by David Crow
I stared at her. I couldn’t move.
“Don’t worry,” she said. “Your dad came to take you somewhere. You’re not in trouble.”
“Uh . . . okay.”
I glanced around the classroom for the last time and forced myself to get out of my seat. As I walked down the aisle, Violet said, “You’re probably being kicked out of school, you big brat.”
I pulled her pencil out of her hand and put it on the teacher’s desk on the way out of the room. When I looked over my shoulder at her, she stuck out her tongue and then smiled.
In the parking lot, Dad stood next to the Rambler tapping his watch. He yelled for me to hurry up. Lonnie, Sam, and Sally were already in the car.
“Are we really leaving?” I said. “We’re not going without Mom, are we?”
Dad didn’t answer. We pulled up to our house, quickly packed our belongings into cardboard boxes, and put everything in the Rambler. Dad had already loaded the furniture, curtains, towels, sheets, and dishes into the green trailer. My shoes squeaked as I stumbled through the echoey house in a daze.
“The Gallup water and electricity people cut everything off today,” Dad said. He tossed Mom’s clothes into a small pile and dragged a dirty mattress into the bare living room. “And I disconnected the phone. The landlord has our last rent check. I told him he could rent it to someone else today.”
“Okay, I think that’s everything,” Lonnie said.
“Empty the refrigerator,” Dad told her. “Hurry, we don’t have much time before she gets home.”
Lonnie ran to the kitchen, and Dad taped a note to the front door:
Don’t look for us. We don’t want you.
As we drove down South Cliff Drive, my arms and legs felt numb. Before we got onto Route 66, I turned around to see the top of the Winn’s Variety sign in the distance. Mom would arrive home to find that cruel note and everything gone. She’d be cold, hungry, and tired, with no food, no heat, no warm bed, and no one to ask about her day. Soon the landlord would kick her out.
“She has almost two hundred dollars—and I let her keep the car,” Dad told us once we’d gotten onto the highway.
Yeah, like that was some big prize. The Ford station wagon he bought her had a broken heater, an oil leak, a rusted-out muffler, bald tires, a huge crack in the windshield, and an engine that coughed thick black smoke. When Mom drove faster than twenty-five miles an hour, the car shimmied so badly it almost shook apart.
As Dad drove the Rambler out of Gallup toward the northern edge of the Navajo Indian Reservation, my mind filled with questions I couldn’t answer: What would Mom do? Where would she go? How would she survive? If Dad had paid for her to keep getting help, could she have become a good mom someday?
I stood a better chance of making it on the street than Mom did. How could we do this to her?
And what would become of us?
PART 3
* * *
FORT DEFIANCE
1963
A well-built hogan in Fort Defiance, Arizona. 1965.
CHAPTER 20
IT TOOK US LESS THAN an hour to reach the city of Window Rock, the entrance to the Navajo Indian Reservation, where you can see the sky through a giant hole in a wall of red sandstone. On the left, we passed the tribal headquarters in a long building flanked by six flagpoles. What I knew about the Navajos I had learned in our enclosed EPNG compounds and my trips to the Hubbell Trading Post, and it didn’t occur to me that life in Fort Defiance would be any different.
By then, I had stopped crying, but my insides felt raw and shaky. None of us kids had spoken since we left Gallup. Dad kept muttering something about “the useless bitch.”
He turned right and headed north to Fort Defiance and the Bureau of Indian Affairs Headquarters, where he had been working since we moved to Gallup.
“What’s the matter with all of you?” He looked at Lonnie next to him and in the rearview mirror at Sam, Sally, and me. “We finally got rid of that no-good mother of yours. You kids should be thanking me.”
I stared out at the scenery and tried not to think about Mom. Ahead on the left, a massive black rock with jagged peaks jutted out of the flat desert and rose high into the sky. Soon after, we came to a small run-down village straight out of National Geographic. There were no traffic lights, stores, or big buildings. A gas station sat next to a small diner on one side and a ramshackle laundromat on the other, located in what appeared to be a temporary storage unit.
