The Bean Trees

by Barbara Kingsolver

  "I thought you seemed like a bewildered parent. Which is perfectly ordinary. Usually the bewilderment wears off by the time the kid gets big enough to eat peanut butter and crackers, but knowing what I do now, I can see you were still in the stage most mothers are in when they first bring them home from the hospital."

  I was embarrassed to think of how Mattie must have seen straight through my act. Driving up here like the original tough cookie in jeans and a red sweater, with my noncommittal answers and smart remarks, acting like two flat tires were all in a day's work and I just happened to have been born with this kid growing out of my hip, that's how cool I was. I hadn't felt all that tough on the inside. The difference was, now I felt twice that old, and too tired to put on the show.

  "You knew, didn't you? I didn't know the first thing about how to take care of her. When you told me that about babies getting dehydrated it scared the living daylights out of me. I realized I had no business just assuming I could take the responsibility for a child's life."

  "There's not a decent mother in the world that hasn't realized that."

  "I'm serious, Mattie."

  She smiled and sipped her coffee. "So am I."

  "So how does a person make a decision that important? Whether or not they're going to do it?"

  "Most people don't decide. They just don't have any choice. I've heard you say yourself that you think the reason most people have kids is because they get pregnant."

  I stared at the coffee grounds that made a ring in the bottom of the white mug. Back in Pittman I'd heard of a fairly well-to-do woman who made her fortune reading tea leaves and chicken bones, which she kept in a bag and would scatter across her kitchen floor like jacks. On the basis of leaves and bones, she would advise people on what to do with their lives. No wonder she was rich. It seems like almost anything is better than having only yourself to blame when you screw things up.

  "Taylor, honey, if you don't mind my saying so I think you're asking the wrong question."

  "How do you mean?"

  "You're asking yourself, Can I give this child the best possible upbringing and keep her out of harm's way her whole life long? The answer is no, you can't. But nobody else can either. Not a state home, that's for sure. For heaven's sake, the best they can do is turn their heads while the kids learn to pick locks and snort hootch, and then try to keep them out of jail. Nobody can protect a child from the world. That's why it's the wrong thing to ask, if you're really trying to make a decision."

  "So what's the right thing to ask?"

  "Do I want to try? Do I think it would be interesting, maybe even enjoyable in the long run, to share my life with this kid and give her my best effort and maybe, when all's said and done, end up with a good friend."

  "I don't think the state of Arizona's looking at it that way."

  "I guarantee you they're not."

  It occurred to me to wonder whether Mattie had ever raised kids of her own, but I was afraid to ask. Lately whenever I'd scratched somebody's surface I'd turned up a ghost story. I made up my mind not to bring it up.

  I called for an appointment to meet with Cynthia alone, without Turtle. In past appointments she had talked about legal claim and state homes and so forth in Turtle's presence. Granted Turtle had been occupied with the new selection of toys offered by the Department of Economic Security, but in my experience she usually got the drift of what was going on, whether or not she appeared to be paying attention. If either I or the state of Arizona was going to instill in this child a sense of security, discussing her future and ownership as though she were an item of commerce wasn't the way to do it. The more I thought about this, the madder I got. But that wasn't what I intended to discuss with Cynthia.

  The appointment was on a Friday afternoon. I started to lose my nerve again when I saw her in her office, her eyes made up with pale green shadows and her hair pulled back in a gold barrette. I don't believe Cynthia was much older than I was, but you put somebody in high-heeled pumps and sit her behind a big desk and age is no longer an issue--she is more important than you are, period.

  "Proof of abandonment is very, very difficult," she was explaining to me. "In this case, probably impossible. But you're right, there are legal alternatives. The cornerstone of an adoption of this type would have to be the written consent of the child's natural parents. And you would need to be named in the document."

  "What if there are no natural parents? If they were to be dead, for instance."

  "Then it would have to come from the nearest living relative, the person who would normally have custody, and a death certificate would have to be presented as well. But the most important thing, as I said, is that the document would name you, specifically, as the new guardian."

