“I’m glad you made it,” she says, throwing a glance at the parking lot, seeing the Dodge and no one else coming.
“She’ll be here in a while,” Taylor says. “I left Turtle with Mama across the street at a restaurant so I could tell you some stuff first.”
“That’s fine, come on in. Taylor, this is Cash Stillwater.”
Taylor has to look twice before she sees the man in the comer sitting under the rubber tree. His worn, pointed-toe boots are planted on the carpet and his shoulders lean so that he seems drooped somehow, like a plant himself, needing more light.
“Taylor Greer,” she says with urgently insincere friendli-ness, extending her hand. He leans forward and meets her halfway, then sags back into his chair. His dark face seems turned in on itself from shyness or pain, behind the gold-rimmed glasses.
Taylor sits in one of the chrome chairs, and Annawake clears her throat. “Cash has asked us to help find his granddaughter, Lacey Stillwater. I guess Alice might have told you that.”
“Mama said there was maybe a relative. I don’t know how you’d prove something like that.”
“Well, there’s blood testing, but I don’t think we need to go into that at this point. Cash would just like for me to give you the information he has. His grandchild would be six now, seven next April. She was left in the custody of Cash’s younger daughter, an alcoholic, after his older daughter died in a car accident. The child was given to a stranger in a bar north of Oklahoma City, three years ago last November. We have reason to believe that stranger might have been you.”
“I can’t say anything about that,” Taylor says.
“We have no hard feelings toward you. But whether or not your adopted daughter is Cash’s grandchild, there are some problems here. If the child is Cherokee, her adoption was conducted illegally. You didn’t know the law, and I don’t hold you responsible in any way. I’m angry at the professionals who gave you poor advice, because they’ve caused a lot of heartache.”
Taylor is so far past heartache she could laugh out loud.
At this moment she is afraid her heart will simply stop. “Can you just go ahead and say it? Do I have to give her up, or not?”
Annawake is sitting with her back to the window, and when she pushes her hair behind her ears they are pink-rimmed like a rabbit’s. “It’s not a simple yes or no. First, if she’s Cherokee, the fate of the child is the tribe’s jurisdiction.
The tribe could decide either way, to allow you to keep her or ask you to return her to our custody. The important precedent here is a case called Mississippi Band of Choctaw versus Holyfield. I’ll read you what the Supreme Court said.”
She picks up her glasses and a thick stapled document from the desk behind her and flips through it, turning it sideways from lime to time to read things written in the margins. Suddenly she reads: “The U.S. Supreme Court will not decide whether the trauma of removing these children from their adoptive family, with which they have lived for three years, should outweigh the interests of the tribe, and perhaps of the children themselves, in having them raised as part of the tribal community; instead, the Supreme Court must defer to the experience, wisdom, and compassion of the tribal court to fashion an appropriate remedy.”
“So,” Taylor says, trying not to look at the silent man under the rubber tree. “What does the voice of wisdom and compassion say?”
“I don’t know. I’m not that voice. Child Welfare Services has the final say. They can give or withhold permission for a child to be adopted out. Assuming we’re sure of jurisdiction here. Once we have all the facts, I’ll make a recommendation to Andy Rainbelt in Child Welfare, and he’ll make the decision.”
“Do I get to talk to him?”
“Sure. He’s planning on meeting you this afternoon. And I’ve agreed not to make any recommendations until I’ve heard what you have to say.”
Taylor is aware of being the white person here. Since her arrival in Oklahoma, she has felt her color as a kind of noticeable heat rising off her skin, something like a light bulb mistakenly left on and burning in a roomful of people who might disapprove. She wonders if Turtle has always felt her skin this way, in a world of lighter people.
“Sir?” Taylor speaks to the man, Mr. Stillwater.
He leans forward a little.
“What was your granddaughter like?”
He crosses an ankle on his knee, looks at his hand. “I couldn’t tell you. She was small. Me and my wife, we looked after her a whole lot when she was a little bit of a thing. I’d say she was a right good baby. Smart as a honeybee. Right quiet.”