Here’s a little Métis flash-fiction for ya. Happy Tuesday.

A mother, a friend, an aesthetician. A woman in stilettos and a ruffled pink blouse raves about Angelique’s skill with hot wax. Acrylic nails airbrushed with cherry blossoms. A cousin (and there are many) tells us how Angelique used to snare gophers when she was fifteen. Made earrings from their tails for her friends in the city; that sort of Daniel Boone aesthetic was popular in the late seventies. The earrings were a big hit until the smell set in—Angelique was no taxidermist. Laugh a little, she’d want us to. Remember her from the PowerPoint projected on the clubhouse wall: Salsa dancing at a three star resort on the Mayan, hiking the Andes, kayaking on Stave Lake with her boyfriend, Ed. He put together the PowerPoint. She was loved, Ed reassures us. So deeply loved, and when he’d tried to be unbiased and think of something less than ideal to tell us about her, all he could come up with was her terrible spelling. An affliction—she never recovered from learning French as her first language. A woman in a blue rinse and a polyester suit nods vigorously. Oui, c’est vrai. Laugh a little, our people have always made light in the dark. Even when it’s inappropriate. We’ll keep laughing.