. But Naudah did not understand. Bess brought a cup of steaming coffee anyway and offered it to Cynthia Ann. "Oh! Too-pah!" Naudah cried with delight and took a sip. Coffee was a great delicacy on the Comancheria, but this was bitter . "And I brought some hot chocolate for Topsannah," Bess added, smiling. "lAzucar?" Naudah asked. 42 "Sugar? Sure. I'll get some." Bess came back almost at once with the sugar. Naudah felt a surge of gratitude for Bess. "Gracias! Thank," she stammered. Bess was the favored wife in this lodge, and she was kind and loving. "I can see that everything's going to be all right," said Bess. "Everything is going to be right." But in spite of Bess' optimism, Naudah felt lonely for her husband and sons, and she felt dirty living in a white man's house. There was no explaining it. She admitted that the women kept everything clean, even the rug she and Toh-Tsee-Ah slept on. Something more profound contaminated the Parker house, something built into the very assumptions they lived by. Her Comanche father Paha-yuka had put it simply: "The whites are crazy; they don't think the way we do." And, Naudah knew, their spirit would contaminate her and Toh-Tsee-Ah-ne, too, if it got the chance. She had to protect herself. She must stay pure in soul until she and Toh-Tsee-Ah could get out of here. In the barnyard, Naudah saw a scissortail-messenger of the Spirits. "Flyaway, brave, bird. Flyaway to the Comancherfa. Tell all my relations where I am. Tell my family to come and get me and TohTsee -Ah. Tell them to come and kill these Tejanos, and take me home." She discovered a juniper bush in the corner of the Parker yard. It wasn't cedar, but it was a close substitute. She nipped small twigs and branches from it, made a thatch of it, and lit it at the fireplace, then wafted the smoke over herself. She brushed the smoking thatch up and down, close to her legs, across her head and down her back as far as she could reach. She felt cleansed. Then she smoked Toh-Tsee-Ah-ne the same way. She felt good, renewed. Paha-yuka had taught her that the ritual was an affirmation of her place in the world. It asserted the individual 's version of the partnership every person has with the universe . It tells the hunter that he is never alone, no matter how far away he wan'ders from this relatives and friends. It guarantees the captive that a world of harmony and good fortune exists, no mat- 43 ter how many restraints prevent one from reaching it. Naudah refused to wear anything but her deerskin sheath, rejecting all the clothes the white woman tried to force upon her. She put aside the polka-dot and print pinafores and smocks they had given Toh-Tsee-Ah and dressed her in her antelope shift. It was a pitifully small gesture, but it was all she had to maintain their identity and a fragment of their dignity. "That's all right," said Anna. "She must feel a lot more natural in her own clothes. It won't hurt anything for her to wear them." "Well, it's all right," said Bess. "For now." "Yes," said Isaac. "We've got to be patient." "I just can't see why she wants to go back," said Anna. "Well, once she learns the conveniences of civilization, she'll forget all about going back," said Isaac. Bess and Anna repeatedly came into Naudah's room or took her and Toh-Tsee-Ah into the main room of the double cabin, with their sewing baskets and bowls ofvegetables to peel. "It's better, we...