Kiss of the Bees (7 page)

Rita taught Davy and Lani the old stories and the medicinal lore Rita had learned from her own grandmother, from
Oks Amichuda
—Understanding Woman. Had Rita been physically able, she would have taken her charges out into the desert to show them the plants and animals she wanted them to understand. Instead, the three of them spent hours almost every weekend at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, with Davy pushing Nana
Dahd’
s chair along the gently graded paths and with Lani perched on the old woman’s lap.

For Rita, every display in the museum was part of her comprehensive classroom. As they went from one exhibit to another, Rita would point out the various plants and tell what each was good for and when it should be picked. And on those long afternoons, if it was still wintertime, so the snakes and lizards were unable to hear and swallow the storyteller’s luck, Rita would tell stories.

Each animal and plant came with its own traditional lore. Patiently, Nana
Dahd
told them all. Some tales explained the how of creation, like the spiders stitching together the floating pieces of earth. Others helped explain animal behavior, like the stories about how
I’itoi
taught the birds to build their nests or how he taught the gophers to dig their burrows underground. There were stories that did the same thing for plants, like the one about the courageous old woman who went south to rescue her grandson from the warlike Yaquis and was rewarded by being turned into the beautiful plant, the night-blooming cereus. And there were some, like the stories of how Cottontail and Quail both tricked Coyote, that were just for fun.

As the children learned the various stories, Rita had encouraged them to observe the behavior of the animals involved and to consider how the story and the animal’s natural inclination came together to form the basis of the story. What was observable and what was told combined to help the children learn to make sense of their world, just as those same stories had for the
Tohono O’othham
for thousands of years.

Rita—her person, her stories, and her patient teaching—had formed the center of Lani Walker’s 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 grandmother is so deaf, she didn’t hear the baby screaming. The other kids from the village found her in the afternoon, after they came home on the bus.

“Someone brought her into the hospital at Sells last night, but she’s still so sick that this morning they transferred her to TMC. I came along to handle the paperwork. By the time I finished, the ambulance had already left, so Gabe came to get me.”

“How old is the baby?” Rita asked.

“Fifteen months,” Wanda answered.

“And what will happen to her?”

“We’ll try to find another relative to take her, I guess. If not . . .” Wanda Ortiz let the remainder of the sentence trail away unspoken.

“If not what?” Rita asked sharply. It was a tone of voice Davy had seldom heard Nana
Dahd
use. He looked up from his drawing, wondering what was wrong.

Wanda shrugged. “There’s an orphanage up in Phoenix that takes children. If nobody else wants her, she might go there.”

“Whose orphanage?” As Rita asked the question, she pushed the awl into the rough beginning of her new basket and set her basket-making materials aside.

“What do you mean, whose orphanage?” Wanda asked.

“Who runs it?” Rita asked.

“It’s church-run,” Wanda replied. “Baptist, I think. It’s very nice. They only take Indian children there, not just
Tohono O’othham
children, but ones from lots of different tribes.”

“But who’s in charge?” Rita insisted. “Indians or Anglos?”

“Anglos, of course,” Wanda said, “although they do have Indians on staff.”

Diana walked back into the living room carrying a tray. “Indians on staff where?” she asked as she distributed cups of coffee. In view of the fact that Rita Antone made her home with a
Mil-gahn
family, Wanda Ortiz was a little mystified at Rita’s obvious opposition to the idea of Indian children being raised by Anglos. After all, Rita had raised Davy Ladd, hadn’t she?

“Running an orphanage for Indians,” Wanda Ortiz told Diana. “We were talking about the little girl I brought to TMC this morning. Once she’s released, if we can’t find a suitable relative to take care of her, she may end up in a Baptist orphanage up in Phoenix. They’re really very good with children.”

“Do they teach basket-making up there?” Rita asked, peering at her nephew’s wife. “And in the wintertime, do they sit around and tell
I’itoi
stories, or do they watch TV?”

“Ni-thahth,”
Gabe objected, smiling and respectfully addressing his aunt in the formal
Tohono O’othham
manner used when referring to one’s mother’s older sister. “The children out on the reservation watch television, and those are kids who still live at home with their parents.”

“Someone should be teaching them the stories,” Rita insisted stubbornly. “Someone who still remembers how to tell them.”