  "What kind of document exactly?"

  "The law varies. In some states the mother would have to acknowledge her consent before a judge or a representative of the Department of Economic Security. In others, a simple written statement, notarized and signed before witnesses, is sufficient."

  "What about on an Indian reservation? Do you know that sometimes on Indian reservations they don't give birth or death certificates?"

  Cynthia wasn't the type that liked to be told anything. "I'm aware of that," she said. "In certain cases, exceptions are made."

  Cynthia's office was tiny, really, and her desk wasn't actually all that big. She didn't even have a window in there.

  "Don't you miss knowing what the weather's like?" I asked her.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You don't have a window. I just wondered if you ever kind of lost touch with what was going on outside, being cooped up in here all day with the air conditioning and the fluorescent lighting." It was the first time in my life I'd ever said anything like "fluorescent lighting" out loud.

  "As you recall, I came to your house on the evening that your, that April was assaulted." Cynthia always called Turtle by her more conventional name. "I do my share of field work," she said.

  "Of course."

  "Have I answered your questions, Taylor?"

  "Mostly. Not completely. I'd like to know how a person would go about finding the information you mentioned. About the laws in different states. Like Oklahoma, for instance."

  "I can look that up and get back to you. If you like, I can get you the name of someone in Oklahoma City who could help you formalize the papers."

  This took me by surprise. "You'd be willing to help me out?"

  "Certainly. I'm on your side here, Taylor." She leaned forward and folded her hands on her desk blotter, and I noticed her fingernails were in bad shape. It's possible that Cynthia was a nailbiter.

  "Are you saying that you'd rather see Turtle stay with me than go into a state home?"

  "There has never been any doubt in my mind about that."

  I stood up, walked around the chair, and sat down again. "Excuse my French, but why in hell didn't you say so before now?"

  She blinked her gold-coin eyes. "I thought that ought to be your decision."

  At the end of my hour I was halfway out the door, but then stopped and came back, closing the door behind me. "Thank you," I said.

  "You're welcome."

  "Can I ask you a kind of personal question? It's about the cameo brooch."

  She looked amused. "You can ask," she said.

  "Do you have to shop at the Salvation Army? I mean, is it because of your pay, or do you just like rummaging through other people's family heirlooms?"

  "I'm a trained therapist," Cynthia said, smiling. "I don't answer questions like that."

  Out in the lobby I stopped to chat with one of the secretaries, who asked where my little girl was today. The secretary's name was Jewel. I had spoken with her several times before. She had a son with dyslexia, which she explained was a disease that caused people to see things backwards. "Like the American flag, for instance," she said. "The way he would see it would be that the stars are up in the right-hand corner, instead of the left. But then there's other t
hings where it doesn't matter. Like you take the word WOW, for instance. That's his favorite word, he writes it all over everything. And the word MOM, too."

  Before I had gotten around to leaving the building, another secretary came hustling over and handed me a note, which she said was from Cynthia. It said, "I appreciate your sensitivity in not wishing to discuss April's custody in her presence. I'm sorry if I have been careless."

  There was also a name: Mr. Jonas Wilford Armistead--along with an Oklahoma City address--and underneath, the words "Good luck!"

  All evening, after I'd fed the kids and put them to bed, I paced the house. I couldn't wait for Lou Ann to get home, but then when she did I wasn't sure I wanted to tell her anything yet. I hadn't completely made up my mind.

  "For heaven's sake," Lou Ann said, "you're making me nervous. Either sit down or wash the dishes." I washed the dishes.

  "Whatever's on your mind, I hope you get it settled," she said, and went to the living room to read. She had been reading a novel called Daughter of the Cheyenne Winds, which she claimed she had found in her locker at Red Hot Mama's, and had nothing whatever to do with Angel being on the Montana-Colorado Circuit.

  I followed her into the living room. "You're not mad are you? Because I don't want to talk about it?"

  "Nope."

