Lani Walker—Leah Donner

Lani Walker and Leah Donner are best friends whose friendship begins at the University of North Dakota and grows through shared experience, private confidences, and an important disagreement. Both are outstanding students and orphans raised by adoptive families, but their different upbringings shape what they know about one another. When Lani chooses to leave their shared summer plan and return to Tucson for Fat Crack Ortiz, Leah’s frustration tests the friendship without erasing its closeness: Lani trusts Leah with parts of her life she cannot fully explain, while Leah insists that the decision be faced plainly.

Meeting and Common Ground

Lani and Leah meet in a Society and Literature class during their freshman year. Leah is a White Mountain Apache, while Lani’s adoptive parents are both Anglos; Leah, who was raised in an all-Indian household, is surprised by that contrast. Their backgrounds differ, but both girls are orphans who were adopted after the practice of Anglo parents adopting Indian children had fallen out of fashion. They are also both outstanding students among the INMED students at the university. Their friendship develops from these points of recognition rather than from identical family histories: each can understand something of the other’s experience while discovering that the details of their lives are not interchangeable.

Their connection belongs to a broader college life in which Lani shares a home with three other Native women from different communities. The four roommates share values, jokes, and a belief that storytelling belongs to winter. Leah still lives in a dorm, but her friendship with Lani is especially close: she is Lani’s best friend and the person to whom Lani entrusts information she does not readily offer others. The narrative makes that trust visible through the specific things Lani chooses to tell her, not through a claim that the two friends agree about everything.

Private Confidences

Lani tells Leah about the charm she wears around her neck, made with hair from blond and Black people. She also shows her a prized medicine basket she has woven for herself, making it as much like Nana Dahd’s original as she can. Lani recognizes that her work is not as well made as the basket of Rita’s grandmother, but considers it respectable. The basket is both a material expression of her own making and a connection to inherited knowledge; choosing Leah as its confidante places the friend inside a personal world Lani does not explain to everyone.

The most consequential confidence concerns Fat Crack Ortiz. Lani tells Leah how sick he is and how much she needs to be home with him. That disclosure prepares the ground for their conflict: Leah knows the urgency Lani feels, but interprets the situation through the immediate facts that Fat Crack is not technically Lani’s relative, is diabetic, and is too stubborn to take his medicine. The disagreement is therefore not caused by a lack of information alone. Leah has heard that Lani is worried, yet she doubts that returning home can change what will happen.

A Summer Plan Broken

Lani and Leah had made a verbal agreement to spend the summer after graduation volunteering for Doctors Without Borders. Months after Lani changes course, Leah remains signed up and is still smarting over Lani’s decision to withdraw. Lani, by contrast, plans to return to Tucson as soon as she finishes her last exam. Their separation is practical as well as emotional: Leah continues with the summer commitment, while Lani makes her return home the priority.

At dinner the night before the decision is recalled, Leah speaks impatiently about Fat Crack’s illness and refusal to take medicine. She asks, in effect, what Lani can do if he is determined not to care for himself. Lani’s answer is that she will sit with him and watch him die if that is what is needed. Her response does not claim she can cure him or reverse his choices. It defines her commitment as remaining present, even when presence cannot prevent the outcome Leah fears.

Limits of Explanation

Lani does not continue arguing after making that answer. Even with Leah, her very best friend, she cannot explain everything or tell the whole story. The limit matters: intimacy has made Leah the recipient of unusually personal confidences, but it has not made the full meaning of Lani’s obligation easy to translate into an argument her friend will accept. Leah’s objection remains grounded in practical concern, while Lani’s resolve reaches beyond the family relationship Leah can recognize and the medicine Fat Crack refuses to take.

The friendship is consequently shown as close but not frictionless. Leah’s disappointment over the broken plan persists for months, and Lani does not resolve it by persuading her friend that the choice is sensible. Instead, Lani follows through on the decision to go home after her last exam. Their bond is measured both by what Lani can entrust to Leah—the charm, the basket, and her fear for Fat Crack—and by what she still cannot make Leah understand.