Sherman Alexie - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

The classroom was quiet. They all knew my family had been living inside a grief-storm.

And had this teacher just mocked me for that?

"What did you just say?" I asked her.

"You really shouldn't be missing class this much," she said.

If I'd been stronger, I would have stood up to her. I would have called her names. I would have walked across the room and slapped her.

But I was too broken.

Instead, it was Gordy who defended me.

He stood with his textbook and dropped it.

Whomp!

He looked so strong. He looked like a warrior. He was protecting me like Rowdy used to

protect me. Of course, Rowdy would have thrown the book at the teacher and then punched her.

Gordy showed a lot of courage in standing up to a teacher like that. And his courage

inspired the others.

Penelope stood and dropped her textbook.

And then Roger stood and dropped his textbook.

Whomp!

Then the other basketball players did the same.

Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

And Mrs. Jeremy flinched each and every time, as if she'd been kicked in the crotch.

Whomp! Whomp! Whomp! Whomp!

Then all of my classmates walked out of the room.

A spontaneous demonstration.

Of course, I probably should have walked out with them. It would have been more poetic.

It would have made more sense. Or perhaps my friends should have realized that they shouldn't have left behind the FRICKING REASON FOR THEIR PROTEST!

And that thought just cracked me up.

It was like my friends had walked over the backs of baby seals in order to get to the

beach where they could protest against the slaughter of baby seals.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't that bad.

But it was sure funny.

"What are you laughing at?" Mrs. Jeremy asked me.

"I used to think the world was broken down by tribes," I said. "By black and white. By Indian and white. But I know that isn't true. The world is only broken into two tribes: The people who are assholes and the people who are not."

I walked out of the classroom and felt like dancing and singing.

It all gave me hope. It gave me a little bit of joy.

And I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That's the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change. I made a list of the people who had given me the most joy in my life:

1. Rowdy

2. My mother

3. My father

4. My grandmother

5. Eugene

6. Coach

7. Roger

8. Gordy

9. Penelope, even if she only partially loves me

I made a list of the musicians who had played the most joyous music:

1. Patsy Cline, my mother's favorite

2. Hank Williams, my father's favorite

3. Jimi Hendrix, my grandmother's favorite

4. Guns N' Roses, my big sister's favorite

5. White Stripes, my favorite

I made a list of my favorite foods:

1. pizza

2. chocolate pudding

3. peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

4. banana cream pie

5. fried chicken

6. mac & cheese

7. hamburgers

8. french fries

9. grapes

I made a list of my favorite books:

1. The Grapes of Wrath

2. Catcher in the Rye

3. Fat Kid Rules the World

4. Tangerine

5. Feed

6. Catalyst

7. Invisible Man

8. Fools Crow

9. Jar of Fools

I made a list of my favorite basketball players:

1. Dwayne Wade

2. Shane Battier

3. Steve Nash

4. Ray Allen

5. Adam Morrison

6. Julius Erving

7. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

8. George Gervin

9. Mugsy Bogues

I kept making list after list of the things that made me feel joy. And I kept drawing

cartoons of the things that made me angry. I keep writing and rewriting, drawing and redrawing, and rethinking and revising and reediting. It became my grieving ceremony.

I'd never guessed I'd be a good basketball player.

I mean, I'd always loved ball, mostly because my father loved it so much, and because

Rowdy loved it even more, but I figured I'd always be one of those players who sat on the bench and cheered his bigger, faster, more talented teammates to victory and/or defeat.

But somehow or another, as the season went on, I became a freshman starter on a varsity basketball team. And, sure, all of my teammates were bigger and faster, but none of them could shoot like me.

I was the hired gunfighter.

Back on the rez, I was a decent player, I guess. A rebounder and a guy who could run up and down the floor without tripping. But something magical happened to me when I went to Reardan.

Overnight, I became a good player.

I suppose it had something to do with confidence. I mean, I'd always been the lowest

Indian on the reservation totem pole—I wasn't expected to be good so I wasn't. But in Reardan, my coach and the other players wanted me to be good. They needed me to be good. They

expected me to be good. And so I became good.

I wanted to live up to expectations.

I guess that's what it comes down to.

The power of expectations.

And as they expected more of me, I expected more of myself, and it just grew and grew

until I was scoring twelve points a game.

AS A FRESHMAN!

Coach was thinking I would be an all-state player in a few years. He was thinking maybe I'd play some small-college ball.

It was crazy.

How often does a reservation Indian kid hear that?

How often do you hear the words "Indian" and "college" in the same sentence?

Especially in my family. Especially in my tribe.

But don't think I'm getting stuck up or anything.

It's still absolutely scary to play ball, to compete, to try to win.

I throw up before every game.

Coach said he used to throw up before games.

"Kid," he said, "some people need to clear the pipes before they can play. I used to be a yucker. You're a yucker. Ain't nothing wrong with being a yucker."

So I asked Dad if he used to be a yucker.

"What's a yucker?" he asked.

"Somebody who throws up before basketball games," said.

"Why would you throw up?"

"Because I'm nervous."

"You mean, because you're scared?"

"Nervous, scared, same kind of things, aren't they?"

"Nervous means you want to play. Scared means you don't want to play."

All right, so Dad made it clear.

I was a nervous yucker in Reardan. Back in Wellpinit, I was a scared yucker.

Nobody else on my team was a yucker. Didn't matter one way or the other, I guess. We

were just a good team, period.

After losing our first game to Wellpinit, we won twelve in a row. We just killed people, winning by double figures every time. We beat our archrivals, Davenport, by thirty-three.

Townspeople were starting to compare us to the great Reardan teams of the past. People

were starting to compare some of our players to great players of the past.

Roger, our big man, was the new Joel Wetzel.

Jeff, our point guard, was the new Little Larry Soliday.

James, our small forward, was the new Keith Schulz.

But nobody talked about me that way. I guess it was hard to compare me to players from

the past. I wasn't from the town, not originally, so I would always be an outsider.

And no matter how good I was, I would always be an Indian. And some folks just found

it difficult to compare an Indian to a white guy. It wasn't racism, not exactly. It was, well, I don't know what it was.

I was something different, something new. I just hope that, twenty years in the future, they'd be comparing some kid to me: