by Wab Kinew
Bugz glanced at Feng. He stood in line behind the women, who crouched one at a time and crawled into the lodge. She’d never seen him without a shirt on before. He bowed his head and held both ends of the towel draped around his neck. He looked skinny, but not scrawny. She shook her head and looked away. Feng and the rest of the men entered the sweat. Ladies first. Bugz’s thoughts dripped with sarcasm. Waawaate walked past Bugz, who didn’t move to join the queue. She remained standing some ten paces from the lodge door, still hugging the blanket against the cool night air. Waawaate crouched near the doorway, listening to his father.
“Alright, son, bring ’em in,” Frank grunted toward Waawaate. “Seven rocks.” Waawaate nodded as he stood up slowly. Bugz noticed him groan as he straightened his legs. He shook one foot, paused, and limped like a dog with a porcupine quill in his paw for a few steps. By the time he picked up the pitchfork he’d corrected his stride. He tore apart the logs in the fire raging only feet from the Sweat Lodge door. He plunged the pitchfork into the glowing embers at the base of the blaze and pulled out a large rock, orange-red with heat. A blue-white flame slithered across its surface. Bugz watched the flame disappear as Waawaate carried the stone with the pitchfork, marched it toward the doorway, and slide it into the pit inside the lodge. “Aho, Nimishomis!” Bugz heard her father and some of the other men acknowledge the stone grandfather joining them in the sweat.
“Aho, Nokomis!” Summer and some of the other women acknowledged the rock as their grandmother. Bugz scowled.
Bugz set herself down in a camping chair with a long sigh, still wrapped in the blanket. She would spend the ceremony here. Outside. Excluded. Anishinaabe culture, like every Indigenous culture she knew, prohibited women from participating in ceremonies when they had their periods. Bugz couldn’t believe this silly rule was preventing her from joining her friends and family.
The ceremony was supposed to be about healing, life, and the interconnectedness of all beings. All are related. Except for her, apparently. Or anyone else on their “moon time.” And yet Feng, who knew absolutely nothing about this way of life, got to sit inside, front-row center, just because he was a boy. Bugz stewed on this slight. Superstition. Her frustration grew. She shook her head at the spiritual teachers—including many women Elders, including her own mother—who insisted on upholding this tradition. Sure, they’d dress it up in seemingly progressive talk, saying women on their “moons” were too powerful, too connected to the life-giving force inside them to participate, that their bodies would overwhelm the medicine men conducting the ceremonies. There’s something too powerful about women’s bodies, alright. Bugz knew it had nothing to do with magic, only fear. It was simply old-fashioned rule-making, condescension, and telling a woman what she could and couldn’t do, as far as Bugz could tell.
She fumed. A ribbon of sparks exploded from the fire as Waawaate rolled a burning log over and pulled another red-hot rock from the center of the blaze. The pitchfork seemed to pull Bugz’s anger out of her body for all to see. Her scowl matched the fiery intensity of the rocks the pitchfork retrieved. Everything infuriated her. She looked inside the door of the Sweat Lodge and saw Liumei sitting up very straight and looking incredibly focused. Bugz rolled her eyes. Does she think this is yoga class? Oh my god, I hope she doesn’t say “om.” To Liumei’s left sat the woman who’d loudly reminded all the other women earlier that night not to go into the lodge if they were on their time. Women like her seemed to take special pride in broadcasting how much they knew about the culture—especially about all the protocols that kept women in “their place.” This woman seemed to believe the stricter her scolding, the more virtuous she looked, and hence the closer to the Creator she became. Traitor. To the traitor’s left sat Bugz’s mom. Bugz looked away quickly and back to the fire. She seethed at her mother. How could her mom—their community’s first woman chief in modern times, for crying out loud—think in such a backward way when it came to her body and what it did every month?
