by Sally John
“Okay, no ‘Mama Jasmyn’ nickname. But honestly, the Casa would have fallen apart by now without you.”
Two compliments from Sam? Quinn would tell Jasmyn to shut up and accept them. “Thanks.”
“It’s true. You’re not Liv, but you are you and that’s what we needed. Like a ray of sunshine. Hey, that fits your name, doesn’t it? All bright.”
Jasmyn groaned.
“You’ve been told that before.”
“Once or twice.”
Sam chuckled as she slowed the car and turned off the pavement onto a narrow dirt path.
They drove for several moments, up a hill, winding around boulders and low-lying bushes. The Jeep easily rumbled over rocks and crevices.
She braked and turned off the car. “Follow me.”
The instant Jasmyn stepped outside, a sudden quiet hit her. It was physical enough to feel like hands clapping over her ears, deafening her.
She scrambled behind Sam on blond-colored dirt strewn with rock up a steep incline. Ahead she could only see its rim and above it the bluest of blue skies. She caught up to Sam at the top, saw beyond the rim, and gasped.
“Welcome to the desert, Jasmyn Albright.”
The vista before them seemed larger than even the ocean. It stretched on and on and on. It was bigger than enormous. There were mountains in the distance painted in reds and browns and purples…boulders of all shapes and sizes scattered about like confetti…plants in gray-greens and browns, small and low to the ground. The highway looped like a thread in and out, behind and through it all.
Jasmyn exhaled. “Oh my gosh. I thought it would be…I don’t know. Dull. I never imagined…” How could she have imagined? The desert was too vast and too beautiful for words.
“Next March this will be a carpet of flowers. The scents, unbelievable.”
“Can we come?”
Sam chuckled. “Jasmyn, you can drive yourself here anytime you want. You saw how short and easy the route is.”
“I could, couldn’t I? I’ll bring Liv. The ride would do her good. Maybe Tasha and her mom. Inez would enjoy it. Oh, Sam, thank you for showing this to me.”
“You’re welcome.”
They stood for a while longer. Sam seemed to soak it in as much as Jasmyn did.
Jasmyn remembered how Sam had agreed the city felt confining, like a straitjacket. She wondered then why Sam didn’t leave it more often. And if her home in Arizona was anything like this, why wouldn’t she go back there, at least for visits.
Which begged the question, if Jasmyn also thought the city felt like a straitjacket, why would she dread going back to Valley Oaks and her beloved green fields?
She was dreading it.
But who needed to wonder about that right now? She was in the desert.
“Hey,” Jasmyn said. “I thought you weren’t going to play tour guide.”
“I’m not. It begins and ends here. I just wanted you to see this.” She pressed her lips together. She appeared to be having an emotional moment.
Sam? Emotional? Maybe she’d left dark and moody back in the car.
At last she spoke. “In all honesty, you know how it is to see something through someone else’s eyes? It changes your perspective somehow. Things look brand new. Uncluttered.” She paused. “I used to love the wilderness, but I’d lost sight of that. Today it’s back. Thanks.”
“Anytime.” Jasmyn smiled. “You could return the favor. I used to love the cornfields and my hometown. Maybe if you came with me to Valley Oaks…”
“In your dreams.”
“You could have ribs slathered in Danno’s sauce.”
“No, thanks. I hear it’s cold there. Come on, I have to get to my meeting.”
Jasmyn took one last gaze at the bigness and whispered, “Thank You.”
It was what Liv would have done. And it felt good.
Thirty-Four
Sam stole a glance at Jasmyn as they drove past the highway sign that announced they had entered the Lotanzai Reservation. Jasmyn’s face seldom disguised her feelings. Right now her eyebrows inched above her sunglasses, clearly suggesting some hesitation. It was an old reaction that Sam knew well.
She said in a solemn tone, “No need to worry, Jasmyn. They are a peaceful people these days.”