Navajo women exited the laundromat carrying mountains of clothes in woven baskets and climbed into dented pickup trucks. Kids ran around in bare feet, and men lay passed out in the parking lot. Mangy dogs drank from oily pools of water.
From the front seat, Lonnie glanced over her shoulder at me and widened her eyes. This was far worse than Gallup—we were taking another huge step backward.
Hogans, five-sided adobe mud-and-wood structures with sheepskin doors, were scattered everywhere. A lot of the Navajo shoppers in Gallup and at the Hubbell Trading Post lived in them. Dad said they had small chimneys and dirt floors with no running water, electricity, or bathrooms. He laughed. “They sure are primitive bastards.”
As we drove by, Navajos milled around outside their hogans collecting sheep dung and mesquite wood for fuel. At one place, a sheep was hoisted on a spit over an open fire. Women sat at rickety looms weaving rugs while skinny sheep and horses stood there lifeless and children ran around in ragged clothes.
The remaining families lived in small, rusted-out trailers. With each one we passed, I felt relieved that Dad didn’t expect us to live there, but nothing ahead looked better.
He slowed and took a right off Kit Carson Drive onto Eighth Street, a dirt road with enormous craters. Sally grabbed onto my leg to keep from sliding off the seat. The Rambler jolted so hard I thought the axle had broken.
Dad parked in front of a tiny wooden box. Sam and I could have toppled it with a couple of hits from a hammer. We all went stiff, worse than when we pulled up to the duplex in Gallup. I would have welcomed 709½ South Second Street, even with all the drunks in the front yard.
“This neighborhood is called Mud Flats,” Dad said. His voice strained the way it always did when he was embarrassed. We stared at the shack in front of us. “I convinced the BIA to let us live here until other housing becomes available.”
The Navajo kids running around the neighborhood stopped and stared at us in the car as if we’d gotten lost and would soon be on our way. There wasn’t a single friendly face. No one smiled.
I never wanted to get out. Ever.
“Unload—now!” Dad yelled.
As we reached for the door handles, a pack of feral dogs exploded onto the car, barking and clawing at the windows. We all jumped back in our seats. Sally screamed.
“Ignore them,” Dad said.
But when we opened the doors, the dogs snarled and nipped at us, attacking anything they could eat. On my way to the house, another dog charged me on the wooden steps. His ugly fur, full of scabs and open wounds, barely covered his ribs. My calf burned as he bit my leg, tearing a hole in my jeans.
I kicked the dog hard and yelled, “Go away!” He whimpered and took a few steps back but then joined several more, all of them growling and poised to strike. I bolted through the door.
While Dad, Lonnie, Sally, and I unloaded boxes from the car, Sam threw rocks at the dogs, but that didn’t work. Even after Dad kicked them hard, they kept coming.
Inside, the drywall had large cracks and stains. Sheets of shiny pink-orange insulation hung from the ceiling, and beams of sun filtered into the living room through holes in the roof. As we walked into the kitchen, we kicked up clouds of dust from the thick layer of dirt coating the floor. In some places, water had mixed with the dirt, and our shoes left footprints in the semi-dried mud. The flimsy plywood floor buckled under my feet.
The heater didn’t work, and it was cold enough to see our breath. We would have been warmer in a tent. There were three t
iny bedrooms, and you could hardly turn around in the bathroom. Spiders ran out of the drain in the tub when I turned on the light.
A puny kitchen with peeling linoleum led to the back door and our backyard: a large pit filled with rocks, whiskey bottles, wine jugs, and weeds. Our wooden box didn’t have a number. Mail was delivered to PO Box 82. The tribal ledger listed it as house 231.
The ground on Eighth Street was harder than concrete when we arrived, but within days, I learned “Mud Flats” was the right name for the neighborhood. Rain turned the ground into a goopy stew of red clay, garbage, wine bottles, urine, and feces. If Mom had come with us, she would have changed her mind about the sorriest place she’d ever lived—unless she was in a worse spot or even dead.
For the first time, I didn’t want to explore. We didn’t have anywhere to go except for the school about a mile behind us. Whereas Gallup had expanded my world, Fort Defiance shrank it. Our previous neighbors on South Cliff Drive might not have liked Sam or me, but we had so many fun stores, allies, and streets to roam through. And, of course, there was Ray Pino.
