Gardens in the Dunes

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  “Oh candy balls!” Maytha called out as she held up the paper sack.

  “Too bad she didn’t buy us some lard or coffee—we could have had tortillas and coffee for supper!” Vedna said as she stuffed two candy balls into her mouth. They all helped themselves to the candy.

  Indigo took out her color pencils and her notebook to show off her drawings of flowers to Sister while the twins lifted the fine linen underwear and petticoats from the trunk. They oohed and aahed over the chambray dresses trimmed in satin ribbon, and joked with one another about how much money they could sell them for—enough to eat for months, they laughed.

  Indigo unpacked her two other pairs of new kidskin slippers and held them next to Maytha’s bare feet; the shoes were too small, but Maytha and Vedna didn’t care. They stretched the kidskin and forced the slippers on their feet, and wore them proudly.

  The little grandfather was in his bundle propped up in the corner of the room so he could watch. Sister opened the big hatbox and lifted up a pot of orchids for a better look. Indigo cautioned her sister to be careful with the plants, which irritated Sister.

  “You think I don’t know what a flowerpot is?” She put it back in the hatbox just as she found it. Indigo saw Sister’s hurt expression and felt terrible; she apologized over and over until Sister told her it was all right. Indigo tried to hand her the hatbox of orchids—she insisted she take them, but Sister shook her head; she knew nothing about these plants; she’d only kill them.

  Indigo hated herself for hurting Sister’s feelings—she loved her more than anyone, as much as she loved Mama and Grandma Fleet. If Sister didn’t want the orchids, then Indigo didn’t want them either. She tossed the hatbox out the door; it landed with a thud on the sand, and all the pots overturned, dumping bark, orchids, and all. Later Sister took pity on the poor orchids and scooped them back into their pots and gave them a place on the windowsill.

  It was getting dark now and Maytha filled their lamp with oil; they hadn’t bought lamp oil in so long they didn’t bother to replace the lamp chimney after it shattered. They used a piece of rag for the wick, and Vedna lit one of their precious matches; a lovely orange-yellow flame glowed in the dark room. Without the proper wick or chimney it gave off puffs of sooty smoke, but they didn’t care.

  They finished off the candy balls but had no way to open the tins of peaches and corn. Sister laid down the sleeping baby and took the cans and the axe outside. Whack-whack-whack, they heard, and a moment later Sister returned, both hands cupped around the can dripping sugary peach juice. Indigo shared her portions of the peaches and the corn with Linnaeus, then put him to bed in his cage next to Rainbow. After they finished off the can of corn, the twins and Sister took the tin of tobacco and rolling papers outside for a smoke before bed.

  Indigo realized then she had no bedding, no blanket, so she arranged her wool coat and raincoat on the sandy floor near Sister’s bedding. For covers she used her nightgowns one on top of the other, and slept in her clothes as the other girls did.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Hattie noticed the buggy driver was acquainted with the trader and his wife; all the white people here seemed to know one another. “Strength in numbers,” she supposed, since whites were outnumbered by Indians here. The driver probably stopped there overnight each time he drove to Parker or Yuma. Hattie smelled fried chicken and biscuits, but the woman said nothing about food. She wasn’t really hungry anyway; she was worried about Indigo. Maybe she was wrong to leave the child at Road’s End. Indigo’s sister and her friends seemed nice enough, but they’d created a good bit of notoriety for themselves along the river.

  The trader’s wife put her in the same room as she and Indigo had shared the night before last; the sheets on the bed had not been changed. She brought out the bottle of paregoric syrup Edward gave her for emergencies, to help her sleep. She pulled the bedding to the floor off the horsehair mattress, and wept because this was Indigo’s custom, to sleep on the floor. Blankets! Indigo had no blankets, nothing!

  Hattie rolled over and sobbed facedown in the pillow, so the others did not hear. She took two good swallows of the paregoric and lay back with her eyes closed, listening to her own heartbeat. Gradually her heart and her breathing slowed and the anxiety over Indigo without blankets gradually passed. Her sister and the other girls would take care of Indigo; it was plain how much her sister loved her, and the other girls seemed very kind. Hattie would simply buy Indigo blankets and other necessities the girls might need and return to Road’s End next week, but this time with a new driver. She drifted away to sleep as she imagined warm white wool blankets piled next to the parrot cage in the little mud house.

