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"You're the woman who follows the peyote road."
Looking up from her rude blanket loom, a woman with black hair streaked with gray chats with Blue Corn Woman, and another woman cleans her buckskin dress by rubbing white cornmeal on it. "Indian women get close to each other," the blanket weaver says. "Thanks for inviting us to gather under your turquoise sky."
"You're a handsome woman, Blue Corn Woman tells the blanket weaver, and with the same mixture of cordiality and compliment, a little Indian girl attracts Blue Corn Woman's attention by the flash of her copper bracelet. "Paint on your face and feathers in your hair couldn't make you any prettier," Blue Corn Woman says. And just for a moment, Blue Corn Woman thinks ...
"Yes, look again at this child," Grandmother Peyote whispers. Trade shows are spiritual events. It is all about the healing and the hunt.
"What's the right response?" Blue Corn Woman asks Grandmother Peyote in a muted voice, and she doesn't have too long to wait for an answer, because the little girl is boarding her transportation for the journey home.
"You're the woman who follows the peyote road. These ideas are private. You're also a woman who follows her dreams. This pretty girl child with the burnished copper bracelet has weak vision. Her strength is in her hands. She carries a long heritage right into your future," Grandmother Peyote hints, just moments before a dust devil whips through the tent camp, throwing one of the tents twenty feet into the air.
What sort of an omen is this momentary element of wind to prevent the little girl and her family from leaving before Blue Corn Woman can get another look at her? And when she does look at the little girl again, this is how it is. Her face is painted with blue dots, and her hair is decorated with one Chinese coin tied on the end.
"Where did you get this magic coin in your hair?" Blue Corn Woman asks the little girl.
"Indian girls never tell those secrets," the little girl replies, "but she was a pretty gypsy lady who plays a tambourine."
"Where did you see her, child?" Blue Corn Woman asks.
"By the water, sitting on a rock," the little girl answers.
"Wait, Grandmother Peyote! I must know more ... Come back into my vision," Blue Corn Woman cries, throwing just a little pinch more peyote into her tea.
excerpted from Blue Corn Woman Copyright 2005 Sage Sweetwater, firebrand lesbian novelist
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Site: Sage Sweetwater Creative Properties
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