The milk baths had started when Snow was still very young, not long after Mrs. H had married her father. Her stepmother had told her that she could teach this little animal that she'd unknowingly agreed to mother how to be a woman--meaning, of course, a white woman. And to wash the Indian out of her, every Sunday Mrs. H put Snow in the milk. It was always cold, so cold it hurt like lye. So cold she thought she'd die in it. And then Mrs H would added ice and made Snow hold it. In her mouth and elsewhere.

Snow still couldn't drink milk.

"I ain't confused," she snarled.