The Wandering Gene and the Indian Princess

by Jeff Wheelwright

  ALSO BY JEFF WHEELWRIGHT

  Degrees of Disaster (1994)

  The Irritable Heart (2001)

  In memory of Dale Owen

  Everything is foreseen, yet free will is granted; the world is ruled with divine goodness, yet all is according to the greatness of one’s deeds.

  —PIRKEI AVOT (ETHICS OF THE FATHERS)

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter 1 Girasol

  Chapter 2 Predestination

  Chapter 3 The Wandering Gene

  Chapter 4 El Convento

  Chapter 5 The Lost Tribe

  Chapter 6 From the Morada to the Kingdom Hall

  Chapter 7 The DNA Age

  Chapter 8 Last Days of the Indian Princess

  Chapter 9 When Harry Met Stanley

  Chapter 10 The Obligate Carrier

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  NOTES

  INDEX

  PROLOGUE

  * * *

  Shonnie Medina was a happy girl. She was a happy girl who felt she would die young. But all that was under the surface. On the surface she was beautiful.

  Her physical beauty, when she was a young woman in Culebra and a young wife in Alamosa, was the primary thing that people mentioned about her. Photographs and snatches of videotape don’t quite capture it because fundamentally what people were talking about was charisma. It came through her looks when she was in front of you, tossing her full head of dark hair and giving you her full attention. Then her beauty acted like a mooring for her other outward qualities, undulating from that holdfast like fronds of kelp on the sea. Then Shonnie was magnetic, vain, kind to others, religious without reservation, funny, a little goofy, and headstrong.

  Being headstrong or unreasonable was the quality that the doctors in Alamosa and Denver blamed for her death—for Shonnie was right about dying young. She carried in her cells a dangerous genetic mutation and died when she was just twenty-eight, having refused surgery for her aggressive, inherited breast cancer.

  The gene she carried is known as BRCA1.185delAG, a famous gene with a long pedigree. This book will tell the story of the gene, with background about the scientists and other professionals who have grappled with that crucial stretch of DNA. The book will also tell of Shonnie’s large family in the southern part of Colorado’s San Luis Valley, radiating from their genetic heritage to questions of faith and identity. The book will boil down to a medical and spiritual choice. Shonnie Medina might have saved herself if she’d put herself into the hands of scientific medicine. Jealous of her body, oblivious to the gene, she insisted on another style of care.

  The happiest day in her wholesome life was her wedding day: August 1, 1992. Shonnie was twenty-two. To marry Michael, an Anglo boy from Alamosa, Shonnie made something of a cultural leap. The Medinas are Hispanos, a mix of Spanish and Indian people. Older than other Hispanics in North America, the Hispanos claim a four-hundred-year history in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Their villages, dotting the northern reach of the Rio Grande, were as lively and insular as shtetls. Culebra itself was a tight cluster of villages where everybody knew everybody else, and for that reason Marianne Medina, Shonnie’s mother, was concerned about the all-too-close genetic relationships. She told her daughter, You’re going to marry someone from away from here, thinking more about geography than about race. Shonnie did, although it was only fifty miles north and not the Hispano type that her mother expected.

  If there was a racial element to her identity, it’s hard to describe. For one thing, Hispanos regarded themselves as an ethnic group, not a race. For another, Shonnie’s religion had taught her to be color-blind. She hardly spoke of race, other than to make light of Indianlike misspellings of her name—when, for instance, she received letters addressed to Shawnee. Her complexion was very fair. For centuries the Hispanos of New Mexico had prized the pure pale skin of the españole and had strived to upgrade their racial status and skin tone through marriage. Yet Shonnie Medina tanned deeply and was notorious for showing off her tan, spurning the weak winter light of Culebra. She dared to look dark, Native American dark, because of her confidence in her whiteness. Indeed, a few days before the wedding she decided that Michael looked too pale next to her. She had him undergo a stiff treatment with tanning lotion—which turned his face orange and prompted a frantic scrubbing. Whatever Shonnie thought about her racial or ethnic heritage in America, her wedding would make her assimilation complete. For all that, a geneticist would be able to look below her skin and easily distinguish the Hispano from the Anglo she was marrying.

