Out of the Darkness

My earliest memories of childhood include waking up cold and hungry and going to bed each night the same way. I could never get warm enough, like the cold swept into my bones and kept it on chill. My stomach never felt even half full most of the time. I was born a fraternal twin and I was a bony unattractive child and insecure like many others. I always felt something was missing in my life that never righted itself, like I was incomplete. And I always felt it was my twin brother, Lee Tom’s, absence in my life.
I had no vague notion of who my mother was during my babyhood years. Alice may have already detached herself from me. I may have been a motherless daughter from the beginning. I had to rely on episodic details from certain family members during my baby years.
In the spring of 1951, I was two and a half years old when Alice abandoned me. I was the first child abandoned by her intentionally. Alice took me to the old Teecnospos Trading Post. She told a woman sitting there to watch me while she went inside the store. Alice actually sneaked out the back door of the trading post and left. There I sat on the bench until the same lady realized she wasn’t coming back for me. A sweet lady named Ida Mae rescued me and took me in.
Ida Mae said to me years later, “You were playing in the sand alone and I watched you for some time before I went inside the store to look for your mother. I was told she left a long time ago and I realized she left you there on purpose.”
“I returned home but I went back to the store and you were still there leaning against the building falling asleep.” Laughing, she continued, “You were covered in dirt even on your eyelashes. I took you home and I gave you to your father the next day.” Like she said, my father was located the next day and I was given to him, he quickly acknowledged me as his daughter. Years later my father talked about this and said, “I didn’t believe it at first that she left you at the store and then I was stunned when I saw you.” My father always believed since then that Alice was capable of anything. She began to come and go from her marriage as she pleased even while she was pregnant with her next child.
I refer to my birth mother by her given name, Alice, because that was all I knew to call her. Basically, she lost her rights as a mother to me the day she deliberately abandoned me. And I have to distinguish that non-existent relationship which I will cover further into the story. I never called her anything but Alice. The word “Shi ma” (mother) was too intimate and alien sounding on my tongue and uncomfortable to say. I couldn’t force myself to say it to her. Much less look her in the eye and that is the truth of it.
Alice tried to portray herself a good mother. She would prefer her family to think that her life had been relatively normal. I believe that is far from the truth. Since I never knew her as a mother, I was never able to draw close to her. I never experienced the love, protection and loyalty of a mother.

My father, Cowboy Denet Tsosie, was born in Teecnospos, on Thursday, July 21, 1904. His given Indian name as a young boy was “Dinay-z-tol” after his own father. He could never remember his mother’s name except to say he loved his parents very much. I asked him one day how he got his English name, “Cowboy?” Reflectively, he said, “I used to work for a white man in Colorado, I always wore a big Stetson cowboy hat when I showed up to work on his ranch and my boss would greet me, “Hey! Cowboy! I didn’t know what Cowboy meant he said but it was because of my hat. I spent time lassoing horses and cows on his ranch so the name stuck. This man taught me how to spell and write my new name on my paychecks so I could cash them.”
Later, the Navajo census came around and his English name became “Cowboy Denet Tsosie.” My father’s Indian name became his middle and last name. “Denet Tsosie” Yet he was proud of his name calling himself “Hub boy” My father could not pronounce, Cowboy, no matter how he tried, he ended up pronouncing it ‘hub boy’ each time.
I remember Teecnospos traders, Lloyd and Jay Foutz, watch my father sign his name on his check. And all three of them would huddle and laugh together like it was a secret. I never knew what they laughed about but my father sure did find it funny!
My father stood six feet tall, sturdy and strong with large hands. Of course, being a small child I thought my father was the tallest and strongest man ever. He only knew a few English words and of being illiterate, he explained, “My mother did not want me to go to school, when the government car came for me she would hide me. And she hid me from the Mormons, who she said stole children so I never went to school. Instead I stayed home and helped my parents with the sheep and cattle, but I used to wish I could go to school.”
So many years later he did the same with us, when he saw the Mormons coming near the hogan, we ran and huddled under the blankets until he said to come out. (A Hogan is a rough abode, it is built in a round shape, constructed mostly with mud and logs) Most Navajos lived in a hogan year round, in those days. Rain was rare so we never had to worry about the hogan washing away. I don’t know what we would have done if it rained for days.
Apparently, the experience of his own mother not willing to send him to school had influenced him so that his main agenda for us, his children, was to go to school. Unrelentingly he pushed us to stay in school and finish school. He put much emphasis on education to us. His own lack of formal education narrowed his options for work and it made for a sermon when he served us breakfast. He wanted us to become responsible, working people. Without an education he knew we would not have good jobs. My father wanted the best for us and he knew we could do it.
His own job as a uranium miner left his ears with limited hearing. His hearing was damaged due to the exposure of dynamite blasting in the Carrizo Mountain. He was only able to do menial labor work put out by the chapter house. Even that was not dependable work.
My paternal grandfather, Denet Tsosie, stood over six feet tall. He believed in and practiced the Navajo medicine ways. No doubt he wanted his son, Cowboy, to follow in his footsteps. He was also a silversmith by trade. I didn’t have the pleasure of meeting and knowing my grandparents. My father was 44 years old when I was born.
My birth mother, Alice Clah Cheesy, was born in December of 1925. She hailed from the nearby community of Beclabito, New Mexico. I know virtually nothing about who she was. And like my father’s parents I didn’t have the pleasure of knowing her parents or any important history of who they were except to hear of them through close relatives and stories that changed through the years. My maternal grandfather, Cheesy Clah, avidly practiced the Indian peyote religious ways.