Bugz’s mom spoke up. “You’re walking in two worlds, Feng. Our Elders shared this teaching with us a long time ago. Walking in two worlds. One foot in the contemporary world and another foot in the traditional world. That’s what I tell the kids in our community. We need the traditional footing to tell us who we are and the contemporary footing to get along in this world. I don’t know what it’s like to be you, but I’m guessing it’s something like that. One foot in your culture, one foot in the mainstream. Does that make sense?”

Feng listened as Liumei translated.

“Frank, tell him about the Pipe and how it comes together,” Summer said.

“Right.” Bugz’s father shifted in his place. “We’ve been given the Pipe to pray with by the Creator. The bowl of the Pipe is from women, from the earth, and the stem of the Pipe is from men, from the tree that grows out of the earth. But when you put them together like we do with the Pipe in ceremony, they form something new, something more powerful than either one of them were on their own.” Frank paused for dramatic effect. “An Elder once told me you have to be like that. ‘Be like the Pipe. Take the modern world and put it together with the traditional world and make something even more powerful than what was there before.’ That’s what she told me, and that’s what you have to do too.”

“That’s beautiful,” Liumei said from across the lodge, before turning and offering an interpretation to Feng.

Bugz’s mother studied Liumei. She turned to speak directly to Feng. “It’s not just a male and female thing. It’s about two ways of life, two modes of being. Whatever they are for you, you have to put them together to make something new and more powerful. Everyone used to talk about reconciliation. This is it. Bringing things together to make something better.”

Everyone in the lodge waited for Feng’s response to Liumei’s latest translation. He could sense it. So even as his mind raced with competing questions—How do I reconcile my desire to live my life with the awesome power of the party? How do I fill the hole that my parents left in my heart?—he instead said what he knew the others wanted to hear.

“Makes sense.” While everyone in the lodge nodded in approval and assumed they’d done a great job in helping Feng bridge the Chinese, Uyghur, Western, and Anishinaabe ways of life, Feng’s thoughts returned to something closer to his heart. Mom and Dad.