“All right. From now on, I will refer to you as Lady Josephine,” Samuel said with the faintest of smiles.
“No.... how about I just make it my secret Navajo name and only you and I will know it,” I said, conspiratorially.
“You are the furthest thing from a Navajo ...” Samuel scoffed.
“Well, what if a beautiful Navajo woman had adopted me when I was just a baby? Would she have given me a Navajo name? Even if I had blond hair and blue eyes?”
Samuel stared at me for a minute, frowning. “I really don’t know,” he confessed. “I’ve never known a Navajo who adopted a white baby. I’m the closest thing most Navajo get to a white baby.” Samuel’s countenance darkened. “Luckily, every Navajo child that is born belongs to his mother’s clan, so I am a Navajo, no matter who my father was.”
“Did you ever know your father?” I asked quietly, not liking that I might make him angry, but not fearing it either.
“I was six years old when he died. I remember things about him. He called me Sam Sam, and he was tall and kind of quiet. I remember my life before he died and then after he died when we went to the Indian Reservation. I hadn’t lived on the reservation before. It was very different than the little apartment we’d been living in. I spoke Navajo because my mother had spoken it to me exclusively. I spoke English too, which made school easier when I started at the school on the reservation. My mother never talked much about my father after he died.”
“Do you think it made her sad?” I ventured, thinking about my own mother’s death and how hard it had been for my dad to say her name for the longest time.
“Maybe. But it was more about tradition than anything. The Navajo believe that the only thing that is left behind when a person dies is the bad or the negative parts of their spirit. They call it chidi and when you talk about the dead it invites the chidi. So…we never talked about him much. I know she loved him and missed him. When I was really young, she read to me from the Bible that my dad had given her. I think it made her feel close to him without talking about him. She became a Christian when she married my dad, but within a year or so after his death she rejected it. She has become very angry and bitter. She didn’t know how to live off the reservation without my dad, and when he died, she went back, remarried, and I’m sure she’ll never leave.”
“I don’t know what I would do if I could never talk about my mother...” I whispered. “Talking about her helps me remember her. It makes me feel close to her.”
“Your mother died?” Samuel’s voice rose in surprise.
“Yes.” I was a little stunned that he didn’t know. I had just assumed that he knew what his grandparents knew. “She died the summer before third grade. I was almost nine years old.” I shrugged a little, “I guess I’m just lucky I had her for that long. I remember lots of things about her. Like the way she smelled, the way she covered her mouth when she laughed, the way she said “Josie Jo, to and fro” when she pushed me on the swing.”
“Why are you lucky you had her that long? I think that makes you unlucky. She died and you don’t have a mother.” Samuel’s face was stormy and his lips tightened a little as he waited for me to respond.
“But I did have her for those nine years, and she loved me, and I loved her. Look at people like Heathcliffe. He had no mother and no father.”
“Yeah, I guess he had a right to be a jerk.”
“I guess he had reason to be, at least in the beginning, but that doesn’t make me like him any better. He was hateful and angry all the time. The first time I read the book, I kept waiting for him to change, to develop some character…but he never did. I just despised him for it. I wanted him to be lovable, even just a little bit, so that I could like him.”
“People didn’t like him because he had darker skin and he looked different than they did!” Samuel was angry again.
“Maybe that was true to a point, in the beginning. But the father, Mr. Earnshaw, loved him best of all…better than his own children. Heathcliffe never did one thing with that love. Catherine loved him, too. What did he do?”
“He went off and joined the military or something, right? He made something of himself, improved how he dressed, and how he looked!” Samuel defended Heathcliffe like he was Heathcliffe.
“But he never changed WHO he was!” I cried back passionately. “I wanted him to inspire me! I just ended up feeling sorry for him and thinking ‘What a waste!’”
“Maybe he couldn’t change who he was!” Samuel’s face was tight and his hands were clenched.
“Samuel! I’m talking about him changing on the inside! Nobody that loved him cared that he was a gypsy! Don’t you get it?”
“Catherine loved him despite of what he was on the inside!” He fought back still.
“Their version of love damned them both in the end! They were two miserable people because they never figured out what true love is!”
“Why don’t you tell me what TRUE LOVE is then, Lady Josephine, since you are so wise at thirteen-years-old!” Samuel sneered at me and his arms were folded across his chest.
My cheeks were flaming, and my finger poked him in the chest with every syllable I recited. “‘True love suffereth long, and is kind; true love envieth not. True love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. True love does not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. True love rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth. True love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things!’” I stopped for a breath and one emphatic push against Samuel’s chest. “1st Corinthians, Chapter 13. Check it out.”