She pushed the iron. At least she had books to read. The Braille Institute sent new ones each month. And there was always her piano and now the children who rode their bicycles out from town for weekly lessons. And Heddy and Karl at the chicken ranch were good company. She and Chiang knew the way and walked by themselves now. Heddy and Karl took a midafternoon break for tea and cookies around 3:00 every day. Visiting them broke up the long afternoons. She liked it when Karl told her stories of his nomadic life as a lumberjack, of how he had emigrated to work on the railroads in Canada, and of how he tried to learn English from the gang boss. Jean smiled when she remembered him saying, “Yeesus Christ, Yeanie, after a year I discovered it was Russian.”
Once Heddy invited Jean and Forrest for a pork chop dinner. “Yeesus Christ, Forrest,” Karl bellowed, “let me cut that up so I can eat my own meal in peace.” When they came to visit Forrest and Jean, Karl said, “Yeesus Christ, Forrest, can’t you turn on some lights in here or haven’t you paid your bill?” She was surprised at his bluntness. In Bristol he would have been a factory worker and Heddy a serving woman, but in Ramona, things were different. Although she couldn’t talk to them about music or books, they slipped into each other’s lives naturally. Heddy was like Mary, the downstairs maid back home, genuine and earthy. She felt she’d known them for a long time.
Two months after Icy died, Jean and Chiang walked up the hill in time for afternoon cookies. “No tea for me today, Heddy. Do you have any milk?” Jean asked.
“Yeesus Christ,” Karl said. “You have something you want to tell us?”
Jean giggled. “Maybe.”
She felt him looking her up and down and it made her smile. He cleared his throat. “Does Forrest know?”
“Of course he does, Karl. And we’re going to name him Forrest, Junior, if he’s a boy.”
Heddy rushed over to her and smothered her in a hug.
“Yeesus Christ, Yeanie. Have some more cookies.” Karl put four more on her plate. “But how you going to manage? I know Forrest works hard, but, well, you can’t feed a kid on music lessons.”
In that, Karl touched the only apprehension Jean and Forrest had about the new baby. Right when he needed it most, his evening grain loading job dried up. After the war, Commodity Credit Corporation resumed shipping grain in gunny sacks instead of open bins. Forrest wrote more letters. He asked relatives for ideas. Nothing was too humble. He knew he had abilities and talents. He just needed opportunity, yet opportunity always seemed so dependent on others, just what he didn’t want to be. He hated the thought that he wasn’t being given a chance by a skeptical world.
One night, with the baby only weeks away, he walked outside. He lifted his arms up over his head, grabbed hold of the lowest branch of the Chinese elm in the front yard, and took a deep breath. His senses were keen on listening. He heard crickets, the distant bark of a dog when a lone car went by on the highway, Jean running the water at the kitchen sink, but he heard no new ideas. Still, he felt in close touch with the ranch and the world. Somewhere, here in Ramona, must be the answer, he told himself. He wasn’t the only man in the world ever in this situation of need. Others had been guided. He remembered Alice reading to him from the Old Testament the story of the poor widow asking Elisha for help to pay creditors. “What hast thou in the house?” the prophet asked her, turning her thought to what she already had. And she poured out oil into all the vessels she had and paid the debt. But what did Forrest already have to pay for the baby, and to continue to pay? Two arms, a strong back, endurance—and hope. That’s gotta be enough, he said to himself, and prayed that it was true.
His brother Lance came by the next afternoon out of breath. “Forrest, you remember the McDonald boys on the other side of the valley?”
“Yeah, big red-headed guys.”
“I just saw them, back from the war. They’re making some kind of Indian bricks, adobe maybe. Digging the ground right up and putting it in wooden frames. Maybe you could do that. If we could find out how, what to mix with it to make it solid, I’d pay you to make some for me for a new turkey brooder.”
What did Forrest have at his house? Dirt, plenty of clay dirt, and shovels. And an Indian buddy who could build the wooden forms. He knew he couldn’t do it alone. He reached for his jacket and headed out to the highway. He stopped when his feet felt the pavement. “Hey, Ydeño,” he called, and he heard the Indian come out of his house and cross the road.
In the next few days they learned the formula—dirt, sand and bitumen, an emulsified asphalt or tar suspended in oil. When it dried, it would solidify the dirt. With Forrest shoveling and combining the mixture and with Earl pouring into the wooden frames, they made 48 bricks the first day. The next day a few more. When they dried, Forrest leaned them on end and shaved off the rough edges with a trowel. It was filthy work. Wherever the bitumen fell on their clothes, it stuck and solidified. Their shoes hardened until they couldn’t bend. By the end of the second week, they began taking off their pants in the brickyard at the end of the day and leaning them up against the barn until morning. Earl would turn the hose on Forrest before he went in the house. But it was work, using the land, using his strength, using what he had, and what he could do.
Chapter Twenty-four
Forrest Merton Holly, Junior, came early, on April Fool’s Day, a squirming, scrawny jumble of arms and legs. In the hospital, as soon as they’d let her, Jean stroked every crevice, every curve of smooth flesh. Jean’s mother came out for two weeks. “He doesn’t look like any other baby I’ve seen,” she said.
“What’s that mean?” Jean asked.
“He looks like a little man already. The fuzz on his head is so light he looks like he has white hair.”
“What else?”
“The fuzz is curly.”
“And?”
“He’s got a tiny little mouth, perfectly symmetrical, and translucent skin. He’s looking up at you like a little dumpling.”
Jean tried to hold onto the vision.
After Mother left, Jean used her family trust money to hire a practical nurse. She didn’t know a thing about handling a baby. Miss Andrews was an English old maid who talked as if she had false teeth that didn’t fit. Jean had mixed feelings about this woman who took over so completely. The first time Jean tried to diaper Forrie with Miss Andrews’ brusque instructions coming over her shoulder, Forrie wiggled so much that she dropped the open pin. Her hand fumbled for it on the towel under him. Miss Andrews moved her aside. “I don’t know how you’re ever going to take care of this baby by yourself,” she sputtered.
“That’s just what I don’t need to hear.”
Miss Andrews was so capable, so utterly in charge, that Jean had to fight her way to Forrie whenever he needed changing so she could do it herself. With Miss Andrews’ critical eyes on her, Jean’s hands shook whenever she struggled to pin his diaper without jabbing him. One day she was heating milk for Forrie and got confused about where she’d put things. The saucepan in her hands touched something on the counter and she jerked. The warm milk splashed on Forrie. Above his cries Miss Andrews said, “I hope that teaches you that you shouldn’t have another.”
“Miss Andrews, you’re dismissed!”
“You don’t mean that, so don’t say foolish things.”
“I do indeed.” She wiped off Forrie with a wet wash cloth.
“You’re missing some spots. How are you going to keep him clean? Not just now, but always?”
“You mean when he poops? Why don’t you say it? I’ll, I’ll fill up the sink and give him a seat bath.”
“That’s not the proper way.”
“If it works, it’s proper enough.”
“But how are you going to know when he has a rash?”
“I’ll feel it.”
“My dear, sometimes you can’t.”
“Then he’ll tell me. He’s got a voice.”
“Yes, just listen to him now.”
“You telling me I can’t is all the more
reason I will. I’ll give you your money and then please go.”
The next day was trying. Jean didn’t have a moment’s rest. It seemed like she wrestled for fifteen minutes just to stuff his feet into his pajamas. When she finally got Forrie to sleep after dinner, she dropped into bed herself in absolute fatigue. The next morning she discovered she hadn’t done the last night’s dishes. It started the day off wrong.
Three days later she hired Lupe, a humble creature with a soft voice who seemed to love little Forrie. “Callate, niñito, duermete, niñito,” she crooned as she walked the baby to sleep. It calmed Jean, too. But she was either going to be a mother herself or she wasn’t—ever. The second alternative was unthinkable. A month later, Lupe left for a better job and Jean ordered a washing machine. Washing diapers with a scrub board in the bathtub had gotten old fast. She just couldn’t keep up with Forrie by washing diapers by hand. “We can afford it on time, can’t we?”