After that, the old woman lapsed into a moody silence. By then Rita Antone and Diana Ladd had lived together for almost a dozen years. Diana knew from the expression on the old woman’s face that Rita was upset, and she quickly went about turning the conversation to less difficult topics. She wouldn’t have mentioned it again, but once Gabe and Wanda left for Sells and after Davy had headed off to bed, Rita herself brought it up.

“That baby is
Hejel Wi i’thag
,” Rita Antone said softly. “She is Left Alone, just like me.” Orphaned as a young child and then left widowed and with her only son dead in early middle age, Rita had been called
Hejel Wi i’thag
almost her whole life.

“And if they take her to that orphanage in Phoenix,” Rita continued fiercely, “she will come back a Baptist, not
Tohono O’othham
. She will be an outsider her whole life, again just like me.”

Diana could see that her friend was haunted by the specter of what might happen to this abandoned but unknown and unnamed child. “Don’t worry,” Diana said, hoping to comfort her. “Wanda said she was looking for someone—a blood relative—to take the baby. I’m sure she’ll find someone who’ll do it.”

Rita Antone shook her grizzled head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

A week later, Fat Crack Ortiz was surprised when his Aunt Rita, who usually avoided using telephones, called him at his auto-repair shop at Sells.

“Where is she?” Rita asked without preamble.

“Where’s who?” he asked.

“The baby. The one who was kissed by
Ali-chu’uchum O’othham
—by the Little People, by the ants and wasps and bees.”

“It was ants,
Ni-thahth
,” Fat Crack answered. “And she’s still in the hospital in Tucson. She’s supposed to get out tomorrow or the next day.”

“Who is going to take her?” Rita asked.

“I’m not sure,” Gabe hedged, even though he knew full well that Wanda’s search for a suitable guardian for the child had so far come to nothing.

Rita correctly interpreted Fat Crack’s evasiveness. “I want her,” Rita said flatly. “Give her to me.”

“But,
Ni-thahth,
” Gabe objected. “After what already happened to that little girl, no one is going to be willing to hand her over to you.”

“Why?” Rita asked. “Because I’m too old?”

“Yes.” Fat Crack’s answer was reluctant but truthful. “I suppose that’s it. Once the tribal judge sees your age, she isn’t going to look at anything else.”

Rita refused to take no for an answer. “Give her to Diana, then,” she countered. “She and Brandon Walker are young enough to take her, but I would still be here to teach her the things she needs to know.”

Gabe hesitated to say what he knew to be true. “You don’t understand. Diana and Brandon are Anglos, Rita.
Mil-gahn
. They’re good friends of mine as well as friends of yours, but times have changed. No one does that anymore.”

“Does what?”

“Approves those kinds of adoptions—adoptions outside the tribe.”

“You mean Anglos can’t adopt
Tohono O’othham
children anymore?”

“That’s right,” Gabe said. “And it’s not just here. Tribal courts from all over the country are doing the same thing. They say that being adopted by someone outside a tribe is bad for Indian children, that they don’t learn their language or their culture.”

There was a long silence on the telephone line. For a moment or two Fat Crack wondered if perhaps something had gone wrong with the connection. “Even the tribal judge will see that living in a Baptist orphanage would be worse than living with us,” Rita said at last. After that she said nothing more.

Through the expanding silence in the earpiece Fat Crack understood that, from sixty miles away, he had been thoroughly outmaneuvered by his aunt. Anglo or not, living with the Walkers was probably far preferable to living in a group home.

“I’ll talk to Wanda,” he agreed at last. “But that’s all I’ll do—talk. I’m not making any promises.”

Mitch Johnson drove to Smith’s, a grocery store on the corner of Swan and Grant. Once there, he stood in the soft-drink aisle wondering what he should buy. With one hand in the pocket of his jacket, he held one of the several vials of scopolamine between his fingers—as if for luck—while he tried to decide what to do.

What do girls that age like to drink early in the morning?
he wondered.
Sodas, most likely.
He chose several different kinds—a six-pack of each.
Maybe some kind of juice.
He put two containers into his basket, one orange and one apple. And then, for good measure, he threw in a couple of cartons of chocolate milk as well. Andy had warned him against using something hot, like coffee or tea, for instance, for fear that the boiling hot liquid might somehow lessen the drug’s impact.

And it did have an impact. Mitch Johnson knew that from personal experience.

One day in August of the previous year, Andrew Carlisle had returned from another brief stay in the prison infirmary holding a small glass container in his hand.