Barbara Kingsolver - The Bean Trees

There would come a time when she would just wave at the sight of passing gravestones and quietly say, “Bye bye.”

Finding the church turned out to be a chase around Robin Hood’s barn. Mattie’s directions were to the old church. The congregation had since moved its home of worship plus its pastor and presumably its refugees into a new set of buildings several miles down the road. I was beginning to form the opinion that Oklahomans were as transient a bunch as the people back home who slept on grass-flecked bedrolls in Roosevelt Park.

The church was a cheery-looking place, freshly painted white with a purple front door and purple gutters. When Mattie used to talk about the Underground Railroad, by which she meant these churches and the people who carried refugees between them, it had always sounded like the dark of night. I’d never pictured old white Lincolns with soda pop spilled on the seats, and certainly not white clapboard churches with purple gutters.

Reverend and Mrs. Stone seemed greatly relieved to see us, since they had apparently expected us a day or two earlier, but no one made an issue of it. They helped carry things up a sidewalk bordered with a purple fringe of ageratums into the small house behind the parsonage. Meanwhile Estevan and I worked on getting possessions sorted out. Things had gotten greatly jumbled during the trip, and Turtle’s stuff was everywhere. She was like a pack rat, taking possession of any item that struck her fancy (like Esperanza’s hairbrush) and tucking another one into its place (like a nibbled cracker). Turtle herself was exhausted with the events of the day, or days, and was in the back seat sleeping the sleep of the dead, as Lou Ann would put it. Esperanza and Estevan had already said goodbye to her in a very real way back in Mr. Armistead’s office, and didn’t think there was any need to wake her up again. But I stood firm.

“It’s happened too many times that people she loved were whisked away from her without any explanation. I want her to see you, and see this place, so she’ll know we’re leaving you here.”

She woke reluctantly, and groggily accepted my explanation of what was happening. “Bye bye,” she said, standing up on the seat and waving through the open back window.

I think we all felt the same exhaustion. There are times when it just isn’t possible to say goodbye. I hugged Esperanza and shook hands with Reverend and Mrs. Stone in a kind of daze. The day seemed too bright, too full of white clapboard and cheerful purple flowers, for me to be losing two good friends forever.

I was left with Estevan, who was checking under the back seat for the last time. I checked the trunk. “You ought to take some of this food,” I said. “Turtle and I will never eat it all; it will just go to waste. At least the things there are whole jars of, like mustard and pickles.” I bent over the cooler, stacking and unstacking the things that were swimming in melted ice in the bottom.

Estevan put his hand on my arm. “Taylor.” I straightened up. “What’s going to happen to you here? What will you do?”

“Survive. That has always been our intention.”

“But what kind of work will you find around here? I can’t imagine they have Chinese restaurants, which is probably a good thing. Oh God,” I put my knuckle in my mouth. “Shut me up.”

Estevan smiled. “I would never pray for that.” “I’m just afraid for you. And for Esperanza. I’m sorry for saying this, it’s probably a very nice place, but I can’t stand to think of you stuck here forever.”

“Don’t think of us here forever. Think of us back in Guatemala with our families. Having another baby. When the world is different from now.”

“When will that ever be,” I said. “Never.”

“Don’t say that.” He touched my cheek. I was afraid I was going to cry, or worse. That I would throw my arms around his ankles like some lady in a ridiculous old movie and refuse to let him go.

When tears did come to me it was a relief. That it was only tears. “Estevan, I know it doesn’t do any good to say things like this, but I don’t want to lose you. I’ve never lost anybody I loved, and I don’t think I know how to.” I looked away, down the flat, paved street. “I’ve never known anybody like you.”

He took both my hands in his. “Nor I you, Taylor.”

“Can you write? Would it be safe, I mean? You could use a fake return address or something.”

“We can send word by way of Mattie. So you will know where we are and what happens to us.”

“I wish that didn’t have to be all.”

“I know.” His black pupils moved back and forth between my eyes.

“But it does, doesn’t it? There’s no way around the hurt, is there? You just have to live with it.”

“Yes. I’m sorry.”

“Estevan, do you understand what happened back there in that office, with Esperanza?”

“Yes.”

“I keep thinking it was a kind of, what would you call it?”

“A catharsis.”

“A catharsis,” I said. “And she seems happy, honest to God, as happy as if she’d really found a safe place to leave Ismene behind. But she’s believing in something that isn’t true. Do you understand what I’m saying? It seems wrong, somehow.”

“Mi’ija, in a world as wrong as this one, all we can do is to make things as right as we can.” He put his hands on my shoulders and kissed me very, very sweetly, and then he turned around and walked into the house.

All four of us had buried someone we loved in Oklahoma.

I called Mama from a pay phone at a Shell station. I dug two handfuls of coins out of my jeans pockets, splayed them out on the metal shelf, and dialed. I was scared to death she would hang up on me. She had every right. I hadn’t said boo to her for almost two months, not even to congratulate her on getting married. She’d written to say they’d had a real nice time at the wedding and that Harland was moving into our house. Up until the wedding he’d always lived in a so-called bachelor apartment, which means a bed plus hot plate plus roach motel in his sock drawer, in back of El-Jay’s Paint and Body.

There was static in the line. “Mama, I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “I’m just outside of Oklahoma City so I thought I’d give you a ring. It’s a lot closer than Arizona.”

“Is that you? Bless your heart, it is you! I’ll swan. Now weren’t you sweet to call.” She sounded so far away.

“So how’s it going, Mama? How’s married life treating you?”

She lowered her voice. “Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Either you’ve got a bad cold or you’ve been crying. Your sound’s all up in your head.”

The tears started coming again, and I asked Mama to hang on just a minute. I had to put down the receiver to blow my nose. The one thing Lou Ann hadn’t thought of was that I should have packed two dozen hankies.

When I got on the line again the operator was asking for more coins, so I dropped them in. Mama and I listened to the weird bonging song and didn’t say anything to each other for a little bit.

“I just lost somebody I was in love with,” I finally told her. “I just told him goodbye, and I’m never going to see him again.”

“Well, what did you turn him loose for?” Mama wanted to know. “I never saw you turn loose of nothing you wanted.”

“This is different, Mama. He wasn’t mine to have.”

She was quiet for a minute. We listened to the static playing up and down. It sounded like music from Mars.

“Mama, I feel like, I don’t know what. Like I’ve died.”

“I know. You feel like you’ll never run into another one that’s worth turning your head around for, but you will. You’ll see.”