“Oh, dear. How did you know? I didn’t mean to—I’m sorry. The thing is, I watched one too many old Westerns with my grandpa.”
“Indians were the bad guys.”
“Exactly. We even found arrowheads on the farm to prove it.” She groaned. “He was a difficult man.”
Sam figured Jasmyn sugarcoated the truth about her grandfather the way she did most things. From the few hints Jasmyn had dropped, Sam imagined the old man was a misogynistic bigot who blamed his granddaughter for being born to his unwed daughter.
“Hey, Sam, can I ask you something personal?”
Sam decided to just go ahead and answer the question she assumed was on Jasmyn’s mind. “Yes, I am an Indian.”
“Now how did you know what I wanted to ask?”
“Because people have always asked me that. I legally changed my name from Whitehorse to Whitley after college and now they ask less. Apparently, I don’t look Indian with a different name. I’m three-fourths Navajo.”
“Really?”
Sam focused on the highway and the odometer, anticipating the unmarked road. She stuffed down familiar, ugly reactions. Things like, Yeah I really am three-fourths Navajo. What of it?
As a kid on the rez, she was defined by that one-fourth slice of non-Navajo heritage. As a college student off the rez, she was defined by the three-fourths. As an adult, she realized how much unwarranted shame had colored her world because of other people’s reactions.
“You are the first one I’ve met.”
“Something to write home about.”
“I’m sorry.” Jasmyn apologized often. “Am I being offensive?”
Sam sighed. In spite of her saccharine voice, Jasmyn was the most genuinely nice, wholesome person she had ever known. The woman would have to work at being offensive. “No, you’re not. I’m just being my usual touchy self on the subject. So what do you think? Do I meet your expectations?”
“Well, you definitely dress better than the characters in the Westerns.”
She smiled.
“Seriously, Sam, in Valley Oaks we don’t have much experience with other cultures. Ninety-nine point nine percent of us are descendants of Swedish farmers who came to America in the mid-1800s, married each other, and farmed.”
Sam’s mind’s eye flashed to the faded photo she had of her grandmother, the grandmother with long blond hair and blue eyes. Her father’s mother.
From the corner of her eye she saw the turnoff as they sailed past it.
“Nuts.” She slowed, pulled off the side of the empty highway, and made a U-turn. “I missed the turn.”
“The turn? We’re in the middle of nowhere. How will people ever find this new hotel?”
“They’ll go the front way, where a freeway and big signs for the turnoff into the town of Overland are located. I took this back route because it has the best wow effect for desert first-timers.”
Jasmyn grinned. “Thanks.”
“Yup.” She slowed at the narrow, cracked asphalt road and turned. “The reservation covers about fifteen thousand acres. My grandmother was Swedish.”
“Huh?”
Sam bit her lip. Those last words had slipped themselves into the conversation. She had nothing to do with it. Not even Randy had ever heard them, and she shared more with him than anybody.
“Swedish!”
Sam cleared her throat. “My father’s mother. She died when I was a baby. I don’t remember her at all.”
“How…”
“Heart attack.”
“I mean, how did she become your grandmother?”
Sam couldn’t help but smile. “Jasmyn, let’s save that talk for another time.”
She laughed. “Not that talk.”
“Oh! You mean how did she become my grandmother?”
“That’s what I said.”
Good grief. Sam was teasing and discussing her family. Jasmyn Albright was an atrocious influence.
“Hannah Susanne Carlson came to teach on the reservation in the 1940s and met my grandfather. Blah, blah, blah. They both died young, as did my father.”
“Then you don’t know much about them?”
Sam remembered the handful of stories she had heard as a child. “An elderly woman once told me that everyone adored Hannah. That she was a wonderful teacher and a kind person. I have no idea why she went to live with the Navajo.”
“She needed to meet your grandfather so you could be born.”
So she could be born? Sam tilted her head. What an odd comment.
“Trust me, Sam, I’ve thought a lot about these things. My mother never even knew my father’s name. My heart has this spare room—oh, never mind. That’s a long story. Where did Hannah come from?”
