Chaska laughed. “Just trying to get on your good side.”
Afterward, he helped Doug and Naomi’s Uncle Tim set up a sweatlodge for theinipiOld Man was holding to prepare Naomi for her naming ceremony.
She came outside to watch them as they constructed the willow frame.
Chaska walked over to where she stood in the shade. “What do you think?”
“I’m starting to feel nervous.”
“About theinipior the naming ceremony?”
“Both, but mostly theinipi. I’ve heard stories about people freaking out and trying to get out. I don’t want to be that person.”
“Don’t listen to the stories.” Some of them were true, but hearing this wouldn’t help her. “Old Man goes easy on first-timers. It won’t be like the sweats we do for Sun Dance. Doug will be there. Star will be there. Win and I will be there, too. You can sit between us if you like.”
She nodded. “That would make me feel a lot better.”
He kissed her. “It’s going to be fine.”
“Hey, Naomi, I’d like you to come meet my sisters,” Star called.
Naomi kissed Chaska and walked back to the house.
Chaska helped finish the lodge and stacked firewood. Then it was time to head to Rapid City to pick Winona up at the airport. He stopped in at the house to tell Naomi he was leaving. “I’ll be back in plenty of time for theinipi.”
“I can’t wait to see Win.”
“She’s excited to see you, too.” He gave her hand a squeeze, then headed out the door and climbed into his truck, an idea forming in his mind.
Heated stones. Sage. Sweetgrass.
Naomi sat in the silent sweatlodge with a towel wrapped around her shoulders, her pulse beating a little too fast. Winona sat on her left and Star just beyond her, while Chaska sat, shirtless with a towel around his waist like the other men, on her right.
Darkness. Water hitting stone. Hot steam.
She fought back her panic, her senses stunned by the pitch black, by the suffocating heat. She held onto Chaska and Winona’s hands, felt their reassuring presence beside her.
A drumbeat. Her heartbeat. The otherworldly trill of an eagle bone whistle.
She sang the songs, songs she had practiced every night with Doug, songs she knew by heart, Chaska’s strong voice and Winona’s joining with hers, with Grandpa Belcourt’s, with Doug’s, with Star’s.
Tears. Prayers. Purification.
She didn’t know why she was crying, but couldn’t stop, old sorrows and fears rising inside her only to wash away in the steam. She prayed for everyone in the lodge, for all of her relatives, for the Lakota people, for all Native peoples, for the kind people of Scarlet, for the woman who’d abandoned her, for Peter and Ruth and their congregation.
Tunkasila, Creator, take pity on me. I am praying with my people.
Songs. Voices raised in unions. Drumbeat strong as a heartbeat.
“Mitakuye Oyasin!” they said together.All my relations.
The door went up, steam shooting into the night, cool night air rushing in.
When theinipiwas over, Naomi felt new and clean and free.
Naomi stood in her bedroom, Winona, Star, and other women from her family, helping her put on a hundred-year-old tanned doeskin dress with quillwork that her great-grandmother had once worn. She couldn’t believe they were letting her wear it. The quillwork—blue with black designs—was among the best she’d ever seen.
“You look beautiful,” Star said.