Running Barefoot (14 page)

One morning on the bus I offered my earphones to Samuel, only to have him push my hand away irritably. I stifled the girlish instinct to cry from my hurt feelings. Sonja said women have many emotions, but only one physical response. When we’re angry we cry, when we’re happy we cry, when we’re sad we cry, when we’re scared, you guessed it, we cry.

“What’s wrong, Samuel?” I said after several moments of tense silence.

“I don’t want to listen - that’s all,” he said tersely.

“Okay. But why did you push my hand away? Am I bothering you?”

“Yes.” Samuel lifted his chin as he said this, jutting it at me, like he said the word purposely to hurt me and make me angry.

“What am I doing that’s bothering you?” I again fought the wet that threatened to undermine my dignity. I spoke each word distinctly, focusing on the shape and sound instead of the sentiment.

“You are so.....” His smooth voice was layered with turbulence and frustration. Samuel rarely raised his voice, and didn’t do so now, but the
threat was there. “You are so… calm, and accepting, and NAIVE that sometimes…I just want to shake you!”

I wondered what in the world had brought on this vehement attack and sat in stunned silence for several heartbeats.

“I bother you because I’m calm...and accepting?” I said, my voice an incredulous squeak. “Do you want me to be hyper and, well, intolerant?”

“It would be nice if you questioned something, sometime.” Samuel was revving up to his argument; I could see the animation in his face. “You live in your own happy little world. You don’t know how it feels to not belong anywhere! I don’t belong anywhere!”

“Why do you think I created my own happy little world?” I shot back. “I fit in perfectly there!” I hated it when he tried to start a fight with me.

“Come on, Samuel. Everyone feels like they don’t belong sometimes, don’t they? Mrs. Grimaldi even told me that Franz Schubert, the composer, said that at times he didn’t feel like he belonged in this world at all. He created amazing, beautiful music. He had this enormous gift, yet he often felt out of place, too.

“Franz Schubert? He was the guy that wrote the song you played at Christmas, right?

“Yes!” I smiled at him like a proud teacher.

“It’s not quite the same thing Josie. I don’t think Franz and I have much in common.”

“Well I hope not!” I said saucily. “Poor
Franz Schubert never made any money from his music and was completely broke and mostly destitute when he died from Typhus at only 31-years-old.”

Samuel sighed and shook his head. “You always seem to have an answer for everything, huh? So tell me what to do, Josie. My mother keeps calling me. She calls me late at night, and she’s so drunk all she can do is cry and swear. My grand parents are trying to stay out of it, but I know her calling like that, at all hours, is upsetting them. She says I will never find
hozho
in the white man’s world. Can you believe she is using the Navajo religion to make me feel guilty, while she is a complete mess?”

I realized none of Samuel’s angst had anything to do with me.

“What’s
hozho
?” I plied him gently.

“
Hozho
is at the heart of the Navajo religion. It essentially means harmony. Harmony within your spirit, your life, with God. Some people compare it to karma too, the idea that what you put out comes back to you. It is a balance between your body, mind, and spirit.”

“Have you found
hozho
on the reservation?” I held my breath, hoping I hadn’t overstepped my bounds.

“Ha!” Samuel mocked, throwing his head back, “I feel closest to it when I am with my Grandmother, listening to her, learning from her, but no...I have never found it there.”

“It doesn’t sound like your mom has it. How can she lecture you about something she doesn’t possess herself?” I grew indignant on his behalf.

“My mom has not had any
hozho
since my father died. She says she turned her back on her people when she married him, but I think she turns her back on me when she says things like that. I was six years old when he died. I remember being a family! We were happy! My dad was a good man!” Samuel’s composure cracked, and he visibly shook himself.

“Grandma Yates gave me my dad’s journals. He kept them all through high school and during his mission on the reservation. When he left home, he boxed his things up, but somehow the journals were left behind at my grandparent’s. I haven’t read them all, but what I have read makes me want to be
more
like him, not less! I feel like I am being ripped in half. I don’t want to see my mother anymore; I am disgusted by her. Do you know my father never drank alcohol…..ever! In his journal he said one of his friends in high school raped a girl after drinking too much. He said his friend never would have done something like that without the alcohol. It ruined both the girl’s life and his friend’s life. He decided then and there he would never touch the stuff.

“On the reservation alcohol is a huge problem - I’ve seen Gordon hit my mom so many times it makes me sick. I have fought him off of her only to have her turn on me. She wasn’t always like that. I
have memories of her being gentle and happy. She has no excuse! She had my grandmother to raise her. My grandmother Yazzie is the finest woman I know. My Grandfather Yazzie was much older than my grandmother, and he struggled with his health, putting a lot more responsibility on her shoulders, but they both loved my mother and they raised her right - my mother was their only child. My grandmother had a lot of miscarriages; they considered my mother a miracle, a gift. They taught her the traditions and language of our people. I think she turns her back on the
dine’
when she hides in the bottle.”

“What does your Grandmother Yazzie tell you?”

“I really haven’t talked to her about any of this. She doesn’t speak English very well, and although she has access to a phone, she’s not comfortable using one. She has my mother make calls for her when it’s necessary, but unfortunately, with my mother in the state she is in most of the time, my grandmother stays away. My grandmother lives out on the land she was born on, in her hogan. My mother lives in tribal housing with her husband and whichever of his kids that happen to be living at home.”

“But you said your grandmother told you that you would need to survive in both worlds, remember? That is why you needed a warrior spirit. Maybe for you,
hozho
won’t come from either place, but from a merging of both.” I offered, trying
to comfort him.

