With Victor spending most days at Curva’s place, the two children put new demands on her. Both headstrong, they kept her running from morning until Henry picked up Victor late in the afternoon. They were curious about everything and ignored Curva’s attempts to curtail their explorations. Both were impossible to keep inside, even during cold weather.
Curva found them riding the sheep and pigs and calves. They’d get thrown but would climb right back on the animals’ backs, ready for another go. She even found the two of them roosting on eggs—after chasing the hens out of the chicken house—and imitating their squawking, though all they produced were scrambled eggs and a sticky mess.
Finally, Curva had to attach ropes to their waists just to keep them on her property, but Victor quickly chewed through them. Nothing kept them restrained for long, and they didn’t like anything else to be restricted; they were intent on releasing all the animals and creating chaos. Cows bellowed on the roads, milk straining their udders. Pigs and sheep roamed through the holes Victor and Sabina cut in the fences. Chickens came unmoored from their nests.
A wooden gate Curva constructed across the doorway leading outside didn’t last a day. She found pieces of it strewn across the porch. The niños had freed themselves, and she found them in the pigpen, rolling in the mud with the pigs, oinking and shrieking.
Curva dragged them to the well, ignoring their shouts of protest—No! No! No! Leave us alone!—took off their clothes, and rinsed off the mud. She needed a dozen eyes and ears, all watching and listening to ensure they didn’t harm themselves. No easy task. She ran all day, following them into the fields and beyond, fighting off grasshoppers and flies. Sweat dripped from her forehead and beaded between her breasts.
Chasing kids wasn’t what she imagined herself doing at middle age. She always had wanted a life like Suelita Flores. That woman had no trouble, it seemed, having babies and, over the years, bedding down with half of the men in Berumba. Curva wasn’t a prostitute like Suelita, but she liked hombres—all kinds of them—and she loved Suelita’s ability to do as she pleased with as many men as she wanted. Suelita didn’t worry about her kids not having a papá. Why should Curva?
Curva threw up her hands and said to Henry, These bambinos, they drive me loca. He tried to pitch in, taking the kids with him out in the fields and giving Curva a chance to catch up with herself. With some free time, she visited Catherine, Edna, Sophie, and Inez, sharing war stories with them about raising children and laughing about these lively youngsters she was in charge of.
But she couldn’t be angry for long with Sabina or Victor, even though her connection to Sabina was different from the one she had with the boy. The pregnancy had happened so mysteriously and unexpectedly that it was difficult for Curva to feel emotionally attached to her daughter. Never a clinging, helpless bebé, Sabina’s independence from the time she left the womb also created distance between them.
Still, Curva immersed herself in the children’s needs and put her greenhouse and other explorations temporarily on hold. Yet at night, before falling asleep, she thought about things she didn’t have time for during the day. It puzzled her that while sleep resembled death in that she lost consciousness, she always woke in the morning. Why, then, couldn’t humans wake from death in a similar way? Why couldn’t they live forever? What was the secret?
The Real People
Inseparable from the beginning, Victor and Sabina seemed more like twins except, technically, Victor was older than Sabina, and they weren’t siblings. Though Victor was the elder, Sabina was the leader, her ravenous curiosity the driving force that took them into the world.
Outside, the two niños made paths through the abundant prairie grass, taller than they were. Losing themselves in the labyrinths they created, Victor was dependent upon Sabina to find their way out again. They chased field mice and slipped garter snakes into their pockets and chomped on grasshopper legs. Little more than animals themselves, they sniffed the air, sensing the former inland ocean and the dinosaurs that once roamed there. But there was something else they picked up on, another odor they couldn’t quite identify.
On the go from dawn till dusk, Sabina and Victor rafted on the sloughs and irrigation ditches, pretending they were pirates on the high seas. Or they lolled in a pasture and listened to the wind in the grass and stared at cloud formations, making up stories about the faces and shapes they saw. They found trees to climb and branches to swing from.
