Leslie Silko - Gardens in the Dunes

Sister Salt was lying down that evening when Maytha and Vedna surprised her; they had big grins on their faces because they’d just counted it all up and realized they’d made all the money they needed to buy land. Very soon they’d leave this noisy dump for good! They invited her to come with them — they weren’t going right away — in a month or two. Think about it. After they went back to their tent, her eyes filled with tears.

I am the only one who will wait for you, dear little Indigo, she whispered that night before she went to sleep. Now both the baby and its father wanted to leave, and the twins were going too!

In mid-July the rains came and the weather began to cool off. Rumors flew around the construction site, but there were no signs of the state militia or the federal troops. Cooler weather made Sister Salt restless; she began to dream about the old gardens, where Mama and Indigo were planting red amaranth and speckled yellow beans.

The baby was big enough to be seen in her belly, so she only had sex with Big Candy now; otherwise the baby’s features might resemble other men’s. The cloth of her smock shifted just a bit as the baby kicked and turned; the baby wanted her to eat Sand Lizard food, not all this animal grease and cooked food. Big Candy wanted a big strong son and insisted she eat plenty of meat, and each night he brought back big platters of leftovers — beef rib roasts and stuffed pork loins and bowls piled high with orange yams and stewed okra. But now the odor of meat and its grease made her nauseous; she ate the okra and yams but pushed the meat aside.

Why should I talk to you when you don’t feed me the food I need? The baby turned and turned but didn’t speak again; the baby worried her and she decided to confide in Maytha and Vedna. But when she went by the laundry, the washtubs were turned upside down and the fires were out, and the twins were nowhere to be found. They must have found a ride going north and went to visit their old auntie, who was ailing.

She wished she’d gone with them; now they joked all the time about escaping that place; the earth of the dam towered above them in a sinister hump, they all agreed. The trampled earth of the dam site looked all the same, just as each day’s work around Big Candy’s casino tent and brewery took on a sameness. The construction workers who preferred to drink beer and gamble at Big Candy’s down along the river became regular customers. The men made the same remarks each time they saw Sister Salt — why had she stopped taking them to the willows to roll around on the sand? Why didn’t she come inside the casino tent to bring them luck with the dice? She learned to avoid the casino tent and so did Maytha and Vedna because the drunk gamblers who lost often turned nasty and blamed the women for spoiling their luck.

It wasn’t too hot yet; a walk would do her good. She left behind the river for the sandy hills above to gather wild greens. The construction noises receded as she walked, so she kept going until she no longer heard anything but the wind and the meadowlarks in the rice grass. She had not planned to walk so far without her gourd canteen, but her legs kept going, and the farther she went the better she felt; even the baby stopped turning so much.

A distance up a dry wash she found a coyote melon vine snaking through the rice grass and thistles. At the first sweet taste of melon, she was overwhelmed by memories of the sweet yellow melons they shared the last autumn they were all together. The salt of her tears made her cheeks itch. They had been so happy together that sunny afternoon a few months before the crows and then the dancers came. That last afternoon, the melon’s sugar juice stuck their fingers together and they squealed with delight as they pulled them apart.

She ate one melon and then another like a starving person until her hands and even strands of her hair were sticky; her stomach felt too full and unsettled. She sat with her arms across her belly protectively and waited for the cramp to pass. Grandma always warned them not to eat too much too fast! The baby must like this Sand Lizard food because it didn’t complain. She lay back on the fine sand to take a rest. The sky here was pure endless turquoise, and the air here smelled so clean, unmarred by the dust and smoke of the construction. The sun was moving lower in the sky but she didn’t want to turn back yet.

What else was there growing wild in this sandy wash, ready to eat? She walked a distance farther up the wash and sure enough she found a stand of sunflowers, many still in bloom but others gone to seed. Her stomach felt uncomfortably full but at the same time she felt so hungry she crammed handfuls of dry seeds into her mouth, hulls and all. Ummmm! The flavor in her mouth was so rich and delightful she swallowed despite how full her stomach felt. She couldn’t spit them out and waste them!

A short distance beyond the sunflowers she spotted the bright red fruit of a chile pepper plant; once someone must have had a garden here, and a few seeds replanted themselves just as they did at the old gardens. Oh how she wished she were there!

She ate the sweet hot peppers one after the other, as if they might take her home if she ate enough of them. The heat of the peppers in her stomach eased the odd heaviness she felt; she knew she really should start back to the river before it got any hotter than it was. But all the food in her stomach made her feel heavy and sleepy; the heat was already strong, so she decided to take a nap in the shade of a big boulder and start back when the sun went down and it cooled off.

She slept longer than she intended; the shadows were already long and the sun about to set. If she wasn’t back by dark, Big Candy and the twins might worry. She walked only the distance back down the wash, past the melon plant, when another cramp tightened around her belly and back until she knelt in the sand, doubled over from the pain.

She thought it was only diarrhea until she saw the gouts of dark blood glisten on the sand between her feet. How strange that the blood’s color was identical to the dark red edge of the sky at sundown. All this blood! How much more blood did she have before she died, and the baby died too? She crawled to clean sand and lay on her side with her knees drawn to her belly; the blood felt warm and thick between her thighs and then it happened: she could not stop her body from contracting and pushed to relieve herself, then realized something else had happened, some part of herself had been expelled. She could feel it pulsate but it beat faster than her heartbeat and she knew it was the baby Sand Lizard, born too soon.

Twilight was fading into darkness as she gathered up the wet bundle still connected to her own body. She smelled blood as she cradled the dark sticky mass in her arms before she bit through the cord that connected them. He was a tiny shrunken old man who refused to stop sucking his own hand long enough to open his eyes. She tore her skirt and gently wrapped him, not too tightly, around and around until she’d made a cocoon with only a small opening above his face to keep him warm. She was still bleeding, and the cramping did not stop, and she thought, My Sand Lizard grandfather has come to take me home.

The sand remained warm after darkness came, and she curled around the little black grandfather, who preferred his own fist to the nipples of her breasts. She did not lose consciousness, but she was so weak she felt the pull of the earth bring her to the ground, and she thought, So this is how we return to Mother Earth. She was happy to return because she missed Grandma Fleet so much.

Toward morning the desert cooled off and she woke shivering in the darkness; the stars were bigger and brighter late at night when they thought no one was watching them. She looked overhead; the stars were closer and bigger now; how they flashed in arcs traveling from place to place. Though she shivered, still she took care not to move her arms or shift the bundle in her arms; she did not look down because she did not want to know if he was alive or dead. Was the bundle warm, or cold? It was so small she couldn’t be sure; carefully she pushed herself deeper into layers of sand that were still warm. Oh how soothing the warm sand was on her belly and the base of her spine! How sweet sleep was — let me sleep forever.