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By Root 652 0

have assumed a wedding interpretation, in which the center aisle divides the two families; the seats on the other side are filling up briskly. Cash is over there and so is Letty, in a red dress with an imposing row of gold buttons down the front; countless other friends and relations have trailed in with children and greetings and messages for their neighbors. Boma Mellowbug is wearing a man’s pinstriped suit and a baseball cap, looking very sporting. She holds the hand of an old, extremely thin man whose hair hangs between his shoulder blades in a white plait as thin and prickly as binder’s twine. The heavyset woman who waited on Alice and Annawake in the coffee shop hustles in, leaning into Letty’s row in a businesslike way to inform Letty that the half-size dress patterns are in at Woolworth’s in Tahlequah.

“What is half-size, Aunt Earlene?” asks a young woman who’s nursing a baby. “I always wondered that.”

Earlene turns her back and speaks over her shoulder, reaching her hands around to her waist and the back of her neck to demonstrate. “It’s when you’ve got less inches from here to here than you have in the inseam and the bust measurements.”

“It’s for when you’re shorter than you are wide,” says Roscoe.

“You hush,” Letty tells him. “I don’t know why Sugar feeds you.”

Earlene plumps herself down next to the nursing mother. The baby is making a good deal of noise at his task, sounding like the squeaky wheel determined to get all the grease.

Sugar comes in late, long after Roscoe has taken the one vacant seat next to his sister-in-law Letty, and she seems uncertain where to go. She takes Alice’s side at last, but a seat on the aisle, as close as possible to the Stillwaters.

The talking falls to a hush when a small woman in heels and a white silk blouse clicks in and takes her place at the front table next to Andy Rainbelt. She has a good deal of hair, which she shakes when she sits down, as if it might have gathered dust somewhere along the road to this point. Annawake puts on her glasses, squares the pile of papers in front of her, and stands up. She looks out at the small assembled crowd and smiles oddly. “Have you all decided this is Stillwater versus Greer?”

The auditorium owns up to this by its silence.

She leans forward on the palms of her hands, peering out over her glasses, looking just like a lawyer in blue jeans. “Well, it isn’t. This is not a court battle, it’s just a hearing. I’m Annawake Fourkiller, you all know me here. I was hired by the tribe to oversee its interests in this case. This is Andy Rainbelt, who has jurisdiction as the appointed representative of Child Welfare Services. And this is his boss, Leona Swimmer, here to make sure we all do our jobs.”

Leona Swimmer nods very slightly, apparently wishing to acknowledge nothing more than that she is, in fact, here.

Annawake goes on. “Mr. Rainbelt and I have conferred, and we’re prepared to make a recommendation about the child known as Turtle Greer, also known as Laccy Stillwater.”

Turtle stops swinging her legs. Taylor squeezes her hand so hard that for once Turtle knows herself what it’s like to be bitten by those turtles that don’t let go.

Annawake looks down at Andy. “Did you want to say anything?”

“No, you go ahead,” he says. Leona Swimmer is craning her neck to read the blackboard behind her. BINGO, everybody wins! Taylor can just imagine this Betty Louise Squirrel. Some charmed, perky type whose tires never go flat and whose kids never get chicken pox. Taylor pictures her as an actual squirrel, in an apron.

Annawake speaks in the level sort of voice that takes practice to achieve. “There are two principal legal considerations here. First of all, the adoption of the child by Taylor Greer was improperly conducted. There was no malice on her part, but even so it was illegal. I’ve filed a motion in state court to invalidate the adoption.”

The nursing baby lets out a small strangled cry. His mother moves him to her shoulder, patting and bouncing him there to get the air bubbles to rise according to the laws that govern babies.

“Secondly,