  On the day of the wedding, it was warm and not windy in Culebra. The high prairie sky was clear. Chairs were set up in the gravel parking lot facing the Kingdom Hall, and a low stage was prepared for the young people of the nuptial party, separate from the rest of the gathering. While the groomsmen directed the arriving cars to park around the back, the afternoon’s clouds took their seats on the front row of the mountains. There were more than a hundred guests, a few of whom put up umbrellas against the sun.

  The procession began, to the accompaniment of the taped melodies that are prescribed for such occasions. Steps crunching on gravel, the somber ushers and colorful bridesmaids walked down the aisle between the chairs. Marianne Medina had made the girls’ dresses, all but one, and she didn’t stint on the bright fabric. Here comes Veronica Sanchez on the arm of an usher. Veronica is Shonnie’s first cousin once removed. Her grandmother and aunt died of the family disease. Here’s Jackie Van Geison, whom Shonnie has been instructing in the Bible. Jackie will meet her future husband here today. And so on, until the exotic bride and her father appear, brilliant in the open air.

  Shonnie had seen a picture in a magazine of an Indian (Asian Indian) bridal gown. Judging from Marianne’s adaptation of it, the gown must have featured mounds of satin and a multitude of jewels. Shonnie’s dress glinted with sequins and dripped with beads and teardrop pearls. The skirt was slit down one side. The back had a bustle, a detachable bow, and a long, flouncy train. Although Marianne had lined the underside of the train with a protective strip so that it could drag without harm, for most of the day Shonnie carried the train on the crook of her arm, or else she hung it from a special strap on her wrist, which spoiled the effect, Marianne thought.

  Joseph, Shonnie’s father, had vetoed the bodice that was pictured in the bridal magazine because he thought its heart-shaped bustline was too revealing. Instead, Shonnie went with a lacy, scalloped pattern across her collarbone. Her wedding veil could barely contain her sumptuous black hair. Her nails were manicured with French tips. The pièce de résistance was a jeweled headband, which she wore low on her forehead, Apache-style, its stones having been taken from her grandmother Dorothy’s necklace. Taller in heels than her father, Shonnie passed by her guests smiling, and Joseph, escorting her, wore a huge grin. When they reached the platform and Joseph let her go, the groom picked up the bridal train and the two mounted to their seats. The attendants were already sitting.

  The officiating elder, who happened to be Michael’s father, began to explain the marital contract to the young people. In an address lasting forty minutes, the elder covered the responsibilities and requirements of husband and wife as stipulated by scripture. Two are better than one, advises Ecclesiastes (4:9). The husband, designated the head, is to be respectful of the wife, the elder said, not tyrannical. Her honor is precious, delicate, cherished. Leaning toward Shonnie, Michael held open a Bible for both of them and expertly turned the pages to the passages being cited. The ges
ture symbolized that, though the husband directed the couple’s spiritual life, the two were literally on the same page. It would be interesting to know what Shonnie was thinking then.

  Ecclesiastes goes on to observe that if two lie down together, they will certainly get warm. That Shonnie and Michael were virgins did not need to be stated. Probably their bodies had not warmed one another for more than a few seconds; they had resisted what were called the desires incidental to youth. In fact, they had rarely been alone because the orthodox youth of their circle socialized together, usually under the eye of a chaperone.

  At last they spoke their marriage vows. Michael took the microphone first, and then Shonnie. Her voice was succinct and soft. Among the onlookers, only Shonnie’s sister did not look happy. Iona was losing her big sister, her only sibling, for the first but not the last time. Instead of ending with “So help me God” or the like, the vow was sealed, rather woodenly, with “According to God’s marital arrangement.” Husband and wife turned and presented themselves to their witnesses. They kissed and walked shyly off the platform, up the aisle.

