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breath.
     
    "Well?" I said, and waited.
     
    Rafael's eyes flitted back and forth across the paper.  "Her name's Michaela," he said.  "Michaela Morales."
     
    I whistled.  "We've got ourselves a little Latina."
     
    "Huh?"
     
    "Keep reading."
     
    He did.  "She's ten," he said.
     
    "That's a good age," I said.
     
    "Yeah.  Says her mom's in prison..."
     
    Well, that was unpleasant.
     
    "Says she comes from a pretty abusive home.  Court-ordered therapy a few years ago."
     
    "I'd expected something like that," I admitted. 
     
    "She's got heterozygous beta-thalassemia."
     
    "Oh, what's that?"
     
    "It's a blood thing, a kind of anemia.  Just means she needs to eat iron."  Rafael stopped reading for a second.  "This kid's been in eleven foster homes in three years."
     
    I smiled ruefully.  "Zeke hinted at that."
     
    Rafael lowered the file.  He looked across at me.
     
    "What if she's, like...a terror?  And she murders us in our sleep?"
     
    "Are you sure you're not exaggerating?" I said, trying to mollify him.  "If she were violent, it would say so in her file."
     
    Rafael scanned it again, quickly.  "It doesn't say," he admitted.
     
    "Then she's not violent."  I touched his arm briefly.  "She probably has emotional problems."
     
    "Then what do we do?" he asked.
     
    "Be patient with her," I said, "and think constantly about her needs.  That she's been through so many homes means a lot of people gave up on her.  It would be nice to show her we won't turn her backs on her.  Don't you think?"
     
    For a moment, Rafael was so silent, I could hear Charity crunching on cornmeal cookies in the next room over.
     
    "Damn," Rafael said.  "Am I glad you can finally talk."
     
     

3
    Touchy Uncle Sal
     
    It was a Sunday morning.  A day of rest, as far as Nettlebush was concerned, but I guess the law stops for nothing.
     
    I tugged on the collar of my turtleneck and winced at the computer screen.
     
    Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe
, I typed on the keyboard, and immediately felt my brain melting to slush.  An intellectual I am not.  Why did I choose law?  Why didn't I choose picketing, or goat herding, or paranormal investigation?  Why didn't I become an astronaut?
     
    Do you know about the Mark David Oliphant case in 1978?  Mark David Oliphant was a non-Native living on a Native American reservation.  That happens sometimes; in my experience, most tribes are pretty open to people from different races.  But that's not the point.  This guy was a Grade A Jackass.  He walked around getting into fights, beating up women--he even beat up a tribal police officer.  So the tribal police arrested him on battery charges.  Makes sense to me.
     
    Didn't make sense to the rest of the country.  The Supreme Court butted in and came up with this new law--or, well, a new interpretation of the old law.  But whatever you want to call it, it's disgusting, and it still baffles me that anybody agreed to it.
     
    In 1978, the Supreme Court decided that the Suquamish tribe didn't have the power to charge Mr. Oliphant because he's white.
     
    An axe murderer could show up in Nettlebush tomorrow, and as long as he's white, we're not allowed to stop him.  And if we stop him, we're the ones who go to prison.
     
    Did I mention this happened in 1978?
     
    There are about a thousand different reasons I hate this law.  The axe murderer scenario is only one of them.  Did you know 35% of all Native women are going to be assaulted if they leave their reservation?  It's like their attackers know they can get away with it.  And when I think about it, I guess they do.  It's a virtual free-for-all.
     
    If I could just convince a judge to overturn that ridiculous ruling--
     
    "Damn it!"
     
    I turned off the computer monitor and spun around.
     
    Rafael stormed into the front room looking frazzled and frustrated.  At once I felt very sorry for him.
     
    "My grandmother's visiting the reserve this summer," Rafael