Leslie Silko - Gardens in the Dunes

Indigo realized then she had no bedding, no blanket, so she arranged her wool coat and raincoat on the sandy floor near Sister’s bedding. For covers she used her nightgowns one on top of the other, and slept in her clothes as the other girls did.

♦ ♦ ♦

Hattie noticed the buggy driver was acquainted with the trader and his wife; all the white people here seemed to know one another. “Strength in numbers,” she supposed, since whites were outnumbered by Indians here. The driver probably stopped there overnight each time he drove to Parker or Yuma. Hattie smelled fried chicken and biscuits, but the woman said nothing about food. She wasn’t really hungry anyway; she was worried about Indigo. Maybe she was wrong to leave the child at Road’s End. Indigo’s sister and her friends seemed nice enough, but they’d created a good bit of notoriety for themselves along the river.

The trader’s wife put her in the same room as she and Indigo had shared the night before last; the sheets on the bed had not been changed. She brought out the bottle of paregoric syrup Edward gave her for emergencies, to help her sleep. She pulled the bedding to the floor off the horsehair mattress, and wept because this was Indigo’s custom, to sleep on the floor. Blankets! Indigo had no blankets, nothing!

Hattie rolled over and sobbed facedown in the pillow, so the others did not hear. She took two good swallows of the paregoric and lay back with her eyes closed, listening to her own heartbeat. Gradually her heart and her breathing slowed and the anxiety over Indigo without blankets gradually passed. Her sister and the other girls would take care of Indigo; it was plain how much her sister loved her, and the other girls seemed very kind. Hattie would simply buy Indigo blankets and other necessities the girls might need and return to Road’s End next week, but this time with a new driver. She drifted away to sleep as she imagined warm white wool blankets piled next to the parrot cage in the little mud house.

She dreamed the bright orange carnelian carving of Minerva seated with her snake was a life-size sculpture in a fantastic garden of green shady groves and leafy arcades. Next to the path stood a life-size waterbird and her chick carved from pale lemon yellow carnelian. In a thicket of holly she heard rustling and twigs cracking as if something large were approaching. Oddly, she wasn’t afraid when she saw the old tin mask rolling down the grassy path as if it were alive.

She woke and struck a match to see the clock: half past twelve. She lit the lamp on the table and opened the trunk and brought out the little carvings. She arranged them on the nightstand so they were at eye’s level from her pillow, and thrilled at their lustrous surface and transparent glow. Where were you in my dream? she asked the milky chalcedony carving of the three cattle. She took a sip of water and put out the light; oddly, the tin mask no longer seemed threatening.

Hattie ate the breakfast the woman served them, and was surprised at how good the eggs with biscuits and slices of smoked ham tasted. She was relieved the others at the table ignored her; nothing she could say or do would change their opinion of her: white squaw. Fortunately, her year of graduate classes prepared her for obnoxious conduct.

Now that she had decided her course of action, even the ride back to Needles seemed shorter. As the buggy passed through the business district of Needles she noticed a large mercantile and dry goods store on the corner; tomorrow she would shop there for Indigo’s blankets and the others things the girls should have. She needed to visit the local bank to arrange for a transfer of funds from her account in New York.

The hotel desk clerk studied her signature after she signed the guest book and handed her a letter from Edward, postmarked Winslow. Edward described the campsite at the bottom of the meteor crater and the sorry condition of the equipment, especially the drilling rig, which broke down more days than it worked. But all that would be corrected very soon. He and the doctor were about to board the train to Albuquerque with the latest discovery — a wonderful meteor iron studded with white diamonds — to have it assayed. New mining equipment would also be purchased on this trip, and he hoped he did not have to exceed the credit line she arranged for him.

He described in colorful detail the mesa climb and mentioned “a slight stiffness” in his leg, but devoted the remainder of the letter to a description of the Indian burial — the “baby,” or meteor iron, wrapped in layers of feather blanket, wore a tiny necklace and matching bracelet of tiny beads. Funeral offerings of food and a toy whistle were carefully arranged in the stone cavity with the meteor iron.

That night Hattie dreamed Sister Salt’s live baby was in the stone cavity, but Edward and the Australian doctor insisted on using a large steel pick and heavy shovel to excavate the baby. She woke soaked with sweat and shaking; in her dream one of them struck something and Edward yelled. She saw blood spurting everywhere and a tiny severed leg; but the infant in the stone cavity was unharmed, even smiling.

She just finished dressing when there was a knock, and a telegram envelope was slipped under the door. Her heart beat furiously in those moments before she opened the telegram. It was sent from Albuquerque and all it said was: “Urgent. Come at once. Your husband hospitalized.” It was signed by the chaplain of St. Joseph’s Hospital.

If she packed only one bag and hurried, there was still time to make the eastbound train to Albuquerque. She felt light-headed and had to sit down on the edge of the bed.

♦ ♦ ♦

Indigo woke up before the others and took Rainbow and Linnaeus for a walk along the river; the sun had just come up and she thought the early start might get them more food. The first day she walked the river, Indigo realized others from the settlement of houses by the church walked along here to search for greens or other plants to boil and eat. Before the government drew reservation lines, there was plenty for everyone to eat because the people used to roam up and down the river for hundreds of miles to give the plants and animals a chance to recover. But now the people were restricted to the reservations, so everyone foraged those same few miles of river.

Up in the sandhills and high foothills, Indigo’s luck was better; she knew the higher ground and what grew there better than she knew the riverbank. Anyway, long ago when they asked why Sand Lizards refused to live along the river, Grandma Fleet told them that too much time along the river put one at risk for fevers.

Indigo found a stand of sunflowers gone to seed near the mouth of an arroyo; ordinarily she would have only taken some and left the rest for the next hungry being who came along, but she was afraid her parrot would suffer if she did not take all the seeds, so she filled the pockets of her skirt. Linnaeus loved the seeds too, and Indigo began to plan a small winter garden for peas and greens and beans. Too bad the sunflowers had to be sowed in June, but next season she would sow rows and rows of the giant sunflowers. Next year she would harvest the big flat faces full of seeds for them all; but this year they were going to have to sell some of her clothes and things to buy food.

When she returned with her cache of sunflower seeds, the twins were snoring in unison, but Sister was sitting up on her bedding with the little grandfather at her breast. She proudly showed Sister all the greens and seeds she’d collected for the monkey and parrot. “What about me?” Sister asked. “Won’t you offer me any?” She made the words sound like they were a joke, but Indigo knew there was truth in the joke too — if they barely had food for themselves, how could they spare food for pets?