2011 Student Writing Awards Booklet - Santa Fe Community College

nun that takes in only the unwanted of the unwanted, or a white lawyer
named Nancy whom I thought would act like all the other social worker,
doctor, or staff types
A pale woman, in a plain-blue suit, sat on a plastic chair in the
middle of a cold, gray, green-bluish room of an adolescent unit of the
Alaska Psychiatric Institute.
“What do you want” Nancy asked me.
“I never want to go back,” I said in a very serious tone.
“Then it shall be,” she responded gently. I never had to appear in
the courtrooms, to face my parents or look them in the eye. Nancy always
began and ended our meeting sessions with a hug.Why would this
stranger, lawyer-type woman want to hug me She always would tell me,“I
want you to go to college.” I didn’t even know what college was. As Native
students, we were separated from the “whites.” It was thought that because
we came from the villages or assumed that we came from the villages that
we couldn’t speak English “good” enough to go to college. Later in life, I
understood that Nancy was a child’s advocate lawyer/or a guardian adlitem.
She was one of the first people to advocate successfully on my behalf
to get me out of a very dangerous situation. Nancy did not act like what I
thought she would act like and hugs were so rare in that hospital.
After leaving the hospital, I went to meet Sister Arlene Boyd, the
director of McCauley Manor. Prior to meeting Sister Arlene, I imagined
that nuns were like those nuns depicted in “Sounds of Music,” nice, gentle,
singing, and kind.The intake process was a chance for Sister Arlene to
assess if there was any last chance for me to live with my family.The temperature
in the room shifted as a gray, claustrophobic fog settled in over my
mom spewing hot lava rocks, hateful words blurred out in my memory.
Sister Arlene, pinkish-red in the face, invisible smoke fuming out her ears
and mouth, rose and shouted,“Leave and don’t you ever come back here!”
My parents got up to leave. Seaweed from the shore got tangled up inside
my chest and throat.The fog has lifted and the temperature in the room
settled back down. Next, I received a tour of the house.
Standing in the middle of a large silver-like kitchen, I asked,“May
I have a glass of milk.”
“You don’t have to ask for milk here,” Sister Arlene responded,
“This is your house,You live here now!”
How could a “white” lawyer or a Catholic nun be kind to someone
they didn’t even know How could these two women have such soft
ocean waves in such contrast to spewing, red-hot lava rocks Even though
I had been bombarded with racism and prejudices, and even though I
assumed the racisms and prejudices based on ideas of differences of how
white (larlurmakens) and Yupiks were, these two women showed me that
“Kindness is strange, but never long a stranger.” Even though I may have
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