The Eves

by Grace Sammon

  She continues, “I love stories and I love food. I think this Hopi olla, with its spoons, would be a great cover for a cookbook. Maybe I’ll get around to that someday. It would be good if we could match spoons to recipes.”

  Rapidly, I agree and make two notes—one adding the question about what did you bring with you to The Grange, and one about Jan writing a cookbook. “I’d love a picture of that. The way you describe it, there’s already a whole back story here through the spoons.”

  Jan jumps right back in. “I’ll take a picture and email it to you. I’ve got a new Photoshopping program from Erica that I can play with and adjust how the light hits it.”

  “Really, you Photoshop?” I ask.

  “I didn’t say I do it well. What I do well is garden and cook; and cook for a lot of people. You should stay for supper.”

  “So, what’s on the stove?” Her response won’t matter. I’m made hungry already by the aroma.

  “Lime and curry chicken in tomato paste sauce, stir-fry cabbage with carrots and canned plums, and mashed potatoes. If we finish early enough, I might make a pie. CC brought in the last of the apples this morning.”

  We go through the list of questions first, just to confirm that she wants to, or is willing to, talk about all of them. I quickly realize this won’t be short question and answers, at least with Jan. I already want to ask her what she brought with her, why the tattoos, and, if there’s any significance to the Hopi jar. I want to know if I am wrong, or if I have created a stereotype, that country music, à la Dolly Parton, isn’t exactly a Black thing (if there is a “Black thing”). I’m pretty sure these questions will have to wait. Jan wants to talk.

  Turning down the pots on the stove, Jan invites me to her room in the turret on the second floor. The room is accessible only up a winding stair making it undesirable to the rest of the women. Jan explains that she still has the legs for it and the daily sun rise and east-facing view inspire her. I’m winded and my knees are screaming by the time we get to the top. Although she took the stairs slowly, Jan hasn’t skipped a beat.

  The room is cramped. There’s an oversized bed that must have been assembled here, with an air mattress—the only one able to make it up the stairs. There’s an armchair and a low stool being used as an ottoman in front of it. Like Joan’s studio, there are bookcases below the turret-surround windows. These are filled with Native American pottery. On the two walls that are useful for pictures there are a dozen paintings. Horses in darkness silhouetted against a pale moon, horses with Madonna-like women with babies riding bareback, and there are sunrises.

  “Joan did most of these,” Jan says, as she sits down on the low bookcase, inviting me with her hand to sit on the stool. “This one is the first she gave me. We were teenagers. She was trying to capture the story that is always told about my mother’s birth. Joan loved it. She felt it made me quite exotic! She and I are related on our fathers’ side. My mother was Indian, Hopi, specifically. I’m what they used to call red-boned—a mix of ‘redskin’ and ‘negro.’ I am that, and more. It seems that that term, along with ‘high-yellow,’ are derogatory terms now, but we never thought so—it was just a way of describing who we are. I was red-boned, Joan, a mix of Black and white, more high-yellow.

  “Anyway, the list of questions you sent down asked about my earliest memory. It is my mother telling me the story of her birth on the pueblo in Arizona.

  “Sit, Jessica, and I will tell you. In my mother’s culture, a good storyteller is one with a story bag of oral traditions, someone who collects and remembers stories from long ago, someone who sees that a story is being created every minute, right in front of your eyes. My mother was such a woman. My mother would sit us down in front of her. She would sit on a low stool, legs open wide, elbows on knees, leaning into us.” Jan assumes this position, leaning deeply towards me, and continues, “My mother would then say, as if casting a spell, ‘Aliksa’i, it is time for a story.’ In Hopi ‘ali’ means something like delicious, good, delightful. As children, we fell under her spell, eagerly awaiting what came next. Following tradition, she would always tell us if the story we were about to hear was true or made up. These are her words, Jessica.

