The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(87)

Till I realized: this was precisely what Jean was talking about.

Nothing unusual.

Aside from Laurel, the faces were nearly indistinguishable from one another. Southeast Asian . . . Diné . . . hair, features, skin . . . so similar . . . so familial.

Cousin, kin, clan.

Jean sighed with pleasure and shifted on the log.

“Athabascan,” she murmured.

I reached back to my U.S. history lessons and dredged up what I could about Athabascans. Crossed from the Asian continent thousands of years ago. Their descendants became the Inuits in Canada. Then much later some turned south and migrated again—latecomers, compared to other tribes. And their descendants became the Apache, Hopi, Zuni—and the Navajo.

“They crossed the Beringia on foot,” said Jean, still watching Trang. “Followed the migrating bison south along the Rockies. They retain so much of the look of their Asian forebears, don’t you think?”

In my mind’s eye I could see with utter clarity what she was describing. The slow southward progression of clans at the end of the last ice age. If you stretched back far enough, Trang and the Begays could easily share common ancestors.

Unlike those first immigrants, of course, Trang didn’t cross the land bridge into Alaska. He rounded the globe from a different direction entirely—to connect through sheer happenstance with cousins a thousand generations removed.

Millennia of separation until—a homecoming.

“It wasn’t an adoption,” I murmured. “It was a reunion.”

“At any moment”—Jean nodded, uncapping her flask—“we may see a unicorn.”


*

We were back in the great room saying our good-byes before heading out when Jessie led me toward the kitchen.

“Let’s pay our respects to Begay’s grandmother. She’s old as they come, and all this”—her hand circled in the air—“all this is hers.”

I knew the old Navajo tradition was matrilineal, and it was daughters who inherited livestock and land. But I didn’t know it was a custom still followed.

The kitchen was crowded with women talking animatedly in English and Navajo. Seated in a chair against the far wall was a petite, wizened woman, her white wisps of hair twisted into a traditional bun. She wore a red velvet blouse cinched at the waist with a sash, a black skirt to her ankles and soft deerskin boots. Slung over her shoulders was a simple gray blanket with stripes of white and black. The lines of her face were so deep-set, they didn’t seem so much the wrinkles of age as the fissures of natural erosion.

She turned in our direction as we paused in the doorway. Then she said something in Navajo and beckoned us closer, her face breaking into a delighted grin, her thin lips parting over teeth almost too white, too perfect. She watched as I approached, her brown eyes probing mine . . . just like Olin at breakfast under the oak tree.

“Yuhzhee,” said Jessie as the room quieted. “This is Joanna.”

Slowly, deliberately, Yuhzhee raised a wrinkled hand, stretching to touch my face. I had to bend for her to reach. Her fingers were thick, the tips as worn as weathered wood.

I’d never been around someone of such great age before. Jessie and Olin were old, certainly, and my Oma had been in her seventies when she passed, but this woman felt . . . ancient. She didn’t seem weighed down by the years, but buoyed by them. Weightless as a cornhusk doll. Or a carving out of cottonwood root.

She said something in Navajo, and I shook my head. “I’m sorry—I don’t understand.”

I peered about the room for someone to translate, but no one seemed inclined to do so. Finally, a young woman stirring a pot on the stove spoke up:

“She said you shouldn’t be here.”

I pulled away from Yuhzhee and straightened. Shouldn’t be here? I might be a newcomer, but I wasn’t a stray cat scratching at their door.

“I was invited,” I said stiffly.

Jessie laid her hand on my arm, shaking her head as if I hadn’t understood.

“No,” the young woman continued, not unkindly. “You’re a welcome guest. She means there’s somewhere you need to be. Something you need to do.” She shrugged. “This is not a bad thing.”

The old woman was urging me closer again. And again I leaned down, if more reluctantly.

This time, Yuhzhee fingered a lock of my hair, examining it curiously. She said something and the women in the room burst into laughter. I glanced around in confusion.