Leslie Silko - Gardens in the Dunes

“But really,” Mrs. Abbott continued, “won’t that be a great deal of bother?” But Hattie was not listening; she and Indigo were talking excitedly about the bird. Hattie was pleased to see Indigo animated and smiling; the parrot was well worth the extra bother.

Indigo was so excited about the gift of the parrot she woke at dawn. Though Susan pretended she had not seen Indigo watching them, Indigo understood Susan’s gift of the green parrot. She did not intend to tell Hattie what she’d seen; to even admit she had watched Susan and the gardener might get her in trouble. Of course she accepted Susan’s gift!

What a special day this was! The beautiful green parrot was hers! She slipped on the blue satin slippers for the occasion. She stopped in the kitchen for a cookie, then went to tell the green parrot the good news. As she approached the aviaries, she heard the sunrise songs of the Chinese thrushes; their songs were very beautiful but tragic, maybe because they were born in cages and could not survive if freed.

The green parrot opened one eye at Indigo and seemed about to close it again when she held up the gingerbread cookie. The parrot promptly fluffed his feathers and opened both eyes. Previously Susan ordered the parrot be fed only sunflower seeds, which he largely ignored; but the cookie seemed to interest him a great deal. Indigo broke the cookie in halves and ate one so the parrot could see it was good to eat, then she held the remaining half between the bars of the cage near the bird.

“You can come with me now,” Indigo whispered. “You won’t be lonely.” She pushed her fingers and the cookie into the cage, closer to the bird.

“Ummm! Gingerbread! You’ll like this,” she urged softly. The green parrot opened its beak as it stretched one wing and then the other and ruffled its feathers as it began to move along the perch to reach the bit of cookie. The parrot took a bit of the piece of cookie and tasted it, watching Indigo intently all the while. How thrilling it was to feel the beak daintily plucking off another bit of cookie! When the last fragment of the cookie was gone, the parrot was within inches of her fingers and Indigo could not resist the urge to touch the ruff of bright red feathers above his beak. For an instant their eyes met before the parrot sank his hooked beak into the tip of Indigo’s finger.

For an instant Indigo was shocked by the fiery pain that pulsed in her fingers and hand; tears ran down her cheeks as she clutched the bleeding finger against her body and squeezed it hard to stop the dizzying pain. Her heart was pounding in her ears from the bird’s surprise attack.

“But I love you!” Indigo cried as the parrot nonchalantly scratched the top of his head with the claw of one foot. “Then let me out of the cage,” the parrot seemed to say with his glittering eyes. When she opened her hand to look at the injured finger there was so much blood she could not see what damage was done. Then to her horror, she saw big splatters of blood across the toes of her lovely blue satin slippers.

Stained slippers in hand, Indigo ran in stocking feet down the path to the fishpond in the Abbotts’ garden. She had to wash out the blood before the slippers were ruined.

“Smack! smack! smack!” The big blue-and-red carp sucked the edge of the water lily leaf for the velvet green algae on its edge. Indigo held her breath as the carp raised its blue head out of the water to reach the top of the leaf, and for an instant their eyes met before the carp slapped the water with its tail — splash! — as it dove underwater again.

The injured finger bled a few drops into the water as Indigo thrust it into the soothing coolness. She could see the wound clearly — it was not large but it was deep, the shape of a half-moon, the mark of the parrot beak that parrots gave their human servants so other parrots and creatures would treat the parrot’s servant with respect. Oh but why stain the blue slippers? What discouragement she felt when she looked at the shoes. Hattie asked her to save the satin slippers for the blue garden party, but she thought it wouldn’t harm them to be worn just once before that night.

She carefully dipped one and then the other satin slipper into the water, and tried to rub away the splotches of blood; maybe the slippers just needed to soak a bit in the shallows on the steps of the pool. While they soaked, Indigo scooped handfuls of algae from the rocks at the edge of the pool and flicked it into the water above the carp’s head. She watched the strand of algae float for an instant before the carp opened its big mouth and swallowed it. She was thinking of what she might do to make friends with the parrot when she noticed the blue slippers had floated off the steps and were sinking slowly deeper into the pool. By the time Lloyd fished the slippers out of the water with a leaf rake, the slippers were ruined. Mrs. Abbott was terribly disappointed, but Hattie didn’t seem to care. She told Indigo the plain white slippers they brought along would be just fine.

The hot dry weather necessitated the additional expense of workers to pull hoses from the horse-drawn water tank and pump to keep the lawns and flowers of the English gardens in top form. Drought or no, Susan refused to give up the Delphinium belladonna because its blue was more pure than any other; dozens of big plants were nurtured in the cool house, and as the ball approached, the gardener directed his assistants who labored to carefully stake each of the stalks of the plants with fine wire before the five-gallon pots were buried discreetly among the white buddleia.

The morning of the ball, the Scottish gardener surprised Susan with two hundred pots of white tulips and white freesias carefully prepared by weeks in the cold room of the greenhouse. The pots of tulips and freesias lined the walks and balustrades of the blue garden and the adjoining terraces. The gardener worked similar wonders in the cold room with the rare blue primulas, which did not leave the greenhouse for transplanting until the late afternoon of the ball.

The blue garden was a lovely sight indeed the night of the ball, despite the dry hot weather. The pots of blue hydrangeas did not leave the glass house until the afternoon of the ball, and the workers were instructed to bury them pot and all in the ground between the powder blue verbena and the sapphire blue lobelia. Along the edge of the walk, a scattering of white mignonettes were transplanted for their night fragrance. Big pots of white and blue wisteria carefully pruned into dwarf trees and forced to bloom for the ball were arranged to create shimmering draperies of the pendulous blossoms. Weeks before, the Scottish gardener had instructed the workers to allow the white rambling roses to overgrow the stone gateways.

Tiny silver lights strung in the shrubs and trees flickered on just as the sun set. On tables draped in white damask, silver platters with real boars’ heads, nose to nose, formed centerpieces. Guests began to arrive as the full moon rose over the bay. Even the dry summer provided a lovely clear evening, and the drought only deepened the blue of the sky after sunset. A hush fell over the guests as the pianist began to play the Moonlight Sonata and Susan slowly descended the pale limestone steps. The full moon gave off a lovely silver blue glow, which was all that Susan could ask for her dramatic entrance in a white satin Renaissance-style ball gown, trimmed in sapphire blue, which was transformed by the moonlight from mere white to shimmering moonlight blue.

While Edward and Hattie and the Abbotts assisted Susan and Colin receiving the guests on the main terrace, Indigo watched the people from a distance, from the far end of the rectangular pool, where a big silver carp basked motionless at the bottom. She brought crackers and bits of bread from a table of food on the terrace to toss to the carp. The guests began to stroll along the pool’s edge to ooooh and ahhh over the fragrant white Victoria lilies big as dinner plates and highlighted by blue lilies of all hues. Indigo was careful to keep herself behind the shrubs and tall flowers where the white women could not see her to call out her name and touch her before she could escape. She was happy alone with the flowers. She loved to inhale the fragrance of the white mignonettes, then hurry down the steps to sniff the gardenias so the scents lightly mixed with each other.