  “‘Aiksa’i.’ This is the story of how I was born. This story is true. I was born close to midnight on the pueblo in Arizona. The wind blew and the coyotes yipped, yipped, yipped, announcing my arrival. Because we had no Hopi word for ‘apportioned lands,’ we borrowed the Spanish word ‘pueblo’ to describe the land our people had populated for a thousand years and the white man had so recently ‘given’ to us. The pueblos, like the white man’s allotted reservation lands, were supposed to be neatly drawn lines to bring peace, while providing prosperity for the white man. But it was still a restless land. Still, the soldiers came. They still come. One of the women had the back of her legs slashed by a soldier’s sword as she was walking the road the week before my arrival. It was too dangerous for us to stay. So, it was, in our house made of stone, with dirt floors, clean and swept, and with a small kiva in the corner for warmth, that I came into this world. I slid from my mother easily, but only after a full day of labor. My first wails were accompanied by deep inhales of the pungent smoke from the pinion-wood fire. The other women tended to my mother and me as my father readied the horses. He then lifted my mother, as gently as he could, on to a horse. The woman handed me to her with a blessing. Then, my parents rode into the night. And, so it came to be that I was baptized at midnight on the back of a horse as we fled.”

  Jan laughs and her eyes sparkle. “This is my earliest memory, me and Joan listening at my mother’s feet to this story. I just can’t think of a more auspicious start to person’s story! Of all the things you wouldn’t want to do directly after childbirth, I imagine, horseback riding is right up there.

  “Child, you look skeptical. What I can tell you is that all Hopi true stories start and end the same way. I wish I could remember the words she’d say. I never bothered to learn the language my mother would gladly have passed on. But always at the end of a true story she would say the words in Hopi and then translate ‘this is not hearsay, Jessica, this is really true.’”

  I am humbled. “Oh, Jan, I wish I was a better writer! Your mother’s beginning indeed makes a very good story and both you and she tell it beautifully.”

  “What I wish Jessica, is that she had written it, or that I had taken the time to capture all of her stories, or that my children would have been interested. It didn’t seem important to me until after she was dead. And, since I barely see my children, I imagine neither my mother’s story, nor mine, are important to them. My daughter Brenda used to come here. She and Tia used to be close. I’m not sure what happened to that, but families are funny places, aren’t they?

  “We didn’t see much of my mother’s family and I have no other real Hopi roots, although my mother made sure I was a bona fide, card-carrying Indian. She and my father moved to Baltimore so he could work on the railroad. Decent work for a Black man in those days, but very far away from the pueblo.

  “In answer to your question about whom I would like to most speak with, it would be my mother. At my age I understand, and regret, the many hurts I caused her, big and small. I wonder at the hurts and joys I didn’t even know I caused, as I watch myself and my daughter spar and miss opportunities together. I wish I had been a better daughter. I wish my daughter saw what I now see. I would give an awful lot to see my mother sit, where you are, on her stool and whisper ‘Aliksa’i.’”

  Chills run down my arms as Jan reaches between her legs and into the bookcase picking up a piece of pottery, caressing it. “It’s one reason I bought this ‘storyteller.’ It’s by the Cochiti clay artist Helen Cordero. She was actually a bad potter. She could not quite get the coiling right for pots, so she made these figures instead. This one is in remembrance of her grandfather, braids going down his back, children climbing all over him. He was the storyteller in her family. I think she got the idea
from Cochiti lore around ‘singing mothers.’ Her work was so wildly popular with tourists and collectors that they were copied, adapted, and rapidly manufactured by many tribes and vendors. In answer to a question I think you want to ask, what I brought here was my mother’s stool, the one you are sitting on, and this collection of paintings and pottery. These were the things that mattered.” She leans further toward me, offering me the figure. Taking it from her it is surprisingly light, has an old dusty feeling, it makes you smile.

  Elbows on her knees, she says, “Jessica, I tell you this, our stories are important. This is not hearsay. This is really true.”

  just for today

  M

  y mind is too full, after talking with Allison and Jan, to process one more interview. I beg off a discussion with Deirdre. I need time to clear my head. I’m surprised that it feels like I have been sitting far too long today. A walk will do me good. Pointing me to a path that will lead me to the new construction, Jan assures me that if Allison shows up, she will let her know that I’m at the new house. As the door closes she calls out for me to invite Malcolm and Ali over for dinner, and shouts to Deirdre and Margaret Mary, asking them to peel and core the apples, and set the table.