“Um, up north. Seems like it started with an ‘I.’ My dad told me when I was little. My mom refused to talk about his family.”
“Illinois?”
“I don’t know.”
“Seriously? You don’t?”
“I don’t. Iowa, Idaho, Indiana. It doesn’t matter.”
“It’s interesting, though. Why wouldn’t your mom talk about it?”
Sam had asked her once. If she thought long enough about it, she could feel the sting on her sixteen-year-old cheek and hear the shrill voice. You stupid girl, shut up! “I figure Hannah and my mom did not get along for some reason. My mom is a difficult woman. She never said a nice thing about my dad. I don’t know why she hooked up with him in the first place.”
“There’s only one explanation. Same one as why your grandmother stayed on the reservation. Your mom got together with your dad so you could be born.”
“Come on, Jasmyn. That’s ridiculous.”
Jasmyn gave her a small smile. Enigmatic. A Liv-cloneish smile and attitude. “You never googled Hannah Susanne Carlson?”
“I did. Do you have any idea how many Carlsons there are in this country?”
“Yes. It’s a good Swedish name. Half the people in Valley Oaks have a Carlson in their family tree.” Then she giggled. “Who knows? We might be related.”
The tribal council president’s name was Deborah Brown. She was a stylish fiftysomething woman in a black business suit, a red silk blouse, and pearls. Her well-coiffed hair was short, thick, and black. She was intelligent and friendly.
She looked nothing like Sam’s mother. She acted nothing like Sam’s mother. There was no reason for Sam to react to her as if she were her mother. But she did.
Sam felt incompetent, ugly, stupid, and worthless. She hoped it wasn’t showing.
“Randy.” Deborah looked up from the sketches spread about the table where the three of them sat. “You didn’t tell me your young associate was brilliant.”
Randy shrugged. “What can I say? We keep Sammi out of sight. Can’t have another firm hiring her away.”
Deborah smiled and her whole face lit up. “The question is, what firm would it be? Evidently she’s an engineer and an architect and probably has a host of other top-notch talents in her back pocket.”
Sam squirmed in her seat. “I don’t have a degree in architecture.”
“I doubt that would matter.” The woman gazed again at the drawings. “Besides being more beautiful, your renditions flow better than the architect’s. You’ve made a casino look like an extension of the landscape. It blends in like bighorn sheep camouflaged against the rocks and hills.”
Randy caught Sam’s attention and winked. He mouthed, Told you.
Deborah smiled at her again.
“You said you drew these for fun?”
“Sort of.” She made herself meet the woman’s eyes. They were warm and caring. Her edginess dwindled and she softened her voice. “Yes. It’s a hobby. They’re not to scale; I don’t have the skill. But…well, I couldn’t help but take another look at the plans.”
“Why is that?”
Sam still had a hard time explaining why, but she tried. “Because I wanted to take into account your history. I didn’t find burial grounds or any environmental reasons to halt the project, but I highly suspect that this corner where you want to build is where your ancestors summered. Now you’re going to welcome other people to come and play here. It seems a shame to obliterate the landscape any more than necessary.”
“That’s the most impractical thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I know, right? And I’m one of the most practical people on the face of the earth.”
Deborah’s eyes were moist. “Me too. But this speaks to my heart.”
Sam felt her own eyes burn, and she blinked quickly.
Randy hummed off tune. “Please don’t tell anyone I was in on this conversation.”
Deborah laughed. “I want to show these around. I’m sure the others will agree that we could ask the architects how much they can incorporate into what we already have on the table.”
Sam resisted the urge to do a handspring.
They hashed out details. Although the new designs were Sam’s creation, she wanted to give them to the professionals who could actually make plans that contractors could use to build. Randy insisted on some official paperwork that would give her credit. There was the question of fees.
They left Deborah in her office in the community center and made their way outdoors. Across the road they stopped beside Randy’s car.
