Gardens in the Dunes

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  The tenth and last card represented the future, the outcome of the present enterprise, and here was La Sandia, the fat ripe Watermelon; its sliced, succulent red flesh meant success, success! The dicho said, “La barriga que Juan tenía, era empacho de sandia”—”Juan’s belly is glutted with watermelon.” Only the best conditions produced big ripe melons or permitted Juan to gorge himself—this card told her the conditions were perfect. Clearly it was time to take the dog circus to perform at the construction camp.

  Despite the noise of the camp, and his father’s fear, the little black grandfather was growing. Now Sister teased him and called him Little Black Spider because his legs and arms seemed longer as he grew. He still fretted over the noise unless she held him and sang louder than the outside noise. Hour after hour she sang, and when she ran out of songs she sang sounds that were parts of words—Sand Lizard, Spanish, and English nonsense words seemed to calm him and drown out the noise best.

  She bundled him onto her back, secured with her white cotton shawl, and took him for a walk away from the tents. As the earth was heaped higher across the riverbed, the dam resembled more and more one of the monster stories Maytha and Vedna learned from their father. This monster ate up all living things up and down the poor river. Upriver, the backwaters flooded the cottonwoods and willows; now they were beginning to die. The watercress and delicate mosses that used to fringe the river’s edge were submerged, and the silver green minnows disappeared. She sat at the river’s edge for hours and watched the slow currents move through the tall reeds and mosses while the little one enjoyed a deep sleep. She thought about Indigo and Mama then, and about the Messiah and the dancers. She was beginning to think they would not see one another again.

  Later, Sister Salt offered to take Maytha and Vedna to meet the woman with the dog circus so they could ask the Gypsy cards about their future. Sister Salt wanted to ask the Mexican cards about Mama and Indigo. But the twins seemed reluctant; it was true the woman gave water to Sister right after the baby was born; still, one had to be careful of traveling strangers. Vedna had to laugh because soon they were going to be traveling strangers themselves. Still, they wanted to see the dog circus perform, and the decks of cards that foretold the future; so they decided to stay for a few more days.

  Sister Salt intended to tell Big Candy about the Mexican woman and the dog circus, but she didn’t have a chance because he was so busy. The next afternoon as Sister and the twins relaxed in the shade with the sleeping baby, two black dogs suddenly appeared, dressed in patchwork capes of bright satins with little horned caps decorated with bells tied behind their ears—jokers’ caps copied from a deck of cards. The dogs were quite friendly and bells rang as they wagged their tails.

  Juanito called Big Candy out of the brewery tent to watch the dog circus arrive. He was astonished to see a dark woman who wore a white cape sewed with bright red satin figure of the queen of diamonds over her dress; she was flanked by more black dogs that wore satin capes sewn with scraps of satin to form the figures of the king, the jack, the ten, and nine of diamonds. She didn’t notice Sister or the twins under the tree until Sister called out a greeting. Delena acknowledged them with a wave, but remained where she was, talking in a low voice to the dogs.

  Slowly the dogs began to canter around the sandy clearing behind the tents, and as they gradually increased their speed, a small crowd began to gather. The dogs began to leapfrog over one another in a dead run; playfully the dogs began to tear at one another’s costumes, and bells and bits of the costumes began to litter the sand. Even the gamblers stopped to come take a look, and they laughed and laughed and cheered on the dogs while the woman in her odd costume watched.

  When the dogs finally stopped their tug-of-war with the costumes and gathered around their mistress, Sister and the twins joined other spectators, who cheered to see more of the dog circus, but Delena ignored them. The exhibition was over. Gradually the crowd drifted away to the gambling tents as she praised the dogs in a high soft voice. She patted and spoke to each dog separately as she retied the bells and adjusted the capes, examining the damage to the costumes. When Big Candy approached from the gambling tent, she turned away from the dogs to straighten her queen of diamonds cape before she greeted him.

  Sister Salt picked up the sleeping baby and the twins followed. They stood nearby to listen as Big Candy and Delena negotiated a price for the dogs’ performance. Candy said he had to consult Wylie before they had a deal, but he was sure the boss would go for it. Candy hadn’t smiled like that in days. He really enjoyed the spectacle of the playing card costumes—together they formed a royal straight flush, a winning poker hand that would be inspiration for his customers! Sister felt a pang of sadness as she realized the birth of the little grandfather brought Candy worry, not happiness; Candy seemed far happier to see a dog circus than his own son.

