Playful Peach #2
I woke up in a cold sweat with keen awareness of what I was supposed to do that day. 4:00 am, I really should try to go back to sleep. But, I couldn’t. I was too anxious.
The hot sticky air in my room reminded me of how much I wished that my mother would buy a fan. The air is so thick in Alabama in August its like no one moves, but the air on the reservation seemed worse. Combine sticky, suffocating air with the numerous old Indians without teeth stumbling home in an alcohol haze and you would feel suffocated too. I hate it here.
During the school year though, I get to escape and at least pretend to be normal. Well, at least as normal as you can be when you are an 11-year-old American Indian boy in the deep South with arms that look too long for your body and old hand me-downs that your mother bought at Goodwill. Sometimes when I am at school I try to pretend I am like everyone else and that I am not constantly reminded of my heritage and the fact that my people are dying.
Last year I got my first real friend. Bill is your typical Alabama boy, with a tuft of blonde hair that is always in disarray and sparkling blue eyes. I wished that I could trade my dull black hair and stern brown eyes for his. Bill lives just outside the reservation so I went to his house a lot. (He never went to mine.) And one day after school Bill’s mother invited me to go to their church. I was so excited! This would be my real entrance into normal life. All the kids in my class went to church together and I always felt left out. Not anymore though.
I started going to church despite my mothers’ disapproval. She told me I was hurting our ancestors and denying my roots. I told her that I didn’t care and that I could do whatever I wanted. I expected her to argue or slap me, but instead she just walked away sad. I tried to shrug it off; I wasn’t going to give up my opportunity to fit in.
I was really “in” when I accepted Jesus into my life. Every week the preacher would ask people to come up to the front and admit all the bad things they had done and ask Jesus to come into your soul. I wasn’t really sure if I believed any of that, and the thought of having another person in my body freaked me out. But, I knew that I would never fit in if I didn’t, so I got enough courage to walk to the front. At the front I saw the approving eyes of the congregation and I knew they accepted me.
That is why I am dreading today. I am turning 12 today, a very important step in the lives of boys on the reservation. Your 12th birthday is when you get to become a man. No one ever talks about what happens, but all the men in the tribe come to your house dressed in the clothes of the Anishinaabe (or “our original people) and they take you into the woods and speak to the spirits. I am afraid the spirits will know that I rejected them for Jesus and something bad will happen to me.
I hear a knocking at my door and it’s my mother. She calls on me to wake up and says that I will soon ‘walk the Red Road’ which means that I will be following the traditional ways of my people. I sigh deeply and get out of bed. I guess I will just have to greet my fate.
The leader of my tribe seemed like a giant in our small trailer, his head nearly touching the ceiling. He smiled at me as I walked towards him and patted my arm trying to be reassuring, but really made a sickening feeling rise in my stomach. I started my walk on down the Red Road.
We got to the clearing and I saw all the men that I had known all my life. Life in Indian Country is close, everyone probably knows too much about everyone else. But, at this moment I was thankful that all of these men knew my whole life story. It felt comfortable and nice.
The Chief told me that I would be known as Aniimikiiwanakwad. In English, it means Thunder Cloud. I felt proud to bear such a strong sounding name, it sounded so much more powerful than Joe. But, as I was distractedly thinking about my name the men began to dance as the Chief burned some leaves in this bowl. Then one man, I know him as Jim, began to sing the songs of the Anishinaabe. I stood there and let his voice powerful voice wash over me as the smoke that the Chief was burning mesmerized me.
The Chief smudged the remnants of what he was burning on my cheeks and said something to me in Anishinaabe language. Even though I didn’t fully know what he was saying, (mom has tried, but failed to teach me the language) I felt it in my soul. It was as if the Chief was inside my head speaking to me and I had never felt more alive. It was nothing like when I accepted Jesus because I didn’t even think or wonder how I felt. I just allowed myself to feel one with the Chief and the men around me and most important, the Anishinaabe. And I knew that this was the first moment in my life that I truly felt normal.
