Kiss of the Bees

“What are you doing?” Jessica asked.

“I’m going to take it home and use it to make a basket.”

“Really? Out of hair?”

Lani nodded. “Nana Dahd showed me once how to make horsehair baskets. This will be an o’othham wopo hashda—people-hair basket.”

Hair had been the main topic of conversation that night at both the Walker household and at the Carpenters’ just up the road.

“Whatever happened to your hair?” Brandon Walker demanded. “It looks like you got it caught in the paper cutter at school.”

“It was too long,” Lani answered quietly. “I decided to cut it off. Jessie cut hers, too.”

“You cut it yourself?”

Lani shrugged. “Jessie cut mine and I cut hers.”

Silenced by a reproving look from Diana, Brandon shook his head and let the subject drop, subsiding into a gloomy silence.

The next day was Saturday. With the enthusiastic approval of Rochelle Carpenter, Jessie’s mother, Diana collected both girls and took them to her beauty shop in town to repair the damage.

“You both look much better now,” Diana had told them on the way back home. “What I don’t understand is why, if you both wanted haircuts, you didn’t say something in the first place instead of cutting it off yourselves.”

Jessie kept quiet, waiting to see how Lani would answer. “We just decided to, that’s all,” she said.

Since Lani didn’t explain anything more about the fight on the bus, neither did Jessie. As for Diana, she was so accustomed to the vagaries of teenagers that she let the matter drop.

Several weeks later, Lani emerged from her bedroom carrying a small flat disk of a basket about the size of a silver dollar. Diana Ladd had spent thirty years on and around the reservation. Over those years she had become something of an expert on Tohono O’othham basketry and she recognized that her daughter, Rita Antone’s star pupil, was especially skilled. As soon as Diana saw this new miniature basket, she immediately recognized the quality of the workmanship in the delicate pale-yellow Papago maze set against a jet- black background.

“I didn’t know you ever made baskets like this,” Diana said, examining the piece. “Where did you get the horsehair?”

“It’s not horsehair,” Lani answered. “It’s made from Jessie’s hair and from mine. I’m making two of them, one for each of us to wear. I’m going to give Jessie hers for her birthday.”

Diana looked at her daughter. “Is that why you cut your hair, to make the baskets?”

Lani laughed and shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’m making the baskets because we cut our hair.”

“Oh,” Diana said, although she still wasn’t entirely sure what Lani meant.

It was another month before Jessie’s maze was finished as well. Each of the baskets had a tiny golden safety pin fastened to the back side. Lani strung a leather thong through each of the pins, tied her necklace around her neck, and then went to Jessica’s house carrying the other basket in a tiny white jeweler’s box she had begged from Diana.

“It’s beautiful,” Jessie said, staring down at the necklace. “What does it mean?”

“It means that we’re friends,” Lani answered. “I made the two baskets just alike so we can still be twins whenever we wear them.”

“I know that we’re friends,” Jessie giggled. “But the design. What does that mean?”

“It’s a sacred symbol,” Lani explained. “The man in the maze is I’itoi—Elder Brother. He comes from the center of the earth. The maze spreads out from the center in each of the four directions.”

In the years since then, the black-and-gold disk had become something of a talisman for Lani Walker. She called it her kushpo ho’oma—her hair charm. The original leather thong had been replaced several times over. Now when she wore it, the basket dangled from a slender gold chain Lani’s parents had given her on the occasion of her sixteenth birthday.

The people-hair charm served as a reminder that some people were good and some were bad. Lani didn’t wear it every day, only on special occasions—only when she needed to. There were times when she was nervous or worried about something—as on the day she went to the museum to apply for the job, for instance—that she made sure the necklace went with her.

Having the basket dangling around her neck seemed to give her luck. Every once in a while, she would run her fingertips across the finely woven face of the maze. Just touching the smooth texture seemed to calm her somehow. In a way Lani couldn’t quite explain, the tiny basket made her feel more secure—almost as if it summoned Nana Dahd’s spirit back and brought the old basket maker close to her once more.

Coming out of the bathroom with her hair sleek and dry, Lani looked at the clothing she had laid out on a chair the night before—the lushly flowered Western shirt with pearl-covered snaps, a fairly new pair of jeans, shiny boots, and a fawn-colored cowboy hat. Walking past the chair, Lani went to her dresser and opened her jewelry box. She smiled as the first few bars of “When You Wish Upon a Star” tinkled into the room.

Taking her treasured maze necklace from its place of honor, she fastened it around her throat.

Mr. Vega—that was the name the artist had signed in the bottom right-hand corner of the sketch, (M. Vega) —had asked her to wear something Indian. Of all the things Lani Walker owned, her o’othham wopo hashda—people-hair basket—was more purely “Indian” than anything else.

Mr. Vega might not know that, but Lani did, and that’s what counted.

David Ladd was still reeling from the effects of yet another panic attack that Saturday morning as he finished