  Candy offered the dog circus woman empty crates, and kegs, even planks if she wanted them, for the dogs to leap over. A bit embarrassed by Candy’s enthusiasm, Delena nodded, and he immediately called Juanito to bring the items he requested.

  “Ooh ooh!” Maytha said after Delena and her dog circus accompanied Big Candy to Wylie’s tent. Vedna squeezed her mouth and eyes shut tight in mock disapproval that made all three break into laughter. Sister announced she didn’t care if Big Candy went off with her—Delena was nice. Anyway, the little black grandfather still refused to forgive Candy for believing he would die. They were better off apart, especially the baby.

  Before long, Delena and her dogs came back alone. Big Candy stayed at Wylie’s tent to start cooking for Wylie’s big dinner. His important business connections from Prescott and Yuma were coming day after tomorrow. Sister and the twins helped Delena pick up the pieces torn from the costumes. Delena wasn’t worried; she kept the bear and lion costumes for the dogs to wear until the diamond suits could be repaired. Now that they’d met her, Maytha and Vedna agreed with Sister; the dog circus woman was really interesting and she seemed nice.

  Delena mentioned Big Candy had invited her and the dog circus to camp there next to the tents, then made them laugh as she repeated her reply: “Thanks but no thanks!” Her dogs would bark all night at the drunks stumbling around. She made it clear she wasn’t going after Big Candy even though he was interested in her—they all could see that. Sister had almost given up on Candy; still, she felt relieved Delena wasn’t after him; she and the twins liked her even more now. They told Delena she was right—the place was getting noisier at night now that the soldiers were camped nearby. That’s why Maytha and Vedna were leaving, and Sister might go too.

  They all walked her and the dogs back downriver to her camp hidden in the tamarisk and willows. The dogs fanned out ahead of them, bounding along then stopping to sniff a rock or to urinate on a dry log. They hadn’t gone far when Delena stopped because there were only six dogs; the crippled dog was missing. They were about to go back to look for the dog when she limped out of a tamarisk thicket, her tail wagging.

  “Ooh look! What’s that in her mouth?” Maytha exclaimed. The others bent down for a closer look; they were amazed to see a $1 bill in her mouth.

  “Some drunk dropped his money!” Sister Salt laughed, and the baby let go of her nipple with a soft pop to stare at her merriment.

  “We need that kind of dog!” Vedna remarked.

  Delena smiled but said nothing as she folded the banknote into a tiny square and reached under the satin cape to tuck it down her blouse between her breasts. The seven black dogs were her army.

  In her shady camp, they shared two bottles of beer the twins swiped from the brewery tent while the Mojave ladies were gone. No more green beer by the pail like the other night, they laughed; the hangovers were too brutal. The beer got Maytha and Vedna excited again about how amazing and funny the dogs’ performance had been. Just wait, Delena told them; that was just a little rehearsal. Wait until they saw the big show!

  They sat awhile without talking, and the sudden quiet woke th
e little grandfather, who peered sternly at the young women until Sister offered him a breast. After he was nursing contentedly, Sister asked Delena to bring out the Mexican cards to see what they knew about Mama and Indigo.

  OK, but first she had to understand the cards might bring bad news, Delena explained. The Gypsy woman—she called her Auntie—who took her in and began to teach her about the cards was strong, never sick. That winter in Chihuahua she came down with a cold; she wasn’t very sick—she still was up around the camp. Delena was still learning the cards then, and just for practice she asked the cards when her auntie would get over her cold. She shuffled the deck four times as she had been taught, then took the first card off the top for the answer. It was La Campana, the Bell, upside down. She had not seen that card reversed before, and was not sure of its meaning after she recited the card’s dicho: “The bell and you beneath it.”

  As she was talking, Delena took the Mexican cards out of their woven bag and unwrapped them. She paused to look up at them before she continued.

  “I took the card to Auntie to ask her how the reversed Bell should be read.” Here Delena paused and swallowed.

