The Day I Sat with Jesus on the Sundeck and a Wind Came Up and Blew My Kimono Open and He Saw My Breasts

When she was 70, Edmonton, Alberta author Gloria Sawai collected the stories representing a lifetime of work into a spare and magical volume called A Song for Nettie Johnson that holds the beauty of the prairie and the pious, poor, dark, and delightful people who live there "on the margins" within its pages. The book won the Governor General's Literary Award in 2002.

Sawai likes the symbolism of stone and grace. Nora Foster Stovel said that the stone suits the "flinty side" of the work and the Governor General's Award said, "The power of grace illuminates her world." Sawai's spartan, plain-spoken use of language may remind some readers of Plainsong by Kent Haruf.

The opening novella from which the collection gets its title, "A Song for Nettie Johnson," begins: From her chair at the edge of the quarry she looks down at the the bottom of the pit--as wide and as long as a garden, as big as a front yard with grass, or the sunny porch of a white mansion far away.

And later, when describing the nearby town: If you were a bird, a large bird say, or better yet an angel, a young angel sent from the north of heaven, and if you were flying south on this day, over the town of Stone Creek, and if your muscles were strong and the sinews of your wings sturdy so you could balance above the town, resisting the winds that could blow you past Regina into Manitoba, and if you were looking down as you paused in your flight, you would see below you a huddle of rugged buildings beside slim and dusty roads.

I find the work stunning, and appreciate its confluence of magic and the natural world. Stovel summarizes the stories well: "Sawai's dedication of A Song for Nettie Johnson to her parents, brothers, and children suggests the core of kinship in this collection. The power and the pain of family, of blood relations, challenge and sustain the acute sensibility of the girl-child as she is initiated into the mysteries of the adult world in such sensitive stories as 'The Ground You Stand On' and 'Hosea's Children.' The cover image, 'Woman Dancing in Meadow' by Gary Isaacs, portrays a woman rooted to the earth but reaching for the sky--an apt symbol for the central consciousness of these stories."

The final story in the book, "The Day I Sat with Jesus on the Sundeck and a Wind Came Up and Blew My Kimono Open and He Saw My Breasts." previously appeared in twelve anthologies. It's not surprising. The title gets one's attention. It has been called blasphemous, and that's nonsense that misses the point and the message and the transcendence of the events of a windy day when Jesus stopped by for a visit.

Speaking of the clarity the world brings to a person during extraordinary events, the protagonist says, You can imagine how distinctly I remember the day Jesus of Nazareth, in person, climbed the hill in our backyard to our house, then up the outside stairs to the sundeck where I was sitting. And how he stayed with me for awhile. You can surely understand how clearly those details rest in my memory.

How matter-of-fact Sawai is in writing about His arrival: First he was a little bump on the far, far-off prairie. Then he was a mole way beyond the quarry. Then a larger animal, a dog, perhaps, moving out there through the grass. Nearing the quarry, he became a person. No doubt about that. A woman, perhaps, still in her bathrobe. But edging out from the rocks, through the weeds, toward the hill, he was clear to me. I knew who he was. I knew that just as I knew the sun was shining.

Reading "A Song for Nettie Johnson" and "Oh Wild Flock, Oh Crimson Sky" and "The Dolphins" and "The Day I Sat with Jesus on the Sundeck and a Wind Came Up and Blew My Kimono Open and He Saw My Breasts" simultaneously anchors a person to the earth as surely as stone while setting him free into the sky as surely as wind and angels.


--Malcolm