At times, they watched ant colonies carting their booty. They also experimented on the lizards, cutting off their tails to see if they’d grow back. And they swung from a rope in the hayloft, landing in piles of newly mown hay. Haystacks had other attractions, making excellent huts that they burrowed into. When they tired of being moles, they climbed to the top and rolled down the sides, trying to see who could do it the fastest.
They also liked to catch mice and put them in their pockets. Then they ran back to the house and barged inside: Look, Curva, they said. Touch them.
Curva shrank back in mock horror: With my bare hands? They might bite me.
Tittering, they said, Come on, Curva. They’re nice. Look! They won’t hurt you.
She could see the animals’ little bodies moving under their trousers, squirming, squeaking, and quivering. Then they scurried up Sabina’s and Victor’s backs, making the two of them laugh even louder. The mice poked their heads through the openings between their shirt buttons and twitched their noses, trembling with terror.
Okay, let them go now, mis bambinos, Curva said, clapping her hands together. Pronto. And she had shooed away the frightened little creatures, sending them all back into the fields.
One day, Sabina and Victor went farther than usual and in a new direction. The land no longer produced much except for intermittent patches of straggly grass, and the earth had turned sandy in places. Victor called out, Let’s go back. But Sabina—walking in the lead, wearing a pair of Victor’s shorts and one of her own blouses—ignored him. She marched into this new territory. He followed, hesitantly.
Suddenly, Sabina began to sink. Reaching out for Victor, she screamed, Help. She didn’t understand why the land was swallowing her. The clammy mixture of wet earth and sand gripped her bare legs, pulling her under. The clearly defined mountains in the distance and the prairies themselves tilted and swirled. Nothing appeared solid; nothing held together. Even Victor was a blur, his features indistinct. For the first time she realized that life could end in minutes. There was nothing she could do about it except watch.
Victor stood there, staring. He thought his friend was playing a joke and laughed out loud, his mirth merging with her shrieks.
Face contorted in fear, she tried to grab him, waving her hands like windmills. Pull me out, she said, unable to move her legs without a great effort. But he could see that the nearby earth was dangerous. If he tried to help, he’d get sucked in too.
Frightened now, he also started screaming. Sabina’s legs were no longer visible, and it wouldn’t take long for the ground to claim all of her. Certain he was seeing the last of his friend, he yelled as loudly as he could, their voices rolling across the prairies like tumbling tumbleweeds, picking up speed and force. They bumped into Billie One Eye, who was working nearby with tribal members, teaching youngsters how to carve totems. He cocked his ear, recognizing the cry for help. Holding the shovel in front of him like a spear, he took off in the direction of the shrieks, quickly reaching the two children.
Sabina’s upper body was still above ground, and her arms flapped frantically, resembling chicken wings and equally as useless in this situation: she could neither fly nor help herself. But her screams quieted when she saw Billie.
He placed the shovel’s handle near her hands: Grab it, kid, and hold tight, he said.
She did as she was told, and Billie pulled her out of the bog to safety. She held onto his legs, afraid to let go, wet sand clinging to her
skin.
Sabina seemed somehow familiar to Billie. He knew she was Curva’s daughter, though he had only seen her from afar. But he recognized something in her of Ni-tsi-ta-pi-ksi, the real people, a name the Blackfoot had given themselves instead of what the Whites called them: Blackfoot. Sabina was one of the few individuals he knew, outside of his mother, whose hair was red, like his own. And she had Sighing Turtle’s sky blue eyes, now blurred with tears. It startled him to see something of his mother in this girl, who was looking up at him adoringly.
Once their hysterics quieted, Billie took the two children back to Curva’s place, shooing them on ahead, using the shovel as a walking stick. But Sabina wanted to hold his hand, still frightened over her brush with death. She masked her fear with questions, lots of them, wanting to know about the recently discovered bones, and whom they belonged to, and why they were there, and what exactly is a Blackfoot burial ground, and couldn’t she help him with it?