“By the time it gets here, we’ll probably have enough in cash,” he said. “But by then, Forrie will be old enough to wash his own diapers.” Forrest’s adobes, selling now to builders in the valley, were bringing in a little more money each week. In fact, he and Earl fixed up living quarters in the barn for two Mexican laborers and hired Luis and Ezequiel.
“One hundred, Jeanie. One hundred bricks already today!” he shouted one afternoon and scraped dirt from his feet at the doorway. Jean was crying in the second bedroom. She heard him hurrying through the hall, and she tried to get control of herself. She always seemed to be trying his patience with tears.
“What’s the matter?”
She only sobbed louder and crushed little Forrie to her.
“Is he okay?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Jean, tell me.” His voice was smooth as warm honey, all concern. She felt his big hands laid gently on her shoulders as he came up to her from behind.
She sniffled and drew in her breath in quick gasps. She had to tell him, now that he’d discovered her, but she knew it would only frustrate him, too. “I just want so badly to see him, just once.”
Forrest turned her toward him and wrapped her and the baby in his arms.
Mealtime became a battle that often ended in disaster. Finding Forrie’s mouth to feed him mashed fruit or vegetables was like chasing a goldfish in a pool with only your hand. Jean strapped him in a highchair, but that didn’t prevent him from turning his head and backing away from the oncoming spoon. She tried holding his head with one hand, aiming the spoon with the other, her little finger stretched out searching for his mouth, but she could never be sure of what actually stayed in his mouth and went down his throat. She suspected that most of it went down his front, on his hands, on the highchair, and on her. She touched inside the little jar of baby food to find out how much was left and brushed her hand along his bib and on the highchair table to see how much had spilled. “This baby is fed by guess and by hope,” she typed to Mother in a few stolen moments.
Each little victory over feeding the baby made Jean realize that it was not the first. Surely throughout history and throughout the world, mothers without sight lifted babies’ spoons upward, hunting for the mouth, hoping the baby would help, impatient for the time the child could pick up a piece of food by himself. Perhaps, in some primitive culture, a sightless woman in a reed hut scooped a handful of mush, held it in her right hand while her left reached for the baby’s head, the two hands coming together at the baby’s chin. Or by the shore of the Galilean Sea a woman knelt, her head held straight ahead, her babe in the folds of her wrap, her hand guiding his head to her breast. Or near an Asian river, a woman with unseeing eyes chewed a piece of fish, felt for the child’s mouth, took the fish from hers and put it in his.
There was no immutable law, she told herself, which decreed that no woman without sight shall be given a child—the task is far too difficult. No, there was no such law. She could march forward, her life a continuation of the triumph and heartache of all the sightless mothers before her, strong in the thought that some force had helped these women. They didn’t give up, didn’t stop having children, didn’t say the world and life were too hard, too foreign, too frightening to have a child.
There must be ways to do things, and she had to learn them. When Forrie began to crawl, she asked Forrest to build a playpen in the shade of the Chinese elm. Putting him there gave her a little time to catch up. One day while she was washing dishes with Chiang at her feet, she heard the screen door open.
“Forrest?” she said.
“No, ma’m.” Earl’s out-of-tune voice contrasted to Forrie’s gurgles. “Here’s the baby.” He put Forrie in her arms. “I found him in the bull pen. He must have climbed out. I just happened to look up from the brickyard and saw his round, white bottom crawling along in the dirt.”
“In the bull pen? Is he all right?
“Yes’m, but it scared the hell out of the bull. He shot out of there in a hurry.”
As the months passed, Jean felt Forrie’s body grow sturdier. Measured against her extended arm, he was inches longer—and pounds heavier. When Forrie began to walk, Jean definitely needed some help. Lupe’s cousin Celerina came to do housework, and some days after school a girl named Hilda Baker came for a couple of hours to tend to Forrie while Jean made dinner. But what did a fourteen-year-old girl know of babies? She did her best. The job was important. Hilda’s mother was an Indian, her father a screaming red-headed Irish Bolshevik out of work. The family had no money. Hilda worked for dimes and quarters. And she learned. Hilda, Celerina, Mother Holly, neighbors, Forrest, everyone helped out at odd moments.
