brown round shape, cover the top with white bread dough flattened out, and call, "Look! A chocolate cupcake!" Then she would giggle louder than anyone, hugely pleased with the success of her joke. There is a term in psychology, "motivated forgetting," which seems most apropos concerning much of the time Beverly was with us. Some things I remember vividly, and other blocks of time are vague and nebulous. I remember snatches of conversation, see the flash of her brown legs under a full pink and white checked skirt, feel the desperate strength of her arms around my neck as I leaned over to tuck her in for a nap. Not at first she was silent and withdrawn, waiting I had a feeling of being on probation, of having to do things according to the rules without knowing what the rules were. Herbert brought her to the door each morning, sleepy-eyed and frequently still in her pajamas. Soon most of her clothes were at our house and most of her playthings. She spent many weekends with us, when her father went to Flagstaff or to one of the nearby boarding schools to visit friends. It soon became more normal to have her with us than for her to be gone. After a few weeks, we didn't see a color when we looked at her; we saw a sweet little girl who was beginning to respond to our loving care. She would sidle up to one of us, waiting to have an arm extended or a lap offered, shy and reserved still, but able to accept the love she needed. We took her with us wherever we went, and we soon became a familiar sight, accepted on the reservation without comment. However, when we went "outside," we were frequently amused and sometimes astonished at the reactions we encountered. Some people seemed to feel that since the situation was a little out of the ordinary, the usual rules of etiquette didn't apply and they were free to question, comment, stare and even point. Beverly's Hershey-chocolate color was quite a contrast to our crew of five blonde Danishmen, but to have people stare as we approached, do a quick double-take as they met and passed by us, then turn completely around on the walk to look again was just too much! We considered meeting this kind of approach with a similar one; we would line up in two rows of four people each, all point an accusing finger at the offending one, and chant some ridiculous verse we'd made up to fit the occasion. We reluctantly abandoned this idea on the premise that one rudeness doesn't excuse another, but we were sorely tempted. Before the Federal ruling concerning segregation in public establishments, many restaurants in Arizona and Utah where we went had a policy of "the right to refuse service to anyone." I had been so naive when I first saw those signs that I thought they had been posted as a protection against inebriated customers. When we took Beverly into them with us we were never refused service, but the service we did receive was frequently inferior. Other times it was so over-solicitous we felt conspicuous and were embarrassed. While in Flagstaff on one of our bi-monthly shopping trips we stopped at a variety store lunch counter. Beverly casually remarked, after we had given our orders and were waiting to be served, that she and her Mama had stopped there one day "but we didn't ever get waited on and we left." I suddenly lost my appetite, and I saw my husband, who is not a violent man, clench his fists until the skin over the knuckles was tight and white. I told her maybe they just hadn't seen them waiting and she smiled and nodded, wise beyond her years. A routine trip to Flagstaff supermarket became an occasion to be remembered when a Negro lady followed me up and down several aisles, then finally spoke when I smiled at her. She seemed genuinely interested and I explained I was caring for the little girl as a friend of the family. She was amused; she knew many Negro people who worked in "white folks" homes and cared for their children, but she had never known the reverse to be true. We strolled up and down the aisles of the store together, shopping and chatting casually about Beverly, the high cost of living, and man's inhumanity to man. We were the object of many disapproving looks from other people - both white and Negro. We laughed about it, but we could have just as easily cried. We didn't exchange names. Each time we went to Flagstaff I watched for her, but we didn't meet again. My husband tells me that even without going to college I have made a very real contribution to the science of dontopedalogy (that's the art of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it) and I'm afraid I have to agree with him. It's a talent I try to control, but I am not always successful. As weeks went by and the incidents mushroomed I found myself biting my tongue or clenching my jaws to hold my mouth shut so I Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example. Mark Twain 12 wouldn't offend someone. The only time I allowed my precariously controlled hostility to erupt was when I went to a dentist in Flagstaff. I hadn't been to him before, but