Between Earth and Sky(20)

Miss Wells strode down the aisle, her horsehair crinolette rasping against her cotton skirt, her heels like a hammer atop the wooden floor. She rapped her ruler on the edge of the desk Alma and Minowe now shared. “On your feet, Margaret. Let’s hear your numbers.”

The girl flinched and slowly rose to her feet. “One, two, dree, four, five . . . er . . .”

“Six,” Alma whispered without looking up from her book.

“Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.” Minowe sank back into her seat beside Alma the moment she finished speaking.

“Adequate, but not exemplary.” Miss Wells’s eyes flickered to Alma and narrowed. “Perhaps next time you can complete the recitation without Miss Alma’s help.”

Alma clamped her lips around a laugh. She glanced at Minowe and saw the same pent-up laughter building behind her cheeks.

“All right, class, pull out your slates. Write out numbers one through ten. Copy them five times before the end of the period.”

Minowe picked up her chalk, and Alma turned back to her book. She knew Miss Wells would quiz her about the reading at the end of class, but her attention drifted from the book’s pages to the windows.

A fresh powdering of snow had fallen during the night. She couldn’t wait to don her overcoat and race outside. The Indian girls played a game with sticks and twine—pupu’sikawe’win, Minowe called it—no matter the weather. Now Alma played as well.

Of course, the snow had put an end to their nighttime excursions into the forest. Mr. Simms would undoubtedly notice footprints leading to and from the school.

After lunch, the boys marched outside for woodworking instruction with Mr. Simms while the girls cleared the tables and headed for the kitchen.

With her arms elbow-deep in a bowl of minced meat and breadcrumbs, Mrs. Simms divvied up the chores. Alice and Catherine washed the noontime dishes while the littlest girls dried. Others set to work peeling potatoes and churning butter.

Alma, Minowe, and Rose—whom Alma now called by her Ho-chunk name, on stools at one end of the large, wood table in the center of the kitchen. A mound of dough towered before them, which they were to knead and shape into rolls.

Alma loved this time of day, no matter what her assigned task. As long as they did their work and kept their voices to a whisper, Mrs. Simms never yelled at them for talking and giggling.

With an apron tied about her waist and her hands dusted white with flour, Alma grabbed a handful of dough and pressed it down onto the table. She flattened and folded, flattened and folded, then formed a small ball and placed it into a large pan greased with lard. Her next one came out oblong and lumpy—more the shape of an animal than a roll. She laughed and nudged her friends.

“Look. A rabbit.”

Minowe raised her eyebrows. shrugged.

Alma formed two long ears and a round tail. “See?” She hopped the sticky dough across the table.

giggled.

“Waabooz,” Minowe said.

Alma repeated both words. It had taken her days to get the nasally i sound in name right, to mimic the long vowels frequent in Minowe’s words, but she loved learning, loved the game of piecing together the syllables and guessing at the meaning, loved that language—hers and theirs—was something they could share.

“Rabbit,” the Indians said together, struggling, just as she did, with their pronunciation.

Minowe took her roll, shaped wings onto either side, and moved it through the air. “Bineshiinh.”

said.

“Bird!” Alma shouted, loud enough to catch a raised eyebrow from Mrs. Simms. “Sorry,” she mumbled. Her friends laughed.

went next, creating a sticky blob neither Alma nor Minowe could guess at. She grabbed a new piece of dough and formed four legs and a round body. Then, after a quick glance in Mrs. Simms’s direction, bared her teeth and growled. A bear! in Ho-chunk. Makwa in Anishinaabemowin.

The game continued until only a few sticky streaks of dough remained where the giant mound had stood. Alma scraped what she could into a final ball, sculpting legs, a thick tail, and upturned snout—a wolf howling at the moon. She held it up for the girls to see.

scrunched her face, and Minowe poked at the now-sagging form. Alma readjusted the neck so the head once again turned upward and made a quiet howling noise.

clapped.

Alma echoed the Ho-chunk word, still stumbling over the nasally vowels.

They both turned to Minowe. She took the lump of dough from Alma’s hand and studied it, then shook her head. Alma and howled together, faces raised toward the ceiling, lips drawn into an O.

“Ma’iig—” Minowe stopped mid-word and let the mushy figurine drop to the table.

“Are you girls speaking Indian?”

At the sound of Miss Wells’s voice, Alma snapped to attention, dropping her face and clasping her sticky hands together.

“Need I remind you such speech is forbidden? Perhaps demerits or—”

“No,” Alma said.

Miss Wells’s eyes flared at the interruption. “Excuse me?”

Alma’s knees knocked against the leg of the table. “We . . . um . . . we weren’t speaking Indian. I was teaching them English.” She nudged Minowe in the ribs. “Tell Miss Wells some of the words I taught you.”

“Bird,” Minowe said without looking up. “Rab . . . rab . . .”