Sabina hopped along, trying to keep up with his longer strides, unable to take her eyes off him. His red hair shimmered like polished copper in the sun, and the black eye patch made him look like a pirate. Sabina wondered what he hid beneath it.
Victor trailed behind, sulking, kicking at clods of dirt, angry that he hadn’t been able to save his friend. He whistled between the spaces in his teeth, and did a cartwheel or two, trying to get Sabina’s attention, but she was too caught up in admiring Billie to notice Victor.
When they arrived at Curva’s, they found her weeding the vegetable patch next to the house. A paisley scarf kept her long hair off her face. Billie explained what had happened, stuttering a little and shuffling his feet. His face turned the color of flame when Curva threw her arms around him and thanked him profusely for rescuing her daughter. She smelled smoke in his hair and sweat on his body and felt a stiffening in Billie’s groin.
Bones will be bones.
Sabina ran into the house and grabbed her camera. But by the time she appeared again, Billie had left. Curva was sitting on the porch, looking dazed, and Victor was chasing some chickens around the yard, flapping his arms and imitating their squawking. The girl aimed her camera and caught the look on Curva’s face, a cross between desire and bliss.
The Weedites and Curva
Though her neighbors didn’t object outwardly to the illegitimate niña she’d borne or to Curva carrying on with Henry, they gossiped plenty in private about both. When the sewing circle met at Catherine Hawkins’s house, she served tea in china cups her mother had brought from England as part of her trousseau. Along with the tea and cookies, Catherine also served up the latest Curva rumors, her lips quivering as if fighting a smile. She said, I saw her in the woods one day, naked, fondling herself. The woman has no shame!
While sipping her tea, pinky curled like a piglet’s tail, Inez Wilson raised her eyebrows and told the others that Curva bedded down at Henry’s place some nights. Or else he did at hers.
Edna MacGregor clucked her tongue and blurted out, What kind of example are Curva and Henry setting for the children? Such loose behavior.
Sweat beading on her upper lip, Catherine ran the tip of her tongue along her lower lip, forgetting the cup and saucer she was holding, her fingers slackening. Both fell to the floor and shattered. Catherine shrieked: Oh my god, Mother would turn over in the grave if she knew. All she sacrificed to bring that china with her!
Sophie Smart, who had been sitting quietly, drinking her tea, said, There’s more, my friends. I’ve heard that Curva has been slipping out at night to see Billie One Eye at the greenhouse and the burial ground.
Edna gasped: An Indian lover? That’s the limit! What would Catherine’s mother say to that?
Catherine rolled her eyes in response and said, Mother would die a second time.
Dropping to her hands and knees, Catherine began collecting the fine porcelain shards from under the table, trying to piece them together. Sophie joined her, the two women face to face in that small space. Her curly mop in disarray, Sophie hissed, How can she let Billie touch her?
Catherine’s eyes glazed over. She was unable to respond because she envied Curva’s freedom to carry on as she did.
Later, Catherine and Sophie glanced at the other women, curious to see how they were reacting. But no one wanted to speak out too harshly against Curva, so the ladies gave her a lot of slack. The women had a strong motivation to protect Curva: her greenhouse, a tropical paradise that was expanding before their eyes. Never before had they witnessed something so fertile. They remembered the dried-out seed Curva had shown them, one she had brought with her from Mexico. It had turned into a dwarf avocado tree almost overnight and produced strange fruit they had never seen before. Her greenhouse tomatoes began as ordinary garden varieties but became gigantic—as big as bowling balls.
The structure itself seemed to be a living thing. The women didn’t know what to make of it. So they approached the greenhouse with reverence because it was beyond their understanding. They wanted to be near the place, yet they also feared it—feared what it might do to them. If strange phenomena happened within its boundaries to plants and other things, what might it do to humans who strayed too close?