  “Auntie said, ‘That’s my card, isn’t it?’ ” Now tears streamed down Delena’s cheeks, and the twins looked at each other and Sister.

  “The Bell means good fortune when it is upright—the church bell rings and everyone dances under the bell at weddings and baptisms and other happy occasions. But reversed, the Bell lies upside down on the fallen beam that supported it; to be under the Bell, then, can only mean disaster.”

  Sister glanced down uneasily at the baby in her arms, and Maytha and Vedna shifted their legs under them to restore circulation. Delena smoothed out the patchwork cloth of colored satin and shuffled the Mexican cards over it. Vedna tipped the empty beer bottles to her mouth one after the other for any remaining drops.

  “She died?” Maytha asked in a soft voice. Delena nodded as Vedna elbowed her and whispered loudly, “What do you think, stupid!”

  Sister shook her head at them both. Delena was laying out the cards, and Sister didn’t want the message of the cards affected by the twins’ quarrel. Now as Delena began to lay down the cards they didn’t take their eyes off them. All three inhaled sharply at the first card, La Muerte, the skeleton with the big scythe. Delena frowned and shook her head at them; their reactions might influence the cards.

  “Yeah, be quiet!” Sister Salt warned them. “Don’t spoil the cards for me!”

  So in silence they leaned close to watch Delena lay down the cards; each time the Bell upside down did not appear, Sister whispered thanks to the old ancestor spirits. When the last card went down and no overturned Bell appeared, she exhaled deeply, her heart pounding.

  Delena studied the ten cards for a long time before she began to read them. The skeleton, Death, the first card, was gracefully covered by the Flowerpot of red blossoms, and both were crossed by the Sun. This looked very promising, indeed, she said, and both twins patted Sister on the back enthusiastically. La Muerte has a good dicho, she told them: “ ‘Death’s here, death’s there’—that’s nothing unusual. That’s the way life is; it means some sort of change.”

  The dicho of the Flowerpot said, “One born in a flowerpot does not leave the room”; this was a reminder each being had its limits. “Cover for the poor” was the dicho of El Sol, the Sun card; all the poor have over their heads is the Sun, but that is enough because the Sun is a mighty presence. The Sun card might also be read as the Son of the God who shelters the poor in the world. This was among the best cards in the deck.

  Sister was so happy to hear this, she leaned down to kiss the little sleeping grandfather on both cheeks.

  Following those three cards was the Spider’s Web, which indicated a struggle but also one who refused to give up. The Web might look delicate but it wasn’t weak and didn’t give back anything entangled in it. The Cooking Pot card overturned meant some upset or trouble, but the dicho said it was “little”—the Spider’s Web more than balanced the Pot upside down. Sister wondered if this Cooking Pot card had anything to do with the big dinner Candy was preparing for the boss and his friends.

  Above all these cards was the lovely card La Estrella, the Star. “The shining guide of the sailors” was its dicho, and it was the most important—it meant Sister would find her way back to her sister.

  The Watermelon card—a fat slice cut from the ripe red fruit—came up again for Sister, with its tidings of abundance and success. Sister recalled the delicious melons they shared from the old gardens, and the wild melons she ate the day the little grandfather was born.

  The Apache card above the Flag card and the overturned Rooster card meant the people hiding in the mountains from the soldiers would escape destruction. This was the only time Delena looked up from the cards to smile and nod at them. Sister knew she was thinking of the people in the south where she had come from, as well as the Messiah and the dancers here.

  “The last card is the most important of all,” Delena said, tracing her finger over the ocean blue of La Sirena, the Mermaid. As Delena recited the dicho—“Don’t get shipwrecked by siren songs”—Sister realized it was some kind of warning; but when she asked her, Delena only shrugged. Maybe the card wasn’t hers; maybe it was Big Candy’s.

  Edward was shocked, but he did not protest after she booked separate cabins and shared hers with Indigo. He wanted to explain, but each time he started, Hattie shook her head and turned away from him. There was nothing to explain. It did not seem to occur to him she wanted apologies, not explanations.