Forrest’s help was often mixed with playfulness, but he had a short fuse whenever Forrie cried or fussed. In a mix of sportiveness and exasperation, Forrest would brandish a slipper, shake it at the crying Forrie and threaten him with something silly, trying to sound fierce. It had little effect on the baby and only made Jean laugh. But when the baby’s sounds became serious, she also knew that Forrest explored with his hands all the possible problems with utmost gentleness.
Life became a game to see who would be one step ahead of whom. When Jean walked into the living room one morning, her foot kicked something out of place on the floor. She reached down to see what it was. The opened box of Vel laundry soap. She had bought it only the week before. Now it hardly weighed an ounce. She touched the floor, then the furniture. Soft, flaky powder everywhere. It was time to put bells on Forrie’s shoes.
In bed at night in the minutes of conversation before exhaustion took over, Jean and Forrest shared the events of the day. One night Forrest told her, “I had a scare a coupla hours ago because of that crying kid.”
“What happened?”
“I didn’t know Hilda was here when you were in the kitchen, and when I went in the bathroom to shower, I heard Forrie bawling like he wanted Heddy and Karl up the road to know it. He kept crawling back and forth in the hallway right in front of the bathroom door. By the time I was stark naked, I couldn’t stand it any more. I grabbed my slipper, flung the door open and shouted, ‘D’ya see that slipper?’ Only Hilda was carrying him, I guess because she squeaked at me, ‘Yes, sir,’ in a quavery voice.”
Jean laughed. “You sure gave her an eyeful.” Back home, Jean thought, that would have been horrors, but here, under the circumstances, it was a normal part of life.
Eventually, as Forrie grew more active, what they shared at night became more worrisome. “Forrie pets Chiang, and I don’t know what to do about it,” Jean said one night.
“That’s natural.”
“But it’s not good for Chiang. She’s less effective as a guide then. That’s one of the first things we learned at The Seeing Eye. I think he teases her, too. I hear him run after her more and more lately, but today when I yanked his arm to stop him, I found that little Mexican chair in his hands. He’s been rushing at her with that.
“And I noticed something else, too.” Her voice lowered. “Chiang’s claws tapping the floor when
she walks don’t sound rhythmic any more.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Diapers flapped in Jean’s face. She pushed the basket along the dirt with her foot and guided her own movement by touching the clothesline above her. She reached down to the damp pile, pulled out a shirt and hung it. A breeze gathered momentum, not the dry desert winds of a Santa Ana, but a humid, skittish wind. It made the windmill across Ash Street thrum and then rattle. At least the air’s moving, she thought. She had an odd sensation that her face could slide right off her if she stayed out there long, so she hurried to get the laundry hung and go back into the cooler house. She bent and stretched, bent and felt the inner sides of the basket. Nothing more. She picked it up, hesitated and turned what she thought was 180 degrees, back toward the house. Accuracy about direction was more important now that Chiang was gone. Slowly she put one foot in front of the other. She still thought of Chiang nearly every time she walked outside and had to get her bearings by herself. But it wasn’t just Chiang’s help she missed. It was her constant presence near her as well, her companionship.
She sometimes thought she had traded Chiang for another child. Months earlier, when she wrote to The Seeing Eye that Chiang was petted, teased, and played with by a toddler and that another child was due, they advised her that perhaps Chiang’s purpose had been served. A Seeing Eye dog could not be treated as a family pet. Yes, a guide dog should be loved and petted by his master, but not played with by a child. Furthermore, if Chiang’s movements suggested lameness and a vet confirmed that, prolonging her life when a child’s teasing could not always be detected and stopped was not a kindness. Even though she half expected their response, her hands traced the line of Braille over and over until she’d memorized it. Still, she had sat there. The washing machine stopped but she didn’t get up. In the new quiet she recognized with a start the sound beneath it, Chiang’s snoring. It had grown comforting, a part of her life. Not hearing it would leave a void.
What Love Sees Page 22