Jornada del Muerto: Prisoner Days by Claudia Hall Christian Read Free Book Online Page A

that, I towered
over her.
    She was the most influential person in my
life. Until she died, she was a presence in every moment of my
life, especially after my mother died. She was everything good and
everything bad in my life. I am here because of her.
    She told me once that she knew the moment I
was born that I would to save the Tewa people. She told me that
she’d waited for me all of her life. She told me that she would
live long enough for me to start my journey. By sheer force of
will, she did just that.
    Everything she told me came true. She was
106 when she died. She didn’t even get sick until I returned from
the Wixaritari. She died my first day in prison. I helped her soul
pass on my first day in solitary confinement.
    I always wonder why she was so influential
to me. Why did I love her so much? Why did I do what she told me to
do without question or hesitation? The prison psychologist focused
on my relationship with my great-great grandmother. He said it was
unhealthy. He told me that my dependence on her was the “genesis of
my criminal mind.” Since prison was her idea, he couldn’t have been
closer to the truth.
    I loved her. How could that be unhealthy? I
miss her. You’d think that I would see her all the time now. I’ve
seen only her five or six times since she died. What’s worse, is
that seeing her now is not like spending time with her when she was
alive.
    When she was alive, seeing her was about fry
bread, kisses on the cheek, and much, much laughter. If I spoke,
her eyes would focus on my face as if she were trying to absorb my
words. She was so full of love and life. Her smiles never faded.
Her love of life never ebbed.
    When she comes now, she’s much more serious.
She warns me of danger, reminds me of the prophecy, and generally
nags me to do what she wanted me to do. She’s more anxious now.
More irritating, too.
    Like this journal. She haunted me, day in
and day out, for the last year, to start this journal. I’m not even
good at it, and she kept bugging me to create it.
    I wonder why I miss someone who was so
bossy, so opinionated, and so dominating. I guess we understood
each other. She believed in me, supported me through the dark days
after my mother’s death, and the coming into shamanism. When I
looked over the cliff into the emptiness, I wasn’t afraid like most
shaman students. I knew that my great-great-grandmother would pull
me back from any abyss. She was that kind of person. She could pull
anyone back from a spiritual, emotional or psychic abyss.
    She couldn’t help with the drugs and alcohol
abyss. She hated drugs and the people who used them. To live in her
house, which I did most of my life, you had to be drug and alcohol
free. She mistrusted any alcohol use. She mistrusted my father’s
occasional use of alcohol even though he held a steady job all of
his life, cared for his children and grandchildren, and generally
was reliable until the moment he died.
    Reliable. My great-great grandmother said
that the Tewa needed my father’s reliability, consistency, and
strength to create a strong, reliable shaman. She believed that
only my father’s son could fulfill the prophecy. My brothers all
had a touch of spirit in them. My oldest brother wasn’t interested
in the unpractical. He became an accountant.
    My middle brother, Earnesto, was my best
friend growing up. Earnesto liked the idea of the power of being a
shaman, but would rather race bikes or play his guitar than study.
He didn’t want me to be a shaman, either. Made me too weird. But he
loved me nonetheless. He was the only one who worried for me when I
was gone in the summers. He was devastated when I had to come here
to the Pen.
    I see my middle brother about once a month.
He stops by to see how things are going. When we get to Pecos
Pueblo, I’m certain he will know what we need to do and where we
need to go. He worked there with my father. He was always prying
into the Pueblo’s long-held secrets. He took my