Written by Chee Brossy
Photo by Jason S. Ordaz
Issue 57.2 came out this week and to celebrate we’re sharing this Story Behind the Story for Chee Brossy’s excellent piece “Movin’ It”, including an excerpt from the story. Be sure to get your issue of 57.2 to read the full story. You can also subscribe , so you’ll never miss an issue!
The first thing that came to me, and how I began “Movin’ It” originally, was the image of a man sitting in his two-story house, alone, in front of the TV, looking at his reflection in the empty screen. Pictures of his family are on the wall, but he is alone. He has been through some ordeal and lost much and is at a point where he has to do something about it. That or sink.
There are these races, or fun-runs you might call them, that happen every summer in the Navajo Nation, called the Just Move It series. Almost every community holds one, so there are 50 or more. Originally they were started in the late 90s by the Navajo government’s health division to inspire a healthier lifestyle in the nation, since diabetes was becoming a problem. But as the years have gone on, the communities have really embraced the series, making it their own, and some people spend their summers going from race to race across the reservation. But in our story, since he doesn’t run in those circles, Willis has never heard of it, and the Movin’ It that he hears of becomes a way to get out of the house.
In rewriting and after feedback from mentors and other writers I trusted, it became clear that I couldn’t just plop the reader down in front of the blank TV with Willis—there had to be more of the story to get us to that moment. And so I began to find and fill in the characters of Rhonda and Ashkee. Like Ashkee, someone I knew really had joined up a few days before the Twin Towers fell. The issues that the characters face, of how to come back from terrible things—war, disease, heartbreak, loss of faith—are things that we all face. Sometimes they swallow us, and sometimes we climb back out. Hopefully with a joke or two to sling at our buddies.
Excerpt from “Movin’ It”
The plants were something different. She was going to give them to the medicine man as down payment. As long as I’d known her Rhonda had never gone to get plants for a ceremony. Ashkee had just got back from the war and Rhonda wanted to have a sing. When she told me where she was going with the plastic bag I said, “Do you even know what you’re doing?”
I was in my sweats boiling some tea when Rhonda came in and sat at the kitchen table. She was breathing hard. Green and yellow plants stuck out of the top of her plastic bag and a stick poked through the bottom. She put her elbows on the table and touched her forehead. She had her sleeves rolled up the way she did when she was working.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” I asked. I was feeling sorry for what I said before. I knew she was annoyed at me with her hand on her forehead.
“I’m fine,” she said, waving her hand. But it was a little too slow. Like for show. Maybe she was playing.
“Did you see a coyote? I think I saw a coyote.” I smiled. I couldn’t help it. “Because I didn’t see that skin hanging in the shed. I figured you put it on to go hunting. Better to sniff out those herbs.” I giggled—it was my old joke. I could already feel her turning to me all disgusted, then she would get that twinkle in her eye, poke me in the ribs, shoo me away and say, “You’re just the worst. You’re the coyote. You old Coyote Man.”
But she didn’t say anything. The corners of her mouth were shaky. She touched her forehead again and said, “I don’t feel right.”
“Too much Kool-Aid?” I wanted one more funny moment. Just one more. But my heart was already beating fast. “Because sometimes that means too much sugar. Or is it not enough? I forget.”
Rhonda closed her eyes and tipped sideways. My feet slipped on the floor but I had just enough to catch her shoulder with my chest before she hit the floor.
Chee Brossy is Diné from Red Mesa and Wheatfields, Arizona. He received his MFA
from the Institute of American Indian Arts where he was an editor of the journal Mud
City. His writing has appeared in Denver Quarterly, Prose Magazine, Red Ink Magazine
and elsewhere. He has taught English and creative writing at the middle school, high
school and college level and has served as an artist in the schools in and around Santa Fe.
He has also worked as a staff reporter for the Navajo Times. He lives in Santa Fe. This
story is from his fiction manuscript Not That Way.