The hot sticky air in my room reminded me of how much I wished that my mother would buy a fan. The air is so thick in Alabama in August its like no one moves, but the air on the reservation seemed worse. Combine sticky, suffocating air with the numerous old Indians without teeth stumbling home in an alcohol haze and you would feel suffocated too. I hate it here.
During the school year though, I get to escape and at least pretend to be normal. Well, at least as normal as you can be when you are an 11-year-old American Indian boy in the deep South with arms that look too long for your body and old hand me-downs that your mother bought at Goodwill. Sometimes when I am at school I try to pretend I am like everyone else and that I am not constantly reminded of my heritage and the fact that my people are dying.
Last year I got my first real friend. Bill is your typical Alabama boy, with a tuft of blonde hair that is always in disarray and sparkling blue eyes. I wished that I could trade my dull black hair and stern brown eyes for his. Bill lives just outside the reservation so I went to his house a lot. (He never went to mine.) And one day after school Bill’s mother invited me to go to their church. I was so excited! This would be my real entrance into normal life. All the kids in my class went to church together and I always felt left out. Not anymore though.
I started going to church despite my mothers’ disapproval. She told me I was hurting our ancestors and denying my roots. I told her that I didn’t care and that I could do whatever I wanted. I expected her to argue or slap me, but instead she just walked away sad. I tried to shrug it off; I wasn’t going to give up my opportunity to fit in.
I was really “in” when I accepted Jesus into my life. Every week the preacher would ask people to come up to the front and admit all the bad things they had done and ask Jesus to come into your soul. I wasn’t really sure if I believed any of that, and the thought of having another person in my body freaked me out. But, I knew that I would never fit in if I didn’t, so I got enough courage to walk to the front. At the front I saw the approving eyes of the congregation and I knew they accepted me.
That is why I am dreading today. I am turning 12 today, a very important step in the lives of boys on the reservation. Your 12th birthday is when you get to become a man. No one ever talks about what happens, but all the men in the tribe come to your house dressed in the clothes of the Anishinaabe (or “our original people) and they take you into the woods and speak to the spirits. I am afraid the spirits will know that I rejected them for Jesus and something bad will happen to me.
I hear a knocking at my door and it’s my mother. She calls on me to wake up and says that I will soon ‘walk the Red Road’ which means that I will be following the traditional ways of my people. I sigh deeply and get out of bed. I guess I will just have to greet my fate.
The leader of my tribe seemed like a giant in our small trailer, his head nearly touching the ceiling. He smiled at me as I walked towards him and patted my arm trying to be reassuring, but really made a sickening feeling rise in my stomach. I started my walk on down the Red Road.
We got to the clearing and I saw all the men that I had known all my life. Life in Indian Country is close, everyone probably knows too much about everyone else. But, at this moment I was thankful that all of these men knew my whole life story. It felt comfortable and nice.
The Chief told me that I would be known as Aniimikiiwanakwad. In English, it means Thunder Cloud. I felt proud to bear such a strong sounding name, it sounded so much more powerful than Joe. But, as I was distractedly thinking about my name the men began to dance as the Chief burned some leaves in this bowl. Then one man, I know him as Jim, began to sing the songs of the Anishinaabe. I stood there and let his voice powerful voice wash over me as the smoke that the Chief was burning mesmerized me.
The Chief smudged the remnants of what he was burning on my cheeks and said something to me in Anishinaabe language. Even though I didn’t fully know what he was saying, (mom has tried, but failed to teach me the language) I felt it in my soul. It was as if the Chief was inside my head speaking to me and I had never felt more alive. It was nothing like when I accepted Jesus because I didn’t even think or wonder how I felt. I just allowed myself to feel one with the Chief and the men around me and most important, the Anishinaabe. And I knew that this was the first moment in my life that I truly felt normal.
posted by Anonymous at 8:43 AM
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