Bugz thought back to another night years earlier, when she’d listened to the fire crackle and hiss in the exact same place, as a young girl. Back then she’d sat on her mother’s lap, the two of them bundled up together in the same star blanket Bugz now hugged. As they’d cuddled underneath the heavens, meteors, and northern lights, Summer told Bugz about the significance of the Sweat Lodge. It represented the womb of Mother Earth. “Those who go inside are reborn and come crawling back out of the ceremonial doorway renewed,” Bugz’s mother had said.
As she recalled this memory, it dawned on Bugz for the first time that her mom had sat outside the sweat with her that night because she’d been on her time. Bugz furrowed her brow. Her treasured childhood memory made possible only by their shared ostracism from the sacred gathering happening a few feet away. Bugz wondered which tradition she was helping to pass on. The Sweat Lodge ceremony? She didn’t feel very involved with that ritual. Perhaps instead she was helping carry on the practice of keeping women on the periphery. She shook her head at the thought of women not benefiting from the symbolic renewal of the womb of Mother Earth because of the renewal of their own literal, real-world wombs.
“Stupid,” Bugz said aloud.
“I know you are, but what am I?” Waawaate caught Bugz talking to herself. He grinned as he planted the pitchfork in the ground and climbed into the sweat. He pulled the canvas covers down behind him, plunging the interior of the sweat into darkness and leaving Bugz outside, completely alone with her thoughts.
CHAPTER 31
Bugz stared into the flames. The fire inhaled and exhaled momentarily with the wind. She thought of the time before the big bang. After a few breaths, she heard the muffled voice of her father praying in the Anishinaabe language inside the lodge. Bugz imagined herself inside the sweat with the others. She pictured the translucent red glow tracing the forms of the rocks in the pit and could practically feel the heat and the beads of sweat running down her face. With all of her heart Bugz wished she could be inside. She slouched lower into her chair until she was barely peeking above the top of her blanket, the rest of her immersed in the universe-like expanse of that old star quilt. After Bugz shifted in the blanket again, she could hear others taking their turns to pray. When they broke up the prayers with traditional songs, she hummed along. She knew every word, every melody. She knew them better than most of the men in the ceremony. Yet they were never asked to miss a sweat.
Bugz knew the ceremony wouldn’t finish for a long time. Four rounds in total, yet the first had only just begun. Bugz thought of the feast to come after the sweat. All the participants brought food. She knew her parents assumed she would prepare it. Leave the food outside with Bugz and she will get the feast ready. They always expected women to take care of the preparations. Perhaps that’s why some women always sat outside. Free labor. She thought for a second about cutting up the fruit and fry bread. Instead, she pulled out her phone and slouched even lower into her chair.
As Bugz peered through the glowing rectangle into the Floraverse, a growing realization of the silence inside the lodge crept up on her. She could hear no one praying. No one sang either. Something odd was unfolding inside the sweat. She put her phone down for a second and tried to eavesdrop. Nothing. She held her breath and focused harder. Finally, Bugz heard a whimper. It sounded like an animal, the sound of a young man trying to stifle his tears.
Feng. His turn to pray must’ve come, and now he couldn’t respond. She’d seen this type of thing before. Somebody with emotions bottled up deep inside froze as they all came rushing forward inside the ceremony. This is why she was so upset at her exclusion from the Sweat Lodge—it had an undeniable power to it. She yearned so badly to be inside. Bugz resolved that when she grew older and took charge of running the ceremony, she would separate the superstition from the tradition, parsing the purity of the practice from the mistakes of the practitioners. If she ever grew to take charge of the ceremony, that is. May
be her period would never end and she’d never get to sweat again.
The crying in the lodge grew louder. Bugz tried to imagine what might be making Feng cry: leaving his home behind; the racism at school; his parents. She wondered if he was thinking about her. She heard him cry harder still.
CHAPTER 32
“I don’t want to talk,” Feng said through a trembling voice. He felt suffocated by the heat and humidity of the sweat. His heart ached. His mind raced. He could see nothing around him in the darkness of the Sweat Lodge but still felt as though everyone inside was staring at him. Worse yet they were probably judging him for crying.
