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It was a part of her, wasn’t it?
How could she not have feelings for it?
Tears filled her eyes again. What should she do when the time came for her to decide the fate of this baby? She knew that she should not want to keep the child, yet . . . yet . . . could she truly give it away? Once she held it in her arms, as this little girl was holding her pretend baby, could Joylynn turn her back on the tiny, defenseless creature?
Feeling someone’s eyes on her, the child stopped singing and stared at Joylynn. Then she smiled the sweetest smile Joylynn had ever seen.
The little girl laid her doll aside and came to Joylynn. “Why do you have tears in your eyes?” she asked in perfect English. It seemed most of the people in this village could speak English. “Are you sad?”
“Not really,” Joylynn murmured, wiping the tears away.
“Then why are you crying?” the child asked. “Are you lonely? You look lonely.”
“Yes, I am lonely,” Joylynn said, slowly smiling. “But now that you are here, talking with me, I don’t feel so alone any longer.”
To Joylynn’s surprise, the girl took her by one hand and yanked on it. “Come with me,” she said. “You can play house with me.”
“Play . . . house?” Joylynn said, walking with the little girl back to where she had been sitting beneath the tree. “Yes, I would love to play house with you . . . that is, if your mother wouldn’t mind.”
“Ina is busy grinding meal for tonight’s supper, so she will not know what we are doing,” the little girl said, softly giggling. She let go of Joylynn’s hand and gazed up at her. “I know your name but you do not know mine, do you?”
“No, I don’t,” Joylynn murmured. “But I would like to, especially if we are going to play house together.”
“I am called by the name Singing In Water,” the child said, smiling widely. “I like your name. Do you like mine?”
“It’s as pretty as you are,” Joylynn said, her eyes moving slowly over the little girl. She was petite and pretty with big brown eyes, a round, copper face, and hair hanging in two braids down her back to her waist. She was dressed in buckskin, ornamented with beautiful beaded designs. She wore moccasins that went up to her knees, also beautifully beaded.
“Sit,” Singing In Water said as she spread a blanket out for Joylynn. “Watch. I will show you how to play house.”
Feeling lighthearted and gay for the first time in months, Joylynn plopped down on the blanket and watched what Singing In Water did next.
“You do this first,” Singing In Water said. She scurried around beneath the tree and picked up some forked limbs that had fallen to the ground. “You stick these in the ground like this, and then watch what I do.”
Joylynn saw how she pushed the limbs into the ground in the shape of a tepee, then disappeared momentarily inside her parents’ tepee and came back with a small, old buffalo hide that she placed over the sticks, so that it looked like a small tepee.
“This is our home,” Singing In Water said. “It is just big enough for us to go inside and sit. Will you sit with me?”
“If I can fit in,” Joylynn said, laughing softly.
She crawled inside but had to keep her shoulders hunched over so that she would not push her way through the roof.
Singing In Water came in after her, carrying her pretend baby.
She sat down close to Joylynn, so close that Joylynn could smell the sweetness of the child’s skin and clothes, like rainwater.
“On days when a lot of my friends play with me, we make a much larger house, and boys play with us,” Singing In Water said. She placed a braid that had come over her shoulder behind her, so that it hung alongside the other down her back.
“You pretend to be families?” Joylynn asked, beginning to feel cramped in the small space. Her stomach was uncomfortable in her hunched position.
“Ho, and the boys go to their mothers to get a buffalo tongue that has been cooked, or some pemmican,” Singing In Water said, slowly rocking her pretend baby back and forth in her arms. “We girls then spread clean grass on the floor of our home and put the food on it. We feast on the food, the boys on one side of the imaginary fire pit, the girls on the other.”
“It sounds like so much fun,” Joylynn murmured. She had never had any close friends to play with when she was a child because the farms the families lived on were too far apart.
“It is fun,” Singing In Water said, then she handed the doll over to Joylynn. “Would you like to hold my baby?”
Joylynn was taken aback by the suggestion.
She stared at the strange-looking thing the girl called her baby, then did as she had seen the child do.
