Free I Am Regina by Sally M. Keehn Page A

father’s scalp. Another scalp hangs there. Brown hair.
    â€œDid you club mice for me?” Woelfin asks, her head cocked sideways, a dark eye glittering at me.
    â€œNo,” I whisper, staring at the scalp. It reminds me of clubbed mice—all brown and pink and bloody. My hands begin to tremble. I think I’m going to be sick.
    â€œAiii! What are we to eat?” Woelfin says.
    I shake my head, trying to clear my mind of a painful memory this new scalp has evoked: the gleam of a tomahawk; death screams; two scalps—Father’s and Christian’s.
    The earthen bowl that Woelfin gave me wobbles in my trembling hands. Suddenly, it crashes to the floor.
    Stunned, I stare at the shattered pieces.
    â€œTskinnak is no good!” Woelfin screams, raising her hand to strike me.
    I cover my ears and slowly back away from Woelfin’s screams, the broken shards—one step, two, until I feel the door flap, feel cold wind chill my back. I run away from her mean hut, scrambling through the charred circle where the Indians hold their council fires. Snow, mixed with cinders, has turned wet and gray.
    I remember the bleak, the frightening day my father died. His hair ...
    â€œNo!” I scream, wanting to shut out the memory; running blindly while my head reels with the remembered crash of a cabin door slammed open; the smell of burning flesh; bloodred flames; two scalps.
    Tears stream down my face as I scramble past the two upturned canoes resting against the sweat lodge, slide through mud and snow downhill to the stream.
    Water rushes past my feet and I see within my mind a whole fleet of canoes. They are made of white birch bark. Indians pole them through a stream of gray and light brown hair.
    There is no solace from a memory here. There is no solace anywhere. My mind bums as if it were on fire. I don’t know how to make it stop.
    I could drown myself in water.
    A twig breaks under someone’s foot. Woates, a thick-set Indian woman, approaches, walking carelessly through the sticks and dark, wet leaves strewn along the stream bank. She stares at me with curious eyes as she sways from side to side, carrying a load of firewood on her right hip.
    I recall a soft low voice, an arm, footsteps strangely silent as they cross twigs and leaves.
    Sobbing, I stumble around the curious Woates and up the bank. Hugging my arms, head bowed against the snow, I skirt charred logs, run toward a locust tree arching over a snug bark-roofed hut. Eyes blinded by tears, I stumble through a door flap into the only refuge that I know.
    There, beside a warming fire, Nonschetto holds me in her arms. Sobbing, I try to tell her what has happened. Tell her for the first time what had gone on before. Father. Christian. Barbara. All lost. All gone. The Indian words come slowly and I cannot seem to get them right.
    Nonschetto croons as she smoothes the wet hair from my face. Her dark eyes well with tears, as if she were experiencing all my pain and horror.
    â€œMy mind bums like fire,” I whisper. “I want to die.”
    â€œNo, Tskinnak. You will live.” Nonschetto’s voice is soft, but I sense the strength of iron in it. “You are a strong girl. You will weather this storm and all the storms to follow.” Gently, she cups my hand in hers, places my hand on my heart so that I feel its slow and steady beating. “Tskinnak. Nonschetto will teach you.”

CHAPTER Ten
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    B eyond the circle of our village, up a low hill near a small clear spring, grow the sugar trees. Yesterday, Nonschetto taught me how to gather their sap. She was patient with my clumsiness, as she was the day she taught me how to make an earthen bowl. The bowl is not as fine as Woelfin’s moss-green one, but she uses it.
    Yesterday, along with the other women from the village, we made small incisions in the sugar trees using hatchets the Indians bought from the white man. We inserted small bark funnels into the