  The reception took place at the high school gymnasium. Spanish fans decorated the steep banks of the folded bleachers. Removing her veil, Shonnie extended a hand to her guests. Out of the competing glare of the sun she looked even more luminous. George Casias, the wedding photographer, estimated that four hundred people came. The two families, because they shared a faith, mingled comfortably. Michael’s side did find it unusual that the newlyweds opened their presents in the middle of the reception, but that’s how Hispanos did it.

  The couple’s first dance was to a recording of a slow tune, “Love of a Lifetime.” Shonnie rested her arms on Michael’s shoulders and enfolded the nape of his neck with her hands. The white tips of her nails looked like whole notes swaying on a bar of music. His entire right side was covered by her train, as if by a swan’s wing. After Joseph danced with her, she and Michael cut the wedding cake. It was an elaborate, almost garish, four-tiered affair, erected over a miniature fountain and held firm by struts on two sides. Linking arms, Shonnie and Michael drank iced tea from plastic champagne glasses, someone having forgotten the ceremonial wine, though this was a dry party anyway.

  “Hey Baby, Que Paso?” played next, their fast dance (“I thought I was your only vato”). Whether the beat was fast or slow, Shonnie was an instinctive, supple dancer, he not so much, to put it kindly. When Americans first traveled over the Santa Fe Trail to New Mexico, they remarked on the fondness for dancing among this strange, uninhibited, Catholic people. Light in the arms of the horny gringos, the ladies would tip back their heads and make merry laughter, all the while smoking their corn-husk cigarettes.

  At 7 p.m. it was time for the newlyweds to leave. On the videotape, dusk transfigures the summer sky, the orange fingers of the departed sun still harrying the diaspora of cloud. Michael carries his wife, her head averted, to the front of the high school. He tells Shonnie to keep her eyes closed until he stops. The surprise is a waiting white limousine. All the Culebrans are astonished, because no one has ever furnished a limo at a Spanish wedding before.

  Now they pose for one more picture; now they raise their champagne glasses to their lips with arms interlocked. At the send-off Shonnie doesn’t toss her garter to her bridesmaids. That would be too racy a gesture for a woman like her. Fishing her car keys from a compartment of her dress, she flips them—how many times has Shonnie forgotten or lost her keys?—to her sister. The dashing couple turns, waves, and disappears into the limo with the quick agile grace of their youth. The gene gets in with her, the gene that has followed her from Judea to Sepharad to Mexico and up the winding aisle of the Rio Grande.

  There is a passage in the adventures of Don Quixote where the addled knight comes briefly to his senses. His sidekick, Sancho, informs him that the lady Dulcinea, the inspiration for Quixote’s quest, is not a noblewoman after all but a lowly maid of the village.

  So what? Quixote declares. So what if I apostrophize her? He concludes, You should know, Sancho, if you don’t know it already, that the two qualities above all others that inspire love are beauty and reputation. And these two Dulcinea is in consummate possession of.

  Chapter 1

  * * *

  GIRASOL

  En un corral redondo

  con vacas en el fondo

  y un pastor hermoso

  y un perro rabioso

  In a round corral

  With cows far back

  Are a beautiful shepherd

  And a rabid dog

  —RIDDLE FROM OLD NEW MEXICO

  To cross the border from New Mexico into the San Luis Valley of Colorado is to cross a meaningless line. State highway 522 becomes state highway 159, and Taos County Costilla County. The run-down village of Costilla, New Mexico, becomes the run-down village of Garcia, Colorado. By all that is holy and true, the way is still New Mexico, at least as far as Alamosa.

  To the west is the clean-edged cone of Ute Mountain, incongruously standing by itself on the plain that widens to the San Luis Valley. On the right, growing more imposing with each mile, is the Sangre de Cristo range, which encloses the east side of the Valley. These mountains are said to have been named by a dying man, Francisco Torres. Part of Torres had already died before he spoke his famous last words. Of noble Spanish ancestry, having been engaged to be married in Seville and suffering the death of his fiancée only days before the wedding, the heartbroken man retired to a monastery, whereupon he learned of an expedition to the northern frontier of New Mexico. (How many powerful thoughts have been hatched in the safety of monasteries!)