  "I'll tell you tomorrow. I just have to think some more."

  She didn't look up. "Go think," she said. "Think, and wash the dishes."

  I didn't sleep at all that night. I was getting used to it. I watched Turtle roll from her side to her stomach and back again. Her eyes rolled back and forth under her eyelids, and sometimes her mouth worked too. Whoever she was talking to in her dream, she told them a whole lot more than she'd ever told me. I would have paid good money to be in that dream.

  In the morning I left her asleep and went to Mattie's to finish an alignment and front-and-rear rotation I'd left undone the previous afternoon. The guy was coming in sometime that day to pick it up. I didn't look at a clock but it must have been early when I went in because I was already finished and ready to go home before Mattie came downstairs. I hung around a while longer, making coffee and dusting the shelves and changing the calendar (it was still on May, and this was August). I stared for a long time at the picture of the Aztec man carrying the passed-out woman, thinking about whatever Latin American tragedy it stood for. Thinking, naturally, of Esperanza and Estevan. Though I knew that more often than not it was the other way around, the woman carried the man through the tragedy. The man and the grandma and all the kids.

  Finally Mattie came down. We had a cup of coffee, and we talked.

  Afterward I found Lou Ann and the kids in the park. Turtle was amusing herself by sweeping a patch of dirt with an old hairbrush, presumably Edna's since it was red, and Lou Ann had momentarily put aside Daughter of the Cheyenne Winds to engage in a contest of will with Dwayne Ray. Lou Ann was bound to win, of course.

  "I said no! Give it to me right now. Where'd you get that from?" She grabbed his first, which was headed on an automatic-pilot course for his mouth, and extracted a dirt-covered purple jelly bean. "Where in the heck do you think he got that? My God, Taylor, just imagine if he'd eaten it!"

  Dwayne Ray's mouth remained in the shape of an O for several seconds, still expecting the intercepted jelly bean, and then he started to scream.

  "I used to know this old farm woman that said you've got to eat a peck of dirt before you die," I said.

  Lou Ann picked up Dwayne Ray and bounced him. "Well, maybe if you don't eat a peck of dirt before your first birthday then you won't die so quick, is what I say."

  I sat down on the bench. "Listen, I've made up my mind about something. I'm going to drive Esperanza and Estevan to a safe house in Oklahoma. And while I'm there I'm going to see if I can find any of Turtle's relatives."

  She stared at me. Dwayne Ray came down on her knee with a bump, and was stunned into being quiet.

  "What for?"

  "So they can sign her over to me."

  "Well, what if they won't? What if they see how good she's turning out and decide they want her back?"

  "I don't think they will."

  "But what if they do?"

  "Damn it, Lou Ann, you've been telling me till you were blue in the face to do something, take action, think positive, blah, blah, blah. I'm trying to think positive here."

  "Sorry."

  "What other choice have I got than to go? If I just sit here on my hands, then they take her."

  "I know. You're right."

  "If her relatives want her back, then I'll think of something. We'll cut that fence when we come to it."

  "What if you can't find them? Sorry."

  "I'll find them."

  Lou Ann, uncharacteristically, had overlooked the number-one thing I ought to be worried about. Over the next few days Mattie asked me about fifty times if I was sure I knew what I was doing. She told me that if I got caught I could get five years in prison and a $2,000 fine for each illegal person I was assisting, which in this case would be two. To tell the truth, I couldn't even let these things enter my head.

  But Mattie persisted. "This isn't just hypothetical. It's actually happened before that people got caught."

  "I don't know why you're worried about me," I told her. "Esperanza and Estevan would get a whole lot worse than prison and a fine."

  I did suggest to Mattie, though, that it might be a good idea to fix the ignition on Two-Two, my VW, now that we were setting out across the country again. She looked at me as though I had suggested shooting an elected official.

  "You are not taking that old thing," she said. "You'll take the Lincoln. It's got a lot of room, and it's reliable."

  I was offended. "What's wrong with my car?" I wanted to know.

