Turtle stops swinging her legs. Taylor squeezes her hand so hard that for one Turtle knows herself what it’s like to be bitten by those turtles that don’t let go.
Annawake looks down at Andy. “Did you want to say anything?”
“No, you go ahead,” he says. Leona Swimmer in craning her neck to read the blackboard behind her. BINGO, everybody wins! Taylor can just imagine this Betty Louise Squirrel.
Some charmed, perky type whose tires never go flat and whose kids never get chicken pox. Taylor pictures her as an actual squirrel, in an apron.
Annawake speaks in the level sort voice that takes practice to achieve. “There are two principal legal considerations here.
First of all, the adoption of the child by Taylor Greer was improperly conducted. There was no malice on her part, but even so it was illegal. I’ve filed a motion in state court to invalidate the adoption.”
The nursing baby lets out a small strangled cry. His mother moves him to her shoulder, patting and bouncing him there to get the air bubbles to rise according to the laws that govern babies.
“Secondly,” Annawake says, “we’ve determined that the child is Cash Stillwater’s granddaughter, Lacey Stillwater.
She recognizes him, and bears a strong family resemblance.”
“Isn’t that so,” moans Letty in a low, breathless tone as if receiving the spirit. Cash is perfectly still. He can’t feel his hands, and wonders if he’s having a quiet, unnoticeable kind of coronary.
“Given those facts,” Annawake says, “we have to consider Cash Stillwater to be the child’s legal guardian. If this were contested, a court would undoubtedly find in favor of Mr. Stillwater. The Indian Child Welfare Act clearly states that our children should stay within our tribe, and whenever possible, with their own relatives. In this instance the natural mother is dead and the father is unknown, so the obvious choice would be to assign guardianship to the grandfather.”
Cash still hasn’t moved. Taylor has stopped breathing.
“There’s complication in this case.” Annawake picks up a ballpoint pen and clicks the point in and out, in and out.
“The child has formed a strong attachment to Taylor Greer, the only mother she’s known for the past three years. Mr. Rainbelt evaluated the adoptive setting, and after consulting with a psychiatrist, he feels it would be devastating to break this extreme attachment. He recommends counseling for the child, who suffered a period of abuse and neglect before she was abandoned and subsequently adopted. Counseling will be undertaken at the expense of the Nation. That’s one of our duties to this child. Mr. Rainbelt suggests it would be valuable to the healing process, too, for her to spend time with her grandfather and other relatives.”
Annawake holds the pen at arms’ length and suddenly stares at it as if she had no idea of its purpose or origin.
“So,” she says finally. “You can see.”
No one in the audience makes any indication that she or he can see.
“You can see we have conflicting considerations here.
Keeping the child in her own culture, and not disrupting her attachment to a non-Cherokee mother. We want to reinstate this child—who should be called Turtle, since she’s grown to be a fine little person under her adopted mother’s care, and that’s the name she connects with her conscious memory of herself—we have to reinstate her as the granddaughter and legal ward of Cash Stillwater. We recommend her legal name be recorded at Turtle Stillwater. So, we’ve figured out who she is. We’ve come that far.”
Someone in the audience exhales. The baby emits a tiny belch.
Annawake takes off her glasses and looks at the ceiling as if in prayer. There is nothing up there but soundproof tile.
No evidence of the Above Ones or the six bad boys who got turned into pigs, for whatever reason. The faces in front of her are wide open, waiting. She remembers wanting to her Uncle Ledger, as a child, during the sermons. This is how it would be.
“I think we’re looking at one of those rare chances life gives us to try and be the very best that we are,” Annawake says. “The outside press, when they look at this case, will be asking only one thing: what is in the best interest of the child? But we’re Cherokee and we look at things differently.
We consider that the child is part of something larger, a tribe.
Like a hand that belongs to the body. Before we cut it off, we have to ask how the body will take care of itself without that hand.
“The Indian Child Welfare Act was designed principally to protect the tribe from losing its members. Our children are our future. But we want them to grow up under the influence of kindness and generosity. Sometimes we have to put the needs of an individual in second place, behind the needs of the community. But we should never put them out of our mind entirely. What we have to do is satisfy the requirements of the tribe, without separating Turtle completely from the mother and grandmother she’s come to love and trust.”