“I want to be an Indian.”
Daddy slapped his knee and howled with laughter. Mama worked hard not to smile and took a sip of coffee.
“Girl, you’re already an Indian,” Daddy said, still laughing and wiping his eyes.
I slumped to the floor. “Not that kind of Indian,” I moaned. “An Indian like Tonto. He wears Indian clothing with moccasins. He even has a beautiful paint pony. In fact, all the Indians on TV have horses.”
Daddy smiled, motioning me to him. “If we were that kind of Indian, where would we put all our horses? In our tiny backyard?”
I folded my arms.
“Horses need a lot of land, sweetie. Maybe when you’re older, you can buy a horse. Though for the life of me, I don’t know where you would put it in Los Angeles.”
“When I’m older, I plan to go back home,” I muttered. “Then I’ll have all the land I need.”
“We’ll see.”
“Can we buy a TV, Daddy?” Peewee asked.
“Yeah, and you could watch The Lone Ranger to see what I’m talking about!” I added.
“Televisions cost a lot of money,” Mama said. “Maybe one day.”
◉ ◉ ◉
That “one day” came sooner than I thought. A couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, Daddy carried home a television set.
“I bought it from this guy for fifteen dollars,” he said. He carefully placed it in the corner of the living room and maneuvered the set like he was going to turn it on. “I plan on fixing it.”
“It doesn’t work? That’s a lot of money for something that doesn’t work,” said Mama.
“Trust me, I’ll get it to work.”
Mama, Chich, Peewee, and I watched him as he traveled from the living room into the tiny laundry room and brought back his prized toolbox that Tele-Autograph had given him. For the rest of that evening, Daddy scattered the television’s guts all over the wooden floor. He carefully dusted off each tube and studied each circuit board.
“You are going to clean everything up when you’re done, aren’t you?” Mama asked as Daddy tested another tube.
“Don’t worry, Cate,” he said.
Mama checked each morning to make sure Daddy hadn’t left any television parts on the floor. It seemed he buried his head deep inside the body of the set, working on it any minute he had free.
I didn’t know if Daddy could make that TV work. But I knew I wanted to watch Jay Silverheels play Tonto if he did!
19 The Jacket
While Daddy tinkered with the television, Chich kept me busy helping her with a sewing project.
Mrs. Hernández had rushed over one evening with a size forty-two man’s jacket. “Philip’s confirmation at St. John’s is scheduled just before Thanksgiving. We don’t have money to buy him a new jacket, but I found this beautiful black wool one at the secondhand store,” she explained. “Would you be able to make this a little smaller? I know it’s short notice. I understand if you can’t do it.”
Everyone on the street knew Chich sewed. Since we moved to 58th Place, she had made a dress for Addie, curtains for Mrs. Gartner, the elderly German woman across the street, and repaired a zipper on Miss Elsie’s blue linen dress. Our living room was also looking better each month. Beautiful new curtains hung on our windows.
“I will do my best,” she said, looking over the jacket. “I need to measure Philip first.”
Mrs. Hernández returned with Philip, and Chich took his measurements. After they left, she went into the kitchen to get a few paper grocery bags to make a pattern.
It had been a while since I offered to help Chich with a sewing project, and I missed it. “Can I help with the jacket, Chich?”
She smiled. “Of course, khwiʔim.” She put me to work carefully ripping out the seams that held the jacket together while she drew a boy’s jacket pattern on paper grocery bags. Pieces of brown paper lay everywhere.
“Bring those old jacket pieces,” she said, “and let’s start pinning the pattern on them.”
I watched her first. She placed the pattern on the fabric, pinning it down. I then took one of the sleeves and placed the pattern and the pins just as Chich had. Once all the pattern pieces were pinned, we took turns using the scissors to carefully cut the excess material away from the pattern.
“Where did you learn to sew?” I asked.
My mother taught me. She had learned to sew when she and the other kids from the reservation were forced to go to boarding school. Said it was the only thing she enjoyed there. The schoolteachers wouldn’t allow the children to speak Umpqua or sing our songs. She realized that no one bothered her when she spent hours at the sewing machine, so she would hum the melodies to our songs and sing them in her head. She told herself our stories in Umpqua over and over again, so she wouldn’t forget. It helped her feel connected to home because she rarely got to visit her family.
Next, Chich stitched together the newly trimmed black wool fabric pieces with her Singer sewing machine. Then it was time to make the lining.
She showed me how to take the same pattern pieces and make them smaller. We placed them on the blue-striped satin fabric and pinned and cut those as well.
This time she had me take a few turns sitting down at the sewing machine to sew some pieces. Together we sewed up the blue-striped lining.
I loved sitting next to Chich each night, working away on Philip’s jacket. Like her mother, she’d be humming or singing songs in our language from back home.
The night before we were to give the jacket to Mrs. Hernández, Chich guided me as I hand-stitched the lining inside it. “Make sure to hide your stitches so they don’t show,” she said, taking time to review my work when I got lost in my thoughts. “Good, very good.”
When Mrs. Hernández came back with Philip, Chich brought out the jacket.
Mrs.
