by Amy Harmon
He looked at me with exasperation. “You. Don’t. Share. It. With. Anyone. Else,” he repeated sarcastically.
I blushed and looked down at the book. “Why?”
“My grandma says if you do your legs will turn hard…but I think it’s more a tie that binds the people together, keeps tradition alive, that kind of thing. My mom told me it’s sacred.”
“Wow. I wish I had a secret name. I’ve never really liked Josie Jo very much. It’s kind of silly and babyish,” I said wistfully.
“What name would you rather have?” Samuel actually looked interested in my response.
“Well...my mom really wanted us to all have ‘J’ names. I guess it was her way of binding us together, kind of like your family. So maybe I could just pretend it’s Josephine and everyone can still call me Josie for short. Josephine is so much more dramatic and ladylike.”
“All right. From now on, I will refer to you as Lady Josephine,” Samuel said with the faintest of smiles.
“No. How about I just make it my secret Navajo name and only you and I will know it,” I said, conspiratorially.
“You are the furthest thing from a Navajo,” Samuel scoffed.
“Well, what if a beautiful Navajo woman had adopted me when I was just a baby? Would she have given me a Navajo name? Even if I had blonde hair and blue eyes?”
Samuel stared at me for a minute, frowning. “I really don’t know,” he confessed. “I’ve never known a Navajo who adopted a white baby. I’m the closest thing most Navajo get to a white baby.” Samuel’s countenance darkened. “Luckily, every Navajo child that is born belongs to his mother’s clan, so I am a Navajo, no matter who my father was.”
“Did you ever know your father?” I asked quietly, not liking that I might make him angry, but not fearing it either.
“I was six years old when he died. I remember things about him. He called me Sam Sam, and he was tall and kind of quiet. I remember my life before he died and then after he died when we lived on the reservation. I hadn’t lived on the reservation before. It was very different than the little apartment we had been living in. I spoke Navajo because my mother had spoken it to me exclusively. I spoke English too, which made school easier when I started school on the reservation. My mother never talked much about my father after he died.”
“Do you think it made her sad?” I ventured, thinking about my own mother’s death and how hard it had been for my dad to say her name for the longest time.
“Maybe. But it was more about tradition than anything. The Navajo believe that the only thing that is left behind when a person dies is the bad or the negative parts of their spirit. They call it chidi and when you talk about the dead it invites the chidi. So…we never talked about him much. I know she loved him and missed him. When I was really young, she read to me from the Bible that my dad had given her. I think it made her feel close to him without talking about him. She became a Christian when she married my dad, but within a year or so after his death she rejected it. She has become very angry and bitter. She didn’t know how to live off the reservation without my dad, and when he died, she went back, re-married, and I’m sure she’ll never leave.”
“I don’t know what I would do if I could never talk about my mother,” I whispered. “Talking about her helps me remember her. It makes me feel close to her.”
“Your mother died?” Samuel’s voice rose in surprise.
“Yes.” I was a little stunned that he didn’t know. I had just assumed that he knew what his grandparents knew. “She died the summer before third grade. I was almost nine years old.” I shrugged a little, “I guess I’m just lucky I had her for that long. I remember lots of things about her. Like the way she smelled, the way she covered her mouth when she laughed, the way she said ‘Josie Jo, to and fro’ when she pushed me on the swing.”
“Why are you lucky you had her that long? I think that makes you unlucky. She died and you don’t have a mother.” Samuel’s face was stormy, and his lips tightened a little as he waited for me to respond.
“But I did have her for those nine years, and she loved me, and I loved her. Look at people like Heathcliff. He had no mother and no father.”
“Yeah, I guess he had a right to be a jerk.”
“I guess he had reason to be, at least in the beginning, but that doesn’t make me like him any better. He was hateful and angry all the time. The first time I read the book, I kept waiting for him to change, to develop some character…but he never did. I just despised him for it. I wanted him to be lovable, even just a little bit, so that I could like him.”
“People didn’t like him because he had darker skin and he looked different than they did!” Samuel was angry again.
