Buffalo Mesa Mummy

Chapter 8

“Shiyaazh, can you not sleep?” Mrs. Shantos asked, using the same Navajo word for “son” that she used with Charlie. She had wrapped herself in a handmade Navajo blanket. The blanket had been a wedding present to her from her mother’s best friend when she and Jack had wed and was worth a great deal of money.

Peter turned and smiled at her, motioning for her to join him on the swing. Mrs. Shantos took a seat and remained silent for a long time while they both stared at the crystal clear starry sky.

“You still miss her a lot.” Mrs. Shantos stated.

Peter kept looking at the stars and then softly said, “Every day. Sometimes times I wake up in the morning and think I hear her in the kitchen, humming one of the dumb tunes she would get in her head.”

“Peter, I know I have said this before, but understand it is true. Jack and I consider you as one of our children. We love you as much as we do Charlie or Maria. It is impossible for someone to take the place of a mother and that is not what I mean.” Mrs. Shantos said as she softly touched Peter on the shoulder.

Peter had tears in his eyes and he tried to steady his voice before he answered, “One of the things I regret the most about my mother not being here is that she didn’t get a chance to know all of you. Dad told me the other day that mom would have loved this place.”

“I understand just a little how it feels to lose a parent, or I should say a whole family for that fact.” Mrs. Shantos spoke with a tear in her own eye.

“What happened?” Peter asked, turning sideways and putting his feet up with his back to the end of the swing so he could look directly at Mrs. Shantos.

“My mother was a nurse, as you know, in New York City when she decided to come out to New Mexico for the summer and work with the Navajo Reservation doctor. It was part of some volunteer program and my mother was one of those people that was always looking for ways to help others.” Mrs. Shantos began.

“Is that why you decided to become a nurse?” Peter asked.

“Partially,” She said with a smile. “It has come in handy I will admit, especially since you arrived in town. You do seem to need a lot of patching up.” 

“Anyway, my mother decided to stay on after the summer.” Mrs. Shantos continued, “She was really taken with the place, and then there was my father, Aditsan Walker. Mother said his name means “listener”, and it fit him. He would sit for hours and listen to my mother talk about New York and all the things there were to do there. Then Father would take her hand and walk out into the open and point to the sky. He would ask her, “Does New York have this sky?”

“What would she say?” Peter asked.

“What could she say? Of course New York had the same sky, but you couldn’t see all the stars or the vastness of it all like you can here. Father would say he could never live where he could not see the Navajo sky. My mother’s family could not understand why she wanted to stay out “there with those people” as they called them. When they got the news that my mother was going to marry a Navajo medicine man it was not a pretty thing. First they begged her not to do it and then they threatened to disown her if she went through with it.” Mrs. Shantos had gotten to her feet and was now pacing the porch as she told the story.

“Did they, I mean disown her for marrying a Navajo?” Peter asked with disbelief.

“Yes, Peter they did. They would not talk to her on the phone or write her or have anything to do with her at all. In fact when I was born a couple years later she sent a birth announcement to her parents and they returned it unopened.” She answered.