90

Michigmaa keeps felt pens in the back pocket of the front seat for coloring on long car rides. She draws ducks. When her dad circles the sparsely populated clutch of gers looking for his horseman friend, her mother moves her arm towards him, and he pulls the pink sleeve of her jacket and she wriggles out of it whie driving.

The jeep goes all over everywhere, the best commercial for big manly cars if only there were a camera. Up and over jagged rocks. Only thing interrupting swept landscape is the inevitable fine silt that sneaks in through the doors shut tight, kicked up by the rare automobile.

What means turn right? Michigmaa's dad asks me. I haven’t memorized the verb “to turn’ yet. East, if you forget an objective compass. East, if your body is the map.

East, if forward is north. Back in the city, a place called the Lady Image Center that offers a service called the Dream Dance. It’s next to the flower center.