DAXKA

I got in trouble a lot as a kid because I was always daydreaming.

Walking home from school I'd get sidetracked, come home late, and more than once I almost got hit by a car. At school I daydreamed when I was supposed to be doing work. I doodled while I dreamed — not drawing, I was terrible at that, mostly scribbling and words that made no sense. As I dreamed, the world got quiet around me. And my inside world got louder.

I learned ball in 5th grade. I had talent and I was timid. I wouldn't take the ball to the net and I drove my coach crazy. I was the best player on that team and I still wouldn't take the shot — I'd hand it off to a teammate. Afraid to take the shot. Mr. Shugarts was my coach then and I adored him — my favorite teacher. I worked hard for him. I think he noticed. I was more confident in 5th grade than I would be for a long time.

Fifth grade is also when the bullying started. I grew tall and chubby with crooked teeth, and I wore homemade clothes — scratchy pull-on polyester in every color, the kind grandmothers wear. Fifth to seventh went downhill.

7th grade I'm in a much bigger school. I have one friend, Beth, who I grew up with in church, and she doesn't play sports. I have no clique. Nothing has changed — my shoes are too small, my socks don't match. Homely with braces and short hair.

They're cutting people, not just picking starters. It's intimidating and humiliating. I'm waiting to get cut.

I sit in the gym waiting for our first game, at the end of the line against the wall. Quiet, watching the other girls crowd together, smiling and joking in their clique — not mean, exactly. Just closed. I'm not in the Marsha Brady club, or Jan. I pull at my socks. My feet hurt.

And the world goes quiet, the same way it does when I daydream. Like wearing ear muffs, staring at nothing.

Then I hear it. My name. I look up thinking no, I heard wrong. Coach Slotemaker is standing over me. “Get up, Iverson. You're starting the game.”

My jaw drops. I struggle to stand. The laughing has stopped. The girls move aside quietly to make room in the huddle, as surprised as I am.

I swallow hard and hope I'll take the shot this time, because he picked me. That means something, and I want to make him right.

It wasn't my confidence or enthusiasm. Something moved him.

Mr. Slotemaker was my history teacher too. Later that year, when a family history assignment was hard for me, he asked me to write about Native Americans instead, and gave me the book to do it. He told me he respected American Indian cultures and people very much. That meant a lot to me.

He opened a door to something I found out I was good at. He saw it. Made me want to practice. Develop some pride in myself.

One coach was at the beginning of that phase. The other was at the end.

It rolled into the next years. The bullying stopped. I started standing taller — outgrew the chubbiness and my teeth straightened out.

When I write, I'm in complete tunnel vision. I block out sound. I don't hear my husband call my name. I'll shove my phone in a drawer if it buzzes. I get so far into my head, seeing things, trying to feel and get that emotion onto the page. Time flies like an F-16. I still neglect things.

Except now it pays off.

Lots of Native kids love basketball. Rez ball, coed ball, adult leagues — seniors even. It's huge in Indian country. Some become big college stars. Few go on to the WNBA.

When I sat down to write these verticals I'd been watching the WNBA games, and it got me thinking about why.

So I dreamt up Daxka. I thought if all those girls could time travel back to their great-great-great-grandmothers' day and witness and feel the hard core strength they come from, that might transport into their confidence on the court.

I gave her the thing I didn't have, which was a happy ending. A connection to her past she could see in her daydreams. A fight on the beach with a warring clan. A test of her physical and spiritual strength. Knocked out with a slave club. Slitting the throat of her attacker with a dagger. Thrown into the bottom of a canoe and dropped at the feet of the chief of her rivals.

Her hot head and smart mouth got her there. Now can it get her out?

I love thinking that the people of our past probably weren't much different in how they felt than we are. Just different surroundings.

I didn't know anything about my culture at that age. It took me decades to figure it out, and I gave it to her.

If I'd known that history — my history — I think it might have changed my life. I'll never know. But that's why I write characters like her.

They say write the stories you wish existed when you needed them. Daxka's is that for me.