Tribal Journey (4 page)

I looked down at it. The whole leg, from my toes to my hip, was in a thick white cast. What was going on? What had happened? My mind was in a fog.

Slowly I looked around the room. There was Mom asleep in a chair next to the bed.

“Mom? Mom, what happened?” She woke up and looked at me.

“Oh, Jason. I'm so glad you're awake. Don't try to talk. I'll call the doctor to come check you.”

“What happened to me?”

“Don't you remember? You were in a terrible car wreck. Two days ago.” As Mom left to find the doctor, the images of the accident flooded back into my mind. That made the throbbing pain in various parts of my body return. I moaned.

My first thought was that I missed the beach bonfire with all of my friends. How terrible was that!

The next few days were a blur. I slept a lot—when I wasn't being poked, prodded, and probed by various doctors and nurses. They'd examine me and then go off to a corner of the room and talk to each other in whispers. None of them looked very happy.

Finally one of the doctors came into the room with my mother.

“Son, the doctor has some news to tell us,” she said, and then stepped back.

The doctor, an old man with white hair and wire-rimmed glasses, moved in close to the bed.

“Jason, I'm just going to give it to you straight,” he said. “We think you may not be able to use your left leg again.”

“How long will that be?” I asked.

“As far as we can tell right now, forever,” he replied. He paused for a moment to let that sink into my brain. “There was damage to your spine where the nerves from your leg connect to your central nervous system.”

I thought I understood what he was saying. But I didn't like it at all. I was too shocked to speak. Mom was crying as she rushed around to the other side of my bed. She bent down to hug me.

“It may take weeks before you can get yourself around in a wheelchair,” he went on to say. “Maybe months. It all depends on you and how much you actively take part in your own recovery.”

He went on talking, but I couldn't hear what he was saying. It all became too depressing. I
felt like I was moving through a tunnel away from Mom, the doctor, and the hospital room. Then the tunnel became a dark hole. I landed at the bottom of it. I think I passed out.

As the days went by, I found out more about the accident. A nineteen-year-old girl was driving the car that hit me. She was texting as she drove through that intersection. And she walked away from the accident with only a few cuts and bruises. How fair was that?

“I blame myself,” Mom said. “I'm the one who let you drive the car.”

“Don't go there, Mom,” I said. “I'm the one who wasn't paying attention.”

For days Mom regularly tried to cheer me up. So did Zak and Shauna when they came to visit.

My friends came by to see me, too. They all said they were so sorry about what happened to me. It sort of sounded like they were talking to me through a tin can attached to a string. I really couldn't connect to them. They talked for a few minutes until they ran
out of things to say. Then they left. And I was alone again.

Mom brought schoolwork for me to do so I wouldn't fall behind. But I didn't care. I wasn't interested in doing schoolwork. I wasn't interested in anything.

The nurses must have started giving me some new medicine. In a few days I didn't feel like I was in a hole any more. I still felt sort of numb, but the hole was fading away.

About a month after the accident, Mom came to my room one morning with a big smile on her face. She said, “Jason, you get to go home tomorrow. What do you think about that?”

“Depends. Do you mean the shelter or our actual home?”

“I mean our actual home. Soon after your accident I filed for divorce from your father.”

“You actually did it,” I said.

“Yes,” Mom said. “And the judge issued a special order that says your father can't come near any of us until he gets treatment for his problems.”

“Is that why Dad hasn't tried to see me?” I asked. “I mean—I know I'm mad at him and all. And I'm not ready to forgive him. But he's still my dad.”

“It's complicated,” Mom replied. “He asked how you were doing. But we can talk about that another time. For now, your father has moved out of the house so you could be in your own home to recover.”

“That sounds pretty good,” I said.

“Your father also agreed to go to counseling to get help with his drinking and his violent behavior. He may be ready for a visit in a few weeks.”

“We'll see how I feel about it when the time comes,” I replied.

The next day the doctor took off my big thick cast and replaced it with a thinner, lighter one. Afterward, the nurse rolled a wheelchair into the room. With Mom's help I got into it.

“Let's go home,” Mom said.

“Let's go home,” I said.

There had been some changes made to the house. Workmen from the Chief Seattle Center had built a wheelchair ramp up to the front door.

Mom pushed me up the ramp and into the house. It felt so good to be back there even though the memory of the night we left was still in the air. Mom had moved everything from my upstairs room down to her old bedroom so I could roll right in.

The next day a Mrs. Anderson came from the hospital to talk to me. She told me that she was the hospital's physical therapist.

“What's a physical therapist?” I asked.

“I figure out a plan for your physical recovery,” she said. “I know exactly what body movements you need to start doing to help you get your strength back. And
they will also help your muscles, joints, and bones heal.”

“What's the point? I'm never going to walk again. Or swim. I'll forever be the kid in the wheelchair.”

“That's only true if you believe it to be true,” she said. “Your own belief in yourself can make a big difference in the outcome.”

She explained how the physical therapy process worked. She also told me how long it might take to see results. It all sounded pretty pointless to me. I guess she was used to dealing with people like me. People who felt like giving up before they even started.

“When your cast comes off, I'll bring you a crutch to use,” she continued. “Your right leg is still good. You won't have to spend all your time in a wheelchair.”

“What a choice,” I said. “The crutch or the wheelchair.” She ignored my sarcasm.

Before leaving, she told me, “We'll start physical therapy next week, whether you want to or not. Your mother has already signed the forms.”