  She dreamed the bright orange carnelian carving of Minerva seated with her snake was a life-size sculpture in a fantastic garden of green shady groves and leafy arcades. Next to the path stood a life-size waterbird and her chick carved from pale lemon yellow carnelian. In a thicket of holly she heard rustling and twigs cracking as if something large were approaching. Oddly, she wasn’t afraid when she saw the old tin mask rolling down the grassy path as if it were alive.

  She woke and struck a match to see the clock: half past twelve. She lit the lamp on the table and opened the trunk and brought out the little carvings. She arranged them on the nightstand so they were at eye’s level from her pillow, and thrilled at their lustrous surface and transparent glow. Where were you in my dream? she asked the milky chalcedony carving of the three cattle. She took a sip of water and put out the light; oddly, the tin mask no longer seemed threatening.

  Hattie ate the breakfast the woman served them, and was surprised at how good the eggs with biscuits and slices of smoked ham tasted. She was relieved the others at the table ignored her; nothing she could say or do would change their opinion of her: white squaw. Fortunately, her year of graduate classes prepared her for obnoxious conduct.

  Now that she had decided her course of action, even the ride back to Needles seemed shorter. As the buggy passed through the business district of Needles she noticed a large mercantile and dry goods store on the corner; tomorrow she would shop there for Indigo’s blankets and the others things the girls should have. She needed to visit the local bank to arrange for a transfer of funds from her account in New York.

  The hotel desk clerk studied her signature after she signed the guest book and handed her a letter from Edward, postmarked Winslow. Edward described the campsite at the bottom of the meteor crater and the sorry condition of the equipment, especially the drilling rig, which broke down more days than it worked. But all that would be corrected very soon. He and the doctor were about to board the train to Albuquerque with the latest discovery—a wonderful meteor iron studded with white diamonds—to have it assayed. New mining equipment would also be purchased on this trip, and he hoped he did not have to exceed the credit line she arranged for him.

  He described in colorful detail the mesa climb and mentioned “a slight stiffness” in his leg, but devoted the remainder of the letter to a description of the Indian burial—the “baby,” or meteor iron, wrapped in layers of feather blanket, wore a tiny necklace and matching bracelet of tiny beads. Funeral offerings of food and a toy whistle were carefully arranged in the stone cavity with the meteor iron.

  That night Hattie dreamed Sister Salt’s live baby was in the stone cavity, but Edward and the Australian doctor insisted on using a large steel pick and heavy shovel to excavate the baby. She woke soaked with sweat and shaking; in her dream one of them struck something and Edward yelled. She saw blood spurting everywhere and a tiny severed leg; but the infant in the stone cavity was unharmed, even smiling.

  She just finished dressing when there was a knock, and a telegram envelope was slipped under the door. Her heart beat furiously in those moments before she opened the telegram. It was sent from Albuquerque and all it said was: “Urgent. Come at once. Your husband hospitalized.” It was signed by the chaplain of St. Joseph’s Hospital.

  If she packed only one bag and h
urried, there was still time to make the eastbound train to Albuquerque. She felt light-headed and had to sit down on the edge of the bed.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  Indigo woke up before the others and took Rainbow and Linnaeus for a walk along the river; the sun had just come up and she thought the early start might get them more food. The first day she walked the river, Indigo realized others from the settlement of houses by the church walked along here to search for greens or other plants to boil and eat. Before the government drew reservation lines, there was plenty for everyone to eat because the people used to roam up and down the river for hundreds of miles to give the plants and animals a chance to recover. But now the people were restricted to the reservations, so everyone foraged those same few miles of river.

  Up in the sandhills and high foothills, Indigo’s luck was better; she knew the higher ground and what grew there better than she knew the riverbank. Anyway, long ago when they asked why Sand Lizards refused to live along the river, Grandma Fleet told them that too much time along the river put one at risk for fevers.

