The Sand Hill Review               http://www.sandhillreview.org 2010

They Call Me Phoenix

Davina Kotulski

They call me Phoenix, not because I’m from Phoenix and not after the mythical bird that rises from the ashes, but because I was wearing an over-sized, red T-shirt with the word Phoenix on it when they found me in a box in front of the Gallup Fire Station. None of the firemen had seen anyone drop me off, but I know I’m Indian, just not sure what tribe. I figure I’m Apache, Dine, Zuni, Hopi, or Pueblo. Although, I suppose I could be Pima or T.O. Anyway, that’s why they gave me the last name “All Nations” because no one knew who my people were. I sometimes go by the name Phoenix All Nations-Yazzie, because Ben Yazzie was the Navajo firefighter who took me home to his wife, Anna, and raised me as his own.

Ben is from the Salt Clan and Anna is Bitter Water. Things get complicated for me here because according to Dine (Navajo) culture I can’t marry someone from my same clan. So, if I’m Dine and don’t know my clan, this could inadvertently lead to a taboo marriage. That was the reason I told Johnson Yellowbear I would not go out with him. He insisted it would be fine because his Dad is Lakota.

“The Navajo are a matrilineal tribe.” I said. “How do I know your mother’s tribe isn’t the same as my birth mother’s?” I told him, trying to discourage him from asking again. But the real reason I told Johnson this was because I wasn’t interested in him, or any other boys for that matter, and I knew that he would tell everyone to explain my rejecting him and then I could be certain that the other Navajo boys would leave me alone too. But after I cut my hair short and got caught with the half-breed, Eileen McKenzie, people knew my real reason.

After I got caught with Eileen, Ben and Anna sat me down in the living room of the three bedroom mobile home just outside of Yah-Ta-Hey. Anna held the gold cross of her necklace in between her thumb and forefinger and rubbed it in a circular motion looking at me like she wanted to say something but couldn’t find the right words. Ben just held his forehead in his hand and stared at his brown work boots.

I didn’t always call them Ben and Anna. I used to call them Mom and Dad but, after that day we sat down in the living room to talk, that all changed.

“What do you think you were doing with that girl?” Ben asked angrily.

“I was kissing her,” I wanted to say, but I knew he didn’t want to hear that. So, I said nothing.

“What your father’s saying is that whatever you were doing with that McKenzie girl is not normal. It’s not Indian.”

I wondered if Anna was trying to tell me that I wasn’t Indian. Maybe she had learned something about my birth parents that she hadn’t told me, not wanting to hurt me and tell me that I wasn’t full-blood. Not being full-blood was a big deal. Eileen got teased all the time, which was why she let me kiss her when I told her that, if she did, she could hang out with me and I’d protect her from the others.

Eileen’s mother, Lucy, worked at the Rehoboth Hospital cafeteria and had met Eileen’s father, who was a doctor, when he was hungry after a long surgery. Bob McKenzie loved to tell the story about how he had saved Lucy Benally from marrying another Gallup drunk. Gallup was where the reservation Indians would go to drink their bottles of Old English before heading back to the reservation. In the sixties, Gallup had drive-thru liquor stores to serve all the thirsty Navajos because you couldn’t buy alcohol on the Navajo Nation. So, the Navajos who lived in Window Rock would pile into their cars and head to Gallup. Once they finished drinking, they would either pass out on the street or get back in their cars and head towards Window Rock on Highway 666. Anna Yazzie said the highway was cursed because it was the number of the beast and tried to get a petition going to change the number, which she felt would solve the problem.

“Why don’t they just stop selling alcohol in Gallup?” I asked once. “Wouldn’t that solve the problem?” Anna had ignored my question.

Eileen was pretty with sandy blonde hair and darker skin than most bilagáana, the word Navajo’s call Whites. She had blue eyes that drew attention from the boys in our high school and anger from the girls who used to beat her up. Patsy and Sharon had cornered her in the bathroom and were about to beat the white off of her when I stepped in. Not because I didn’t like Patsy or Sharon, but because I liked the way Eileen looked. I thought maybe she wouldn’t be as nice to look at if she was missing teeth like Harmony, who had gotten her front teeth knocked out when she was riding on the back of her brother’s motorcycle and had fallen off and hit the pavement face first, or like the Miller kids who had lost most of their teeth because their parents were too fucked up to consider buying toothpaste or a toothbrush, let alone taking them for the free dental care that Indian Health Services offered. So, I stepped in knowing that no woman could resist a hero rescuing her from the bad guys, even if the bad guys were Navajo girls and the hero was a stocky Indian stud-broad. I knew I had a chance.

“Leave her alone,” I told them when I saw that Patsy had pinned Eileen’s arms to the pink wall and Sharon was holding her by the neck.

Sharon’s dad was in Leavenworth for running over a tribal cop who had pulled him over when he was coming back from a beer run in Gallup. He had pulled over to the side of the road, waited for the cop to get out of his car, and then he had run him down. Patsy’s parents had been know to get into arguments that routinely led to at least one of them getting stabbed, the cops getting called, and only a 90 day stay in county jail because they both refused to press. Sharon and Patsy had some pretty big family reps to live up to and Eileen was going to be their trophy.

“What’s it to you Phoenix?” Sharon said loosening her grip on Eileen’s throat.

“I said, leave her alone.” At 5 foot 4 and 250 lbs, people sometimes find me intimidating.

“What’s your fucking problem, you confused about your role Pochahontas?” Patsy snickered.

“Don’t pull that bullshit on me. Let the white girl go.”

Patsy looked at Sharon who was looking back at me.

“Indian legend says your day is coming, white girl.” Sharon said, letting go of Eileen’s throat. “Come on, Patsy let’s go.”

Patsy slightly eased her grip on Eileen and then slammed her hard against the wall before leaving. Eileen clutched at her throat, tears streaming down her face.

“It’s okay now,” I said putting my arm around her and pulling her closer. She let me brush her hair out of her face and hold her. She was happy to have me walk her home from school and let me kiss her when we were sitting on her bed. Things were going pretty well, I could feel the sweat bead up on the back of her neck as we lay together and she pressed her groin to mine. But then her father came to the door to tell her that dinner was ready, and that’s when all hell broke loose. I didn’t hear him knocking, only the soft moans Eileen made as I inched my fingers up her shirt, moving my finger tips over her erect nipples. She didn‘t hear anything either, probably because my tongue was in her ear. We were totally making out when he opened the door and found us, legs intertwined. I think he’d been standing there awhile before I saw him.

“What in Christ’s name?” He yelled, his mouth wide open.

I noticed his right hand was in his pocket as though he were feeling for change. I noticed this because I thought it was weird that he hadn’t immediately grabbed me and beaten the living shit out of me, which is what I would have done if I found my 14-year-old daughter making out with anyone, boy or girl. And that’s probably what Ben Yazzie would have done if he had found me with Eileen in the mobile home.

But that’s when things got hard, hard like the second round of the sweatlodge when someone invites some new age white guy who pours his drinking water on the rocks, instead of drinking it, because he has some dumb ass need to prove himself and doesn’t think about the impact of his behavior on others.

That night, as I sat on the baby blue sofa in the Yazzie’s living room across from Ben and Anna, we had an un-family making ceremony that began with Ben calling me a bunch of nasty names and telling me how ungrateful I was and how he should have left me to die in that cardboard box. Anna tried to stop him, but he went to my room and threw my stuff outside and told me to get out.

Anna clutched her gold cross tighter and told me that she would pray for me. She went to hug me goodbye, but then changed her mind and waved instead. I think she was worried that she might catch whatever it was that had caused me to kiss Eileen.

I picked up a few of my things off the ground, a blue and white plaid shirt, an Indigenous CD, and my Gathering of Nations baseball cap, and walked down the dirt road towards 666. I didn’t know where I was going to stay, but I figured I’d have better luck in Gallup. So, when I got to 666, I crossed the street and held out my thumb and started walking East, the direction of new beginnings.