“Congratulations, Sam. I’m really proud of you.”
She had no words, only a grin that wouldn’t stop stretching across her face.
“You should celebrate.”
She eyed the small town center, little more than a speed bump on a side road. There were some nondescript houses, a mobile home park, a school, a Laundromat, a gas station, a café. She assumed Jasmyn was nearby, probably with half a dozen new friends in tow. “I’ll find my friend and we’ll get some ice cream at the café.”
Randy chuckled. “Be careful you don’t overindulge.”
“Actually, this whole thing doesn’t feel real yet. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do.”
“Get used to it. You’re gonna be a rock star. You should dress up and go to a fancy restaurant on the coast with a guy wearing a tie. Do you have one yet?”
“A guy in a tie?”
“Yeah.”
“Nah. I don’t have time for that.”
He shook his head. “Give yourself a break, Sammi.”
“But I love work. I’m fine.”
Randy slipped on his sunglasses. “I’m going home to my wife, and we’re going to make a list of all the eligible nice guys we know.”
“Don’t you dare.”
He laughed and got in his car.
Thirty-Five
“But…” Jasmyn paused, unsure how to phrase her question.
The little woman seated in the pew beside her nodded as if she understood. From what Jasmyn had sampled of her wisdom in the past hour or so, she probably did understand.
They had met soon after Sam went into her business meeting, after Jasmyn finished wandering through the small town, which didn’t resemble her small town in the least. There was no library, no pharmacy, and no post office, which were Valley Oaks staples. Few people were about in the middle of a hot weekday.
She had spotted a bell tower through a patch of trees, a white adobe Spanish-looking structure with arches and a tile roof. Next to it was a matching tiny church. A small sign read Mission San Pedro de Lotanzai, 1782. She peeked inside and saw an old woman sweeping the floor. The woman happily greeted her.
“Come, come.” She gestured and propped her broom against the doorjamb. “The church is open.”
As Jasmyn stepped out of the sun, between walls at least two feet thick and into the coolness, she felt transported. The place could have been a movie set for one of her grandfa
ther’s Westerns. It was dusky and had low wooden ceiling beams, simple pews on either side of the aisle, and little else. Several votive candles flickered from a table in a back corner near the door.
The best part, though, was the woman who introduced herself as Nova.
She looked a little bit like a dried apricot trimmed with two silver gray braids, an embroidered white peasant blouse, a brown skirt, and a kind smile. Her voice was low, whispery, fitting for someone who obviously had been talking for many, many years.
Nova gave Jasmyn a tour of the church. It was, she explained, an Assistencia, or extension, part of the church’s thrust inland from the main missions along the coast. For more than two hundred years, itinerant priests had conducted Sunday services, sometimes only once every other month. The one who came nowadays drove a Chevy truck and showed up every other week.
The tour over, they sat now on a hard pew, Nova’s feet dangling above the uneven stone floor. The rough adobe walls were white, stenciled with colorful designs. Sunlight filtered through four stained glass windows, two in each of the side walls. Up front, beyond a rail, was a table, and behind that, high up on the wall, hung a large wooden crucifix.
Jasmyn admired Nova’s ability to relay without bias a history that sounded basically like a long, hostile struggle between cultures and religions. The story upset Jasmyn. Which was why she was confused and could not frame a question tactfully. She gave up and said instead, “I wish I had your wisdom, Nova.”
She chuckled. “I’m only ninety-two.” She raised her arms high above her head and wiggled her fingers. “I’ve scarcely brushed the tips of the wise eagle’s feathers.”
Jasmyn smiled.
“There is time yet for you.” She lowered her arms. “But to gain wisdom, you must ask the difficult questions.”
Okay. Jasmyn nodded. Ask it. “The thing is, the history here is so awful, so tragic. I don’t understand why this place hasn’t been razed. Why would you revere where your ancestors were enslaved and forced to work for foreigners? Forced to claim a faith that had brought so much misery to them?”