Worst Day Ever

  Chapter 4 – The Name Game

  Jackson wished he could shrink down and disappear into the gopher hole at his feet. He looked at the crowd of kids gathered around him on the playground. Their eyes were mocking and bold. Rayna’s smooth brown hands rested on her hips as she gathered up taunting words and flung them at him.

  “Who cares about Jesus? What kind of Native are you anyway? Why do you want to worship a wimpy white man? Go ahead and pray to him instead of using Indian medicine but don’t expect to have any friends in this school if you do.”

  The bell rang and broke the intensity of the moment. Recess was over.

  Rayna’s shiny black ponytail flashed in the sun as she whipped around and walked toward the school without giving Jackson a backward glance. Everyone turned and followed her into the school. Everyone: even Austin.

  “Stinky stinky bo binky - banana fana fo finky - fee fi mo minky – stinky!”

  “Jackson, Jackson, bo backson – banana fana fo fackson – fee fi mo mackson - Jackson!”

  The song went on and on and everyone on the bus joined in while they bounced along the rough reserve roads. Now and then the yellow bus would jerk to a stop and let out a child who would then chant the rhyme as he or she ran up the driveway toward home. Jackson kept his eyes on his iPad and concentrated on his game. He hoped ignoring them would work.

  Finally Beyonce and Rayna got off the bus at their stop and the enthusiasm for the chant diminished. Austin was the only one of Jackson’s friends who didn’t enter into the cruel game. But he didn’t look at Jackson or say good bye when he was let out at his driveway.

  “Jackson, Jackson, bo backson – banana fana fo fackson – fee fi mo mackson - Jackson!” Jessie sang as she skipped up the driveway beside her brother.

  “For ******* sake Jessie! Stop it! I’ve had enough! O my ***. You should be standing up for me, not joining them.”

  Jessie stopped skipping and looked up at her big brother with a sassy twinkle in her eye. “I think it’s funny! I don’t know what you’re so mad about.”

  “Stinky stinky bo binky - banana fana fo finky - fee fi mo minky – stinky!” Jessie skipped up the back steps and into the kitchen, threw her lunch bag onto the counter and gave Kokum a hug.

  “How did your day go my girl?” Kokum asked with a fond smile.

  “Good! We finger painted in art today and I made a cat.” Then with shining eyes, Jessie dug into her back pack and pulled out a folded piece of pink paper. “Luci invited me to her birthday party. Can I go?”

  “We’ll ask your mom,” said Kokum holding it to the light and peering at it closely.

  “And, Jackson swore at me.”

  “What?” Kokum lowered the card and looked from Jessie to Jackson with a deep frown between her eyes.

  “He did it just a minute ago. He got mad at me and said Jesus’ last name and OMG at me. That’s bad isn’t it!”

  Jackson didn’t know what to say. He slipped his feet out of his shoes, left them in the porch and went to his room without looking Kokum in the eye.

  When the coast was clear, Jackson grabbed a handful of cookies and ran out the back door to get some privacy. This time he didn’t chance heading to the river where Kokum could be fishing. Instead he peeked into the barn and listened for sounds of human beings. All was silent so he slipped into one of the stalls.

  “OK God, Jackson here.” He prayed out loud. “I blew it again. I said your name in the wrong way. I know that’s really bad but I was just so mad at Jessie. You’d think she’d be on my side. You’d think someone would be on my side. Are you even on my side? I stood up for you today in the playground and all I got was mocking. They called Jesus ‘a wimpy white man’ and asked why I wanted to worship him and I didn’t even know what to say.”

  In frustration, Jackson picked up a huge armful of hay and threw it as hard as he could into the next stall.

  “Haaa . . . chew! Haa . . . chew!” a wave of sneezing erupted from the stall beside him.

  “What? Who’s there?”

  In two steps Jackson went around the corner to see who else was hiding in the barn. Kokum stood there with a huge clump of hay balancing on her head like a hat. She sneezed again as she brushed it off.