  Indigo found a stand of sunflowers gone to seed near the mouth of an arroyo; ordinarily she would have only taken some and left the rest for the next hungry being who came along, but she was afraid her parrot would suffer if she did not take all the seeds, so she filled the pockets of her skirt. Linnaeus loved the seeds too, and Indigo began to plan a small winter garden for peas and greens and beans. Too bad the sunflowers had to be sowed in June, but next season she would sow rows and rows of the giant sunflowers. Next year she would harvest the big flat faces full of seeds for them all; but this year they were going to have to sell some of her clothes and things to buy food.

  When she returned with her cache of sunflower seeds, the twins were snoring in unison, but Sister was sitting up on her bedding with the little grandfather at her breast. She proudly showed Sister all the greens and seeds she’d collected for the monkey and parrot. “What about me?” Sister asked. “Won’t you offer me any?” She made the words sound like they were a joke, but Indigo knew there was truth in the joke too—if they barely had food for themselves, how could they spare food for pets?

  Indigo opened the trunk to the compartment with the dresses and her light wool coat; she took them off the hangers and folded them carefully in stacks on top of the open wool coat. She tied the arms of the coat around the bundle and turned to Sister.

  “Maybe we can trade someone this stuff for some beans and corn, and maybe some meat.” Sister gave a short laugh at the mention of meat. The people here were Christians but they were still poor. Who could afford to trade food for a dress? Only the trader and his wife might have the money. It would be better to sell them in Needles, if only Needles were not so far and rides on the mail wagon didn’t cost so much.

  That afternoon Indigo put Linneaus and Rainbow in their cages, and Vedna snapped the huge padlock on the door of the little house; they were off to the trading post with the dresses bundled in the wool coat. They were disappointed to learn the trader was gone to Yuma, and they almost left the store before the trader’s wife asked if they had something they wanted to sell.

  First she reached for the wool coat, but Indigo held on to it, and told her it wasn’t for sale. The wool coat was part of her bedding. The woman held up the dresses at arm’s length and examined them carefully, although a number of them had not been worn even once. She bought all the dresses, then called her Chemehuevi laundress from the back room to boil the dresses. Indigo protested that the dresses were clean, but the other girls shook their heads to quiet her. As it was, the trader’s wife allowed them only $7 in trade for all the dresses.

  The twins motioned for Sister to come to the rear of the store, where the three of them huddled and discussed something—Indigo wasn’t sure what it was about. They left the trading post with big sacks of beans and cracked barley, a little coffee, a small can of lard, and a big sack of colored candy balls; they still had the sugar and the wormy flour Hattie gave them.

  It wasn’t much for the lovely dresses trimmed in blue satin ribbon, made especially for Indigo, but it was better than starving. They walked back to the house with their mouths full of candy balls and smiled. The cracked barley was to brew beer or something similar to it; they didn’t have all the other ingredients but they’d watched Big Candy and they figured they could get the recipe close enough to brew beer or ale or something to get people drunk. Maybe the Christian Chemehuevis at Road’s End would not buy it, but the twins said drinkers would come from miles around. At least they could make enough money from the brew to feed themselves until the garden fed them.

  They put on a big pot of beans to simmer on the coals all day while they all pitched in to prepare the garden to plant the winter seeds. The land the twins bought from their old auntie was across the road from the best farmland, irrigated by a system of ditches from the river. At one time the ditches brought water to their land too, but they were buried under the sand now.

  In the rich moist fields close to the river, tiny green sprouts could already be seen; seeds planted too early sprouted, but quickly got scorched to death in the fierce autumn sun. If they didn’t get their seeds planted now, later the ground would be too cold to germinate the seeds.

  Among the old and broken hoes and rakes the twins found when they moved in were tobacco cans of seeds saved by their auntie. Maytha and Vedna argued over the worth of old seeds, but Maytha was right; these seeds were all they had except for the seeds Indigo brought; those seeds might not know how to survive here. At least a few of the seeds in the cans were bound to germinate, so they all worked away with rakes and hoes; none of them had gloves, so their hands got blisters and calluses. The twins and Sister joked farming wasn’t any better than laundry for a lady’s hands.