  She occupied herself with Indigo; they were reading about gladiolus and they’d nearly finished the book of Chinese monkey adventures. There were moments when she forgot about the arrest, but then the awareness swept back over her, and she scarcely noticed the sun’s warmth against her face or even the refreshing ocean breeze. Sometimes she experienced an odd breathlessness while resting and could think of nothing else but the poor giant beetles suffocated under their bell jars at the Natural History Museum. Behind the glass she felt nothing, yet all was visible.

  She experienced strange dreams that took her back to Laura’s garden of aloes and sand, where she was alone but did not miss the others or wonder where they were. Variations of the dream took her to Laura’s wild forest, where she always felt fearful alone and turned and ran back, to awaken bathed in sweat and shivering. She slept a great deal on the return voyage—often twelve hours each night. Awakening was the most difficult because she forgot and was happy for a moment before she remembered Edward’s treachery; then her heart raced and she felt her spirits sink into her stomach, where the flutter stirred a vague nausea. Fortunately she had Indigo along to remind her here was an opportunity to rearrange her life’s priorities. She scarcely thought of her thesis now; it was already part of another life, and another person, not herself.

  After she refused to hear his explanations, Edward assumed Hattie simply wanted to put the incident behind them, and made no further mention of it. Though he was initially stunned by his arrest, his shock gave way to an odd sense of relief as if some dreaded task were now over. He was confident his contacts in the Plant Industry Bureau would persuade the customs authorities in Livorno to drop all charges. He was weary of plant collecting for others when the large profits lay in the propagation and sale of hybrids. Already he was developing a new plan.

  The customs authorities seized all the twig cuttings, but Indigo was delighted to discover all the cloth sacks of gladiolus corms were intact; she’d counted them before and not one was missing. Likewise, all the little envelopes of seeds from Aunt Bronwyn and those from Laura were safe; and even she found the cloth bag of green and yellow feathers she saved whenever Rainbow dropped them. Now they were moving west with the sun, and Indigo began to feel a stir of excitement each morning when she woke: going home! Rainbow seem to sense it too, because he began to call her as soon as the sun rose. While Hattie sat motionless in the deck chair or slept in t
he cabin, Indigo talked to Rainbow about where they were going, and about their real home. First they had to return to Riverside to get Linnaeus and for Hattie to contact the boarding school superintendent. Then they’d all go on the train to Needles together; Hattie promised to hire a driver and buggy for the two of them to search for Sister Salt and Mama until they both were found. Rainbow would have to be patient and get used to Linnaeus little by little. When they got to Needles, both of them must stay close to Indigo at all times or someone might steal them or a golden eagle or big hawk might carry them away and eat them.

  They enjoyed lovely weather over the Atlantic crossing; the days were sunny and clear, and they encountered no storms, only light rain showers. The fair weather had a tonic effect for Edward, though it did not seem to cheer Hattie much.

  When they stopped to refuel in St. Augustine, Edward wired Susan and Colin to propose a final settlement of the estate, and a cancellation of all his indebtedness to them. The citrus groves around the Riverside house would be sold at once, but he proposed to lease the house from Susan and Colin until his new prospects began to pay dividends.

  In New Orleans, Hattie and the child rested at the hotel before their departure on the train the next morning. Thoughts about the details of his new plan left him restless; were it not for this restlessness they might have stayed a few days in New Orleans, time enough for his sister and her husband to wire him their response to his offer. He sent a telegram to his new business associate, Dr. Gates, at the Albuquerque address he gave. Then, out of habit, he walked to the waterfront to search out curios and oddities and, of course, unusual plants.

  Among pallets of green bananas on the dock, Edward saw pallets of burlap bags of vanilla beans, then noticed a pallet of bundles with delicate green stems pushing heroically through the burlap. On impulse he lifted a bundle from its pallet for a closer look. Here were dozens of Guatemalan orchids—robust specimens of Brassavola nodosa with huge white birdlike blossoms of a heavenly fragrance. They’d be just the orchid to win over the public. Sun priests of the Maya reputedly held the orchid sacred because it invariably bloomed on the autumnal equinox. Flowers of the gods! He could imagine the ads in magazines now. He was in such high spirits he bought bunch of bananas for Indigo to take to her monkey. He had to hire a cab to bring him and his purchases back to the hotel.