“That’s okay, that’s okay.” Even with his limited English Feng could tell Bugz’s dad was trying his best to sound reassuring. “Let it all out.” They paused again before Frank recited an Anishinaabe prayer. “Aho! Baakinan!” he shouted in conclusion.
Bugz’s dad and Waawaate shot their arms out under the door flaps and pushed the covers open. Light from the fire poured into the lodge’s entrance just as surely as billows of steam rushed out of the doorway into the cool summer night. The rocks inside hissed loudly. No one spoke for a long time.
“How you doing, Feng?” Frank asked.
“Okay,” Feng whispered, just loud enough to be heard over the cooling rocks.
“You know, sometimes when we have a hard time in a ceremony, it’s because there are things going on in our life that we need to address,” Bugz’s dad said. Liumei nodded along. “No one here is judging you.” Without Feng’s phone nearby to provide automatic interpretation, Liumei translated Frank’s words into Mandarin for her nephew.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Summer asked.
Feng paused long enough to see a torrent of images roar by his mind’s eye: Xinjiang, his parents, his childhood mosque, the boarding school, the principal, young Liumei’s tears, Bugz, Mishi-pizhiw, a Thunderbird’s Nest, the ceremony he was now a part of. He cleared his throat and spoke in Mandarin. Liumei nodded along before translating again. “I guess he feels lost. Caught between a few different things…like different worlds. He thought he had it all figured out in China. Then he came here.”
Feng thought of the Floraverse and the real world, of his Clan:LESS brothers. He thought of Bugz and himself, a young man and young woman. Different worlds, for sure. I’m in the sweat and you’re all the way out there.
Liumei asked several questions in Mandarin, apparently anxious to help Feng verbalize his emotions for the others.
Feng felt nervous and hurried to answer, perhaps a little too quickly. He could see Bugz outside the lodge sitting beside the fire. He knew it was too dark in the lodge for her to be making eye contact with him but he could feel her gaze just the same. He felt she could tell he was uncomfortable and rushing his answers. Liumei spoke on his behalf. “Ever since he came here, he feels like maybe there’s more to our family’s culture. He feels it calling him.”
He watched Bugz through the doorway. In the flickering firelight, he admired her beauty. He’d long ago concluded his people were backwards, but he’d come here to the Rez and met someone from an Indigenous background like his who was not ashamed of it at all. Instead, she wore her culture as a badge of honor and even turned it into something the whole world admired about her. As he pondered this, Frank, Summer, and Liumei exchanged glances.
Feng stared silently at the stones in front of him. He remembered sitting in the principal’s office, hearing that he couldn’t go home.
Bugz’s mom spoke up. “You’re walking in two worlds, Feng. Our Elders shared this teaching with us a long time ago. Walking in two worlds. One foot in the contemporary world and another foot in the traditional world. That’s what I tell the kids in our community. We need the traditional footing to tell us who we are and the contemporary footing to get along in this world. I don’t know what it’s like to be you, but I’m guessing it’s something like that. One foot in your culture, one foot in the mainstream. Does that make sense?”
Feng listened as Liumei translated.
“Frank, tell him about the Pipe and how it comes together,” Summer said.
“Right.” Bugz’s father shifted in his place. “We’ve been given the Pipe to pray with by the Creator. The bowl of the Pipe is from women, from the earth, and the stem of the Pipe is from men, from the tree that grows out of the earth. But when you put them together like we do with the Pipe in ceremony, they form something new, something more powerful than either one of them were on their own.” Frank paused for dramatic effect. “An Elder once told me you have to be like that. ‘Be like the Pipe. Take the modern world and put it together with the traditional world and make something even more powerful than what was there before.’ That’s what she told me, and that’s what you have to do too.”
“That’s beautiful,” Liumei said from across the lodge, before turning and offering an interpretation to Feng.
