Wild Sorrow (33 page)

But I did not hesitate. I stepped across the threshold, through foot-thick adobe walls into a dwelling that had been built nearly five hundred years before white explorers had come to “discover” this new world—a world in which a vibrant civilization balanced delicately on the rim of a tiny river, celebrating with the movement of the sun and the stars, resonating with the rhythms of the earth. I entered into the abode of a woman who had been lucky enough to have been beaten so badly with a broom that she was permitted to come home from a place that sought to steal the soul of the People through the genocide of its children's spirits.

It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust. A blanket had been tacked up over the window behind the Holy Family on their table, leaving the room in darkness. A large shadow hung in front of me, the shape of it instantly recognizable, and I felt a violent rush of sickness sweep through my chest and into my gut.

Sica Blue Cloud had struggled long and hard to get to a spike that had been driven into one of the vigas that spanned the low ceiling in her humble home. Holding on to a broom for support—a broom, of all things!—she climbed onto a low stool, and then the folding chair that I had seen her nephew bring. From this she stepped off and flew, rising like a Blue Cloud—away from the pain and the sorrow, away from the shame and the incapacity to fathom why, away from the leather belt that encircled her neck, holding her suspended in midair for just long enough to give her spirit time to leave her crippled body behind. She had made a sign and hung it to her chest by forcing the crucifix on her rosary through the top of the paper. The sign read:
I am an Indian.

I went to the doorway and looked out at the three women who awaited word of what I had found. Their faces looked stunned, confused, and fearful—much like the faces of the children in the photographs I'd seen at the abandoned Indian school. “Sica's sorrow,” I said, looking at Momma Anna, “last time.”

Sandi Ault celebrates her love for the wild west in this series. She loves to write, to explore, to adventure, to research, and to discover. She spends her free time hiking mountains, deserts, and canyons, searching out new sources of wonder and amazement, new places of magic and enchantment. She is at home in wild places, in the ruins of the ancient ones, in the canyons, on the rivers, on cliff ledges and high mesas. She loves to visit her friends and adopted family at the pueblos. She lives in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado with loving companions: a husband, a wolf, and a cat. Visit her on the Web at
www.SandiAult.com
and
www.WildSorrow.info.