Free The Secret Letters by Abby Bardi Page B

inside any of the big, official-looking buildings there except for the Washington Monument, where we always brought relatives from out of town so they could gawk at our nation’s capital. The Department of the Interior took up a whole city block, and its carved metal front door was so heavy I almost couldn’t open it. It seemed like everyone in the lobby was staring at me as I walked across a giant coin with a buffalo on it. A woman next to an x-ray machine asked me where I was going.
    â€œThe Bureau of Indian Affairs,” I said, trying to sound official.
    â€œDo you have an appointment?”
    â€œNot exactly.”
    â€œThen who are you going to see?”
    â€œI don’t know. I just have some questions.”
    She eyed me with suspicion and said the BIA wasn’t open to the public. “You can have a pass to go to the museum,” she said. “But that’s it,” she added in case I was a terrorist. She gave me a visitor’s badge and waved me through the metal detector and into a long hallway with black and white checkerboard floors. I kept walking as if I knew where I was going.
    The museum’s automatic doors flew open, and I found myself in a room filled with props from an old cowboy movie: a crumbling wagon wheel, a barrel, a dirty stuffed owl, a cracked wooden jug. As I kept walking, more doors shot open and led me into a room of old photographs. Men with lined faces surrounded by crowns of feathers,pretty women with long braids, children with wide eyes.
    Suddenly, I understood what Milo was talking about. I had grown up with a family that, as Pam always said, “put the fun in dysfunctional.” Now, I had a new family, not just my father, but his people, my people, the beautiful ancestors whose lands had been stolen from them just the way my lands—my backyard, anyway—had been stolen from me. Maybe this was a little overdramatic, I told myself, but I understood how they must have felt when their woods were cut down by pioneers to build log cabins and their plains of roaming buffalo were fenced to make pastures. I had felt the same way myself when an exclusive community (luxury homes starting at 600K) was built where my favorite pond used to be.
    I stared at the faces of my new relatives. They stared back at me. Their eyes seemed to really see me, somehow understanding what I had gone through in my short, pointless life, and to feel sorry for me. But now that we had found each other and I was part of their great tradition (though I admit I knew almost nothing about it, apart from what I’d grown up seeing on TV), everything was going to be okay.
    A big map of the United States was dotted with places where the Bureau had offices, all out west. The names of tribes were written on the map, and the first place I checked was Arizona. I could see a big section near Flagstaff that said “Navajo,” and next to that, “Hopi.” One of these had to be my tribe. My tribe. I felt my heartbeat drumming in my chest. I had found what I was looking for, though I still wasn’t sure exactly what it was.
    Now I needed to find someone to tell me how to open a casino, but I didn’t know who to ask. A guard at the opposite end of the hall didn’t see me as I strolled back into the marble hallway to a bank of old-fashioned elevators with cursive numbers on the metal plates. I got in one, expecting someone to try to stop me, but no one did. I pushed all the buttons and peered out at each floor until, on the fourth floor, I saw a signthat said “Public Affairs.” I’m the public, I thought, and went in.
    â€œI need some information,” I said to a woman behind a counter.
    â€œWhat would you like to know?” She had straight gray hair and pale eyes and did not look like one of us.
    â€œWell—” I thought for a minute. What did I want to know? I wasn’t sure. “I guess my first question is, how does someone prove