Won't that be fun, I thought.

A few days later—I think it was the middle of May—Mom brought an older Native American man to see me. He kind of looked like someone I may have met a long time ago at one of the tribal culture classes I went to. He had brown wrinkly skin, two braids of grey hair, and a look on his face that made it seem like he knew a secret nobody else knew.

Mom said, “Jason, I don't know if you remember Mr. Franks. He's come to visit you.”

The man approached my bed and reached out his hand to shake. I didn't move. Mom continued, “Mr. Franks is working with the tribal youth at the Duwamish Cultural Center, teaching them our language, songs, and dances.”

“That's nice,” I said. “Didn't my mother tell you I wouldn't be dancing ever again?”

“Jason, don't be rude!” Mom said firmly.

Mr. Franks signaled Mom that it was all right. He pulled up a chair next to the bed and sat down facing me. Without saying a
word, he reached out his hand again, this time palm up. He was inviting me to put my hand in his. I was curious, so I did.

He put his other hand on top of mine and looked into my eyes for what seemed like forever. A song began to rise from somewhere inside him. First it was a humming. Then Indian words started forming. The sound was low and kind of calming. He closed his eyes and the song filled the room. In a few moments I closed my eyes, too.

I must have fallen asleep or passed out, because in a few minutes I opened my eyes and saw that Mr. Franks was no longer in my room. The singing had stopped. I could hear him talking softly to Mom out in the living room.

In a minute they both came back into my room.

“What just happened?” I asked.

Mr. Franks spoke to me for the first time. “Your soul has been very far away from your body. I called it to come back to be with you
again. You should start feeling better about things now.”

That sounded kind of crazy. I looked to Mom to see if I could tell what she thought about it.

She said, “Mr. Franks and I think it would be good for you to start sitting in on the tribal culture classes. It would help for you to be around our people more and learn about that part of yourself again. It would be healing.”

“Okay,” I said without thinking. Wait. Why did I say that? That's not what I intended to say. What was going on with me?

“See you next Saturday,” Mr. Franks said with a smile. He shook hands with me and my mother and left.

The next day Mom rolled me and my wheelchair into the back of the minivan. She'd had some changes made so the wheelchair could easily fit in the side door. There were also clamps in the floor that held the chair. That way it wouldn't roll around as she drove.

She took me to the hospital so the doctor could take off my cast. Even with the cast off, there was no feeling in my left leg. It was dead. I had to pick it up with both hands to move it.

As promised, Mrs. Anderson brought me a crutch made of aluminum. It was the kind that could be folded up when not being used. It could fit in the pocket on the back of the wheelchair. Whoopee-do. I was less than excited about it all.

I started physical therapy sessions the very next day. Mrs. Anderson said I needed daily physical activity or my muscles would just quit working. She showed me how to do exercises at home that would make me stronger and improve my balance.

What she wanted me to do was hard. But I was so bored I decided to give it a try. I thought I'd just go with the flow like before.

By the time next Saturday came I was definitely having second—and third and fourth—thoughts about going to the tribal
culture class. In fact, I wasn't sure about it at all. But I had promised my mother, so I went.

The Duwamish Longhouse sat across the street from the Duwamish River. They said that a long time ago the river was beautiful, with a natural shoreline. Now it was like a big open water pipe lined with cement borders and boat docks. Freight barges moved up and down the river carrying loads in and out of the factories and warehouses in the area.

The Longhouse was near the only natural shoreline that was left. I had learned that this was part of the traditional Duwamish homeland. This was where Chief Seattle had lived. He was the man the city had been named after. So here his people had stayed.

The language class had already started when I arrived. It was being held in a classroom on the second floor. The room was lined with windows that looked out on the river. A dozen or so teens sat on folding chairs in a circle around Mr. Franks. He was talking Indian to them. A few elderly women sat nearby listening.

I'm glad I'd learned how to get around in my wheelchair on my own so Mom didn't have to come in with me. How embarrassing would that have been?

Mr. Franks paused when he saw me. “Jason, I'm glad you could make it. Come join the circle.”

I wheeled over as a couple of the kids scooted sideways to make room for me.

“Everyone, this is Jason,” Mr. Franks said. “Jason, this is everyone.” They all said “hi” or “hello” or something in the tribal language I didn't understand.

I listened to what was going on for a while, but it really didn't catch my attention. Mr. Franks said the Salish people lived in villages up and down the coast of Washington. The language used by tribes in the area was called Lushootseed. I couldn't even pronounce the name of the language, much less words from the language.

He had everyone in the circle practice saying a few tribal words. We were to then use those words in a song he taught us.

But all the while, I could hear noises coming from outside that sounded like a chain saw cutting into wood. When we took a break from the language lesson, I wheeled over to the windows and pulled myself up out of the chair. Leaning on the windowsill, I peered outside.

Down below, across the street and closer to the river, a man was cutting into a huge cedar tree that lay on the ground. He was shaping it into what I thought could only be a very large canoe. A couple of other younger men were helping him. They used some kind of tool that was shaped like an axe to hack away at the inside of the tree. It looked like they were trying to hollow it out.

“What are they doing down there?” I asked Mr. Franks.

“They're carving a dugout canoe,” he said. “It will be used this summer to paddle up to a tribal community in Canada. It's part of the yearly canoe journey that all the Coast Salish tribes take part in.”