Samuel looked at me then, his eyes sad, his expression conflicted. “Maybe my father’s God can help me find the answers I need. I have his bible. My mother gave it to me a long time ago, before she re-married. I told you she would read it sometimes. She believed it was true when she married my father. I don’t think she’s found any balance in trying to straddle both worlds.”

“But Samuel, you just said she was happy once, before your father died. Maybe the loss of balance came when she rejected your father’s God. She’s rejected both her traditions and her beliefs. She’s not embracing the Navajo way and shunning the other. She’s shunning them both. So she moved back to the reservation after your father died. So what? Living on a reservation doesn’t make you a Navajo.”

“What?” Samuel looked at me with something akin to shock widening his eyes and slackening his jaw. He grabbed my arm. “What did you just say? Say it again!”

“You don’t have to live on a reservation to be a Navajo?” I stammered, confused.

“You didn’t say it like that,” Samuel was shaking his head. “You said ’living on a reservation doesn’t make you a Navajo.’”

“Right . . . so.....?”

“So what
does
make a Navajo - is that what you’re saying?” It sounded more like a statement than a question

“Yeah, I guess so. What makes someone a Navajo, Samuel? What is it that defines a Navajo? Is it really where you live, the color of your skin, your moccasins, the turquoise you wear around your neck? What?”

Samuel was momentarily stumped. I was anxious to hear what his answer would be. I was a descendant of the Danes - and if someone asked me, I could tell them a little about my ancestry. But was I Danish? I’d never even been to Denmark. I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t know any Danish customs or traditions. It was just my lineage. I had a feeling being Navajo was a lot bigger than just heritage, or ancestry.

Samuel struggled to answer. “Being Navajo is about blood....”

“Check,” I said smartly making a checkmark in the air. Samuel smiled and shook his head in pretend exasperation.

“Being Navajo is about language-”

“Check-”

“Being Navajo is about culture.”

“What about the culture? Can you still be a Navajo and not live in a hogan?”

“Some of the traditionalists might say no. The old medicine men don’t like some of the younger generation of
hataali
(medicine man) trying to modernize or change the old ways. But Grandma Yazzie says culture is teaching your children the customs, the traditions, and the stories that have been passed on through the generations.
This goes back to language. If the younger generations are not taught the language, we lose the culture. There are no English translations for many of the Navajo words, they carry their own meaning - you lose the meaning, you might lose the lesson in the legend, you lose your culture.”

“Hmmm, I would say a definite ‘check,’” I reasoned. “You were taught by the best. So what else?”

“Being a Navajo is about preserving the tribal lands.”

“Hmmm. You’ll have to explain that one.” My brow furrowed in concentration.

“You may not have to live on the reservation to be a Navajo, but can you imagine not having a land to go back to?”

“Well, doesn’t America belong to all Americans, Levanites and Navajo alike?”

“It’s not the same.”

“Why?”

“That’s why they call America a melting pot. The idea is that different people from different places come to America, and they become one people. This is a good thing. The difference for the Navajo is that the land from which they originate
is
the American continent itself. There is no Navajo nation across the water that, simply by its existence, helps preserve the culture of the original people, like an Italy or an Africa or an Ireland. When people from Ireland migrate to America, Ireland still exists, full of Irish people. Where are your
ancestors from?”

I knew Denmark had a role in this somewhere, and I answered him, engrossed in his grasp of the issue.

“Okay, so imagine some bigger neighboring country comes along and takes Denmark and makes it into a National Park and says to the Danes, “Take your wooden shoes and get out. You are welcome to move into our country. After all, we are all Scandinavians, and you can live in our country just as easily as you can live here.””

“I don’t know if the Danes still wear wooden shoes,” I chortled.

“You get my point though, right? If the Danish people don’t have a Denmark, they cease to be Danish eventually - they just become Scandinavian, or whatever. If you take away the land from the people, the people cease to be a people. If you take away the tribal lands, the Navajo people will eventually cease to exist.”

It was my turn to stare at Samuel in awe. “You are one smart Navajo, Samuel. I hereby give you an enormous checkmark.”

Samuel rolled his eyes. But there was a peace that hadn’t been there before. He sighed and reached for my headphones.

“What are we listening to anyway?” He said companionably, and ‘
hozho
’ was restored on our hard green seat on the rickety yellow school bus.

9. Coda

I had given Samuel all the tapes I made for him when he returned from the reservation in March. I had lined them up neatly in a shoe box and written down the each song title along with its composer, making a reference card to fit into each cassette. He said he listened to a different one every night before he went to sleep. I did the same, and I often looked out my window, down the street, to where I could see his grandparent’s house, wondering what composer was keeping Samuel company that night. He would be leaving soon, and I wanted to give him a graduation present – something to remember me by.

Sonja was the one who actual ended up giving me the idea. She was recording my lessons and playing them back to me so I could critique myself, my finger speed, my musical phrasing, my timing. I suddenly knew what Samuel would like better than anything else I could give to him.

For the next week I perfected the piece I had written for him, making sure it was exactly right. The night before school got out, I asked Sonja if I could have a brand new tape. She acquiesced, and I
told her that I wanted to record my composition. She was eager to comply and lifted the lid on the grand piano to its greatest height and held her little microphone in its gaping mouth to record my effort. I played with all the feeling I could muster, our imminent parting accentuating my emotions.

When I was done Sonja was staring at me oddly. She turned to push stop on the recording before she spoke.

“My dear, if I didn’t know better I’d think you’d fallen in love.” There was amusement in her tone, but also a hint of apprehension. Her back was to me, and I was grateful for it, as I felt a flush crawl hotly up my neck. She rewound the cassette and slid it into the case.