  So off he went, the reconstituted Fray Torres. Two bony ranges, the Sangre de Cristos and the San Juans, join at the northern perimeter of the Valley and form a sort of rib cage opening onto New Mexico. After reaching the source of the Rio Grande River in the San Juan Mountains, the Spaniards made their entrada to the San Luis Valley from the west. All the while, they were being hounded by Indians. Fray Torres was badly wounded in one of the attacks, and the party had to hole up at the foot of the eastern mountains. On this August day of 2007, the prairie is rather hazy and the peaks a vague gray, so that the sunset will have less to work with, but at the time Fray Torres lay bleeding, snow draped the top of la sierra like a waiting canvas. As seen from the valley floor, the darkening red in the clefts of the mountains would have flushed to the sky like magma. One story has it that Torres got to his feet in a kind of ecstasy, crying, Sangre de Cristo! Sangre de Cristo! [Blood of Christ!], before collapsing. In another version, he lay there watching the effect, and whispered the words.

  The elevation, 7,500 feet, is noticeable to any visitor from sea level. Lungs pinched, the northbound traveler turns instinctively toward the shelter and water of the mountains, away from the exposure and aridity of the prairie. Near the state line, Costilla Creek flows busily out of the Sangre de Cristos and intersects the highway. After driving up the creek a few miles, the water sporting over boulders, you come to a colorful cemetery. It has small American flags stuck on the graves, and pinwheels apparently, or possibly Pueblo Indian prayer-sticks?—no, they are gaudily adorned crosses whose arms are fixed. Naked to the sky, the Santo Niño Catholic cemetery is without greensward or landscaping, just mineral soil and dusty weeds separating the graves.

  The detour continues east along Costilla Creek, past vacation ranches on the floodplain and trout-fishing spots in the national forest, but those are Anglo elaborations on the landscape and would break the spell. Instead, turn north again at the cemetery, mount the dry tableland (still in the cool aura of the mountains), and cross into the Culebra Creek drainage of the San Luis Valley. You have reached the perimeter of the Spanish colonization from Mexico. Rio Culebra, the serpent river. Via sinuous channels and man-made tangents, Culebra Creek and its tributaries irrigate the southeast corner of the Valley, where the Medina family lives an
d where this story takes place, this story of genes and faith. The people who settled here had Indian blood in their veins—they had Indianness circulating within their Catholic Spanishness, whether they admitted it or not.

  Ever since Santa Fe, the sunflowers have been mesmerizing. Bisecting the sagebrush and rabbitbrush, brilliant yellow sunflowers line both sides of the road and project onto the horizon a single yellow vanishing point, which holds your attention like a hood ornament. With their purposeful heads and vaguely vertebrate forms, the sunflowers could constitute a race of people marching north. The common sunflower, Helianthus annuus, is a camp follower of human beings. Native Americans were the first to domesticate the plant and distribute it. It traveled to Europe with homecoming Spanish explorers and returned to America a few centuries later, much modified, in the company of German, Russian, and other immigrants. The cultivated strains are put to many uses, both industrial and horticultural. Meanwhile, the feral common sunflower, which never left, sprouts on the roadsides and in fallow fields, and is considered a weed in several states.

  Along roads in San Luis Valley you can find scraggly, foot-tall sunflowers, their leaves wizened, barely flowering in cracks of asphalt, while a few miles away, lush six-footers are hulking on a floodplain of Culebra Creek. They are of the same race. More than most plants, the common sunflower has phenotypic plasticity, which means a potential for a plethora of shapes. Although the environment (obvious differences in soil, light, water, nutrients) can account for the difference in form, geneticists have wondered about the sunflower’s DNA. After all, it is the genes of the plant that tell the plant what to do in response to the environment. The sunflower, scientists say, is genetically versatile, its DNA so full of variation that it can grow in any reasonable habitat. A population of sunflowers appears to contain templates for a host of identities, as if an awesome package of environmental software were preloaded onto the hard drive of the genes. Global warming? Renewed ice age? Bring it on; the sunflower will adjust and assimilate.