Bugz thought back to another night years earlier, when she’d listened to the fire crackle and hiss in the exact same place, as a young girl. Back then she’d sat on her mother’s lap, the two of them bundled up together in the same star blanket Bugz now hugged. As they’d cuddled underneath the heavens, meteors, and northern lights, Summer told Bugz about the significance of the Sweat Lodge. It represented the womb of Mother Earth. “Those who go inside are reborn and come crawling back out of the ceremonial doorway renewed,” Bugz’s mother had said.

As she recalled this memory, it dawned on Bugz for the first time that her mom had sat outside the sweat with her that night because she’d been on her time. Bugz furrowed her brow. Her treasured childhood memory made possible only by their shared ostracism from the sacred gathering happening a few feet away. Bugz wondered which tradition she was helping to pass on. The Sweat Lodge ceremony? She didn’t feel very involved with that ritual. Perhaps instead she was helping carry on the practice of keeping women on the periphery. She shook her head at the thought of women not benefiting from the symbolic renewal of the womb of Mother Earth because of the renewal of their own literal, real-world wombs.

“Stupid,” Bugz said aloud.

“I know you are, but what am I?” Waawaate caught Bugz talking to herself. He grinned as he planted the pitchfork in the ground and climbed into the sweat. He pulled the canvas covers down behind him, plunging the interior of the sweat into darkness and leaving Bugz outside, completely alone with her thoughts.

CHAPTER 31

Bugz stared into the flames. The fire inhaled and exhaled momentarily with the wind. She thought of the time before the big bang. After a few breaths, she heard the muffled voice of her father praying in the Anishinaabe language inside the lodge. Bugz imagined herself inside the sweat with the others. She pictured the translucent red glow tracing the forms of the rocks in the pit and could practically feel the heat and the beads of sweat running down her face. With all of her heart Bugz wished she could be inside. She slouched lower into her chair until she was barely peeking above the top of her blanket, the rest of her immersed in the universe-like expanse of that old star quilt. After Bugz shifted in the blanket again, she could hear others taking their turns to pray. When they broke up the prayers with traditional songs, she hummed along. She knew every word, every melody. She knew them better than most of the men in the ceremony. Yet they were never asked to miss a sweat.