Here, there was no escape.
Most of the men milled around by the side of the road talking to one another, not working. Endless lines of small children, old men, and women carrying heavy loads shuffled along Kit Carson Drive, their cheeks sunken and their skin chafed by the wind. The older men and women bent over as they walked, weighed down by a sadness that mirrored my own.
The sides of the road were littered with wagon wheels and car parts damaged by all the deep ruts. Gallup seemed rich by comparison, and Albuquerque was a wealthy fantasy from the past. Our part of town had no public facilities except a shuttered aluminum shed with a padlocked garage door and weeds covering the front. On the door in red paint was “FT. DEFIANCE FIRE STATION NO PARKING.”
Though we had grown up near Navajos, I knew very little about how they lived or what reservation life was like. Dad loudly claimed his Cherokee heritage brought him to Fort Defiance to serve his Navajo brethren, but nothing about this poverty-stricken, hostile place made me feel that way. And I’m positive my brother and sisters agreed.
THE FOLLOWING MONDAY, SAM, SALLY, and I reported to Tse’hootsooi Elementary School, a Navajo word meaning “the valley between the rocks,” an accurate description of Fort Defiance. Lonnie enrolled at Window Rock High School, home of the Scouts, and acquired driving privileges when the BIA gave Dad an old brown Ford sedan to do his safety officer’s job. It had a cracked windshield and no hubcaps or a front fender, but it had official US government license tags.
Lonnie drove Sally to her kindergarten class in the Rambler and then drove a quarter mile to the Window Rock High School parking lot. Sam and I walked. It never occurred to Lonnie to offer us a ride or for us to ask. We had to get used to living in Mud Flats, and this was the only way to get started.
First, we had to deal with the dogs. As soon as we stepped out of the house, they came barreling into our yard and snapped at our legs. We threw rocks at them and kicked them away, scuffing up dirt and rocks. Within seconds, our shoes, socks, and pants were filthy. We walked backward to keep the dogs from sneaking up behind and biting us, and they finally took off.
Then about halfway to school, as we navigated the broken, weed-filled sidewalk on Kit Carson Drive, a stream of Navajo kids left their hogans and trailers. Wearing jeans and cowboy boots, their black hair slicked back with gel, the boys surrounded us in no time. A few walked directly in front of us and slowed down. Others got right behind and bumped into us. They laughed and spoke in Navajo with their mouths full of chewing tobacco. We didn’t understand a word, but their tone wasn’t friendly.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sam said, breaking through and racing ahead.
I kept walking. If we ran away every day, we’d look scared and vulnerable, and eventually they’d catch up with us. The two older boys jumped in front of me while the others stood at my back. The biggest one shoved my chest, and I fell over the guy who had dropped to his knees behind me.
I got to my feet and started down the sidewalk again. They blocked my path all the way to the flagstone walkway at the school entrance, forcing me into the street to go around them. They kept calling me names in Navajo. I didn’t say anything. Their last words were “See you after school.”
Tse’hootsooi Elementary School looked surprisingly brand new. It had corrugated steel walls painted bright orange and framed plate-glass windows and doors. A big blue sign read, “Home of the Papooses.” The campus looked inviting—so did the even nicer high school, visible across the gully. They were the only modern buildings around except for the teachers’ apartments next door, which were enclosed by a barbed-wire fence similar to the one on the EPNG compounds.
Stumbling into a brightly lit office, I asked where to go for the fifth grade. A large Navajo man stood by the front desk. “I’m Mr. Lee, your principal,” he said. “What’s your name?” He was a burly guy built like Dad, with the same mean eyes.
When I answered him, he said, “A boy who looks just like you reported for third grade, and a young lady by that last name walked a little girl to her kindergarten classroom.”
I nodded. “My brother and sisters.”
“I thought so.” He didn’t smile. “One of our assistants will take you to your class.”
The young Navajo woman said, “Welcome, David.”
