But Ta-Na-E-Ka was over. As I neared home, I worried. My
feet were hardly cut. I hadn’t lost a pound. My hair was combed.
My grandfather met me wearing his grandfather’s beaded
deerskin shirt. “Welcome back,” he said in Kaw.
I hugged my parents. Then I saw Roger stretched out on the
couch. His eyes were red. He’d lost weight. His feet were bloody
and sore.
“I made it. I’m a warrior,” Roger said.
My grandfather saw I was clean, well fed, and healthy.
Finally he asked, “What did you eat to keep you so well?”
“Hamburgers and milkshakes.”
“Hamburgers!” my grandfather shouted.
“Milkshakes!” Roger said.
“You didn’t say we had to eat grasshoppers,” I said.
“Tell us all about your Ta-Na-E-Ka,” my grandfather
ordered.
I told them the whole story.
“That’s not what I trained you for,” my grandfather said.
“Grandfather, I learned that Ta-Na-E-Ka is important.
I handled it my way. And I learned I had nothing to fear. There’s
no reason in 1947 to eat grasshoppers. Grandfather, I’ll bet you
never ate one of those rotten berries.”
Grandfather laughed aloud! Grandfather never laughed.
Never.
“Those berries are terrible,” Grandfather said. “I found a
dead deer on the first day of my Ta-Na-E-Ka. The deer kept my
belly full.” Grandfather stopped laughing. “We should send you
out again,” he said.
Grandfather called me to him. “You should have done what
your cousin did. But you know more about what is happening to
our people today than I do. You would have passed the test in any
time. You can make do in a world that wasn’t made for Indians.
I don’t think you’ll have trouble getting along.”
Grandfather wasn’t entirely right. But I’ll tell about that
another time