“Maybe that was true to a point, in the beginning. But the father, Mr. Earnshaw, loved him best of all…better than his own children. Heathcliff never did one thing with that love. Catherine loved him, too. What did he do?”
“He went off and joined the military or something, right? He made something of himself, improved how he dressed and how he looked!” Samuel defended Heathcliff like he was Heathcliff.
“But he never changed WHO he was!” I cried back passionately. “I wanted him to inspire me! I just ended up feeling sorry for him and thinking ‘What a waste!’”
“Maybe he couldn’t change who he was!” Samuel’s face was tight and his hands were clenched.
“Samuel! I’m talking about him changing on the inside! Nobody that loved him cared that he was a gypsy! Don’t you get it?”
“Catherine loved him despite of what he was on the inside!” He fought back still.
“Their version of love damned them both in the end! They were two miserable people because they never figured out what true love is!”
“Why don’t you tell me what TRUE LOVE is then, Lady Josephine, since you are so wise at thirteen years old?” Samuel sneered at me, and his arms were folded across his chest.
My cheeks were flaming, and my finger poked him in the chest with every syllable I recited. “‘True love suffereth long, and is kind; true love envieth not. True love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. True love does not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. True love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. True love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things!’“ I stopped for a breath and one emphatic push against Samuel’s chest. “1st Corinthians, Chapter 13. Check it out.”
And with that I picked up my big green dictionary and my overflowing book bag and staggered up the aisle. The bus wasn’t at my stop yet, but I was out of there.
* * *
Samuel didn’t say much the morning following our heated Heathcliff discussion. I asked him if he wanted to read the final five pages. He said he already had and left it at that. He looked out the window the whole way into school, and I sat uncomfortably without anything to read. I wound up going ahead in my math book and doing the next day’s lesson. The ride home was much the same. Luckily, it was Friday.
Monday morning I arrived at our seat first. I wasn’t carrying the dictionary anymore, having no reason to lug it with me if we were done. Samuel wasn’t far behind and he said “scoot” when I sat down. I shifted over against the window, and he sat down next to me. Scoot was the only thing he said the whole way into Nephi. This time I was prepared, and I buried my nose in Jane Eyre. Jane Eyre was like comfort food to me, and I was feeling a little rejected.
After school, I climbed on the bus, dreading the half hour I would sit next to Samuel in silence. I missed the reading and the discussion. I even missed him a little.
Samuel was already seated, and he watched me come toward him down the aisle. There was a strange look on his face when my eyes met his. He looked almost triumphant. I sat down, and he held out a thin plastic folder.
“I guess you know something about true love after all. At least Ms. Whitmer thinks so,” he said vaguely.
My eyes quickly sca
nned the cover page. It was Samuel’s report on Wuthering Heights. He had titled it ‘True Love or Obsession?’ Ms. Whitmer had written the words “Brilliant!” across the page in bold red print. I yanked the cover page over, my eyes flying down the page. Samuel had taken 1 Corinthians Chapter 13, replacing the word ‘charity’ with ‘true love’ as I had done, and basically written a paper on the difference between true love and obsession, using examples from the book. His final sentence was wonderful, and it was all his own. He said “Where true love would have redeemed them, obsession condemned them forever.”
I whooped loudly, only to have kids turn and stare at me curiously.
“Samuel! This is so cool! Did she say anything to you?” My smile felt like it was going to split my face in half, but I couldn’t help it.
My excitement must have been contagious, because he grinned at me briefly, his smile a quick flash of white teeth.
“She said it was so impressive that she’s not just going to pass me, she’s going to give me a B.”
I whooped again, and threw my fisted hands skyward in victory. This time half the bus turned and stared. Tara even stopped mid-sentence, eight seats up, and gave me a “What the heck?” look. I ducked my head and stifled a giggle. Samuel shook his head and rolled his eyes, but he was laughing too.
“Lady Josephine, you are something else,” he said softly and reached over and took my hand in his. His hand was big and warm, his beautiful skin golden brown against my own. My hand felt very small as it lay in his, and my heart felt like a tiny hummingbird fluttering in my chest. Samuel held my hand for a second more and then gently slid his hand away.
