Running Barefoot

7. Dissonance



The last week in February, Samuel didn’t come to school. On Monday, I thought maybe he was sick or something, but after a few days I was worried about him. By Thursday, I couldn’t stand it anymore, so I came up with a plan to see him. Nettie Yates had given me a recipe for chocolate chip zucchini bread when we were canning the summer before. She’d shredded the zucchini into freezer bags and taped the laminated recipe to the pouches so that I could “just whip some up whenever I wanted to!” I had yet to make it. Zucchini and chocolate chips seemed like an odd combination.

I was grateful now for an excuse to go see her and hopefully find out what was up with Samuel. I pulled some shredded zucchini out of the freezer, made up a couple loaves of the chocolate chip zucchini bread, and headed out into the icy February evening, a loaf of the hot bread wrapped in a dish cloth and held against me, keeping my fingers warm.

Nettie Yates answered the door after a couple knocks and seemed glad to see me.

“Josie,” she exclaimed happily. “How nice to see you! Come in, come in! Oh, it’s miserable out there! Did you walk?”

“It’s not far, Mrs. Yates,” I said trying to talk between my chattering teeth. “I made zucchini bread from that recipe you gave me and thought maybe you’d like to try it, maybe give me some pointers,” I lied smoothly.

“What a perfect day for warm zucchini bread! I’d love some! Come into the kitchen. You can put your coat and boots back in the mud room by the back door.”

I handed her the loaf, bound tightly like a baby in a blanket, and pulled my coat and boots off. I didn’t see any sign of Samuel. I padded through the kitchen on stocking feet, trying to search without looking obvious about it. Samuel’s coat wasn’t hanging on any of the hooks in the mudroom. I turned to hurry back in the warm kitchen, when I heard someone coming up the back steps. The door whooshed open and Don Yates came tumbling in, nose and cheeks red, cowboy hat pulled low. I scurried out of the mudroom into the kitchen, not wanting to be standing there staring if Samuel was right behind him.

“Woo Wee! It is colder than a witch’s kiss out there!” Don Yates slammed the door closed behind him. I heard him pulling off his boots and unzipping his coat. Samuel wasn’t with him.

“Josie Jensen is here Don!” Nettie called out from the kitchen. “She brought us some nice zucchini bread. Come on in and I’ll get you some hot coffee to go with it.”

Don came tottering in, still bundled in thermals and flannel, rubbing his hands together.

“Hello, Miss Josie.” Don went to the sink and washed his hands and face while Nettie cut the zucchini bread and spread butter thickly over the top. I sat down, not sure how I was going to get the information I needed. Samuel obviously wasn’t here…unless he was sick in his room.

“Josie, the bread looks wonderful!” Nettie exclaimed. I took a big bite of the slice Nettie set before me, chewing it slowly, trying to buy myself some time to plot. It was really good. Who knew zucchini would work with chocolate chips? You couldn’t taste the zucchini - it just made the bread moist. The bread tasted like thick spicy cake, the chocolate chips imbedded around the edges. I felt a surge of pride that it had turned out so well.

“It’s gonna be ten below tonight,” Don muttered to himself. I’ve got the horses inside, but it’s gonna be miserable for ’em all the same. I hate February…most miserable month of the year,” Don grumbled under his breath.

“So…Mrs. Yates….I noticed Samuel wasn’t on the bus....is he sick?” I stunk at subterfuge.

“Oh, heavens no!” Mrs. Yates declared, covering her mouth as she tried to answer between bites. “Samuel went back to the reservation.”

Time stopped, and I stared at Nettie Yates in horror.

“For good?” My voice rose with a squeak, and I stared down at my half-eaten slice of bread, my mind spinning. “He’s not coming back?” I said in a more controlled tone, though my heart was constricting painfully in my chest.

“Well, we don’t know exactly,” Nettie said carefully, sharing a meaningful look with Don.

“What does that mean?” My fear was making me impertinent.

“Well,” Nettie started every sentence with ‘well’, especially when she was trying to be discreet.

“Samuel’s mom wants him back home.” Don’s gravely voice was blunt as he wiped the back of his hand over his lips, checking his mustache for crumbs.

“But....” I tried to proceed gingerly, not wanting to give my feelings away. “Won’t it be hard for Samuel to finish school if he leaves now?”

