Han mikodapida

Hello my friends!
Phew, what a week! I've just gotten some down time today and that was really good. But I'll tell you about this week later. I want to back up a little bit because I promised you stories, and so much has happened! But these stories aren't for the weak-hearted...so now I've warned you.
Remember Haley and Marshal? I've seem quite a bit of them and their mom and grandma. Both Denise (fake name for their mom) and Laura (fake name for their grandma) are living in abusive situations. Denise was in the shelter for awhile, and Laura, who takes care of the kids part-time, is in our women's program.
I'd play with Haley and Marshal (and Caitlin, the baby) often while I was hanging out with the women in the shelter. It surprised me a little bit how different they acted around Denise. They misbehaved more, hit each other and things like that. And then when I would tell them to stop, Denise would say, "Don't be afraid to just hit them." I said little in response to this.
Laura was essentially homeless. I'll try to get a picture of the little covering where she slept if I can. She has an old engine-less van to keep her stuff in, but she lived pretty much outside--with an abusive man. She needs to have a rod put in her back to correct the damage from her last beating, but the doctors won't do surgery until she is safe. The last time those three kids came into shelter, they were covered in what looked like chicken pox. It turned out to be mosquito and/or flea bites from staying with Laura.
And it's not that Denise is homeless. It's just that three kids is way more that she can handle. Maybe that's even part of the reason she keeps going back to her man. The last time they were in the shelter, Haley started acting out and Denise got frustrated. Finally she threatened to send Haley back to her dad, and Haley started screaming and crying in a tantrum like I've never seen before.
There is a tradition of adoption--they call it "hunka" when it goes along with a ceremony--in Lakota culture. They say that adopted relatives are even stronger than blood relatives. Laura has an adopted daughter (Denise's adopted sister) whom I'll call Jenna. She came into shelter about the time Denise was last here, and she's incredibly sweet and talkative. Somehow we randomly struck up a conversation about horror movies and Stephen King--I think it was because we were watching a scary Lifetime movie. Anyway, a day or two later, I came in and found out that Denise had just left that morning, without even taking her things with her. So I sat and talked with Jenna for a long time. She showed me pictures of her six kids. Three of them live with one family member and three with another. The eldest, I would find out later, was born because Jenna was raped by her gym teacher when she was fifteen. The girl, who is now fourteen, doesn't know that.
One picture she showed me was of Denise with a bruised face. Jenna said, "I took this the last time she got her nose broken so I can remind her of what it was like. But she won't even look at it." Jenna was clearly upset that Denise had gone back to her man, but didn't have much to say about it.
That was on a Friday. It turned out that that weekend, some of the women went away to see family members, and Jenna was left all alone in the shelter. She told me the next week that she was very lonely, and even wanted to call her ex-boyfriend to come get her. Her bruises and scars were still healing even then. And not only that, but Denise had called and tried to convince her to go back.
"Do you think she just wants you to because she did?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Well, I'm glad you didn't."
Later that week, Jenna and I were cleaning up from some event or other, and I mentioned something about going home. She looked stressed and said,"When are you going home?"
"On August 30th."
"Oh no, all my good friends are leaving me!"
I felt horrible watching her face as she said this. She's been trying to guilt me into staying, but I promised her that we'll keep in touch.
Another woman in the shelter right now has two kids, and I'll call her Connie. She's really funny; she and Jenna started telling me stories about how they once got into a big fight in Pine Ridge (the town which they're both from) about a year ago. And I don't mean the kind of passive-aggressive fight we're used to, I mean the hitting and hair-pulling that's really common around here. When some friends finally pulled them apart and asked why they were fighting, they both said, "I dunno!" It turned out to be a misunderstanding. Later, they ended up working together at the local grocery store, and are now friends.
I think that's enough stories about these women for now. I'll fill you in about them later.
Mitakuye Oyas'in
-Jenny