* * *
It got dark quickly now that winter had gripped the valley. Getting up the hill to the Grimaldi’s house had become more difficult with the snow, but I never complained, and whenever Sonja raised the issue of being concerned over the weather or the dwindling daylight, I just smoothed it over. My panic at missing a lesson must have been evident, because she never pressed me to postpone lessons until spring thaws made my way a little more hospitable. I had stopped riding my bike up the hill. The hill was so icy the tires couldn’t get any traction. I would just ride to the base of the hill and then trudge to the top along the side of the road where the snow was piled and I wouldn’t slip.
Sonja had begun teaching me how to conduct music as if I were conducting a live orchestra. She would put a record on, put the score in front of me, and I would conduct, keeping time with my waving arms, bringing in the imaginary instruments and cueing the dynamics as if I were the one in control.
I left my lesson that day with my head full of music. Sonja had been in a flamboyant mood, and the music still poured out of the house behind me as I made my way down the hill. She had turned on Ravel’s “Bolero” and I had conducted it joyfully. It had a wonderfully insistent, repetitive melody, and it was perfect for a novice conductor like me to practice “bringing in” the instruments, as they were continually added, sections at a time.
It was times like these when the music felt like a thrumming, pulsing power inside of me. I was practically levitating as I spread my arms and spun in dizzy circles down the snowy hill. The speed of my descent made me laugh as I recklessly conducted the internal orchestra swelling my heart to near bursting.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t actually levitating, and I began to stumble, heavy boots tangling and arms flailing. The fog of musical euphoria abandoned me mid-flight. I cart-wheeled down the remainder of the hill, landing in a deep snow bank two-thirds of the way down. I acted like a child so rarely that it was strangely ironic that when I truly lost myself in child-like wonder, I ended up hurt and alone. My ankle screamed with a sickening, stomach-churning agony that had me whimpering and crawling on my hands and knees trying to escape the pain.
My piano books were scattered down the hill, marking my flight path. There was no way I was leaving them behind. I started crawling up the hill to collect them, realizing as my hands sunk into the snow that I had also managed to lose my gloves and my glasses. Without the assistance of my boots, I kept sliding down when I tried to inch upwards. I tried valiantly not to cry as I reprimanded myself on my idiotic behavior, talking myself through the ordeal of gathering up the books closest to me and praying for the books I couldn’t get to. Going back up the hill to Sonja’s was out of the question. I slid down the rest of the way on my butt, clutching my few books to my chest and slowing my descent with my good leg.
Once I arrived at the bottom, I faced the puzzle of how I would get home. Riding my waiting bike was completely out of the question; my ankle wouldn’t bear any pressure at all. I didn’t trust my balance most of the time without an injury, forget hopping and pushing the bike home. Looping my piano bag around my shoulders and pulling my coat sleeves down over my hands I began to crawl home. The darkness was settling around me, and I knew I was in trouble. I wasn’t going to be able to go two miles on my hands and knees. Thoughts of my family finding me frozen solid at the side of the road had me crying in self-pity. I wondered if Samuel would miss me. I wished I could see him again before I died. Maybe he would cut his arm like the Comanche Indians used to do when someone died, so their arm would show a scar for each loved one lost.
I had asked him how he knew about the Comanche tradition when he was a Navajo. He had told me many of the tribes had many stories and legends in common, and his grandmother had told him it was the Comanche way of reminding yourself of a loved one without speaking their name.
I was startled out of my morbid thoughts by the sound of a sheep baaing from somewhere to my left. He sounded as lost and unhappy as I was. The sheep bellowed mournfully again, and I could make out his black nose and feet against the snow where he was huddled beside a scrubby enclosure of brush and juniper trees. I crawled toward it, thinking maybe I could huddle there with it. Wool was warm, wasn’t it?
