Barbara Kingsolver - The Bean Trees

Although, of course, I supposedly had enough Cherokee in me that it counted. I knew I would never really claim my head rights, and probably couldn’t even if I wanted to-they surely had a statute of limitations or some such thing. But it was a relief to know the Cherokee Nation wasn’t a complete bust. I read a story once, I might have this confused but I think the way it went was that this lady had a diamond necklace put away in a safe-deposit box all her life, thinking that if she ever got desperate she could sell it, only to find out on her deathbed that it was rhinestones. That was more or less the way I felt on that first terrible trip through Oklahoma.

It was nice to find out, after all, that Mama’s and my ace in the hole for all those years really did have a few diamonds in it: Lake Oologah, Lake o’ the Cherokees.

“The Cherokee Nation has its own Congress and its own President,” I reported to Esperanza and Estevan. “Did you know that?” I wasn’t sure if I actually knew this or was just elaborating on what the girl in the restaurant had told me.

The scenery grew more interesting by the mile. At first it was still basically flat but it kind of rolled along, like a great green, rumpled bedsheet. Then there were definite hills. We passed through little towns with Indian names that reminded me in some ways of Kentucky. Here and there we saw trees.

Once, all of a sudden, Turtle shouted, “Mama!” She was pointing out the window.

My heart lost its beat for a second. To my knowledge she had never referred to anyone as Mama. We looked, but couldn’t see anybody at all along the road. There was only a gas station and a cemetery.

Turtle and Esperanza were becoming inseparable. Turtle sat on her lap, played with her, and whined at the rest stops when Esperanza wanted to go to the bathroom by herself. I suppose I should have been grateful for the babysitting. I couldn’t quite imagine how I would have kept Turtle entertained by myself, while I was driving. We’d managed a long trip before, of course, but that was in Turtle’s catatonic period. At that stage of her life, I don’t think she would have minded much if you’d put her in a box and shipped her to Arizona. Now everything was different.

Lake o’ the Cherokees was a place where you could imagine God might live. There were enough trees.

I still would have to say it’s stretching the issue to call the Ozarks mountains, but they served. I felt secure again, with my hopes for something better tucked just out of sight behind the next hill.

We found a cottage right off the bat. It was perfect: there were two bedrooms, a fireplace with a long-tailed bird (stuffed) on the mantel, and a bathroom with an old claw-foot tub (one leg poked down through the floor, but the remaining three looked steadfast). It was one of a meandering row of mossy; green-roofed cottages lined up along a stream bank in a place called Saw Paw Grove.

They didn’t want to take it for the night, but I insisted. We had the money from Mattie, and besides, it wasn’t that expensive. No more than we would have spent the night before if I hadn’t had connections at the Broken Arrow. It took some doing, but I convinced Estevan and Esperanza that we weren’t doing anything wrong. We deserved to have a good time, just for this one day.

I told them to think of it as a gift. “As an ambassador of my country I’m presenting you with an expenses-paid one-day vacation for four at Lake o’ the Cherokees. If you don’t accept, it will be an international incident.”

They accepted. We sat on the cottage’s little back porch, watching out for Turtle and the holes where the floorboards were rotted out, and stared at the white stream as it went shooting by. No water in Arizona was ever in that much of a hurry. The moss and the ferns looked so good I just drank up all that green. Even the rotten floor planks looked wonderful. In Arizona things didn’t rot, not even apples. They just mummified. I realized that I had come to my own terms with the desert, but my soul was thirsty.

Growing all along the creek there were starry red-and-yellow flowers that bobbed on the ends of long, slender stems. Turtle informed us they were “combines,” and we accepted her authority. Estevan climbed down the slick bank to pick them. I thought to myself, Where in the universe will I find another man who would risk his neck for a flower? He fell partway into the creek, soaking one leg up to the knee-mainly, I think, for our benefit. Even Esperanza laughed.

Something was going on inside of Esperanza. Something was thawing. Once I saw a TV program about how spring comes to Alaska. They made a big deal about the rivers starting to run again, showing huge chunks of ice rumbling and shivering and bashing against each other and breaking up. This is how it was with Esperanza. Behind her eyes, or deeper, in the arteries around her heart, something was starting to move. When she held Turtle on her lap she seemed honestly happy. Her eyes were clear and she spoke to Estevan and me directly, looking at our eyes.

Estevan survived his efforts and handed a flower to each of us. He kissed Esperanza and said something in Spanish that included “mi amor,” and fixed the flower in her buttonhole so that it sprang out from her chest like one of those snake-in-the-can tricks. I could imagine them as a young couple, shy with each other, doing joky things like that. I braided the stem of my flower into my hair. Turtle waved hers up and down like a drum major’s baton, shouting, “Combine, combine, combine!” None of us, apparently, was able to think of any appropriate way of following this command.

I was supposed to be calling them Steven and Hope now so they could begin getting used to it. I couldn’t. I had changed my own name like a dirty shirt, but I couldn’t help them change theirs.

“I love your names,” I said. “They’re about the only thing you came here with that you’ve still got left. I think you should only be Steven and Hope when you need to pull the wool over somebody’s eyes, but keep your own names with your friends.”

Neither of them said anything, but they didn’t urge me again to call them by false names.

Later we found a place that rented boats by the half hour and Estevan and I took one out onto the lake. Esperanza didn’t want to go. She didn’t know how to swim, and I wasn’t sure about Turtle, so the two of them stayed on the shore feeding ducks.

Estevan and I took turns rowing and waving at the shore until Turtle was a tiny bouncing dot. By then we were in the very middle of the lake, and we let ourselves drift. The sun bounced off the water, making bright spangles and upside-down shadows on our faces. I rolled my jeans up to my knees and dangled my bare feet over the side. There was a fishy-smelling assortment of things in the bottom of the boat, including a red-and-white line floater and a collection of pop-top rings from beer cans.

Estevan took off his shirt and lay back against the front of the boat, his hands clasped behind his head, exposing his smooth Mayan chest to the sun. And to me. How could he possibly have done this, if he had any idea how I felt? I knew that Estevan had walked a long, hard road beyond innocence, but still he sometimes did the most simple, innocent, heartbreaking things. As much as I have wanted anything, ever, I wanted to know how that chest would feel against my face. I looked toward the shore so he wouldn’t see the water in my eyes.

I pulled the wilted flower out of my braid and twisted the stem in my fingers. “I’m going to miss you a lot,” I said. “All of you. Both, I mean.”

Estevan didn’t say he was going to miss all of me. We knew this was a conversation we couldn’t afford to get into. In more ways than one, since we were renting by the half-hour.