Crazy Brave: A Memoir

In the epigraph, north is the direction of difficult lessons. It is “white, sharp, and bare” (55), but it also shows the way forward.

After the divorce, many men court Harjo’s mother, and she eventually marries an older man who at first captivates everyone. Then, however, they marry in a ceremony without Harjo, her sister, and her two brothers. They move out of their idyllic childhood home and into a new house, leaving Harjo depressed. The first night she has an intense nightmare, and her new stepfather harshly scolds her, dropping all pretense of his earlier kindness. The next morning he punishes her sister by holding her upside down and whipping her with his belt. Harjo tells her mother, and her stepfather denies it. He hates Harjo from that day forward and threatens to kill them all if Harjo’s mother divorces him.

The stepfather does not permit her mother to leave except to go to work or to buy groceries, and he isolates her from her friends: “He watched and marked her every step, every word” (60). No domestic abuse shelters exist at this time, and as a white man, his word would be accepted over theirs. There is no protection for them. The children are given duties in the house, particularly Harjo and her sister because they are female. Her stepfather only contributes through his share of the house payments. Her mother works long hours at restaurants and pays for food, clothes, and all expenses for the children. She stops singing.

One day they all go to a large community picnic where Harjo’s mother sings a song with the band. It is an important moment for Harjo and her mother, but Harjo knows that they will all pay for it with their stepfather later. He scolds all of them in the car on the way home, and her mother sleeps for a long time.

Harjo considers this period of her life from “late elementary school through adolescence” as a “long silence” (63). She states that three events during this time bewildered her. One is when she accidentally steps on her fish that flipped out of its bowl. She puts it back in the water and prays deeply, at peace. The fish soon revives, and Harjo feels “the presence of the sacred” again (64), yet she must keep doing her chores and soon forgets this feeling again. The second event is when she sees a beautiful yet fear-inducing white light at the foot of her bed that keeps growing. She calls out, the babysitter comes in, and the light disappears. Harjo wishes it would come back, even as she fears it. In the third event, she shares a rare night alone with her mother during a hurricane. A tornado passes their house, leaving them undamaged. Later a “ball of fire” flies around the house from the kitchen, down the hall, and disappears (65). Her stepfather returns just after the grim sign leaves.

Harjo describes herself at age 16 as both attractive and ugly: ugly for missing a front tooth she lost at seven. As she comes into her own body as a young woman, her stepfather pays more attention to her. She is “careful not to be anywhere near him alone” for fear that he will sexually abuse her (69). One day he finds her diary, breaks the lock, and reads it in front of the family, humiliating her. She swears she will never write again.

She makes friends with every different group in school: rich and poor, Indian and non-Indian. She reads all the books she can from the library and buys all the records she can with the money she makes from various jobs. She looks for a vision to free herself from her “domestic prison.” She feels sexual desires and becomes artistic, taking up drawing, photography, and singing.

She continues to experience betrayal and violence. One day she walks with a boy despite a warning in her heart that she calls “the knowing.” The boy attempts to rape her, but she escapes. She is excited to try out for the high school play, but her stepfather beats her and refuses to let her because she has chores to do. One day she goes with friends to a party outside the city and gets drunk. Her friends leave her there, and she finds a ride home, “[paying] for it without money” (76). She writes, “I left part of myself behind” (76). Afterward she begins drinking intermittently to escape the horrors of her life.

She grows frustrated with the racist and patriarchal use of the Bible by the church. She leaves the church altogether when the preacher acts racist toward three dark-skinned Mexican American girls during a sermon and throws them out. At school, she quits band when the teacher does not permit her to learn saxophone because she is a girl.

Her stepfather begins rubbing her back perversely after her mother leaves for work, and one day the children watch him make her mother play Russian roulette with a gun. Her stepfather plans to send Harjo to a fundamentalist Christian school, and she plans to run away to San Francisco during the hippie movement. Instead she applies to an Indian art high school in Santa Fe, the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), and is accepted.

At IAIA, she meets others with similar stories to hers and is free to learn and thrive. Together, the students rediscover their Native American cultural backgrounds and incorporate them into their art. Racial tensions and past problems lead some students to act out by damaging faculty cars, tattooing themselves, or cutting themselves. Harjo rediscovers art and storytelling as her outlet to cope with past pain.

One day she is called into the office of the dorm master, Mrs. Wilhelm, who shows Harjo a letter from her stepfather saying that Harjo is problematic and a thief and should not be trusted. Mrs. Wilhelm tears the letter and throws it in the trash. Harjo is stunned to be believed over the word of a white man. She has a vision of an old man who takes her to a stone quarry on the moon. From there she watches her father kissing a blond woman at a ballroom while her mother waits for him at home in front of the television, caring for the children.

Harjo recalls stories and anecdotes of meeting new friends, running from the dorm police at night after being caught drinking, and flirting with boys. She befriends a flirtatious girl named Lupita who claims to be from Venus and is escaping a father who has been sexually abusing her since she was 10. Lupita and Harjo are caught drinking one night, and Mrs. Wilhelm gives them a month of restriction instead of expelling them.