Chapter 2: Waking to a New Name
The smell of frying blue corn mush and wild onion pulled Lusa from sleep. Morning light, honey-thick and dust-swirling, cut through the lace curtains her grandmother had made. It fell across her face, warm on her eyelids. She stirred, the muscles in her legs—the ones that didn’t always listen to her—twitching beneath the heavy weave of the diyin diné blankets.
“Shíyázhí,” a voice murmured, soft as the embers in the clay stove. A hand, calloused and gentle, brushed a thick dreadlock from Lusa’s cheek. The lock was woven with a thin strip of red cloth and a tiny turquoise bead. “Time to meet the sun.”
Lusa opened her eyes. Her mother’s face was there, a landscape of deep love and quiet patience. Nizhoni. She was Beautiful, like her name said. “Nimá,” Lusa said, the word feeling round and sure in her mouth. It was one of the anchors. Nimá. Mother. Home.
“My beautiful girl.” Nizhoni slipped an arm behind Lusa’s shoulders, helping her sit up. The process was slow, a familiar dance. Lusa’s body, nineteen years old now, was strong in its own way but uncooperative in others. Her legs, thin and curled, rested in the padded wheelchair beside the bed. Her arms had better reach, her hands capable of delicate work if given time and focus. But the world often moved too fast, the connections between thought and action fading like smoke.
“Bluebird today,” Lusa said, pointing a finger toward the window where the bird sang. Her sentences were simple, direct. Concepts were clouds. Feelings were stone.
“Yes, bluebird,” Nizhoni said, easing her into the chair, smoothing the long, magnificent ropes of her daughter’s hair over her shoulders. The dreadlocks, a testament to years of careful, communal grooming, hung heavy past her waist, a tapestry of black woven with colorful threads and bits of shell. They were not a style. They were a history.
After breakfast—the mushy, comforting tązhii and sweet tea—the medicine woman came. Asádí sat on the floor cushion beside Lusa’s chair, her own aged hands folding over Lusa’s.
“You have Nááná, grandchild,” Asádí said, her eyes like dark river stones. “It is not a sickness. It is a way of being. Your heart… it does not have the walls others build. It sees what is true. The kindness in a person, the sadness in the wind. But the parts of the mind that build cages for things, that make plans to trap the future… those parts are quiet in you.”
Lusa listened. She liked the sound of Asádí’s voice, the way the words rose and fell. She understood maybe one in three. But she felt the meaning. It felt like being seen. She giggled, a sudden, bright sound, and reached for her stuffed rabbit on the low dresser, pulling it into her lap. Its fur was worn soft.
“She understands in her spirit,” Nizhoni said, watching her daughter’s face.
“She does,” Asádí nodded. “The world will always try to tell her she is broken because she cannot follow its frantic maps. But here, she is whole. Her path is just… different. More direct.”
The days were a string of such moments. Lusa helped, in her way. She could shuck corn for hours, the repetitive motion soothing, her fingers finding a rhythm. She would hum, a tuneless, happy noise, as she worked. She could not manage the family budget or read a complex contract—the ghost of Kael Thorn would have been appalled at the irrelevance of such skills—but she could tell when her little cousin was lying about where he’d been by the shift in the air around him. She could feel a storm coming a full day before the clouds gathered, a throbbing in her temples that made her fussy.
And she loved women. This, too, was simple and direct. Men were like loud, shapeless trees. Interesting, but distant. Women were the detailed landscape. Their voices, their smells, the curve of a smile or a hip under a skirt—these things pulled at a deep, warm current in Lusa’s belly. It was a feeling, not a thought. A wanting that was pure sensation.
It was at the summer festival that she saw Mara. Mara, who worked with the community garden, her arms tan and strong, her hair cut short like black moss against her skull. Lusa was watching the dancers, the drumbeat vibrating through her chair wheels, when Mara walked over and crouched down, offering a slice of cool watermelon.
“You look hot, Lusa,” Mara said. Her eyes were direct, her smile easy.
