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This is what my grandmother said: "He who is a windigo sees the other Indians as his totems. He sees anybody who has a bear for his totem as a bear, and so he kills and eats him, and so with someone who has the deer as his totem. If anyone has a beaver as his totem, that's how he sees him and so he kills and eats him."

And she said: "When it's beginning to be spring, perhaps in March, and it's starting to warm up, then it melts," she says, "the ice he must bear within himself," she says.

So he who is a windigo melts when it starts to warm up, then he recovers. He doesn't know much of what he did previously as a windigo. That's all.

—Maude Kegg,
"When Aazhawakiwenzhiinh
Almost Became a Windigo,"
from Nookomiks Gaa-inaajimotawid,

And the same man had four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy. —Acts 21:9

Our Lady of the Curlers. That's what we call Agoba, our sister. Her boyfriend is the unwanted lover of the lake. He calls to each wave, superior, and speaks to ships and freighters gone to their watery graves. Cordelio is Hispanic; his family came north for work. Agoba met him at church, but sometimes on Sunday morning, Cordelio goes to Mass at the Catholic church with his family. The cold, the cold is a god, he says. Cordelio calls the snow angels falling; there's no one left in heaven to do God's work, he worries. But God's work is done on earth, my father tells him. We snatch the lost from the fire: Jude 23. We are a blemish on Agoba's love feast. We sit in church and hear the testimonies: I chopped one tree shared the wood with my neighbor had wood all winter. I was in the lion's mouth. I was in the whale's belly and he spit me out on the shore at Little Marais. A church family has its trials just like others. Pentecostal Christianity is no guarantee against trials, though my father spells it trails in his sermon notes. When Agoba translates his handwriting into readable sermons, she corrects his misspellings.

Agoba was my father's grandmother's name. He thought it was, anyway. Agoba hoped so, suffering as she did with that name ALL HER LIFE, she said. We call her Agie. Over that she has suffered as well. She won't speak for herself. Meekness is her mark, her cross to bear. It's what she says anyway. There are four of us: all sisters. Dunlin, Juna, Phoebe, and Agoba. Our father is the preacher in the Waters of the Superior Church, the kind with signs and wonders following.

I, Dunlin, called Dunie, or Dumie sometimes by the sisters, am named after a plover, a shore bird which nests on the ground at the intersection of blue sky, blue water, and the blue distance of the north woods. It also was a family name; my father thought his grandfather's name was something like it. Phoebe is a biblical name. Juna is named after no one.

The four of us are a year apart; we look nearly the same except Agie was given Hair. My father's grandmother was known for the hair she kept tied up like a freighter to the dock. But when she let it loose, it sprang from her head in masses. The Hair hit every other generation, and only one girl in that generation. Agoba was the Chosen. She fluffed it, brushed it, curled it, and she outshone us. None of us had hope of anyone sitting on the front pew with us as long as Agoba was not taken. One boy who couldn't make up his mind between Juna and Phoebe after Agie wouldn't have him was soon gone. We lost our patience. Though Agie had all the boys, she wanted only Cordelio. She wouldn't leave the house until her Hair was curled and she looked like an angel flown down from heaven. Our Mother of Sorrows. Our Father of Mystery. Our Holy Spirit of Many Tongues. Our Sisters of Manifest Density. Our Sisters of Holy Inspiration and Divine Intervention.

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