  "What's wrong with it, child, I could stand here telling you till the sun went down. And just about any one of those things could get you pulled over by a cop. If you think you care so much about Esperanza and Estevan, you'd better start using that head of yours for something besides thinking up smart remarks." Mattie walked off. I'd seen her bordering on mad before, but never at me. Clearly she did not want me to go.

  The night before I was to leave, Virgie Mae Parsons came knocking on the door. It was late but Lou Ann and I were still up, going round and round about what I ought to pack. She thought I should take my very best clothes in case I might have to impress someone with my financial security. She was sure that at the very least I ought to take a pair of stockings, which I would have to borrow from Lou Ann, not being in the habit of owning such things myself. I pointed out to her that it was the middle of summer and I didn't think I'd need to impress anyone that much. We didn't notice a timid little peck at the door until it grew considerably louder. Then Lou Ann was afraid to answer it.

  I looked out the window. "It's Virgie Mae, for heaven's sake," I said, and let her in.

  She stood looking befuddled for a second or two, then pulled herself together and said, "Edna said I ought to come over and get you. We have something the children might like to see, if you don't think it would do too much harm to wake them."

  "What, a surprise?" Lou Ann asked. She was back in less than a minute with Dwayne Ray in one arm and Turtle by the other hand. Turtle trailed grumpily behind, whereas Dwayne Ray chose to remain asleep, his head bobbing like an old stuffed animal's. In the intervening minute I had not extracted any further information from Virgie.

  We followed her out our front door and up the walk to their porch. I could make out Edna sitting in the glider, and in the corner of the porch we saw what looked like a bouquet of silvery-white balloons hanging in the air.

  Flowers.

  A night-blooming cereus, Virgie Mae explained. The flowers open for only one night of the year, and then they are gone.

  It was a huge, sprawling plant with branches that flopped over the porch railing and others that reached nearly as high as the eaves. I had certainly noticed it before, standing in the corner in its c
rumbling pot, flattened and spiny and frankly extremely homely, and it had crossed my mind to wonder why Virgie Mae didn't throw the thing out.

  "I've never seen anything so heavenly," Lou Ann said.

  Enormous blossoms covered the plant from knee level to high above our heads. Turtle advanced on it slowly, walking right up to one of the flowers, which was larger than her face. It hung in the dark air like a magic mirror just inches from her eyes. It occurred to me that she should be warned of the prickles, but if Lou Ann wasn't going to say anything I certainly wasn't. I knelt beside Turtle.

  There was hardly any moon that night, but gradually our eyes were able to take in more and more detail. The flowers themselves were not spiny, but made of some nearly transparent material that looked as though it would shrivel and bruise if you touched it. The petals stood out in starry rays, and in the center of each flower there was a complicated construction of silvery threads shaped like a pair of cupped hands catching moonlight. A fairy boat, ready to be launched into the darkness.

  "Is that?" Turtle wanted to know. She touched it, and it did not shrivel, but only swayed a little on the end of its long green branch.

  "It's a flower, dear," Virgie said.

  Lou Ann said, "She knows that much. She can tell you the name of practically every flower in the Burpee's catalogue, even things that only grow in Florida and Nova Scotia."

  "Cereus," I said. Even its name sounded silvery and mysterious.

  "See us," Turtle repeated.

  Lou Ann nosed into a flower at eye level and reported that it had a smell. She held Dwayne Ray up to it, but he didn't seem especially awake. "I can just barely make it out," she said, "but it's so sweet. Tart, almost, like that lemon candy in a straw that I used to die for when I was a kid. It's just ever so faint."

  "I can smell it from here." Edna spoke from the porch swing.

  "Edna's the one who spots it," Virgie said. "If it was up to me I would never notice to save my life. Because they come out after dark, you see, and I forget to watch for the buds. One year Edna had a head cold and we missed it altogether."

  Lou Ann's eyes were as wide and starry as the flower she stared into. She was as captivated as Turtle.