Lusa took the watermelon. Juice dripped down her wrist. “Loud,” she said, pointing to the drums, but she was smiling.
“Good loud or bad loud?”
Lusa considered. The sound wasn’t outside her; it was inside her ribs. “Good,” she decided. She looked at Mara’s mouth. She wanted to touch the scar on her lip. So she did, her fingers damp with juice.
Mara stilled, but didn’t pull away. She let the touch happen. Then she laughed, a low, warm sound. “You’re something else, you know that?”
They became a quiet fact. Mara would come by after her work, her clothes smelling of soil and basil. She’d push Lusa’s chair along the dirt paths, telling her about the plants, which ones were struggling, which were thriving. Lusa listened, soaking in the tone, the care in Mara’s voice. Sometimes she’d reach out and wrap a dreadlock around Mara’s wrist, a silent, possessive knot.
One evening, with Nizhoni visiting her sister, the hogan was theirs. The clay stove glowed. Mara lifted Lusa from her chair to the pile of sheepskins and blankets near the fire, the motion strong and effortless. They had done this before—cuddled, kissed. But tonight, the air was different. Thicker.
Lusa tugged at Mara’s shirt, a wordless request. Mara understood. “You sure?” she whispered, her breath against Lusa’s neck.
In answer, Lusa kissed her, open-mouthed and clumsy with want. It was enough. Mara undressed them both, her movements slow, allowing Lusa’s hands to follow, to explore. Lusa’s world narrowed to the map of skin under her palms: the tight muscles of Mara’s back, the soft swell of her breasts, the surprising roughness of a callus on her palm.
When Mara’s fingers traced down Lusa’s belly, over the gentle curve where her disabled legs met her torso, Lusa gasped. It was a sharp, bright shock of feeling. Her body, so often a distant, frustrating country, was suddenly the precise center of the universe.
“Right there?” Mara murmured, her fingers circling, not entering yet.
“Yes,” Lusa breathed. It was more a sigh than a word.
Mara kissed her, swallowing her sounds. She touched Lusa with a focus that felt like devotion, her fingers sliding through the slick heat she found, learning her rhythms. Lusa’s hips jerked, a spastic, uncoordinated movement, but Mara held her, guided her. “Let it happen, shíká, my heart,” she whispered against Lusa’s mouth. “Just feel it.”
The climax, when it broke over Lusa, was not a thought. It was a white wave that erased everything. It was a soundless shout in the hollow of her bones, a trembling that started in her core and radiated out to her trembling fingertips. She went rigid, then boneless, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.
After, Mara held her, stroking her hair. Lusa, floating in a warm, sated haze, reached between Mara’s legs. She mimicked what she had felt, pressing the heel of her hand against Mara, feeling the wetness and the hard nub beneath. Mara’s breath hitched. She guided Lusa’s fingers, showing her the pressure, the pace. “Like that, fuck, just like that,” Mara grunted, her hips pushing up, her own need raw and urgent now.
Lusa watched Mara’s face contort, listened to the filthy, beautiful words tumbling from her lips, felt the frantic clutch of Mara’s hand on her wrist. She felt powerful. She felt connected. When Mara came, her cry was sharp and short, her body bowing tight against Lusa’s.
They lay tangled in the dim, firelit quiet. Mara gently cleaned them both with a soft cloth. Lusa traced the patterns on the blanket above them, her mind peaceful, empty of everything but the scent of their sweat and sex and the dying fire.
“You are so beautiful,” Mara said, her voice ragged with affection.
Lusa turned her head. She looked at Mara, really looked, with her Nááná heart that saw truths. She saw no pity. No condescension. She saw a woman undone by pleasure, looking back at her with awe. A simple, solid truth.
“Full,” Lusa said, placing her hand on her own chest.
Mara smiled, understanding. “Yes.”
Outside, the bluebird had long since gone to sleep. The stars were the only map, and Lusa, for now, had no need to read them.