Sherman Alexie - Reservation Blues

I was so scared when I first saw Big Mom. She was this huge woman with fingers as big as my arms, I think. I kept thinking she could squash me like a bug. But then she called me a special woman. It made me realize Big Mom is really a woman and we could have a good talk.

She took Chess and me into the sweatlodge, and I kept thinking that Big Mom was inside my head. I’ve always been able to sort of read people’s minds, been able to get into their heads a little bit. Even Chess always told me I had a little bit of magic. But there were always people, especially women, who had more magic. I remember I was trying to read this old white lady’s mind on a bus ride to Missoula when she turned to me and said “Get out!” Well, she really said it in her head. That old white lady threw me out of her mind, and I had a headache for a week. But that was nothing compared to Big Mom. I kept feeling like she could have made commodity applesauce out of my brain.

Anyway, we took a sweat together, and it was great. Big Mom sang better than anybody I ever heard, even Aretha Franklin. That steam in the lodge felt so good in my throat and lungs. It made me feel like I could sing better. Chess said the steam made her feel that way, too. And Thomas said we could sing better after we came out of the sweatlodge with Big Mom.

But I was also kind of scared that Big Mom would know that I was in love with Father Arnold. She might know that I kissed him and that he kissed me back. I was scared of what she would think of me. How can an Indian woman love any white man like that, and him being a priest besides? Big Mom felt like she came from a whole different part of God than Father Arnold did. Is that possible? Can God be broken into pieces like a jigsaw puzzle? What if it’s like one of those puzzles that Indian kids buy at secondhand stores? You put it together and find out one or two pieces are missing.

I looked at Big Mom and thought that God must be made up mostly of Indian and woman pieces. Then I looked at Father Arnold and thought that God must be made up of white and man pieces. I don’t know what’s true.

“I’m hungry,” Victor said as they all lay on the floor in Big Mom’s living room.

“You’re always hungry,” Chess said.

“Will you two be quiet, please?” Thomas said. “Big Mom is still sleeping.”

“Oh,” Victor said, loudly. “I didn’t think God needed to sleep. I thought God was a twenty-four-hour convenience store.”

“She’s not God,” Thomas said.

“Oh, my,” Victor said. “The perfect Thomas admitting that Big Mom ain’t God. That’s blasphemy, enit?”

“It’s not blasphemy,” Thomas said. “There is no god but God.”

“Well,” Victor asked, “who is she then?”

The rest of Coyote Springs looked for the answer, too.

“She’s just a part of God,” Thomas said. “We’re all a part of God, enit? Big Mom is just a bigger part of God.”

“Literally,” Victor said.

“She’s going to teach us how to play better,” Thomas said. “She’s going to teach us new chords and stuff.”

“How?” Victor said. “She’s just some old Indian woman.”

Just then, Big Mom played the loneliest chord that the band had ever heard. It drifted out of her bedroom, floated across the room, and landed at the feet of Coyote Springs. It crawled up their clothes and into their ears. Junior fainted.

“What in the hell was that?” Victor asked.

Big Mom walked out of the bedroom carrying a guitar made of a 1965 Malibu and the blood of a child killed at Wounded Knee in 1890.

“Listen,” Thomas said.

Big Mom hit the chord again with more force, and it knocked everybody to the ground. Everybody except Junior, who was already passed out on the ground.

“Please,” Chess said, but she didn’t know if she wanted Big Mom to please, quit playing, or please, don’t stop.

Big Mom hit that chord over and over, until Coyote Springs had memorized its effects on their bodies. Junior had regained consciousness long enough to remember his failures, before the force of the music knocked him out again.

“Enough!” Victor shouted. “I can’t hear myself think!”

“There,” Big Mom said to Victor. “Have you learned anything?”

“I’ve learned that a really big guitar makes a really big noise.”

“Is that all?”

“What do you want me to say? I keep waiting for you to call me Grasshopper and ask me to snatch some goddamn pebble from your hand.”

Thomas stood up and reached for Big Mom’s guitar.

“Patience,” Big Mom said and pushed his hand away.

“I can play that chord,” Thomas said. “But I need your guitar to do it.”

“All Indians can play that chord,” Big Mom said. “It’s the chord created especially for us. But you have to play it on your own instrument, Thomas. You couldn’t even lift my guitar.”

“What about Victor?” Thomas asked. “He’s got Robert Johnson’s guitar. Why can’t I have your guitar?”

“That guitar is different,” Big Mom said. “That guitar wanted Victor.”

“Shit,” Victor said. “This is all starting to sound like a New Age convention. Where are the fucking crystals? Well, I know who’s got the fucking crystals. Jim Morrison’s got the fucking crystals, and he’s dancing naked around the campfire with a bunch of naked white people, singing and complaining that his head feels just like a toad.”

“Please don’t say that name,” Big Mom said. “I’m so tired of that name. It’s irritating how much I have to hear that name.

“What?” Victor asked. “Which name? Jim Morrison?”

“Stop that,” Big Mom said.

“Jim Morrison,” Victor said and laughed. “Jim Morrison, Jim Morrison, Jim-fucking-Morrison.”

Big Mom shook her head, walked out of the house, and left Coyote Springs alone.

“You’re such an asshole,” Chess said.

“What’s going on?” Junior asked as he finally woke up.

“I know I can play that chord,” Thomas said.

“I kind of like the Doors,” Checkers said.

“This is the end, my friends, this is the end,” Victor said.

Victor wasn’t the first Indian man to question Big Mom’s authority. In fact, many of the Indian men who were drawn to Big Mom doubted her abilities. Indian men have started to believe their own publicity and run around acting like the Indians in movies.

“Michael White Hawk,” Big Mom said to the toughest Spokane Indian man of the late twentieth century. “Don’t you understand that the musical instrument is not to be used in the same way that a bow and arrow is? Music is supposed to heal.”

“But, Big Ma,” White Hawk said, “I’m a warrior. I’m ’posed to fight.”

“No, Michael, you’re a saxophone player, and you need to work on your reed technique.”

Most times, the Indian men learned from Big Mom, but Michael White Hawk never admitted his errors. White Hawk had actually been something of a prodigy, an idiot savant, who could play the horn even though he couldn’t read or write.

“I hate white men,” White Hawk said. “I smash my sax’-phone on their heads.

“Michael,” Big Mom said, “you run around playing like you’re a warrior. You’re the first to tell an Indian he’s not being Indian enough. How do you know what that means? You need to take care of your people. Smashing your guitar over the head of a white man is just violence. And the white man has always been better at violence anyway. They’ll always be better than you at violence.”

“You don’t know what you talkin’ ’bout,” White Hawk said. “You jus’ a woman.”

He left Big Mom’s house after that and ended up in Walla Walla State Penitentiary for smashing his saxophone over the head of a cashier at a supermarket in Spokane.