Call Me Indian by Fred Sasakamoose

Author:Fred Sasakamoose [Sasakamoose, Fred]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2021-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

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My doubts made me a bit nervous about the car trip, with this small group of fellows who knew each other so well. Yet I was glad to be invited along. And the trip would get me out of a bit of a jam.

After one of our early home games, I’d been in the lobby signing autographs when a beautiful girl came up to me and introduced herself. Her name was Helen. She was a fashion model, and a Cherokee.

“What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked. “Do you want to meet for breakfast?”

I took her up on the invitation.

We got along well. She was from Oklahoma. About a hundred years earlier, her people had relocated there after being forced out of the American southeast as part of the Trail of Tears. Some of the members of her band, however, were relatively lucky—they found oil on the land where they were settled. She had grown up with all sorts of luxuries. Her father, she told me, was a rich man. When she described her life at home, it was very different from the reservation life I knew.

Whenever I was in town, we would go out for coffee or meals. She had a car, so she would sometimes pick me up at my apartment and drive me to my practices.

As the season drew to a close, she began to talk about our future. We’d known each other for less than a month. I tried to explain that I was just starting out. I wasn’t in any position to make plans. She didn’t care. Her father would build us a house, she said. We wouldn’t have to worry about anything. But first she wanted to go home with me. She wanted to see Sandy Lake and meet my family.

Oh, boy, I thought. That’s not going to work.

For one thing, I knew that showing up at my mother’s house with a girlfriend was a bad idea. During my visits home in the last few years, my mother made sure I knew her rules when it came to relationships.

“Don’t bring a woman home unless you’re married,” she warned me.

But that didn’t mean she was giving me permission to marry.

“You’re not your own boss until you’re twenty-one,” she used to say. “And even after that, when it comes to marriage, I’ve got a say.”

But even if I had thought my mother would welcome this young woman with open arms, I didn’t want her coming back with me. My family still lived in the same one-room log house. We had no power. No running water. We used an outhouse. I was too embarrassed for her to see that. Too embarrassed even to explain it to her. I hated being ashamed of my home, but I was.

I told Helen I couldn’t take her to Sandy Lake because I was heading to the coast with some of my teammates. She gave me a photograph of herself. I didn’t give her my address. Or make any promises about the following year.

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