  The wide path runs behind the house along the top of the cliffs. Ahead to the left there are lines of white fences dividing and then subdividing broad sections of acreage. The path dips into a canopy of huge linden trees. Small twigs and branches, snapped in the wind, crunch under my feet. Off to the right, so close, the Chesapeake Bay. It’s a unique perspective being up here. When I had the kids, below, hunting crabs and sharks’ teeth I had no idea what sat atop the cliffs.

  It is cold, the wind, strong off the bay! I increase my pace, almost to a jog, until I come across an animal pen off to my left with a dozen or so large, almond-colored sheep. They are heavy with wool, huddled together in a corner of the pen under a huge leafless tree. What seems like miles of fence runs down toward Rt. 4. As I walk over and lean into the pen, two llamas, clearly not happy at my sudden approach, run over, stomp their feet aggressively, and spit.

  “Really? Really?! Oh, yuck! Yuck! Yuck! That’s disgusting,” I shout into the wind at the nonplussed llamas. Turning to try to wipe the green, odorous slime off my shoulder with my sleeve, I see a golf cart bumping along the path in my direction.

  “Good afternoon, we haven’t met yet, I’m Deirdre. Jan said you’d be walking this way and I thought with the wind and the cold you might want a ride. Oh, I see the llamas got you. Sorry about that. They are just doing their job, guarding my sheep.”

  She reminds me, instantly, of one of Sleeping Beauty’s three plump little fairy godmothers. Cute, flighty, humorous. A bit magical.

  “Nice to meet you, I’m Jessica. Guard llamas? Really? Pretty effective, and this is pretty disgusting.”

  “I know, but they do the job of keeping predators away from my sheep, stomping and spitting. I keep them up here now, under the trees. My last llama got struck by lightning in the lower, more open pasture. It doesn’t help to be the tallest in this crowd.”

  In response to my stifled giggle, she continues, “It’s OK, Jessica, you can laugh, everyone does.

  “You can wash up at the new house.” She looks absolutely lovingly at the animals. “They are beautiful, aren’t they? This is a good flock. The wool has been extraordinary this year, and we’re getting good results with the llama fiber as well. More about that later. Just let me toss these two bales in the pen.” With that she gets out of the cart and removes one and then another diminutive hay bale from the back, tossing them gingerly into the pen. “Cute hay bales, eh? Luckily, Gene Martins’ people make them up for me or I wouldn’t be able to tend the herd the way I like. Come on, hop in. I’ll ride you up to the new house.”

  We travel the path for a short distance, through the trees, and see the new house straight ahead. I apologize to Deirdre for not meeting with her earlier today, explaining my overload and the need for a walk. I tell her I want to talk to her about how she got the idea for all of this. She graciously says we will have time to talk, and that she’s not surprised if I found Jan a little overwhelming. She babbles a bit about the sheep and knitting and how surprised and delighted she was when her children and grandchildren gave her the two llamas last Mother’s Day.

  We come to a bumpy, jostling, stop in front of the house, with the two wheels on my side just off the path. The west-facing house is a large, oblong shaped, stuccoed house, with deeply slanted tin roofs. Great eaves overhanging the wrap-around porch.

  Deirdre says, “Malcolm will have to explain all the mechanics of the place. All I can do is point out the wind towers over there and the obvious design features. The roofs, gutters, and drains go into containment bins to collect rain and melting snow. There’s also some, oh, what’s the word, special water system. It’s frustrating to keep losing words at this age. Anyway, the water is used and cleaned from all parts of the house, even the toilets—it’s used, reused, and also used for the plants. I’m not sure I’m comfortable with it—oh, wait, ‘gray water’ system! It’s called a gray water system. Sorry, senior moment! Lots of those in this crowd!

  “We will see about the water thing. Oh, and there’s something called a composting toilet that sounds just dreadful! Luckily, CC has installed both the composting toilet and a traditional one in response to our protests. There are solar panels on the west-facing roof, and we now have an entire field of solar panels below, something about getting this house ‘off a grid.’ There’s also a garage in the back with a covered walkway so we can get to the cars and golf carts. Goodness knows some of us, who shall remain nameless, shouldn’t be driving anymore!