  “Kokum! What are you doing here?”

  “I come here to pray sometimes Nosisim.”

  “Me too,” said Jackson as it dawned on him that Kokum had heard everything he had just said to God.

  “I was prayin’ for you, Nosisim. You are havin’ a hard time this year for sure. But I want to tell you that God is for you and we are for you and Jesus is no wimp. He wasn’t even a white man you know. His skin was as brown as yours. He loves you enough to die for all the wrong things you have done lately and he will stand by you at school if you want him to. When I was prayin’ for you just now, he told me what to do about tomorrow.”

  The wind blew puffs of dust into their eyes as they waited for the bus at the side of the road the next morning. Austin nervously checked his backpack for something that seemed to be stuck at the very bottom of it. Jackson scowled, folded his arms over his chest and stared at the bulls in the field across from them. Jessie stood calmly holding Mosom Jeremy’s big rough hand and her other hand held tightly to her Wonder Woman lunch bag.

  Jackson, Austin and Jessie turned their heads toward the small cloud of dust in the distance that soon turned into a yellow school bus. Mosom Jeremy didn’t even glance at the bus. He calmly puffed on a cigarette and blew smoke into the cold fall sky. As the bus crunched to a halt in the gravel driveway he dropped his smoke onto the road and ground it out with the bottom of his dusty black cowboy boot.

  Jackson, Austin and Jessie tensed up. The bus door opened. The driver barely looked at them but nodded at Mosom as they all boarded the bus.

  Austin walked way to the back of the bus and sat beside a first grader he didn’t even know. Jessie quietly slid into the seat beside Luci. Jackson, feeling slightly sick, sat in the front row and stared out the window. He wished he could disappear in a puff of dust like the bus did when it left the driveway after school.

  Mosom didn’t sit down. He stood in the middle of the isle facing the back of the bus and grabbed on to the seat in front of him as they continued down the road toward the next stop.

  Each child who boarded the bus had to walk past Mosom. He solemnly nodded to each one, asked how their families were doing, and kept his eyes on them as they found places to sit. The kids squirmed a bit in their seats as they tried to look anywhere but back into Mosom’s eyes.

  Giggling about someone’s lame facebook post, Rayna and Beyonce barely glanced at Mosom. They pushed past him to claim their usual seats in the middle of the bus and their heads were bent down over a text they were composing as the bus lurched back onto the road.

  But their necks bent backward at the same moment when a dark shadow fell over Rayna’s smart phone. As their eyes swept upward they noticed a pair of faded blue jeans, a large silver belt buckle that said ‘1974 Bull Riding Champion’ a blue plaid cowboy shirt and a large leathery face topped by a beaten up cowboy hat. “What’s your name?” Mosom asked in a conversational tone.

  “I’m Rayna Delorme and this is my cousin Beyonce Bear.”

  “Do you know my grandson Jackson?” The girls nodded in unison as Mosom continued to tower over them. “He was named after my best friend – his other Mosom – Jack Osagin. Jack Osagin was a very powerful person. As a young man he won the Paul Acoose Memorial Run, but he died from cancer last year.”

  Mosom paused as the bus jolted over a rut in the road. “A person’s name is very sacred, and it should be treated with respect. Do you agree?”

  The girls nodded in unison as the bus pulled to a stop in front of the school. All the kids quietly filed past Mosom and the two girls.

  When everyone else was out of earshot, Mosom leaned
toward the girls and said, “I don’t mind telling you that my grandson means a lot to me. I would lay down my life for him if I had to.”

  The girls didn’t know where to look or what to say. After a long awkward moment, Mosom moved aside and let them leave the bus. Rayna was already down on the third step when she suddenly turned back to face Mosom and said. “But he was really stinky that first day of school.”

  “Yes.” agreed Mosom, “He is really stinky sometimes.” Then he smiled a Rayna and Beyonce.

  They smiled back and ran toward the school with their backpacks bobbing behind them.