Eagle Dancer

“Mama, mama!” Emily called as she raced into the house.  Seeing her mother standing at the kitchen sink, Emily slowed down.

“Mama, I heard the drums talking ALL day.  What’s going to happen?”  Emily waited but her mother didn’t answer.  She knew that her mother did not like to talk about things from the past but Emily had hoped that today she would.  Emily would have better luck asking her grandmother.  She turned away.  Her grandmother must be here somewhere.  She hurried into the living room.  Her grandmother was sitting in her old rocking chair, sewing on something from the family-mending basket.

“Grandmother Anna, what are the drums saying?”  Her grandmother looked up with a slight frown on her face.  “Oh, oh,” Emily thought, “I should have greeted her before I asked her about the drums.  I must fix this, quickly.”

“Unci,” Emily spoke again, slower, using the Lakotah word for grandmother, “Unci, how was your day?”  She kept her eyes cast down in respect to the old lady.

Her grandmother smiled at Emily, as she had known she would.  “My day has been good.  Lela wastay.  Thank you for asking, wincicala.  Do you remember what ‘lela wastay’ means?”

“Yes, unci.  It means ‘very good’, and wincicala means ‘little girl’.”  Emily knew her grandmother wanted her to remember things of the Lakotah.  Emily knew her mother did not agree with Grandmother Anna and wished the old days would be forgotten.

Emily wanted to know about the drums.  From school, she had heard them all day; the steady beat like a deep voice, throbbing on the wind.  Other students had stopped to listen as they had played in the schoolyard.  No one had spoken about it aloud and Emily could barely wait to get home and ask what it meant.

“Unci, I heard the drums all day.  What are they saying?”