  “We like Malcolm’s design. Poor dear, it hasn’t been easy for him to please all of our interests, and CC’s absolute demand that all the materials be, drat, what does she call it, oh, from ‘sustainable’ materials.

  “The big bare landscaping beds here are being plotted out now by Sydney, Jan, and the horticulture students from the college. Poor dear, Sydney’s had a rough week, so tired of the chemo. She wants this bed to be pretty and medicinal. She has a good list of what will grow well here and be perennial. I’m so glad Sonia and Ali asked her to do this!

  “Anyway, here we are. Go ahead, hop out and walk right in. Malcolm’s wonderful. He can show you where to take care of the llama spit. He will be eager to show you around. Jan asked me to remind you to invite them to supper, and I hope you’ll stay.”

  Leaving the cart, I choose the gently sloping wood ramp up to the corner of the porch rather than the wide central stairs at the front door. The front door is extra wide and there is almost no sill between porch and the house interior. Clearly, this place is being designed, seamlessly, to accommodate the women as they age. Walking through the doorway is inspiring. Open, airy, filled with light. No furniture yet. Jimmy Buffet music is coming loudly from the back of the house. Warm wood tones are everywhere. There’s a great room, alcoves, and what appears to be six-bedroom suites, three to the left, three to the right. One on each side has a private bath, while two share a “Jack and Jill” connecting bath.

  There’s a large loft overhead adding to the dramatic effect when you enter the great room. Ceiling fans are circulating counterclockwise, sending heat back down to the rooms from the ceilings. There are also rooms in front of me on a second floor.

  Walking across the great room, I slide open the door I suspect might be an elevator. “Eureka,” I say aloud.

  “It’s an elevator, not gold,” says the voice behind me. I’m met by a broad smile and a laugh. “Jan texted that you would be up here. I’m Malcolm. Did you survive the ride with Deirdre?”

  He is a man’s man, someone comfortable in his own skin. Sandy-blond hair with a tan that I just assume is perpetual. There is no stress about him. He’s dressed in cargo shorts and a Caribbean-look Tommy Bahama shirt that contrasts strongly to the brisk fall air outside. He smells sweetly of a man that has wor
ked all day. The equally sweet smell of rum comes to me from the glass he is holding in his left hand, pencil in the other. Like his wife, he is instantly likable. I’m comfortable with him. I let myself think how nice it will be to get to know him, and Ali, and Gene.

  With a sweeping and examining eye he looks over the room and explains that the floor is cork, the doors and paneling bamboo. “The front porch, railing and benches are from recycled carpet fiber, totally termite resistant, but they look just like wood. NyloBoard—who knew? I was skeptical about all the sustainable materials until I see them and the rich wood grains and lustrous, stone-like looks.

  “Did you notice this, above the elevator call box? The other contractor put in this recycled clear plastic panel so you can see that both the interior and exterior walls are straw bales. I’m sure Tobias told you about that. The straw is grown here on property and is baled. We assemble it and synch it together. We cover it with clay stucco we make from harvesting the clay from fields. Makes for a very well-insulated house! The roof is aluminum. If Deirdre mentioned it, she’d say it was tin. She forgets. Aluminum is safer for the water table and run off. Did you notice the big eaves? I think they keep the over-all feel of the building more in keeping with the period of The Grange main house. They also serve to protect the walls, help with snow removal and with the solar elements we need.”

  He pauses, noticing my shoulder and sleeve. “I see Deirdre’s llamas got you. Come into the kitchen and wash up. I’ll turn down the music some. The kitchen has worked out really well! The floor is reclaimed wood from local barns. The cabinets look like walnut, but they are eucalyptus. The countertops are my favorite. The material is better than granite, has the same look and feel. It’s what they call ‘paperstone.’ Amazing to me, its recycled paper. I like it because, while it looks like granite, granite gets so cold. This stuff seems always lustrous and warm to the touch. Beyond the kitchen there’s a solarium.