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  • Apache
  • Lavonne Adams

My belly is a spring river, swollen. Soon, this child will come. I have done all that I should—eaten no liver to darken my child's skin, turned away from the plump berries that would leave their own pink marks. I refuse to eat any animal's feet, don't want this little one to enter the world standing—and I no longer look at Slow Walker, with his foot like a club, or at my husband's grandmother, with her eye that has turned white as snow. When I offered my sister's small child both bow and burden strap, she reached for the burden strap, as if the bow was little more than windfall kindling. And I knew it was a daughter kicking my heart. For seven days, I have worked this buffalo skin, pegged it to ground, scraped away what tissue remained. I have soaked the skin in water and ash until the calf 's golden hair became a paste I could wipe away. And after I work the skin until it's soft as cattail-down, I will shape it into a small tipi, that my daughter may learn early the ways of women—how to boil buffalo's horns in water to shape them into spoons, to mix meat and fat, pound it into pemmican. How to gain our people's respect by sharing whatever wealth she has. Each morning, as I grind corn, I glance up at the sky, where the clouds couple and break apart, and I know her name will be Clouds Moving, that she will have a spirit like the white buffalo, rumored yet rarely seen.

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