“His mom said he doesn’t need to finish if he’s just going to herd sheep. She says they need him there.” I could tell Don was none to happy about the situation. “Samuel is eighteen years old. Legally, he’s an adult, and nobody can make him finish.”

“But I thought she was the one who wanted him to come here!” I was angry and confused, and my face probably showed it.

“She did!” I must have hit a nerve, because Don’s voice rose emphatically. “She talked to him on the phone last week. She said he sounded good and decided he ‘was cured’.” Don lifted up his fingers and waggled them, making quotations in the air as he repeated the words Samuel’s mother had used.

“But…what about the Marines?” I was trying to keep my composure. I couldn’t let them know how much this conversation was upsetting me. “He’s worked so hard! He’s even learning how to swim!”

Nettie set down her cup of cocoa and looked at me in surprise. “How did you know about the Marines?”

“Samuel and I are assigned to the same seat on the bus, Mrs. Yates,” I confessed. “I’ve talked to him a little bit. He’s been trying so hard to get good grades, too! I can’t believe he’s just going to quit school.”

“Samuel’s bein’ pulled in two directions, Josie.” Don shook his head and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “I don’t know that he feels like he has a lot of say in the matter.”

I needed to get out of there. I was going to burst into tears and there was no way I was going to do it in front of Don and Nettie. I bit my inner cheek hard, the sharp pain postponing my rising emotion.

“Well, I’d better get on home. Dad’s going to be wanting something hot to eat on a night like this.” I headed to the mudroom and grabbed my things, not letting myself breathe too deeply, not releasing my soft inner cheek from my back teeth.

I yanked my boots on and zipped up my coat frantically, pulling the hood down over my messy curls. Don made a move to get up, maybe to see me home.

“Don’t worry about me getting home, Mr. Yates. I can see our front porch light from here. It’s only a block. I’ll be fine.”

“Well, thanks for comin’ by, Josie.” Nettie seemed a little stumped by my erratic behavior. I’m sure she thought my interest in Samuel was a little peculiar as well.

I took my dishtowel from her outstretched hand and turned to leave.

I stopped, torn between my concern for Samuel and my wish to vacate the kitchen before I dissolved into a howling puddle.

“If you talk to Samuel soon.....will you tell him I came by and asked about him? Please remind him about his umbilical cord.”

Nettie and Don stared at me like I’d lost my marbles. “Just tell him, okay? He’ll understand.”

I fled through the house and out into the frigid February evening.





Another week passed. March came, and Samuel didn’t come back to school. I didn’t return for updates from Don and Nettie. It would only raise questions, and I’d raised enough already. I had started making him tapes of all the music we had been listening to. I had made him a ‘collection’ of greatest hits from all the composers I loved. I had 10 tapes of my favorites, everything from Beethoven to Gershwin. I had put my absolute favorites on one tape and entitled it Josie’s Top 10. I had included Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C Sharp Minor that Samuel had loved. It had not been among my top ten before, but it always would be now. Each cassette case had the titles neatly labeled next to the composer. I didn’t know how I was going to give him the gift now.

Then one morning, about two weeks after he left, I climbed on the bus, and he was sitting there waiting for me like he’d never been gone. I rushed to him and sat down, grabbing his hand in mine and holding on for all I was worth.

“You’re here!” I was whispering, trying to be discreet, but I felt like laughing out loud and dancing. He turned his face toward me, and I saw that the left side of his face, from his eye to his chin, was covered with a mottled green and yellow bruise, most likely a few days old.

“What happened? Oh, Samuel, your face!”

Samuel let me hold his hand for a moment, clasping mine tightly in his as well. Then he gently extricated his fingers and folded his hands together, like he was afraid he might take my hand again.

“I’m here until I graduate, which is going to be harder than it would have been two weeks ago. I have to go to my teachers and beg them to help me. I missed mid-terms and big assignments in every class. I have to read Othello.” He grimaced and looked at me. “I might need your help with that.” I nodded my head willingly as he continued. “When I graduate, my grandparents are going to take me to San Diego for Marine boot camp. I don’t think I’ll be going back to the rez any time soon.” Sorrow bracketed his mouth and his lips turned down slightly.

