I pull up for gas. With my tank topped off I get back on the road, and allow the memories to continue to flood over me. My hand tightening on the throttle as I remember exactly how and when my life changed, which led me ending up at the one place I never expected.
All caused by the truck slamming into my father’s SUV, pushing it into a flooded wash in one of the summer monsoons. Injured from the crash, possibly knocked out—we never knew for certain—the car had been swept away and my dad died before he could be rescued.
Mom didn’t even try to survive in the Anglo world without him. Even before the funeral she was packing our bags and ending the lease on the house. Fuck, I’d hated her for that. For wiping everything they’d been together out of existence. Now I’m older, I imagine it was the only way she thought she could cope.
It’s always hard on a boy to lose his father, especially when they’ve had a good relationship. I’d felt adrift, lost in wild seas without anything to anchor me. My sixteenth birthday only weeks away, I couldn’t get my head around the loss.My dad’s gone. He’s never coming back.I was now the man of the family, but not entitled to be involved in any decision making, it would seem.
“We’re what?” My head shakes with incredulity, only a few minutes since I’d come home from school, unable to believe what I was seeing and what she had just told me. “Mom? What’s going on?”
“We’re moving, Tse.”
Looking at the boxes packed and labelled, I can see that. “Yeah, but what did you say? To the reservation?” My head keeps moving side to side as I look around in disbelief. “These are labelled for the thrift shop, Mom.” It looks like we’ll be taking little more than our clothes with us.
“We’re moving in with my parents. Your grandparents. We haven’t got room for everything.”
A crow’s flying alongside me. It stares at me for a moment, a man on his own on his bike on the road, and then it flies off into the desert as if mocking me for being even freer. Yeah, I had toleave everything behind. An Xbox would have been useless on the Rez. Fuck, how upset I’d been. I was going somewhere I’d never dreamed of visiting, let alone living there. Meeting people I’ve never met, and only occasionally heard of. I didn’t know why my father had wanted my Navajo family kept away from me, but that’s what he’d done. To a fifteen-year-old boy it was like my mother was transporting me to a different world. A place I couldn’t begin to imagine.I hadn’t made it easy for her.
“My friends are here. My school…”
“There are schools on the reservation. You’ll make new friends.”
I know it won’t be as simple as that. A new kid on the block, one who can’t even speak the language, is likely to be picked on, not welcomed. I pull my shoulders back. “Mom, I’ll leave school. Get a job. Support you…”
“Oh, Tse,” she sighs. “I can’t survive in Tucson. Not without your father by my side. It’s time I returned to my family. And past time you learned about your culture.”
“It’s not mine. It’s yours.” With that shout as my parting shot, I walk out of the house, go to my friend’s home, and spend the evening sharing my woes.
No argument I put forward can persuade her. One morning a man, not looking unlike myself, parks a truck outside our house. Mom opens the door, and is in his arms, making me glare, remembering the recent loss of my father. They speak in rapid fire Navajo, a language I’ve never heard used in conversation before and one I don’t understand a single word of. Voices rising and falling, making it impossible for me to identify syllables. Hearing them brings my fears back in full force.
I don’t interrupt, just wait until Mom remembers I’m there. She spins around, a smile on her face for the first time since we lost Dad. “Tse, this is my brother. Your uncle. He’s come to take us home.”
We are home, I think as I glare. But at least there’s an explanation for the emotional display.
My uncle steps forward, nodding toward Mom. “Sorry bout Fatter. Muttah reddy ta leave.” His heavy accent confirms all my fears. I’m going somewhere I don’t even understand what they’re saying.
As my eyes go wide, Mom slaps his wrist. “Stop it, Roy, please. Tse’s worried enough as it is.”
A wink toward me, then her brother holds out his hand. “Pleased to meet you at last, Tse. Ready to get going?” His accent has all but disappeared.
I later learned it was a trick they played on tourists, playing the part as expected. In time, I’d come to find most Navajo spoke English no differently from anyone else I’d ever met, except maybe in their excitement pronouncing th as tt. That morning, I was just relieved that despite my concerns, I was probably going to be able to comprehend everything said around me.
Chapter 6
Mouse
Riding automatically, I don’t notice the scenery rushing by, still lost in the past and in recollections of the first time I made this journey. A kid who hid his fear beneath a sullen mask. Who could blame that scared child/man?
It was a new chapter in my life. In some ways like being reborn all over again. Taken from the loving home I’d first entered as a baby, uprooted and then set down in a primitive eight-sided hogan made of logs, staying with my grandparents and mother, all sleeping in one room. There was no electricity in our house, we were too far off the grid.
For a boy brought up in Tucson, it was a complete culture shock. No wonder Mom had given away my Xbox.
The move had been as bad as I’d feared. There I was, a stranger, someone not from the Rez despite looking like I belonged there. Most of the kids expected to spend the rest of their lives on the reservation, so they didn’t bother to keep up their grades, many dropping out of school early. Me? I saw education as a way I’d be able to escape, and, with no friends and nothing much else to do, something to occupy me. So I threw myself into my studies, quickly finding I had an aptitude for using computers for something other than games.
I wasn’t the only outsider, there were a few white kids who attended the school too; children of teachers, nurses, and other Anglos who worked on the reservation. My natural inclination was to gravitate to them, but I wasn’t part of their tribe, and anyfriendship I made would only set me apart from the Navajo. I didn’t fit in. Anywhere.
A windblown frown comes to my face as I continue to remember. I’d gotten my ass kicked more times than I care to remember, my food dumped off my lunch tray. My tennis shoes once stolen so I had to walk home barefoot. I was as miserable as anyone could be.
One Saturday morning, I was sitting outside the hogan, just kicking my feet, not knowing what to do with myself. Oh, the boys here played football, just like I had in Tucson, but obviously I hadn’t been picked for the team. It seemed no one knew how to treat me, which wasn’t surprising, I hadn’t gone out of my way to make friends.
