“Second day out,” she says, and the audience laughs again.
With Annawake watching, Jinny feels slightly embarrassed about the low laugh threshold of Oprah’s studio audience.
“You could have walked away. Why did you take her?”
Oprah asks in a caring way.
“Seeing as how it’s against the law,” Annawake adds.
“Which law?” Jinny asks, surprised.
“Indian Child Welfare Act. You can’t adopt an Indian kid without tribal permission.”
Franklin Turnbo has come in and hung up his jacket. Annawake motions him over, still concentrating on the black-and-white screen. The three of them watch the mother push her hair out of her eyes, thinking. She seems unaware that she’s on TV—unlike the Cub Scout, who keeps bobbing on the edge of his chair and raising his hand as if he knows the answer.
“I felt like I had to take her,” the mother finally answers.
“This woman just plunked her down on the seat of my car and looked at me and said, ‘Take her,’ I said, ‘Where do you want me to take her?’ I thought she needed a ride somewhere.”
Finally the audience is completely quiet.
“Take who?” Franklin Turnbo asks.
“That Cherokee kid,” Annawake says, nodding at the screen. The mother looks down at the little girl and then back at Oprah. “The woman told me Turtle’s mother was dead, and that somebody had been hurting Turtle. She was the dead mother’s sister, and it looked like somebody’d been hurting her too. Then she got in this truck with no lights, and drove off. It was the middle of the night. At the time I felt like there was nothing else in the world I could do but take the baby. I’d been driving forty-eight hours. I guess my judgment was impaired.”
The audience laughs, uneasily. The little girl is staring at Oprah and clutching a fistful of her mother’s skirt. The mother carefully moves the child’s hand into one of hers.
“The next summer I went back and legally adopted her.”
“Can’t be,” says Annawake. “Not legally.”
Oprah asks, “Where did all this happen?”
“Oklahoma, Indian country. Turtle’s Cherokee.”
Annawake bangs the desk like a judge, bringing the court to order.
The sky has gone dishwater gray. There could be rain on this west wind, Annawake thinks. But it’s Third Saturday, stomp-dance night, and old people love to tell you that rain always holds back till the dancing is over. They’re mostly right. She parks her truck, gathers up her bouquet of blue and white papers from the office, and wonders briefly what ought to be done about the aluminum siding that is buckling on the north side of the house. With two free fingers she forks up the handlebars of a tricycle from the front walk and parks it out of harm’s way on the porch.
“Siyo,” she says, latching the screen door to keep kids in and dogs out. Her brother and sister-in-law are kneeling on the kitchen floor and return her greeting without looking up.
They must be on speaking terms this week: they’re hammer-ing the legs back onto the old pine dining table, and it’s not easy to take on a project like that without communicating.
Annawake watches the two of them, united for once as they both concentrate on keeping the table leg on straight while Dellon drives the nail. His thick braid swings like a bell rope as he hammers, and their heads almost touch. “Got her?” he asks, and Millie nods, her crinkled perm softly brushing Dellon’s shining black crown. They were married less than a year and have been divorced for five, but it hasn’t interfered with their rate of producing children. When the table leg is secure, Millie rolls sideways and takes hold of the lip of the sink. Annawake takes her other hand and pulls her up.
“Seems like you take one month longer with every baby,” Dellon says, and Annawake laughs because it’s true: the first was premature, the second right on time, the third one three weeks late, and this one seems to have staked Millie’s ample territory for its homestead.
“Don’t say that out loud, he’ll hear you.” Millie leans over her stomach and tells it, “You’re coming out of there this weekend, you hear? If you go any longer past due you’re walking home from the hospital yourself.”
Annawake gets a soda out of the refrigerator and sits in a chair, moccasins together, facing the upside-down table. “Is this thing going to live?”
“It’ll never walk again,” Dellon says, squatting on his heels.
He shrugs his braid back over the great round loaf of his shoulder and gives the table leg a couple of trial knocks with the hammer. He grins up at his little sister. “You scalp the cowboys today?”