Of course, Curva’s lustiness also attracted them, as well as her infectious laugh. Both offered hope that they too could escape from their mundane lives and find the delight she did in what seemed to be trivial things. They had never seen anyone else get so excited about bee colonies. Even ants fascinated the woman to no end. Inez stumbled on Curva crouched by the side of the road, charting the track of a long line of marching ants. An hour later, after shopping at the Smart’s store, Inez reported that Curva was still there. And those phantom streams that at times mysteriously appeared and disappeared in Curva’s presence caused them to jump and hop around to avoid getting their feet wet. Before she showed up in Weed, their days had been drab and uneventful. Now they couldn’t imagine life without her.
If Curva was aware of these women’s conversations and her own role at the center of their circle, she didn’t let on when she saw them. Nor did they say anything to her. Though they felt she had crossed a forbidden line by carrying on with an Indian, they envied her boldness and lived vicariously through her. It was one more thing she could pull off that they couldn’t. They protected her uniqueness—the impulse to follow her own desires—and viewed Curva as one of them. If they had to, they would fight for her till the end. Anything that threatened her freedom likewise jeopardized their futures. Before she had arrived, they didn’t think they had much of a future outside of the usual routines. Now they saw a glimmer of hope. It was no surprise, then, that any time their men talked of reining in Curva, the women withheld their sexual favors until their partners saw the light.
A Visitor
One night, Curva was sipping a glass of dandelion wine at her kitchen table after dinner, dreamily trailing her fingers through the dust on its surface left from another windstorm, watching them create an image. Sabina was in bed, sleeping. Dios let out a low growl and whimpered, cowering under Curva’s skirt. Manuel and Pedro huddled in their cage, shivering. She glanced around the room, wondering what was upsetting the animals, and patted the trembling dog. She said, It’s just the wind, Dios. The parrots shrieked, Wind, wind!
Some branches knocked against the window, and Curva rose, ready to pick up a gun. But before she could do so, Xavier, accompanied by a strong wind, strode through the front door, though it wasn’t día de los muertos. Curva froze, unable to do anything but stare at her hermano. Death hadn’t changed him at all. If anything, it had made him more handsome and vital.
Dios slunk into the bedroom, tail between his legs. The dog had faced wolverines, bears, and worse on the trail, but ghosts? They didn’t have a scent, leaving Dios confused and scared. Manuel and Pedro screeched Ghost, ghost!
Xavier threw back his head and laughed. Buenas tardes, mi hermana, he said, as if they’d p
arted only yesterday and not twenty years before. He wrapped his arms around Curva and held her close. She slowly melted in his embrace, her heart beating wildly. His arms seemed weightless, as light as silk against her skin, and he smelled of the earth after rainfall on a warm humid day. She sighed, tucking her face into his neck and soaking up his scent, afraid to look at his face for fear he would disappear.
Shivering, Curva pulled away so she could see him better, still unable to believe Xavier was actually in her casa. She stared at him, stunned, not comprehending what she was seeing. Her brother. Over the years he’d appeared often in her dreams, but this was the first time he’d materialized in waking life. Death may not have changed him fundamentally, but his hair had grown, now longer than hers, and it had grey streaks at the temples. His face had wrinkles, too, and was weathered from the sun. She took some comfort from knowing that everyone and everything aged, dead or living, except, it seemed, for Kadeem the Trinidadian.
Xavier also brought the odor of newly mown grass with him. The smell filled the room, though none grew near Curva’s house. It reminded her of the lawn that surrounded their family home, the one they’d sold to fund their travels. Whenever Xavier had mowed it, the scent filled the place for hours afterward.
Curva recalled that when the people in their village had celebrated día de los muertos, many spoke of their departed family members as if they were actually present. Some believed they saw them swirling among the living, part of the colors and smells and sounds. Curva had liked that idea then, and she still did, though Xavier’s appearance stirred many questions about death and immortality.
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