he had been recommended by someone at the boarding school and he was kind enough to give me an immediate appointment when I called him from a service station just outside of town. Sterling dropped me off at the dentist's office with Beverly and Alan, our eight-month old towhead, and he took the other children with him while he attended to some other business. The dentist was surprised when he saw Beverly and I could almost feel him selecting and discarding conversational bits and pieces, wanting to know but not daring to ask. I had a chip on my shoulder; it had been there for some time and I was waiting for someone to say something so I could vent some of my hostile feelings. He cooperated beautifully. I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity if I'd written the script myself. He cleared his throat two or three times, then asked, "How many children do you have, Mrs. Nielson?" I waited while he manipulated the probes and cotton wads around, then finally answered, "Five." "Five? That's a lovely family." "Yes, isn't it? We think it's nice" "Uh - are they all - that is - well, are they all adopted?" I waited a moment until he had removed some of the equipment from my mouth, opened my eyes wide in astonishment and exclaimed innocently, "Adopted? No, of course not! They're all ours. Whatever gave you the idea they were adopted?" He blushed, looked embarrassed, swallowed a couple of times, and tried to speak, but no words came. Finally, with a noncommittal "Oh," he got extremely busy with the drill and other equipment. He finished the job in record time and I paid him and left, offering no further explanation. His relief as I went out the door was almost tangible. I was almost ashamed of myself - but not quite. I didn't understand my feelings of resentment toward the many strangers who felt free to comment and speculate about the relationship. I still don't understand, any more than I understand what it was that caused our boys to see Beverly as the color they were, while the little Indian boys were different. They believed this so implicitly that they came home several times with bloody noses and skinned knuckles, acquired while converting some unbeliever to their way of thinking. Whether they convinced the other children that Beverly was white or that we were brown I cannot say, but they were prevailed upon to believe we were the same. Shortly after the famous or infamous incident with the dentist, I was again combing Beverly's hair. The setting was much the same. Yellow kitchen stool, green asphalt tile floor, gritty with the ever-present sand, black-hair, brown-skinned little girl and brown-haired, suntanned woman, and the sun slanting through the branches of the tree outside the water-spotted west window. The physical setting was the same, but how other things had changed. She was no longer a child we were caring for, she had become our little girl, and we loved her with a depth of feeling I would not have believed possible just a few short weeks before. As I reached in front of her to get the comb from the table, she took hold of my arm and held it next to hers. Something about the action was so poignant it was as though time were arrested. She whispered something, but inaudibly, and I leaned over with my ear next to her lips so I could hear when she repeated. "Miss-us Nielson," - I had never been able to get her to call me anything else, although I had tried many times. "Miss-us Nielson, I wish - I wish - " then the rest came in a rush "I wish we wuz the same color!" Haircombing was forgotten as I swept her off the stool and into my arms and we cried together. Helplessness, despair, rage, sorrow - such a tumult of feeling swept over me as to be indescribable. As the weeks went by and Beverly became more and more an integral part of the family, Sterling and I discussed the possibility of a legal guardianship, or even adoption. We knew we loved her enough to take her permanently, and we felt her father would agree to it, but we also knew we would not always be on the reservation where we could cope with whatever difficulties would be likely to arise. Reluctantly, sadly, and with some bitterness, we knew we not only loved her enough to keep her; we loved her enough to give her up when the time came. We drifted in a sort of Never-Never land, savoring each day we had her melodious, soft voice in our ear, her warm, smooth eager arms around our necks and her mischievous, gleeful laugh mingling with the delighted laughter of our other children. One morning Beverly wasn't deposited at the door at the usual time and a vague feeling of uneasiness grew stronger as the morning advanced. About ten o'clock I heard a familiar voice call my name through the screen, and Earline came in as casually as though she had been gone only a week-end, not for several months. My feelings were ambivalent, and under the conversation I could hear my thoughts running around and around: "You knew she would come back. You knew you would have to give her continued on page 27 13