I reached up with my right hand and gently touched his bruised cheekbone. “What happened?” I repeated softly, hoping he wouldn’t pull away.

“Compliments of my mom’s husband.”

“He hit you?” I whispered, shocked.

“Yeah. I hit him, too. Don’t look so alarmed. I gave as good as I got. In fact, I had to hold back a little because he was so drunk it really wasn’t a fair fight.” Samuel’s voice and face were smooth and untroubled. I wasn’t really buying it.

“Your mom lets him hit you?”

“Mom doesn’t have much control over anything at this point. She drinks way too much too, and she’s scared of him. But she’s more scared that he’ll leave, and even more scared that I will be the reason he does. It’s better for everyone if I go and stay gone.”

“But…I thought your mom wanted you back home. That’s what your grandparents said.”

“My mom doesn’t want me to be a Marine and get myself killed in some “white man’s war.” My mom doesn’t understand why I want to go. She says she never should have married my father. She says I am leaving her because I am ashamed I am half Navajo…the funny thing is, she wants me gone, but she doesn’t want me to go.”

I felt his helplessness and didn’t know how to comfort him. I didn’t understand the relationship he had with his mother, or the difficulty in being of mixed race, from mixed cultures, full of mixed emotions.

“What made you decide to come back?” I didn’t think I would have had the courage to leave my family.

“I spent some time with my grandmother. During the winter the sheep are corralled close to home, and my grandmother works almost non-stop at her loom. She makes these amazing rugs and blankets. She says her ability to weave is a gift from Spider Woman.” He looked at me, a faint smile lurking around his firm lips. “Spider Woman is of no relation to Super Sam or Bionic Josie.” He quirked his eyebrows at me and then continued, serious again. “Spider Woman is considered one of the Holy People - kind of like the Gods of the Navajo people.

“My grandmother never went to school. Her parents were suspicious of the schools of the white man. They hid her in the cornfield when the social service people came to enforce the education laws on the reservation. There were boarding schools for the children then. The children were sent away, and they weren’t allowed to speak Navajo. Her parents worried that school would change her. They told her the sheep would provide for her, give her everything she needed.

“The funny thing is, they were right. My grandmother is very independent. She cares for the sheep, and they provide for her. She knows how to shear, wash, card and spin the wool into yarn. From the yarn she makes the rugs and blankets to sell. The Navajo name for sheep means “that by which we live.” She says she is grateful for the gift of weaving from Spider Woman, and for her sheep, for her hogan, for her life…but she wishes she had been able to go to school.

“When I was there she told me to study hard, to be proud of my heritage and not be afraid of myself. She said I was Navajo, but I was my father’s son as well. One heritage was not more important than the other.”

Samuel grew quiet, and I sat next to him in contemplative silence.

“I’ll help you, Samuel.”

“I know you will Josie…and Josie?

“Hmm?”

“Remember when I told you that you were the furthest thing from a Navajo?”

I laughed a little, remembering the derision with which he’d made the statement. “Yep, I remember.”

“I realized something when I was with my grandmother.” He paused, smiling faintly. “You remind me of her…funny, huh?”

I pondered that for a minute. Samuel continued, apparently not expecting me to answer.

“She sang me a healing song before I left. Usually the chants and the songs are sung by the old men, but she said the words are like a prayer, and prayer is for everyone.” The words of the song are:

There is beauty behind me as I walk

There is beauty before me as I walk

There is beauty below me as I walk.

There is beauty above me as I walk.

In beauty I must always walk.

“You always walk in beauty, Josie. You are constantly looking for it.... I think you are secretly a Navajo after all.” Samuel took my hand in his this time.

“Can I have a secret name?” I teased, but I was touched by his sentiment.

“I’ll think about it.” Samuels’s lips twitched, and merriment flitted across his stern features. “By the way, Nettie and Don said you came looking for me. They said you were acting strange and talking about umbilical cords.” Samuel’s eyes danced with laughter.

I giggled and covered my mouth with my free hand.

“Samuel?” He looked at me in response. “I think I have a new code word for music.”

His forehead creased “What?”

“Sheep.”

“Why?”

“Because music is ’that by which I live.”

“Bee’iin’a at’e?”

“Wow. Is that how you say it? That’s even better.”

And we listened to Mozart’s ‘Requiem’ in peaceful companionship.