“Where you been, Char?,” the Cherokee woman asked. “Penjamo” (a Yaqui village) he told her while closing the front door to the nighttime air. I was on the floor in the living room playing with the baby chicks he just bought us. “We gonna make chickens!” I said to myself as I smiled to myself … in my head. In the backyard of the house in Paradise Valley on the corner of Friese Drive, we were “gonna make chickens,” the Cherokee woman told us.
“I’m hungry,” I told him. He walked to the empty refrigerator. Opening the freezer door, he looked down on the frozen plastic container of elk stew some people gave to us. He looked down at me as I stood there with him. He placed the elk stew in a pot and made it warm.
The Cherokee woman walked into the kitchen. “Good, we gonna eat,” she said. She asked him if brother could eat, too. He nodded, “yes.” They all came to the table because they were hungry, too. “It’s good,” he said to me as I tasted the too salty elk stew. “Everybody eat your food,” the Cherokee woman said to all of us.
I saw “pictures” in my head. “Pictures” of the Yaqui Deer Dancer. “Pictures” of the hunt. “Pictures” of people eating The Deer. “Pictures” of a celebration of the hunt because it brought food to hungry people. He saw these “pictures” too – in his head. This is my Blood.
Julie C. Abril
Bayfield