Daystar Seed In The Wind

1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-61792-284-8
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 600 Seiten

Plains Cree tribal and modern life fiction

Autoren/Hrsg.

Daystar

Leseproben

Chapter 1:  The Power of Zero       It was snowing in them big fluffy flakes at Ermineskin Indian Residential School in the middle of November 1963. The snow was coming down in huge, thick, white flakes in a sunless gray afternoon, like flakes of laundry soap being poured into a plain gray enamel pail. Phyllistine thought to herself, “Geez, even the snow is big and white!”  And then she thought of this saying, “pure as the driven snow.” Why did white people get all the breaks in life? Did God give them all these breaks? Was God really that unjust? She reasoned, “He couldn’t be that unjust…why just look at me…I look like some Injun princess outta some Old West postcard. I am beautiful…even if it’s my opinion…it’s only my opinion that counts in my life anyway. What more in life do I want? I got long, beautiful, shiny, black hair past my waist, I got the face and body of a high fashion model from wunna them cover girl ads and the brains of a UN Secretary…what more does I wants outta life, as my dad would say with his University of Reader’s Digest degree of self learning?   Her dad didn’t really look like any of the movie stars in her magazines, but she decided that he had to look like Sitting Bull even though she had never seen a picture of Sitting Bull. To her, that was better than looking like the King of England…pictures of whom she had seen. Her mom looked like a someone who had been a princess two centuries ago. She reminded Phyllistine of a preserved Egyptian mummie. Phyllistine just knew that she was never going to be overweight or have white hair or have a wrinkled face-off. Oh, Mother! Where did your beauty go? Why, to the wrinkle bin, of course!   It was the long recess and the drabness of life after lunch hour and some of the kids were throwing snowballs in the schoolyard just for something to do on a do-nothing kind of a day.  Phyllistine and her friend, Charlene, were standing at the junior high school doorway trying too hard to look as cool as possible without looking cold (to the guys because no one else mattered).   Phyllistine and Charlene called each other Missus. They were each fourteen whole years old and they both knew everything there was to know in the whole world...needless to say, (their world was so small). It consisted of Injun reservation life in Hobbema, Alberta, Canada and that was it. It was unexciting poverty, irrelevant statistics and an extremely boring lifestyle. One day was as sad and as unexciting as the next…They were so boringly poor, or such poor bores. She often thought of being in the world of Life Magazine, but she could only daydream about it because she couldn’t even afford to buy the magazine, let alone live the life that was inside. She wondered what it would be like to live in a house like that, to drive a car like that, to wear clothes like that. Her real world was not the magazine world, though. She had to stick to the facts of life, to the ragazines of Injun reservation life.   But something had to keep her going. Phyllistine was a knock-out and she knew it, and what's worse, she acted like she knew it. Missus, herself,  wasn’t too awful bad, as she had once described herself.  They each had a Number 7 cigarette to puff on in the freezing November air, thanks to Phyllistine, who always brought all the cigarettes to school.  She always remembered to steal off her mom or her dad or her brother or her sister or her Kokum.  Somebody always managed to have cigarettes and they wouldn’t miss a couple uvvum, especially if Phyllistine was a clever thief and stole only one here and there. They wouldn’t miss ‘em. She never saw any of them counting their cigarettes and taking smokes inventory. No chance of getting caught if they couldn’t even remember how many cigarettes they smoked in one day! She was safe from stolen cigarettes suspicion. Yyyyep, she off the suspects list because she wasn’t even on it in the first place! She felt smug about her place in life.   Missus’ mom didn’t smoke and her dad only smoked when he was drunk. Probly was too drunk to figure out if it was the alcohol or the cigarettes that made him sick. Maybe it was both, but Phyllistine couldn’t care less. After all, his drinking wasn’t her problem.   This kind of smoking in the snowy weather always made Phyllistine kinda sick to her stomach but she pretended that it didn’t  bother her…she was cool…and pretending not to be ghastly ill was a part of being cool…she guessed.   Deep down inside, she also knew that it made her breath smell pretty horrible…like  an extremely stale cigarette mixed with plaque and old food particles in a smelly cocktail…quite the mixture…but she was cool, so she smiled through it all.  But, man, she wanted to throw up! This kind of pretending  to be cool took up a lot of energy and a lot of good health, she noticed. She never realized that being cool was ever gonna be this hard. It wasn't exactly easy to pretend to be not getting sick when you were getting sick and you wanted to puke all over the place...but not right in front of all these people! Not in front of all her friends and all those enemies that she had to show off in front of. What would they think of her? That she was a pukey punk and not a cool puffer? She was a beautiful girl being all cool and stuff, just puffing away in the school yard.   Then she saw the dreamboat of the school, Gabriel, come walking over towards where her and Missus were standing  He was walking with two girls and they were all teasing each other by gently pushing and shoving and laughing all the while.  Then he stopped in front of Phyllistine.  He squished a snowball in her face without warning.   “Hey, what didja do that for?” she falsely complained.  Her heart was actually racing because she had never talked to him before in her life and he looked so beautiful up close. She daydreamed about talking to this dreamboat so many times in her life that she had an electric shock moment. She felt millions of tiny little electricity bumps all over…and it didn’t seem like they were all coming from the cold weather. Man, she left corny, even though she knew that she was what the schoolkids called a knockout, but her self-image was a little low on gas, because he was the knockout of the male world and he took her breath away.   She lied to herself, it was such an easy thing to do these days. If she could lie to herself successfully, then she could lie to anyone successfully.  It made sense to her.  She told herself that she was running outta breath because it was too damn cold outside. She couldn’t really explain away her beating heart so easily though. Snowy weather doesn’t exactly cause heart beats like the one she was having right now! Man, she was having herself a secret heart attack. She was desperately hoping that he wouldn't hear her heart beating for him, it was so goddamn loud. That would definitely not be cool! Her heart was racing microphone loud and that was not cool.   “Just to rub off  some of your eye make up!” he teased with a big smile.   “Well, ain’t you the pompous make-up artist!” she shouted, trying her darnest to hide her trembling voice just so she could continue to sound ‘cool’. Even she knew that a shaky voice was not cool, especially in the great presence of the school dreamboat. He even had a dreamboat voice and a dreamboat smile…and get a grip…get yourself outta the gutter!   “How could I be a make-up artist when I think you look so much better without make-up…that’s  why I rubbed it all off!” he replied smugly. “Wanna go for a walk?”  He started to walk away without even waiting for her to answer, he was used to being followed by a dozen girls. He just kept on smiling at her…taking her with him with his smile. He knew she would follow, like they all did.   Well, she’d teach this son-of-a-pompous-so-and-so some manners.  Man, she could not believe how pompous he was!  “No thanks,”  she false-proudly said. “I hafta finish my cigarette. I wouldn’t wanna waste what I have left just to waste my time doing what every other girl does.”   “Go ahead. Be my guest. Have your cigarette. Have your bad breath.  Maybe you could breathe on Miss Eggbert in class and knock her out flat.  That way, classes would be cancelled for the afternoon and everyone would be thanking you for the huge favor.”  He mockingly laughed and went way out into the schoolyard.    Phyllistine stood there feeling stupid and ridiculed and rejected and secretly fuming but she was ‘cool’.  Her face did not show any of these feelings.  She only knew how to show open defiance…real good.  She hoped that he would turn around to check on her dejection.  He did. She seized the opportunity. She took a huge drag off her cigarette and blew the smoke ever-so-obviously his way.  He shook his head and smiled and turned around to keep walking. He had to show her that he wasn’t the least bit dejected that she would rather...