  For their winter garden, they planted amaranth and all kinds of beans and black-eyed pea seeds they found in the cans. Indigo planted only a few of the seeds from her collection; all the others she intended to plant in the old gardens when they got home.

  Linnaeus learned to follow along behind Indigo without disturbing the seeds she just planted, but Rainbow was naughty and hopped off her shoulder to rake his beak through the sand to expose the seeds and eat them. His parrot waddle was so cute she couldn’t bear to scold him or lock him in his cage. She picked him up and kissed him and told him to stay put on her shoulder, then replanted any seeds he ate. But Linnaeus was a good worker; with his sharp eyes and quick fingers he caught sucking beetles and cutworms and ate them head first.

  When they took a break for lunch back at the house, Indigo opened the trunk to the compartment with her seed collection; she untied the drawstrings on the cotton sacks of gladiolus corms Laura gave her and felt each one to make sure they remained healthy. At the time Laura gave her the seeds, Indigo used her color pencils to write the color names on the envelopes of gladiolus seed. Now she couldn’t resist the temptation to plant just a few gladiolus corms among the pea seeds Aunt Bronwyn gave her. Since she and Sister probably would be moved back home by the time the corms grew blossoms, Indigo decided to plant just a few gladiolus.

  Then Indigo found she had a great many black gladiolus corms, so she planted them for a border around the peas; between the beans and the spinach she planted two each of the scarlet, purple, and pink gladiolus. As she planted them, she imagined how this corner of the field would look, and she added white and yellow corms too. What a surprise the twins would have in a few months!

  Later that day, when the planting was finished, Sister sent Indigo and her pets down the road to the neighbors’ corral to look for long strands of tail hair the horses might have snagged. Sister and Indigo wove horsehair snares the way Grandma taught them and carefully strung them in the weeds around their garden; later that evening they had fresh rabbit meat to go along with the beans.

  After dinner they sat outside to smoke and watch the stars before bed; there was no moon and the stars seemed to shine closer and brighter than Sister ever saw; Grandma
Fleet said the stars were related to us humans. The twins agreed; at Laguna they’d heard stories about the North Star, who acted as a spy for Estoyehmuut, Arrow Boy, the time his wife, Kochininako, Yellow Woman, ran off with Buffalo Man. The North Star tipped off Arrow Boy, otherwise he never would have found her.

  At first he was uncomfortable outdoors at night, but quickly Big Candy got reaccustomed to the soldier’s life out on the trail. He didn’t build fires and slept with his shotgun in his hand. The mule was young and stout; but on the morning of the fourth day of the chase, the mule pulled up its left hind leg and refused to leave Tonopah. Big Candy traded the mule for dried apricots and mutton jerky, and an old handcart he towed with a strap around his chest. That first day the miles blistered his feet, but he shot a covey of quail before dark and cooked himself a feast. His feet healed after he took a knife to the boots and cut them open at the heels and the toes.

  This wasn’t a race. He would keep on her trail steadily, and he would find her. He didn’t care if he had to follow her all the way to Mexico City and back; she wasn’t getting away with his money. The days were still hot but nothing like the summer, and the nights were almost cold enough to want a fire.

  The next day the going got harder, as the trail left the Aguila valley and ascended the stony brush mountains of Gila Bend. Here the wheels of the cart hung up on lava rock outcrops in odd shapes that reminded Candy of the mushrooms he once stuffed and cooked for Wylie.

  He camped outside town at Gila Bend so he could scout the trails to the west and south to make sure she did not double back on him and head for Yuma after all. The extra miles to sweep the trails left Candy too exhausted to eat that night. After the first week, the waist of his dungarees was too loose to button; he tightened his belt two notches and recalled the old stories Dahlia told about their Red Stick ancestors who trailed enemies for months through the swamps and bayous as silent and swift as water snakes. Those first days he dreamed about the trail and the tracks he followed by day, over and over; if he thought about Wylie or Sister and the baby, he quickly refocused his thoughts on the pursuit.