How could any non-Navajo feel welcome? As we walked down the hall, kids peered out every door with hostile stares, like everyone knew I didn’t belong in Mud Flats or Fort Defiance.
My new classroom had a blackboard on one side. On the other, three rows of windows looked out to the rocks and weeds on the playground. Twenty-five Navajo kids gawked at me, two of whom had knocked me down on the way to school, but I spotted a few Anglo faces too. Many of the Navajos slumped down in their seats, their eyes dull and angry. They were too thin, and their clothes were dirty and torn. But a handful of them wore clean, pressed shirts and sat up tall, well-nourished and happy.
A kind, lanky Anglo man got up from behind his desk. His eyelids drooped and fluttered, as if he’d just woken up from a nap. “Welcome. My name is Mr. Aday,” he said with a thick Southern drawl. His pants were pleated like a girl’s skirt, and he wore the wing-tipped shoes I saw on people in newspaper car ads. No one else spoke to me except the cafeteria lady who asked if I wanted a sloppy joe sandwich.
I ate as far away from everyone as I could. And outside during recess, I flattened myself against the building, wanting to disappear.
On the playground, in the cafeteria, and in the bathrooms, whenever I left the sight of a teacher, boys pushed, shoved, and punched me. While I used the urinal, a kid crept behind me and peed on my pant leg. Then he stuck a plug of Red Man chewing tobacco in his mouth, yelled “bilagaana” in my face, and strolled out the door.
On the way home, four boys tackled me. I hadn’t sensed them coming and didn’t have time to turn and fight back. Sam was right behind me but managed to jump out of the way. They threw me down on an anthill and sat on my arms and legs, pinning me so I couldn’t move. My ears and neck burned as big red ants sank their pincers into my skin.
Sam ran up behind the boys and pushed them off me. The boys wandered away, looking over their shoulders, watching me strain to get to my feet, their laughter echoing in the valley.
“WE HAVE TO MOVE BACK to Gallup,” I told Lonnie later that evening when she asked how the first day went. “I can’t make it here.”
Shrugging her shoulders, she closed her biology book and put it on her bed. “We can’t move back,” she said. “Dad doesn’t want to. He gets housing as part of his job. It’s not so bad. At least Mom and Dad aren’t fighting all the time.”
“I guess you had a better day than Sam and I did.”
“Some of the high school boys are nice—and some of the girls too,” Lonnie said. “A couple of the girls told me that the meanest boys drop out by ninth grade. When you and Sam get to high school, your life wil
l get better.”
“If we live that long.”
My escape had always been to roam around town, throw cherry bombs and firecrackers, read and sell newspapers, and talk to people. That was impossible in Mud Flats.
Lonnie made friends quickly and took off to see them whenever she could. Dad wasn’t around much either, coming and going at random times. He stockpiled powdered milk, Spam, canned corn, potpies, and cereal for us, so we weren’t going to starve. Our tiny shack was the only safe place in town.
In those first days in Mud Flats, Sam, Sally, and I huddled together like scared mice, often under a blanket watching television. Everyone in the shows looked like they were in a snowstorm because the reception was terrible. We had just two channels, but it represented our only outside view of the world.
Mom was always on my mind. I missed her okra and roast beef dinners and her watery iced tea. I missed trying to take care of her too.
I didn’t realize how sad Sam, Sally, and I had become until one afternoon when Lonnie and Dad were out. Sam and Sally watched TV in the living room, eating peanut butter sandwiches, while I put a potpie in the oven and turned on the gas. Forty-five minutes later, the oven was still cold and the potpie still frozen. Lighting a match, I opened the oven and reached for the pilot light.
A flame shot out and blasted me to the back of the kitchen and flat onto the floor. The house shook and the windows rattled. Smoke erupted from the dirty oven along with the thick smell of burning gas.
Trying to stand, I fell backward, snapping the screen door off its hinges, and rolled off the stoop and into the ditch in our backyard. I got to my feet and fell backward again. The world kept spinning, my stomach with it, and a million bees buzzed in my head. I gasped and wheezed, but air wouldn’t fill my lungs. My face burned.
Sam and Sally flew out the back door, their mouths wide open when they saw me.