Daniel Hecht - Land of Echoes

By the time she was six months pregnant, she was in bad shape. She'd been cooped up forever and ever. She'd received every heartbreak imaginable. She felt burdened and heavy and tired all the time. The hope that Peter would return had worn thin. She was so lonely she wanted to die; she probably would have if Joseph hadn't been there.

Then one day she found a letter from Peter in her mailbox. It had been mailed from California to the old address and had been forwarded by the post office. At the sight of his scrawl on the envelope, familiar from the occasional love letters he'd written, the hope and fear exploded in her. She practically fell down in the stairwell as she ripped it open and read it.

He was in California. He'd tried to start up in LA but had drifted down to San Diego. Things were going pretty well. He'd found a job maintaining vending machines at the naval base. He had gotten some regular air-time at a community radio station; he had also registered with a film agency up in Hollywood and was excited at the prospect of maybe some work as an extra, there were a couple of films coming up that needed Indian types. He loved her, he would never forget a single moment with her. But he couldn't be with her. He was a poor backcountry Navajo, she was a rich Santa Fe white girl. They should have known better than to try, with the deck stacked so badly against them. He was seeing somebody else now, a Jicarilla Apache woman who was escaping reservation life just as he was. Julieta should move on with her life. He was very, very sorry.

A few days later, while she was still reeling from that, she saw a car slide past the building, its driver looking up at the windows. She realized she'd seen the same car on several occasions. And this time, she recognized the driver's face: one of Garrett's assistants, a thug named Nick Stephanovic. Garrett was having her watched!

Suddenly the whole absurdity of her plan struck her. A naive twenty-five-year-old idiot and a thirty-year-old idealistic Navajo doctor were no strategists for the kind of war she was fighting or the kind of enemy she had. She'd never keep her secrets. Even if the divorce went through without a hitch, Garrett could keep watching. If she suddenly appeared with a baby in her arms, a Navajo baby, he'd know everything. She didn't dare ask her lawyer, but she suspected that proof of her infidelity would be cause to retroactively overturn a settlement. Far more frightening, the extent of her deception would conjure in Garrett the rage she'd glimpsed when he'd killed her horses. At that point it would've had nothing to do with love anymore, or even ownership: He'd get back at her because his pride demanded it. She'd seen his vengeful side in business dealings- cross him, and he never forgot. She'd never be safe. Her nightmare would go on and on with no reprieve, ever.

The whole thing had been a mistake, she saw, error upon error, stupidity upon stupidity. If she really wanted to start a new life, she realized, she had to let go not just of Garrett and of Peter, but of the baby, too.

Yes, she'd have to give up the baby.

It wasn't just her anger at Peter or her fear of Garrett that resolved her. She saw with frightening clarity that she was in no shape to be anybody's mother. She was too confused, impulsive, damaged; she had too much angry pride and had made too many mistakes because of it. The baby should have stable, sane, capable parents-two of them. The baby should be removed as far as possible from the wrath of Garrett McCarty and the emptiness left by an abandoning father and the mess of Julieta's life.

She talked it over with Joseph. Again, he served as her sounding board, didn't suggest or force her decisions in any way. The only time he put his foot down was after she'd told him her decision. He would help her, he said, if she was absolutely sure, if she'd considered every option and felt there was truly only that one. But it has to be forever, he warned her. You have to let go completely. You can't change your mind in a month or a year or five years. You can't rip a family's life apart by coming in later and claiming the child they've raised as their own. You can't do that to a child who loves the people it knows as its parents.

I know, she told him. That's right. I know.

There's another reason, Joseph went on. You can't second-guess yourself, either-can't hold your future hostage to the bad things that have happened. Your heart has to have freedom to grow and move on. If you emotionally cling to this child after it's gone, it'll be like having an open wound that can never heal. If you ever change your mind, you'll only hurt yourself and other innocent people. It's a one-way street, Julieta. It's got to be.

Off-record, at-home births were common on the rez-as a rural GP, Joseph had delivered his share. He said he knew of an infertile couple in a remote area of the eastern rez, good people who dearly wanted a child. When Julieta's time came, Joseph delivered the baby and brought the boy to them.

Julieta saw her son for only those minutes after his birth: Joseph laid him on her chest while he did some repairs on her. She looked at the wrinkled little face, saw those tiny lips working, and at that moment felt a force in her that she never imagined existed. It changed her inside. It was as if her whole body and mind became one big magnet, as if she existed only as that pull toward the baby. Her breasts ached and tingled with the desire to nurture him, but he wasn't ready to suckle. She looked at him for a long time. Marveling at him. But labor had exhausted her, and after a while she closed her eyes and forgot everything but the glow of that warm little weight against her skin, the minute movements. She drowsed. When she awoke the baby was gone. As they'd agreed.

Joseph never told her the details of where the boy went. There was never any question of finding him again. The new parents would report the arrival as a home birth and fill out the papers in their names. With a Navajo father and a black Irish-Hispanic mother, he'd have the right coloring to blend in. He'd grow up as a Navajo, share the good and bad of a Navajo's fate in twentieth-century America.

For once, their plans went off without a hitch. With all the heartbreak and tension, Julieta had gained barely any weight during the pregnancy. She was far too thin, but the bright side was that nobody would suspect she'd recently given birth. The divorce took place in April, and it went as her lawyer predicted. She ended up with the Oak Springs house and twelve hundred acres and three million dollars, plus an uneasy proximity to McCarty Energy's Hunters Point field and the enduring hostility of Garrett and his nasty son.

She never saw her baby again. She never heard from Peter Yellowhorse again. She was twenty-five when she began her new life.

Julieta reined Madie to a stop. A mile away, the school was just visible over a swell in the land, the buildings new and clean but sad-looking in the wan, milky light. Julieta just sat in the saddle and looked at the lonely little cluster. The sun was not far from the horizon, so dulled by the uniform overcast its glow didn't impart any warmth to the buildings or the walls of the mesa.

Cree stopped Breeze beside her. She was astonished at how differently she saw the scene now. It was rooted in all the reasons Julieta had done this monumental thing. The buildings were not just objects of stone and steel but manifestations of feeling and purpose. They were built not just on the bare red desert earth but on a foundation of one person's past pain and error and the profound drive to turn it all around, to remedy wrongs and atone for them, to act for the good rather than react to the bad.

Julieta's accomplishment awed her.

Of course, it was also built on a subconscious desire to find the lost child again. Or to sublimate and channel the mothering urge, frustrated then, in the act of nurturing and guiding many children.