The sheep had other ideas. My approach made him complain even louder, throwing his head back and demanding that I stay away. “BAAAAAAACK,” he seemed to say, and I half giggled, half sobbed at the futility of it all. “BAAAAAAAA!” he cried again.
Somewhere in the distance a dog barked. The sheep bellowed in response. The dog barked again. Maybe someone was looking for the sheep. I didn’t have much hope that anybody would be looking for me. My dad and brothers loved me, but I had no real hope that they would think much of my absence until it was marked by many hours. The dog seemed to be getting closer. An occasional yelp indicated his progress in our direction. The sheep would bleat back when he heard the dog, and I waited hopefully for a canine rescue. I was very cold and a little wet from my tumble in the snow, and my hands were aching almost as much as my ankle. I huddled inside my beautiful blue coat and prayed for deliverance.
The darkness was complete as Don Yates’ black and white collie mix, Gus, trotted up to the lost sheep. Not far behind him, Samuel trudged, bundled against the snow in a black ski cap and his sheepskin coat, having traded his moccasins in for a pair of laced work boots. I cried out to him in gratitude, and he stopped in surprise.
“Josie?”
“Samuel! I’ve sprained my ankle, and I can’t ride my bike home. I tried to crawl,” I stuttered out, my teeth chattering, “But my gloves are missing and it was just too far.”
Samuel hunched down next to me and pulled his hat from his head and pulled it down on mine. The sudden warmth and my relief at his presence made the tears I had been trying to control stream down my face. Samuel grabbed my hands in his and started rubbing them briskly.
“Why are you out here?” He sounded angry and his hands rubbed harder in concert to his harsh words. My tears flowed faster.
“I take piano lessons every afternoon from Mrs. Grimaldi. She lives at the top of Tuckaway Hill.” I didn’t tell him how I had gotten carried away in the music and rolled down the hill.
“How did you end up on your hands and knees half frozen to death?” he barked out incredulously.
“I slipped,” I said defiantly,
pulling my hands from his and wiping the tears from my icy cheeks. Samuel yanked his gloves off and grabbed my hands back insistently. Forcing my hands into the gloves, he rose to his feet and reached down for me, lifting me to my feet.
“Can you walk at all if I help you?” His voice was a little less confrontational now, and I tried to take a step forward. It was like someone took an ice pick and rammed it into my ankle. I fell in a heap at Samuel’s feet. The pain made me nauseous and the contents of my stomach rose up in rebellion. I retched just to the right of Samuels’s work boots. Luckily, I’d had only an apple and half of a sandwich for lunch many hours ago, and there wasn’t much left to throw up. But puking with an audience was worse than the pain in my ankle, by far. I moaned in mortification as Samuel kicked snow over the steaming remains of my lunch and squatted down beside me again. He handed me a handful of snow to clean my mouth, and I thankfully wiped and “rinsed” my mouth, my hands shaking.
“Did you say you rode your bike here?” Samuel’s voice was gentle.
“It’s at the base of the hill, back there.” My voice wobbled dangerously, and I stopped speaking abruptly, not wanting to disgrace myself any further.
Samuel stood and walked away from me, in the direction that I had come. A few minutes later he was back, pushing my bike beside him.
“I’m going to help you get on…”
“I can’t push the pedals, Samuel,” I interrupted, my voice cracking again as the swell of tears clogged my throat.
“I know,” Samuel replied calmly. “But the seat is long. I can ride behind you and pedal.”
The bike was fine for me, but Samuel was over 6’0. This was going to be interesting. Samuel held the bike with one hand and pulled me to my feet with the other. Moving the bike close to where I was teetering, he straddled the bike and helped me climb on in front of him.
“Can you put your feet up in front of you?”
The bars made a big U shape providing a good spot for my feet when I wanted to coast. Samuel helped me raise my hurt leg, and I gingerly scooted as far forward on the seat as I could as he braced the bike with me on it. With a little shove, grunt, and a wobble we were off. The bike wove precariously, snow and gravel making it extremely treacherous. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit down on the yelp that escaped. Samuel used his legs to propel us forward until we established enough forward motion for an attempt at pedaling.