Bugz’s mother studied Liumei. She turned to speak directly to Feng. “It’s not just a male and female thing. It’s about two ways of life, two modes of being. Whatever they are for you, you have to put them together to make something new and more powerful. Everyone used to talk about reconciliation. This is it. Bringing things together to make something better.”
Everyone in the lodge waited for Feng’s response to Liumei’s latest translation. He could sense it. So even as his mind raced with competing questions—How do I reconcile my desire to live my life with the awesome power of the party? How do I fill the hole that my parents left in my heart?—he instead said what he knew the others wanted to hear.
“Makes sense.” While everyone in the lodge nodded in approval and assumed they’d done a great job in helping Feng bridge the Chinese, Uyghur, Western, and Anishinaabe ways of life, Feng’s thoughts returned to something closer to his heart. Mom and Dad.
Summer nodded again. “Here.” She took the eagle-bone whistle necklace from around her neck and waved it above the rocks. “I’m going to give you this to protect you while you’re going through this challenging time. It’s an eagle whistle.” Summer handed it to Frank, who handed it to Waawaate, and so on down the line to Feng.
“Put it on if you want.” Bugz’s mom gestured as though she were presenting a medal to an Olympian. “You’re supposed to earn that through an act of bravery or at the Sundance—our most powerful healing ceremony.” Summer smiled. “I’m giving it to you now because it took bravery to show your emotions like you did tonight.”
Bugz’s father spoke again. “I’m going to sing a song. Blow on that whistle four times, and then I’ll start.” Liumei translated.
Feng blew the whistle softly, a light airy sound escaping the translucent yellow bone. Waawaate nudged him and whispered for Feng to blow harder. He pursed his lips and emptied his lungs. The tone flipped from that of a flute to the high, piercing sound of an eagle screaming in mid-flight. Three shrieks.
“Aho!” the others in the sweat exclaimed. Frank kicked off a song and all the Anishinaabe people joined in, punctuating the beautiful traditional melody.
CHAPTER 33
Though the hearts of everyone in the Sweat Lodge filled with feelings of warmth and happiness, Bugz felt cold. And it was not just because she sat outside the lodge. She did not sing along, even though she knew the words to the song. She sunk back into her blanket. This guy cries and is treated like a hero.
Bugz’s jealousy roiled inside. There was more at stake here than just the eagle whistle, as beautiful as it was and as long as she had coveted it for. Bugz found herself wondering how Feng had come to deserve this attention from her parents. It’s because he’s a boy. Her jealousy blinded her to his suffering. Perhaps her ostracism justified her feelings.
She refused to look into the doorway. Instead, she compiled a growing list in her head of all the times her parents had failed to notice her suffering. Or her success in reviving their culture. Wh
y don’t they make an eagle whistle for me? She looked to Feng, who at that very moment had a tear running down his cheek as the others sang. Lucky.
Bugz wondered why she’d never received the motivational speech about walking in two worlds. She was the one who had to go back and forth between hating herself and feeling okay each and every time she picked up her phone. Skinny. Fat. Talented. Lucky. Virtual. Real. The song finished and everyone shouted in celebration.
Men just have to show up and the entire knowledge of all cultures of the world is handed to them. A woman like me can rebuild our entire civilization from scratch and no one even notices. Bugz turned her gaze back to the lodge, hoping her parents would see the mean look she was giving them. They didn’t.
“Alright, we better close this door before it gets too cold in here. Waawaate, want to get that door?” Frank asked.
From where Bugz sat, it looked almost as though her brother had been shot by her father’s words. As soon as Frank finished speaking, Waawaate collapsed and fell to his side.
CHAPTER 34
Waawaate’s upper body sprawled out of the doorway into the fire’s dimming light. His head rolled as though searching for help. Bugz froze. She could do nothing but stare into her brother’s wide eyes. He appeared to stare through her and into the afterlife. She wanted to reach out and help him, but the sudden realization of her big brother’s mortality kept her pinned to her chair.
“Son?”
