Running Barefoot (5 page)

Winter came early, and by the end of October, Levanites had their kids bundled in moon boots,
hats, and puffy coats that made movement awkward. I had turned thirteen September 2, and in anticipation of the upcoming cold season, my Aunt Louise bought me a new coat in a bright periwinkle blue. It was the nicest thing I had ever owned. My dad told her we didn’t need her charity when she’d brought it over. Aunt Louise was my mom’s younger sister, and she proceeded to rip him up one side and down the other. It’d been a couple years since I’d had a new coat. I’d worn Johnny’s old jean jacket and layered flannel shirts all winter last year, and this year she wasn’t having any of it. Dad seemed stunned by her accusations, and looked at me like he was seeing me for the first time. I just patted his hand and said, “I liked Johnny’s jacket, Daddy. That’s why I wore it.” Lately, I had caught my dad watching me with a strange yearning on his face. I asked him about it once, asked him why he looked so sad. He’d smiled a little and shook his head.

“I’m not so sad, Josie Jo . . . I was just thinking about how fast you had to grow up... You weren’t a little girl for very long. Not nearly long enough.” He’d patted my back and made a quick exit out the back door, retreating to the horse corral and safer pastures.

That particular Monday morning there was new ’Sunday snow’ on the ground. Sunday snow was the snow that had fallen on Sunday night, but hadn’t yet been played or walked in; it was a beautiful white blanket when I tromped through it in
my old tennis shoes. Samuel Yates was already at the bus stop when I arrived, and he climbed on before me, walking straight back to our seat and sliding in against the window. He wore no hat over his glossy hair, and his quilted jacked was lined with that fuzzy sheep skin. He wore moccasins on his feet. I wondered if they were cold, but the moccasins seemed relatively dry, much dryer than my sneakers, so I didn’t worry about him too much.

Samuel hadn’t paid any attention to me at all - ignoring me and everyone else - since the day he’d knocked Joby into the aisle. We hadn’t been assigned a third person to our seat. Mr.Walker was probably a little apprehensive; maybe he had decided to leave well enough alone. So for the last week I had ridden back and forth from school sitting beside him, not saying one word. I was not a person uncomfortable with silence, so I usually just read the whole time. I had started reading all of Jane Austen’s books and was now working my way through
Persuasion
.

I was enmeshed in Anne’s longsuffering when Samuel spoke.

“You read a lot.” It sounded a bit like an accusation, his words clipped and soft.

“Yes.” I didn’t know what to say, exactly, but to agree with him.

“Why?”

“I like books . . . don’t you read?”

“Yes, I can read!” His soft voice was angry and his eyes flashed. “You think because I’m a
Navajo that I’m stupid?”

I stammered in my defense, my cheeks flushing at his perception of my words. “That’s not what I meant! I didn’t think that…I just meant don’t you
like
to read?”

When he didn’t answer and resumed looking out the window, I tried to read again. But my thoughts swam wildly in my head, and I stared blankly at the page. I felt despondent that I had wounded someone who had so recently come to my rescue. I tried again.

“I’m sorry Samuel,” I said awkwardly. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”

He snorted and looked at me, raising one eyebrow. “I’m not a little girl. I don’t get my
feelings
hurt.” His voice was slightly mocking. He took the book from my hands and began to read from the page.

“‘I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone forever.’”

Samuel’s intent had been to prove his reading skill, but he stopped suddenly, embarrassed by the deeply romantic missive from Captain Wentworth to Anne.

We both sat unmoving, staring down at the book. I couldn’t help myself. I started to laugh.

Samuel scowled for a minute. Then his lips twitched and he seemed to exhale his discomfort.

“How old are you?” He questioned his eyebrows slightly raised.

“Thirteen,” I replied defensively. I always felt defensive about my age. I didn’t feel thirteen, and I didn’t look thirteen, so I hated
being
thirteen.

Samuel’s eyes widened in surprise. “Thirteen?’ It didn’t sound like a question, but more like a doubtful exclamation. “So you’re what, in seventh grade?” He said this in the same flat, yet incredulous, voice.

I pushed my glasses up on my nose and sighed. “That’s right.” I took my book out of his hands and prepared to tune him out.

“Isn’t that book a little....grown-up for a seventh grader?” he argued. He pulled the book out of my hands again and read on, this time silently. “I don’t even understand what most of these words mean. It’s like a different language!”

“That’s why I read with a dictionary...although I don’t bring it to school with me. It’s way too heavy.” I looked down at the book again, feeling shy. “In some ways it is a different language. My teacher, Mrs. Grimaldi, says our language is disintegrating.”

Samuel just looked at me, his face incredulous.

“I’m sure it’s not as different as Navajo is from English, though,” I continued, trying to draw him into further conversation, surprised he was speaking to me at all, especially now that he knew I was just a lowly seventh grader.

“Yeah, Navajo is very different.” Something shuttered over his face, and he turned away from me, looking out the window again, ending our very brief exchange.

It was several more bus rides before Samuel spoke to me once more. I had been shut down on our last conversation, and was unwilling to try again.

“I hate to read.” His tone was argumentative, and he glared at me. As usual, I was tucked into my book, my knees drawn up to support its weight. I looked at him, wondering what he wanted me to say. “Okay...?”

He drew a book out of his backpack and tossed it on top of the copy of
Pride and Prejudice
that was opened on my lap. The book was
Wuthering Heights
. I almost groaned in sympathy. I hadn’t tried to finish it after Sonja had relieved me from it the first time. I had no desire to spend any more time with it. With school work, piano lessons, and piano practice, along with all the chores that came from living with two men - Jared and Jacob were up and mostly out of the house by then - my reading mostly took place on the bus and at
bedtime, when I faithfully looked up all my undefined words. I still read a couple books a month, but I didn’t plow through them as I had in the summer.
Wuthering Heights
was NOT on my list of Books-To-Read and yes, I did have an actual list.

