Shame

were displayed very respectfully, almost in the manner of a shrine. There was a wooden arrow with a pouch tied to it, mounted feathers of raptors, what looked to be a bear claw necklace, and a painting of a white buffalo.
    “Are you an Indian?” Caleb asked.
    “I’m Heinz Fifty-Seven. But part Indian.”
    “What tribe?”
    “Lakota, better known as Sioux.”
    Caleb kept walking around the living room and looking at things. He was reluctant to sit down. Lola watched him pace. She was tempted to tell him that he was the one wanted for murder, and that she was the one who should be feeling ill at ease, butdecided to hold her tongue. He was nervous enough already but was trying to cover up by touring the room as if he were in a museum.
    Caleb paused to study one of the paintings. It showed an Indian pausing in flight just long enough to taunt his pursuers. There were arrows in the ground around him that had fallen just short of their intended target.
    “I have a friend who’s an artist,” Lola said. “He painted that for me. The French called that Indian Berdache, a Salteaux who was the best runner in his tribe. I call the painting
The Decoy.
That’s what Berdache did. He set himself up as a decoy to a Lakota war party. He shot arrows at them and taunted them to chase him so that his people could escape.”
    Caleb took a closer look at the painting and frowned. Lola smiled at his reaction.
    “Yes, Berdache was a drag queen.”
    “For real?”
    “For real. Among many Native American cultures there was a tradition that anthropologists refer to as
berdache
. It’s a French word that means ‘slave boy,’ which is not at all an accurate picture of what berdaches were to their tribes. I, and many others, prefer the term
Two-Spirited People
, or
Two-Spirits
, souls that embody both Mother Earth and Father Sky.”
    Caleb shook his head, still finding it hard to accept. “These Indians wore women’s clothing?”
    “In most cases. But I think you miss the point.”
    “What point is that?”
    “What the berdaches wore didn’t matter so much as what they were. The Lakota believe all objects have a spirit. They refer to their own berdaches as
winkte
. They believe that the spirit of both man and woman combine as one in a winkte. Winkte aren’t deviant; they’re special. Winkte can see with the vision of both genders, not just one. Their position gave them the freedom to move freely between men and women.”
    “Was that their role? Emissary?”
    “In some tribes they acted as go-betweens for the sexes. In others they performed sacred duties. And in still others they took on many of the feminine roles.”
    Caleb moved away from the painting, but Lola wasn’t ready to change the subject.
    “There is a Cree word for berdache:
ayekkew
. The translation is ‘neither man nor woman,’ or ‘man and woman.’ I always thought that appropriate. Neither and both. That speaks to me.”
    “I’m glad you found some historical justification for what you are.”
    Lola ignored his condescending tone. “We’re very alike, you know.”
    “In what way?” he asked.
    “Like you, I was always the outcast, always different. I thought of myself as a freak. There were no role models for me. As a teenager, my father thought he could beat my anima out of me, and my classmates took up where he left off. I was kicked out of my own house and had to live on the streets until my aunt, my mother’s sister, took me in.”
    Caleb didn’t say anything, but she had his attention; he was even looking at her.
    “But the beatings still didn’t stop. I just administered them myself. And what was worse, I knew how to hurt myself more than anyone else could. I was a mess. I’m still not sure how I survived, but I remember the moment my life started to turn around. My aunt gave me this book on Native Americans and pointed out the section on the berdache tradition.”
    Lola’s eyes teared up. “It was an epiphany.” Her words came out hushed, choked. “It was like God tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘It’s all right.’”
    His entire life, Caleb thought, he had been waiting for that tap. He felt a twinge of jealousy.
    “The more I studied, the more I learned there were berdache-like traditions in other cultures: the Mahu of Polynesia, the Hijra of India, the Xanith of Oman, the Chukchi in Siberia. And I came to realize that I have a place in this world. So do you.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “The heyoka