Barbara Kingsolver - The Bean Trees

“Who?”

“Ma.”

“That’s right. That’s me. You’ve got loads of friends. Lou Ann’s your friend, and Edna and Mattie and all the others, and they all love you and take care of you sometimes. And Estevan and Esperanza were good friends too. I want you to remember them, okay?”

“Steban and Mespanza,” she nodded gravely.

“Close enough,” I said. “I know it’s been confusing, there’s been a lot of changes in the management. But from here on in I’m your Ma, and that means I love you the most. Forever. Do you understand what that means?”

“That beans?” She looked doubtful.

“You and me, we’re sticking together. You’re my Turtle.”

“Urdle,” she declared, pointing to herself.

“That’s right. April Turtle Greer.”

“Ableurdledear.”

“Exactly.”

On an impulse I called 1-800-THE LORD, from a public phone in the City Library where we’d come after Turtle decided she’d like to look at some books. I don’t know what possessed me to do it. I’d been saving it up all this time, like Mama and our head rights, and now that I’d hit bottom and survived, I suppose I knew that I didn’t really need any ace in the hole.

The line rang twice, three times, and then a recording came on. It told me that the Lord helps those that help themselves. Then it said that this was my golden opportunity to help myself and the entire Spiritual Body by making my generous contribution today to the Fountain of Faith missionary fund. If I would please hold the line an operator would be available momentarily to take my pledge. I held the line.

“Thank you for calling,” she said. “Would you like to state your name and address and the amount of your pledge?”

“No pledge,” I said. “I just wanted to let you know you’ve gotten me through some rough times. I always thought, If I really get desperate I can call 1-800-THE LORD.’ I just wanted to tell you, you have been a Fountain of Faith.”

She didn’t know what to make of this. “So you don’t wish to make a pledge at this time?”

“No,” I said. “Do you wish to make a pledge to me at this time? Would you like to send me a hundred dollars, or a hot meal?”

She sounded irritated. “I can’t do that, ma’am,” she said.

“Okay, no problem,” I said. “I don’t need it, anyway. Especially now. I’ve got a whole trunkful of pickles and baloney.”

“Ma’am, this is a very busy line. If you don’t wish to make a pledge at this time.”

“Look at it this way,” I said. “We’re even.”

After I hung up I felt like singing and dancing through the wide, carpeted halls of the Oklahoma City Main Library. I once saw a movie where kids did cartwheels all over the library tables while Marian the librarian chased them around saying “Shhhh!” I felt just like one of those kids.

But instead Turtle and I snooped politely through the stacks. They didn’t have Old MacDonald Had an Apartment , and as a matter of fact we soon became bored with the juvenile section and moved on to Reference. Some of these had good pictures. Turtle’s favorite was the Horticultural Encyclopedia . It had pictures of vegetables and flowers that were far beyond both her vocabulary and mine. She sat on my lap and together we turned the big, shiny pages. She pointed out pictures of plants she liked, and I read about them. She even found a picture of bean trees.

“Well, you smart thing, I would have missed it altogether,” I said. I would have, too. The picture was in black and white, and didn’t look all that much like the ones back home in Roosevelt Park, but the caption said it was wisteria. I gave Turtle a squeeze. “What you are,” I told her, “is a horticultural genius.” I wouldn’t have put it past her to say “horticulture” one of these days, a word I hadn’t uttered myself until a few months ago.

Turtle was thrilled. She slapped the picture enthusiastically, causing the young man at the reference desk to look over his glasses at us. The book had to have been worth a hundred dollars at least, and it was very clean.

“Here, let’s don’t hit the book,” I said. “I know it’s exciting. Why don’t you hit the table instead?”

She smacked the table while I read to her in a whisper about the life cycle of wisteria. It is a climbing ornamental vine found in temperate latitudes, and came originally from the Orient. It blooms in early spring, is pollinated by bees, and forms beanlike pods. Most of that we knew already. It actually is in the bean family, it turns out. Everything related to beans is called a legume.

But this is the most interesting part: wisteria vines, like other legumes, often thrive in poor soil, the book said. Their secret is something called rhizobia. These are microscopic bugs that live underground in little knots on the roots. They suck nitrogen gas right out of the soil and turn it into fertilizer for the plant.

The rhizobia are not actually part of the plant, they are separate creatures, but they always live with legumes: a kind of underground railroad moving secretly up and down the roots.

“It’s like this,” I told Turtle. “There’s a whole invisible system for helping out the plant that you’d never guess was there.” I loved this idea. “It’s just the same as with people. The way Edna has Virgie, and Virgie has Edna, and Sandi has Kid Central Station, and everybody has Mattie. And on and on.”

The wisteria vines on their own would just barely get by, is how I explained it to Turtle, but put them together with rhizobia and they make miracles.

At four o’clock we went to the Oklahoma County Courthouse to pick up the adoption papers. On Mr. Armistead’s directions we found a big bright office where about twenty women sat typing out forms. All together they made quite a racket. The one who came to the front counter had round-muscled shoulders bulging under her pink cotton blazer and a half grown-out permanent in her straight Cherokee hair-a body trying to return to its natural state. She took our names and told us to have a seat, that it would be awhile. The waiting made me nervous, even though no one here looked important enough to stop what had already been set in motion. It was only a roomful of women with typewriters and African violets and pictures of their kids on their desks, doing as they were told. Still, I was afraid of sitting around looking anxious, as if one of them might catch sight of me fidgeting and cry out, “That’s no adoptive mother, that’s an impostor!” I could imagine them all then, scooting back their chairs and scurrying after me in their high-heeled pumps and tight skirts.

I needed to find something to do with myself. I asked if there was a telephone I could use for long distance. The muscular woman directed me to a pay phone out in the hall.

I dialed Lou Ann. It seemed to take an eternity for all the right wires to connect, and when she finally did take the call she sounded even more nervous than I was, which was no help.

“It’s okay, Lou Ann, everything’s fine, I just called collect because I’m about out of quarters. But we’ll have to keep it short or we’ll run up the phone bill.”

“Oh, hell’s bells, Taylor, I don’t even care.” Lou Ann relaxed immediately once she knew we hadn’t been mangled in a car crash. “I don’t know how many times this week I’ve said I’d give a million dollars to talk to Taylor, so here’s my chance. It just seems like everything in the world has happened. Where in the tarnation are you, anyway?”

“Oklahoma City. Headed home.” I hesitated. “So what all’s happened? You’ve decided to take Angel back? Or go up there and live in his yurdle, or whatever?”

“Angel? Heck no, not if you paid me. Listen, do you know what his mother told me? She said Angel just wants what he can’t have. That I’d no sooner get up to Montana before he’d decide he’d had enough of me again. She said I was worth five or six of Angel.”