“I’ve read parts of this book,” I said cautiously, not understanding why he’d tossed the book in my lap.

“I was sure you were going to say you had,” he said wryly. “It’s as confusing as that book you were reading the other day.”

“Why are you reading it then?” I asked, certain he must be, or he wouldn’t have it in his possession.

He didn’t answer for several seconds, and I waited, wondering if he would take the book and turn away again. “I am failing English. I have Ms.Whitmer, and she told me if I read that book and write a report on it, she’ll pass me. So, I am trying to read that book. I have to read it and have the report on her desk in two weeks. I could see by the page he had dog-eared that he was in trouble.

Ms.Whitmer was a tough old bird who had taught at the high school for 25 years. She had a bit of a reputation, sometimes drove a Harley to school, and commonly wore combat boots. She was very intimidating, knew her stuff, and wouldn’t take any crap. My older brothers had liked her, but had groaned about the workload. Johnny was barely squeezing by in her class as well.

“Why this book? Did she tell you why?”

“She told me doesn’t usually give extra credit. I told her I would do anything. She slapped this book down and said ‘If you can get through this one I’ll know how bad you want it.’ So here I am. Now I know why she had that look on her face,” Samuel said morosely.

“Why do you care?” My question just popped out.

Samuel glowered at me. “I want to graduate,” he enunciated through clenched teeth. I promised my Grandmother I would graduate.” He said this reluctantly. “I’m going into the Marine’s in May, and I want my diploma. My recruiter said I’ll have a lot more opportunities if I graduate first.”

We sat quietly for a minute. Samuel stared out the window as he was prone to do, and I fingered his book, still in my lap. I thought about how proud he seemed, and how hard it must have been to go to Ms. Whitmer and ask for the extra credit.

He reached over to take the book, but I held onto it tightly, and moved it away from his outstretched hand.

“I’ll read it with you,” I blurted out, surprising myself and him. He stared at me suspiciously. I shrugged my shoulders. “I told you I had read parts of it - I want to read the rest,” I cringed at my lie. “We’ll read it together. We spend an hour, sometimes more, on this bus every day. I don’t mind reading out loud if you don’t.” I couldn’t believe I had been so forward. My neck got very
hot underneath my hair, and I hoped I wasn’t getting hives, which sometimes happened when I got really upset or nervous.

“You read, I’ll listen.” he said stiffly

“Now?” I questioned. He just raised his eyebrows.

I opened the book, swallowed my discomfort, and began at the beginning.

4. Progression

I decided our little book club was incomplete without the 1828 Webster’s dictionary, so every day I lugged the monstrous book to and from school for use on the bus. Samuel had rolled his eyes when I had pulled it out of my oversized bag the following morning. Every time he forgot himself and said in frustration “What does that mean?” I would nod my head towards the big green book lying between us. He would sigh and look up the word in question while I spelled it out for him. There were also words I wasn’t sure of, and would make him look those up as well - though I was pretty certain if I didn’t know what they meant, neither did he.

A week went by, and I read morning and afternoon as he sat quietly and listened. One afternoon as I was reading, I became engrossed in the story, and forgot to read out loud.

Samuel’s brown, long-fingered hand suddenly lay over the page my attention had been captured by. I realized I had been reading silently for at least several seconds.

“Whoops!” I giggled. “Sorry about that.”

He reached over and took the book from my hands. “My turn,” he said, without rancor. He
found the place where my imagination had quelled my voice and began reading out loud in his deep baritone. I had always been the one to read, so I was taken aback at his sudden willingness to be the reader.

He spoke English perfectly, but his voice had a different cadence, the words delivered almost in a rhythm - and his tone stayed constant and unvaried, without the rise and fall that a storyteller adopts to convey emotion. I found myself listening to his voice, being pulled into it, as I had, just moments before, been pulled into the story.

“Josie? Are you going to look up that word?”

I shook myself out of my reverie, not wanting to admit I hadn’t the faintest idea which word I needed to look up. “Spelling?” I said evasively, to cover my ignorance.

“Where are you today?” he said. “Your mind is everywhere.”

“I was listening to your voice,” I flushed at my confession and inwardly cursed the constant blushing that gave me no privacy.

“No you weren’t, you haven’t heard anything I’ve read.” He countered mildly.

“I was listening to your
voice,
” I insisted again. He lowered his eyebrows in a scowl, not understanding me.

I tried to explain to him how his voice didn’t seem to rise and fall in the same patterns as mine did. When he didn’t respond, I thought perhaps I had made him angry. Samuel was very sensitive
about being different, flaunting his Navajo heritage one moment, growing angry if someone took notice of it in the next.

He seemed thoughtful as he spoke. He chose his words carefully, as if he’d never considered them before. “The Navajo language is one of the most complex languages on Earth. From ancient times, it was only a spoken language, not a written language. If you don’t learn it as a child, it is almost impossible to master. Every syllable means something different. We use four tones when we speak - high, low, rising, and falling. When the voice rises or falls, in Navajo, it can mean a completely different word. For instance, the words ‘mouth’ and ‘medicine’ are pronounced the same, but they are said with different tones. The same word, but . . not the same word at all. Do you understand? Maybe that is why, when a Navajo speaks English he says each syllable with the same intonation, because no intonation is stressed.” He thought about what he’d said for a moment. Then he asked me, almost as if knowing the answer would cause him pain, “Do I sound strange to you when I speak?”