Curse of "Shauneta"

Working until ten at night I often wasn't home until eleven. On one particular night, I had been shopping after work and found a glass cutting board with a beautifully painted rooster on it. Just my neighbor Patty's style! I wanted her to be surprised in the morning and find it on her porch. We lived in Orangevale California it is a country town outside of Sacramento. There were no porch lights between my home and hers, the thing I feared walking to her place was some drunk or spraining my ankle in a pot hole.

The country was safer than most parts of the city, it was more beautiful too, there were hawks, a few coyotes and huge oaks that were hundreds of years old, and this had occasionally led me to wonder what this land was like when it belonged to the Native Americans, before the Spanish and the US arrived. That night fearing an addict, I let my baby-dog out to walk with me. Her name was Jelly Bean and she was a protective German Shepard, a good companion and protector. About 10 feet from the porch I heard a man say "shauneta" over my left shoulder. He sounded like a mere yard from me, my adrenaline had started pumping and I was getting goose bumps. My dog was sniffing some flowers and seemed to be ignoring the situation.

I slowly turned to meet this person, my lungs filling with air ready to scream and wake everyone if I had to. No one was there! My dog was still enjoying the garden. I am a logical person and I tried to figure out where the voice had came from, it was a voice that had no organic source, but had a crystal clear tone. I had no idea what this word meant, do you? Deep in my bones I felt like I had just intruded on someone and this person was upset at me. I quickly ran to the porch tossed my gift there and called to Jelly Bean and we ran back home.

I shut the door and every window to keep the night breezes out. I knew it was a ghost. My dog came over to me and I petted her for a long, long time. The next morning I left early to school and researched what that word meant, I just couldn't find any definition. That is when everything I loved began to get destroyed off piece by piece, but all within three months of that night.

First, I was made to leave my well paying job. Second, my beloved, and up to that point healthy, dog got very sick. The vet said nothing could be done for her. Three weeks later she died of a stomach tumor. Third my cars transmission blew up. School was thirty miles away and I had to drop out. Lastly, my beloved favorite aunt Honey-Jo called me, saying the doctors gave her only two weeks to live. She was a fit and healthy non smoking 74 year old woman. She had lung cancer. Honey-Jo in many ways had been closer to me than my parents. I went to visit her and she passed on.

All of these things happening concurrently were excruciating. This is more than coincidence, this strange voice and then terrible occurrences. Was the voice a Native-American victim of a long ago genocide taking revenge? I guess I don't need to ask that I feel the answer is yes. If you know what "shauneta" means please let me know, this is a mystery so important to me!